Murder at the Bike Shop | Sidebar 11

Summary

---

Proof: A True Crime Podcast

Episode: Murder at the Bike Shop | Sidebar 11

Date: April 9, 2026

Hosts: Susan Simpson, Jacinda Davis, Kevin
Season 3, Episode 11 Discussion

---

Overview

Main Theme
This Sidebar episode centers around an in-depth discussion of Season 3, Episode 11 of Proof, exploring new revelations and critical missed leads in the investigation of Earl’s murder at the bike shop in Kalamazoo. The hosts reflect on significant witness tips that were overlooked, the possible roles of various suspects (particularly James Long), and the bittersweet events surrounding Scott’s brief release from prison before his death.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Unfollowed Witness Tips & The Impact on the Case

• Recovered Tips: Recent records requests uncovered witness tips from the morning of Earl’s murder. These tips provided eyewitness accounts of suspicious activity and a car outside the bike shop (04:06), information that could have changed the direction of the investigation.
  • Susan Simpson notes: “Including two tips we found about sightings at the bike shop from early in the morning when Earl was killed.” (02:13)
• Pattern of Overlooked Evidence:
  • Kevin highlights the recurring theme of ignored leads in wrongful convictions: “Just the little circumstances, the things that have to happen. You know, so many things are by chance and if somebody had followed up on either of those two tips, this would likely all be a very different story.” (02:42)
• Multiple Corroborations:
  • Four separate reports (from two tipsters, an officer, and another witness) all described the same vehicle/activity at the crime scene. Jacinda points out: “So really there’s four tips because… there was another tipster on the same night Officer West saw something. So four tips about the same thing…” (03:52)

2. Details of the Witness Accounts

• Notable Witness "Sally":
  • Sally, a tipster, noticed the suspicious vehicle so strongly that she reported it to police twice after seeing no follow-up. “She left her full name and number. So she had been very easy to contact.” (06:09)
  • The car was parked backwards—possibly to hide the license plate, since Michigan uses rear plates only (04:30).
• Anonymous Tipster Search:
  • Susan describes the failed attempt to trace the anonymous tipster’s 1988 phone number and the limitations imposed by the passage of time (06:18).

3. Implications of James Long as a Suspect

• Emerging Theory:
  • The evidence, particularly witness descriptions and the fact that James Long had keys and a connection to the location, led the hosts to argue he was a more credible suspect than Scott.
    • “Given the evidence that was likely someone familiar with the bike shop who did it and had keys, it's hard not to make him a prime suspect.” (08:18)
• Missed Forensics:
  • The show discusses untested physical evidence, including fingerprints and DNA, which could have linked James Long to the crime (09:29).
    • “We know those bloody fingerprints don’t belong to Earl or to Scott. Well, did they ever compare them to James? There’s no indication they did.” (09:23)

4. Potential Motives & Scene Narrative

• Relationship Dynamics:
  • Earl’s trust and long relationship with James, alongside conflict over James’ sexuality and managerial roles, is shared as possible motive context (13:23).
• Alternative Scenario:
  • Jacinda hypothesizes: “You can see how Earl maybe called [James] because he heard something that night. He comes over and he’s pissed off… some kind of argument happens.” (14:07)
• Medical Examiner's Theory:
  • The conclusion was that the fatal attack might have been an act of rage, not a deliberate murder—making a personal connection and unexpected escalation plausible (14:21).

5. Reflections on Scott's Release & Last Days

• Bittersweet Release:
  • The team recounts the fraught process of securing Scott’s release home and the visible joy he experienced with small comforts, like a milkshake, after decades in prison.
    • “He finished it. I think it was the last, like, real food he finished, but he downed that milkshake.” (18:14 - Susan)
  • Kevin recalls: “The utter joy…even his diminished capacity…at having that milkshake.” (17:56)
• Physical Decline:
  • The gravity of Scott’s declining health and the Herculean effort required to get him home is described in raw detail.
    • “He was literally like dead weight.” (22:17 - Kevin)
  • Yet, the fleeting happiness of release is recognized as a rare moment of "joy and hope" for Scott and for the team (20:20).

6. Discoveries About Richard Bendeville

• The episode closes with references to persistent focus on Richard Bendeville, emphasizing the value—and sometimes necessity—of concrete, documentary proof over oral testimony (24:00).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Missed Tips’ Consequences:
  • Susan: “If anyone had seen or investigated [these tips] could have changed everything…” (02:33)
  • Kevin: “So many things are by chance and if somebody had followed up on either of those two tips, this would likely all be a very different story.” (02:42)
• On Evidentiary Failures:
  • Susan: “Given the evidence… it’s hard not to make [James Long] a prime suspect.” (08:18)
  • Kevin: “Let’s put it this way—it’s a much stronger case than was ever made against Scott.” (08:38)
• On Scott’s Final Days:
  • Kevin: “The utter joy…at having that milkshake.” (17:56)
  • Susan: “He finished it. I think it was the last, like, real food he finished, but he downed that milkshake.” (18:14)
  • Kevin: “It took five or six of us and every ounce of strength we had to get this guy…up into this trailer…he was literally like dead weight.” (22:17)
• On Investigative Regret:
  • Kevin: “I remember driving…to James Long and Jimmy Connell’s house in Alabama and…they were both dead. And just the level of disappointment is hard to explain…” (17:08)

---

Important Timestamps

• Unfollowed Tips/Discovery: 02:13–06:50
• James Long as a Suspect: 07:22–09:43
• Scott’s Release & Milkshake Moment: 17:42–18:21
• Reflections on Scott’s Health and Joy: 20:00–22:22
• Discussion of Richard Bendeville & Evidence: 24:00–24:20

---

Conclusion & Next Steps

Susan closes by urging listeners to tune in for the season finale (episode 12), promising more revelations and a deeper look into the critical ‘papers’ unearthed in their investigation, and their implications for justice in the Kalamazoo case.

---

Transcript

[A]

I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping my money, too. So if you're tired of overpaying for wireless and fed up with crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees, and quote unquote free perks that actually cost more in the long run, switch to Mint Mobile.

[B]

At Mint Mobile, all plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. And it's easy. Bring your own phone and number, activate with ESIM in minutes and start saving immediately. No long term contracts, no hassle.

[A]

You can ditch your overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month.

[B]

15 bucks? I could be saving so much money.

[A]

Think of how many Manhattans you could buy for that savings.

[B]

Oh, I'm switching right now.

[A]

So if you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop [e-mail] proof that's mintmobile.com proof. Upfront payment of $45 for three months. Five gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only. Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

[C]

Hey, sweetie. Your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm gonna give it a try. Wish me luck. Me again. I put in the license plate. It gave me an offer. Unbelievable. Okay, I accepted the offer. They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done. The car is gone. I'm holding a check anyway. Carvana, give it a whirl. Love ya.

[A]

So good you'll want to leave a voicemail about it.

[B]

Sell your car today on Carvana.

[A]

Pickup fees may apply. Hello, and welcome to this week's sidebar. We're here to discuss episode 11 of season three of Proof. And I'm here with Jacinda and Kevin, and we are discussing our penultimate episode of the season. Hey, guys.

[B]

Hey, Susan. How you doing?

[D]

Hey, Susan.

[A]

This episode, we heard about a lot of things, but we also discussed something we got from records. Requests from Kalamazoo Police Department, including the asylum observer tips that Scott fought to see for so many years. Those tips were the ones that had the various tips about Alan Nutter and his confessions. But somehow it seems like other tips in there that are significant got overlooked. Including two tips we found about sightings at the bike shop from early in the morning when Earl was killed.

[B]

Yeah, two tips that if anyone had seen or investigated could have changed everything for the direction of the investigation and for Scott's life.

[D]

It's one of those things that stands out in all of these wrongful conviction cases and certainly this one over and over again. Just the little circumstances, the things that have to happen. You know, so many things are by chance and if somebody had followed up on either of those two tips, this would likely all be a very different story.

[A]

Yeah. And we can't explain why they were not followed up on. We don't know why the original investigators didn't do it. We don't know why the Scott's attorneys didn't look at. We just don't know. But the tips are there. I guess if you're focused on the idea, it's either Scott or Alan Nutter maybe you see those tips and you just keep on flipping because there's no reason at all that either Scott or Ellen Nutter would be at the bike shop at 6:30am so it might not have seemed important.

[B]

I guess not. Except for the description of the man matches Alan's car and the.

[A]

Yeah, I mean it's also the fact there's two of them. If it was just one tip, you might be like, okay, there's random testers all the time. Like maybe it's not important but when you have two that fit together like that and timing and like what they saw, I mean that's, that's a hell of a coincidence for it not to be something.

[D]

And they're saying the same thing that a police officer said six hours earlier.

[B]

Right. And another witness. So really there's four tips because don't forget there was another tipster on the same night Officer west saw something. So four tips about the same thing about this car there and a man activity there.

[A]

It shouldn't have been happening. And everyone I spoke to who worked at the bike shop or like was familiar with it said like there's no reason this car would have been there at 6:30. Like there's just no reason there were never cars there. That's why the two tipsters presumably noticed it because it just wasn't something that was often there or ever there. And we also jacinda, we had a discussion too because the tipsters describe both and describe how one saw the car parked backwards with its rear against the side of the building. Other, the second one, Sally we spoke to in the show drove by a little bit later and saw already parked there. But. But in Michigan there aren't front tags, only back tags. So I Parking backwards like that, you would hide your tag numbers.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

The other thing that also stands out to me is that there's then another tip that James Long's partner, James Connell, that he drove that car or a similar car. Yeah, a similar car. And that he left town right after. I mean, that's giving even more evidence to look into. Oh, here's a guy who has this car. Here's a reason, like this person is tied to the shop through his partner. All of these things that could have been looked at. I mean, the James Connell tip just kind of knocked me back on the floor. Like, what? What do you mean? Like, how are we here?

[A]

How did no one ever look into it?

[B]

It's like Officer west told us, it's all pieces of a puzzle that you're building. And this picture makes more sense. Like, these are all pieces that fit together. The other thing I was going to say is when we went to speak with Sally, the tipster who called in about seeing the car in the morning, it stood out to her so much that she told an officer that morning when she came back from work, you know, and there was the police activity and it was taped off, and she stopped and she told someone what she saw. And when no one followed up with her, and when the case was still unsolved a few months later, she called again. Like, that's how certain she was that what she saw was unusual.

[D]

Right. So it's the tip comes in again. So it's another new tip.

[A]

And she left her full name and number. So she had been very easy to contact.

[D]

Right. So it's followed up on. Again, it's another tip.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So again, there's two sun observer tips in the morning. One 6:30am 1645645 was Sally. We spoke to her. The 6:30am tipster we could not find. I wish we had. They did not leave a name. They wanted to be anonymous, but for some reason, they wrote down a phone number anyway. And I've done everything I could think of to find out who had this number in 1988. And unfortunately, I just came to a dead end. I found people who had it later on, even not too many years after that. But they didn't have it at the right time. And there's just no record now of who the 1985 holder of the number was.

[B]

We talked about trying to find a phone book from that period and uploading it to AI to have it search for that number. But, yeah, it's really hard to find a number.

[A]

I did Find the classified ads from the Kalamazoo gazette for, like, 86, 87. Like in 87, some of that number listed an ad in the Gazette, and I was able to, like, reverse engineer that and find the number holder, but it was a new number for them, so no luck.

[D]

But as was said in the episode at the time, the information was a phone call away.

[A]

Yeah. We obviously have a lot of suspicions about James Long, the employee. But unfortunately, this many years later, what would have been trivial back then is just almost insurmountable now. And I will say, working on the case, as we were going through finding new evidence, it was amazing, kind of how each piece we found started to click together. It doesn't prove what happened, but the evidence that suggests James Long may have been there that night just kind of kept coming together and kept fitting in a way other stuff in this case never did.

[B]

Yeah, I think one thing, and we've talked about it a couple times on the show, but we haven't made a big point of it, is the bar that slides across how all the doors were locked except for that one bar,

[A]

the one thing that someone from the outside couldn't lock. Yep.

[D]

And he had keys. I mean, it's. All of it fits together of. At a minimum, he should have been a serious suspect, despite whatever happened with him passing the polygraph.

[A]

Yeah, like, that's all he did. He took a polygraph. He passed the end. Even though there are so many red flags. And the story you can make against James Long is coherent and explains mostly everything. Does it mean it happened? No. But given the evidence that was likely someone familiar with the bike shop who did it and had keys, it's hard not to make him a prime suspect.

[D]

Let's put it this way, it's a much stronger case than was ever made against Scott.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, with Scott, they just never even try and explain the blonde man in the tan cream car.

[B]

Well, doesn't the prosecutor say it probably was a social engagement?

[A]

He's like, someone just came by, probably like, yeah. Is that Scott? We can't say it's Scott. Maybe it's not Scott. Whoever it was wasn't the killer, so don't worry about it. Then why are they there and not talking about it? And there were other ways that could have potentially proven this. So we mentioned before how the first crime scene analyst concluded that the murder weapon was like a metal bike rim that was found where the main assault took place. It had blood on it and bloody fingerprints on it. We know those bloody fingerprints don't belong to Earla Burn and don't belong to Scott. Well, did they ever compare them to James? There's no indication they did.

[B]

Right. And it would have been easy to test the DNA found underneath Earl's fingernails and compare that to James.

[A]

Well, not in 88, but later on.

[B]

Yeah, during the appeal process. Like decades later. Like, that could have been tested, too.

[A]

But so where it stands now, we can't talk to James. We can't talk to his boyfriend Jimmy. We have no direct evidence that he was there, but I find it plausible. Like, I wouldn't convict him on it, but in terms of understanding what happened in this case, that would be my current bet.

[D]

And when Scott gets out, he's not really well enough to even talk to him about any of that. And James Long would have been someone he'd met.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, I think I'm not typically a picky person when it comes to food or things like that. There's one thing I am incredibly picky about.

[B]

Well, what's that, Susan?

[A]

That's how my water tastes.

[B]

You know, I'm the same way. My water tastes a lot like sweet swamp.

[A]

Some places just have really gross water. It's unfortunate, but when I'm somewhere that has swamp water, I'm definitely not drinking out of the tap.

[B]

Yeah, but, you know, we're not alone. Did you know that three out of four US Homes have toxic chemicals in their tap water?

[A]

Yeah. Even though contaminated water can look clear, it can put you at risk for devastating health concerns, including fatigue, hormone disruption, cognitive decline, even cancer. Surprisingly, standard fridge and pitcher filters do little to remove most contaminants. And bottled water contains microplastics.

[B]

Introducing Aquatru, the countertop water purifier, tested and certified to remove 84 contaminants, including chlorine, lead, forever chemicals and microplastics. Its patented four stage reverse osmosis system goes way beyond ordinary filters for pure, healthy water. You can trust no plumbing, no installation.

[A]

Aqua Truwater is the best. I used to use a fridge pitcher, which was okay. I guess I'm never going back. Aqua True is the best tasting water I've ever had.

[B]

So join 98% of customers who say their drinking water is cleaner, safer and healthier.

[A]

Go to aquatru.com now for 20% off your purifier using promo code proof. Aqua True even comes with a 30 day best tasting water guarantee.

[B]

Take the guesswork out of pure great tasting water with this exclusive podcast only offer now at aquatru.com A Q U A T R U.com using promo code

[A]

proof P-R-O-O- it is really good water, though. All right, so to all the men listening to our show right now, go ahead and like press mute for the next 30 seconds or so. Okay? To all the ladies listening, we wanted to tell you about Honey Love.

[B]

Honeylove makes the best bras and shapewear out there.

[A]

Do you need comfy, reliable support for your boobs? Try HoneyLove.

[B]

No joke. It's really great. And you know, if you don't like wearing underwire, honeylove is the solution.

[A]

Their modern wireless T shirt bra. It's amazing for a lot of reasons, but probably the main one. Jacinda.

[B]

Well, a big bonus for us is because going into prisons having underwire makes the whole process much more difficult. Put on your Honey Love, walk right through the metal detector.

[A]

Yeah, comfy, stylish, and prison improved. What more can you need? So treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Use our exclusive link to save 20% [e-mail] proof. That's honeylove.com proof.

[B]

After you check out, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you experience for yourself. The new standard in comfort and support with Honey Love.

[A]

We know that Earl trusted James. James was one of his longest term employees. Like, again, he started working there in 1960 when he was 14 years old. But we also know there was conflict between them in part apparently because Earl was, quote, traditional, I guess, homophobic and didn't approve of James's lifestyle. So not entirely clear what happened there, but we know there was some sort of conflict about it. And there's also a fairly open conflict, at least open bad feelings about the fact that Earl favored Karen Raymond, the young female employee who'd come on just a few years before and he'd made her power of attorney, made her manager of the store. And James was like not shy about being bitter about that. He openly told police back then and to the cold case team that, you know, he was not a fan of that arrangement.

[B]

So you can see, I mean, obviously we're filling in the blanks with our own theories, but you can see how Earl maybe called him because he heard something that night. He comes over and he's pissed off, like, look what I do for you. I'm here in the middle of the night and some kind of argument happens

[A]

and explains other weirdness in the case that the medical examiner concluded that whoever did this was not Trying to kill him. The medical examiner had a theory that it was torture to try and make him explain where the money was hidden in there, which I feel like it's kind of a reach. But it could also fit an attacker who just was, you know, moment of anger and rage and lashing out and not trying to kill him at all.

[B]

During Scott's interview. We don't have the audio of it, but the transcripts work. Them and Madison are trying to say to Scott or they're trying to get him to confess by saying, we know you didn't mean to kill him. We know it's an accident. We know when you left you thought he was still alive. Just tell us it was an accident. This will be so much easier for you now. Just apply all of that to James Long. Right? It makes more sense.

[A]

It explains why he's coming back at 6:30 in the morning. That's him. He's there to check on Earl, not realizing it was a fatal injury. I mean, it also explains why Earl didn't call 911. He's still alive, but he never calls for help. Maybe because he too didn't realize how badly he was hurt and maybe he didn't want to call the police on James. I mean, we don't know. But it, it provides a much better answer for why Earl wouldn't have called for help than if it was some random attacker who broke in in the middle of the night.

[D]

Whatever happened there that night, it probably doesn't kill a 40 year old man. It kills an 80 year old man.

[A]

And it wouldn't have killed Earl if he'd called for help. And there's also a few other bits and pieces about the crime scene that never made sense really. Like one thing that employee Lori Scott told us is that when she got there that morning, she found Earl's shoes tucked by like sort of little stairway leading to the house where they always were when he'd go into the house for the night. And she remembers wondering like, why would his shoes be like neatly placed there? Like he was, you know, just going about his business. Like if he was going outside to walk around like the state says he would have put his shoes, he'd still have shoes on. Like to her it said that he came in, did not plan on being outside, like calmly took his shoes off, was not in struggle or strife, the door wasn't open when he put his shoes there. Basically what she's saying, like if someone was inside, he knew they were there and he was okay with it.

[B]

Like he had Come back inside, taken his shoes off, placed him in their usual spot, and then something happened.

[A]

But at that point, the door should have all been locked, because that far in. So it didn't make any sense that someone would have been following him inside or something like that. And there's also the fact that, like, it's remarkable Earl made it to his bed. I mean, his residence was very cluttered. He's a spry man for his age, but he was seriously wounded. Broken ribs, hurt hands, one fractured skull, like, he was injured. And so to be able to scramble over the piles of stuff by himself and make it into his sleeping area. Oh, like, it never seemed that plausible to me. So perhaps someone helped him there.

[D]

I remember driving through these back roads to James Long and Jimmy Connell's house in Alabama and pulling up and being told by the neighbors that they were both dead. And just the level of disappointment is hard to explain because I really thought from everything that we had seen at that point that they were there, and

[A]

we missed Connell by months, like.

[D]

Yeah, like, it really felt like there were some answers there. It felt like so many other things in. In Scott's case were just. He didn't get a lot of breaks. Scott didn't have a lot of luck.

[A]

No. Not until the very, very end. And I got him two and a half days at home.

[B]

I'm not sure I called that lucky, but, yeah, at least he got to come home and die with his family by his side.

[D]

At least he got a milkshake.

[B]

He did. He got a milkshake.

[D]

It's hard to explain to people. I don't know if we put these pictures up on social media or even if we have pictures of it, but the utter joy that he had even his diminished capacity and he was so tired the day we picked him up. The utter joy at having that milkshake.

[A]

Yeah, he finished it. He. I think it was the last, like, real food he finished, but he. He downed that milkshake.

[D]

Just. I hope that any of us can experience just, like, that much joy for a second. The idea that you have that much happiness over something like that. And I also remember the night Jeff Titus got out and we took him to dinner, and Jeff had an ice cream sundae. And the joy in his face.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Was unbelievable.

[B]

Yeah. Eating that brownie ice cream sundae.

[D]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Yeah. That was incredible.

[A]

We also heard in this week's episode about residencing hearing, which is how Scott

[B]

was able to get home for those few days.

[A]

Yeah. And, I mean, I said he got Lucky, earlier, it really was, like, touch and go if that was going to happen or if it would be resolved in his favor. There were many times where we were thinking it was not going to happen, and, you know, it'd go back and forth, like, things would be fixed and it'd be unfixed and fixed and unfixed. And in the end, it finally did. At the time, it felt like, amazing, like, progress and luck that it went through, and we didn't know how. How little time Scott had left.

[D]

Even then, it was touch and go. And any of us who've been involved with some of these wrongful conviction stories certainly know that it never goes how you expect it's going to go or how you hope it's going to go. There's always, like, 16 bumps in the road with everything. And just remembering back now to the time, like, vivid memories of Olivia and Claire sort of doing unbelievable amount of work in a ridiculously short period of time to sort of pull off legal miracles to make the hearing happen at all.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And seeing him that day, it was the first time any of us had seen him in person, and you could see how diminished he was. But the staggering thing was how much worse he got from that day over the next 24 days. When we picked him up at that

[A]

hearing, he was so happy and alive. Like, you could tell he was sick. But, like.

[D]

And there was a lot of joy there, Right. Like, if we go back to, like, episode one, we talk about how there's no joy, and we've never been in one of these things where someone's getting out where there's no joy. There was a lot of joy that day.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Hear it in the episode when we're all in the lobby and we're talking to him on the phone and talking to Lavon and Eric and those guys who'd been in that position and gotten out. And, like, there was a lot of joy and a lot of hope, and it would evaporate over the next three and a half weeks because he got so sick. I mean, what, he had a brain aneurysm, right? And, like, it was amazing. He even made it out of prison. And we. We know now that if it had been just a few more days, he wouldn't have.

[A]

His body was breaking down. Like, he held on, like, past the point he should have.

[D]

I think that it's one of these things. He. He willed himself to get out of that building. He's like, I'm not going to die in this building. And then he had nothing left when he Got out the door. Like, his body was just destroyed. And he was, like, green. I mean, he was green when we picked him up.

[B]

I remember sending you guys that text and trying to get him in the car, and he looked like, how the hell are we going to do this? And. And I think, you know, we heard in the first episode, I send you a text, like, this isn't good. Like, he's not in good shape. Like, worse than any of us had expected.

[A]

Olivia was saying that. So they had this very large corrections officer that helped him into the van. Finally gets him in, and Scott says, he's not going to be there when we get home. Like, how are we going to get me out?

[D]

You go back to episode one, and it doesn't translate, really, in audio. Right. But it took five or six of us and every ounce of strength we had to get this guy who even in his sort of diminished capacity, was still close. Close to 300 pounds, I think he's like 280. And to get him up into this trailer into a chair, he was literally like dead weight.

[A]

But if we hadn't had the camera guys with us, I do not think he would have ever gotten home.

[D]

No, that's right. And so the only way to get him in the house was to put the camera down and carry him. And it kicks into, like, you have to get this person and take care of them. You're also not documenting the moment anymore because you just have to get him comfortable. And we'd all gone there with the intention of filming it so the world could see it. And then you just go through. We're just going to get him in the door. And that was everything all of us could do. I mean, if you look at the picture in episode one, there's three of us, and that's just getting him from,

[A]

like, a chair to another chair, one

[D]

chair to another chair, that wasn't even getting him, like, up the ramp and carrying him into the trailer and doing all those things which required everybody. And it was. It was extraordinary. Yeah.

[A]

I mean, it was. It was brutal and awful just to be there watching. And I'm. I'm really sad Scott's not here to hear the season for himself.

[D]

Yeah. One of the things about, like, listening to this episode down, like, before we put it out, it was nice because we had all talked about how there was no joy that day. It was nice to hear, like, Levon's voice and hear him be excited for it and everyone be excited for this happening, because there was so much hope at that moment, like maybe he's going to be okay for a minute or maybe he's going to get to experience some joy. And I like to remember that day in the lobby because I was happy, right? And I think we all still had some hope at that point.

[A]

Lastly, we heard this episode more about Richard Bendeville and what we learned about him while we were working on Scott's case.

[D]

We kept talking about Richard Bendeville throughout the series, and then when we met with him, you know, he just kept saying, you've got to find, you know, doesn't matter what I say, what anyone says, you've got to find the piece of paper that has the proof. And then there it was.

[A]

So tune in Monday for episode 12, the final episode of season three, to hear about papers we found and what they mean about Kalamazoo and the legal system. There.

[B]

You've been listening to Proof Sidebar, a podcast by Red Marble Media in association with Glassbox Media. Send us your questions and [e-mail] follow us everywhere with the handle at the end proof crime pod and on our website, proofcrimepod.com thanks so much for listening.

[E]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[A]

Hey, everyone, Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[E]

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[A]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways.

[E]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty.

[A]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.