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- [00:01]
A
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- [01:02]
B
Summer adventures are better with Minky Couture. From road trips to ball games, beach nights to backyard movies, Minky has you covered. Don't miss the Everywhere Blanket. Water resistant, ultra soft, and made for life on the go. Wherever summer takes you, bring comfort along. Minky couture.com the original best blanket Ever. Hi, I'm Juliet Cowley, a retired FBI profiler and host of the True Crime podcast the Real FBI Profilers. If you're fascinated with true crime and criminal profiling, then join us as we discuss real cases and examine the behavior exhibited before, during, and after the commission of the crime. You can listen to the consult wherever you get your podcasts. It's as close as it gets to being in the room with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.
- [02:10]
A
I'm brett. And I'm alice, and we are the prosecutors. Today on the Prosecutors, we continue our look at the murder of Jade Beasley. Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my Maganda, or actually Maganda co host Alice.
- [03:16]
B
Thank goodness you pronounced it correctly the second time. That was great. I have no idea what that means, but Tagalog. Oh, Tagalog.
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A
Tagalog. Tagalog.
- [03:27]
B
That was pretty good though.
- [03:28]
A
Tagalog for visually beautiful. So you're visually beautiful, but I think you're also beautiful non visually, if that makes any sense.
- [03:40]
B
You mean I have a face for podcasting?
- [03:43]
A
You have a face for podcasts and a soul for Podcasting, too, so.
- [03:47]
B
So my sister in law speaks Tagalog, so we'll see if you're right. I have no idea. I got nothing. This is the same sister in law, by the way. I have no idea if she listens or not, but she makes the best from scratch pho in the world.
- [04:02]
A
Really?
- [04:03]
B
Oh, it's like, wow. Whenever I go visit for a hot second, like, I'll be, like, passing through the airport. She will make it like the day before because it takes 24 hours to make. And, like, bring me a bowl of pho. That's what a good sister in law she is.
- [04:18]
A
Well, that sounds amazing. I would love to maybe anything Tagalog or. I will say this. I love all Asian food. And they. Sometimes they do that map of the world broken up into regions, and it's like, if you could only eat one food from one region for the rest of your life, which one would you pick? I always pick the one that's got, like, Japan, China, the Philippines.
- [04:36]
B
So good.
- [04:37]
A
Korea. I mean, it's just all so good. Also so good.
- [04:41]
B
Indeed. Did you know that there's a ramen place here? Have you been to it?
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A
No, I have not.
- [04:46]
B
I don't know if it's any good, but I was waiting for someone at the hospital, and I was like, I want to eat some food. And ramen was, like, down the street, but I did not get a chance to go. And I was like, did you know there was a ramen place? Remember when I made us go to that ramen place at the ramen bar in the airport?
- [05:01]
A
Yes. And it was awesome.
- [05:02]
B
It was like the best ramen ever.
- [05:04]
A
It was incredible. I've never had a better meal at an airport.
- [05:08]
B
And we never even ordered with a human.
- [05:10]
A
Remember?
- [05:10]
B
We just had to, like, scan it on a phone. They wouldn't even let us order to a human. And it was, like, phenomenal. Or maybe we were hungry.
- [05:18]
A
That was when we did the 2020 episode.
- [05:20]
B
That's right.
- [05:20]
A
On Leah Schofield, when we were.
- [05:22]
B
And we were like, in laguardia, maybe.
- [05:24]
A
I think it might have been laguardia.
- [05:26]
B
I think it was laguardia.
- [05:27]
A
I think it was laguardia. If you're ever in laguardia. Ramen bar, ramen place.
- [05:30]
B
Well, the next time you come into town, let's go get ramen, which is my point.
- [05:34]
A
All right, so we're back with the Murder of Jade Beasley. This is our fourth episode. It might be our last episode, but we're not sure because, as some of you may have noticed, We're a little long winded. We get on tangents and we like to talk about things, which is good for podcasts.
- [05:47]
B
Who gets on tangents? Not us.
- [05:48]
A
Yeah, not us. Us tangents. Never.
- [05:51]
B
I like to think, I'd like to think they are mental explorations of the topic at hand. And sometimes the explorations are so far that it takes a while to come back to the point.
- [06:01]
A
And this is obviously a very serious topic with a lot of potential tangents to explain various things that may be unusual. We've done three episodes on this looking into the murder of Jade Beasley, an 11 year old girl. Her stepmother, Julia Beverly, was convicted for the crime. There are people who think that she was convicted unjustly. And so we're going through the evidence in the case. We've been spend a lot of time on the timeline. We spent a lot of time on her statement to the police. This is a case where someone decided to give a voluntary statement to the police. It turned out to be about two hours of talking and it was very damning for her. You know, you often hear defense attorneys say, don't talk to the cops. It's pretty good advice. I would prefer you not take it, but it's pretty good advice. Now I will say this. There are people who think, well, clearly that's a sign she's innocent because she voluntarily spoke to the police. And you'll hear her own defense attorney says that, her appellate attorney says that. Always point out she voluntarily talked police. Not unusual at all. It would be stunning probably to most people how many very guilty people have voluntary conversations with the police with no attorney present.
- [07:16]
B
And also imagine this situation, she's the one who saw the so called perpetrator, was the only one in the house at the time, is the one who made the 911 call. It would probably raise more questions if she didn't voluntarily go speak to the police. Right. And so she, she's in a pickle.
- [07:32]
A
And honestly, if she did this, she's got a lot of stuff to explain. You know, she's got these cuts on her hand, she has these bite marks on her arm. She, as Alice said, has indicated that she saw the person. So she's in a pickle because there are several things that she does that looking at this, you might think, man, not smart to talk to the police, not smart to narrow this down to a man in black. We're about to talk about that. But in her situation, given her own state, the wounds to her body, she really has to talk to the police. And she really has to explain and really pin it on one individual because she has to explain. Why is it you have cuts to your hand? Well, because I engage with the person who's responsible for this crime.
- [08:18]
B
And if you remember, you know, a case that we've covered extensively, of course, are the Delphi murders where Richard Allen actually puts himself there. And of course, the tip that he gave in about himself being on the bridge and essentially being bridge guy doesn't come in until many years later when they find the tip. But when you know or you suspect that you're going to be someone they're going to look into, oftentimes you're thinking, okay, I need to set the narrative to either mislead or to explain away on the front end. Because if I can explain these things on the front end, it's going to be a lot less suspicious than all signs then point back to me and seven days later, all of a sudden I have to then come up with a story that's going to be a lot more suspect. And here's the other thing. We've said this all the time. Almost every person that we've ever interviewed, whether they're just a witness or the target or the suspect, they think they're smarter than us. And they think they're smarter than any law enforcement officer they're talking to. And they think that they can sell their story to the jury, to a law enforcement officer and they can explain it away. Maybe some people are great at it, but I've yet to honestly meet someone who at some point in their lie within speaking for more than 2 minutes, 5 minutes, it's hard to keep a lie together.
- [09:29]
A
Look at Alec Murdaugh. I mean, I think most of you probably think he's guilty. Some of you may think it was the midget cartel hitman who did it, which is possible. I mean, there's always a possibility. But I think most of you think he's guilty. And he spoke to the police multiple times and testified in his own defense. Lengthy testimony, day long testimony. So just an example. And he's a lawyer. Just an example.
- [09:53]
B
He was one of the prosecutors in the town. Yeah.
- [09:56]
A
So, you know, this is sort of a tangent to begin this, but it relates back to what I've been talking about. There are a lot of tropes that you see that just aren't that true. And one of them is it is simply not the case that just because you talk to the police that means you're likely innocent. And honestly, it's not the case that just because you lawyer up and don't talk to the police that you're likely guilty. I think in this case, in this particular case, with these particular facts, it would have been very strange if the stepmother of the, the 11 year old who was murdered was like, I'm not talking to you, I want a lawyer. That would have been very unusual. There might be circumstances where that's appropriate, particularly if the police initially had been very aggressive with her. You know, if they had been accusing her from the beginning. You know, if they showed up and they found Jade in the tub and the first thing they said to her is, why'd you do this? Right. Like you can imagine a scenario in which maybe she should immediately get a lawyer. But I think given the facts as they played out, obviously she had a choice, but I don't think she really had a choice to talk to the police, to try and tell them her story and to explain the injuries that were going to be very suspicious that she had on her. So that's sort of a summing up where we've been and like I said, we've talked a lot about her own words, which is absolutely evidence, powerful evidence in this case. It's always funny to me when people say there's no evidence in a case and it's like, well, there's X, Y and Z. Oh, and A, B and C, and there's an M in there too. You know, it's like there's, there's all sorts of evidence. And her statement is obviously a huge piece of evidence that you have to consider. But now we, we're going to talk a little bit more about this man in black and some of the physical evidence and the physical circumstances that the police found in this case.
- [11:43]
B
Right. So this is not an investigation where they showed up on scene and decided that they had found the killer. Not at all. In fact, before they even reach the house, they begin to look for this man in black who is reported on the 911 call by Julia. So this man in black, if you remember in the 911 call, she says that she has seen the intruder and they're running out. Now this is an active situation. Then you have someone who is out there who has murdered a young child, seemingly for no reason, out on the streets. It is a very serious situation and this is the way the police approach it. So officers immediately, not after they've approached the house, before they even get to the house, they start looking for the man in black. Officer Sam Ward grabbed his rifle and began kicking down doors of storage Sheds, barns, storm shelters, basically any structure. Not people's houses, because you need a search warrant for that. Where someone could be hiding. Because what we know is that someone has just committed a bloody murder. There's probably going to be trails of them. And he's running and he may be hiding somewhere because he knows the police have been called, he can hear the sirens, and so immediately he is just busting down doors looking for this dangerous man in black.
- [12:54]
A
And it's worth pointing out, based on what Julia has told them, this guy's only got like a 10 minute, 12 minute head start. 15 minute tops, right? Because she engages with him, he runs off, she goes inside, she washes her hand, she grabs a towel, she finds Jay, she kind of taps her on the shoulder, tries to check her pulse. That's all her interactions are with Jade. She runs in, she calls the police, she's on, I think the 911 calls. Twelve minutes long, the cops are on their way. He's got a 15 minute head start. She says she didn't see a bicycle, she didn't see a car, she saw no mode of transportation. So you got to imagine this guy, he's still got to be pretty close. So they are full on blitz trying to find him.
- [13:38]
B
And part of this blitz is making sure they cover everything around the house. They spread out through a cornfield and they're looking for footprints. Cornfield if you've ever seen them. The grass, you can see where grass has been disturbed. Remember, the canines come in later and actually what they smell for is that broken, disturbed grass. So they're looking for footprints there. And you know what, you should be finding footprints because someone is running through this area. You might even see some blood because this is a bloody scene. But despite looking for 45 minutes. So basically within the hour of this man having just engaged with Julia and having just been at the house with no mode of transportation except his feet, they found no signs of anyone else on the property. The only people they saw throughout this search or an elderly couple walking a dog. And that's it. So this is, remember a Saturday, early afternoon, you know, late morning. So this is not a time when there's a bunch of people out. Other officers start canvassing surrounding roads. They're knocking on neighbors doors, seeing if anyone has seen anything. And it's not just officers they bring in. K9. As we've already mentioned, Justin Francis was a K9 handler and he was called to the scene with, with canine Loki. Awesome name for a dog. Actually, my other brother and sister in law had a dog named Loki. So for an hour and a half, Francis and Loki canvassed the entire area. They're not just relying on officers, eyes and searches. They've brought in K9 with their superior sense of detection and smell. But Loki never alerted to anything that would have indicated another person had been present. They covered about a 10 acre area around the home. Officer Adam Rawlinson was an officer with the Fish and Wildlife Service. So he and his partner K9 Nate also responded to the scene as part of the local federal partnership. So again, multiple jurisdictions are on this. Within like the first minutes of this investigation, he searched another part of the property for about an hour and 15 minutes. And at no point did his canine take make any indication of a positive hit.
- [15:55]
A
So you got the situation. And look, dogs are not infallible. Dogs sometimes don't react when you expect they should, but they're pretty good. And you've got two here. And this is a fresh scene, like we said, 15 minutes. You know, it took some time for the dogs to get there. I think it was about 45 minutes after the initial call, the first dog shows up. So, but still super fresh scene. And he got two dogs, well trained dogs, trying to find just some indication that someone else had been there. They're not finding anything. You know, the police are fanning out. They see this elderly couple. The only other person anybody saw was on the way. You may recall this from the timeline. On the way, one of the police officers sees a woman dressed in black and stops and talks to her and she mentions that she's out with her dog. And you know, this is one of those things where there's criticism about how this officer handled this interaction because he stops, he speaks to this woman, realizes it's a woman, and he moves on. And at trial he's asked, well, did you get her name? Did you like, get her address? Did you make a report? He's like, no, I didn't do any of that. And so that's the criticism. See, he should have followed up. Why didn't he follow up? The reason's pretty obvious. He's looking for a man in black and it's an urgent situation. He's not going to stop and pull out his notebook and be like, okay, person who clearly is not involved and is not a man. Let me get all your information just in case later on I want to be able to answer a question at trial about who you were. No, he like wraps up with her, eliminates her and moves on, trying to find the man in Black. That's the reality of the situation. And the fact of the matter is, despite a very thorough search and a really engaged search, they don't find any evidence. This guy. This is another case, and we've seen this many times, including the Murdoch case or the Darla Routier case, where someone says there must have been someone else there that did this because it wasn't me, but. Or in $routier similar to this. She also says she engaged with this person and received wounds from this person, but there's no evidence of them. There's no footprints, there's no DNA. There's no hairs. There's. There's nothing other than the word of the person to indicate that they were ever present in the area. And it's just. That doesn't necessarily mean this person didn't exist. It is always possible someone could. You would leave some trace, but you left a trace. It just wasn't found for whatever reason. That's a possibility, but it certainly is a strike against the existence of the man in black that there seems to be no evidence of him other than what Julia is saying.
- [18:38]
B
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- [22:38]
A
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B
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A
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B
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- [24:08]
A
Okay, let's talk about the home. Okay, so officer Deschamps was one of the people who responded to this circumstance. And he testifies at trial, and he testifies a lot about what he's seeing when he gets there. Recall, the whole idea here is this has been some sort of break in. So she leaves, she goes to Walmart, there's some sort of break in. Well, if it was either she didn't lock the door or Jade let the person in, there's no damage to the door. There's no damage to the jam. There's no damage to the area of the bolt. There's nothing about the door that indicates it has been forced open or the lock has been picked or anything like that. So if someone came in, they opened the door and they came in, or Jade let them in. Now, Julia did not remember if she locked the door. I think in her statement she feels like she did, but she's not 100% certain. And honestly, I mean, I would lock the door, but I mean, I could imagine you're only going to be gone for a little while. Not that big a deal. So she doesn't lock the door, but there's no indication that the door is locked, forced.
- [25:20]
B
I mean, you're still leaving for like an hour.
- [25:21]
A
I know it's a long time to leave an 11 year old, but I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt a little bit. I mean, if she locked the door, then Jade opened it. I mean, they didn't break in. So if you think she locked the door, then I think you're sort of. Either Jade was just foolish and opened the door to a total stranger, or this is someone that Jade knew who was dressed all in black, who I guess came there to kill her.
- [25:49]
B
And which is really interesting because if it were someone that she knew to open the door to, then it would be interesting because they were in face to face contact with Julia, that she would not have recognized someone who Jade would have known because she's only 11. So it's not like she's just hanging out at the bar or the mall by herself, interacting with a bunch of people who are unknown to her parents.
- [26:13]
A
I mean, I think it's worth sort of traveling down this line for a little bit. Okay, so who could it be? I mean, she's 11, she could have a boyfriend and she could have an older boyfriend that maybe her parents didn't know about. That's a possibility.
- [26:26]
B
But maybe not so old who can drive. So maybe it's a teenager. It could be a 14 or 15 year old, right?
- [26:31]
A
5ft tall. 5ft tallish because remember, Julia says not much taller than her now she might not recognize them because once again, they're dressed all black. Now it seems like if you show up at someone's house dressed head to toe in black, wearing gloves with a ski mask on, you're there to kill them. Right? I mean, so this person would have gone there to kill either Jade or I guess possibly Julia. They show up thinking she's there and they end up they have to kill Jade for some reason. I mean, I get that's, you know, just if you're thinking through it or a relative.
- [27:05]
B
And so if they are wearing all that, how would Jade even know who that was? Unless they brought a change of clothes or put on the mask and the Glo after the fact. Right. Like if the purpose is to fool them to get in, you have to appear familiar to them in order to be let in. In the first instance. Okay, it's December, maybe it's cold. So you're dressed in a turtleneck. You know, I don't know what this. Well, a hoodie, right? A black hoodie and black pants. But maybe you don't have the ski mask on yet, and you pull that on later. But it's weird because the person you came to kill is already dead. And that's at the point in which you pull on the ski mask. Seems a little strange. It does seem that you would show up at the front door with the ski mask and maybe with the dogs barking like crazy outside. Jade is just stumbling out of her bed from her morning nap and thinks someone knocked on the door, maybe it's Amazon delivery, and opens the door, and lo and behold, she's let in the killer.
- [27:54]
A
Yeah. And I think it's worth noting. You know, we've talked about the dog some before, but something you just mentioned. You know, we talked about this timeline with Julia and how it doesn't really work because she gets back about 30 minutes before she calls 911. And so what is she doing during that whole period? She does not tell the police this. She does not make this an official statement. She will later tell people involved in sort of the Innocence movement for her that she just sat in her car and scrolled on Facebook, which is something people do. She scrolled on Facebook for 30 minutes. And so that's what she was doing for those 30 minutes. Very unlucky for her that she just happened to be doing that. But the whole time she's doing that, the dogs are going crazy. And you got to think this person who's just murdered somebody is in that house with the dogs just going nuts, and they're just hanging out. It's a very.
- [28:41]
B
And knowing, by the way, likely that someone has just pulled up and is coming home. Right, Right. And so you would think most people do not sit in their car for 30 minutes once they get home. You think, okay, my opportunity for escape is going to be very narrow. Mom has come home, dogs have alerted. They're going to know something's wrong. Blood's everywhere. I am in the middle of a crime scene. I have minutes. Not. I'm going to sit here until she decides to drive back away. No, because most people drive up to their house in order to get out of the car and come back in.
- [29:09]
A
So why would you wait? One reason you might wait is I'm gonna wait till she comes in. I'm gonna kill her because she's here. I can't get out with her seeing me, so I need to kill her. Which makes the actual behavior very strange because he makes no attempt to kill her. Doesn't even make an attempt to stab her. Waits until she gets up to the front door and Then rushes past her. But in that moment, she also tries to grab the knife, but he doesn't stab her or slash at her or anything. He just keeps going. She cuts her hands, he keeps going. The whole thing is just very weird. It's just very weird. It's not when you hear it, and I think this is important. We're talking about a lot of evidence, and there's a lot of evidentiary reasons to make your decisions, but you're also just regular human beings with common sense. And we always tell jurors, you don't leave your common sense at the door when you become a juror, and you don't leave your common sense at the radio when you're listening to a podcast. So when you hear someone tell you a story, I think particularly when you're going to have to compare that story against conflicting evidence and decide, is the story true? And the conflicting evidence just a whole bunch of really unfortunate coincidences for the person who tells the story. Like, you're having to make that decision. I think when you're having to make that decision, if the story just seems unbelievable to you, it just doesn't seem like what would happen in real life. I think that's something that's pretty important, and I think it is something that's relevant for people to think about when they're thinking about a case like this. Okay, so there's nothing to indicate the door was forced open, but there was blood on the inside of the home near the door, really all over the place. There's a little bit, I think, of. Is there blood outside or not? Pretty much, no. There might have been, like, a drop of blood outside, but for the most part, the vast majority of this blood is on the inside of the home. And there's so much blood in so many places, it's really hard to tell where this started or how it went. The only thing you can really tell is this attack ranged all over that house. The prosecution during the trial, they had a chart with all the places that blood was found, and it's just everywhere. And the crime scene photos, there's just blood everywhere, and there's masses of blood everywhere. And it really feels like this was an attack that sort of went all over this house, and I think likely ended in the bathroom, because that's where we end up finding Jade. One of the things that people often talk about, Jade's at least as large as Julia may be larger. And one of the things that her defense attorney focused on was, well, how did she get her in the bathtub? I don't think she necessarily did get her in the bathtub. I think there's a strong possibility that whoever did this engaged with her all over that place. This attack sort of happened all over. She's running for her life, fighting when she has to. She eventually retreats to the bathroom, which is not unusual. I had a murder case where someone retrieved the bathroom, is end up stabbed to death there, retreats to the bathroom, ends up in the bathtub, and that's where she dies. I mean, I think that's a, a very likely scenario here. But there's so much blood. You remember when we did the Jeffrey McDonald case and because of the fact that everyone in the household had a different type of blood, that was the
- [32:32]
B
only way we could see the trail.
- [32:33]
A
You could track the murder. You could figure out exactly how it went down because of that. Unless you have something like that, it's kind of hard to do. And in this case in particular, it was very difficult. Now what was interesting is there were drops of blood just outside the master bathroom and in the bathroom sink. There was blood leading up to the garbage can in the kitchen. There was blood in front of the oven, there was blood on the stove. There was blood going around the island. It really seems like there's just, just like I said, it's moving around this trailer. There's blood on the refrigerator. There's blood on the mattress in Jade's room as well as on a plastic bag on an end table, on the laptop. There's blood on both the exterior side of the door to her room and on the interior side of the door. There was a heavy concentration.
- [33:21]
B
Is this a multi level house?
- [33:23]
A
No, it's a trailer. It's a double wide trailer. I was also going to say like the backyard is sort of fenced in. So like you could have gone out the back but it would have been a little difficult. So I don't know if that was really an option. So if you were going to get away, you probably had to go through the front door. And it doesn't seem like that was ever an option either. There was a heavy concentration of blood just outside of Jaden's bedroom. Remember, Jaden is Julia's son. He wasn't there at the time. And I will say this, if you look at the photographs, it's a large deposit of blood and it does seem different from the rest of the house just because there's so much of it and it's so concentrated. So it feels like it's possible that either this is where it started or where a lot of it happened. There's also transfer patterns just above the floor on the wall, and there are bare footprints in the blood. Now, only a couple of those footprints had sufficient definition for comparison. Both were identified as being from Jade. And I think this just reiterates she is running through her own blood at times. This attack, as it's going on, is happening in places and then going to other places and then going back. And that's the only thing you see. You're not seeing like a bunch of boot prints or a bunch of other prints. I mean, whoever did this, whether it's Julia or Jade, didn't really leave any of their own footprints in the blood, at least that we could compare. The only comparable ones were Jade's.
- [34:55]
B
So this is really hard to imagine how much blood is in here. But essentially, if you imagine this double wide trailer, what this tells us with the blood pattern is that there was an immense struggle inside the house with the doors closed. Because someone would have run out. There would be tracks and whatnot. And what's really interesting, that there is a large amount of blood all over on the interior of the door, but not on the outside, is if she herself, Jade, is tracking through her own blood. It means that this is not a one track. The killer isn't just following her on a one track path, she's doubling back. She's running past where she's already been attacked. And so this is a desperate attempt for her own life. And you would think that if someone is running out after this bloody of a scene, you would see track marks, there would be blood on the outside, not necessarily directly coming from Jade herself, but being tracked out with the killer, the man in black, who is running out with the knife that was the murder weapon as well as with the shoes that they had on. Even if they took off their shoes, there's gonna be blood on their clothes. You would see something splatter, spatter, something. Because of the amount of blood we're seeing on the inside, but the fact it's so clean on the outside, I imagine, like if you have a closed unit and you've shaken it up and everything goes everywhere inside the unit, it seems very unlikely that whoever did this came from the outside and left without time to clean up.
- [36:27]
A
And there's indications of cleanup, which is one of those things that's a little weird. I mean, you see places where it seems like blood has been cleaned up. You see places where blood only shows up. And this is particularly true in like the master bathroom. And in other. Some other places where you only see blood if you use aluminol, and there's just blood that appears to have been wiped up, which is a weird thing to do if you're the random killer. It's a weird thing to engage in any kind of cleanup. And obviously, we're going to talk about the fact the way Jade is found is one of those weird things, right? That, you know, she's in this bathtub with the running water and the lack of blood. And the police also noticed that despite all this blood, that Julia, she was in bare feet and there was no blood on the bottom of her feet. And it was a little unclear what shoes she was wearing or what happened to them. She later on would say something about, well, she was wearing flip flops. But at some point in the rush to, like, get to Jade and get to the phone, she lost him. A little unclear what happened to him. Right. But certainly her feet were clean, which, given that she would have had to have traveled through a fairly bloody scene to do the thing she said she did was a little unusual.
- [37:44]
B
And again, there's split everywhere. So this may not mean anything, but note that there is blooding leading up to the garbage can where you may dispose of flip flops or anything else of your cleanup. Sure, maybe you brought your own garbage bag if you're the man in black and you knew that you were going to have a cleanup and you didn't need to use any garbage can that was there. But the fact that blood is leading up to the garbage can probably indicates or at least supports the theory that there's some sort of cleanup here. So Deschamps also took pictures of Julia's vehicle, the one that, remember, she got into before this man in black ever showed up. Drove 30 minutes to Carbondale to go to the Walmart, never gets out of that car because she realizes that she has credit cards. She doesn't have her credit cards. Drives another 30 minutes back, sits in her car for another 30 minutes. At no point while she's in this car, up until this point has there been any indication that anything is wrong inside. It's not until she walks up towards the front door that she realizes there's this man in black. So she engages with him. She goes in the house, washes her hands, finds the bloody scene, stays in the house as she makes a 12 minute 911 call. So why is it then that when the officer came and took pictures of Julia's vehicle, he was able to document blood on Julia's gear shifter? The interior door panel of her car, the interior driver door armrest, the exterior door handle and the steering wheel cover. All the blood that she would have encountered when she struggled with that knife from the man in black would have been at her front door when she walked in. At no point in any of her versions of the story did she ever take her bloody hands and go to her car to try to run away or anything else. So it's very curious that all of this blood would be both on the interior as well as the exterior of her car.
- [39:32]
A
And this is, you know, once again, we often do the whole what would you have to believe thing. And there's just so many coincidences that have to happen here. I mean, essentially you have to think, well, at some other time she had cut herself. I mean, she self harmed, so maybe she'd cut herself and she got blood on her car, then she never cleaned it up. And it was recent enough that the police noticed it. And man, what an unlucky break for her because there's no good explanation for this blood based on her story, because she never got back in her car from the moment when she left her car. She never returned to it again after that point. So there should not be any blood on her car.
- [40:18]
B
And this isn't like a paper cut, right? So based on where it is, what this shows us, we don't know timing of it, but because it's on the gear shifter, the interior door panel, the driver's side armrest, the exterior door handle and the steering wheel cover, what does that sound like? You go to your car with a bloody hand, you open the door with a bloody hand, you get inside the car, you rest your arm on the driver's side. By the way, this is not the passenger side. So it's all the driver. Jade is 11, she's not a driver. Julia drives this car. And it's on the steering wheel cover where your bloody hands are to drive the car and you're gear shifting with your bloody hand. In other words, there's enough blood to be able to transfer to all these places. This is not mere touch. She had a paper cut from school pickup and here it is. And some of you may think, well, maybe someone else drove her car. It's their blood. Well, they tested these areas and the stains from the vehicle were all indicative of blood number one. And this blood tested showed that it was consistent with Julia's blood, though there wasn't enough DNA present to make a definitive match. Now, the blood found in the master bedroom was a mixture of two contributors, one of which was definitely Julia's to 1 to 770 sextillion. So if you've not followed us before, when you do DNA or blood testing, you don't get the result that says this is Alice's blood. What you get is a probability that it matches a person because they're matching basically the profile together. In other words, 1 in 770 sextillion means it's almost impossible that this is not Julia's blood. Now, there were two profiles, remember the other profile found in that mixture, Note mixture. They're not next to each other, they've been mixed together was Jade Beasley's to a 1 in 2.4 million certainty.
- [42:10]
A
So 1 in 2.4 million compared to 1 in 770 sextillion is incredibly small. But compared to like the population of the United States is pretty good, right? I mean, if there's 400 million people in the country, then that means there's, check my math for me, 200 people who have that profile that that profile would match if it's 1 in 2.4 million. So not 1 in 770 sextillion. But I think we can all say for certain it was Jade's. It wasn't one of the other 200 people in the country who just so happened to. Somehow the man in black just so happened to be somebody that it could be. And I'll just note her dad. Like if you're thinking, well, maybe it was a relative, her dad, her mom, her siblings, 100% confirmed alibis. It's none of them. They couldn't have done this, right? So this is a problem because, remember, and you know, this is a place where either she was honest to a fault or she should have thought about her story a little bit more. Because when she says she sees Jade, well, there's a couple problems with this. Number one, supposedly she washed her hands off before she even saw Jade. That's problem number one. So you have to think that maybe when the guy's knife stabbed her hand, there was a transfer of blood. And then when she washed her hands, that transfer of blood remained in the sink enough that they could say that was hers. I think that's unlikely. I think things like you find the blood in the car, but you can't test it definitively because you just don't have enough. It is unlikely that enough blood would be transferred in the five second interaction that she had that you would find this. But that's one possibility. It could have been. And really that's what it has to be because she says she went to the bathroom first. So even if you think, well, she then walked through the house and she saw Jade and she touched her and she checked her pulse, and maybe that's when she got the transfer. Well, according to her story, she didn't go back in the master bathroom at that point. So she had to have gotten this transfer from the man in black during this very brief interaction. Or she got it because she killed Jade and then she went and washed up in the master bathroom. And that's why you're seeing this. And this is one of those other situations. And I remember saying early in the podcast, I feel like I've learned so much early in the podcast that if Scott Peterson was innocent, he was the most unlucky man in the world. But what I have noticed in a lot of innocence cases is that is true of the basically all these people who claim they're innocent and most of whom turn out not to be, that there are so many bad coincidences. And I'll just say this. In a case like Leo Scofield's case, there actually aren't. You know, the bad coincidence for him is not a coincidence. It's his bad behavior with his wife made him a suspect and he ends up being convicted. But there's not like a whole lot of coincidences you have to explain away in order to think he's innocent. With Julia, if she's innocent, she is also the most unlucky person in the world because so many things are happening that seem to indicate that she did this. And you have to think of, man, she's so unlucky because she had just cut herself a few days before and got blood in her car. Man, she's so unlucky because when she grabbed at the knife, there was a transfer of blood and it ended up in the bathroom. Wouldn't you know, she's so unlucky because she just so happened to forget her cards. And if she hadn't forgotten her card, she would have been at Walmart. And by the time she got back, Jade probably would have been found by her mother and no one would think she's involved. And she wouldn't have been engaged with the man in black. She's just so unlucky on so many different levels. And you're seeing that. Are there explanations? This is a circumstantial case because there's no direct evidence. Are there explanations, possible explanations for basically every single thing we're going to talk about? Sure. There's probably no smoking gun that is like. Well, that's just utterly unexplainable. So therefore, she's guilty. There are explanations for every single one. But it's kind of like, what are the chances of rolling a dice 20 times and getting the same number every time? Not great.
- [46:32]
B
And here's the other thing. She happens to have those cuts on her hands that would be consistent. I mean, look at the. There are pictures of where her cuts are. And I just think her blood on the inside of her car is just so damning because it is not account. And here's the thing, she couldn't account for it because I don't think it was necessarily visible to the eye. She did a really good job cleaning up. So this is all part of the investigation that they find these sorts of things. But like you said, you got to be very unlucky for all these things to come out.
- [46:59]
A
Yeah, she happened. She just happened to bite herself the night before. You know, it's just, man, so unlucky. Just so many unfortunate. She just happened to stop at the hucks to throw away a diaper on that day. Just happened to do that. She just happened to misremember that she had actually gone to Carbondale some other time, not that day, and transposed it and got confused. Confused. This was going to be the day that she's going to sit in her car as it's running out of gas, looking through Facebook. I mean, just so many. Just so unlucky. It's just. It makes you feel sorry for her that all this bad luck is just piling up on her. But I guess that's, you know, I guess that's where we're at. But. And she got lucky. I mean, she actually did get lucky in a few things. If she did this, like the fact that she threw the stuff away at the Hux and they had already taken the garbage out by the time the police showed up. And that was lucky, but. Okay. All right, let's talk about the knives, because obviously one of the things that everybody's going to wonder is, did they find the knife? Do we have the murder weapon? And the answer is, no, we don't. Or we don't think we do. So there were knives that were recovered from the kitchen area. They were tested for blood. One of them was clean. I'll just say this. Maybe you can clean off a knife you've just used to stab someone. Death to the point that the forensics guys wouldn't find anything. But the fact that the knives clean doesn't necessarily make me think that was it. Right. They were all tested for blood indication, and nothing really shows up. They did have a mixture of at least two individuals, DNA wise on there. They could not be conclusively determined who they were from. There's actually a third profile found that they were able to match to a crime scene tech, because that happens. And I think this is really important, by the way, this is just a reminder. Whenever you hear there's unknown DNA found in any case. DNA. It's hard. Even professionally trained people, it is difficult not to. What's impossible not to shed your DNA everywhere you go, but it's. It's difficult not to leave stuff behind, even if you're trying. And you see that here, where crime scene text DNA is found, the police are going to search that landfill where Huck's garbage goes. They find a few knives, they find a few other things. None of them were able to be connected to this case. And at the end of the day, whether this was someone who brought their own knife and did this or took a knife from the home, whatever happened, the murder weapon was never identified. And it wasn't a situation where, like, there's a knife block and there's one blade missing. And it must have been that. I mean, I will tell you, I have, like 37 knives in my house, including the ones in the knife block. If someone came and stabbed me to death with one of the knives and took it, you never know, because I have.
- [49:49]
B
I was gonna say we have a lot of knives, especially after, like, I don't know, maybe when you have, like, a perfect set when you first buy them. At this point, we have so many knives that don't match or anything. If one were missing, I can tell you definitively, Mr. Alice would have no idea that it were missing. I might be able to tell. But honestly, we have knives that we never use. But I. I think. Well, you know, we'll get to the theories of what happened here. I think it was a snap moment. It wasn't planned, so likely it came from something easily accessible. But with a lot of knives in a house or just a lot of things that could puncture anybody. I mean, anything can be a weapon. Anyone who lives with children knows that anything can become a weapon as well is important here.
- [50:37]
A
And this is another place where Julia's really unlucky because the murder weapon is not found. It's not like the Darling Routier case, where it's right there, the murder weapon is not found. And she just so happened that day to have stopped by a garbage can precisely for the purpose of throwing something away. And threw something away not 30 minutes before she calls 91 1. How unlucky is that? Because, of course, you can't find the murder weapon. Well, your suspect stopped at a garbage can and threw something away.
- [51:08]
B
Hmm.
- [51:08]
A
There's a reason the police searched that landfill. They found a few other things around those, and they found, like, a shower curtain. And none of that is related to this case. Like, they found a shower curtain. There were no shower curtains missing. I guess maybe they could have had an extra shower curtain, but I don't think that's relevant. And frankly, it's kind of funny, because there's no shower curtain in that Walmart bag. I'm confident the Walmart bag is big enough to have clothes, towels, a knife, everything else. I don't think anybody, like, stuffed a shower curtain in that bag.
- [51:36]
B
And also, there was so much blood everywhere. Like, why get rid of the shower curtain?
- [51:39]
A
Yeah. I mean, just leave it.
- [51:41]
B
Of all the things.
- [51:42]
A
But it's funny because Julie's defenders actually use the fact they found the shower. They don't think the shower curtain is related, but they're trying to say they put a shower curtain in the back. I mean, no, they're not. The shower curtain's not involved. So I think if there were things missing from the house, either the man in black just took them with him and got rid of them, or they were in that bag that Julia threw away. And that bag was plenty big enough to have a knife in it. And as we talked about last time, if you just look at it, you can argue about how big the bag is and how much stuff you could put in it. But one thing that seems pretty clear to me, whatever was in the bottom was long enough to square out the bottom. That absolutely could have been a knife. So that could have been where the knife ended up being.
- [52:30]
B
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- [54:19]
A
We talked about this a little bit, but I think it's worth coming back to because we tried to never forget the victims and we're not going to forget Jade. But this was such a brutal attack. Jade had so many wounds, 104 wounds to her body, a lot of stab wounds. She had defensive wounds, she had blunt force wounds, she had scrapes. It was evident that she absolutely fought for her life. And that's going to become important because as we know, Julia has injuries on her she that she attributes to the man in black. We're going to talk more about some of those injuries that she had probably in the next episode. But she has injuries. And if there's one thing that's certain, if she killed Jade, Jade didn't go down without a fight. And Jade would have left her mark on Julia. And the attack on Jade was incredibly brutal, probably in part because she was fighting. She just, she didn't go down. And so there's a lot of stab wounds that you're seeing because of that. Another thing that's important, Jade was not sexually assaulted. So if you're thinking back to is this a man in black? You know, maybe this is just a random man in black who just wants to kill. And that happens. It's happened before. Incredibly rare, but it happens. But it basically has to be that because she wasn't sexually assaulted. So whoever did this, either they didn't come to sexually assault her or it just became such a struggle against this 11 year old that they could not subdue her. And that didn't happen. But the other thing that didn't happen, which I think is equally important, people have speculated, you know, maybe this is like a druggie, this is somebody who Just wants to steal stuff and that's why they're there. And there's like three months after this happened, some guy high on meth shows up at a neighbor's door, knocks on the door and that's become the wait, it was him. There he is, he's like doing it again. Now, he wasn't dressed all in black, he didn't break in, he didn't kill anybody. He was obviously very high, not the kind of guy who necessarily would have gotten away with murder. But anyways, so the theory is maybe it was him and he's breaking into steel things. There's nothing taken from the home. Certainly nothing of value is removed from the home. So if somebody came in there to steal, they killed Jade and then decided, despite the fact we've just murdered somebody, we're not even going to take the credit cards that Julia left behind.
- [56:46]
B
Or tv.
- [56:47]
A
The tv, computer. Or the computer.
- [56:49]
B
She was working on a computer.
- [56:51]
A
Right. So they didn't take anything. So it seems like either this was a random act of violence, just purely random, or it was some sort of attack that was not well planned and was spontaneous.
- [57:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, remember an 11 year old girl with 104, 7 stab wounds, including the blunt force trauma. What you see here is just immense rage and emotion. It's not a precise killer. If this person came just to kill, not to sexually assault, not to steal things, they came to inflict as much pain as possible. Which is really interesting because you would think someone who came to just inflict torture would actually be able to knock her out in one foul swoop. Right. With like knocking her out and there wouldn't actually be so much of a fight. The fact that there is so much of a fight makes it really interesting because it would have almost had to have been a situation where she recognized the person, she lets the person in, closes the door, because remember, there's no blood on the outside of the door and they actually sat down or like had a conversation and were actually friendly before this, engaged so that it was all of a sudden in surprise as opposed to someone coming in through the door and immediately attacking, which you would expect if it were a stranger or someone who came to rob. But also a strange way to rob, to knock on the door and just expect to be let in and instead decide to do this incredibly brutal murder. Now it's not impossible, but it's because she's an 11 year old girl. Most people who just want to commit random violent acts would even be stopped in their tracks when it's Like a young child. And the purpose is not to sexually assault them. Right? We see unfortunately lots of child predators who the only thing they care about is the pedophilia and then they end up killing the person because it's a side effect. Like they don't want to get caught or whatever. But for just this random act of violence, it is shocking to me that you don't see like a motive around her death, whether it be the sexual assault or the burglary.
- [58:57]
A
And can I just say this? So men, this is just a fact. Don't write me an email about this. Men tend to be stronger than women. They just do. They have higher muscle mass. They just do. Even if they're shorter, you know, even if they're only 5:2, for instance.
- [59:16]
B
I mean your percent body fat, right? Like the. Even a fat man's percent body fat, like they're a man, can reach percentage body fats that women cannot. We die before we reach those. I will never be 2% body fat. I cannot be. My body is not built for that.
- [59:32]
A
And I just wonder if Jade, an 11 year old girl who's 5ft tall or 5 foot 2 or whatever she is, she's still an 11 year old girl, she's still the child, you know, I just wonder if she could have faced a man, even a man who's her height, her size. I think based on what Julia is saying, this is a guy who's on the shorter side, but he is bigger than Julia, he's taller than Julia, so maybe he's about Jade size. I just wonder if she could have engaged in this much of a struggle with a man, with a knife. It feels like the kind of struggle she could have pulled off against a woman who was shorter and weighed less than her. Even if it's a really terrible situation and the woman has a knife and she's going to overcome things. I just wonder if the way we see this go down with the fighting, the struggle, the running is more indicative of a little bit more evenly matched struggle than what you would see if this were a man.
- [60:45]
B
That's actually a really great point because I think you've told a similar story before where you've made your wife act out different like murder scenes to figure out how they're done. So science for science for science. So obviously I've done the same where if I'm reading like an autopsy report, I'm reading, you know, some sort of investigative report, I'm like, how can this possibly happen? And I've asked Mr. Alice to be like, okay, hold my hands behind my back. I want to see if I can get out of this. And like, how I twist my arms and if I'm able to get out. And he's. Now he's much bigger than me. He's a foot taller than me, but he's also a man.
- [61:19]
A
Right.
- [61:19]
B
He's not a bodybuilder, but he's definitely a man. And he is a foot taller than me. But whenever we engage in those, like, okay, how would I get out if both of my hands were behind my back? It's not even a struggle. There is no world where I could even break out of it. And it's not even fun anymore. Like, nevermind, don't actually use any force. Let me out of this. Because I can't struggle against. When he, like, wants to hold my hands, I cannot get out of it. So that's a really, really good point because the struggle we see goes on for so long. The fact that 104 stab wounds can even happen and blunt force trauma and scratches, and that she's alive for all of that. She is. She's alive throughout the house. She doesn't die in front of Jaden's room. We know this because it's her feet tracking her own blood across the house. She's alive enough to be able to engage in this struggle for likely minutes, if not longer. And this is not a situation where she shut down right away.
- [62:18]
A
Yeah. And look, I'm not basing my view on this case on that. I'm not saying, like, that's definitive, but once again, don't leave your common sense at the door. And I think applying common sense to this, it is interesting how long and how hard she was able to fight. And I think that probably says something about the person she was fighting against.
- [62:40]
B
So the police weren't just using the naked eye to find blood where they could. Here's the thing, as you've heard from multiple law enforcement officers who've investigated very bloody crimes, this is one of the bloodiest crimes any of these officers had ever seen. Still, they used luminol, which, it's actually Leuco crystal violet, in order to find blood where it may have been cleaned up. So it may not be visible to the naked eye, but luminol literally lights it up. And they used it in the master bedroom. So although there's no visible blood, the bathroom sink reacted heavily. It lit up, including on the sink and the faucet itself. It was also used throughout the floor of the house, indicating a number of bare Footprints, but no shoe prints. Now, this included in the master bedroom, just outside the master bathroom. This is interesting because you would think that the attacker, the man in black, would have shown up to the house with shoes on. And all we see inside the house are bare footprints. Brett knows this about me. I'm barefoot in my house. Everyone who comes to my house has to take off their shoes. But even if you're not a shoeless household, if you have been sleeping or you're just in your house for the day, not leaving, I think a lot of people, even if they're not in a take off your shoes kind of house, are barefoot at home, just like we change into our pajamas if we're home, even if we're not going to sleep. So it's really interesting that you see no boot prints here. So you'd have to imagine that the man in black came in, took off his shoes, and then had time to put them back on as he ran out. Or he was just, you know, a barefoot runner and trained in this. And that's why you see barefoot footprints only. And no shoe prints anywhere either inside the house or remember, outside in the 10 acre search that they did, they saw no footprints at all.
- [64:25]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to me there's a lack of footprints. I think it's interesting that they can't tie any of these footprints to Julia. I mean, in some ways that's probably. It's probably good for her that they don't find footprints that are definitively not jades. Now they find the outline of footprints that are not. We can't tell who they were. Right. Like, we can't say that this was definitely Jade's footprints. And I think it's worth talking about the footprints or what seemed like maybe they were footprints outside, Right. In this bathroom, master bedroom area. Because if there's a footprint in blood in that area, that is unusual. Because our understanding, once again, or at least from the blood we see, it does not seem like this attack went into the master bedroom. There's blood everywhere except for the master bedroom and the master bathroom. And the only blood we see there seems as though it was either very light or it was cleaned up. And they're not really seeing that blood unless they use this luminol stuff. Right. It's not actually luminol, but you know what I mean. So if that's true, though, if it's true that there's an apparent footprint, and I think you have to couch this because I don't think it's definitely 100% there was a footprint. If there's an apparent footprint there. Also really bad for Julia because once again, she doesn't have blood on the bottom of her feet. So it seems like she would have left that footprint there, maybe gone into the master bathroom, cleaned off her feet. And so now she doesn't have blood on her feet anymore. She's not tracking blood anymore. And that's why you don't see it. I wish. You know, talk about a smoking gun. If they could have identified this is her footprint in blood somewhere in that house, that would have been a big deal. Obviously they couldn't do that. Not saying they could, but just the location of the blood is interesting to me. And the fact that once again, it's not visible with naked eye, which means it was cleaned up. It seems like there is blood that was cleaned up in the master bathroom and bedroom and not just in the sink, but in other places. That's pretty damning to me because I don't think the man in black was taking time to clean up.
- [67:01]
B
And the man, of all the places to clean up, why the master bedroom, right? The master bedroom is her room, Julia's room, Whereas the man in black. Who cares? This whole house is a murder scene. I don't really care, shower curtain or no shower curtain, I'm about to run out of here. But to spend it would make sense just psychologically to clean up the area where it's your space because you're thinking that distances yourself even more. And one other thing to note is I don't know if all these bare footprints are definitively matched up, but because they are similar sizes, Julia and Jade, I would think that their feet are also similar sizes. At the very least, you wouldn't likely have say, you know, by the way, men and women's feet are, look slightly different too, sometimes, depends not everyone. If it's a five foot man, maybe his foot is also the same size as well. But that's also why the story has to be that it's a similar sized man. Right.
- [67:54]
A
Who took his shoes off.
- [67:55]
B
Who took his shoes off. Yeah. So who knows who all these footprints are? Because I would think all three people. If there are three people, really just two, Julia, Jade and man in black, their feet would be similar sizes. There would not be this huge discrepancy if you had like a six foot, five man whose foot would clearly be much larger than an 11 year old girl's. So I think that makes it difficult as well. In addition to the cleanup, I'm just
- [68:20]
A
looking in the trial transcript. And they talk about how the blood in the master bedroom area, most of the presumptive presence of blood was based upon lcv. Correct. You could not see that by the naked eye. And the guy says these were smaller circular stains. Okay, so there was visible blood on the floors in the master bedroom, which is not great for her. And throughout the living room, those are smaller circular stains. A little unclear with that. Those were visible naked eye. The actual patterns that appeared to be footprints were not visible until LCV was sprayed. So just once again, if there are footprints in that bedroom that got cleaned up, that's really bad. Or, you know, I mean, that's just. I don't know, it just seems really bad to me. I don't know how you explain that.
- [69:11]
B
So we've already said this, but this was a ton of blood. And it wasn't just a ton of blood that was dripping down the walls when the police officers came in. It was dried, it was coagulated, and it was described like candle wax, which means that it sat there for some time. This is not fresh blood. And one of the officers said, you know, in his 13 years, he'd never seen that much blood. And that is just really interesting because of the timeline that we know from Julia herself. There's just so much blood. And for it to have coagulated meant not just the 30 minutes she's in the car, not the 12 minute phone call. I mean, something much longer.
- [69:49]
A
The blood being described as candle wax, it's just like that took time. Dried blood in puddles. And because, look, blood dries pretty fast. I mean, you know, if you have just a little bit, like a drop of blood is going to dry pretty fast because it's not a lot of blood. But when you got blood in puddles and it's.
- [70:08]
B
And it's drying, I mean, just think about paint. You know, probably most of us don't have puddles of blood around. But if your kids are like my kids, they want to paint all the time, which means I have to squeeze out thick globs, which is a similar viscosity to blood as well. Globs of paint on like a plate. And as they paint, it dries, right? Like if they smear the paint across the page and it's a very thin, because of physics and the amount of surface area to dry, it dries pretty quickly, right? Not immediately, but that little smear dries quickly. But the, you know, spurt of paint that I have on the paper plate, that's thick and viscous and kind of sits up a little bit. That can stay there for a little bit of time, like an hour or so. Certainly doesn't dry in the amount of time that my kid is painting. By the time they lose interest in it, if it sits on the table when I come back to clean it up later, the outside is a little bit thicker because it's starting to dry, but the inside is still pretty liquid. Right. Imagine that for the blood here. It's not just the top layer is kind of dry. It's coagulated kind of throughout.
- [71:09]
A
Okay, we're going to end with something that we've talked about several times because I am slightly obsessed with it because I don't understand how it can fit into Julia's story. And that's the bathtub. So remember, you have Officer Welsh. He's the one who's talking about. He sees all this blood. Puddles of blood, blood everywhere. He is the one who goes into the bathroom. And so this bathtub, it's like one of those. It's sort of like up against the wall, and it's like a shower. It's got a shower and then the bathtub. And it does not have. Some people have asked if it had an overflow, because sometimes some bathtubs have that, like, hole where if you fill it up too much, the water will go through the hole so it doesn't overflow. This is not that fancy. A bathtub doesn't have one of those. I looked at the picture yesterday just to check to make sure. Doesn't have one of those. And it's not that big. It's not a huge bathtub. It's not like. This is a massive clawfoot tub, right? Not that big a bathtub. He comes in and he finds Jade. She's in this bathtub. She's sort of slumped over the edge, and the bathtub is half full of clear liquid. The water is running. The drain is stopped. And I don't know how you explain that if. Because here's the thing you got to remember. Talked about all the blood. Blood doesn't seem fresh. Blood seems like it's dried. And so you maybe think, okay, okay, let's think about this. How is it possible that Julia could be innocent? Well, one way she could be innocent is that guy was waiting on her to leave because he was gonna rob that place. And he watches her drive off. He's parked his bike behind the barn or something and managed to avoid all the cameras. They're gonna catch her later. None of them catch him. He's waiting her to leave. She leaves to go to Walmart. He immediately goes in, oh my God, there's somebody still here. Freaks out, stabs her to death. She flees into the bathroom, falls into the bathtub, right? And then, I don't know, like, let just imagine, for some reason at that point, the man in black decides to turn on the water or something. I don't know why he would do that.
- [73:17]
B
Cleaning up the footprints in the master bedroom.
- [73:20]
A
Yeah, exactly. Or maybe as she fell in, she stopped it up. Yeah, and she's got her clothes on too, so she wasn't taking a bath. Right. She stopped it up and started the water running. And that's why the water was running. Okay, but forget the baths up for a second. Let's say he did that. Let's say he immediately went in there and he immediately stabbed her. And she immediately bled all over the place. And Julia, she's driving to Walmart, she's like, oh my goodness, I forgot my cards. Well, I got a diaper, so I might as well throw that away. Even though I'm also on empty. I'm gonna drive to the gas station, throw my bag away and head back. Gets back, it's like, well, you know, I'm on empty. I could get my credit cards and then go get some gas and go to Walmart. I mean, I've only been gone for 10 minutes. What's the big deal? But instead of doing that, she's distracted by Facebook. So she's looking at Facebook for 35 minutes this whole time. Guys in the house. The blood's drying. It's been an hour. The blood has dried mostly. Then the interaction happens with Julia. Then she checks on Jade, she calls the cops, takes another 15 minutes. So really got an hour and 15 minutes. Maybe that's enough time. Maybe that's enough time for the blood to dry. But the problem is, if that's what happened, if the murder occurred much earlier and Jade ended up in the bathtub much earlier, why is the bathtub only half full? Why is the water not bloody? Why is it still running? Why isn't overflowing? Because if she ended up in that bathtub an hour before and the water started running, and you need that to be true because you need time for the blood to dry, why is the water not overflowing? And why is it clear?
- [74:54]
B
So on an alternate timeline, what if she died at 9:30 when Julia took her break? Then 911's not called until three hours later. And in that three hours, blood is drying, things are Being thrown away. Bloody footprints are being washed away. And it took several rounds of washing off Jade's incredibly bloody body in order for the water to run clear. That wasn't the first time that bathtub was filled up, but rather it had been running for quite some time in order to clean off all the amazing, immense blood that was all over her, to wash off as much DNA as possible.
- [75:28]
A
And you may be thinking to yourself, why would Julia clean up her body? I have no idea. Number one, I think it's possible what Alice just said is a possibility attempt to clean up DNA. But I will just note, there are many murders that the murder happens. It's not planned. And what you see is initially an attempt. This actually gives away a lot of cases. Some people think this happened to Michael Peterson case, case. There's an attempt to clean up the blood. The person realizes, I can't clean this up. They got to come up with another story, and they do it. That happens all the time. So why would she be washing the blood off of her? Washing the blood maybe off of her feet, doing all this? I don't know. Maybe it's a cleanup DNA. Maybe she's freaking out. But it seems like whoever did this, whether it's Julia or the man in black, Jade, ended up in that bathtub, probably the last place she retreated to. And then that person spent enough time washing her off, washing the blood off and everything else, that by the time the police got there, the water was not bloody, it was clear. And I think probably whether it's the man in black or Julia who did this, and you can decide who you think is more likely would have done this. This person was cleaning her off and then intended to either turn the water off or leave it running, but not leave it stopped and just made a mistake. Either they turned the water off, but they didn't turn it off completely, which happens. You see that happen and maybe accidentally stopped it. I mean, sometimes, if you've ever dealt with a bathtub, which I deal with more often than I used to because my kids like to take baths. You know, like you're trying to clean out the bathtub before they get in there, and it's, like, so hard because, like, all the dirt doesn't want to go down the drain, because of course it doesn't. And the stopper keeps going down and you keep pulling it up. That just happens, right? I just feel like maybe this wasn't intentional. I don't think whoever did this intended to fill up the bathtub with clear water. I think that Happened after they had done the cleanup and they didn't notice it was happening. And so that water is filling up. And because Jade has been dead for so long, she's not bleeding anymore. They've washed off all the residual blood. And I know everybody's gonna ask this because you ask in every case, is there a time of death? There's never an actual time of death. Time of death is a myth. Okay. Like you can. You can sort of. She died sometime between 9 and 1. That would be the kind of time of death they'd give you and they'd feel good about that because there's four hours. That's pretty close, right? Like you're not particularly. Because she's been in water and everything else, we're not gonna know. The pathologist not gonna be able to say she died at 9:35. And that was right when Julia was on her break. So therefore she did it. We're not going to have that. But what you do have is the fact that as the officer also says, Welsh, who pulls Jade out of the bathtub, he's the one who gets her out of the bathtub, starts doing this cpr, even though she is cold to the touch, there is a wound in her chest. He can see the gaping wound in her chest. She's got all kinds of wounds. None of them are bleeding. But the fact of the matter is, and I think when we talked to Joseph Scott Morgan on body bags, he talked about this, how when police officers find children, they will try life saving measures even if there is no way the child is alive or has any chance. And I think that's what you see happening. He's trying to do it. Then another officer, Sloan, arrives. Welch goes into the kitchen and that's when Julia looks at him and says, is she dead? So we did. We cover a lot today. I'm not sure.
- [79:02]
B
Almost a page.
- [79:03]
A
Yeah. Okay. We've gotten through enough that I'm pretty confident we're finishing next week. Right? Right. Maybe. I think we're going to finish next week. But all this is important because this is a circumstantial case. It's a mosaic case. All of these little pieces of evidence. And what you're looking at to decide, do they line up, do they prove who did this? That's how you have to look at this. And these cases, circumstantial cases, they're strong. Not because any one piece of evidence is super strong. Because when you put them all together, even if you manage to knock out one here, knock out one there the picture remains clear. And it's not a case where you're relying on a witness. And it's like, well, he said it was Julia, and that's all we got. But we think he's credible. We don't have that. It's all these different circumstances lining up and combined with her very definitive story, which only allows for one alternative. It was either her or the man in black. That's the only option. If there was cleanup, it was either her or the man in black. If somebody washed off Jade's wounds, it was either her, the man in black. That's just the way it is because of the story she's told. And when you're looking at this evidence, you're always comparing it against that story. Okay, well, we know you guys are enjoying this. If you want to discuss it and there's discussions going on on the gallery, you should check that out. You can shoot us an email prosecutorspotmail.com if you think we got anything wrong. We're always happy to correct things. And you can check us because we've put all the documents up on the website. If you want to read the trial transcript, you can. If you want to watch the videos. As I said last episode, the Viper Pit podcast has put a lot of videos up on their YouTube page. And I'm just using it because they redacted things that I wouldn't redact, like people's telephone numbers and stuff. And it's like, actually, that's. That was pretty responsible of you. I would have just thrown it up there. So we'll just use those links to watch that. You can watch the Hux video, whatever you want to do. We've already had one podcast that's reached out about the file. Are happy to share it if you want to cover this case. There's a lot in there, but I think it's all very informative. Follow us on all the social media at Prosecutors Pod. If you want to watch us record these, join us on Patreon for $3 a month. If you want to get these episodes early and ad free, you can either Join Patreon for $3 a month or if you're an Apple user and you don't like Patreon, you can subscribe on Apple. I will note once again, because some people get confused by this. Everything we do will be free eventually. Like, there's no. Like, you have to subscribe.
- [81:50]
B
There's no special episode. Yeah, it's just the timing of Exactly.
- [81:54]
A
And the ads. So if you don't want ads and you want it a little early, you can pay $3 a month. Otherwise you're gonna get it. You just have to be patient. And you have to listen to ads. All right, Alice, is there anything else you want to add before we sign off for today?
- [82:10]
B
No. Except that we'll go obviously more into additional evidence. But what we know from this, and don't lose sight of this, is that Jade was one tough girl. There's going to be more testimony about what she was taught to do. And I think she did all of it. She did everything she could to save her life, but she didn't stand a chance when she was faced with whether it was Julia or the man in black. That person wanted her dead. And they weren't finishing. In fact, this is clear overkill as well. There was a lot of emotion here. So I don't know what that man in black had against her, but boy, was he mad. He held himself together to knock on the door, take off his shoes and make small talk before he just went psychotic on her or Julia went psychotic on her.
- [82:56]
A
And as we said, it's one or the other. There is no third option, so. All right, guys. Well, this has been fun as always. We'll be back next week probably with the conclusion of this story, but until then. I'm Brett.
- [83:10]
B
And I'm Alice.
- [83:11]
A
And we are the prosecutor.
- [83:35]
B
My hair is having a lot of flyaways happening. What? Let's not revisit last night.
- [83:42]
A
I have no idea what that means. So I guess I could say it and just.
- [83:46]
B
I shared with everyone the bra for older women picture. Cuz I'm like, come on, you guys, hold on. All right, okay.
- [83:57]
A
I'm going with this one. I'm going with this one. Let's. All right, we ready to start this thing?
- [84:05]
B
Couldn't be more ready. I honestly have no idea if we'll get through through it today.
- [84:08]
A
I think we will, but we might. Yep. I thought we'd do about an hour and a half and be done. I was wrong.
- [85:14]
B
I'm not gonna say I told you so, but I was like, oh, no, man. Just because they're so. No, no, I'm not saying. I mean, the blood on the inside of the car is. Is really bad. It's a real bad fact. And I was thinking, well, what's a better story to tell, Pluto? TV has thousands of free movies and TV shows.
- [86:18]
A
We're coming at you with everything we got.
- [86:20]
B
This is. This is the mindset.
- [86:21]
A
Free.
- [86:22]
B
This is the mantra.
- [86:23]
A
Free.
- [86:24]
B
This is the mindset. Mindset with movies Like Pineapple Express, the entire Star Trek film franchise and Gladiator. And TV shows like Survivor, SpongeBob SquarePants, the Fairly Odd Parents and Ghosts. Pluto TV is always free. Huzzah. Pluto TV stream. Now pay Never.
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A
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B
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A
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B
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A
Another good reason.
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B
And that it's one of those good saunas with the hot rock thing. Ugh. Love a good hot rock thing. Fancy.
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A
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B
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A
Book a Loved by Guest property with VRBO and you get a top rated vacation rental that's loved for all the right reasons.
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B
I love my VRBO for the location.
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A
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B
Oh and for the pool. Cause pools are cool.
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A
I feel the love book of verbo that's loved by guests. If you know you've Erbo.
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B
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