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[Music] My son Christian Andreakio was um hard worker, loved life. He just always liked
00:00:22
the water. He talked about either working offshore um in the Gulf. Then someone told him about the toeboats and
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that's when he went that direction. He was on the verge of becoming the youngest toeboat captain
00:00:38
and probably had a long career running a boat up and down the river. Loved to be the center of attention and
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the life of the party. Whether you were 80 years old or you were 15 years old, he was going to flirt with you.
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always wanting to help somebody out. Ultimately, his good-heartedness is what got him in trouble at the
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end. He had gone to a party across the lake, and I think he met her at the party. Willie Goodman was very polite,
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very, I mean, cute girl. When we first met her, she was quiet, you know, and Christian liked her, so that was good
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enough for us. Is there any doubt in your mind that Christian fell in love with your
00:01:28
daughter? No. No doubt whatsoever. And did she feel the same for him? She did and she does to this day.
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We were out to eat at a restaurant. Had just sat down. My father called and said
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we had a tragedy. 911. Where's your emergency? Man, we had a suicide. You suicide? Yes, ma'am. That
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was toughest toughest news I ever heard. It still hurts today. Who is it, sir? Christian
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Rocky, but he's laying across the the bathroom, the tub, and he's he's got blood everywhere.
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Did he take his own life? No, sir. Absolutely not. No, he he would never do that.
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Okay. Who's that in the background? That's his girlfriend. What's her name? Whitley Goodman.
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Do you believe that your son was murdered? Oh, I 100% believe he's murdered. Mr.
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Andreakio was shot in the right side of the head. There was very little, if any,
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investigation that took place on the scene on the day that it occurred. It was totally bungled because the
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investigators were called off because they didn't do their job. We had to do their job for them. Sitting across from
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me today, do you know who killed your son, Christian? Yes. [Music] I was so confused whenever I started
00:03:10
being blamed. I really was. We're going to keep on fighting. I do have a small army, but they're smart.
00:03:19
She did not kill him. As a prosecutor, I have never in my career seen anything like this case. I don't care to change
00:03:27
anyone's mind. They let somebody get away with murder. [Music] [Music] I can't believe this is happening to our
00:04:24
family. I think everybody was just kind of in shock. This is something you know that happens
00:04:31
to other people. It doesn't happen to you. From their lakeside home just outside
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Meridian, Mississippi, Ray and Todd Andreakio are haunted by the death of their 21-year-old son Christian in 2014.
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A lot of days I look out there and, you know, expect to see him out there with the jet ski floating about,
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but you know, every day you get caught with memories. [Music] Christian grew up here on Delwood Shore
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Lake where he fell in love with the water and dreamed of becoming a toeboat captain on the Mississippi River.
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He was on his way to being a really good man. And I think he would have made a good father, a good husband. It's tough
00:05:18
to talk about this. Yeah. I miss him every day. [Music] Have either of you honestly been able to
00:05:32
have any peace in your life during all of this since your son's death? No. No. We've we've kind of been at war since it
00:05:40
started. And you're at war now? Yes, sir. This isn't over. No. Well, it's not by a long shot.
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For now, there are two unanswered questions at the heart of this case. Why would a young man with so much to live
00:05:54
for take his own life? Or perhaps more importantly, did someone take Christian's life from him? Your son's
00:06:02
death, suicide or homicide? Homicide. It's definitely a homicide. But Lauderdale County District Attorney
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Cassie Coleman, who took over the case in 2018, says the evidence points in another direction. Well, at this point
00:06:20
there has been further investigation by multiple agencies that have determined it to be a
00:06:29
suicide. At issue are the events of February 26th, 2014. I had talked to Christian that morning.
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He was on the boat. You know, everything was fine. Christian was a few days into what's
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called a hitch, a 30-day work trip on the Mississippi River, where he was a first mate on a toeboat. Ray called him
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about getting tickets for a Rihanna concert. And he said, "Well, let me check the dates to see." He said, "I got
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to go. I'll call you back later. Love you." Got off the phone. Just hours later, they were told that
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Christian was found dead in his apartment, which he shared with his girlfriend, Whitley Goodman. And I was
00:07:11
like, "No, I don't I don't think so. Christian's a work. He's not even He's not even in town."
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A Meridian police detective broke the horrible news to them in person. And he said, "Well, this is his driver's
00:07:28
license." And when we saw his driver's license, it became a little bit more real.
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But suicide, nothing made sense to Ray and Todd. He's never had any kind of mental problems, any kind of depression.
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I'm proud of where I came. Professionally, at the age of 21, Christian's life couldn't have been
00:07:50
better. And on the personal side, he adored Whitley, who had dropped out of high school and wanted to become a hair
00:07:58
and makeup artist. They made each other happy. He was crazy about her. What is it, buddy? Christy Chatterton is
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Whitley's mother. She's very funny, very creative, and adventurous. She's a young
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woman that Christian Andrachio fell in love with. She is. Whitley even moved in with the
00:08:20
Andreakios. But after a few weeks, Ray says Whitley became jealous, defacing a picture of Christian and his
00:08:28
ex-girlfriend. I figured that she stabbed the faces out and then she brought the picture to me.
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What' you think, Todd? I thought she was a nut. The Andreakios asked Whitley to move
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out. And so, you know, his kind of attitude was, "Well, if she can't be here, then I
00:08:50
can't be here." Christian and Whitley moved into this apartment, which Christian paid for. I felt that she was
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using him for money. He was providing her with a place to stay with a car, clothes, makeup, whatever. Whitley's mom
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saw problems, too. Especially when Christian was on the toeboat. She would have to stay on the phone with him at
00:09:14
night so he could keep up with where she was and what she was doing. You mean for
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like an hour after an hour? Like hours and hours and hours every night. I didn't know how unhealthy the
00:09:28
relationship had become. But none of this seemed to add up to suicide for the Andreakios.
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So for him to take his life over somebody he'd been dating for 6 months, I don't think so. No.
00:09:43
On the night of Christian's death, Rey needed answers. She called her brother Chris Thompson and asked that he drive
00:09:51
over to the Meridian Police Department. That's where Christian's friend Dylan Swearing, who made that 911 call. What
00:09:59
was your first name? Dylan. Dylan was being questioned along with Whitley. And I told him to be sure that Whitley
00:10:08
didn't have Christian's phone. At first, Whitley denied having it, but eventually
00:10:14
turned it over to police. To me, that was a big red flag right off the bat. So, she had lied initially about not
00:10:22
knowing where Christian's phone was, right? It's very suspicious because why would you do that?
00:10:31
My personal opinion is that she did not want that phone to get in the hands of law enforcement because there were a lot
00:10:39
of sexually oriented photographs and messages in that phone. The Andreakio were stunned to learn the
00:10:48
investigation at the scene lasted only 45 minutes. And the job they did in this investigation, how would you describe
00:10:57
it? piss poor. But that same investigation did turn up something that the Andreakios hoped
00:11:09
would be a gamecher. Both Dylan and Whitley are checked for gunshot residue. GSR. What do they find? Gunshot residue
00:11:21
on both their hands. In both hands. And what does that suggest to you? They were in a room when the gun was
00:11:29
[Music] fired. Nobody wants to think that their child was at a point in their life where
00:11:49
they took their own life. I mean, that's just human nature. But we had someone in
00:11:54
the community who had killed himself and that it really bothered Christian and he
00:12:01
several times told me, you know, mom, if anybody ever says I killed myself, you come looking because I wouldn't do that.
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For Christian's family, that horrible night in 2014 started a search for answers that continues to this day. We
00:12:16
took the time to to have his funeral and then the very next week we started going
00:12:23
to the police department. From the beginning, the Andriakios had questions about that 911 call placed by
00:12:31
Christian's friend Dylan Swearingen around 4:45 p.m. 91. They wonder, is this a genuine call or
00:12:41
an elaborate act? Listen closely. All right. Who is it, sir? Christian. Okay. Just try not to touch anything.
00:12:49
Okay. That's Whitley wailing in the background. Whitley. Whitley. Is she up here? Come down here. They don't want
00:12:58
you to touch anything. Come on. If Come here, Whitley. Come here. It just sounds fake
00:13:06
to me. Please get somebody up there. I think he shot himself. He's already put it out there in
00:13:13
people's mind that it's a suicide. So, you know, now that's how it's going to be looked at. Did your son Dylan shoot
00:13:22
Christian? Absolutely not. Pam Swearing is Dylan's mother. On a very bad day, my son lost his best
00:13:33
friend. Dylan and Whitley declined to grant us an interview, but their mothers agreed to speak for the first time to 48
00:13:42
hours. While they wouldn't discuss specifics of the case, they're adamant their children did not commit any crime.
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It was just so um shocking and you know what she saw like she could never unsee it. I just want them to know that she
00:13:59
did not kill him. That night, Christy rushed down to the police station where Whitley had just
00:14:08
been questioned. I just hugged her and comforted her. Was she in tears? She was hysterical. Christian's death. Suicide
00:14:17
or homicide? 100%. It's suicide. Investigators found Christian's body in the upstairs bathroom, leaning face down
00:14:28
over a blood-filled tub with that gunshot wound to the right side of his head. 4 months after Christian's death,
00:14:36
Benny Dubose became Meridian's new chief of police and took on the case. A lot of
00:14:43
this stuff didn't make sense. Starting with Christian's gun. When the gun was sent to the crime lab,
00:14:50
they did not find any prints on the gun at all. Christian's prints should have been on the gun. The gun was clean,
00:14:59
wiped down. He says the bathroom was surprisingly clean, too. There should have been some blood splatter uh on this
00:15:08
side and uh on this side. There was no blood splatter. Suggesting what? that number one, the crime scene had been
00:15:16
tampered with. Probably, most likely, the blood splatter had been cleaned. Dubau says officers bungled the
00:15:23
investigation. Taking pictures on the crime scene with a dog on sale. They all were issued
00:15:29
cameras, and the pictures, needless to say, were terrible. District Attorney Cassie Coleman agrees.
00:15:37
She inherited the case in 2018. Would you use the word incompetent? Yes, without a doubt. Um, it lacked
00:15:48
competence. It lacked thoroughess. Dylan and Whitley were not even photographed.
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There's been a lot of questions about was there any blood on either one of them. The reality is we don't know. The
00:16:01
timeline that Dylan gives of the events don't really add up. Dylan told police Christian had called
00:16:11
him around 2 early that morning, urgently asking for a ride home from St. Rose, Louisiana. Apparently, Christian
00:16:20
had found out Whitley was cheating on him. He was coming home to kick her out of the apartment. You believe he was
00:16:28
going back to break up with her? Yes, sir. Dylan says he picked up Christian and
00:16:34
they drove back to the apartment. Almost immediately, Christian and Whitley began
00:16:39
arguing when Dylan says Christian suddenly took out a gun and put it to his own head. According to the report,
00:16:48
Christian threatened to shoot himself, telling Whitley to tell him that she loved him. Dylan uh ended up saying that
00:16:57
he took the weapon away from Christian, unloaded it, and hid it. But Whitley told detectives a different
00:17:05
story. When Whitley is asked, "Has Christian ever appeared suicidal?" She says, "No, I don't think so." There were
00:17:13
inconsistencies throughout her stories. According to police reports, Whitley told responders and friends that she
00:17:22
discovered Christian's body, but she told a detective at the station that it was Dylan who found him.
00:17:29
She claimed to be asleep on the sofa and a 45 caliber handgun is discharged and she slept through it. Is that
00:17:38
believable? No. No, not at all. You know your guns. How loud is a 45? That should
00:17:44
have been heard two to three apartments over. And remember, gunshot residue was present on both Dylan's and Whitley's
00:17:53
hands. While police have not publicly commented about the GSR on Dylan's hands, Whitley told investigators she
00:18:01
has an innocent explanation. Her response was, "Well, I'm going to have it on my hands because I was shooting
00:18:07
guns the night before." She said she'd been target practicing with friends, a claim one of those
00:18:14
friends said was true, but another said was false. But the Andreakios are questioning everything, including
00:18:22
something odd. Dylan did earlier that day. What are we seeing in this picture? Um
00:18:28
Dylan Swearing at the credit union. Who has an account at that bank? Christian. These photos were taken at 12:29 p.m.
00:18:39
around 4 hours before Dylan called 911. Dylan told investigators that Christian had given him his debit card with a
00:18:49
startling request. He says that Christian told him to withdraw all of his money, that he was giving him his
00:18:55
money. But there was one little problem. Dylan didn't have Christian's PIN number, so he left empty-handed.
00:19:04
Is that suspicious to you? Absolutely. He arrives back. He said that they um watched a couple of movies.
00:19:15
Dylan said Christian had calmed down, so he gave him his gun back. He says Whitley settled in for a nap. Dylan says
00:19:23
he left for another errand. And when he returned, 911, where's emergency? Man, was that a
00:19:30
suicide? Knowing what you know about this case, if I asked you, was this suicide or homicide? Where are you
00:19:37
leaning? Neither. How do you mean? I don't think that Mr. Andreakio killed himself on
00:19:46
purpose. And I don't think uh anybody else killed Mr. Andriyakio on purpose. Dose believes Christian may have once
00:19:56
again held his gun to his own head. This time upstairs in the bathroom. I believe
00:20:04
that Quitley may have reached for the gun and the gun discharged. I don't think there was a motive. I think it was
00:20:10
just an accident. The Andreakios aren't buying any of it. Could it have been an accident?
00:20:18
I mean, anything's possible, but uh I I don't believe it at all. In this situation, everything points to murder.
00:20:27
And then they whoever staged it to look like a suicide. That night, the coroner ruled the death
00:20:37
undetermined. After an autopsy, a forensic pathologist labeled it a suicide. And just like that, the
00:20:44
Meridian Police Department closed the case. And so then we had to do this, start this investigation on our own. So
00:20:53
they began hiring their own private investigators, eventually forming a small army of supporters and experts,
00:21:01
including a forensic pathologist named Dr. Jonathan Arden. It is my conclusion that the death of Christian Andriakio
00:21:11
was a homicide. [Music] We've just been really let down by the police and law enforcement. We had no idea what to do
00:21:33
or where to start. Rey and Todd Andriyakio began their search for justice by hiring their own
00:21:41
team of investigators, including this man. I've performed about 3,000 autopsies on my own. Former Washington
00:21:49
DC medical examiner Dr. Jonathan Arden, who examined the case file. From the beginning, my reaction was something is
00:21:58
wrong here. Starting with where investigators found Christian's handgun, it was pressed between his left thigh
00:22:06
and the front of the tub. It's significant to me that the gun is in the wrong place on the wrong side cuz he's
00:22:12
right-handed. He's right-handed. Entrance wound in his right temple. How does the gun end up on his left side
00:22:18
once the bullet goes through his brain? He's unconscious. He can't transfer the gun.
00:22:26
Crime scene photographs show that the bullet had struck the wall on the opposite side of the bathroom next to
00:22:32
the sink, but somehow the bullet ends up in the bathtub and he's leaning over the
00:22:39
bathtub. So, none of this lines up for him to have shot himself in the position where he was found. It simply makes no
00:22:48
sense. Clearly, somebody put him there. It's a stage scene. The coroner placed the time of death at
00:22:56
3:45, but Dr. Ardan believes Christian may have died earlier. He says pictures show Christian's body was in advanced
00:23:04
rigor mortise. Rigor mortise is the stiffening of the muscles that happens after death. The development of
00:23:12
wellformed rigor mortise tells me that he's been in that position unmoved undisturbed for at least several
00:23:20
hours which if accurate suggests that Christian may have already been dead when Dylan went to the credit union to
00:23:28
empty Christian's bank account. So yeah, I believe my son's dead and I believe he's trying to steal his money. The
00:23:36
evidence led Dr. for Ardan to reach a dramatic conclusion. Somebody else shot and killed him.
00:23:44
I don't see how you can argue with forensics. Science doesn't lie. People lie. Why would someone want your son
00:23:51
dead? Well, that's the answers, you know, that we would like. The scene was altered or
00:23:58
staged. And usually when you do that, you're hiding something. The family worked with a team of private
00:24:05
investigators, including Sheila Weisaki, to dig further. The Andreakios have had
00:24:11
to fight tooth and nail for the truth. The investigators recorded an interview with Dylan Swearing a few weeks after
00:24:20
Christian died. You are one of the only three people that were even there that day that he had this to say about his
00:24:27
visit to the credit union. That's the only thing I didn't understand, like why did he want me to have this money?
00:24:33
Dylan told them that Whitley and Christian were always fighting and that Christian didn't trust her, even sending
00:24:40
Dylan to spy on her. I was kind of like the babysitter. He always would ask me to check on her, see what she's doing.
00:24:48
And Dylan repeated that he and not Whitley discovered Christian's body. When I opened the door, he was hunched
00:24:56
over the bathtub. And I knew that I knew he wasn't alive just the way he was just
00:25:01
sitting there and like being an adult too. Whitley's mom Christy says the day Christian died wasn't the first time he
00:25:11
allegedly threatened suicide and that Whitley told her about an incident that happened about 2 months before his
00:25:19
death. He had gotten intoxicated and getting angry and heated and he put the gun to his
00:25:26
head and he even would put it to her head and he was asking her if she loved him.
00:25:33
But remember when police asked Whitley if Christian had ever appeared suicidal, she said she didn't think so. Ray and
00:25:41
Todd don't believe their son ever held a gun to his head. We don't think it happened. That does not sound like
00:25:48
Christian to you. Yeah. However, investigators found a misspelled message on Christian's phone
00:25:56
that was sent to Whitley the night before he died. If this doesn't work when I get to my apartment, I'm putting
00:26:03
my pistol in my mouth and I'm ending this. I'm ending this once and for all because Whitley, you're the closest I
00:26:11
have ever been to happiness. I don't trust any of the texts because they were in possession of his phone.
00:26:19
Don't forget Whitley had Christian's phone at the police station. Todd and Ray believe the message could have been
00:26:26
planted. District Attorney Cassie Coleman dismisses that theory. The phone was on the tugboat with Christian at the
00:26:33
time that those messages were sent. And so I do not know of any way that those messages could have been manipulated to
00:26:40
appear that they were coming from the boat if she was in Meridians. 3 years after Christian's death, Benny
00:26:48
Dubose, who had taken over as police chief, decided it was time to get fresh eyes to look at the case. He assigned
00:26:56
Captain Jay Arrington. Gave him the case. He worked his butt off. Captain Arrington, a 30-year
00:27:04
veteran detective of the Meridian PD, combed through the case file and came up with a conclusion that Christian's
00:27:11
family had long waited to hear. Homicide. Are you sure of that? Absolutely. And um do you believe that
00:27:20
Christian's body was moved at that scene? That somebody moved it after his death? I have no doubt.
00:27:29
Captain Arrington, like Dr. Ardan concluded that Christian had been dead for several hours before the 911 call
00:27:37
was made, allowing time for a cleanup. Death scene had obviously been altered from its original state.
00:27:47
Arrington wrote arrest warrants for Whitley and Dylan. The charge, manslaughter by culpable negligence,
00:27:54
which means unintentionally causing a death while acting with disregard for the person's safety. Were those warrants
00:28:02
ever served? No, sir. In February 2017, before Cassie Coleman took over, her predecessor decided to
00:28:12
hand off the case to the Mississippi State Attorney General's office. They wouldn't comment about it with 48 hours.
00:28:20
In October 2017, a Mississippi state prosecutor did present the case to a grand jury. But were you allowed to
00:28:30
present your investigative report at the grand jury? I wasn't allowed to be at the grand jury. It's the only one I've
00:28:36
ever had done that way in all my years. It's the only one. Without ever hearing from the detective
00:28:43
who calls this case a homicide, it's now up to the grand jury whether it will go
00:28:49
to trial. Do you believe in a court of law you could get a conviction? 100%. You were a member of the grand jury,
00:28:56
correct? Yes, sir. And what decision was made? [Music] The woman at the heart of this southern
00:29:18
mystery, Whitley Goodman, has never spoken publicly about the case until 48 hours came to town. Whitley started
00:29:26
talking when she agreed to meet our camera crew to get some video shots with her mom. Two weeks ago, it just came to
00:29:33
me like out of nowhere. She would not take questions, but she did read a poem. The title is Moist by Whitley Goodman.
00:29:43
The verses describe what she says is her tumultuous life after Christian's death.
00:29:49
I miss who I was, the person I once was allowed to be, before the anxiety, the pain, and the notoriety. Before your
00:29:57
name was used in vain as the main source of my pain. In Whitley's words, she is the victim. Oh, it has been such a war.
00:30:06
I guess it's me who we should hate. Uh, I'll be everyone's escape. But there has been no escape for the
00:30:14
Andrachio family, which suffered a devastating defeat in late 2017 when that grand jury returned their decision
00:30:22
to not indict Whitley and Dylan. From the jurors that I have spoken with, they did not believe there was sufficient
00:30:30
evidence to prove either of these people guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of either manslaughter or homicide.
00:30:38
The Andriakios were crushed. I feel like the Meridian Police Department, the Attorney General's office, and everybody
00:30:48
involved officially has let us down. They let somebody get away with murder. Whitley's mother sees the grand jury's
00:30:56
decision as just. She loved him dearly. The greatest tragedy for her is still losing him and finding him the way she
00:31:04
did that day. But the Andreakios were determined to keep their son's case alive. So they
00:31:10
took to social media, starting their Justice for Christian Facebook page. And in June 2019, a podcast
00:31:20
culpable started covering the case. His death was ruled a suicide. The actions of Whitley Goodman and Dylan Swearingen
00:31:29
were now being judged by a national audience. The podcast is exposing all the injustices that have happened during
00:31:37
this investigation. People from coast to coast became enraged and they acted on that rage. Among their targets, DA
00:31:46
Cassie Coleman. Have you received threats? Yes, sir. I have um received threats towards me, towards my family,
00:31:54
threats of physical violence. Take your time. There's a lot of tragedy and heartbreak
00:32:03
um in everybody's family. Do you sleep with a gun by your bedside? Yes, sir. It's that serious. Yes, sir.
00:32:11
In August 2020, the controversy grew even more intense. Right before 48 hours traveled to Mississippi to cover this
00:32:20
story, Captain Jay Arrington's investigative report from 2017 was made public for the first time.
00:32:29
I realized that this was things we had never heard. Arrington writes, "It's my thoughts it could be suicide, homicide,
00:32:37
or accidental with one of the three to be proved with facts. Until that is established that death should be
00:32:42
classified as a homicide." That's a heck of a sentence. When you read that, what did
00:32:49
you think? I'm shocked. We spoke to Cassie Coleman just days after the report was released. Mr.
00:32:58
Arrington's findings. This report, was it presented to the grand jury? Yes, I have had conversations with grand jurors
00:33:06
that were on the grand jury and I've had conversations with the investigators that were there presenting the facts and
00:33:13
they tell me that all of the reports from the Meridian Police Department were presented. But while we were reporting
00:33:20
in Mississippi, we found a grand juror who said that's not true. You were a member of the grand jury that was
00:33:27
looking into the Christian Andrachio case. Correct. Yes, sir. The grand juror agreed to speak if we agreed not to use
00:33:36
her name or show her face. I'm holding a report here that is dated January 11th,
00:33:43
2017, and it was written by a Captain J. Arrington. At the time, had you heard this man's name before? No, sir. I read
00:33:53
her all the major findings of Captain Arrington's report, none of which the juror said she knew. Does that bother
00:34:01
you? Does is that something that you find in any way disturbing? Yes, it's very disturbing because it seems that he
00:34:11
had a lot more information detailed in his report than what we were presented. I think it's a travesty.
00:34:21
I think my son deserves more than that. Now, with the release of Arrington's explosive report, the Andreakios were
00:34:30
finally beginning to think maybe they might have one last chance at justice for Christian. I think we need feds or
00:34:39
somebody to come in here and and clear this up. I don't trust anybody over in Meridian. I don't trust that DA we got
00:34:46
right now. I wouldn't want her anywhere near my son's case. [Music] [Music] in November 2020, like they do every
00:35:07
year, the Andreakio family and their friends celebrated Christian's life. Today is Christian's birthday, uh,
00:35:15
November 4th, and this is our seventh night to have Wishing Night. Heartfelt messages are written on these lanterns
00:35:23
and sent floating toward the heavens. Wishing night is kind of a way of just letting Christian know that we haven't
00:35:33
forgotten him. This peaceful evening stands in contrast to the war of words and deeds in this
00:35:42
emotional case fueled by social media that includes acts of cruelty. All of Christian's autopsy photos were placed
00:35:51
on social media and I think downloaded over 2,000 times. They harassed my daughter. I still believe someone set
00:35:59
her car on fire. We've been run off the road. You're kidding. Absolutely not. I bought a new car and within 3 weeks it
00:36:08
had bullet holes in it. In our interview with District Attorney Coleman, she said she would reconvene a
00:36:15
grand jury if it turned out that Captain Arrington's report had not been presented. I have said repeatedly and
00:36:23
stand by if that information was not presented then yes that is a situation that would open the door to allow the
00:36:31
case to be represented to the grand jury 3 months later. Hey Cassie it's Peter Vans with 48 hours. How are you? I told
00:36:39
Coleman that 48 hours learned from that grand juror that she was not informed of
00:36:44
Captain Arrington's 2017 report. a fact that may have changed her opinion on this case.
00:36:52
I think they should have done more investigating and brought it back to a grand jury again with more evidence,
00:36:58
especially that report to present it to another jury to decide if that it would be indicted or not. Coleman confirmed
00:37:07
that Arrington's report was not presented to the grand jury and said she is willing to reconvene a new grand
00:37:14
jury. She acknowledges the Andriakio family doesn't trust her to present the case. A request for the appointment of a
00:37:21
new prosecutor is pending in court. We're 100% confident that if the information is presented fairly that um
00:37:30
people will be indicted and then of course from there um there'll be a trial. Complicating matters further,
00:37:39
nearly three years after he finished his report, Captain Arrington was indicted in federal court, accused of using city
00:37:47
funds for his personal use. Arrington's attorney, J. Stewart Parish. The allegations are false. They arise
00:37:57
apparently from somebody either intentionally or maliciously misleading other folks.
00:38:07
Caught in the middle of all this are Dylan Swearingen and Whitley Goodman's families. Is there anything that you
00:38:14
would like to say to the Andrachio family? That we loved Christian. We grieve for him, too. And we grieve
00:38:22
for him. Whitley Goodman's attorney, Bradley Clanton, filed a $47 million lawsuit
00:38:29
against the Andriakio family, the podcast culpable, and others for defamation and emotional distress. You
00:38:38
can't torture people for the rest of their lives because they got accused of a crime. The civil suit also seeks an
00:38:46
injunction to shut down the Justice for Christian Facebook page and end their public accusations. You've had four to
00:38:55
five law enforcement agencies all the way up to the Mississippi Attorney General look at this and everyone has
00:39:02
reached the same conclusion that it's a suicide. I was so confused whenever I started
00:39:09
being blamed. I really was. you know, if they were so weak-minded that um that they took pride in, you know, hurting me
00:39:18
without even asking me or ever confirming, you know, what the truth is, that I don't want anything to do with
00:39:24
them. [Music] There's only one life destroyed, actually destroyed, and that's my son.
00:39:30
He's not here anymore. Today, Christian would have been 28. So, the case goes on.
00:39:42
[Music] I think that they wake up every morning and they have a choice of what they're
00:39:48
going to do with their day. You know, they get to go out and live and love and travel and get married if they want to
00:39:56
and have kids and um you know, Christian that's taken away from him. Doesn't he deserve justice? Don't
00:40:06
we deserve answers? [Music] 48 hours. To miss it would be a crime. Were you at all prepared for what
00:40:35
happened in this case? [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] 911. What's your emergency? My daughter
00:41:24
was murdered. He's been murdered. We absolutely were obsessed with this case. January 13th, 1995 was the last known
00:41:35
contact with Catherine. She's handcuffed. She's been to charge. It was always a big case within the
00:41:43
department because it was the biggest case unsolved. Nobody felt safe anywhere. Nobody knew if it was a neighbor. Nobody
00:41:53
knew if it was a police officer because of the handcuffs being used. My name is Tina Llewellyn. Aaron Llewellyn. I'm a
00:42:00
detective. I'm a detective at Bowmont Police Department. My sister's dead. My parents are over there. I have Who's
00:42:06
your sister? Catherine Edwards. I had no idea who Katherine Edwards was, but after I read decades of her
00:42:15
journals, 1986, 1989, '91, 94, I feel like I know her. Things are looking up in my life. I'm going to teach second
00:42:24
grade next year. I know I meant to do this. There were so many of her students that came forward to share the impact
00:42:32
she had on their lives 25 years later. They were always close to me in my heart. I'm Diana Co. and I was
00:42:43
friends with Catherine and her twin sister Allison since middle school. They were so sweet and so funny. They had a
00:42:52
cute laugh and everybody just loved them. This was not an easy case to crack. Every free moment I would try to work
00:43:03
this case while still maintaining my case load, staying up till midnight every night. It just was not going to
00:43:10
happen without the DNA. If there was no DNA in this case, if that evidence had not been properly maintained, we'd have
00:43:17
never got there. My name is Brandon Best, Sergeant, Texas Rangers, Company A Coalcase Team. The
00:43:25
technology has changed so much since 1995. By the time we got to Catherine Edwards, there were a lot more of these
00:43:33
resources that were available. We felt that genetic genealogy was going to be the answer to this case. So, you
00:43:40
would do the police work, you would do the genealogy work. Yes. Along with another genealogologist. My name is
00:43:46
Sherah Brousard Le Point. Tina had started a tree and we really think alike and work together to build this tree
00:43:55
with 7,49 people in it. Oh my gosh. I would call her no less than five times a day.
00:44:01
We were on the phone constantly. Tell her what I found. Just back and forth. I blew her phone up trying to get to the
00:44:08
bottom. We had to narrow down the different family members to find the direct lineage of our suspect.
00:44:18
Is this someone that knew her? Is this someone that was a stranger? She had some, you know, ex-boyfriends. There was
00:44:25
always the worry that it was a police officer, some criminal is not going to have a pair of Smith and Wesson
00:44:32
handcuffs. There was no sign of forced entry at the time. Right. Right. Did we believe it was someone she knew?
00:44:40
Yeah. [Music] [Music] The thing that really got me about the case was you don't expect to have this
00:45:41
beautiful young single school teacher be murdered in her own home. She was such a great person. Came
00:45:49
from such a great family. For Texas Ranger Brandon Best, almost everything about the Mary
00:45:57
Katherine Edwards case was different. It was an unusual crime scene. She's over the bathtub and she's obviously been
00:46:05
sexually assaulted and handcuffed behind her back. Were they police handcuffs? Handcuffs have always been a key piece
00:46:14
of this. January 14th, 1995. It was a Saturday. Catherine, as most people called her, didn't show up for a
00:46:25
family lunch, and she wasn't answering her phone. When her mother and father went to check on her, they had to see
00:46:32
what no parent ever should. What happened, ma'am? We came over here and found her. Please send her. We're
00:46:39
sending someone, ma'am. Is she Was she shot or what? Uh, we can't tell. Catherine was 31. My mom is the one that
00:46:48
told me. Diana Co remembers hearing the news and so she said, "Have you not heard about Catherine?" And I go, "My
00:46:59
Catherine?" She had been friends with Catherine and her twin sister Allison since middle school. I was new to the
00:47:06
area. So I knew no one and they just started talking to me, asked me my name and we were friends from that point
00:47:14
forward. The sisters, both school teachers, look so much alike, everyone had trouble telling them apart,
00:47:21
especially their young students. Miss Edwards was my second grade teacher. Helaniah Adams remembers being in her
00:47:28
classroom. Most of us grew up in a pretty tough environment and being around Miss Edwards was a joy.
00:47:39
Originally, they believed that she might have been drowned, but there wasn't enough fluid in her lungs. So, then it
00:47:45
kind of became a suffocation by compression. I just remember being told that our
00:47:53
teacher wouldn't make it to class that day, everyone just crying. Early investigators could not piece
00:48:03
together what happened, but those policegrade handcuffs were a big clue. It was almost talked about like a ghost
00:48:10
story around a campfire. Detective Aaron Llewellen. Maybe it was somebody in law
00:48:14
enforcement or somebody in security. Could it have been somebody that we knew? In the weeks after the murder,
00:48:21
police focused on tracing the serial numbers of the handcuffs, but came up empty. They also zeroed in on an old
00:48:29
boyfriend, David Perry. They focused on him early on because there was no forced
00:48:34
entry. But Perry was out of town that night. He gave a DNA sample and it was not a match. I wasn't there. It's not
00:48:43
me. The crime scene DNA stayed well preserved and the years dragged on and on until forensic science changed.
00:48:55
Genetic genealogy technology. Genetic genealogy. By 2018, there was a way to take the DNA left at a crime scene and
00:49:04
search for biological relatives. A program Jed Match scarfs up all the DNA from people who agree to share it with
00:49:11
law enforcement and upload it when they use sites like ancestry.com and 23 andMe. Ranger Bess approached me and he
00:49:19
asked if I thought we had a case that would fit the bill for that type of investigation. I said absolutely I know
00:49:23
the perfect case for this and it was a Katherine Edwards case. So in April 2020, the DNA from Katherine Edwards
00:49:29
crime scene went to Aram, a lab outside of Houston for testing. There they would
00:49:35
give us familial matches and from there we would start trying to build a family tree to get us closer to our suspect.
00:49:41
Yeah. But the number of names to pursue was overwhelming. When the family tree began
00:49:47
to grow beyond my computer screen, I started to get a little bit confused. And that's when Tina jumped on board.
00:49:52
Aaron's wife, Tina, an auto crimes detective, began using her off hours to help sort through it. The matches were
00:50:00
all Cinjun. Cinjun ancestry coming from the Louisiana area. Yes. Particularly Kaplan, Louisiana. So Tina went back to
00:50:09
Catherine's journals looking for clues to see if I could see a Cinjun name that jumped out to me. I did find a few
00:50:16
French names and they were quickly eliminated and nowhere in our tree. And as she was building out the branches,
00:50:23
one of the names on the family tree kept coming up. Le Point. As I'm researching the
00:50:29
matches and building my trees and you're researching other people's trees, I kept
00:50:35
noticing Sher Le Point had built that tree. And then I'm working some more. I do some more research. Well, Sher Le
00:50:42
Point built this tree. And I'm like, is she related to our suspect? I had no idea who she was. This is actually my
00:50:51
great-g grandandmother, Claudia. And when they called her, they found out Sherah had been building her family
00:50:57
tree. It was my family's DNA kits that I had uploaded to Jed Match. And then they
00:51:04
found out something that changed the course of the investigation. Sherah was known professionally as the gene hunter
00:51:11
and already skilled at working these cases. She'd identified one of the women buried along Interstate Highway 45 in
00:51:19
the Texas Killing Fields case and she agreed to lend her expertise. I told him that I was willing
00:51:26
to help, even if it meant taking a hard look at her own relatives. It was kind of scary because I'm putting my own
00:51:34
second cousins in this tree and I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, you know, could one of my
00:51:39
grandfather's sister's grandchildren have have done this? They lived here in Texas.
00:51:45
It was a complicated, multi-layered process using publicly available DNA, birth and death records, finding
00:51:53
parents, siblings, and cousins. As you build those trees, you look for information that is pertinent to the
00:52:01
case that you're working on. We had a tag for people who were in Bowmont. She was a teacher. As you build tree, you
00:52:08
look at people who are in education. Every one of these lines are built out. The tree grew up and down and sideways.
00:52:18
There were almost 7,500 names. That's a lot of hours, a lot of work, and a lot of people in a family
00:52:26
tree. All the while, Tina hardly slept, working through most nights, knowing there was a killer still out there.
00:52:36
Every day counted. Every day mattered. I needed to get it [Music] solved. Hunker down at their computers
00:53:04
day after day, constantly back and forth on the phone. Tina Llewellyn and genealogologist Cheryl La Point are
00:53:11
quickly becoming great partners. She was a team player from Jump. Never had met me. We talked so often that we became
00:53:20
friends. Best buds. Best buds. I don't know what else to say. And when they needed DNA, they turned to Tina's
00:53:26
husband, Aaron, and Texas Ranger Brandon Best. So from that point, I mean, Brandon Best would drive around Texas
00:53:32
and go talk to these people. Convincing someone to give their DNA up, to give a piece of themselves up to you in a
00:53:39
homicide investigation can be very difficult. When we would sense um anxiety in someone, Aaron would
00:53:47
immediately tell them, "Hey, who do you want to play you in the movie?" And they
00:53:52
would look at Aaron like he was crazy and say, "Um, what are you talking about? This guy's a Texas Ranger.
00:53:59
everything they do turns into a movie. Who do you want to play your role in this movie? That calmed them down every
00:54:06
time. And I of course do threw out there, hey, I've already got Brad Pitt, so you know, you can't you can't be Brad
00:54:11
cuz Brad's playing me. Was there ever a time though that somebody actually thought my uncle may actually be a
00:54:16
killer. Who knows? In every one of these cases that I've worked using DNA and genetic genealogy, you have at least one
00:54:23
person, usually two or three, that says, "You know what? I had that weird Uncle Joe." Once the uploads were compared to
00:54:29
the killer's DNA, if the amount of shared genetic material was low, they knew it was a dead end. There were times
00:54:37
when we would come across a name and like you get that the the butterflies in your stomach like, "Hey, maybe this is
00:54:43
our guy." And then it turns out it's not our guy. After almost 3 months of ups and downs and nearly non-stop work,
00:54:51
Sherah hit pay dirt. It was about 10:30 at night. She was working a family line very distantly related to her own. It
00:55:00
was a very common cinjun name, Tibido. I got to a couple who were in Bumont. I was able to see from uh records that
00:55:10
they had two sons. This was a major lead, a family in Catherine's town with two sons who went to Forest Park High,
00:55:19
the same school Catherine did at around the same time. I put the names in the tree and I
00:55:27
messaged Tina and I said, "There's a couple in Bowmont. I'm tired. I'm going to bed." And I turned my cell phone off
00:55:37
and I fell asleep on the sofa. And when I woke up the next morning, my phone had
00:55:42
just blown up. And it was you on the other end. Yes. What were you saying? This is them. We found them. Just didn't
00:55:48
know which one. Okay. It's either Michael Foreman or Clayton Foreman. What did you do to to figure that out?
00:55:56
The first name I ran was Clayton. And then when I came across his prior conviction for the sexual assault, the
00:56:02
hair on the back of my neck stood up. I'm like, "This is our guy." In 1981, a 19-year-old woman told police
00:56:09
that Clayton Foreman bound her hands and raped her. She had also gone to Forest Park High School, where Clayton was the
00:56:17
manager of the football team. Foreman was convicted but was given probation and paid a fine but he did not have to
00:56:25
give a DNA sample at that time. This was back in the early 80s. We didn't have sex offender registry. Uh no DNA
00:56:31
database. And then they found another connection. It went all the way back to Diana Co, Catherine's friend from middle
00:56:39
school. In high school, Diana fell madly in love. Her boyfriend had graduated three years ahead of her and they got
00:56:46
engaged. He was so kind. He had the most wonderful personality. And when she started planning her
00:56:56
wedding, she immediately turned to her old friends, Catherine and Allison. And they were one of the first ones I
00:57:03
thought of as a bridesmaid and and I asked them and they said yes. And the groom, the man Diana co-married
00:57:14
back in 1982. Now, he was their number one suspect, Clayton Foreman. She, in fact, did know him. Yes.
00:57:25
In hindsight, there were signs. When Diana found out about Clayton's legal troubles, the wedding was less than 3
00:57:32
months away. And the wedding invitations had already been mailed out. Mhm. And I said,
00:57:40
"Rape?" I said, "Oh, there's no way." But she never got any details and her fiance explained it away. He kept
00:57:50
telling me it it was a big misunderstanding. And so in my mind, I thought, well, he must be telling the
00:57:57
truth because if he got arrested, he's not in jail, but you didn't really believe it was rape, right? Diana's
00:58:05
sister Anne and her brother Scooter were not so sure. And neither were their parents who wanted her to call it off.
00:58:12
And I said, "Well, Dina, why don't you just wait?" And she didn't want to wait. She wanted to marry Clay. She was in
00:58:19
love with him. She's believing him and she's wanting to get married. Then then we have this support as a family. He was
00:58:28
like, "I'm so so sorry. I love you. I want us to be married. I want us to have a family." And so I was like, "Okay."
00:58:37
You know, so I went I went through with it. Diana and Clayton stayed married for
00:58:42
a little more than 11 years. They had a son. The relationship began to fray over
00:58:48
foreman lying about their finances. And it ended after he had an affair. And looking back, Diana can see that he had
00:58:56
an unhealthy fascination with police officers and the tools of their trade, like handcuffs. I remember that
00:59:05
he had ordered those handcuffs. Well, he had them hung over the rear view mirror.
00:59:12
And I I didn't think anything of it. When Catherine was killed, they were divorced. But Diana remembers calling
00:59:21
her ex-husband to talk about it. I think I was, you know, crying and I said, "Oh
00:59:26
my god." I said, "Somebody has murdered Catherine." And and he goes, "Oh, really?" just like no emotion. When we
00:59:38
hung the phone up, I can remember because I was like kind of squinting and kind of like going, "God, that's kind of
00:59:46
odd." With all the mounting evidence, Foreman needed to be found. He was 60 and no longer living in Bowmont. They
00:59:55
quickly tracked him to Reynoldsburg, Ohio. What was he doing there? as an Uber driver at the time. So, I was able
01:00:02
to send a lead uh to a field office up there and basically did what we call a trash run. You need to collect a piece
01:00:09
of DNA so that you can ensure that it's the the right guy. Right. Correct. Uh so
01:00:14
that's what they did. They surveiled his house and then went and snatched a bag of trash and sent it to me. Uh so I
01:00:20
brought that stuff to Houston to the DPS crime lab and from there they tested it. The
01:00:26
likelihood that the DNA belonged to Clayton Foreman was a big number, 461 septilion. It doesn't get better
01:00:36
than that, says Cheryl La Point. I mean, you can't fight those odds. You cannot fight those
01:00:42
off. And that was all they needed. I got a text from a a DPS lab technician and she said, "Go get his ass."
01:00:50
Aaron Llewellyn and Brandon Bess were about to hop a plane to Ohio. ready to face the man they felt sure had killed
01:00:58
Catherine. Mr. Foreman is And while they're doing that, Tina pays a visit to Diana Co.
01:01:07
Did they tell you we had they had DNA though? Tina told you that. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I just went, "Oh my god,
01:01:15
please don't tell me it was clay." I almost fell to the ground. I was just like, "Oh my god, I Oh god, I
01:01:24
can't believe he's done this." What do you think of sharing your DNA with law enforcement to help solve a
01:01:34
murder? Chat now with the 48 Hours team on Facebook and X. When Texas Ranger Brandon Best and
01:01:57
Detective Aaron Llewellyn arrive at the Franklin County Sheriff's Office to confront Clayton Foreman, they have a
01:02:04
cover story. It's about a lost item from one of Foreman's Uber rides. We go in under the uh under the ruse of
01:02:14
someone had left uh a purse in his car. So, he came in voluntarily to talk about
01:02:20
a purse that was in the car. It was April 29th, 2021, 26 years after Katherine Edwards
01:02:27
was murdered. And they are sure they are sitting in front of the man who murdered
01:02:33
her. And we're asking you to visit with us about a crime that we're investigating. Okay. Did he immediately
01:02:39
go, "Uhoh." No, he didn't. So, the crime that we're looking at is the murder of Mary Katherine Edwards, and she was
01:02:45
murdered in 1995. I guess he pretty quickly realized he wasn't there to give up a purse. He did.
01:02:53
And we found a picture of a wedding picture that she and her sister, uh, Al Allison were actually in your wedding,
01:03:02
right? And 1982. 82. Okay. Okay. Do you ever remember anyone ever coming to you about that crime? Were you aware of the
01:03:11
crime even? No. You didn't know the crime occurred? No, sir. Okay. We backed him into a bunch of hard corners. He
01:03:17
claimed that he didn't even know that she was dead. You didn't know that um Catherine Edwards was murdered? No, sir.
01:03:23
Did not. Do you remember them from school? Do you remember the girls from school?
01:03:28
Not really. They were a freshman when you were a senior. Yes, sir. Okay. So on Mary Edwards Mary Craft Cathwards um
01:03:37
didn't know her well. Did you ever visit with her at all? Um did you ever go in her house at all? Any house that she
01:03:45
ever lived in? No. Okay. You know, did you know where she lived? No. Had no idea. So and he's denying denying. He is
01:03:52
denying. You know, in these DNA cases when you whether you're going to get a confession or not, you want to build up
01:03:59
that background of, hey, did you know them? Number one, did y'all have much acquaintance with them or was it just
01:04:06
like a high school friend thing? How did you know them? I think they were bridesmaids for my wife's life. That's
01:04:12
right. Did you ever go on a date? Never dated. All the way up to Did you ever have sex
01:04:18
with this person? Never. obviously had sex with her. No. Never. Never. Did you go to college together? Did you do all
01:04:26
everything was a no. And we had those denials several times. And then so towards the end of the interview, we
01:04:31
asked him, "Well, if all those things are true, can you explain how your DNA ended up on her and on her her bed?
01:04:41
Do you understand DNA?" Mhm. And do you understand how DNA works? You understand
01:04:46
you're made of DNA, right? He's made of DNA. I'm made of DNA. I think that Foreman knew enough about DNA that he
01:04:54
thought he would have been caught already. He knew that he had never submitted his DNA. He had no clue that
01:05:01
he was going to be arrested that day. Play level with you right here and now. I want you to hear me real close. All
01:05:07
right, sir. That crime scene was processed really well and your DNA was on Catherine's bed and was inside
01:05:17
Catherine. Okay. I mean, I don't know how it got there, but you say it was there. There's
01:05:24
only one way for it to get there. Okay. Um, and that's by you putting it there. Okay. Do you understand that? Do you
01:05:31
understand the implications of that? The day that she died, the night that she died, your DNA is in her and your DNA is
01:05:41
on her bedspread. Now, I don't want you to say anything right this second. I want you
01:05:47
to think about the next words that come out of your mouth. I want you to think very hard about that.
01:05:53
Okay. There's two people that know that story. You're one of them and she's the other and she can't talk. Mhm. What I
01:06:02
asked you is now to be honest with us completely and tell us how did that happen?
01:06:11
I'm not going to say anything. I probably need an attorney now. You probably need one or you do need
01:06:21
one. Well, if you're saying I did that, then I probably need an attorney to talk
01:06:25
to you. Well, is that all we got then? We're going to let you walk out of that door just like we told you.
01:06:32
It's a grainy video, but you can probably see us grinning at each other. You have all your stuff that he thinks
01:06:38
he's walking out of here. He thinks he's fixing to leave here. So, as he got out down the hallway
01:06:44
headed towards the elevator, we stopped him and arrested him for the murder of Katherine Edwards.
01:06:50
And after all those years and all that work, Aaron Llewellyn and Brandon Best had one thing left they needed to do.
01:06:58
Uh, if you remember back when we were talking about the crime scene, she was handcuffed. So, we had talked to the
01:07:02
DA's office beforehand and got permission to use those handcuffs. The very handcuffs that bound Catherine the
01:07:09
night she died. How did it feel to put those handcuffs on her? Very good. It's a moment I'll never forget. You feel
01:07:16
like you got to do something for Catherine, you know, like physically got to do for her is take those cuffs that
01:07:23
bound her when she was murdered and put them back on the guy that murdered her. It's, you know, it may seem small to
01:07:29
some, but it was a really big deal to us and it felt good. Even though they'd had
01:07:33
their suspicions about him, the news that Clayton Foreman was arrested for the murder of Katherine Edwards was
01:07:41
still a shock for his ex-wife Diana Co and her siblings Ann Scooter. And she calls me and she says, "Clay
01:07:50
murdered Catherine." And I said, "Dude, what?" your brain doesn't because it it knows him as a person as a as as
01:08:00
somebody that you you know your brother-in-law or your brother. That was that was
01:08:07
that was hard. Yeah. I thought of Allison and I just I I just couldn't believe it.
01:08:25
My my thought immediately went to Allison and I just said, "Allison, oh my god, she's going to hate
01:08:33
me. [Music] [Music] Opening arguments began this morning. Orman is charged with capital murder.
01:08:55
Guilty or not guilt? Not guilty. March 12th, 2024. This is not going to be easy for a lot
01:09:03
of people cuz it's been a long time coming. Nearly 30 years after Katherine Edwards was found dead in her townhouse,
01:09:10
you got to remember this happened in 1995. Bumont prosecutor Patrick Canow and his
01:09:17
colleagues Mike Lair and Sunny Eckhart are ready for trial. You're going to get to learn a lot about DNA. You're going
01:09:23
to hear and they're extremely confident about their case against Clayton Foreman. Mr. Burbank, do you want to
01:09:29
make an opening statement at this time? No, your honor. Tom Burbank is defending
01:09:34
Foreman. He didn't really have anything and he knew it. Next witness. The prosecution calls Catherine's twin
01:09:40
sister Allison. We wanted to remind everyone this is about Catherine and her family. And that's the way we wanted to
01:09:48
start off with here at 60. Sitting before them was the spitting image of what could have been. That is a picture
01:09:56
of my sister Catherine reliving the day she lost Catherine. And then the next thing we know, you know, my mom and dad
01:10:03
drove up and told us what I mean that there were no words. She was dead. That was
01:10:10
all that mattered. I didn't know how, what, or anything. I didn't know what happened to her. It was just that she
01:10:16
was gone was all I knew. The pain and the loss still so palpable. Four years later, I had a daughter and her name is
01:10:25
Catherine. Katherine after my sister. and she never got to know her. That's the hardest
01:10:37
part. It was a lie. Helaniah Adams, Katherine Edwards student when she was seven and now 37, sat in the courtroom
01:10:46
nearly every day. It was times when they would show photos or when they showed the videos of her on the floor. It was
01:10:56
as if your heart was breaking all over again. You measure the proximity of matching
01:11:03
DNA. Detective Tina Lulellen and genealogologist Cheryl La Point along with other crime lab technicians walk
01:11:10
the jury through the process of the genealogy and the DNA match. Texas Ranger Bess and Detective
01:11:17
Aaron Llewellyn go through the final stages of the investigation. All carefully coordinated
01:11:23
to make the chain of evidence airtight. And on the last day, the prosecution calls all the women who had
01:11:30
been scarred by foremen and were alive to say so. He was your supervisor. That's correct. An old coworker. When I
01:11:39
ever I opened up the drawer, there was a pair of handcuffs. A former fiance who found pictures of young girls. He said
01:11:47
to me that he had them so that he could fantasize about taking their virginity. his ex-wife, Diana Co, who agreed to
01:11:57
testify. Did you think at the time you were in love with the defendant? Yes. When you saw him at trial, how hard was
01:12:03
that for you? That was very hard and uh it was very embarrassing to me and and I
01:12:11
do feel ashamed. And it was during the trial that Diana learned about what really happened to that 19-year-old
01:12:18
woman in the months before she and Foreman married. It was the most horrific thing that I could have ever
01:12:25
heard. I couldn't imagine what she went through and was so brave to get up and say what she said. She was the final
01:12:37
witness returning to the night her car got stuck and Foreman falsely claiming he was a policeman offered to help.
01:12:46
First, he he tied my hands back. He tied your hands behind your back? Yes. Did he
01:12:55
threaten to cut your throat if you didn't? Yes. This whole thing took a while, didn't it?
01:13:03
Yes, sir. I'm sorry. What happened then? He He took me home. Did he say something that was that you
01:13:12
felt was odd? Yes. He said three things. He said, "Stop crying. I'm sorry. I hope I didn't hurt
01:13:22
you." And there was another woman who did not testify, but went on the record, an
01:13:29
alleged victim of Foreman's violence, also a high school friend of Diana, who did not press charges. She told
01:13:36
investigators Foreman attacked her from behind and put a gun to her head. She had indicated back in ' 85 or ' 86 that
01:13:45
he had uh come to her apartment and knocked on the door and told her that he was having financial and marital
01:13:52
problems with Diana and he needed somebody to talk to and so she let him in. Prosecutors suspect Foreman used a
01:14:00
similar ruse the night he appeared at Katherine Edward's door. That's the way we thought he got to Catherine because
01:14:07
Katherine was very, very Christian, very given, very naive. And it's a wonderful
01:14:12
thing to be except when you're faced with Clayton Foreman. I've always wondered, did he say something about
01:14:20
me? Hey, it's Clay. And you know, I need to talk to you about something about Diana. It's always I've always wondered,
01:14:29
but I thought I'll never know. After seven days of prosecution testimony, the defense calls no
01:14:36
witnesses and attorney Burbank closes. You heard different things in reference to sex things and stuff like that. Okay.
01:14:44
Still doesn't make him a murderer. You may not like him because of what people say, but I submit to you they have not
01:14:53
proven murder beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution wraps up its case. And it's so easy to believe that evil
01:15:01
doesn't exist. It is here in this courtroom here today. These are things I wish I didn't know exist. And I'm sorry
01:15:07
I've had to talk to you about it, but I didn't bring us here. He did. Now it would be up to a
01:15:15
jury to decide Clayton Foreman's future. Patrick Canow wants them to remember Katherine Edwards didn't have
01:15:23
one. And I do pray that Mike and I still have done a good job for G and you. I hope we've done our job.
01:15:36
[Music] Is this verdict a unanimous one? Yes, sir. It takes less than an hour for the
01:16:01
jury to come back with a verdict. We and the jury find the defendant guilty. Clayton Foreman guilty and
01:16:08
sentenced to life for the murder of Katherine Edwards. It didn't take long cuz all the evidence
01:16:16
was there. Once it got into the DNA, more or less sealed it for him. Larry Delkam, juror number two, says he and
01:16:24
his fellow jurors had very little to talk about. He had no defense that it wasn't him. There's no denial there.
01:16:32
It felt like, hey, this thing does work. For Helaniah Adams, finally some justice
01:16:40
for a favorite teacher after all. I wanted to close that door. finally. She meant so much to
01:16:50
me. And when you heard those words, guilty, what was that like for you? We did it.
01:16:58
Was it Was it emotional? We did it. This whole case was emotional. For detectives
01:17:04
Tina and Aaron Llewellyn, genealogologist Cheryl La Point, and Ranger Brandon Best, it was the ending
01:17:10
they had all worked for, but it left lots of room for reflection. And I think the justice system has worked and he's
01:17:17
where he needs to be. But to say that that's honestly justice for Mary Catherine. It's frustrating to know that
01:17:26
he lived a life and she should have been able to to live a life and have children
01:17:31
and go on. That is frustrating. I never use the word closure. I never use the word justice. There's no justice. He got
01:17:40
to live 26 years. He got to get married. He got to have kids. She did not. There's no justice. I don't believe
01:17:47
there is such a thing as closure. Not on this earth. Beth always wanted a confession. They all wanted to know why.
01:17:55
70% of the time, you're not going to get that. And and 100% of the time, you're not going to get the whole story anyway.
01:18:05
We all wanted those answers and because he was spineless and didn't talk to us or give us any
01:18:13
information, we'll never know the details behind it. And everyone was still reeling, asking themselves how it
01:18:21
was that Clayton Foreman walked among them and no one saw his monstrous core all those years hiding in plain sight.
01:18:30
So when we identified him, I actually have mutual friends with him that were in shock. They could not believe it was
01:18:40
him because they knew he was such a nice guy. He had fooled so many people for so
01:18:47
long. I personally believe that there are more victims out there. We just hadn't found them yet. I find it hard to
01:18:53
believe that he has not assaulted other people. I I really feel with all my of my being I feel that there are
01:19:04
others. And how do you think he was able to conceal this darker side? That's the
01:19:10
part I cannot I can't I I don't understand it. I don't know how he could. Like I always say, it's like Dr.
01:19:19
Jackekal and Mr. Hyde. I have my own speculations. I think somebody I think some people are demonp possessed or or
01:19:26
demon influenced cuz that's pure evil. There's nothing else you can explain. That's just evil. I was married to a
01:19:32
monster is what I was married to and didn't know it and didn't know it. I think if it if he wouldn't have married
01:19:43
me, she'd still be alive. But in the wake of the trial, it was time to turn away from Foreman and
01:19:52
remember Katherine Edwards as she was and in her own words. Wow, I didn't realize the timing on this
01:20:00
one. December the 11th, 1994. She was murdered a month later. I have given my life to God and I will
01:20:10
follow his path for me. That gives me a feeling of great relief and peace. The human spirit is stronger than
01:20:19
anything that can happen to it. The vibrant, beloved school teacher in her prime gone far too soon. If you could
01:20:28
talk directly with Mary Katherine Edwards, what would you wish to tell her? Oh my gosh.
01:20:34
Um, I think I would say I love her and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry this happened to her. And um I was honored to be given
01:20:44
the privilege to help give answers. Very honored. Very honored. She was a very special person. She really was.
01:20:53
[Music] Unfortunately, it introduced me to real loss, to trauma, to fear, to grief, to
01:21:08
heartbreak, to all the feelings. A podcast I watched, they they would always ask aspiring lawyers, when did
01:21:15
you fall in love with law? And I think that's when I fell in love with law in the second grade when
01:21:24
Clayton Foreman took my light from me. Helenia is a student once again. She's studying for her MERS in criminal
01:21:34
justice and plans to apply to law school, a tribute to her teacher. [Music] [Music]
01:21:53
CBS next Saturday. A young mother is murdered. She got shot in the car. At first, this seemed like an openandsh
01:22:00
case, but finding the killer, Carlton Police Department, come out with your hands up was only the beginning. It was
01:22:06
only half the story. 48 Hours is all new CBS next Saturday, 10:9 central, and streaming on Paramount Plus.
01:22:14
[Music] If you're afraid of snakes, then everything you think you know about them
01:22:34
is wrong. My name is Ben Renick. I'm with Ben Ren Reptiles and this is my story.
01:22:45
Ben Renick is an artist when it comes to breeding snakes. And this is a project that I'm actually a really big fan of.
01:22:53
Are there some species of snakes in here that Ben used to work with? Yeah, actually right behind me there's a
01:22:58
reticulated python and Ben was actually very fond of his reticulated pythons. Ben Renick was a great
01:23:06
businessman. He was a young upand cominging rock star in the reptile world. My wife and I uh mainly run this
01:23:15
company. Lley Renick is a kind soul, a devoted mother, and I would say a genuinely
01:23:24
caring person. They were happy. You know, they were very busy. You know, they worked a
01:23:30
lot, and there was never any instance of anything ever being wrong. On June 8th of 2017, at about 5:30 in
01:23:42
the afternoon, Lindley Renick drives home to where her home and her and her husband's snake facility is. She goes
01:23:52
inside and she finds her husband, Ben Renick, lying face down in a pool of blood. I got a call from Lley. She was
01:24:01
hysterical, complete in panic. 911. What's the address? The emergency ground. And I went in to try and find Ben. And
01:24:15
when I found Ben and um and his body, I knew that uh it was too late. Oh my god. My brother's dead. What What
01:24:26
may have happened? He got killed by snake. I assumed it was a snake. for that 1850. The whole building full of snakes.
01:24:41
There's a snake every 4 in here. I don't know what to stop. Someone being killed
01:24:44
by a snake is not something that happens every day, especially in Missouri. Paramedics said there's a bike mark on
01:24:50
him. So, if there's a snake loose in here. Mhm. So, watch your Being the coroner walking into a death
01:24:57
scene with thousands of snakes jumping at the cages. It was just a crazy scene to be at. Do we have anybody we could
01:25:07
call to deal with an anaconda? All right. How could you have something big enough
01:25:16
to kill a person here? I still didn't know what to think. I squatted down next to the body.
01:25:23
There's significant damage. There's blood all around. When I saw that shell casing on the shelf just above his head,
01:25:30
I knew this was not from a snake. This was something much more heinous. I knew that this was a homicide at that time.
01:25:41
Who would want to kill Ben Renick? That was the question. We couldn't have imagined anything like that.
01:25:49
And it was a long wait until we got that answer. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] I don't care if it's a if it's a 5 in
01:26:45
long steak and somebody's trying to bite me, I'm going to I'm going to light it up on a hot Missouri's summer day. In
01:26:52
June 2017, Montgomery County Sheriff's deputies were called to a unique and potentially dangerous death scene.
01:27:03
A literal snake pit, a building with more than 3,000 exotic serpents. Something got him, so watch your The
01:27:12
first responders aren't sure if one of these snakes may have killed renowned breeder Ben Renick.
01:27:19
Who is Ben? That's been renew. Make sure there's no snakes around the victims. Yeah. Excuse me. Coroner Dave
01:27:26
Colbert had never seen anything like it. They're holding shotguns in hand. They were guns out. She could just feel the
01:27:33
anxiety amongst everyone there. No one knew where the killer could be coiled or lurking. But while examining Ben's body,
01:27:42
the coroner made that surprising discovery. Ben's body, lying face down, hid the
01:27:48
true cause of death. He hadn't been bitten by a giant snake. Ben had been shot eight
01:27:55
times, once at close range. This was something that was not just a random act. There's a snake. There's a snake, honey.
01:28:08
We're not doing anything. Nearby was Ben's wife, Lindley. she had discovered his body and she was visibly upset. Uh
01:28:16
what you would describe as somebody who is grieving and you know just lost a loved one.
01:28:26
Okay. Lindley had called Sam who rushed to the scene. Sam Lenny got hit before I
01:28:31
did so I don't know. Okay. I He was always shot in the back almost exclusively. I I don't think he saw it
01:28:38
coming at all. Ben had such a future ahead of him. You know, he was 29 years old. He was almost 30. A lot was
01:28:46
lost. Near this remote highway about 80 miles west of St. Louis once stood a worldrenowned snake breeding facility,
01:28:55
Renick Reptiles, where Ben Renick built his empire of serpents. Welcome to the basement of Renick
01:29:03
Reptiles. Uh we keep particular pythons, blood pythons, white pythons, green anacondas. Ben had uh his first snake at
01:29:10
a very young age and that became a somewhat of a passion for him became a uh a hobby did build into a business and
01:29:19
he was he was very good at what he did. At the time of the murder, Sam and Ben Renick were living in separate houses
01:29:26
with their families on this 70 acre spread. We lived out there together and raised our kids out there together. Then
01:29:34
we went fishing on the weekends and you know, we were close. Ben and Lyn Lee first met when they were teenagers. They
01:29:41
reconnected in 2011, says local attorney Katherine Burgerer. They hit it off right away and their relationship got
01:29:49
pretty serious pretty quickly. Um, I think they moved in together within the first year of dating. Lindley had a son
01:29:58
from a previous relationship. Sam says Ben became a second father to the child. In 2014, Ben and Lindley decided to tie
01:30:07
the knot. Uh they had a beautiful wedding and it was beautiful small family event and it was very special.
01:30:16
Soon they had a baby of their own, a growing family to go with their booming snake breeding business. Lindley found
01:30:24
Ben's passion interesting. She would work day and night helping Ben with the snakes, handling them, cleaning them,
01:30:32
sorting them. In 2016, they opened a second business, a Sentia Spa in Columbia, Missouri, a longtime dream of
01:30:41
Lindley, who once worked as a massage therapist. Hi, I'm Lindley. I'm the owner here. I know that when she started
01:30:48
her spa business, this is something that she had always wanted to do that she that empowered her quite a bit. By 2017,
01:30:57
Renick's snake business was wildly successful. He was shipping his snakes around the world, from the UK to Japan,
01:31:05
and traveling to reptile conventions across the United States. He was so successful, Ben realized that if he sold
01:31:13
a portion of Renick Reptiles, he could make some real money. Ben had planned on selling the majority
01:31:21
of his ball python collection for uh from my understanding was about $1.2 million. Things were going to be very
01:31:28
good for uh my brother and and Lenley. The couple had received their first payment of at least
01:31:37
$200,000, but then Ben was murdered. When you heard that he was dead, what did you think might have happened to
01:31:46
him? So, the first question that I asked was, uh, how many snakes were missing? A
01:31:51
facility like Ben's um, it unfortunately attracts a lot of bad people. bad people
01:31:58
that see these snakes not as these beautiful amazing creatures that they are, but see them as dollar signs. To
01:32:05
understand the world of snakes that Ben lived and worked in, we spoke with Ben's
01:32:10
friend Dave Kaufman, who introduced me to a reticulated python, a snake Ben was known for throughout the world because
01:32:18
of how he bred them in captivity. Ben loved these snakes because how can you not love these snakes? I mean,
01:32:26
really, when it comes down to it, they're big, they're beautiful, they're personable. She's going to go right over
01:32:32
your shoulder and try to go on the cage behind you. Let's see if I'm right. Oh, no. She's going to wrap around you. It's
01:32:38
my new scarf. There you go. Kaufman is also a snake breeder. Have you ever seen a blood python this big? And a
01:32:46
documentary filmmaker who also travels the world tracking rare and exotic reptiles for his YouTube channel. This
01:32:55
is a first. It is a remarkable sensation. It is. Investigators looked into the theory
01:33:03
that Ben's murder may have been a robbery gone bad, but ruled it out. No snakes were missing. Dave Colbert says
01:33:11
it made sense to look more carefully at those closest to Ben. We definitely didn't want to exclude anybody from
01:33:21
being a possible suspect. I didn't know if Sam was involved. Didn't know if Lindley was involved.
01:33:30
The day after his brother's murder, Sam Renick was brought in for questioning. Ask your help. I don't know where to
01:33:36
start. Okay. And they also brought in Lindley. Give me questions for us. What happened? Yeah.
01:33:49
What I mean, what do I do? All your friends and family. But soon enough, those same friends and family
01:33:59
would have reason to question everything they thought they knew about Lenley Reic. Lenley that we knew back then was
01:34:06
uh very sweet uh kind. However, there was there were other sides there that we didn't know.
01:34:29
[Music] With law enforcement discovering that Ben Renick had not been killed by a
01:34:36
snake and quickly ruling out the possibility of a robbery gone bad, Sam Renick had one major question. Who would
01:34:46
have want to been dead? A Missouri State Highway Patrol detective had the same question when he spoke with Ben's wife,
01:34:53
Lindley. Could you see anybody, you know, being upset with Ben to the point to where that may happen?
01:35:03
Both Lindley and Sam were cooperative in their initial interviews. Are you willing to submit to a shotgun or not
01:35:11
shotgun, a gunshot? Yeah. Anything you want, we got it. Okay. Sam says he understood why police would
01:35:18
first focus on them. And he told investigators he could never imagine Lindley being involved. I didn't think
01:35:26
that Lindley would have been capable of murder like that. Lindley also agreed to a gunshot residue
01:35:34
test. But in her one-on-one interview with a detective, Lindley made a startling claim, saying that Sam might
01:35:43
have had a motive to kill his brother. Was there any family issues like between Sam and Yeah.
01:35:54
At issue, Lley said, was Ben's plan to possibly sell the property where they all lived. She claimed Sam was upset
01:36:02
about it. Ben had inherited the property after another tragedy on the Renick family
01:36:09
farm just 5 years earlier. The suicide of Ben and Sam's father, Frank Renick. Ben found him. Uh he came and got me and
01:36:20
I we went there together and uh it was a tough day. Frank Renick shot himself in 2012 after being implicated
01:36:29
in a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme involving fraudulent stock certificates. There's a lot of people that lost a lot
01:36:37
of money, you know, due to my father. Unaware that Lindley was implicating him, Sam wondered whether Ben had been
01:36:44
killed in an act of revenge against their father. We were concerned, however, that, you know, someone could
01:36:51
have been upset enough to to have waited, done something like this. But that theory never took off. And Sam, who
01:37:00
had tested negative for gun residue on his hands, was ruled out after cooperating fully with investigators. I
01:37:08
provided them, you know, everything I had, my cell phone, the shirt off my back, uh, my alibi to where I was when
01:37:15
the murder happened. I I gave a polygraph. As highway patrol detectives continued
01:37:22
their investigation, the reptile community stepped up to help Ben's wife and children. We have a male fire
01:37:31
cinnamon. They held this online auction of donated snakes. She's a pretty girl, guys. Raising more than $40,000. Guys,
01:37:40
remember all this money is going to a great great great cause. You guys banded together and you got thousands of
01:37:46
dollars to Lindley to help her during this time of crime. Tens of th Yeah, we we raised tens of thousands of dollars
01:37:52
to help Lindley and the kids because you felt she was a victim. That's correct. But that supposed victim had a startling
01:38:00
confession when Lindley spoke with detectives again just 11 days after Ben's murder. So, have you been talking
01:38:07
to anyone or did you have a relationship? Eric, how did you guys? Lley admitted she had been unfaithful.
01:38:19
It was just just Did he think the same way? Yeah. Detectives checked that man's alibi and
01:38:29
cleared him of any suspicion. Investigators then interviewed Ashley Shaw, one of Lynley's employees, and a
01:38:38
close friend who she had confided in, which may have been a mistake. I mean, I'm sure that, you know, she was having
01:38:45
um an affair, a couple affairs, actually. Um Ashley, the manager at Asensia Spa, said that Lindley had also
01:38:52
been seeing another man named Brandon Blackwell, who she had met on a dating website. She said Lley was hooking up
01:39:00
with Brandon before Ben's murder. I know Brandon was like really a short time before that, I believe. Along with
01:39:08
Lynley's affairs, investigators had discovered Facebook messages between Ben and Lley. They revealed that Ben had
01:39:16
found out the spa was losing money and that Lley had lied to him about it. Ben sent a message to Lenley just hours
01:39:25
before he was murdered. No more lying. No more keeping things from me. No more not paying people and
01:39:34
thinking it's okay to pay later. 4 months after Ben's murder, Lenley was in front of cops again and
01:39:41
agreed to take a polygraph exam. Okay. How do you think you did, Lenley? Okay. Not exactly. Lindley's polygraph
01:39:51
test was a dismal failure. And so the results of the polygraph showed that you failed the the test. When I asked you,
01:40:00
did you shoot that man? You failed the test. Why? I just failed that, but I didn't
01:40:08
kill Ben. And but investigators suspected she did and may have had help from yet another man in her life. His
01:40:17
name is Michael Humphrey, an old ex-boyfriend and ex-con fresh out of prison on drug possession charges who
01:40:26
she texted and called numerous times, including on the day her husband was murdered. Coming in for a massage. The
01:40:34
thing is that that right there is very suspicious. It appeared Lley was close to breaking.
01:40:43
I don't know, but she continued to deny any involvement dozens of times. I didn't have anything to do with this.
01:40:55
There is so much circumstantial evidence against you in this case, it's mindboggling.
01:41:02
But Lley's gunshot residue test had come back negative with no witnesses, no murder
01:41:09
weapon found or direct evidence linking her to Ben's murder. I need to go get my children.
01:41:18
She left that interrogation room a free woman. The investigation went cold for nearly 3
01:41:29
years until unexpectedly someone came forward with everything Missouri Highway Patrol
01:41:36
investigators were looking for. [Music] The boas are long gone. Pythons packed up. Snakes in new homes. The reptilian
01:42:04
paradise turn crime scene now a vacant frozen field. Eight fatal shots unanswered.
01:42:17
I wasn't sure what to think. Unaware that investigators suspected Lynley, Ben Reick's brother, Sam was left more than
01:42:25
a little uneasy. It was very, very tough knowing um that someone's out there that
01:42:30
had essentially gotten away with murder. Um I was concerned my own safety. And without an arrest, serpent lovers
01:42:40
were also left rattled. So when the case went cold, we would all contact each other asking if anybody had
01:42:49
any information on what was going on. It was frustrating. It was frustrating to have all this time pass and not have a
01:42:56
culprit in custody. All Dave Kaufman knew for sure, humans do things other than what you expect. Snakes do not. And
01:43:05
the most unexpected behavior came from the human closest to Ben Renick, his widow, Lindley.
01:43:13
We want to be, you know, as understanding as possible. However, in time when she refused to talk to us or
01:43:20
allow us to talk to the kids or even uh receive my brother's belongings, we knew
01:43:27
something was wrong. In fact, just weeks after Ben's murder, with her spa business failing, Lindley
01:43:34
had sold the family property, closed up shop, and left town in a hurry. So like one day she was there and the
01:43:43
next day just left and then never came back. Today Beth Mayberry works at that same location. But back then she was
01:43:51
just one more true crime buff in Columbia, Missouri, riveted by a case without a conclusion. How much is this
01:44:00
Renick case talked about around here among It's a lot. And what do people say? What do they think? Um crazy. It's
01:44:07
crazy. Um, and people did start to wonder, maybe Lindley did it, maybe she had someone do this. Um, it did become a
01:44:15
question, a question without an answer until January 2020 when cops followed up on a jail house tip. We're
01:44:26
investigators. I'm here because you used to be dating Lenley. That's correct. Out of nowhere
01:44:34
comes this, you know what what I'm sure the investigators would would think as a
01:44:37
god a godsend. Journalist Dave McKenna of Defector Media was following the case that was
01:44:44
about to change fast for investigators. Your dad gave me a call today and said that you wanted to talk to us. Yeah.
01:44:53
Just lays out the whole story and it is very detailed. It was Brandon Blackwell, the man Lyn
01:45:00
Lee met online. the lover she was hooking up with the very week Ben was murdered. Her husband is freshly dead.
01:45:09
Body's still warm and she's found another warm body. Only a year and a half after Ben was killed, Blackwell and
01:45:16
Lindley had a child together. But Lindley alleged Blackwell had become threatening and they had broken up. Lley
01:45:23
got an order of protection and Blackwell was then charged with violating that order and stalking her. Charges he
01:45:31
denies. He was jammed up in jail and looking to make a deal. Concern is getting out of that cell. Now you're
01:45:38
coming to us when you're in a pickle. Right. [Music] Blackwell's tale begin weeks before Ben
01:45:46
Reic was shot dead when he says Lindley and spa employee Ashley Shaw whipped up a toxic shake for Ben. He was given a a
01:45:57
protein drink one night that was laced full of enormous amounts of narcotics and somehow lived through it. But the
01:46:05
plan was for that to be the last day of his life. a poison potion served to a husband by his wife. Brandon says Lley
01:46:15
confessed that and much more to him. My information is out of the horse's mouth.
01:46:20
Okay. So, when pills failed to kill, Brandon says Lley turned to one time boyfriend Michael Humphrey.
01:46:29
They drove to the farm. He had gloves. He had a firearm. The plan was for him to do it. Um they get there, he hands
01:46:38
her the gun and says he doesn't feel comfortable doing something she's got to take care
01:46:44
of. She walks in with the gun and just shoots him a bunch of times. And according to Blackwell, Lley's spa
01:46:52
employee, Ashley Shaw, was once again involved. Brandon Blackwell told the police that Ashley was in on it
01:47:01
intimately from from the start of the planning. The cold case was blown wide open. On January 16th, 2020, cops made
01:47:11
their moves. Lindley Renick and Michael Humphrey were arrested, charged with the
01:47:18
murder of Ben Renick. Loved ones and friends never saw it coming. What that moment was like for you? Disbelief. I
01:47:26
thought they got the wrong person. It It took us years to find out that Lley was
01:47:30
lying and that she was living in a double life. a sociopath. Uh, if you look that up, that's Linny's picture
01:47:36
will be sitting right there with it. But what motive could Lley have to murder the man she had built so much with? Some
01:47:44
say it was as coldblooded as a cobra. Money. Lindley stood to gain millions of dollars from the death of my
01:47:53
brother. Between the life insurance, the sale of the snakes, and the family farm
01:47:57
that she would inherit, it was significant. Still, investigators needed someone to flip.
01:48:04
They arrested Ashley and Fast let her know exactly what her future reality might look like. Now is a time you're
01:48:13
either on team Lenley or you're on team Missouri. And team Lenley's going to jail. They're going to prison for
01:48:19
first-degree murder. In exchange for leniency, Ashley turned on her one-time boss. Starting with the toxic
01:48:26
ingredients in Linley's venomous smoothie, Ashley would say that Lley told her Ben had abused her. She asked
01:48:35
if I could get any um thing, any prescription pills or anything in the amount that could um help her kill him.
01:48:44
And so I got her um per it was percoet, I'm pretty sure. And there was um I think 15 of them. According to Ashley,
01:48:53
after the shooting, Lindley claimed Michael Humphrey was the trigger man. But she says a few days later, Lindley
01:49:01
changed her story. Ashley now claimed that Lindley confessed to being the killer. And she said, "Oh, no. Once we
01:49:08
got there, I I was fine to do it." And so he handed me the gun and I did it. After the murder, she ever seemed
01:49:15
remorseful. She was sorry. Never. No. But as the case headed to trial, Lindley's legal team insists Michael
01:49:26
Humphrey was the real shooter. And they argue the state's case isn't based on truth, but on the fearful, coerced
01:49:34
testimony of Ashley Shaw. You're either on team Lenley or you're on team Missouri. And team Lenley is going to
01:49:40
jail. How would that impact somebody uh a woman like Ashley Shaw, do you think? Well, if Ashley Shaw ever wants to leave
01:49:46
that interview room for the rest of her life or for the indefinite future, she's
01:49:50
going to change her story. It was only after that threat that she changed her story and implicated Lonely
01:50:08
Renick. I don't know what happened with this. I don't know. It took a lot of time to just process,
01:50:18
you know, the lies that we were given by Lley. In late 2021, Sam Renick was bracing himself for the trials of his
01:50:26
brother's alleged killers. My biggest concern was keeping my composure during the whole time.
01:50:33
First up, Lynley's old boyfriend, Michael Humphrey. The prosecution said Lindley fired the gun and that Humphrey
01:50:41
was in on the plan. Prosecutors said he was in on the plotting. He provided the weapon. He helped knock off her husband.
01:50:52
But that murder weapon had not been recovered. Humphrey's defense argued that he had been lured to the snake farm
01:50:58
by Lindley, who claimed she wanted protection when asking Ben for a divorce. Lley had then surprised him and
01:51:07
pulled out a gun and shot her husband. They painted him as kind of a fawning suitor of this pretty blonde petite uh
01:51:17
snake salesman. The jury didn't believe Humphrey's story of being an innocent spectator. After deliberating for just 5
01:51:25
hours, jurors convicted him of firstdegree murder. Lley is a manipulator and I truly
01:51:34
believe that he was manipulated into where he is right now. Then facing life behind bars, Michael Humphrey, changed
01:51:43
his story. Lynley's trial attorneys, Tim Hesman and Katherine Burgerer. He decides to flip. Why does he do that?
01:51:51
He's convicted of first-degree murder after a jury trial. Uh he agrees to cooperate with the state in the hopes
01:51:57
that he might be able to parole out eventually. Humphrey now admits that he provided the gun that Lley used to shoot
01:52:06
her husband. and he tells them where they can find it, which is in his girlfriend's mother's attic. With the
01:52:12
murder weapon in hand, jurors in Linley's upcoming trial would have to answer one unresolved question. Who
01:52:20
pulled the trigger? This is case number 307, State versus Lenley Renick. The defendant, Lenley Renick, shot her
01:52:32
husband, Ben, eight times, killing him. We're going to come back and ask you to find her guilty of murder. The
01:52:38
prosecution painted Lley as coldblooded as one of her husband's snakes, a killer
01:52:43
who shot Ben and then went about her daily routine as if nothing had happened. She goes to the school, picks
01:52:52
up her two children, and drives them back to the place where she knows she is going to find their father's dead body
01:52:59
because she killed him. Lenley is being deceptive to Ben. The defense counters by saying that while Linley lied and
01:53:08
cheated on Ben, that doesn't make her a killer. She's not planning a murder, she's planning a divorce. They pointed
01:53:15
the finger at the man already convicted of murdering Ben Renick. Michael Humphrey took it upon himself, acting
01:53:22
completely independently, took Ben's life himself. But Lynley's employee and confidant, Ashley Shaw, now the
01:53:30
prosecution star witness, swears Michael Humphrey and Lindley were full partners
01:53:36
in crime. Michael is going to come to the spa and they were going to go together to her house, his business, um
01:53:44
to kill him at home or at at work. Shaw says after the murder, Lindley returned to the spa not for a massage, but to
01:53:53
wash away her sins. So Lley goes back there and she tells you to do what? Uh to give her a shower and she asked me to
01:54:02
scrub her body and her hands really well and she walked. Then Ashley tells the jurors what Lley told her about what
01:54:09
really happened at Renick Reptiles the day Ben was killed. She said that Michael got uh too nervous or didn't
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want to do it and so he handed her the gun and she actually killed him. She said that she put the gun to his back
01:54:22
and shot him several times. But the defense claims Ashley Shaw, just like Michael Humphrey, made up this story in
01:54:30
order to avoid life in prison. How are you able to be so calm when you're being questioned about murders that you
01:54:38
evidently claim to be involved in? How is that, Ashley? I don't know. There are so many aspects of Ashley Shaw's story
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that simply are not credible. And now, in a strange twist of judicial fate, the prosecution called an unlikely
01:54:56
key witness to the stand. Now, what am I holding up? That's That's my gun. That's
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what your gun is? Convicted murderer Michael Humphrey, who now swears he's telling the truth about how Lindley
01:55:09
killed her husband. I heard a shot come out, so I kind of ducked a little bit. I
01:55:14
looked down through there and she was at the end of the corridor, whatever you want to call it, posed up like this with
01:55:20
a gun. All right, thank you so much. Call your next witness. As the trial neared its end, the defense took a
01:55:29
chance on a star witness of their own. Lley began by detailing the troubled and sometimes violent marriage she claims
01:55:38
she was trying to escape. Lley. Uh, was there ever any other occasion where an argument with Ben turned physical? Yes.
01:55:47
Ben and I had been arguing at the house and he grabbed my arm and pushed me into
01:55:53
the refrigerator and was like, "I'm not done with this. We're going to finish it
01:55:57
now." Lley Renick never filed any police reports about the alleged physical abuse. Abusive is a word that I would
01:56:05
not use with Ben. He was very kind, very loving. Then came her chance to explain
01:56:11
why she asked Michael Humphrey to accompany her that fatal day. Hey, my marriage is falling apart. Will you
01:56:18
please just go with me just to make sure like, you know, I'm safe and I can get some stuff and go. Did you ask Michael
01:56:25
to help you kill your husband? No. Set the scene for me and the jury. I walked up right right behind
01:56:36
Michael and then Michael turned around and I saw a gun in his hands and then I heard shots ring out and I screamed and
01:56:47
I ran outside and then I heard more shots go off and everything just went numb and I
01:56:57
remember staring at the trees And then Michael running out of the facility and pushing me towards the
01:57:05
car and telling me, "We have to go, Lily. Get in the car. We have to go now." Claiming to be in shock, Lley admitted
01:57:14
she didn't tell the truth to investigators, but said that didn't add up to murder. And I
01:57:21
understand what that means and how this looks. I just I don't know how to fully express
01:57:31
that I I never wanted been dead. And I Miss Renick, you would not get home. The prosecution was ready to strike. You
01:57:40
were interviewed a bunch by a bunch of cops. Correct. Yes. And you lied to them every time. Yes. But deep down in that
01:57:48
heart of yours and in that brain of yours, you know who killed him. Correct. Yes.
01:57:54
Lynley's lies to cops included a terrible slander, accusing Sam Renick of killing his brother. And then anytime
01:58:03
the police asked me who I thought, I just told them, "Sam, I'm so sorry." Her trying to apologize to me on the
01:58:12
stand and garner sympathy with the jury didn't sit well with me. I'm sorry. There's no low too low for for that one.
01:58:22
Why should these jurors now believe you? You now want these 12 people to believe
01:58:27
it. Correct. Yes. I bet you do. While I regret that it took her 2 and 1/2 years to tell the
01:58:37
truth, I think she was relieved that the full story had finally been told and now
01:58:43
it was in the jury's hands. It had been almost five long years since Ben Renick was murdered. Exhausted, Sam
01:59:05
waited for a jury to weigh the evidence against his younger brother's bride. And
01:59:09
for the record, the And after 12 hours, the judge revealed the verdict. As to count one, we the jury find the
01:59:19
defendant Lenley Renick guilty of murder in the second degree. Verdict. As to count two, we the
01:59:28
jury find the defendant guilty of armed criminal action. In that moment, 33-year-old Lindley
01:59:37
Renick became a convicted killer. She really believed that she was going to get away with all this and she really
01:59:43
believed that she was going to get what she had planned after murdering my brother. The time still to be measured,
01:59:49
the length of her stay in a Missouri prison. You may now retire to consider punishment in this case.
01:59:59
For that, jurors gathered again for a separate sentencing hearing. While life was an option, the jury would settle on
02:00:07
something considerably less. Punishment for murder in the second degree at 13 years. Punishment for armed criminal
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action at 3 years. 13 + three for Ben Renick's life. Jurors never said why they chose such a
02:00:25
seemingly light punishment. But 6 weeks later, Sam would tell the court that the
02:00:31
sentence itself was an injustice. I beg the common person to watch the trial again and ask themselves if my brother's
02:00:38
life was worth only 16 years. 16 years is why I'm here today. He would recount that hideous day that
02:00:47
changed everything. The web of devastation travels far and spared no one. She put the children through this
02:00:54
experience. Here I am, covered in my brother's blood, attempting to comfort the children despite them asking me if
02:01:02
their daddy's dead. Sam's frustration at the sentence seemed to be shared by the
02:01:07
judge. But under Missouri law, he could not increase Lindley's punishment. You're awful lucky, ma'am. You're going
02:01:15
to get out in your 40s, and my 40s weren't too bad. I just hope you don't kill again. That's it.
02:01:26
[Music] Some reflected on the cast of bad characters, two convicted killers, and
02:01:35
Ashley Shaw granted immunity after plotting with Lindley twice. These people, these creeps and dark
02:01:42
characters, behaving very badly and behaving inhumanely towards humans. Ben Renick had created an Eden for serpent
02:01:51
lovers. Spotnos clown. But it was people, not a snake, that destroyed his paradise. You can reduce it to a story
02:01:59
of greed. It may be as simple as that. Greed that left in its bloody wake children and a brother determined to
02:02:07
carry on. The kids lost their father, my babies, and Ben's babies. And I'm here to take care of them for the rest of my
02:02:13
life. And around the world, wherever reptiles coil, slither, and slide, the loss of a
02:02:22
superstar is still felt. What happened to Ben was a tragedy that absolutely did not need to happen.
02:02:31
And yet, Ben Renick lives on in a way he would surely have loved, celebrated with
02:02:41
a new breed of snake named just for him, the Renick ghost. And what ghost is is a
02:02:48
slight reduction of blacks color. It gives the snake kind of a ghosty appearance to it. And that is such a
02:02:58
testament to what Ben meant to this community that he now has a mutation of a snake named after him. You miss your
02:03:06
friend. Every single expo that we would see each other at, there is a vacancy there that will never be filled again.
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[Music] 48 hours to miss it would be a crime. Were you at all prepared for what happened in this
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[Music] case? Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music]