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- [00:01]
A
For weeks now, we've been circling a single brutal question. What really happened to Christopher Whiteley?
- [00:10]
B
We have a man found dead in.
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A
The woods, his throat torn open, no defensive wounds and no clear suspect. And an official explanation that never quite fit.
- [00:22]
B
First a mountain lion, then some unknown wild animal, and then a dog.
- [00:27]
A
There was official certainty without proof. In our final episode of Killsite, we are going to pick apart all of those unanswered questions, the ones that law enforcement never followed up on, and the contradictions they couldn't reconcile, and why those details still won't line up five years later. From Free Range Productions in association with the Dallas Morning News, this is season four of the Unforgotten kill site. I'm your host, Wes Ferguson, and this is episode eight. What really happened, happened.
- [01:10]
B
I am here with executive producer and original reporter Charlie Scudder. Hey, Charlie, how's it going?
- [01:17]
C
Going good. How are you?
- [01:19]
B
Not too shabby. And for the first time, we are also here with our editor and producer here at Free Range, Aislin Gaddis.
- [01:28]
D
Hi. I'm excited to be here.
- [01:31]
B
We're very excited to have you. In this episode, we are just going to answer some lingering questions, some that we can answer, some that maybe we will give it our best shot. And Aislinn, can you go ahead and start asking away?
- [01:43]
D
Yeah. So first, Christopher's body was found without a shirt on. Why was he shirtless and was his shirt ever found?
- [01:51]
C
That's a great question. The why is one of those questions that we just don't know right now. There's a lot of those questions, A lot of those lingering questions. The. Was it found? I think it was one of the initial police reports or reports from the sheriff's office said that a deputy, when they found his bag, that there were clothes in, didn't list what the clothes are. But I think the shirt was found in that bag. But again, as for how it got there, why he was shirtless, what happened, that's one of those we don't knows. Investigators did say that the amount of the blood that was at the scene compared to how much was on his body made them think he was wearing his shirt when he was killed. But again, that's one of those question marks.
- [02:43]
B
That possibility that the shirt was in his bag is not one that had occurred to me because it doesn't actually specify, but that would make sense. And at first I was thinking, like, we know that he had some methamphetamines in his system, and it wasn't from what I was able to Research. It wasn't an amount of meth that was like, toxic or anything like that, but it was enough to get him high. And meth can make you. It can warm you up. So at first I was thinking maybe he was just on meth. He got hot, he pulled it off. It was winter. It was December, and It was like 45 degrees.
- [03:18]
C
It was chilly.
- [03:19]
B
So then maybe I thought he was, like, wandering around in the woods without his shirt on. But then when I went back and read some of those deputies first reports and talking about how, like, he had so much blood around his neck, he had it all over his jeans and his boots, but not on his abdomen. So they thought that he was probably wearing that shirt when he was first attacked. And so that would be extremely bizarre for the shirt to wind up in his bag after he had been attacked. And plus it would have had blood all over it. So we don't know for sure. But I think that if that was the case, if they had found a bloody shirt in his bag, they probably would have mentioned that.
- [03:57]
C
Yeah. And that wasn't specified. It was just that there were clothes in the bag.
- [04:01]
B
Yeah. And we know that when the Texas Parks and Wildlife, when the game wardens came back, they brought a K9, like a search and rescue dog. They combed the immediate vicinity and didn't find anything. So no shirt was found there. And then one of the big questions I've always had is, did the sheriff's deputies and the investigators ever go knock on doors on neighbors homes? Maybe someone else had seen something. Maybe that shirt turned up outside of one of their houses. I don't think they did that because that was never in any of the reports that we were given.
- [04:36]
C
Yeah, that's my understanding, too, that the investigation happened primarily on that property, and that was about it. Yeah.
- [04:44]
D
And another thing that was weird about Christopher's clothing situation, his shorts were pulled through his jean zipper. Why do you think that is?
- [04:55]
B
Yeah, that one is really bizarre. And yeah, we also know that his belt was undone, which is strange.
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D
And.
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B
And one of the first deputies on the scene wrote that Christopher was wearing jeans, basketball shorts, and boxers, and he had a big tear kind of around the crotch of the jeans, and those basketball shorts had been pulled through, and they wrote as if a wild animal was pulling at them or dragging him. And there was a littler hole in the basketball shorts too, but there was no evidence in the dirt that he had been dragged, you know, so it wasn't like his body was being pulled. So this one has always been really strange to me, too.
- [05:41]
C
And that's one that the wildlife experts also pointed out as to them, that doesn't make sense. That yet again, it's something that we heard from the sheriff's department of. Well, that the fact that his shorts are pulled through his jeans shows that a animal was dragging him by the crotch. And that's one where the wildlife experts we spoke with say that's not how animals behave. That's not how. If mountain lion or any animal is going to grab you and drag you, it's not going to be by the boxer shorts. It's not an efficient way to carry your prey. So that doesn't stand up to that critique. But again, that. That was part of what the sheriff's office investigators pointed to. Of. No. Yeah. See, this is an example of why it is an animal.
- [06:33]
B
Yeah. I mean, you look at the tear. I was actually just pulling up the photo of his clothing that his mom, Kimberly had saved. I think she has them in a box at her house, and they're all laid out. And this tear is huge. It's probably, I would guess, like six or eight inches. And it's definitely torn. It's not cut with a knife or scissors or something. At the same time, it's not like I could imagine a human being doing that either, really.
- [06:59]
C
Especially not if he was up and moving at the time.
- [07:02]
B
So to me, that seems. It's not plausible that a mountain lion would do that. But it just does seem a little bit more like an animal than a human to tear up his jeans, pulling on his shorts. I don't know. I mean, you're kind of like shaking your head a little bit. I don't know.
- [07:18]
C
I don't know. This is one of those where I just keep coming back to, I don't know. I don't necessarily picture it, but at the same time, I could. But at the same time, I don't know enough. I. This is why this case continues to make me go in circles.
- [07:32]
B
It's why we're still puzzling over it five years later.
- [07:35]
C
Exactly.
- [07:36]
B
I mean, in what world would a human be doing that, though, right?
- [07:39]
C
I don't know.
- [07:41]
D
So what were the injuries that convinced the sheriff's office that the wound could not have been caused by a human?
- [07:48]
C
Primarily the injury to his neck, the fatal injury. So I forget which episode. We talked about it, but we talked about it's not really a cut, it's a tear. It is a gruesome wound. And it doesn't look like teeth marks, but it doesn't look like a cut, if that makes sense. So looking at how jagged and torn it was, that was what the sheriff's office moved forward with of this could only be non human.
- [08:21]
B
Yeah. I remember when you talked to former sheriff's lieutenant Johnny Rose. You know, he's like, look, I mean, it just wasn't a human. I don't know of any human made weapon that could have done this. And he's not lying about that. It's like really bumfuzzling, you know. And we know that one of the first sheriff's deputies said that it did look like an animal was chewing on Christopher's neck. You know, he obviously wasn't the forensic expert who later said that there were multiple punctures and tears and scrapes. So it was not like one fail swoop. You know, it was like this, like repeated attacks. But we also know that Christopher wasn't strangled because what, his hyoid bone was intact and there was no evidence that some human had strangled him or something like that.
- [09:11]
C
Which is another again, going back and forth and back and forth. When we talk to Mike Bodenchuk, he who was the federal wildlife expert with tons of experience with mountain lions, he talked about how the way that mountain lions kill their prey is not by cutting the jugular, it's not by that kind of bloody violence. In fact, they don't want to do that because that causes them to expend more energy. What they do is they bite down on the front of the neck and break the trachea. And that's one of the things that he talked a lot about, was that was not there when they attack livestock, when they attack deer, you name it, that's how they attack. That's how they kill, is by one bite. Hard bite, solid bite that breaks the trachea and suffocates the prey. When he did not see that on Christopher, that was a dead giveaway. And yet when he went to the medical examiner's office and they had that really contentious meeting, the medical examiners said the human trachea is more robust, it's less likely to break. And Boden Chuck had to fall back on. Well, I don't have that experience, so I can't say either way.
- [10:25]
B
And from what I've read, it's likely to break. It usually does, but it's not outside of the realm of possibility that it wouldn't.
- [10:33]
C
Gotcha.
- [10:33]
B
Yeah, kind of a fluke, but it could happen.
- [10:39]
D
So we have the wildlife experts pretty much agreeing that it could not have been a mountain lion. But what about it being a dog instead. Why or why not?
- [10:51]
C
That's when I keep going around and around too. So many of these are just like that. That was my leading theory for a long time until I started sending it to other medical examiners, other forensic experts who told me it does not look like a dog. It's too big for a dog. That's what we heard from Kendall Crowns. Yeah. Who again, in in Weird World. When I interviewed him, he was in Austin. Now he's at the Fort Worth Medical Examiner's office. And he told me he thought it looked like a bite, but not a dog bite. And he's examined many dog bites. So again, I gotta go to people who know better than me.
- [11:33]
B
If you look at how a dog would typically attack an adult male, Christopher wasn't big, he was 5 foot 8. But that towers over your typical dog. And so with a dog attack, there normally would have been like lots of bites all over the body. You know, Christopher would have put up his arms in defense. So there would have been a ton of bites on his hands, on his arms. There was none of that. Also, when the wildlife examiners went out there and were looking for tracks, they found some medium sized, possibly Labrador sized dog tracks on the property, but none around the kill site. That's also strange because this was like loose sand. There were other tracks. There were tons of boot tracks. No dog tracks near the kill site.
- [12:30]
C
I want to bring that up again because that's one thing that tends to get lost because there's so much happening. And in that I didn't really go into it in depth. We kind of moved really quickly past it in the episode. But when the wildlife investigators and game wardens and sheriff's officials went out to the scene, they found a lot of boot tracks from those first responders the night of the night they had found the body. But they also found pairs of boot tracks, one of which matched Christopher's and one of which didn't, leading in a different direction. And that's one thing that was never explored at all that we know of. That it looked like he was walking with someone.
- [13:10]
B
Yeah. One of the reports, I think in Mike Bodenchuk's report he put together, he says that he did tell Hood County Sheriff's investigators about that. And he went out and showed it to them and they took some pictures and he said, like there was a pair of cowboy boots that looked like Christopher's. Mike said he wasn't 100% sure that those were Christopher's, but same kind of boots and Then the other ones were, like, tactical boots, like maybe hiking boots or some kind of military boots. Yeah. It's just another thing that we have no idea whether that was ever followed up on, and I don't think it was.
- [13:44]
C
Yeah. And again, he doesn't know. But he's also not a csi, Right? Right. These people who were visiting the scene and saying, this is definitely not an animal were also very concerned because they didn't have the training. They didn't want to be interfering in a potential crime scene.
- [14:01]
B
Yeah. Going back to the dog bite theory, another thing that I was thinking about was, like, what if Christopher had, like, already? What if he passed out? You know, what if he was asleep or just lying there? Then it would have been easy for the dog to come up and bite him without the defensive wounds and things like that. Except that there was so much blood on Christopher, the fronts of Christopher's jeans and boots, which told investigators, and it told Mike, that Christopher was most likely standing when he was attacked. For a dog to attack him, it would have had to lunge and go straight for the neck without any other bites. And so to me, that seems pretty unlikely. But when I talked to Mike Bodenchuk, he said that after his final meeting with the forensic examiners, and when they showed him, they pointed out Christopher's wounds and they had stapled his neck back together. I'm sorry if that's gruesome, but he said, he looked at that and he said, I just don't know. Sure, maybe that could have been a dog. So now Mike says Mike's theory is also that it was a dog bite. As unlikely as that was, it's like the least unlikely thing to his mind.
- [15:23]
A
After the break, we hear why Mike Bodenchuk thinks a dog killed Christopher. So I just got a couple of pillowcase covers from Quince for our living room sofa. They had a lot of colors to choose from, but these are terracotta, which goes with our southwestern theme we've got going on. And it has a slub texture that's really cozy and elevated, but effortless. Of course, Quince has got wardrobe staples with quality that's made to last. And Quint works directly with safe ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen.
- [16:00]
B
So you're not paying for any brand.
- [16:02]
A
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- [16:49]
E
I'm partial labs, but a dog could have done that. Some dog. At one point, one of the examiners looked at me and asked, was this a human or was it an animal? And I said, I have no experience with human. I have a lot of experience with mountain lions. And this was not a mountain lion, definitively not a mountain. They changed the initial cause of death to unknown animal. And I actually believe it was probably a dog. And in that regard, then maybe somebody knows about it, maybe somebody doesn't. But it did not make sense in the photos that I was provided, the skin was torn considerably. When we met in the examiner's office, the skin flaps had been pieced back together and it looked as though it was a bite. And I support the conclusion that it was an animal bite. I have no problems with the conclusion they came of unknown animal, but my guess is dog. It's not unusual for people to hunt hogs with dogs, pit bull dogs. And the way those dogs catch their prey is to grab them by the cheek or the jowl or the base of the ear and hold that pig down till somebody comes and gets that pig. It's possible that he heard a pig squealing, went out there and found a dog and a pig locked up and tried to intervene, and the dog actually turned on him just as a reflex. We'll never know. Absolutely never know. But somehow, while he was on his knees, he got attacked.
- [18:31]
D
One thing I do want to ask, which I haven't seen the photos for myself, and I'm definitely not a wildlife or medical expert, but it did occur to me a few times when editing. Did anyone investigate the possibility of it being a human bite? Especially because they did not like, it didn't look like a typical animal bite. As disgusting as that is to think about.
- [18:57]
C
I'm gonna. I don't think so because of the size primarily. Like, I don't see that it's big and. And in fact, it's bigger than the mountain lion bite radius as well. So it was big. We certainly have a smaller bite radius than a mountain lion does. So I don't. I hear it.
- [19:18]
B
I don't buy it.
- [19:21]
C
Just for sheer power and size of the wound. I don't Think that's something that a human could do exclusively with their mouth?
- [19:32]
B
Yeah, that is a wild question. So thank you for that. Yeah. No, I just. Humans just don't have powerful jaws. Like, I just. I've never heard of a human, like, being able to rip someone's throat out, so I would assume. I would assume it's not.
- [19:48]
D
I figured it was very unlikely and just thinking about, like, the type of teeth that animals have compared to us, but it did just in the back of my mind a few times. Did anyone.
- [20:00]
B
Yeah.
- [20:01]
D
Think about this.
- [20:02]
B
When I talked to Christopher's dad, Robert, we only spoke for, like, two minutes before he hung up. But, you know, his theory was that someone killed Christopher and then the dog bit him. Like, in that moment, you know, like, maybe the. The human kills him and then the dog bites. To me, that's hard to imagine that really happening, but it's just. It's his theory.
- [20:24]
C
The wound, it's not a bite mark. Which is another part of why it's so confounding. Is that it? There are not teeth marks at all.
- [20:33]
B
It's like, what, punctures, tears and scrapes. And his right jugular vein was cut.
- [20:38]
C
Yeah, that's how. As it's described. And visually, I don't even know if I'd say punctures, really. Again, I'm not an expert. I didn't. I only saw photographs, but it just. I don't know. I don't know.
- [20:50]
B
I couldn't bring myself to look at the photos too closely. Just going by what was in the autopsy report.
- [20:55]
C
Yeah. I don't blame you.
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B
I figured you had already done that for all of us.
- [20:59]
C
Yeah. Yeah, I certainly. And because, again, I. I kept going back to what could this possibly be? I had to for my own. Could it be this, could it be that? And they are very hard to look at, but I couldn't reconcile it.
- [21:16]
D
There's also the issue of Christopher's body being left in the woods overnight. So there's an issue of maybe the site being tampered with after they found the body. Why do you think they didn't secure the scene?
- [21:32]
B
I don't know. I don't know why they wouldn't have done that. And reading between the lines in the deputy's report, I think that he was troubled by that also. Or maybe he was covering his butt when he said that he and his partner offered to stay with Christopher in the woods that night. And two different investigators said, no, you're free to go. But as to why they thought that was Appropriate to leave Christopher's body unsecured in the woods when there was a killer obviously on the loose. Whether that was a human or an animal or what has just always stuck with me as being, like, really strange and kind of indicative of the lack of care that was shown to this case overall.
- [22:17]
C
Yeah, exactly. That's the same way I feel. It's. There is no reason given, and it's hard for me to come up with a reason other than it was a super cold night and they didn't want to stay out there much longer. I did hear that from the justice of the peace who said that she had to bundle up. It was a cold night. They were trying to get it done with as quickly as possible because of the weather. I don't think that's the reason to just. And I don't think that's their reason to just leave the body, but I don't know.
- [22:53]
B
Yeah, and unfortunately, I put a good faith effort into tracking down all these people and calling them sometimes, you know, maybe they change phone numbers or maybe, like when we look at these online directories, they're the wrong number. But I tried to reach everybody and nobody called me back. As far as I could tell, nobody else really wanted to talk about that and share their side of the story. Except for Johnny Rose, who I spoke with briefly and didn't have a whole lot to say except what he told you, Charlie, which was like, it was not a human. It was too big for a dog. We still think it's the mountain lion.
- [23:29]
D
So after all of your reporting, what do you think actually happened to Christopher?
- [23:37]
C
Well, you're killing me with that question.
- [23:38]
D
I can say if the answers I don't know.
- [23:40]
C
Yeah, all I can do is speculate, and I don't really want to speculate too hard because the answer is we don't know. We do not know. I think when I first looked into the case and published the initial story, my answer was I don't know. And honestly, like, I did not have enough information at the time to know for sure. And if I'm going off of that, I not. I don't have any new information that would change that other than just time and sitting with it. And I don't believe an animal could have done it. Maybe it's a dog, but again, we've heard from people who say it couldn't have been a dog. And so then I'm left shrugging my shoulders, but it doesn't match behavior of a predatory animal.
- [24:31]
B
Yeah, Charlie and I both came up through old School, newspapers, and I think we had that propensity to speculate and editorialize beaten out of us at a young age. So I'm also extremely reluctant to just offer theories, but I also go back to how Christopher's life was so chaotic and disordered in the days leading up to his death. In the night before his death, we know that he was partying and using drugs at a house that was, like, known to be a place where a lot of lawlessness occurred. And then for Christopher's dad to have heard all of the voices and then a kind of a commotion. And then when the deputies came out, and then Christopher's girlfriend Tyler and her great uncle Kenneth both said, no, no one was here that night, you know, which is the opposite of what Christopher's dad, Robert, had heard, you know, so why was there that discrepancy? It just would be such a fluke for Christopher for all of this, you know, and the threats that Tyler's family was supposedly lobbying at Christopher for there to be all of this swirling around him and this violence in his past, and then for him to just walk away from all of that craziness and just happen to be attacked by a dog who made, like, the one magic bite that, like, ripped him up without touching any other part of his body. It just defies reason. At the same time, and also, as Charlie's really stellar reporting showed, there was so much controversy and tumult happening in the medical examiner's office at that time. And we know also that the forensic examiner first, in her initial report, said that Christopher had been killed by a wild animal, possibly a mountain lion. And then a few weeks later, or however long goes by, suddenly they say it's a dog bite. We know it's a dog bite. 100% certainty. Shut up and go away. So, like, at what point did they change their minds from wild animal, slash mountain lion to we know without any question that it's a dog bite. So that also doesn't really.
- [26:41]
C
Yeah, it doesn't give you much confidence. And it goes back to that meeting where we get that quote, we all have to get around this dog bite thing, which is not what you want an independent investigator to be saying, necessarily. And the way that meeting has been characterized is so surprising. It's not how you expect professional investigations to be conducted. And I think when you see those kinds of changes, when you see the kind of shrug, nope, we're done attitude, maybe they're right. Maybe there's nothing to be done. But again, either way, there's something has killed a human. And when something kills a human, we take some kind of action. We find the dog, we find the mountain lion, we find the human, whatever, and tend to punish them accordingly. In wildlife, that means putting the animal down in. When it comes to people, we try them in a court of law. That has not been done. No one has been held accountable for Christopher's murder, period.
- [27:48]
B
Even if it was a dog.
- [27:49]
C
Exactly.
- [27:50]
B
No one went around to see where there's a killer dog in the neighborhood.
- [27:54]
C
Yeah.
- [27:56]
D
And given their disagreement with wildlife experts, do you know if law enforcement has ever re examined the case and the autopsy findings, like, in the five years since Christopher died?
- [28:09]
C
There's no indication of that. The case was quickly closed. But everyone we've talked to who investigated it said they have no reason to reopen it. Oh, gosh, I don't have it in front of me, but I think when I talked to Sheriff Deeds briefly for comment, he said if some new thing came to light, we would reopen it. But with the intonation of, there's not going to be anything new, we're done with it.
- [28:37]
B
I know from past experience with true crime podcasts that I've done that these shows do bring a lot of renewed publicity to these cases. And oftentimes someone from a different law enforcement entity will reach out to me. You know, like, maybe it was originally a local sheriff's department case, and then now I'm hearing from a Texas Ranger or someone, an investigator in the AG's office or wherever. That's happened a few times, but so far, not with this. So, no, no word that anybody else has ever picked up. The investigation has reexamined it. I mentioned earlier that Kimberly, Christopher's mom, still has his bloody clothes in a box at her house. So I could see how it would be useful to examine those for some DNA. And also, like, any kind of animal saliva, like, long ago, would have decayed and been useless. But that was one thing I thought of if someone wanted to try to, like, examine the bloody clothing to see if there was any kind of DNA left on that materials. But otherwise, no, nothing has happened.
- [29:46]
C
And remember, it was at the time sent to a federal USDA lab for testing with the aim of identifying wildlife DNA. The test they ran was not to identify human DNA or to identify individuals. Right. And human DNA was found. There were some dog hairs found, some individual hairs. But that report also talked about how the condition of the evidence, it was molding, literally, it was decaying. They could not run a complete evaluation of it at the time.
- [30:22]
B
And this was like, within a month, it was already moldy and decaying. Because they hadn't preserved it in any way.
- [30:27]
C
Exactly. And the body had been bleached. And so I agree that maybe that could be tested, but it's already been to a lab that determined five years ago would be very difficult to find anything solid.
- [30:43]
A
After the break, more leads, the details that Charlie and I still can't stop thinking about and why I was told to stop contacting Christopher's mom.
- [30:58]
D
And this case has a lot of leads that seemingly went uninvestigated. The tactical boots, his shirt being missing, things like that. Why weren't these leads investigated?
- [31:12]
C
You'd have to ask the sheriff's department that.
- [31:15]
B
It seems pretty clear that the sheriff's department reached some conclusions about Christopher. The place that he was staying, that had a bad reputation. They knew about his criminal past. When I Talked to former Lt. Johnny Rose and he said this was an individual who had been making some mistakes or whatever he said, making some poor life choices. And so it seems they had their mind made up ahead of time that this was an individual from wrong side of the tracks. And it's very clear that they didn't put the care into this case that they might have otherwise, which Wes and.
- [31:59]
C
I, we've talked about this extensively of that does not mean you get to be ignored by the justice system. Just because you've made mistakes, just because you've led your life a certain way, doesn't mean that you. That our justice system should ignore you and should skip over you. And that's not the ideals that we have for how our criminal justice system works. We believe that it will take care of all of us equal under the law. And if someone has made some mistakes and acted violently or not, they should still be able to have their day in court. That clearly didn't happen here.
- [32:47]
B
Yeah. And if you're listening to the podcast, we can't really make you care about Christopher as a person, as a victim, but you should care about a killer being on the loose. You know, if it's a human, someone who has never faced justice and could be free to kill again, or if it is some kind of animal, I mean, that's a dangerous animal that shouldn't.
- [33:12]
C
Be roaming free, shouldn't be roaming free, and is not behaving normally. So this is one thing that I kept meaning to talk about during our conversations, Wes, and kept forgetting. But some of the wildlife experts that we talked to or that I talked to and who investigated this, I had initially met working on Another story about coyotes in the Dallas suburbs. And because coyotes also do not attack people, generally speaking, they are skittish. They don't want to be seen. Just like mountain lions. They don't want to be seen. They keep to themselves. But when you do see them, and if you do have an encounter with them, that means that something's off. That means that something behaviorally has happened to where that pack, that individual has become desensitized to humans enough to approach. And that's not good, either because food has been left out, or there's a trash source that they can forage or whatever, or if there's something behaviorally wrong that could be a genetic trait that needs to be stopped, because it's a maladaptation is the phrasing they use. And I covered this case in Frisco, Texas, where there were attacks of coyotes on people, and they were investigated. They found the pack, they realized that this is not usual behavior, and they destroyed the pack, put those animals down. And that's how we respond to dangerous wildlife that is acting unlike normal. And if there's a mountain lion that has attacked a person, something is wrong.
- [34:54]
B
Yeah. Not fully investigating this did a disservice to the people of Hood county and did a disservice to the safety of these communities.
- [35:04]
C
Exactly.
- [35:06]
D
Something I do want to talk about, which has been in the back of my mind since I edited the first episode and I feel like some listeners may be thinking about as well, is that I know Christopher's dad's theory is that the police didn't investigate because he was a felon and his criminal history or his drug use, but Tyler's family had threatened Christopher in the past and that he went to jail for domestic violence against Tyler. And something that I thought about is that what if there were maybe signs or even just knowing the history that either Tyler's family did something or that there was another domestic violence dispute and that they killed Christopher and it was more of a battered woman situation and that they maybe decided to look the other way because of that. And again, that doesn't like things should be tried in a court of law. But I. That's something that I thought about a lot listening to it, and I just thought that was worth bringing up.
- [36:17]
B
Allegedly threatening. According to Christopher's friend Paulie, we don't personally know that these threats were happening, but we were told that they were happening.
- [36:25]
C
Oh, I was just gonna say. Again, I don't necessarily wanna speculate on it, but it is one of those that's popped up, like, I wonder if. But I have nothing to prove that, so I can't say.
- [36:37]
B
I think that any reasonable person listening to the facts of the case would wonder, would speculate about that. It's an interesting theory. It seems plausible, but we just don't know because the sheriff's department, as far as we know, never asked any of those questions. They didn't follow up with Tyler. We later found out, according to her great uncle Kenneth, that Tyler's mom and her boyfriend at the time and someone else possibly were all there that night when they were partying. I don't think any of those people have been interviewed. It was just because they closed the case so quickly. These questions have never been answered.
- [37:17]
C
It reminds me of a Ted Lasso reference, of all things.
- [37:20]
B
Oh, no.
- [37:21]
C
There's a great scene where he mentions a Walt Whitman quote that's be curious, not judgmental. And I feel like that's what is missing here is a lack of curiosity and instead a lot of judgment. But, yeah, if you're a curious person, you ask those questions and you would want to get to the bottom of this. And as a journalist, I have those questions and I've asked them and want to get to the bottom of it. But instead, we have a rush to judgment, a rush to conclusions, and not a lot of curiosity.
- [37:55]
B
It is sad that you asked all these questions five years ago, and now here we are asking them all again and we still don't have answers.
- [38:04]
C
Yep.
- [38:06]
D
So I also want to ask, you both have spent a while looking into this case. Are there any details or just parts of the case that, like, you can't stop thinking about that stick out to you the most?
- [38:22]
B
Just what popped into my head was still wondering what happened at the house that morning when Christopher called his dad, said he needed a ride and said he had to go deal with those people. And there's this commotion, and his dad's hearing voices, and then his dad drives all the way there and his son never appears. I just would really love to know what was happening in the house in those moments. And that's something that I think that law enforcement could follow up on. They could go back and talk to these people and try to find out what really happened.
- [38:58]
C
Yeah, I just. Again, because I spent time looking at it, I think back to the wound, and it's. I don't wanna say it haunts me. That's too dramatic. But it's in my head. It's burned in my head, and I can picture it, and I cannot fathom how it happened. I keep going back to that of what instrument could have done this?
- [39:19]
B
That's something that you have studied. Now that you're no longer with the newspaper, you're a journalism professor at smu. And that trauma, informed reporting and how to. I don't know if cope with the work is the right word. So how do you live with what you've seen and how do you continue to do the work?
- [39:39]
C
That's a great question. I am a lot better at it now than I used to be. And I think around the time I started working on the story, I was starting to get better at it because there was a time in my career where I was not good at it at all. I went on a lot of walks. This was. I was working on early 21, so we were still on lockdown, still at home. I went on a lot of walks. I would take a break, go for a walk around my neighborhood and then come back and keep working on it. So I did a lot of that. I do a lot of meditation. And I wouldn't do this, and I wouldn't go back to those images and I wouldn't go back to the story if I didn't truly believe that it was some kind of miscarriage of justice, which I do, I believe, like we've talked about extensively at this point. Like, I. This isn't just about Christopher, and it certainly is. And like, justice for Christopher and his family is really important, but it's about a break in how justice is served in Hood county and in Texas. And I care deeply about Texas. It's where I'm, you know, raised. It's where I live, it's where I work. And I remember that. And it helps me revisit and keep going. But, yeah, it's tough.
- [41:03]
D
Have you spoken with Christopher's mom, Kimberly, to let her know what you found out?
- [41:08]
B
So Charlie interviewed Kimberly first, five years ago. I talked to her also. I talked to her one time and on the phone. And then we exchanged a bunch of texts and we had made arrangements to speak in person. And so we were figuring out what day was going to work for both of us for me to drive up to that part of Texas where she lives. And then I didn't hear from her. And then I got an email from Kimberly's daughter, Ashley, who is also Christopher's sister, saying that I was not to contact Kimberly again. And that by bringing all of this up, I was giving her panic attacks. And so I ended up talking to Ashley and she told me that she. There was a kind of an age gap there, and she and Christopher had not been close. She didn't really have much to say about him. And I asked her to go back and just see if Kimberly would change her mind. And as far as I know, she didn't. And I honored that request from Ashley not to contact Kimberly again. So I don't know if Kimberly has been listening or not. You know, I hope that she's not listening because this is her son that we're talking about, and I can't imagine what that wound is like for her. And to have to relive all of this would probably be unbearable. But I would love for word to get back to her that we are grateful that she took the time to speak with us at all and that she entrusted us with this story. And I hope that she's told that we did all we could to further the story of her son, Christopher.
- [42:51]
D
What do you think are the broader implications of this case?
- [42:57]
B
That's one for the professor.
- [43:00]
C
Great. Well, I think we've talked about some of it. We've talked about the idea that this is a miscarriage of justice. Capital J justice. Like that's a big one. Right. If Christopher's case could be mishandled in this way, what does that say about other cases, other people at risk, other people on the margins? That presents a problem for us as a society. Right. As a community. If a sheriff's office is making decisions on what crimes are worth investigating and which aren't, that's a problem. When the podcast started airing, I saw a handful of comments on TikTok I had posted and some of the stuff we'd post on Facebook and social with the podcast that had a ring of what we've seen kind of societally, of this kind of anti science movement of rejecting expertise which has been concerning. There was a lot of comments along the lines of, these experts don't know what they're talking about. I see mountain lions all the time. Or we don't pay attention to what the game wardens say. They have to see it with their own eyes or it doesn't count. But we know that they're out there. And Christopher was definitely killed by mountain lion. And that kind of thinking rejects the expertise of people who have spent their lives studying this animal and studying how it behaves and how it does it. Right. And to just reject that expertise outright, which also came through in some of the sheriff's reports and the reports of that we've gotten from this conversation with the medical examiner's office of just. Well, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't have the qualifications to know about this. There are few people in the world who know more about this subject than the people who investigated Christopher's death. And they were basically shown the door. That's a bigger thing that I think is a potential implication of this, of we know better than XYZ experts. And again, you have experts with different expertise who are disagreeing, and that's challenging. But I definitely have seen an attitude of I've seen mountain lions all the time. So therefore, we cannot trust what these researchers say.
- [45:14]
B
At the same time, we also have a clear breach of trust by those experts in the medical examiner's office who say, well, for the sakes of our reputation, we have to come together around a unified theory, even though we have changed what that theory was. And it seems like putting saving face above getting to the bottom of the truth.
- [45:38]
C
So, from the law enforcement investigators. Right. As compared to, like, wildlife researchers.
- [45:46]
B
Right.
- [45:47]
C
Who are more like scientists than cops.
- [45:50]
B
Right? Yeah. And so in that sense, we just need more public accountability. I think that's not to puff ourselves up too much, but that's the role we're playing here. We are not investigators. We're not law enforcement. We are shining a light on this story, and I hope that maybe this will help this not happen again.
- [46:12]
D
I imagine this might be in a similar vein, but what do you want listeners to take away from this investigation?
- [46:20]
C
I think what we've been talking about, but again, the idea that everyone's death deserves attention, and this has come up in several of our seasons. The idea of the unforgotten is cases that have been ignored in one way or another over time. And that's something I return to is one of the reasons I really connected with this story is because it's one of somebody who was ignored by the system. And I think it's important that we recognize that everyone's life and death matters and for us to take the time to look at those deaths thoroughly. In season two, we talked a lot about how people who were older adults whose true cause of death was ignored because of assumptions about who they were and where they lived and what their last months and days were like. The same kind of thing happened here. You had investigators make assumptions about a person and how they lived and how they died, and that's a miscarriage of justice to me.
- [47:26]
D
Finally, Wes, you mentioned earlier, in the previous seasons, we've seen more investigation or at least more awareness brought on because of the podcast. If listeners maybe want to see that happen or they want to help, what could they do?
- [47:43]
B
That's a great question. So you could write to or reach out to other members of law enforcement. If you live in Hood County, I think that you could contact the sheriff's office directly and ask them to reexamine this case. If you don't live in Hood County, I don't think your request would carry all that much weight. But a lot of times someone will be listening and they'll say like oh well, my sister in law works for the FBI or like my friend is with the attorney general's office. And so working those personal networks have paid off are they appear to be paying off for the cases that we've spotlighted on the Unforgotten in the past. So I would certainly encourage anyone to do that. I bet there are some people listening that know more and maybe they were scared to say they didn't want to stick their nose in it. They know something. They've heard something. You can reach out to us. You could contact Crime Stoppers. You don't have to be afraid. You can share what you know and we'll be here to talk to you. If it warrants doing more episodes, then absolutely we will. I'd also love to hear if you were involved in this case at all and maybe you heard your name, you didn't respond to my phone calls in the past or maybe like my efforts to reach you had failed. So feel free to reach out and let's talk.
- [49:10]
A
The Unforgotten is a free range production. Season 4 Killsight was produced in association with the Dallas Morning News. I'm your host Wes Ferguson. Charlie Scudder and I are executive producers. Our editor is Aislin Gaddis. Sound design and audio engineering is usually provided by Austin Sisler at Eastside Studios.
- [49:32]
B
But Austin just had a kid so.
- [49:34]
A
He is on paternity leave. Huge congrats to Austin and his wife for the birth of their baby girl. If you haven't already yet, you can sign up for our newsletter at unforgottenpod.
- [49:46]
B
Com.
- [49:46]
A
Thanks so much for listening throughout this season and we are going to be back very soon with the next season of the Unforgotten.
- [49:54]
C
More on that soon.