294. The Aconcagua Mystery Part 2

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Prosecutors – Episode 294: The Aconcagua Mystery Part 2

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Prosecutors
• Host/Author: PodcastOne
• Description: A true crime podcast with a different point of view. Every week, Alice and Brett bring their unique perspective as prosecutors to the most famous cold case mysteries of all time. Murder, mayhem, disappearances—you name it. If it's true crime, they're on the case.
• Episode: 294. The Aconcagua Mystery Part 2
• Release Date: March 4, 2025

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1. Introduction

In Episode 294 of The Prosecutors, hosts Alice and Brett delve deeper into the mysterious deaths that occurred during a 1973 climbing expedition on Mount Aconcagua in Argentina. Building on their previous discussion, this episode unpacks the suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths of John Cooper and Janet Johnson, explores the impact of political turmoil on the investigation, and examines recent discoveries that reignite interest in this unresolved case.

2. Recap of the 1973 Expedition

Brett recounts the initial reckoning from the last episode, setting the scene in 1973 when a group of American climbers embarked on the Polish route of Aconcagua—a path attempted only four times prior. The expedition began with a sizable group, but tragedy struck as members fell away one by one, leaving only four survivors who ultimately saw two members perish on the mountain.

Brett [04:18]: "Climbing a mountain is a very dangerous thing. You never know what's going to happen in a situation like that."

3. The Deaths of Cooper and Johnson

The narrative focuses on the unexplained deaths of John Cooper and Janet Johnson. Initially presumed victims of pulmonary edema and hypothermia, their bodies were found under baffling circumstances that contradicted the official explanations.

• John Cooper: Found near the third camp with a bizarre cylindrical wound in his abdomen, inconsistent with typical hypothermia-related death. His missing crampon and ice axe added to the mystery.

  Brett [22:49]: "His face was battered and it was frozen in a look of horror."

• Janet Johnson: Discovered two years later by Alberto Colombero and his team, her body showed signs of violent trauma, including exposed bone and deep cuts inconsistent with an accidental fall.

  Alice [24:09]: "White bone sticking out of her nose and her forehead and her chin... blood stains on her face and jacket."

4. Suspicious Circumstances and Autopsy Findings

Both autopsies revealed injuries that did not align with accidental deaths from falls or environmental factors commonly associated with high-altitude climbs. The wounds suggested potential foul play, sparking theories about violence on the mountain.

Alice [08:35]: "No one could really explain why this was. But we're gonna see."

5. The Impact of Argentine Political Collapse

In March 1976, the Argentine government faced a military coup, abruptly halting the investigation into the deaths of Cooper and Johnson. This political upheaval effectively erased any progress made in uncovering the truth behind the mysterious fatalities.

Alice [35:34]: "It's like... when the government collapses, the investigation is stalled."

6. Recent Discoveries and Renewed Interest (2020)

Nearly fifty years later, in February 2020, Marcus Calamaro found Janet Johnson's camera on the Polish glacier route. Recognizing its significance, Ulysses Korvalin and photographer Pablo Betancourt preserved the camera, leading to the development of its preserved film. These photographs, while beautifully shot, offered no new insights into the climbers' fate but reignited interest in the case.

Alice [38:19]: "Their names can still...at least two podcasters question the official story that exists out there."

7. Theories and Speculations

Alice and Brett explore various theories, weighing the plausibility of accidental deaths against potential murders. They discuss the lack of consistent evidence supporting the official narrative and consider motives that might have led to foul play, such as internal conflicts within the climbing group.

• Possible Murder Theory: Suggests that Cooper and Johnson were victims of violence, possibly orchestrated by other members of the expedition who felt threatened or hindered by them.

  Brett [50:19]: "I think it probably was a murder."

• Accidental Death Theory: Maintains that bizarre accidents can occur on treacherous climbs, but struggles to explain the specific and unusual injuries observed.

  Brett [43:02]: "I think the most likely outcome still is probably it was some really bizarre accident on the mountain."

8. Comparison with Dyatlov Pass Incident

The hosts draw parallels between the Aconcagua Mystery and the infamous Dyatlov Pass incident, noting both cases involve unexplained deaths in harsh mountain environments. However, they highlight key differences, such as the solitary nature of the Aconcagua deaths versus the group dynamic in Dyatlov Pass, which affects the plausibility of various theories.

Brett [50:19]: "Dyatlov Pass... the ultimate mystery... but in this case, you have to believe that two different people in two different places..."

9. Conclusions and Ongoing Mystery

Alice and Brett conclude that the Aconcagua Mystery remains unresolved due to the abrupt halt of investigations caused by political instability. They reflect on the limitations of the available evidence and the passage of time, which has likely erased any remaining clues or testimonies that could shed light on the true nature of Cooper and Johnson's deaths.

Alice [65:36]: "They knew something was up... this will remain a mystery in the sense that we will not know more information than we know today."

Despite the extensive analysis and numerous theories, the mystery endures, leaving listeners to ponder the true events that transpired on Aconcagua nearly five decades ago.

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Notable Quotes:

• Alice [22:49]: "His face was battered and it was frozen in a look of horror."
• Brett [50:19]: "I think it probably was a murder."
• Brett [43:02]: "I think the most likely outcome still is probably it was some really bizarre accident on the mountain."
• Alice [35:34]: "It's like... when the government collapses, the investigation is stalled."

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Final Thoughts: Episode 294 of The Prosecutors offers a compelling examination of a lesser-known mountain mystery, combining meticulous research with insightful analysis. Alice and Brett provide a balanced view, exploring both accidental and intentional explanations while acknowledging the enduring uncertainties that shroud the Aconcagua Mystery.

Listeners intrigued by true crime and unsolved mysteries will find this episode particularly engaging, as it uncovers the complexities and unanswered questions that continue to fascinate investigators and enthusiasts alike.

Transcript

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[Alice]

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[Brett]

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[Brett]

I'm Brett.

[Alice]

And I'm Alice.

[Brett]

And we are the Prosecutors. Today on the Prosecutors, we finish our look at the Aconcagua mystery. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my Sumac Sipas co host, Alice 1010.

[Alice]

Yes, that was excellent. I have no idea what language or what that means, but I'm gonna take it as fantastic.

[Brett]

Well, it's Keshwa, which is the Peruvian dialect. It's actually the Inca ancient Inca dialect. So I went with that instead of Spanish, even though in Argentina I wanted to want to change it up a little bit because I do have a machu Picchu story I'm going to tell later on, so I felt like it was appropriate, and it means beautiful lady, so.

[Alice]

Well, thank you. Thank you very much, and good job. That was like you. You guys haven't seen this because you have the glories of editing. That only took Brett about 10 minutes to practice his pronunciation. It was great. I'm saying practice makes perfect.

[Brett]

I'm like a. I'm like a ancient Incan. Just. Just rolls off the tongue. Okay?

[Alice]

It does. It does not roll off the tongue on this one. Aconcagua, it's still hurting me. But since we last recorded the first episode, it has been haunting me. I think I've had no fewer than three nightmares about this case, because it's haunting. It truly is. And I don't think I will ever hike again in my life.

[Brett]

You know, I don't know what it is about these mountain mysteries, but they really get to me. I really like them. You know, Diallo Pass is one of my favorite stories of all time. Always like doing these. And this one's pretty intense. And if you guys listen to the last episode, just to give you a quick reminder, we're back in 1973. We're in Argentina. We're climbing Aconcagua, and we're going up the Polish route, which has only been done four times before. And we've already had this tragedy that has befallen this group of hikers. You may remember, the group started out kind of, you know, kind of large, with a lot of different people with a lot of skills and abilities. The kind of group maybe you think will have no trouble climbing this mountain. But one by one, they fell away until there were only four left. Those four went up the mountain, and only two came down, which is not a great percentage for your survival rate. But at this point, we have two people who are dead on the mountain. The rest of the group has returned and has actually left the country. And the expectation is this is the kind of thing that happens on mountains. We talked about this. Climbing a mountain is a very dangerous thing. I'll go ahead and tell my story, my Peruvian story. So I'm not much of a mountain climber. I'm sure this is shocking to everyone. But I did go to Peru. It was the first time I'd ever really been at altitude, so it was an interesting experience. But we went to Machu Picchu, which is one of the things you have to do. And it's amazing. It's beautiful. It's glorious. Highly recommend it in just stunning Place you can't. There are so many things about the ancient world that you see them and you just think, it must have been aliens, because how in the world they were able to do this, I don't know, up on this mountain. But if you've ever seen sort of the traditional picture of Machu Picchu looking down over the abandoned city, there is this mountain behind it, and you can climb that mountain, and it gives you a very different view. And so my friend and I, being young and stupid, decided we were going to climb that mountain. It was a beautiful day. It was a cool day. We'd gotten there early. Seemed like a great thing to do. We climbed the mountain all the way to the top, absolutely exhausted. Just dead by the time we get to the top. But it's amazing. Well worth it, right? Well, as we're up there, you know, this is a beautiful day. All of a sudden, this storm starts to roll in while we're on top of this mountain. But because we're so high up, the storm doesn't come over us. It's like, down over Machu Picchu. So we're standing there looking down at this storm and thinking, well, we'll just wait it out. But then as we're watching it, the storm starts to slowly rise up the mountain. And this is like a thunderstorm, right? So we realize if we stay on the mountain, the storm is going to rise up and be above us. So we make the decision to go down the mountain, to climb down the mountain into the storm so that at least for the first half or so, we avoid the storm. Then we're in the storm, then we'll get out of the storm. And when we got to where the storm was, it was one of the craziest experiences I've ever had. Kind of surprised we're not dead, because, like I said, it was a thunderstorm. So, like, lightning is striking below us, right? And then we go into the clouds, and it's like lightning is just constantly striking all over this place. I mean, it was terrifying. We managed to make it to the bottom, and I didn't die. But I guess if I'd been struck by lightning, maybe we would have been some bizarre story and nobody would have really understood how we ended up in that situation. But that's the kind of thing that can happen to you on a mountain. You just never know what's going to happen in a situation like that. And I feel like these people, they definitely experience that, no matter what the final answer to this mystery is, that's brilliant.

[Alice]

Because, you know, in the first episode we had said how the mountain was a character in the story as your experience. The mountain was kind of a character in the story as well. But it sounds like you were not suffering from kind of mental hallucinations due to altitude, which I wonder how much of what we're going to see today can be attributed to being out of one's mind or being completely in control of your mind and trying to avoid responsibility for a heinous crime.

[Brett]

And I think that is definitely the question we're gonna wanna answer. So let's go back. Let's travel away from Peru into Argentina and reveal the rest of the story. Cause there's some twists and turns yet to come. So it's February 13, 1973, and the climbers have now returned back to the United States. And pretty much immediately after they returned, the president of the Mazamas Climbing Club, of which many of the climbers were a member, called for a secret meeting between the club leadership and the surviving members of the expedition. Now, whenever you're having a secret meeting, it's never going to look good. The purpose of the meeting, apparently was to find out exactly what happened during the expedition with the presumed outcome of dispelling of certain suspicions, uncertainties, rumors, whatever, which may have come to your attention and have been amplified by the confused communications during the expedition and by conflicting or incomplete newspaper reports. The meeting occurred at Defoe's law office. Now, look, this is immediately rather suspicious to me because remember Defoe, you know, he is a lawyer, he's from Portland, Oregon, and he is the one who has sort of organized this whole thing. So he was the guy. He was the guy who's collecting the money. He was the guy who planned the trip. He's the guy who decided to add Janet Johnson to the group. In some ways, he might be someone who bears a little responsibility for it, even if as just the leader. But this notion of all the surviving people coming together in a secret meeting to sort of hash out their story is what it sounds like to me. Certainly cast some suspicion on the proceedings.

[Alice]

I was going to say, get your story straight much? Okay, I am not a member of a climbing club. But this immediately struck out as strange to me as well. I mean, we are talking about people. Some of them are part of this climbing club, but they are all dispersed. So this isn't like they're all part of the same fraternity in the same city. This is actually a pretty disperse across the country climbing club. Right. So how do they have this authority? First of all. And does this typically happen in climbing clubs when there is a death or a mysterious death on a climbing trip, to get your story straight, because how does that implicate the climbing club who. It's just a club, right. I can't imagine what liability the club itself may have. So, I mean, I'm curious, you seem to love all these climbing things. Do you know why that may be?

[Brett]

Well, I mean, I think the most charitable explanation would be this is a group of people are going to climb more mountains. This is a terrible tragedy, what happened. Let's learn from it. I guess that would be the most charitable explanation. But given sort of the mystery of what happened and the immediate suspicion that something strange had happened, the involvement of the police in Argentina, there's a really sort of interesting legal issue here too, because, you know, these are Americans, but everything happened in Argentina. So it's not clear that like the local police, even though an American is dead, would have any real jurisdiction to investigate this crime. Ordinarily, something would have had to have happened in Washington or Portland, in Oregon, in the United States that is tied to the murder. So for instance, imagine that someone decided they were going to kill Janet Johnson on the mountain, they planned it in Oregon, they then flew to Argentina and committed the crime. That action in Oregon would be enough that you could charge that in Oregon, but if you don't have that, you're going to run into problems. Some of you are aware, and I forget the, the name, but it was a two people that got married, they flew to Australia, they went scuba diving. The newlywed wife dies, she drowns. The husband was an experienced scuba diver and there were witnesses who indicated that they believed he had tampered with her respirator. So he killed her. And so there was an attempt in the United States to prosecute him. And that was eventually dismissed because of this lack of any proof that anything happened in the United States as part of like planning this crime. So I think they're, they're in sort of an interesting place. And you would think Defoe, who is the lawyer, would know this. And so you wonder if part of this meeting is him explaining to them, hey there, as long as we keep our stories together, there's really nothing that can happen to us here. Like unless we go back to Argentina, there's really nothing that can happen. So let's get our story straight. And it seems like that's exactly what they did on February 15th, which is two days after the meeting. Defoe's secretary types up a three page summary and that would become the official story of the surviving climbers. Not only do they get together and get their story straight, they actually type it out. So they have a story that is their story, it's their timeline. It's, it lays out exactly what happens. And it speculates that Johnson and Cooper probably died of pulmonary edema because that is typically what kills you on the mountain. A combination of the lack of oxygen, the cold, eventually your body gives out and you die. But it would turn out this speculation would not be true. But it's going to be a while before you find that out. March of 1973. John Cooper. Remember he was the one who was found dead from hypothermia near the third camp. His family held a memorial service in Kansas, but at that point his body still had not been recovered.

[Alice]

And a month later in April 1973, Janet Johnson's family held a funeral service at a Minneapolis church. Although Johnson's body also hadn't been recovered and her mother was not expecting it back apparently because remember, Janet was a very seasoned climber. She had given explicit instructions that if anything were to happen, happened to her on the climb, she wanted her body buried at the small cemetery by the Aconcagua trailhead. So she had never anticipated that this would happen, but if it did, she didn't want her body shipped back. So all along the memorial service in the United States at least was going to be without a body. Now nothing really happens for about half a year. Fast forward to November of 1973. A four person team led by Miguel Alfonso was assembled to recover the bodies. Remember, Alfonso was the guide who was going to take this American group up this particular path. And he had been up this path successfully one time prior. A National Geographic reporter and photographer named Lauren McIntyre also joined the group to document this expedition. On November 20, 1973, when they were on this expedition to look for Cooper and Johnson's bodies. Cooper's body was discovered about, about 150 yards uphill from camp. And it was described in the New York Times that he was stretched out on relatively flat terrain. His legs extended and crossed, his hands were bare across his abdomen. His jacket was on, but his hood had fallen behind his head. Now it took days for the teen to maneuver his frozen body down the mountain on a toboggan without damaging his clothes or, or person. This is why, by the way, oftentimes in these very treacherous climes, in these types of conditions, bodies are just left, they're not recovered. Now Cooper's diary was found with Him. And inside there were detailed entries about the expedition, as well as a note from his wife, Sandy, which read, keep roped up and don't forget the crampons, as I don't know how I'd replace you. You are by far the best husband and loving one and really good dad in the entire world. World. Such a sad note. Obviously, this is what he carried with him. It's not easy to carry things up the mountain with you. But he kept this note from his wife close to him, and it was with him when he died. Now, the team, though, they found Cooper's body and they were able to maneuver it down by toboggan. This team was not able to locate Janet Johnson's body on the same trip.

[Brett]

So they found the body. It's relatively close to where they expected to find it. So. So, so far, everything seems normal, right? But there were some things that immediately made them wonder about what exactly happened. So some of these odd things surrounded Cooper's death. He was missing a crampon, which, you know, would have been something he definitely would have had on his feet for this climb. So in some point, he has lost that crampon, and he does not have his ice axe. He's not the first person to lose it, but once again, he doesn't have it. Now, you think about this. He didn't attempt to climb the mountain. You know, he didn't. He didn't go up the most treacherous part. He had turned around and gone back. And frankly, the trip was relatively easy to the point that the other three didn't even. They didn't even express concern about it. They were like, okay, that's fine. See you later. Go back to camp. Right. And yet he's managed, in this, what should have been a relatively easy trip, to lose his ice axe and to lose a crampon. And it wasn't just that. He was found on a gentle slope, so not the kind of area you would have expected him to have fallen, to have slid down the mountain, anything like that. His face was battered and it was frozen in a look of horror. No one could really explain why this was. But we're gonna see. They went ahead, they take him down the mountain, they remove him from the mountain, and they give him a chance to dethaw, because they're going to do an autopsy, which they expect will reveal that he's died of some sort of pulmonary edema. He's died of hypothermia, something like that. But they discover shocking details that they did not expect to find. Gruesome insights into his final moments.

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[Alice]

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[Alice]

When.

[Brett]

They removed his hands, remember, his hands were sort of frozen to his abdomen. He had sort of his hands across his abdomen. When they removed his hands, they discovered a cylindrical hole that was bloody and deep. As a matter of fact, it went basically all the way from his stomach to his back. Explaining this was shocking. No one knew what to think about this. The only thing anyone could come up with is that he had fallen on his axe and somehow died from the injury. The problem with that, there were several. Number one, this would have had to have been a very violent fall because this wasn't just a hole in his abdomen. It would have had to have cut through five layers of clothing and then all the way to his back. Something, just an intense amount of force to make something like that happen. And his axe was missing. So where did this happen? Where he'd had this accident? It couldn't have been where he was because there was no indication he would even fall on that slope. And if he did, it wouldn't be this kind of fall. Where did the axe go? How did he end up with this massive wound to his stomach?

[Alice]

One of the things that was strange about his body was that one crampon was missing. For those of you who don't know what a crampon is, it's literally like a metal claw that you attach the bottom of your shoe. Imagine like, I don't know, just the outside of an ice skate basically, and you strap it onto your foot. And this is important because when you are climbing any icy terrain, you have crampons on because that's how your feet dig into the ice to keep you from slipping. And because it' used in slippery terrain, they're usually like leather types of straps that strap onto your shoe tight enough that they don't slip off because you can imagine if they slip off easily, the crampons are of no use. In other words, they typically don't fall off on their own. Even when you take a hard tumble down a mountain, they're one of the last things you lose if they are properly secured on. That's why the note from his wife, specifically mansion crampons. If you're going to be hiking this, you need crampons. And the fact that he has one and not the other indicates kind of something that I'm going to say violent, but something kind of catastrophic on the outside that would remove it if he were not the one removing it. Something like a fall, but it's not consistent with. You're just trudging along and, oh, there goes my shoe. That's typically not what happens with crampons.

[Brett]

And you're thinking about what did we think happened here? What was sort of the story that we were told. He was probably cold. He probably succumbed to hypothermia, Much like dial off pass. He probably fell where he was walking. He just couldn't make it back to camp, and he died there. Pulmonary edema combined with hypothermia. But now we have this wound. So now you have to think that this person who was already having great difficulty moving to the point that he's now retreating back down the mountain, that he must have had a fall somewhere else, sustained this catastrophic injury, got up, kept walking to the campsite, and then, you know, collapsed, I guess, from maybe bleeding. Maybe there he died of hypothermia, maybe there he died of pulmonary edema. One thing I would note, and I don't know how much you can take from this, because as Alice said, one thing that's always lurking in the back here is the fact that if they're telling the truth, nobody's mind was really working by the time they saw his body. One person thought he was a dead soldier, for instance. But nobody says, like, there was all this blood. We followed a trail of blood or anything like that. Nobody sees that. But the other thing, he did not die of pulmonary edema and he didn't die of blood loss. His autopsy revealed that his death was caused by cranial contusions. He had injuries to his skull and his brain, which is consistent with the fact that his face was all beaten up. So I don't want to say he was beaten to death because that sort of begs the question, but some sort of injury to his head is eventually what killed him, sort of in combination with this massive wound to his abdomen.

[Alice]

Yeah. And remember, on this trip, they don't find Janet Johnson. Fast forward a few months, February 9, 1975, 17 year old Alberto Colombero was climbing Aconcagua with his father, Ernesto, and another man, Guillermo Vieiro. Now, due to an unforeseen storm, probably not unlike the one that Brett had to endure on his Machu Picchu trip, the trio had to abandon their trek to the summit and they headed back down the mountain via the Polish glacier. So that wasn't their original route, but because of the storm, they had to go this route. Now, Alberto noticed something red to his right, which he initially thought was a tarp, a tent or some sort of backpack left in the snow. But when they went over to check out this red thing, Alberto realized that it was not abandoned gear left by a fellow mountain climber. It was the body of Janet Johnson. She was found face up and her face had blackened from two years of exposure and it was battered in three places. Now this you may expect because she's been out in the open for a couple of years in the elements. It's cold up there, so you can imagine the blackness might not be that surprising. But this next part is not necessarily what you would expect if you had found a climber who had just fallen asleep where they were and died of hypothermia. You see, what they saw on her face was that there was white bone sticking out of her nose and her forehead and her chin. And even more gruesomely, her skin hung down like a flap and there were blood stains on her face and jacket. Certainly not what you would expect if she had fallen into the the snow and fallen asleep. Now, not unlike Cooper, she also had a crampon that was missing from one foot and ropes were tangled around her. Her hands were bare and her light jacket was unzipped. And also, like Cooper, they could not find her ice axe. Now, the slope where she was found was shallow, which contradicted Zeller's story that they took a big fall together. Remember, he had said that they were tied together and all of a sudden they fell of the fall actually separated the two of them. But this isn't where she's found. Like Cooper, she's found in kind of a shallow slope and there was also a rock sitting on top of Johnson's body. Now, the hikers who found her believe that someone had murdered Johnson and tried to make it look like she fell. Now, these men who were just on their own hike, they weren't properly equipped to bring Janet's body down the mountain, so they dug it out to make it easier for a recovery. Team to properly remove it later. And when they did this, they noticed a ring on her finger, which they took and passed along to an American hiker they saw on the trail named Alan Steck. Alan mailed this ring to Janet's sister a couple months later. Again, kind of shows you that, I mean, this is incredible of them to even take the time to do this. And I think kind of shows the climbing community typically what you have in a climbing community, right? These three men don't know Janet Johnson, but when they see the ring, they're not taking it off to pilfer it. They're taking it off in hopes that it can be the one part of her body that can go back to her loved ones. And so they pass it on to an American who does just that, mail it to someone that they don't know. That's the type of camaraderie I think you typically see among the climbing community, which is why if you rewind back to that journalist who interviewed the group at the hotel before they even set off, Note at the very beginning, this dynamic for the group seems very off. They seem very segregated from each other. You're beginning to see why he could pick up on that so quickly when you see the actions of complete strangers to Janet Johnson, who just are fellow climbers.

[Brett]

So a year passes, and now it's 1976, and they know the body's up there, but they. They can't get it. Eventually, recovery team goes up, they find Janet's body. Removing her body is very difficult. She's essentially frozen to the mountain. In fact, as they're removing her, they have to essentially cut off one of her arms. They basically leave her. I think it's her left arm on the mountain is to get her body down. But they are able to bring her body down. It's been significantly mummified by the time and the cold air and everything else. They perform an autopsy, and once again, it not pulmonary edema that killed her. Her cause of death was the same as Cooper's cranial contusions. Now, by this point, speculation is growing these deaths look a lot closer to murder than an accident. The person who did the autopsies on both bodies is still alive and has talked about this a lot. And he said, look, seen lots of people who've died on the mountain. I mean, there's a cemetery at the bottom of the mountain. It's called the Clymer Cemetery, where Janet Johnson is buried. She's not the only one, because people die on this mountain. You know, maybe not as frequently as other places. But it certainly happens. People have falls, things like this happen. And he said he'd seen that. But when you see someone who falls and dies, you typically see injuries all over the body. They have broken bones, you know, they have broken hands from reaching out to stop themselves, or broken legs or broken ribs or broken collarbones, broken shoulders, lots of different broken bones from falling. What they typically don't have are injuries contained to their face. And in this case, you have two people who supposedly had fatal falls, falls to the extent that one, you know, had an ice axe go all the way through his body and enough injuries to his brain, that's going to kill him. You have Janet, who, same thing, supposedly fell, had enough injuries to her skull and her brain that she died, strangely, has this rock that doesn't seem to belong, that's sitting on her body, but nevertheless, no other broken bones. That's it. You know, it's like. I mean, I don't want to make light of this, but it's almost like something out of a cartoon where a cartoon character falls and they keep hitting their head as they're going down the mountain or whatever. I mean, it's almost like that. Like somehow both these people managed to have these catastrophic falls and the only damage is to their face. The other thing we mentioned, the ice axe earlier, or the wound, there was a problem with the wound. As we said earlier, it was cylindrical. The. The medical examiner had seen wounds before caused by ice axes. Never anything like this, but he'd seen it. And he said because of the way an ice ax is made, the wounds are square, they're not cylindrical because the shape of the ice axe is square. So when it goes in, it's going to make basically a square wound. It didn't match the wound that he had in his stomach, but something did. And that was an ice screw. So he had seen ice screw wounds before, which are, you know, screw into the side of the glacier to attach ropes. And that sort of thing obviously has a pretty sharp point at the end. Those kinds of wounds would be circular. They would be cylindrical, just like the wound on Cooper. So he's seeing all these things and he's saying, look, none of this makes sense to me. I think that something's going on here. And he refers it over to the police. A judge gets involved. He's now looking into this. They're going to get to the bottom of this. You know, Janice Johnson, in the meantime, her body has been buried in a cemetery near the trailhead. And just as they're opening this investigation, really getting into it. March 24, 1976, the Argentine government collapses. This is a big deal. You know, this is one of those, you know, where thousands of people are going to be killed, there's all sorts of like, you know, fighting between various political parties. It collapses. And now the last thing anybody's concerned with is what happened to these two Americans on this mountain. So what had begun to be an in depth investigation that might have given us some answers completely comes to a halt.

[Alice]

That's like again, out of. You couldn't write a novel like this right as the investigation's getting going, a military coup halts the entire investigation. I'm not saying this is a massive conspiracy to cover up the deaths of Cooper and Johnson, but what unfortunate timing because of course, with the government now no longer the government, there is absolutely no further inquiry into their deaths and essentially nothing happened. Nothing happens for 50 years. Almost 50 years later. Now it's February 2020. A camera was found on the Polish glacier route and a man named Marcus Calamaro found this camera and brought it down to camp. And once there, another man, Ulysses Korvalin, recognized the name on the bottom of that camera, Janet Johnson. A photographer, Pablo Betancourt, was also at the camp and he recognized the potential significance of the evidence that may be in the photos on this camera. So he preserved it as best as he could and headed back down the mountain with this new found camera. Thank goodness, by the way, that these people preserve the camera as opposed to just leave it. A lot of gear is left on the mountainside, so it's incredible actually that it was found that someone recognized the significance of it and brought it down and they didn't do just that. So Pablo Betancourt contacted the New York Times and meanwhile more of Johnson's personal belongings were being discovered on the glacier, which was melting at this point and it was shifting, making it easier now to locate once hidden items. 50 years later. I say you can't always bury secrets. And I think this is one instance where as the mountain is moving, shifting, melting, were beginning to find more of Johnson's belongings. For example, her backpack, which is filled with gear and additional film was found as well as a red jacket sleeve with her arm inside. Previously we said that when they removed her like mummified body, they had to leave behind her arm. And here it was getting revealed as the mountain shifted. Now amazingly, the conditions on the mountain did an excellent job preserving the film. The cold temperatures aid in the preservation, as does the dry air in the Andes. So I guess despite the snow, because of the dry air, the water didn't corrupt the film. Now, this film was developed and it revealed a series of beautifully shot photographs of the trail, the beautiful surroundings, and the climbers themselves. All things you may expect of someone documenting this historic trip up the mountain, but nothing that came any closer to telling us what happened to Johnson and Cooper in their final moments.

[Brett]

And you can look at the photographs. The New York Times published them in the piece that we've referenced several times. And obviously there's no photographs of what happened in the end, but all the photographs leading up to it are exactly what you'd expect. One thing I'll say about them, there's nothing about the photographs that makes you think, man, this group's in trouble. They obviously were in trouble. But, you know, you don't see. I mean, she's taking pictures right up until what seems like basically the end. So, you know, at the end, I keep going back to Di Outlive Pass, because I'm just going to keep going back to Di Love Past. You know, the last few photographs show just how windy and the blizzard conditions and how terrible it was. And then you have photographs, what seems like lights in the sky and just all this weird stuff, right? There's nothing like that. It just looks like photographs of a successful trip. And now they find all this stuff in 2020. And this had been a story that was largely forgotten in the United States. Maybe some climbers still vaguely knew about it, but in. In Argentina, despite what had happened, the coup and everything else, the people who lived around the mountain never really forgot about this. And they always felt like something happened up there that was never fully investigated. So the name Janet Johnson was famous in the area. So when they saw that camera and apparently the way it was found, it was almost creepy. You know, the glacier had moved in such a way that it just. The camera was sitting on, like, a rock pillar. Somebody just walks by it and there it is looking like someone just, you know, sat it there to take, like a selfie or something. They pick it up, they look at the bottom and they see Janet Johnson and they realize what they've got. Now, the photographs obviously didn't do a lot to explain what happened. And officially, the deaths of John Cooper and Janet Johnson are considered accidental. And it is certainly the case that the Polish glacier is a brutal climb. Remember, only four groups had successfully summited it at the time they attempted this, and more than a hundred people have died on this climb in the decades since the mountain was first climbed, the terrain and altitude alone are enough to kill you. Even the most experienced climber can get into a situation where they are in a lot of danger. And I think if you're following what we always tell you to follow the Coldwater prosecutors, the Occam's racer approach, certainly I think you have to start from the position of this was likely an accident. But there's no denying that the story told by the surviving members of the expedition, it doesn't exactly line up with the injuries found on the bodies. And it seems like it's a story that everybody got together and decided was going to be the story that they told. We have fewer details about Cooper's death because the full autopsy has never been revealed. But like I said, we have seen interviews with the person who conducted the autopsy. And if he died as a result of a fall, it is a strange, strange death. As we said, many people who are familiar with the area and familiar with injuries on that mountain were shocked that his body and clothing, remember his clothing should show some damage too. If he's falling down a mountain, you know, he should have damage to his clothes, rips in his clothes, nothing like that. There's no signs of injury, there's no signs of distress. Instead, his injuries are contained to his head and his face and one massive wound in his abdomen. And one of the doctors who performed this autopsy, as we said, does not believe that Cooper's injuries could have been either self inflicted or accidentally self inflicted, the result of some sort of fall. He just doesn't even believe it's possible. He doesn't believe that you could really fall in that kind of way to create that kind of wound. I mean, it really is a one in a million fall if you think about it, to just to do that, you know, you can get injuries, but that perfect injury that pierces all those clothing and goes all the way into your body and it doesn't get deflected, doesn't get misdirected, doesn't go halfway and stop. I mean, this is like so much force. And somehow you fell with all that force right onto the axe to the point that it drove it all the way into your body, to your spine, but nothing else on your body except for your face is damaged. That's what you essentially have to believe if you think this is some sort of fall that resulted in his death.

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[Alice]

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[Alice]

Everything you say. Yes, the Occam's razor approach probably doesn't apply to all these strange wounds, but what really boggles my mind here that's different than Dyatlov Pass is that we have two very, very brutal endings for these two people. But they're not all at once. They're not found in the same ditch. They're not found next to each other. They're actually, you know, the. The terrain is so difficult that even if you're a little bit apart, it would be difficult to locate another. But they are far enough apart that it seems to be on two different occasions, which we'll go into theories more. But if this were a violent attack, you would expect. Expect similar violent attacks are done at the same time by the same people. But to separate it by time and distance is no longer maybe a rage in the moment, heat of the moment sort of situation. It points more. If we were on regular ground, I would say a calculated decision to hunt down two different people. But that is what's so confusing to me here, because at least in Diatla of Pass, we saw kind of the victim grouped together and we saw where they died together. Here there are similar injuries and similar strangeness happening to their faces and things that cannot be explained by a fall. But they're not next to each other. They didn't fall together. It seemingly didn't happen even at once. So let's talk about Janet Johnson. There's a growing number of people who do not believe her death was accidental either, including some of the teen that performed her autopsy. There was bone exposed in three separate areas of her face where the skin had been peeled back, as well as deep slices in her boots that looked as if she was hit with a bladed object. And just like Cooper, her ice axe was never located. Her body was found on a gentle slope, which was not consistent with the story that she fell down a larger part of the glacier that caused, remember, her and Zeller to become separated. But if foul play was involved in Janet Johnson's death, who were the culprits? Suspicion obviously fell on Zeller and macmillan because they're the two that made it back. But their motive really wasn't clear. Did they kill Johnson and Cooper because they were slowing them down? Were they delusional from exhaustion and altitude? Did they kill one because one of them witnessed them kill the other? Like, did Cooper die first and somehow Janet saw them, so then she had to go too, but at a later time when she was unsuspecting of it. So maybe the first one was a heat of passion sort of situation, driving some sort of ice screw through him because of a fight. And Janet Johnson sees, and they know that, you know, they're done for. So they have to eliminate a witness, so they strike later on when maybe she's weak. Truly nothing. Nothing on the mountain, nothing on the camera, nothing on their bodies tell us any of this. And the sad part about this is we likely will never know because we always say it's really hard to keep a conspiracy quiet, right? Whatever happened in Defoe's law office, that meeting back in February, it worked, right? That three page summary is the official story, and that is all we know as to what happened on this trip. But as you can tell, there are way more questions than there are answers from that three page summary of what happened on this trip. And this mystery has captivated the minds of many. For half a century, people have speculated wildly about the true cause of Cooper and Johnson's deaths. People have said, you know, is it maybe a love triangle gone wrong? A stash of money that was never found somewhere on the Polish glacier? Cooper maybe was a government agent. Assassins who crossed the nearby Chilean border came for him. You know, people have really speculated wildly because the conditions of their body and the lack of answers leaves this vacuum for conspiracy theories. And over the years, the surviving members of the expedition have passed away one by one, remember, except for really one or two of them. They were already in their 50s at the time of the climb. So with the passage of time, they too have left this earth and taking with them any secrets that the Aconcagua expedition held. And I hate a mystery that doesn't have an answer. Brett, do you have answers?

[Brett]

Well, one thing I want to note, because you made a really good point, I think it's worth highlighting it. So Dyatlov Pass, the ultimate mystery. So one thing about Dyatlov Pass that you pointed out is one reason to think that whatever happened isn't as mysterious as some people. Some people, present company excluded, once I believe happened, is that the people with the very worst injuries were all found together. So they were all found together in the snow cave. And there are some natural sort of reasons why that might have happened. They could have been on an ice bridge, it collapsed, the snow pours on top of them. There would have been a lot of snow, would have been really heavy crushing injuries, that kind of thing. Those people are all together, so there are explanations for that other than like a yeti attack them. Right? In this case, though, you have to believe that two different people in two different places, neither of which seems to be the kind of place where you'd expect to have these kind of injuries suffered the exact same types of injuries that are unlike what you would expect to find in someone who died on a mountain, but are the kind of injuries that you might expect to find if someone was beaten to death? Death. And look, what do I think? I think the most likely outcome still is probably it was some really bizarre accident on the mountain, because bizarre things happen on the mountain, but that's not actually what I think happened. And I don't know if it's just if it's the mountains or what, but they bring out the conspiracy theorists in me. Like, whenever we have these mountain cases, I find myself giving in to the conspiracy.

[Alice]

Well, here, let me give you a little bit. You're not full conspiracy theorist. Like we said, there have been over 100 people who've died on the same path and their autopsies. Many of them have had autopsies done. And the people who conducted the autopsies on Cooper and Johnson, the ones who see them, we always say, you know, those closest to whatever the report is, you should be listening to them first. The ones who saw with their own eyes operated on their corpses with their hands don't believe that this was the accident of the hundreds they've seen. That says a lot, right? I don't know how to do autopsies, but they see these types of injuries all the time. And they are not concluding that the hundred other people who've died on the side of this mountain were all due to ice screws and murder on the mountain. So I think there does leave some space for an alternative theory, whether you want to call it conspiracy or not.

[Brett]

And look, I think that carries so much weight with me, and it always does. It's one of the reasons in the Diallo Pass case that I'm so hesitant to believe the avalanche theory, because every single person who's ever been to that mountain says it wasn't an avalanche. Everybody who's ever been to where they pitch their tent nerds in an office at MIT playing with the frozen snow generator can come up with a theory about what happened. But the people who've actually been there are like, no, that's not what happened. And that means a lot to me. And in this case, it means a lot to me that these folks say this. I will tell you what I think happened. And I hate to slander the dead because everybody involved in this case is dead. So, you know, take this with a lot of salt. But I think you had these people who went up there, they weren't very close to each other. It seems like they didn't even really like each other. And as they're climbing the mountain. It's getting worse and worse. And we talked about in the first episode how going through difficulty can really bind people together and that. That's true. But if you already have a group that has issues, difficulties can really exacerbate that. I think Janet Johnson was not well liked by the group. I think she was seen as a little bit of an outlier. She just wasn't what they were used to. Right. For whatever reason, whether it's because she was a woman or because of her sexuality or because of how she approached it, there was already a distance there. And you get down to these four people and they really want to reach the summit to the extent that the stories they're telling, even the stories they tell, do not paint them in a good light. It paints them as people who are willing to send Cooper back on his own. Good luck. We're going to the summit. Janet gets separated and they just leave her there. They don't even try and find her. Even the way they're describing, it's pretty bad. I think if this was a murder, I think the way it happened, I think Janet was killed first. I think something happened on the side of that mountain. As they're approaching the summit, when the hypoxia is intense, hallucinations are bad. People aren't thinking clearly. I think she was slowing them down. And they even said at one point that they looked back and she was gone. Right. I think she was slowing them down. She was ruining everything. They were worried about staying on the side of the mountain because their conditions. I think there was some sort of fight. I think probably somebody. That rock that was found in her body is what killed her. I think somebody used that rock to bash her face in, basically, and killed her. And I think Cooper wasn't involved in this. I think Cooper might have even been trying to stop this from happening. And then when he couldn't stop it, he turns around and he's heading back to the camp. And the expectation is if he makes it back to camp, he's going to tell everybody what happened. And I think he was murdered because of it. I think he was chased down. I think he was stabbed with an ice screw. I think one of the men who survived. Remember, he has a black eye, right? Because he fell down the mountain, too. He also doesn't have any broken bones. The only injury he has is a black eye. And mysteriously, he's. Everybody's missing their ice axes, Right. I think there was a struggle. I think he was killed. That's what I think happened. I think these people were murdered. I think this was a murder on the side of this mountain. I think there's a lot of evidence that points to that. I don't think you could ever prove it. Certainly not now. Everyone involved is dead. Every single one of the Americans is dead. The God is still alive. The people who perform the autopsy are still alive. Some of the people investigated are still alive, but none of the actual people involved are alive. They have all died at this point. So you're never gonna know exactly what happened. But to me, nothing about this, other than the fact it happened on a dangerous mountain, nothing about this says this was an accident. So I think it probably was a murder.

[Alice]

I'll join your conspiracy theory with you. The only thing that points away from it is how do they get all their stories together. Dafoe clearly knew something was up, even though there's only four of the whole group.

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Remember, much of the group, half of.

[Alice]

The group had already gone down for different reasons because they got ill, what have you.

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So only four were on top of that mountain.

[Alice]

But I think the fact that they called this meeting, even though half of the group was not even there to bear witness or to be implicated in whatever horrific event happened up on that mountain, it was so out of the ordinary.

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They were all climbers, right?

[Alice]

Maybe none quite as experienced as Janet, but they were all climbers.

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And even they knew something was up.

[Alice]

Even though half of the group was not up there. So much so that it was so horrific that if it ever came out, even though the other half of the group was not up on the mountain, they could be held somehow liable that Dafoe, being the risk averse, lawyer, legalist, knew that they had to get their story together. So the fact that they had that meeting, I think really points to they knew something even if nothing was said. And it may have been as simple as you guys shut your mouths, I don't want to hear what you have to say. So we're just going to plot out what happened because it's one of those like, put your fingers in your ears, la la la la la. I don't actually want to know what happened on that mountain because whatever it was, I know enough about the dynamics and what typically happens on an expedition that nothing good can happen if Zeller opens his mouth. So you're not going to. So the fact that Defoe, who wasn't even up there, calls this meeting, I think points to the fact that the group knew something was up well before they even came down. The Mountain.

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I think there's a reason that the.

[Alice]

Argentinian police was already at base camp questioning people so soon. When hundreds of people die on this mountain, this happens. People die on these treacherous conditions. And this was a treacherous condition that they were hiking in. And I do think. I agree with you. I don't think it was a love triangle.

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I don't think they liked each other.

[Alice]

I think there maybe is something that we can draw from Janet Johnson's camera. We know that she was a bit of a loner. Others describe her, or at least in diaries, it's described as at the expense of everyone else. She's only thinking about herself to get to the summit. And so already there's some discontent there. The fact that her pictures are also beautiful and capturing, you know, this is why she climbed times, right? The world around her. In the 70s, she had come out, she had a tough community. This is where she found beauty. And I think we're seeing a slice of why she loves climbing through her camera. But we're also maybe seeing how things were very difficult up there. Whether it be the hypoxia, whether it be having to be on the side of the mountain for multiple days in a row when they couldn't reach the summit. She's stopping and taking these photos that is very. It's for herself, but it's also indicative of her personality that she's going to find this beauty and find the joy of what she's doing. But it's not communal. What she's doing is not communal. It's pretty. I mean, these photos, they're stunning. They're beautiful. But it's not pictures of people arms around each other, drinking beers. They're also on the side of the mountain. No beers to be had.

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But.

[Alice]

But I think that is setting her apart from the group and that there's growing discontent for her already. And I do think whoever died first, the other one died because they were a witness to whatever happened. I do think how gruesome Cooper's death was. Probably indicates that he was 150 yards away from camp. He could send word it was all going to be over, what, three or four city blocks we heard that described. They knew how far he was from camp. He was much too close to basically the outside world that would blow the whole thing up. And so he was ended three or four city blocks from camp.

[Brett]

And this, this is me speculating, but I think it is strange that no one in the group seemed interested in helping to get Cooper down. You know, Janet Johnson's one thing they didn't like her, number one. Number two, they didn't know where she was, right? Like their story was, there was the fall, she got separated, no idea where she is. She could have fallen all the way down the mountain for all they knew. But they knew exactly where Cooper was. But rather than like try and work with the police to get a group to go up there and get the body, they're heading back the United States the next day. And to me that really rubs me the wrong way and makes me have a lot of questions about exactly what happened.

[Alice]

It's a great point because remember two years later when those three hikers, the 17 year old boy finds her body, what do they do?

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They take her ring of sentimental value.

[Alice]

Because this could be them, they could.

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Be climbing a mountain.

[Alice]

They don't know why she's died, they just know she's dead. What do they do to a complete stranger? They take a sentimental item of value, her ring, to send back to someone.

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They don't even know if they exist.

[Alice]

But if they do, they would like to do this for them. This stranger that they find on the side of the mountain. What do they know about Cooper, his expedition mates?

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They know he has a diary because.

[Alice]

He writes in it every night.

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He writes in it a lot. You look over, you're in a very small base camp, you're going to see.

[Alice]

What other people do.

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Most of them have diaries.

[Alice]

So they know he has a diary and they know it's on him. What could be more sentimental for your surviving wife then the note that she sent to you in the journal that you wrote your last words in. Right.

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That doesn't take much time to reach down.

[Alice]

Take the journal back with you if you're like, I'm not equipped with a toboggan to bring his body down, but you can take his journal that you know he has, especially if that's all you can take back. They don't do that, Right? That's something that you would at the very least expect. Especially when you see two years later total strangers do something like that. For Janet Johnson.

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[Alice]

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[Alice]

I love that.

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[Alice]

But that's not true.

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[Alice]

So I think there was an interest in making sure whatever happened stayed a mystery, and I think they succeeded. I think this will remain a mystery in the sense that we will not know more information than we know today. Likely because the people who know the real information are gone. And that is very sad for Johnson and Cooper. But the one, I guess small, small solace we have is that their names can still, you know, because of this beautiful article by the New York Times, long form journalism and other stories like this, maybe at least if they have, you know, family members who are still alive, know that they are not forgotten, that at least two podcasters question the official story that exists out there. And the other thing is, man, if I'm ever like murdered, I really hope the government where I am murdered is not collapse and then the investigation is stalled because of it. So like again, I'm not that big of a conspiracy theorist. I don't think that they actually military couped the government to stall this investigation.

[Brett]

We're on the way out for a while.

[Alice]

So they were on their way out.

[Brett]

For a while CIA, I doubt they were involved in that.

[Alice]

But that would be the ultimate conspiracy theory is Defoe started the coup.

[Brett]

And look, it's a tragedy for everybody involved because maybe they would have investigated it and conclusively proven that it was an accident and then this wouldn't be hanging over the people who survived. But I think there's a lot of questions about this case. You know, this is one I don't think you've probably seen covered many places. Maybe there's a couple podcasts, whatever out there who've covered it, but definitely the New York Times. I mean basically we just ripped off that entire article. I mean that article is amazing. It's fantastic. Definitely should read it. We will link to it in the show notes. Just, it's, it's good. I mean it is everything you wish journalism still was. It's fantastic. Really interested to hear your thoughts on this. Shoot us an email prosecutors podmail.com@ ProsecutorsPod for all your social media. You can find us on Facebook in the gallery. We're on X, we're on TikTok such that it is. I guess it still is by the time you hear this. If it still is, we're still on it. If not, it's re.

[Alice]

Is.

[Brett]

Yeah, we'll be on something else. We're not joining that communist like little Red book thing though. You can forget about that. But we're in lots of places you can find us. Check us on Instagram. Other thing if you've somehow missed it. We have the substack now. Most of the articles are free though. We, we have started this prosecutors University thing where people who subscribe will get articles on various parts of the law that are confusing. It's kind of like legal briefs, but in written form, if you prefer that. So check that out.

[Alice]

It's like the best case brief you ever. It's more interesting than any case case.

[Brett]

Notes you can find if you're a law student. Really it's an investment in your legal education. You should, you should join. Okay, well, Alice, do you want to answer a question?

[Alice]

Let's do it.

[Brett]

Okay, let's do it. Let's see what's a good one. Okay, so CAJ 2189 says in law dramas, so automatically anything that follows is going to be wrong. But in law dramas I see where the opposing side springs unknown evidence in the hearing that decides if the case goes to trial. Is this accurate? If so, what are the stipulations of the pre trial trial hearing? So what do you think about that?

[Alice]

So gotcha moments don't happen if the pre trial stuff is going as planned because you're not allowed to spring anything on either side. That's what discovery is for. Obviously you've heard of Brady obligations. You have to turn over everything and that's because you don't want to win in court. And there's less justice when there are gotcha moments. You want both sides to be fully prepared for what the other side is going to bring and be fully prepared to counter it or not counter it. That's how we as a justice system try to get to the truth. Right. It's not a gotcha I prepared better than you. It's rather, I'm going to show you every move I'm going to do on the chessboard. There's going to be no surprises. And the best that gets to the truth is what ultimately happens. So it is not gamesmanship, but rather chipping away at the block of justice to reach closer and closer to truth. So those Matlock gotcha moments, they're not supposed to happen in court.

[Brett]

And don't you want it to be that way? You know, I mean, think about it. Do you want the winner to just be whoever has the best lawyer and whichever lawyer is the most clever, the trickiest, or the one who's the most suave or whatever? I mean, is that really what you want? Or do you want it to be basically be set up where the way it's supposed to work is? Really the lawyers are just sort of, I mean, I don't want to say they don't matter because they obviously do, but they're presenting the evidence to the jury to the best of their ability and letting the Jury decide. It's not like you don't want to win through tricks and you can't. I mean, that's. The rules of evidence just prevent that. And it's one reason, and we talk about this, it's really important to respect the rules of evidence. I think there is a big tendency, and we've seen this in a lot of cases, to think that the rules of evidence are almost like a problem. The rules of evidence stand in the way of truth form for the rules of evidence. Defense attorneys could just present anything they wanted and the jury could decide. No, that's not how the system is set up. It really is supposed to be set up where all the relevant evidence comes in. The stuff that isn't going to prejudice you or make you decide based on something other than what the evidence is. And then you want the jury to decide. So, yeah, the gotcha moments are few and far between. It really is much more evidence based and law based than you might think. You know, you think about like the Bryan Coburger case, it's just going on right now. They just had what you would believe, if you follow the media, was this dramatic. You know, the defense had filed this motion to suppress the DNA evidence and to throw out the case and dismiss the whole thing. And, you know, this quadruple murder case hangs in the balance. And we didn't even cover it because we knew exactly what was going to happen, which is this is a typical suppression hearing where the defense makes a pretty outlandish claim that's going to be denied. They had the hearing. People watched it and what happened. It looked like the defense attorney, like if you watched it, you thought, man, this defense attorney is not very good. But that's not what it was. It was that the law was entirely against her. So of course she looked bad because it's not about her and her abilities. It's not like oratory. If she can channel like some Mark Antony or something, Cicero, suddenly she's going to win by acclamation. That's not how it works. Works. She didn't have the law on her side. In fact, the law was completely against her. And she was always going to lose. And she's going to lose because that's how it really works. And you see that in a lot of these cases, no matter how dramatic people want to make it seem, a lot of times there's a reason we're pretty good at predicting the outcome of these cases. Because the law is pretty clear.

[Alice]

Meant to be predictable.

[Progressive Advertiser]

Exactly.

[Brett]

It's meant to be predictable. It should.

[Alice]

It's meant to be predictable.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Alice]

And by the way, this is absolutely true. So if you go to a good lawyer, whether it's a civil or criminal case, they do what we do, which is project for you what will happen in your case. They're going to say, okay, we might get a little bit more information and discovery on this, but this is how I see it playing out for you. Which is why a good lawyer, when they know the evidence is stacked against you, actually tried to get you a good plea deal and may even try to say, hey, you know what? It's in your best interest to take responsibility, get that additional credit from the government in terms of sentencing, and plead guilty now or in a civil case. This is just, you know, free legal advice. They tell you, yes, I'll take this case on for you, but I want you to know this is how It's. I tell my clients this all the time. I'm like, this is the best we can hope for, and it's not a total win. And here's why, why and why. I don't want you on the back end to be surprised. I'm not going to tell you sweet nothings just so that you'll hire me. I want you to know the truth. And that's because we are trained to apply the facts of the law. And there are not supposed to be gotcha moments. I'm not always gonna know how judge is going to rule. And of course there's gonna be things around the margin. We always say that trial is a live circus. You never know what's gonna come out of someone's mouth, but it's you not knowing what's going to come out of someone's mouth, not how it's going to apply to the law.

[Brett]

And I'll tell our lawyers this all the time. I mean, they'll come to me with something either they feel very passionately about or some novel argument they want to try or something along those lines. And I'll often tell them, if you feel passionately about it, you know, you go for it. I will stand behind you. I will do the very best I can. And then we're gonna lose, and then we're gonna lose. So just be prepared for that part where we lose, you know, and usually they're like, okay, and we figure something out, right? Like, we drop that argument and maybe drop that count sometimes, you know, or concede something because we know we're gonna lose. And that really is good. Lawyers are as good at telling their clients, no, that's never going to work as they are saying, you hired me. That's what you want to do. In fact, that's what bad lawyers do. Bad lawyers just do whatever the client says.

[Alice]

All direction from clients. Because that's. Why would you hire a lawyer then? But anyways, these are great questions. Hope you enjoyed this free legal advice. It's not legal advice. This is for entertainment purposes only.

[Brett]

If a lawyer tells you no, it doesn't necessarily mean they're bad lawyer. Okay, well, look, this has been a lot of fun. I've really enjoyed this case. I hope you've enjoyed it as well. We look forward to your thoughts. We'll be back next week with something a little bit more traditionally true crime. Well, you know, we like to throw these mysteries in every now and then, but until then. I'm Brett.

[Alice]

And I'm Alice.

[Brett]

And we are the prosecutors. I'm gonna go ahead and go live unless you have something super secret you want to discuss.

[Alice]

No secret. Great. Huh.

[Brett]

Okay. What?

[Alice]

I think that's fine. Nothing. It just the. The little squigglies look weird. Like, it. It's fine. The. The sound is fine.

[Brett]

Okay.

[Alice]

You know how sometimes if you, like, change the.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Progressive Advertiser]

It's like a graph.

[Alice]

It's like a graph, you know, if you change the metrics.

[Brett]

Right.

[Alice]

But I think it's fine because it's hitting 12.

[Brett]

Let's start marking where we. I think they had left. Oh, you marked it. You're so good.

[Alice]

I did.

[Brett]

You're so good.

[Alice]

You know. No, no, it's not. It's not that. It's that I have no memory of anything.

[Brett]

You're just. I did. Get.

[Alice]

Go, go, go.

[Brett]

As a matter of fact. I'm sorry.

[Alice]

Your haircut looks fantastic.

[Brett]

Fine, Fine. Alice. Alice is sick of it. She's ready to get this show on the road.

[Alice]

No.

[Brett]

Here we go.

[Alice]

Your hair is fantastic. I just can't see it because it's right where it cuts off. There you go. That's amazing. Wow. Best haircut I've ever seen in my.

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[Brett]

You're gonna need some backup.

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[Brett]

Very cool.

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[Brett]

You can't outrun this.

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[Brett]

We got you.

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