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Double Death Investigation /// Part 2 /// 943
00:45:29
Grace Holland, a mother of four, was found dead on July 22, 2020, inside the Creve Coeur, Missouri home of her fiancé Robert Daus. Her case remains highly contested and continues to draw intense scrutiny. The case returned to national headlines in January of 2024, when Robert Daus’s new girlfriend, Dr. Sarah Sweeney was found dead inside his home.
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- [00:01]
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Nick (Host)
Brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card lets you earn daily cash back on every purchase every day. Apply in the Wallet app on iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com. Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing. Thanks for listening. I'm your host, Nick and with me as always. We have no clue what he's saying, but we love the way he says it. Ladies and gentlemen, the cap Old Marble Mouth over here.
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Colonel (Co-host)
It's good to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend
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Nick (Host)
today. Thank goodness we still have some Lone pine West Coast IPA from Sawdust City. This is an aggressively hopped brew bursting with flavors of pine and citrus. Garage grade three and three quarter bottle caps out of five. And here we go. Cheers to Nancy from North Province, Rhode Island. And last but certainly not least, we have Sasha, the English guy married to a German woman living in the Netherlands. So raise a glass and raise them up high, my friends, because you deserve it. Whether you have contributed to the beer fund or if you are just listening in your garage.
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Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah, talk canes in the air. BW double Are you in Beer run? Check out truecrame garage dot com. Sign up on the mailing list and follow us on social media at True Crime Garage. And Colonel, that's enough of the business.
- [02:40]
Nick (Host)
All right, everybody gather around. Grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime. At 6:39am on January 13, 2024, the stillness of the morning broke at the Frontanic Police Department dispatch center when a call came in from Conway Road. A man on the line reported something no one is truly ever prepared to say out loud. He had found his girlfriend unresponsive in his home. And except for in this situation here, Captain, and for this man, he's actually made a very similar call roughly three and a half years prior to this one regarding a another woman who was
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Colonel (Co-host)
unresponsive in his home yeah, been there, done that.
- [03:43]
Nick (Host)
The dispatcher moved quickly, sending an officer to the address within minutes. When the officer arrived, he found 39 year old Sarah Sweeney dead. The scene did not look like there had been any violence or chaos. There were no signs of a struggle, no visible damage, no evidence that Sarah had fought for her life. With nothing immediately suggesting foul play. The incident was initially treated as a natural sudden death. Sarah's body was Transported to the St. Louis Medical examiner for an autopsy. The standard next step that, at least on paper, should provide some answers. But clarity did not come quickly. And almost as soon as the details began to circulate, the story slipped out of the quiet administrative language of police reports and into something heavier, something that drew attention far beyond this little city. Because Sarah Sweeney was not just a woman who had died unexpectedly in a private home. She was the second woman to die under mysterious circumstances in a home belonging to fire Captain Robert Dawes. And that alone, that single fact, two women, one man. At the center of both stories, we've
- [05:11]
Colonel (Co-host)
had reports about this guy being physically and mentally abusive.
- [05:15]
Nick (Host)
Yeah, and for clarity here, remember we had said in episode one that Robert Dawes and Grace Holland had purchased a second home. And so they were in the process of renovating that home and she is found, she being Grace Holland, was found dead in the home that they were actually living in at that time. Now, this situation, the only difference here is this is a different woman, Sarah Sweeney, and it's also the other home, the second home, where this young woman is.
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Colonel (Co-host)
Well, he wanted the houses to be a matching set.
- [05:55]
Nick (Host)
Now, this single fact, again, two women, one man, was enough to ignite the kind of public unease that doesn't fade with time. If anybody still had questions about the first one, guess what? They have a lot more questions now. And it's going to raise questions with people and who keep returning to this again and again and again. Was there a connection? And if so, what was it beyond Robert Dawes?
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Colonel (Co-host)
Well, one of the things we had a problem with, with the first mysterious death was the investigation and maybe some missteps.
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Nick (Host)
Sarah Kathleen Sweeney did not grow up in the great state of Missouri. She was born in 1984 in West Virginia. And due to her father's job with the US Navy, they moved around a bit. She had a great family life and childhood, but unfortunately, she also had pain, like real physical pain. When Sarah was just a little girl entering grade school, she was diagnosed with Perthes disease, a rare childhood hip disorder where the ball of the hip joint loses its blood supply, which can cause the bone cells to die. So this is a very rare but also quite painful thing to suffer through. After high school, Sarah pursued an education in and a career in medicine. She attended North Carolina State University, earning degrees in microbiology and biological sciences. Then, in early 2021, she relocates to St. Louis, Missouri. And from the way that I understand it, she moves on her own here. Captain. She's an adult. She's finished with college. And so this is not something where, unfortunately, she is going to be living in this area without having her family nearby. And I cannot help but wonder if that plays a role in this sad part of the story here. But according to those closest to her, that move marked the beginning of a very different chapter of her life. So not long after arriving in St. Louis, Sarah met Robert Dawes, the fire captain with the Maryland Heights Fire District that we've already talked about. She described him to friends as handsome, charming, and she enjoyed spending time with him. And then the relationship, well, it seemed to become serious. But while Sarah leaned in on this relationship, her family pulled back and thought she might want to pull back as well, because her family checked this dude out, and of course, they found that less than a year before Sarah meets Robert, his fiance, Grace Holland, had died. And you used the perfect word here. It was a mysterious death. The death had been ruled a suicide. But within the community, and especially within Grace's family, as we know, there were people who believed that Robert was responsible for the death of Grace Holland. Sarah's family sent her articles about Grace's death, trying to place the information in her hands before she became more entangled with this man. They urged her to stay away from Robert. It's a big city, a lot of fish in the pond, right?
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Colonel (Co-host)
Maybe big world, too. And. And also, this is a giant red
- [09:41]
Nick (Host)
flag, but it sounds like Sarah didn't want to hear it. She liked Robert, and she seemed to like their relationship. Meanwhile, Sarah's professional life was unraveling in ways that were both complicated and also public. In St. Louis, Sarah went to work for best foot Forward. This is a. These are feet specialists. And In August of 2021, she would resign from working there at Best Foot Forward, and a civil complaint was filed. This is in 2021. Sarah claimed that the owner of the practice, his name is Dr. Franklin Harry, had engaged in unethical and illegal business practices, including insurance fraud and medical malpractice. She also alleged that Dr. Harry had sexually harassed her on multiple occasions and created a hostile work environment. She said that she was unfairly Denied health insurance and paid unfairly. In her opinion as well. This legal battle was not going to be quick nor swift and rather most of the time, as we know they rarely are. So this legal battle is going to drag on as they often do. But all the while it seems that she was not earning an income and her health situation was worsening. In August of 2023, we got legal pressures widening. Robert Dawes was subpoenaed as well for this civil complaint and asked to turn over all communications that he and Sarah have had.
- [11:37]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah, now he's done this before too.
- [11:40]
Nick (Host)
Yes. And remember, he is and was very much a public figure who had a history that had already been scrutinized by the public. By December of 2023, Sarah filed a statement in court that revealed just how far her life had fallen financially. She described the burden caused by her former employer, the inconsistent pay, denial of health insurance, and how it had contributed to her becoming homeless for a time before she eventually would move in with Robert. Now, all of us adults here in the room, we all know how important it is to have health insurance and it's in most of our situations it's a safety net or a parachute. But think about her situation. She has ongoing health problems and has had them since her childhood. So where for us and for a lot of people, thankfully, it's just simply a safety net or a parachute. Her situation, it seems like it's very much a necessity.
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Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah, Lifeline.
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Nick (Host)
This statement, court statement that was filed was stark saying most of her belongings were in boxes and that she was currently out of money. It painted a picture of someone whose life was collapsing. It also placed her inside of Robert Dawes's home, binding her day to day safety and shelter to a man her family had begged her to avoid. As the legal fight escalated, Sarah's health was also demanding more and more of her. She had lived with chronic pain for much of her life, but she had also been diagnosed with mast cell activation syndrome. As I understand it, this is an immune disease disorder and can be, can be life threatening.
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Colonel (Co-host)
Well, chronic pain can be very life threatening too, because sometimes people just can't take it anymore and the medication isn't working properly and they're just in constant pain and the only way out. And while they could go to doctors and doctors can tell them, hey, we're doing the best we can to help you manage the pain and sometimes that's the cause for suicide.
- [14:06]
Nick (Host)
Well, and think about the financial burden and the stress that comes with all of that as well. I mean, the One thing that we've not done great in this country and one thing that we have seemingly allowed to happen now for decades is these medical outfits, and mostly the pharmaceutical industry are very, very greedy organizations and very, very greedy companies out there. And they charge a lot and give a little in return. And she's getting no help as far as getting the, the break on cost and, and the savings on cost from having health insurance. She doesn't have it.
- [14:45]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah. Like I said before, this Robert guy is a huge, giant walking red flag. But she's in financial distress. She's probably going through a lot mentally, and her family's then telling her, well, you, you need to distance yourself from Robert. But he's probably helping financially, so he becomes like a little life raft that she can jump on.
- [15:12]
Nick (Host)
Yeah. It gets difficult to assume that he might be helping. I'm sure he's helping in some way, but he, I mean, he didn't seem to be helping Grace too much.
- [15:22]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah.
- [15:23]
Nick (Host)
It looked like he used her financial situation, her being Grace, as a way of controlling her. Right. I think that's kind of how this one's going to play out as well. And as we've been talking about and leading up to, look, it's obvious at this point that Sarah's life in St. Louis had become a knot of stressors. Right. First, this toxic workplace, financial instability, the grind of a lawsuit, estrangement. Now from her family, that's one thing. Like not only did they urge her to not be involved with this guy, she kind of closed the door on that family relationship. And when she opened the door to the relationship with Robert, and so she has distanced herself from her family. So she's estranged from her family at this time. And, and I believe that. I don't know the date of these articles here, Captain, but I had found more than one statement from the family saying that we had little to no contact with her for about two years. For about a two year time period.
- [16:36]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah. But that's what these controlling individuals want. Oh, your, your family doesn't want us to be together. They don't understand. Yeah. They don't want, they don't want positive things in their life and then they separate them. And then also this is kind of his mo, Right? Oh, you need financial support. Okay. That's another way that I can control you. I can control where you're at because of your financial situation.
- [17:07]
Nick (Host)
And look, there's a lot of people here in this scenario and a lot of times it can be a two way street, maybe even a Three way. I know that that doesn't exist, but it, it doesn't sound like anybody in this whole scenario was going out of their way or setting aside their differences to keep these relationships going. Sarah included in that and her family as well.
- [17:31]
Colonel (Co-host)
Right.
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Nick (Host)
And okay, so we got all this. I mean, so I'm not going to sit here and pretend to understand this Mast cell activation syndrome. I. What I do know about it or I shouldn't say no, what I have been told about it is that stress can be a real big problem for people with this dis. Disease or disorder. And look, stress is not good on anybody even if you don't have a disease or disorder. But what we are pointing out here is all of these stressors. I mean, this is a mountain of stressors. Workplace problems, lawsuit, financial instability, estrangement from her family, a relationship shadowed by public suspicion and rumors. And then she's spending many nights in the hospital at this time. So that was that court statement and court filing that took place in December of 2023. And sadly, three weeks after that filing, Sarah was dead. After Sarah's death at the Conway Road home, of course, news coverage surged in on this. Much of it focused less on Sarah's medical history and her work and more on the fact that she had died in Robert Dawes's home, the same house that he once shared with Grace Holland. And this is the home that the couple had bought and been renovating when Grace died. At first there was very little concrete information. Frontenac police said the matter was under investigation and that they were waiting for autopsy results.
- [19:26]
Colonel (Co-host)
Well, police department is probably going, well, here we go again for one. So we. Let's not screw this one up.
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Nick (Host)
Well, it's a different police department.
- [19:35]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah, but you don't think they know the other guys?
- [19:40]
Nick (Host)
Yeah, I guarantee that they do. But I think we should point out that it is a different police department that does matter in the story.
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Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah. And now is it the same coroner? Because a lot of times that's just the county and so, and I don't, I'm not for sure, but the first case went from a suicide to a suspicious death. And so has that already taken place by the time this investigation's going?
- [20:07]
Nick (Host)
Yes, absolutely it has.
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Colonel (Co-host)
So that's going to send some red flags up for this police department.
- [20:14]
Nick (Host)
Absolutely. And in that. That you're, you're right that this should change things for how this is looked at, this death is looked at. And it should, as you say, encourage them to maybe do better than their partners in blue had done with the previous one. And so you hope that that takes place here. But again, this, this part of the story is a little more difficult because it seems to be a little more closed off. And what one thing I want to be clear about here too, in regard to the Grace Holland death investigation, when we talked about at some point they turn it over to St. Louis county and that was the absolute right thing to do, I really wish that they would have done that right away. And I talked about how much respect I have for the individuals that I've met and spoke with that are from that outfit from St. Louis County. Now, where that, where the Grace Holland investigation sits today, we're told that it's still an active investigation. We need to keep in mind here that you might not be able to write that ship. You know, sometimes it's, it's gone too far in the wrong direction and you can't write that ship.
- [21:44]
Colonel (Co-host)
That's tough because it was, I think as far as the defense, it's going to be hard to get enough evidence to get charges. But then in the Grace case, if you're the defendant, you go, well, why did you initially say it was a suicide? And then, then it changed. So that's going to give you some reasonable doubt there.
- [22:05]
Nick (Host)
Right. But when I'm Furthermore, St. Louis County.
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Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah.
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Nick (Host)
Is completely handcuffed by the mistakes and what was not done in the investigation when they first caught the case.
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Colonel (Co-host)
Right.
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Nick (Host)
So they're, they're working really behind a whole bunch of hurdles that they probably won't be able to clear because it was too screwed up or not worked thoroughly or properly to begin with.
- [22:36]
Colonel (Co-host)
Right.
- [22:46]
Nick (Host)
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- [29:05]
Colonel (Co-host)
All right, we are back. Thanks for joining us here in the garage. Have a seat over there. Not, not, not the red chair. Try the blue chair. Cheers to you, Colonel.
- [29:16]
Nick (Host)
Cheers to you, Captain. As we said here, with the death of Sarah Sweeney, at first there was very little information that was coming out. Frontenac police said the matter was under investigation and that they were waiting for the autopsy results and look for, for the family, for her family. But also this is a very much a public matter at this point. Right? You had a lot of eyeballs on the Grace Holland case, especially at the local level. Now, this gap between under investigation and getting answers we know can feel endless. And in that gap, naturally speculation is going to grow and grow and grow. Grace Holland's family staying aware of the situation and keeping eyes themselves on Robert Dawes. They issued a statement that carried both grief and anger all at the same time. They said they were saddened to learn of another death, especially of someone so young. And they expressed hope that the Frontenac police were, would do what in their view had not been done before, conduct a full investigation. The implication was clear. Grace's family believed the earlier system had failed their daughter, their sister, Grace Holland, and they did not want it to fail Sarah too. Reporters obtained court documents from Sarah's civil suit. Those filings revealed details that were usually private. Right. So this would be things like Sarah's diagnosis, her financial hardships and fragments of her communications with co workers. And of course, this is what the media and the reporters are going to hone in on. These communications messages that showed her drowning in medical debt, losing housing, and they showed that she had moved in with Robert after she herself had been evicted.
- [31:39]
Colonel (Co-host)
Is she talking to females and males?
- [31:42]
Nick (Host)
We only get to see a portion of this. I would assume that. But it's also when we say acted co workers, we. This is a smaller outfit, so I don't know how many people worked there. But again, what I think what we're limited to here, Captain, is when she is communicating about, mostly about Robert Dawes here. So in one message to a co worker, Sarah wrote that she had been homeless and that she had moved in with her boyfriend. Then added a phrase that means it's a big humorous. But also I. It look, it contains grim humor and some fear. I believe when I read it, and I've read it again and again to try to see if she was. Because the first time I read it I was like, she's being sarcastic. But then the more I read it, I'm like, no, there's, there's some fear here. So she referred to him in this message to the co worker as the murderer.
- [32:51]
Colonel (Co-host)
Oh.
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Nick (Host)
Saying it had been scary at times. She wrote that she had lost every penny and closed out her savings account. Now, in this legal battle here, there is a counterclaim. The man that she worked for, Dr. Harry. His attorneys argued that Sarah's mental health played a central role in her lawsuit. They wrote that during Sarah's employment she was in a relationship with Robert Dawes, who, according to Sarah, was abusive and suspected of murdering a previous girlfriend.
- [33:28]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah, I think when all this is going on in your life, sometimes you just have to go back home and say, I'm in too deep of waters, I need help. And we should all be lucky enough if we have family members that are willing to help.
- [33:46]
Nick (Host)
Absolutely. And hopefully those that bridge had not been burned and, and if it wasn't, it might have been time. Well, it's easy for us. I sit, I think to sit Here and in retrospect, say go home. Yeah, but. And it also seems a little obvious too, doesn't it?
- [34:06]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah, but the problem here too is, and I get that she's probably joking on some level, but she's going, oh, the, the murderer. She's not calling him her boyfriend. And, but again, I would argue there's probably.
- [34:21]
Nick (Host)
She calls them both in that communication. She says, I, I had to move in with my boyfriend, the murderer. So I like. So that part of it sounds sarcastic and funny, but. But then it, that's not funny.
- [34:33]
Colonel (Co-host)
You know, I mean like your, your family suspects it. You know, this lady died and you can make an argument on whether he pulled the trigger or whether she pulled the trigger, but ultimately I still think all revolves around him and his shitty actions. But if she's having some physical issues like you said, from, from early on in her childhood, that probably causes stuff with mental issues. And I think that's what, that's what this guy wanted. Let me find individuals that are already wounded, so I can easily. I can control them easier and I can manipulate them easier. And. Yeah, and I think this guy just knew. He was a complete pile of.
- [35:29]
Nick (Host)
Yeah, I, Look, I'm not sitting here laughing or having a ball about two women being dead. I do think she was trying to be funny. The way that she words it is she. It sounds like she's being sarcastic. She's referring to him as what others had referred to him as, as.
- [35:48]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah, I get that.
- [35:50]
Nick (Host)
So the, the part though that is rough is saying it had been scary at times. We don't get a great definition of what that means. Scary at times. Was that scary because of him? Was that scary just because of her situation medically or financially or what have you.
- [36:07]
Colonel (Co-host)
Then also too like, he's been in weird situations and weird relationships. We don't know if he, if it's a situation where she feels she can't be completely open and honest with people because he might be going through her phone. So maybe that's why we don't get a better picture of what's going on.
- [36:26]
Nick (Host)
I think of both of these scenarios, we're not getting all of the information because of the status of the, the death investigations.
- [36:37]
Colonel (Co-host)
Right.
- [36:38]
Nick (Host)
Which is, which is painful because. And I'm not saying that that is the case here, but we have certainly reviewed cases where the investigation itself is suspect and, and does not seem to be great. And an agency will hide behind the veil of, well, it's an open case, so we can't talk about it.
- [37:03]
Colonel (Co-host)
Right. And again, I think there's some level, because a lot of these first responders, they have respect for each other based on, you know, they have firsthand knowledge of what it takes to do these jobs.
- [37:17]
Nick (Host)
So.
- [37:18]
Colonel (Co-host)
But you just hope that they go, Robert, again, okay, we gotta double check our T's, I's, and lowercase J's.
- [37:30]
Nick (Host)
Yeah. And so what we have going on here is simply that the facts are very complicated. To have any. To have any really clean, clear view of what all is going on. What we do know is this Robert Dawes, at this time in our timeline, had not been, and to this day still has not been formally named as a suspect in Grace Holland's death. As far as an investigating agency goes, yeah, there was no proof presented in the material described here or what we could find to say that he had anything to do with Sarah Sweeney's death. And we do know as well that Sarah had legitimate serious medical issues that could plausibly contribute to a sudden, sudden, fatal event. Now, people, of course, are asking all of the questions everybody's thinking about, could Robert be responsible for Sarah's death? Would Mast Cell activation Syndrome go? Could that have triggered her death?
- [38:42]
Colonel (Co-host)
Right.
- [38:43]
Nick (Host)
Sarah's mother said that Sarah had her condition under control, took regular medications and carried an EpiPen at all times. Okay. But I also question how much communication was going on between Sarah and her family at this time. Court documents actually show the reverse of what Sarah's family statements were. Okay. So court documents showed that Sarah had actually gone long stretches without medications due to the lack of insurance.
- [39:21]
Colonel (Co-host)
Right.
- [39:22]
Nick (Host)
So obviously raising more questions about how stable her health truly was leading up to her death.
- [39:30]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah. And I. I know that sometimes with medications, there's complications when you off those medications, so you could have a complication when you get off, but you can also have a complication when you get back on. And then I'd also wonder. I also wondered, we know a little bit about the medication that she was taking for the physical side of her illness, but do we have any medications that she's taken for mental health? Because that can have the same type of effect, whether you're, you know, side effects from going off or side effects from going back on it.
- [40:10]
Nick (Host)
Absolutely. And, you know, those are all things that are of great concern. And unfortunately, we've seen too many people. You hear about it on the news. The wrong cocktail of medications, prescribed or otherwise, has led to the early death of. Of many. Far too many people. Yeah, it's going to be about three months, not quite three. Well, sorry, I apologize. To you, Captain, it's going to be about two months. It's going to be roughly two months right then for the results of that autopsy. So In March of 2024, the results of Sarah's autopsy and toxicology report were released to the public. So the medical examiner determined that Sarah's immediate cause of death was an overdose involving oxycodone and gabapentin mixed with antihistamines. Now, what I am not certain of, it would seem to me the oxycodone and gabapentin would be. Gabapentin would be prescribed medications and a lot of antihistamines you can simply get over the counter. So her manner of death was ruled undetermined, but I mean, it's an overdose of.
- [41:42]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah.
- [41:43]
Nick (Host)
A combination of all these medications.
- [41:45]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah. But it's difficult, too, because it's. Was the overdose by accident or was that on purpose?
- [41:53]
Nick (Host)
True. And the other part of that, too, is circling back to something you had said earlier. Somebody experiencing chronic pain, somebody experiencing all these stressors. I mean, look, she. I mean, like, internally and externally, her world sucked. Right. Everything is terrible for this young woman at this point. Yeah. And I, you know, not a pharmacist, but what do we know? Oxycodone is. Is for pain, and that is one that we've seen plenty of times. People. People take too many of them or abuse it because they are in such pain and agony. And gab. Gabapentin, which is a new word for me. But as I understand it, what the. What the Internet tells me anyway is that that is something that is used to treat seizures and also to. For pain management.
- [42:51]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah.
- [42:52]
Nick (Host)
So at least doubling up with the pain medications. And those antihistamines are rough, too, because those can be a lot stronger than people think.
- [43:03]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah. And sometimes you take one and you don't feel like it's working, and so you take another one and then it. It all hit you at once. And this is kind of off topic, but I saw this story the other day. Very sad tragedy story. Lady was out with her family. She. She kept on complaining that she felt really, you know, weak and something was off. And then she thought, well, I probably dehydrated. So she ended up drinking a. A lot of water in a short period of time then, and that caused her to get even more sick, and she ended up dying. And so I know this seems like it's completely off topic, but what I'm saying is she drank water, and that water caused her to die. So somebody that's taken as much medication as Sarah is, it could have been as simple as, well, I took these pills and I took this pill and I'm not computing, I'm not doing the math about this. And her body and because her body's going on medication, off medication, back on medication, that could have had something to do with it or how she reacted to the medication. So this becomes difficult because she's in a shitty situation with her boyfriend, the murderer, and she has a lot of stuff going on in her life. And you just go, is this an accident or is this on purpose?
- [44:37]
Nick (Host)
Well, and her medical situation certainly puts her physically in a fragile state. And like you were talking about with the water man, life is strange because there are stories that, that you hear and see and they remind you just how fragile life can be, that our lives can be. And then there's other stories where it's woman lifts car to save her baby. You know, it's life is. Life is strange.
- [45:12]
Colonel (Co-host)
The front he grew up to be
- [45:14]
Nick (Host)
a captain Frontnik Police stated that they believe Sarah had been home alone in the time leading up to her death. So that's an interesting statement here, because if, if that is true, if, if they've done their due diligence and they've sorted out that that is the facts here, and it seems to be because they never stray from that statement that would tell us that they don't have anything telling us that or telling them that somebody mixed up a bunch of medications and put them in something, put them in her food or in her. In something she was consuming or worse, feeding pills to someone or pushing them down their throat. And look, these are two very strange, difficult stories. I don't feel comfortable delivering exactly what I think happened because I don't think that the, the media and the, the official reports that have been released, I don't think that they provide us with enough ins sight in either scenario. But from where I sit, what my view tells me is I see two women who both were walking a tightrope and I think that they were on that tightrope before they met this man. And I wouldn't knew that. I wouldn't put it past Robert Dawes to stand there on the sideline with both hands out shaking that rope as the two of them try to gingerly walk across it.
- [47:01]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah, I think in both cases you can point to what Grace's family was saying, okay, maybe you can't prove that he pulled the trigger, maybe you can't prove that he poisoned Sarah or caused the overdose. But is he ultimately responsible And I think there might be a lot more going on behind the scenes because I do that, you know, the one thing I can applaud in the first investigation is to change the findings from suicide to a suspicious death. Because the longer you keep that labeled as a suicide, I think the, I mean, it's hard to admit, hey, we made some mistakes and we got some things wrong. I think that's at least steps in the right direction. And then by that being the case now we, we're having a, hopefully a better investigation, a more thorough investigation, and this one is labeled as a suspicious death as well. So I think that, you know, you could be hopeful that maybe there's more going on behind the scenes or more information that, you know, they don't have to make a public statement that he, that old Robert boyfriend, you know, the murderer is, is a suspect to, to be the number one suspect. They don't have to state that publicly.
- [48:33]
Nick (Host)
The murderer, as Sarah called him. And, and I mean this truly in a metaphorical standpoint or statement, but the. Did, did Robert Dawes pull the trigger? I don't know. But I, I feel fairly confident saying that emotionally and mentally he may have loaded the gun.
- [48:58]
Colonel (Co-host)
Is he still working for the firefighters?
- [49:01]
Nick (Host)
Last I heard, that's the situation.
- [49:03]
Colonel (Co-host)
I think if my chief or captain was involved in two mysterious deaths, I think I'd give him some non paid time off.
- [49:16]
Nick (Host)
The passage of time has not delivered the kind of closure that anyone would crave or want in stories like this. Both women's deaths remain shrouded in uncertainty. Both cases are described as open, with no suspects named and of course, no charges filed. And the public impulse to speculate remains strong and will remain strong, especially where there were allegations of abuse.
- [49:48]
Colonel (Co-host)
Yeah.
- [49:48]
Nick (Host)
But speculation cannot substitute for proof. What remains undeniable is the simplest truth at the heart of it all. Grace Holland and Sarah Sweeney died far too soon. And the people who love them are left behind to carry questions that still do not have answers.
- [50:25]
Colonel (Co-host)
Want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage each and every week. Thanks for being our buddies. Thanks for telling your mother. Thanks for telling your brother. Colonel, do we have any recommended reading for the beautiful listeners?
- [50:36]
Nick (Host)
First up, a big recommendation for our true crime subscription show, off the Record, available on Apple subscription and Patreon. This week we dropped two episodes for your listening pleasure. And then for the readers and fans of Audible out there, I am very excited for this one. It is from longtime friend of the show, James Renner. We had our two episodes on the Amy Bradley case. She has been missing since 1998. That's True Crime Garage episodes 862 and 863. Well, we finally have the definitive book about the case that is coming out and is available now for pre order on Amazon. The title is A Cruise to Nowhere. How I Found Myself While Searching for Amy Lynn Bradley by James Renner. Go to Amazon. It's available for Kindle and Audible as well. Cheers.
- [51:42]
Colonel (Co-host)
And until next week, be good, be kind and don't litter. Sam.
- [52:22]
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Colonel (Co-host)
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