00:00:00
[Music] Greenwood. I lived here half my life. Everyone knows everyone and their business. I have decided to set the
00:00:19
story straight. It's still surreal. I still think maybe I'll wake up. We were out for my birthday. I remember
00:00:32
I was just sitting at the bar and he sat down beside me and we just talked the rest of the night. You were there the
00:00:40
night she met Davis? I was. I was there that night. Did it seem like there was chemistry? Immediately. I would
00:00:46
immediately. Davis, he was so kind and I mean his heart was huge. We enjoyed each other so much.
00:00:56
It was an amazing six months. Meredith, her and Davis, they would go on away weekends a lot. I liked him.
00:01:06
His smile was so contagious and he's just such a sweet guy. I would have never expected this to happen ever.
00:01:14
Greenwood County 911. But it's a oneperson car wreck. Okay, it was a car wreck and somebody is hurt. I pull up
00:01:21
right beside Davis's car and he wasn't in his car. And that's when I noticed his airbags were out. So then also
00:01:29
that's when I kind of started looking at the car more and noticed that his front
00:01:32
tire was smashed in. And I remember looking and I noticed there's a body. Merit just started like screaming like,
00:01:39
"Who is it? Who is it?" And you look over. Mhm. What do you think you were looking at?
00:01:46
Davis. He was laying there and his head was rested on the slot like a pillow and
00:01:52
he was shirtless and his face was covered in blood. Was there anything about the scene that struck you as odd?
00:01:59
Davis being all the way on the other side of the road, the car being wrecked. Like none of that. I couldn't piece
00:02:06
anything together. Davis's car was way over there and his body was way down here and I was like, "Well, how did he
00:02:12
end up down here?" That's quite a distance. Yeah. To here. It is quite a distance. Originally, it came out as a
00:02:19
as a possible traffic accident and then once officers arrived on scene, they realized it was more than that. A lot of
00:02:26
people think it was an auto accident. Well, no, it wasn't. I do believe that this was an accident and not an
00:02:32
intentional killing. It was a murder. I was in shock. I was like, it doesn't even make sense. The photographs of the
00:02:38
crime scene, the text messages from Davis's phone, the ring videos, looking at everything in the totality of the
00:02:45
case was very powerful. How could any of this possibly happen? There's so many things missing from the story. And once
00:02:54
I kind of get that out there, then I can close the chapter. [Music] [Music] Romeo
00:03:44
974 and 1028 Whiskey Echo Victor 253. It was May 7th, 2023, just after 1:00 a.m.
00:03:54
when authorities responded to a reported road accident on a secluded deadend street in Greenwood, South Carolina.
00:04:02
Start roping this off, cuz this is going to be a crime scene. At the edge of the
00:04:06
nearby woods, they would find 46-year-old Davis McClendon's body. But what they saw at first was on the road
00:04:14
itself. A shirt, a shoe, and a mangled sedan. and there was significant damage to the fender. It was a BMW 5 Series
00:04:24
similar to this one. We're using to demonstrate the position of the vehicle that night. After first responders had
00:04:31
locked everything down, Greenwood County Sheriff's Office investigator Patrick Durkin arrived to photograph the scene.
00:04:40
The front driver side wheel was turned slightly kind of whatever had transpired at this deserted crossroads. Durkid's
00:04:48
job was to freeze it in time. First responders had thought Davis McClendon's injuries seemed consistent with having
00:04:55
been hit by a vehicle, though no other vehicle relating to the collision was there. They'd found Davis's body about
00:05:04
50 ft away from the BMW, leading them to suspect he'd been outside his car when he was hit. There was no rain or
00:05:12
anything that would potentially wash anything away. So, um, the main thing I focused on was the vehicle. Durkin says
00:05:20
he noticed some strange damage to the BMW. Usually when we would you would think of a normal fender bender, it
00:05:27
would just kind of be pressed into it. And this was torn back like a tuna can in a sense. It had made authorities
00:05:35
wonder if it was a hit and run or something more sinister. Those airbags were out and a phone was on the front
00:05:42
passenger seat. Durkin saw more debris in the road, but nothing particularly telling. The assumption was that he was
00:05:51
struck by a vehicle. Investigator Ronnie Pal from the Greenwood County Sheriff's Office says
00:05:58
authorities had learned more by speaking to two women at the scene, Meredith Haney and Megan McGovern, who'd called
00:06:05
911. Megan often babysat for Meredith's three children. They provided statements of what they
00:06:13
saw and what had occurred all night long. What did Meredith say? She pretty much gave a summary of the whole
00:06:19
backstory that she had been dating Davis. Meredith had told authorities that Davis
00:06:26
left a club they'd been in that night, calling her minutes later from the road, saying he was parked at the intersection
00:06:32
of Avid Road and Sawrass Place. when he'd put her on hold and then failed to come back on the line. Meredith was
00:06:40
worried and got a ride there from Megan. It was Megan, the babysitter, who'd gotten out of her car and was the first
00:06:48
to see Davis's body. That news must have been stunning. Yeah, it was devastating.
00:06:53
It was It was crushing. Davis McClendon was the ultimate people person without an enemy in the world. Say his friends
00:07:01
Chip Thunderbunk. Everybody loved Davis. He was just awesome. Zack Calhoun, he he
00:07:08
loved Big and Johnny Coats. And what Zach said, he was everyone's best friend. He was he loved everyone. But
00:07:16
none of them could remember Davis ever mentioning the specifics of his love life. Not until he met Meredith Haney.
00:07:24
He told me that he had met somebody and they had just kind of been chatting and um you know, enjoying getting to know
00:07:29
each other. You know, it seemed uh seemed like a good thing. seemed like a positive thing for sure.
00:07:36
Calhoun says Davis had gone through a divorce, but the end of his marriage hadn't done anything to weaken his
00:07:42
devotion as a father and a friend, even to the residents of the retirement home where he worked. He was the most
00:07:50
empathetic person I've ever met. More than four months before Davis died on the night of December 23rd,
00:08:00
2022, Meredith was at that club celebrating her 39th birthday with her best friends. She says they were wearing
00:08:09
their worst Christmas sweaters when the handsome stranger struck up a conversation. And I think he text on
00:08:16
Christmas day and then the next day and then the next and you just kept on talking
00:08:27
until meeting Davis. She says she'd been keeping her head down. Just about 6 months earlier, she had left her husband
00:08:34
of 10 years, a local auto body shop owner named Bud Aur. and she was struggling to balance parenting their
00:08:42
three kids and her job as a grammar school teacher. She says she knew getting involved with someone new would
00:08:49
not be easy. Was there any hesitancy about moving forward with this there? I mean there was. She says first Davis
00:08:58
wanted to make sure she had no intention of reconciling her marriage. He didn't want to be the reason that you know we
00:09:06
didn't get our family back together. So, we made sure from the get-go that that wasn't
00:09:13
going to be an issue and it just it just happened. They would have less than 6 months together.
00:09:26
Could you start to guess what may have happened, how it was hit? The night of Davis's death, at the site,
00:09:34
investigator Patrick Durkin noticed something beyond the strangeness of the crashed car and Davis's distance from
00:09:41
it. There was an oil slick in the road. It's still here. Uh just over a year later, it's it's still here. Uh but
00:09:49
there was a number of footprints and and some tire tracks that were leading away
00:09:55
from this oil stand. And what did that tell you when you saw it? Well, we knew that there was some type of impact to
00:10:02
the vehicle and then we knew there was uh oil and and tire marks that left from here.
00:10:08
It looked like evidence from the vehicle that hit Davis. You guys are looking around and you realize the oil
00:10:16
continues. You could see it was very obvious that there was tire marks that had had gone back down the road and kind
00:10:24
of turned around back where the tire tracks seemed to show a vehicle had turned around. Investigators had found
00:10:32
oil spatters on a street light post. It was about maybe this high. And from there there was a trail of oil that had
00:10:42
led down the road into the distance. It's breaks basically and a man are speaking. You know, we just have to do
00:10:51
the investigation and and see what evidence is there and see where it leads us to.
00:10:59
[Music] [Music] There was a trail uh that led from from the incident location. Investigator
00:11:20
Ronnie Pal says by the time authorities started following that oil trail from the crash site, they had a solid hunch
00:11:28
where it might lead. Davis McClendon's girlfriend, Meredith Haney, had told them she'd suspected where he had been
00:11:35
going when he left her at the bar that night to meet her aranged husband, Bud Acur. And it turns out the oily evidence
00:11:46
led right to Acriman's parents' house. Garage is open. He'd been living there since separating from Meredith about a
00:11:53
year earlier. Sheriff's office. Yes, sir. Authorities body cameras were rolling.
00:11:59
He kind of walked up um and almost was expecting us. Bud Acur and his father were both standing near the garage. Are
00:12:09
there some kids here? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Whose kids are they? Mine. Yours and who? Uh my wife. Okay.
00:12:18
Bud had spent the day with his three kids at a local festival. He and his wife Meredith had a custody arrangement
00:12:24
and it was his night with the kids. But in the driveway, authorities noticed his
00:12:29
white Ford F250 pickup. That's wild. With oil leaking from the undercarriage. They also noticed a crack in the grill
00:12:39
and other evidence that suggested the vehicle had hit someone. That's a palm mark.
00:12:46
Investigators turned to Bud. Do you have your ID on you? Uh, I do not. Okay, just
00:12:51
step over here for me. Authorities say Bud told them he would not answer questions without his lawyer
00:12:58
present. But from speaking with Meredith, they learned she had a contentious relationship with her
00:13:04
soon-to-be ex-husband and came to suspect a jealous Bud Acur had mowed Davis McClendon
00:13:11
down. Looking at the scene, they deduced Davis had been standing outside his BMW,
00:13:17
as shown in this CBS News animation. Based on their investigation, they suspect Bud's pickup
00:13:24
truck sideswiped the sedan and hit Davis, carrying him on the vehicle's grill and depositing his body across the
00:13:33
road. Meredith says Bud had been upset since reaching out to her days earlier when he found out she was dating Davis.
00:13:42
He text me. What did he text you? He said something about Meredith, how could you? What was your
00:13:52
reaction to that text? I think it was hurt. Like I was I felt bad because I just don't like to hurt
00:14:01
people's family. I don't like people to be hurt. So I felt bad. What had begun years earlier as a
00:14:09
promising marriage that would bear three kids had fallen apart. He was a good father. He was a really
00:14:17
good dad. Bud was from a prominent local family and he was a business owner, but
00:14:23
Meredith says his work had become stressful. I started to notice like some depression and things like that
00:14:31
um that I've never seen before. She says he started drinking a lot and the more he drank, she says the more
00:14:40
unpredictable he became. There was screaming, cursing. You felt threatened. Absolutely.
00:14:51
Meredith says he never laid a hand on her, but destroyed her sense of self. The house was never clean enough. There
00:14:59
were never enough groceries. It was so loud and vulgar. It was very degrading. Then she says she noticed her husband
00:15:12
was starting to become paranoid. She remembers being in her closet one day and noticing a strange
00:15:20
pillow. They had cut a hole in it. According to Meredith, there was a hidden camera inside
00:15:27
and then I started finding more of them. What other places did you find cameras?
00:15:32
Oh. Um, there was one hidden in our dresser that faced the bed. Found one in a bush in the front
00:15:42
yard. He put them in all the kids' rooms. She says that was the last straw. They separated in the spring of 2022.
00:15:54
I could breathe. I could be me again. Meredith says the separation seemed to help Bud, too. That he'd stopped
00:16:05
drinking and kept going to church with her and the kids. But by then, she decided it was too
00:16:12
late. When I was done, I was done. And starting again with someone new seemed like a distant dream.
00:16:22
Meredith says, "Until that night, Davis McClendon sauntered up and sat down in her life. They tried to keep things
00:16:30
low-key at first. Meredith says she never wanted to rub Bud's nose in it. So, what did you all
00:16:38
do? We would go out of town. But Meredith says they knew they couldn't sneak around forever. And it
00:16:47
had started seeming like her new relationship with Davis was a forever kind of thing.
00:16:53
We talked about sitting on the porch rocking chairs at 80 and it was just a different kind of
00:17:01
relationship. But after Bud found out, there were new complications. He accused you of cheating. Yeah. Even
00:17:10
though you were weeks away from your divorce, right? Meredith says Bud actually called Davis and asked him to
00:17:17
back off until the divorce was official. What was Davis's reaction to that request?
00:17:24
I think he agreed, but then we talked about it and decided that was just giving him
00:17:33
another little piece of control. And on the night Davis died, she says Bud seemed out of control.
00:17:44
Back at his parents' house, investigators now had a warrant and were finding more clues that Acriman had been
00:17:51
at the crash site. Oily footprints. Oily footprints. At about 6:30 a.m. on May 7th, 2023, Bud
00:18:03
Acur was arrested. He would be charged with the murder of Davis McClendon. We think there's enough evidence at the
00:18:11
scene to to prove of what occurred. So, by the end of the night, you already have someone in custody. Yes.
00:18:22
What's left to do? Well, that's just the beginning. Because it turns out Bud Aur did have a
00:18:30
story to tell. He says Davis was standing near the middle of a dark road approximately shown in this CBS News
00:18:39
animation. Bud says he didn't see Davis until it was too late, that hitting him had been an
00:18:46
accident. And Bud's team says they can prove it. [Music] Investigators are confident they could
00:19:09
prove Bud Acur's truck had hit and killed Davis McClendon, but they knew proving Acriman had done it on purpose
00:19:18
might be harder. Building a case starts from that night. And when investigators looked at that night, they learned Bud
00:19:26
Acur had been tracking Davis and Meredith's whereabouts for hours. He was trying to find them that night, and he
00:19:34
was was not happy about this whole situation. Using security video, phone records, and
00:19:40
even data from Bud's own truck, authorities built a timeline. They began with Meredith's phone, Lieutenant
00:19:48
Matthew Wac of the Greenwood County Sheriff's Office. We were able to extract the information such as the
00:19:55
calls and the texts. A slew of calls and text messages Bud had made to Meredith leading up to the collision. At 8:54
00:20:04
p.m., Bud texts Meredith, "Why do you hate me? I just don't understand." She doesn't respond to him.
00:20:14
She's out with Davis at a local restaurant. We went to dinner um at Break on the Lake.
00:20:22
You see Davis and Meredith, you having dinner and being interrupted by Bud's attempts
00:20:29
to reach her. What was the FaceTime conversation like? Where are you? Who are you with? Why are you doing this to
00:20:35
me? Did you tell him where you were? I feel like it at some point in the conversation either he could tell where
00:20:40
I was because of what's around me or I finally did tell him was one or the other. So, at that point, he knows that
00:20:47
you're out with Davis. While Meredith continued her date with Davis, security cameras catch Bud
00:20:57
Acriving at a popular Greenwood club called Key West. You can see Bud, you know, he's talking to people,
00:21:04
interacting, consuming alcohol. The video shows Bud spent about an hour and a half at Key West, then called Meredith
00:21:13
again. How did he sound on the phone? Intoxicated. What's an intoxicated Bud sound like?
00:21:21
Vulgar. Soon after midnight, Acriman had left Key West. About a half hour later,
00:21:26
cameras show Bud's truck circling in front of Break on the Lake, but by then, Meredith and Davis were no longer at the
00:21:34
restaurant. You can see his vehicle drive through the parking lot as if he's looking for him.
00:21:40
Lieutenant Womac says before long, investigators would learn just how far Bud Acur had gone that night to find
00:21:48
Meredith and Davis. Though Acriman himself wasn't talking, critical information would emerge from another
00:21:54
digital witness, his truck. It's a box about this big that goes into the backside of the dash.
00:22:02
WMAC says in some cars and trucks, the infotainment systems, as they're known, store detailed information about how the
00:22:10
vehicles are being driven, where in a similar model to Bud's Ford F250 pickup. So on Bud's vehicle, they were able to
00:22:20
pull a significant amount of information. This is just a little snippet. You're talking just in in a
00:22:29
24-hour time period, it's over 3,000 events. Events including snap measurements of speed, acceleration, and
00:22:38
brake pressure. Bud's onboard computer even pinged public Wi-Fi it passed. Investigators learned that Bud had
00:22:46
actually driven by Meredith's house and onto Davis McClendon Street that night. But while he was driving around looking
00:22:54
for them, ironically, they had moved to the Key West club, he had just left. When Davis decides to call Bud, he
00:23:05
walked out the back of the bar. It was 12:51 a.m. A few minutes passed and I went out there to check on him and he
00:23:14
was gone. Did he think he could bring the temperature down? Mhm. Records show Davis called her minutes later. And what
00:23:24
was that conversation? Where are you? And that's when he told me that he was going to meet Bud.
00:23:31
Wax says other infotainment system data show that at a bit past 1:00 in the morning, Davis and Bud had their fatal
00:23:40
encounter. And we can tell there was actually an event at 1:11 a.m. on May the 7th. They say Acriman hit the brakes
00:23:48
hard. We could narrow it down to t of seconds of when the collision occurred. And according to the computer, seconds
00:23:57
after the collision, Acriman's truck had stopped. At that point in time, Bud's opening the door. Uh he opens the door
00:24:04
before he shifts it to park. WAC thinks Acriman got out of his truck, which was probably leaking from the collision.
00:24:12
Remember that puddle of oil in the road near the victim. Then he closes the door. Then he gets back in and then it's
00:24:20
shifted to drive at that point in time. Then say authorities, Aur turns his truck around near the lamp post, roughly
00:24:29
as you see in this CBS News demonstration based on their investigation. He then drives away,
00:24:36
leaking an oil trail all the way to his parents' driveway. right here. His phone
00:24:42
becomes unavailable. The ignition turned off and it disconnected from his device.
00:24:46
What does that tell you? That's when he got home and got out. It started to paint a very clear picture.
00:24:53
But Acriman's attorney, Jack Swirling, paints a different picture. I don't think he intended to run Davis McClendon
00:25:00
over. There's no indication that he's aggressive or violent individual. Sheriff's Office. Yes, sir. nor says
00:25:07
swirling is there much to indicate his client was drunk that night. This can I get you to step with me over here for
00:25:13
me, please? None of the cops who arrested him reported he seemed tipsy. The only one who said he was intoxicated
00:25:19
was Meredith. Was he stalking them that night? I think he was trying to find out
00:25:23
confirm that they were together. He wanted to talk to her. According to Swirling, Meredith and Davis had
00:25:30
betrayed McClendon's promise to Bud to stand down until the Acriman's marriage was officially over. She couldn't wait
00:25:38
another month and she's out with this guy uh and she's cheating on her husband. They are still legally married.
00:25:46
South Carolina law calls out adultery. And Swirling says the night Davis died, he let Bud Acriman's repeated calls and
00:25:55
text messages to Meredith get under his skin. Davis got upset about it and that's what led to them having this
00:26:02
meeting. Bud was thought they were going to meet and talk. He says Bud had suggested an innocent and safe place for
00:26:10
it to happen. They were supposed to meet at Bud's parents house, which is about a
00:26:15
half a mile from that location. Swirling says Acriman's children were sleeping there that night, so attacking
00:26:22
Davis would have been the last thing on his client's mind. You wouldn't meet at your parents house if you were angry and
00:26:28
threatening ready to kill somebody. He says it was Davis who selected the deserted intersection as a new location.
00:26:37
And remember how Davis was found without his shirt on that night? Well, Swirling
00:26:41
says he believes Davis took it off to prepare for a confrontation. He was ready to fight. Swirling insists Bud
00:26:49
Acriman meant no harm that night. And Bud is about to tell that story to a jury. Your name? William Grey Acriman
00:26:58
Jr. Um I also go by Bud. Good morning everybody. We are on the record in the state versus
00:27:20
William Bud Acriman. Prosecutors are determined to prove it was no accident that Bud Acriman hit Davis McClendon the
00:27:29
night he died. So in September of 2024, Assistant Attorneys General John Conrad and John Meadows, he intentionally drove
00:27:39
his car into the body of Davis McClinton. start the case off with a bang. Bam. And that's what this case is
00:27:48
about. They'll argue Acriman couldn't stand the fact that his aranged wife was seeing someone and Bud was searching for
00:27:57
Meredith and Davis all over town. Bud Akerman was not going to let Davis McClendon be with Meredith.
00:28:06
That's your house right there. Yes, sir. Meers and Conrad lead with their strongest evidence. There are actually
00:28:12
timestamped videos from the neighbors doorbell cameras at the moment of the crash that killed Davis. It shows what
00:28:20
they say is Bud's Ford F250 driving through the frame. Seconds later on the video, what sounds like a
00:28:28
crash. And seconds after that, a series of muffled sounds. What did you hear? I heard somebody
00:28:38
yelling. Okay. Prosecutors argue it's Bud Acur's voice yelling at Davis McClendon after running him down.
00:28:47
What it sounded like to me was, "What do you want to talk about now?" Bud yelling unheavenly explosives. He uh
00:28:59
said to Davis as he was lying on the ground, "I think he was glad he was dead." But but Acriman's defense
00:29:06
attorney, Jack Swirling, argues the audio is too garbled to prove anything. I've listened to it several times now,
00:29:13
and well, I don't believe you could conclude 100% that that is actually what he said. The prosecutor then calls Megan
00:29:21
McGovern, the Acriman's babysitter and friend, to describe the moment she'd seen Davis's body through traumatized
00:29:29
teenaged eyes. He had blood coming out of his ears and his nose. And I couldn't I'm not exactly
00:29:38
sure if it was coming out of his mouth or not cuz I mean there's just blood everywhere from his nose and everything.
00:29:44
But their star witness is the woman at the center of both men's affection. Meredith Haney who testifies with the
00:29:51
date night security videos as a guide. Yes sir. Is that you? Yes sir. She tells the jury Bud Acriman called her when she
00:30:01
and Davis were at Break on the Lake. Did you think he was trying to find you? I did worry. Yes. And kept calling after
00:30:08
they got to Key West Club. Is that a call from the defendant, Bun Acriman? Yes, sir. Did you reject that call? Yes.
00:30:16
It's 18 seconds later, you get another call. Yes, sir. Well, what did you think about all these calls coming in? I was
00:30:22
getting very frustrated and angry and just it was getting obsessive. But it was getting scary. And she says by the
00:30:30
time Davis McClendon left her at the Key West Club after midnight. And is that Davis McClendon leaving the bar? Yes.
00:30:37
She was worried Bud might be volatile. So when Davis later called to tell her he was going to meet with Acriman, she
00:30:44
says she wanted to go check on the situation in person and makes clear to the jury that when she saw the scene,
00:30:52
she had little doubt who killed her boyfriend. I dove back into Meg's car because I thought that the only way that
00:31:00
Bud would have ever killed somebody would have been to shoot. Objection. Don't go. The judge sustains the
00:31:06
defense's objection, but Meredith continues. I was scared that he was still out there. Okay, Mr. Swirling, you
00:31:13
need crossexamination. All right, go for it. You step down, ma'am. Your honor, state call special agent
00:31:19
Brian Hudac. Digital forensics expert Brian Hudach tells the jury about data in the infotainment system of Acriman's
00:31:28
pickup, including some that show Bud was driving in exactly the right place in Greenwood at the intersection of Aid and
00:31:35
Saul at exactly the right time between 11131 and 11:32 to be implicated in the deadly collision.
00:31:46
He suggests they can even tell the moment of impact. There's something that causes this truck to de accelerate very
00:31:53
quickly. Correct. Correct. And Hudac says the evidence shows Acriman was going 25 mph.
00:32:01
And the amount of detail that that truck had on what Bud did that night is is simply breathtaking. Ford vehicles on
00:32:08
the completely on the wrong side of the road when it strikes the BMW. Collision reconstruction expert Corporal
00:32:14
Christopher Bratcher testifies the dents show Bud's speeding pickup sideswiped Davis's BMW sedan as shown in that CBS
00:32:23
News animation based on the prosecution's theory. They say Bud was aiming at Davis who was standing near
00:32:31
the driver's door when he was hit and that the truck kept going with Davis on the grill until he fell off where
00:32:38
authorities found him. But Jack Swirling argues much of the same evidence shows hitting Davis was an accident. We
00:32:46
maintain that Mr. Acriman did not act intentionally in this case. He says Bud Acriman had no idea Davis
00:32:55
was standing outside his car and calls auto forensics expert Jonathan Nelson to testify that given Acuran's speed in the
00:33:04
dark over a slope in the road and into the parked BMW's headlight beams, he wouldn't have seen Davis McClendon
00:33:11
standing in the road until at most 2 and 1/2 seconds before the collision. Or would a person have sufficient
00:33:18
opportunity to avoid impact? I think most people would have little to no opportunity to begin to try to avoid.
00:33:26
And Swirling says Davis wasn't standing right next to his car when he was hit, but further out towards the center of
00:33:33
the road, and that Acriman swerved to his left into the BMW to get around him, as shown in this CBS News animation
00:33:43
based on the defenses theory. He's trying to avoid hitting him. Wouldn't you swerve the other way?
00:33:51
why he didn't go right. I can't answer that. Swirling knows there may be only one person who can. Call a come around
00:34:00
to stand, please, sir. Acriman's attorney begins by trying to show the jury his client was Meredith's
00:34:07
long-suffering but devoted husband. Did you love her? Not very much. He admits he was angry at Meredith, but
00:34:17
says he only wanted to talk to her and agreed to meet Davis to talk to him, too.
00:34:24
Do you have any intention to hurt him? I deny. Acriman says he hadn't realized how fast he was going and that he was
00:34:32
only trying to pull up next to Davis to talk and didn't see McClendon standing in the road until the last moment.
00:34:41
What action did you take, if any, to avoid hitting the person? I jerked my truck as hard as I could to the left to
00:34:49
try to hit his car to stop the motion of my truck from going forward. But on cross-examination, he admits something
00:34:57
that undercuts his claims of innocence that night. He had never called 911. I panicked. He panicked.
00:35:07
Instead, he left the scene and drove to his parents' house and told them what had happened. But they never called
00:35:14
authorities either. I've seen so many people react in abnormal ways in all the cases I've handled and I've come to
00:35:22
expect those kind of things. In closings, prosecutor Meadows argues Acriman is a murderer with a truck as
00:35:31
his weapon. This might as well be a driveby shooting with a gun. Andy says the Ford pickup's infotainment
00:35:38
system proves it. This is Bud's frame. This is malice. This is intent. That the state has not proven that Mr.
00:35:52
Acrian acted with malice or with the intent. It's the highest possible bar. And the defense insists the state has
00:36:00
not proven its case. That Mr. Amen is entitled to a verdict of not guilty. This is judgment day. It's verdict day.
00:36:11
You never know what a juryy's going to do. You got 12 people making the decision. Have you reached a verdict in
00:36:16
this case? [Music] Ladies and gentlemen, it's my understanding that the uh jury has
00:36:41
reached a uh a verdict for the Acriman jury. 6 days of testimony and evidence boil down to a deliberation less than a
00:36:51
half hour long. State of South Carolina versus William Gaybud Acriman. Did you have a feeling
00:36:59
about what that verdict might be? Yeah, a quick verdict like that is not good. Not good.
00:37:06
We the jury unanimously find the defendant guilty. Sign Bud Acur is guilty of the murder of Davis McClendon.
00:37:15
It was the right verdict. I mean, I I thought it would be fast. Not that fast. Not just fast, but too fast to be
00:37:26
thought through, says Bud Acriman's attorney, Jack Swirling. I don't think the jury considered everything that was
00:37:34
presented to him. They didn't need a lot of time to stew over the evidence. The evidence was clear and obvious.
00:37:41
Damning evidence of what Bud Acur did, say Davis McClendon's friends. And equally damning evidence, they say, of
00:37:49
what Bud Acur never did. Our friend laid there in the road. They still can't wrap their head around why
00:37:59
nobody in the Acriman family ever called 911. Somebody should have done the right
00:38:05
thing. At sentencing right after the verdict, Davis McClendon's son demands accountability from the acrimans.
00:38:17
It is time for this spoiled evil individual and this spoiled evil family in Greenwood to finally gain some
00:38:25
repercussions for their actions. Thank you. A lot's been said about why we didn't
00:38:34
call 911. But Acriman's father tries to explain his own lack of action by saying he was
00:38:42
too disoriented to know what to do at that hour of the night when his son woke him with the
00:38:49
news. The judge's sentence is devastating to the defendant. Mr. Acman, if you please answer.
00:39:00
Sentence of the court is Mr. Aman, you'd be committed to the State Department corrections period of 45 years.
00:39:07
It looks like the end of the road for Bud Acur. I know that where he is is where he's supposed
00:39:16
to be, but it may allow for a new beginning for Meredith Haney. I was worried that if he only got 5 or 10 years that
00:39:27
I'd never get to start a new life because I'd be scared for when he got out. With their father unlikely to get
00:39:36
out of prison for decades, she's determined to spare her children from the impact of that horrible night. As a
00:39:44
single mom, she leans on friends and family. How are the kids doing? more. Looking back, she believes Bud Acur
00:39:56
really wanted to target her that night and that she's only alive because he found Davis McClendon first.
00:40:05
Davis saved my life. You really feel that way? Absolutely. If true, Meredith Haney owes
00:40:14
her life, however challenging, to the new man she had once hoped to share it with. How would you like Davis to be
00:40:24
remembered as a hero? For the way he treated people, for his empathy, for his heart. He was just a good person.
00:40:50
[Music] CBS next Saturday. A soldier suspected of killing his young wife. He's been
00:41:09
trained on how to kill. Goes on the run. He just disappeared off the face of the
00:41:12
map with his 17-year-old girlfriend. If he was willing to kill his own wife, there's no telling what kind of danger
00:41:18
Hannah Thompson would have been in. 48 Hours is all new CBS next Saturday, 10:9 central and streaming on Paramount Plus.
00:41:25
[Music] on November 25th, 2020. It was the day before Thanksgiving. I received a phone call
00:41:51
shortly after 4:00 from the Mount Morris police chief and he asked me kind of frantically, "Is anybody at my house?"
00:42:01
And I said, "My daughter Melissa, there is." And so, there's a fire and it's bad.
00:42:14
My sister Melissa, she was 9 months pregnant, about to have a baby in 2 days. What do you remember from November 25th,
00:42:24
2020? It was my 17th birthday. My birthday is November 25th. Me and my mom were at a store. We're picking out a
00:42:31
cake and we finally got home and my brother Carl frantically is calling my mom. Have you heard from Melissa? Have
00:42:37
you heard from Melissa? And we're like, no. Why? Carl said the neighbor called and he said the house is on
00:42:45
fire. So at that point my heart just sank because we were not sure if Melissa was home or
00:42:54
not. I just wanted them both to be okay. And all I could think was please just have one of them at
00:43:03
least one of them make it through the night. When everyone said they didn't know where she was and they couldn't
00:43:09
hear from her, I knew I knew. Just had that gut feeling that she was gone. For a huge tragedy like that to occur
00:43:18
the day before Thanksgiving on Julia's birthday, right before the baby was to be born, it was just so
00:43:27
much. When I arrived at the scene, I was told the victim was found laying on the
00:43:31
floor in front of the stove. Melissa Lamish was a 27-year-old EMT. We're trying to figure out why there's a fire
00:43:38
in the kitchen. We couldn't tell if it was intentional or accidental. There was all kinds of possibilities running
00:43:46
through our heads, but we we didn't know what happened to her. My daughter Melissa, she's very
00:43:54
thoughtful, and that's why she got into being a paramedic. She wanted to help people.
00:44:00
[Music] When Melissa first told me she was pregnant, she told me a couple things
00:44:07
about the dad. Matt Ployd, they on and off hung out for years and had a similar click of friends. Matt Plloy was a
00:44:14
firefighter paramedic. He was a good firefighter. Matt was somebody that was dependable on the fire scene. He was
00:44:19
just one of the guys. He was keeping a secret the fact that he fathered a baby in the hopes that the
00:44:28
child wouldn't be born. For Matt, he never had a child before. He didn't want to make it known to other people because
00:44:38
he just wanted to keep that part of his life private. Matthew Ploy was a person of interest on
00:44:45
day one simply because he was at the scene. Matthew Poy later told investigators that he was at the house
00:44:53
to see Melissa to talk about um the baby. [Music] He admitted he was there. He told them
00:45:02
everything that they would have needed to know about his presence there. Didn't have anything to
00:45:10
hide. They discussed their finances and then Matt left as she was making some lunch.
00:45:18
She talked about trying some food or something, but we I didn't stare at her. I believe from the very beginning he was
00:45:26
trying to set up a story that there was an accidental houseire that she had been
00:45:31
cooking something which would explain why her body was found in the kitchen. When you got the call about Matthew Ploy
00:45:40
possibly being involved in a murder, what did you think? uh denial that it wasn't one of our
00:45:47
people. It doesn't chime with what a firefighter is. We put fires out. We don't start
00:45:55
fires. We help people. We don't hurt [Music] people. It is unthinkable. [Music] [Music]
00:46:49
Before the fire that set Melissa Lamish's home ablaze on November 25th, 2020, the day had started with excited
00:46:58
anticipation. Melissa was due to give birth to a baby boy in just 2 days, and Thanksgiving was a day away. She was
00:47:07
going to have a nice private Thanksgiving with dad. So, I gave her a call the morning of the 25th and uh we
00:47:14
talked for about 2 and a half hours. Cassie Ball and her sister Melissa had lots to chat about. We talked a lot
00:47:21
about the future. We talked about what was going to come with the baby. The conversation ended because she looked
00:47:26
outside the window. She said, "You got to be kidding me." She's like, "He's freaking here again. I told him he's got
00:47:31
to stop doing this." At the door was 33-year-old Matthew Ploy, the expectant father of Melissa's
00:47:39
baby. She said, "I'll tell you what he wanted. I'll give you a call right back. Bye." Hung up. Did she ever call back?
00:47:45
No, my sister never called back. Melissa Lamish and Matthew Poy met and became friends seven years earlier while
00:47:56
each was in college. They maintained a casual relationship. The friendship says the Lamish family cooled off once
00:48:03
Melissa let Matthew know about the pregnancy. Melissa told her family he did not share her interest in becoming a
00:48:09
parent. He wanted her to get an abortion. She didn't want that. He blamed her, ghosted her. It did come to
00:48:16
upset Melissa because they were friends for so long. She thought he'd at least want to be involved a little bit. Yes.
00:48:22
Melissa thought that he would want something to do with the baby. To that point, she thought he was a pretty nice
00:48:28
guy. Then she saw a different side of him and that really upset her. Deanna and Gus were fully prepared to
00:48:36
help their daughter with whatever she needed for the baby. I had said, "If he doesn't want to be a part of the baby's
00:48:43
life, you know, don't push. The baby is your child." We told her, "Whatever you needed, I'll I'll help you financially."
00:48:50
She knew she had plenty of family support. Everything would have been fine. The Lamish family was a large one.
00:49:01
Melissa had four siblings. She was already an aunt and was known for following her own path. Melissa was
00:49:08
unapologetically herself and that is what she was. She's perfect mix of sugar and spice. Not too spicy, not too sugar.
00:49:14
It was just perfect. Melissa was strong. She was fierce. She was a go-getter. Melissa liked to
00:49:22
reinvent herself through hairstyles and careers. Most recently, the 27-year-old had been working as an EMT. Melissa kind
00:49:31
of fell into the line of work. She had an experience in college that took her to a emergency room and she really
00:49:39
appreciated how she was treated and she wanted to do the same for other people. You're proud? Yes. That was her job and
00:49:46
she took it seriously. As her due date neared, Melissa had to stop working. To make things easier, she
00:49:55
moved into her childhood home with her dad. Her parents had divorced several years earlier. Melissa grew increasingly
00:50:03
excited about becoming a mom, even though she and Matthew had little contact. Melissa would continue to send
00:50:10
him like sonograms or when things would happen cuz sometimes he would respond a little bit, but she didn't know really
00:50:18
where he stood exactly. But Melissa wanted her baby to have the option of having the mother and the father. So she
00:50:24
kept the communication with him. He often shut down. Matthew wasn't just shutting out Melissa. He kept the fact
00:50:33
he was going to be a father a secret, including from his co-workers and Chief Rob Schultz of the Carol Stream Fire
00:50:41
District, several counties away from Melissa's home. We're here 24 hours a day and it's a
00:50:49
just a normal uh course of being a firefighter that you talk about your family, your personal life, and what's
00:50:56
going on, good, bad, or indifferent. I knew Matt as a single guy that didn't have any kids.
00:51:03
Even Matthew's own parents did not know about the pregnancy until Melissa told them. Melissa wanted them to have the
00:51:12
opportunity to be part of their grandchild's life. How did Melissa say his parents responded to the news of a
00:51:17
grandson? Melissa said that his parents were very nice that um they said, "Let me know what you need. I'll help you any
00:51:25
way we can." How did Matthew find out that Melissa had told his parents they were having a baby? I believe that the
00:51:32
parents then approached him, but it was not long after that that she had said, "He's mad I told them." Because he had
00:51:41
kept it a secret. Yeah. Melissa celebrated the upcoming birth with family and friends at a baby
00:51:48
shower. She had let everyone know she was having a boy. It was a happy time until nearly 2 months later on that
00:51:56
fateful Thanksgiving eve. It was just all so surreal. While Melissa's family tried to process their
00:52:10
loss, investigators were hoping to provide them with answers about what had happened. The fire debris is everywhere.
00:52:21
Brian Kedar, then the lead detective at the Ogle County Sheriff's Office, headed
00:52:26
to the kitchen where Melissa had been found. Everything's covered in smoke. Ceilings, walls have fallen down and
00:52:34
everything's a mess. Kedar and other investigators also headed outside to an ambulance to view Melissa.
00:52:42
We've noticed that she didn't have a whole lot of fire damage to her. What does that say? That the fire didn't kill
00:52:49
her. [Music] We needed to identify the area of fire origin and what may have caused that
00:53:12
fire. Michael P, then a special agent with the Illinois State Fire Marshall's office, was trying to establish whether
00:53:19
the fire at Melissa Lamish's home was accidental or intentionally set. What are you looking for? Where the
00:53:27
greatest damage is at, where the fire patterns are at. We're looking at everything and everything in this
00:53:32
picture that may have something to do with the origin of the fire. Where do you think the fire started? Uh, I
00:53:37
believe the fire is over here. Actually, it's in these cabinets where these cabinets used to be
00:53:44
above the stove area. But when P examined the stove, thinking that perhaps cooking flames caused the
00:53:51
cabinets to catch fire, he saw that neither the oven nor the burners had been turned on.
00:53:58
All the controls are in the off position and there is no fire damage in the interior of this oven to show that this
00:54:05
was some type of cooking fire. Also did not find any electrical issues. So, we're starting to run out of accidental
00:54:14
causes and we could identify at least three very simple and easy ways to exit this resident.
00:54:23
Much of the house besides the kitchen remained accessible, so pool thought Melissa could have found a way out. It
00:54:31
was what I would call a survivable fire. This young lady was a paramedic. She's used to dealing with
00:54:38
emergencies. For her to totally lose her perspective and stand there and try and
00:54:43
fight that fire. When you start putting all these things together that you start coming up with,
00:54:50
okay, this makes no sense. While P was inspecting the house, investigators talked with the Lamish family. Keter
00:54:57
learned about the phone call that day between Melissa and Cassie that Melissa ended when Matthew Ploy arrived at the
00:55:04
house. We learned from the family that he was a fireman. Melissa's brother, Carl, told
00:55:12
investigators he had already spoken on the phone to Ploy, telling him he knew he had been at the house that day. Carl
00:55:19
also told Plloy about the fire and that someone had died, but not that it was Melissa. Investigators did that when
00:55:27
they asked Poy to come in for an interview that evening. Moses is [Music] deceased.
00:55:41
Okay. As you watched his interview, what did you think about his demeanor, his responses?
00:55:48
emotionless, very soft-spoken. Matthew said he went to talk to Melissa. He wanted to talk about money, about being
00:55:56
allowed at the hospital when she was set to be induced in 2 days, and that's why
00:56:00
he was there. In that interview, Matthew made a reference to a deadline when explaining his decision to go to the
00:56:07
house that day. And there's a deadline for for that. So, we were there's a deadline for a pregnancy.
00:56:17
There's a deadline. It was a phrase that investigators didn't quite know how to interpret. Was Matthew a suspect at that
00:56:25
point? No, he was not a suspect. What are the next steps in the investigation? We need to determine the cause of
00:56:31
death. We don't know if if Melissa had a medical episode or if somebody did something to her or if the carbon
00:56:38
monoxide from the fire killed her. We don't know. To get those answers, two autopsies
00:56:45
would be performed. One 2 days after Melissa's death and then another about 2 weeks later while lab work was
00:56:52
completed. The results, normal carbon monoxide levels and no soot was found in her system. What was found was evidence
00:57:00
of strangulation, including hemorrhages around her neck. Melissa, it was determined, had been murdered.
00:57:09
We have to plan a funeral. And while we were still waiting for things, it was nearly 3 weeks.
00:57:16
[Music] On December 14th, 2020, the Lamish family held a funeral for Melissa and
00:57:23
her unborn baby, who Melissa was going to name Barrett. We didn't get to kiss his forehead,
00:57:32
touch his cheek. The first time we got any kind of contact, they were in a casket. And the first time I touched his
00:57:45
hand, I just remember gasping just and I had decided I was going to keep holding
00:57:50
his hand. Something Melissa didn't get to do. Melissa's family was convinced that
00:57:59
Matthew Poy was responsible for their profound grief. That he killed Melissa simply because he did not want to become
00:58:07
a father. Matthew, investigators would learn, had been juggling multiple women in his life. I believe he did it because
00:58:16
he's selfish and it was going to change his life having a child. Melissa wasn't asking him for anything. No money,
00:58:24
nothing. He could have walked away. So why? I think it was his pride. He wanted to keep it a secret. With no other
00:58:33
suspects, and with Matthew admitting to being at Melissa's home that day, investigators were also circling in on
00:58:40
Clo, but were still gathering evidence. We had collected DNA evidence at the autopsy and we sent that to the crime
00:58:48
lab. We had gotten search warrants for phone records. We were in the process of getting that information back. They were
00:58:54
also waiting to get information back from Amazon about possible recordings from an Echo Dot that Keter had noticed
00:59:01
and was retrieved from the fire damaged kitchen. We were hoping it would record conversations or something from the day
00:59:09
between the two of them. That Amazon Echo Dot could turn this case around. Could have it could have recorded
00:59:15
Melissa screaming for help, yelling out his name. We didn't know what it would be.
00:59:33
[Music] I was contacted by our police chief to give him a call immediately that he had
00:59:46
something very important, sensitive to talk about. When Carol Stream Fire Chief Rob Schultz returned the call, he
00:59:53
couldn't believe what he was hearing. One of our firefighters was being investigated in a in a suspect in a
01:00:01
murder that occurred about 2 hours from our fire district's boundaries. It was now 9 months since Melissa
01:00:11
Lamish's death in a house fire that had sent shock waves through the community in Mount Morris, where her home was
01:00:18
located. But firefighters where Matthew PL worked in Carol Stream about 75 miles away were
01:00:25
unaware of the fire. Ploy had said nothing. When you heard the name Matthew Ploy in that call, what did you think? I
01:00:34
was, you know, there's no way this could be Matt. They have something wrong here.
01:00:40
But that disbelief started to change when Chief Schultz checked to see if Ployd worked the day of the fire and
01:00:46
learned he had called out sick. That knot in my stomach, like literally wanted to throw up.
01:00:54
The fire chief's sinking feeling only got worse when he learned that investigators believed Matthew killed
01:01:00
Melissa and their unborn child because he did not want to be a father and then set the house on fire in
01:01:08
hopes of destroying evidence. We had placed Matt immediately on paid administrative leave. When I
01:01:17
called Matt in to to tell him, I just said, "I'm being told that you're under investigation for a murder of your
01:01:25
estranged girlfriend and the baby that you're a father of." Did you ask him why he hadn't mentioned it? Didn't feel that
01:01:32
it was uh something that he wanted to talk about and he felt it was personal matter and didn't want to disclose it.
01:01:40
While on leave on August 28th, 2021, Matthew Plloy was called in again for questioning.
01:01:48
My name is Brian. I'm a lieutenant with the sheriff's office. Floyd willingly appeared without an attorney.
01:01:54
I want to contribute to be in the life of her child. Over the course of the 7hour interview, he explained to
01:02:05
investigators why he was at Melissa's the day of the fire. So, we talked about, you know, what I could pay her
01:02:13
and that we'd we just said we'd work it out later to um visiting. He said when he left that afternoon,
01:02:25
Melissa was talking about making lunch. She talked about trying to make some food or something, but I we I didn't
01:02:32
stay around. Most of the seven hours was filled with investigators asking questions and
01:02:38
Matthew Ploy saying very little. So, did you go there to kill her or did you just
01:02:44
go there to talk to her and something happened? We kept accusing him of things and he never said I didn't do it. He
01:02:51
never said you guys got the wrong person. He was just emotionless and he wouldn't communicate. Not once in 7
01:02:56
hours, not once did he get upset. Most people would have told us I'm done. But he just sat and listened to us. Had you
01:03:02
ever experienced an interview like that before? Never. It wasn't just the lack of communication that made Lieutenant
01:03:08
Ketar think Ploy was guilty, but on the rare times PL did talk, the unusual way he phrased things. Did you intend to
01:03:17
kill her? I had no intention of hurting Melissa. During that 7-hour interview, at one point, Matthew did say, "I had no
01:03:27
intentions of hurting Melissa." Did that make you do a double take? Yes, cuz in our opinion that means I hurt Melissa,
01:03:34
but I didn't intend to do it. But it was not an admission of guilt. So Kedar wanted to see if Plo would say anything
01:03:42
more and made an unusual request of Fire Chief Schultz. We asked Chief Schultz if
01:03:48
he would wear a listening device so that he would have a conversation with Matthew. We would be able to hear it and
01:03:53
record it and try to gain some evidence that way. When Brian asks this of me, I'm pretty taken back and initially I
01:04:02
had said no way and I did some thinking about it and called him back and said yes. You have a lot of responsibilities
01:04:09
as a fire chief, but I can't imagine you ever thought wearing a wire tap would be
01:04:14
one of them. No, I don't freely talk about it. It's not something that I'm proud of. It was something that needed
01:04:21
to be done in the hopes of helping the investigation. There's a grieving family out there that
01:04:27
that's looking for answers. And so on September 9th, 2021, Chief Schultz called Matthew Ploy
01:04:36
and asked him to come in to talk. And he agreed. He says, "I'd like to come talk to you." Matthew came in later
01:04:44
that day. The fire station was quickly cleared of all other personnel, and Brian Keter and other investigators
01:04:52
headed over. They were able to place a device that just recorded audio on a phone on fire chief Schultz's desk and
01:05:00
listened in from outside the fire station and from an adjoining office. How are you feeling? Nervous.
01:05:08
Very nervous. Bit scared. Chief Schultz tried to learn what happened to Melissa by appealing to Ploy
01:05:16
on a personal level. I'm trying to find answers and I'm trying to help you. Help
01:05:20
me. Help me walk through. asked me what what happened. But the nearly 2-hour conversation yielded very little info
01:05:28
from Ploy with him again barely speaking about the day Melissa died. I remember saying, "Fill in all the blanks for me."
01:05:35
And isn't it odd that no one here knows that you're going to be a father? Like that's that's something we celebrate
01:05:42
here. What did he say? Nothing. Uh head was down uh a lot of the conversation. Did he ever say, "I didn't kill Melissa
01:05:52
and my baby?" He did not. With none of the interviews resulting in a confession, there was still no arrest.
01:06:00
Something that exasperated the Lamish family. Oh, it was excruciating. And I mean, we were pestering the uh the
01:06:07
police constantly. [Music] There were several reasons for the delay. There was the wait for the fire
01:06:17
marshall's report which concluded that the fire cause is most likely incendiary in nature, possibly the result of a fire
01:06:24
being intentionally set in an effort to conceal a potential homicide. And getting information from Amazon on
01:06:32
whether Matthew's voice was recorded on that Echo Dot they retrieved from the kitchen took time. It did reveal voices,
01:06:40
but nothing that proved helpful for our case. It wasn't even on the day of the murder.
01:06:46
Investigators had also waited to obtain Matthew Clo's DNA until after the August
01:06:51
2021 interview, hoping he would first confess to killing Melissa. We got the results back saying that it
01:07:00
was his DNA under her fingernails. Turn around. Hands behind your back. On March
01:07:06
9th, 2022, after a year and a half of investigating Melissa Lamish's death with a police body cam rolling, Matthew
01:07:14
Poy was arrested on charges including murder, the intentional homicide of an unborn child and arson. Technically,
01:07:23
right now you are under arrest. The motive that the state painted was just an inaccurate portrayal of Matt. By
01:07:33
the time of Matthew Plo's arrest, he had hired attorney John Cup. They painted him to be this monster that at the drop
01:07:41
of a hat after a career of saving people decided to suddenly start killing people. You were indicted by the grand
01:07:47
jury. The evidence doesn't show that Matthew Py murdered Melissa Lamish or their unborn child.
01:07:54
[Music] [Music] Melissa Lamish was loved. This is not someone who had enemies lined up around
01:08:23
the block who wanted to see her deceased. rather there was one person and one person only and that was Matthew
01:08:29
Ploy. Yesterday 16 member panel assistant states attorneys Allison Huntley and Heather Cruz were part of the team
01:08:38
prosecuting Matthew Ploy. All signs pointed toward Matthew Ploy from the very beginning. What we wanted to
01:08:46
portray to the jury is that he was a a guy saving lives for his entire career. Defense attorneys John Cup and Liam
01:08:55
Dixon say their client was misunderstood and as a firefighter was a responsible person, not a murderer. Matt's plan was
01:09:03
to financially support her. He had offered her money before. His plan was to be there.
01:09:08
Matthew Poy pleaded not guilty to all charges. On March 18th, 2024, more than 3 years since Melissa's murder, his
01:09:18
trial began in Ogal County, Illinois. The prosecution argued that Ploy murdered Melissa and their unborn child
01:09:25
because he didn't want to be a father. He was keeping a secret the fact that he fathered a baby in the hopes that the
01:09:33
child wouldn't be born. The defense told the jury there's no evidence harmed Melissa and that he had gone to see her
01:09:41
that day just to talk. They discussed their finances. They discussed what would happen with the birth of the
01:09:48
child. And then Matt left as she was making some lunch. I believe from the very beginning he was trying to set up a
01:09:54
story that there was an accidental houseire that she had been cooking something. I believe that was how he
01:10:00
laid out the scene which would explain why her body was found in the kitchen. Prosecutors called fire investigator
01:10:10
Michael P to testify about his findings. He told the court that he found no evidence of an electrical or cooking
01:10:17
fire. And you start ruling these these various different things out. How certain are you that this fire was
01:10:24
intentionally set? I'm certain that it was intentionally set. No doubt. No doubt.
01:10:32
During cross-examination, the defense suggested that Michael P was unsure of his findings, citing language in his
01:10:39
report such as most likely and it is believed. You use the phrase it is believed because that's an uncertain
01:10:46
opinion. Correct. Just the way I described it, but that's an uncertain opinion. Correct. Not to me. P says he was just
01:10:55
using standard terms used during fire investigations. to review information. The state also called forensic
01:11:03
pathologist Dr. Amanda Humans who had performed one of the autopsies. There was no soot in her
01:11:10
airways and her measure of carbon monoxide in the blood was within normal limits. So she was deceased prior to the
01:11:18
fire. Dr. Humans testified that Melissa's body showed evidence of a violent struggle. The jury heard about
01:11:25
the hemorrhages around Melissa's neck, a specific type of broken blood vessels called peticial hemorrhages, which
01:11:31
according to Dr. Humans is a telltale sign of strangulation. This is the most particular hemorrhages
01:11:39
I've ever seen in a strangulation case. To sit through trial was beyond devastating.
01:11:46
Diana Lamish came to court every day. I had been prepped by the victim's advocate. things were going to be
01:11:53
gruesome. I was going to see a lot. Deanna says she always kept Melissa and her baby Barrett in her thoughts. She
01:12:01
was so strong willed and had such pride. That baby was going to be a strong guy.
01:12:06
Matthew Poty's parents also attended the trial. They've been by his side throughout this. Yes. Every court date.
01:12:15
One of the most important witnesses to testify was Melissa's sister, Cassie, talking about the day Melissa died and
01:12:23
that call which Cassie says was interrupted by Matthew Ploy. What was the last thing your sister said to you
01:12:29
during that phone call? Sorry. She said she'd make the conversation quick and you'd call me
01:12:38
right back. Did Melissa call you back? No. Jurors watched those recorded interviews
01:12:51
with investigators where Matthew Ployd admitted he was at the house. How long were you at the
01:12:58
house? Wasn't more than an hour, I don't think. Prosecutors wanted jurors to hear
01:13:03
that phrase PL used. And there's a deadline for for that. referring to the birth of his son as a
01:13:11
deadline. He said there's a deadline to these kinds of things. That was his deadline to
01:13:19
murder Melissa. If you think about it logically, Thursday is Thanksgiving and Friday is her due date, his deadline.
01:13:26
The only time to do this was Wednesday. So, he took off work and completed his goal. The prosecutors
01:13:35
found even more telling what Poy didn't say, especially during that 7-hour interview, 4 hours of which were played
01:13:43
for the jury. What is chilling is the fact that he never denied murdering Melissa, and he never denied killing her
01:13:51
baby boy. Not one time. It's chilling from a personal perspective, but that's also excellent evidence that the
01:13:59
defendant couldn't bring himself to lie about that fact. Over the course of multiple interviews for several hours,
01:14:05
he was calm and reserved. His silence, defense says, actually points to his innocence, not his guilt.
01:14:15
He had a right to remain silent, but the police are allowed to continue to poke and prod and try to get him confused,
01:14:22
and he just didn't buy into any of that. They say their client, when he did speak, was open with investigators. He
01:14:29
told them everything about his presence there. He didn't hide any of that. He just never admitted what they wanted him
01:14:36
to admit, which was that he killed Melissa and his child, which he didn't do. Do you think the fact that the fire
01:14:41
didn't burn down the whole house, does that play in Matthew's favor or not? I believe it does. If he's a firefighter
01:14:48
and he's trying to destroy evidence, you would think he would have the ability to
01:14:52
set a fire to complete that goal. But during three days of testimony, the state laid out the case that it could
01:15:01
have only been Matthew Ploy who set that fire to conceal evidence of the murder of Melissa and their unborn baby.
01:15:09
Something the defense was about to contest. The state's fire expert deemed that this was arson. He did. And we had
01:15:16
an expert who directly contradicted that. What do you think of Matthew Plet's interview with investigators? Join the
01:15:26
conversation on Facebook and [Music] [Music] X. The state's expert didn't do a fraction of what he should have done to
01:15:46
properly determine the cause of the fire. This should have been an undetermined fire. To try to poke holes
01:15:52
in the prosecution's case, the defense called only one witness, retired firefighter and independent inspector
01:16:00
John Knap. He was not at the scene of the fire, but did study reports and photos. I felt like there was probably
01:16:08
more information that could have been gathered that wasn't there. He disputed the prosecution's claim that Ploy set
01:16:14
the fire. He testified that the evidence collected doesn't prove that the fire was intentionally set by anyone. I
01:16:22
couldn't make that determination to whether or not what the cause of the fire should be other than
01:16:29
determined. When you're not there at the scene, you don't see what we've seen. Not always does every little tidbit end
01:16:38
up in a report. Michael P says the defense's expert is wrong and that his investigation was thorough. We're
01:16:46
looking for anything and everything that could have contributed to the origins of
01:16:50
this fire. They weren't there. He needed to be there when we were doing the examination.
01:16:55
Matthew Ploy waved his right to testify. During closing arguments, the defense accused investigators of having tunnel
01:17:03
vision. The complete lack of investigation of any other individual is shocking. I've never seen such a poorly
01:17:14
investigated case. They didn't follow up on any other leads that may have happened, any other boyfriends, any
01:17:19
other anybody else. If there had been another lead, investigators certainly would have followed it. There simply
01:17:25
wasn't. Prosecutors told the jury that the evidence was clear. Melissa Lamish was strangled to death by the only
01:17:33
person who had a motive to kill her, Matthew Ploy, who was juggling multiple women and didn't want to change his
01:17:40
lifestyle. He clearly did not want to be involved in this baby's life. This is someone who actively hid the fact that a
01:17:49
woman in the community was carrying his child. He clearly had made some choices about having multiple relationships, but
01:17:56
did not make him a killer. The trial lasted a week and after two hours of deliberation, the jury returned
01:18:04
with a verdict. We have a jury find the defendant Matthew Plo guilty of first-degree
01:18:11
murder. Guilty of all charges. I could hear people sobbing and gasping, but like I I couldn't even lift my head.
01:18:21
What did you feel? Shock. Shock. The verdict was a relief for Chief Robert Schultz. He says the case had
01:18:30
long weighed on him and everyone at the firehouse who had worked with Ployd. There was a huge closure here when Batt
01:18:38
was found guilty. You still have the family out there that lost a daughter or lost a
01:18:44
grandson. You're never going to change that. 3 months later on June 27th, 2024, Melissa's family and friends gathered at
01:18:54
the courthouse for sentencing. Matthew Poy listened with little reaction as victim impact
01:19:01
statements were read. We lost Melissa in the prime of her life. Melissa Barrett should still be alive and enjoying life
01:19:07
with her loving family. I shouldn't have spent Thanksgiving that year feeling like there was nothing to be thankful
01:19:14
for. This shouldn't be real. But it is real. It is all real because one man decided to make the decision
01:19:22
that Barrett and Melissa weren't needed or wanted. None of this had to happen. All he had to do was walk away.
01:19:34
Matthew Poy also addressed the court with this brief statement. say anything other than that I share the
01:19:42
pain and the loss of Mos. Do you believe him? Oh no, definitely not for him to say I and too have pain
01:19:53
and loss from Wilson Bear. Like that what a joke. The judge imposed the maximum sentence.
01:20:01
Mr. Ploy, you are sentenced to natural life imprisonment. Life behind bars. Matthew Ploy will likely die in
01:20:10
prison. Does that give you any sort of peace? No. I know it's the justice system and we
01:20:20
received our justice, but nothing about this is just. It's not fair. Nothing about this is fair. No punishment in the
01:20:28
world brings them back. I miss her personality. I think it's her sass. Melissa's sister, Julia Lynn, tries to
01:20:38
hold on to fond memories. Melissa was, I believe, still is the best person that I've ever met. What do you miss most
01:20:48
about your daughter? And there's a grandson you never got to meet. Where do you start? I mean, he was he was going to
01:20:54
come into my home. I was looking forward to raising him. Through all of their grief, the Lamish
01:21:00
family honors Melissa in many ways. We took toys to a local homeless shelter to honor Barrett. To honor
01:21:09
Barrett. We donated money to the nokill shelter that Melissa got her cat from. They also sponsored a tree at a local
01:21:20
arboritum that Melissa loved. Every year at the holidays, this tree will always be lit as part of their display. Shining
01:21:30
brightly like Melissa always did. was so strong. She was fierce. She was powerful. Nothing was going to stop her.
01:21:38
And she was always going to prove herself. And she'd do whatever it takes to do [Music]
01:21:52
it. You've probably heard of the NCIS from the hit TV series, but we're about to take you inside its real life work.
01:22:00
Listen to 48 hours NCIS early and adfree on the 48 hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.
01:22:08
As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. But did
01:22:14
you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story
01:22:20
behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. [Music] On the 13th of June
01:22:42
1993, I was on call as a team leader for our crime scene team. We had pagers then, no cell
01:22:51
phones, and u I got a page. who was a sergeant requesting our assistance on the 21st floor of this high-rise
01:23:00
apartment building. When you entered into the apartment, you didn't really see anything. You wouldn't have known that a
01:23:10
crime had occurred. When you went a little further and you ended up going into the
01:23:17
bedroom, it was catastrophic. When I proceeded to where the body was on the side of the bed, I looked down. I
01:23:27
could see the imprint in blood that looked like a left foot and a right foot. It's an actual bare foot. I mean,
01:23:38
wow. I turned the TV on. I saw the apartment. They said they just found a young woman in her early
01:23:48
30s. Oh my. I just got chills all over. Don't tell me that was Jean. I called the coroner's place and
01:24:02
he said, "Are you all alone? You better get somebody over there with you because
01:24:06
it it was your daughter." I couldn't believe it. Jeanie Childs had defensive wounds
01:24:17
on her hands when they found her. She had been stabbed at least 65 times, including after she had
01:24:25
died. Investigators took DNA evidence at the time. They could not find who it belonged to, and they hit a dead end at
01:24:32
some point and moved on. And it wasn't until 2015 that a cold case unit reopened the
01:24:38
case. A DNA profile was uploaded into myheritage.com and they found what could be a match.
01:24:49
Jerry Westerm is a husband, a father of three, a businessman. He attended church. He was a hockey dad. Police
01:24:57
expect Western to be charged with murder by noon tomorrow. Jerry doesn't have a demeanor of being a violent person. Have
01:25:07
you ever seen him lose his temper? No. I believe it's tip my toes. He's not capable. Okay. He didn't do it.
01:25:17
There was DNA from other individuals that did not belong to Jerry Westerm, but clearly belonged to a male source.
01:25:25
We know that there were experts that viewed multiple footprints, and they're in her blood. The person who put the
01:25:34
footprint down had to step in wet blood, and it had to be after she was stabbed or bleeding. How important did those
01:25:44
footprints in blood become in this case? Without the footprints, we would not be
01:25:50
sitting here. I think that the footprints defined the path of this case. [Music]
01:26:32
[Music] Minnesota crime scene investigators captured this footage when they got their first look inside a
01:26:54
high-rise apartment in Minneapolis. The camera is pointing uh west at this time.
01:27:00
According to police reports, at around 5:30 p.m. June 13th, 1993, a tenant reported water seeping
01:27:09
into their apartment. A building caretaker and a security guard were called to check it out and discovered
01:27:16
the water was coming from apartment 21104. They went into the apartment and they
01:27:23
found that the shower was still running and causing all this flooding next door.
01:27:29
After the shower was turned off, they came upon a gruesome scene in the bedroom. 35-year-old Jeanie Child's body
01:27:38
was partially under the bed. That's when police were called to investigate. This
01:27:43
was a violent, bloody crime scene. This is one of the bloodiest that I'd been to.
01:27:51
Retired forensic scientist Bart Epstein says carefully documenting that scene was crucial. Blood stains and blood
01:28:01
spatter tell a story. Yes, they sure can. In this case, we could establish that Genie Child's was hit in front of
01:28:09
the bathroom door. Epstein says Jeanie then moved into the bathroom. She was stabbed and slashed dozens of times. She
01:28:18
was down on the floor smearing blood along that area. While the shower had been turned off earlier, investigators
01:28:26
noticed water was still running from the sink faucet. There was a lot of activity
01:28:32
going on there. Why was the sink faucet still dripping? Was he trying to clean up? Jeanie apparently made it back to
01:28:39
her bedroom where her body was found. The blood wasn't confined to just the area where she was. The blood was on the
01:28:47
walls. The blood was on the comforter. The blood was on the floor. Julie Rendleman is a defense attorney
01:28:53
and legal consultant for 48 hours. It leads one to believe that a struggle happened, that she was fighting to save
01:29:02
her own life. The living room appeared untouched. A sitcom was still playing on the
01:29:09
TV. There was no evidence of forced entry. If Jeanie knew her killer, what could have prompted so much violence?
01:29:18
This to me seems like more rage. Someone who got upset at the time that the crime
01:29:24
was committed. Jeanie's mother, Betty Ecman, was watching television news when she saw a report about a woman who had
01:29:32
been murdered. I called my husband at work. I said, "I just seen them on the news taking a stretcher out of that
01:29:40
building that she lives in." Betty soon got the news no mother wants to hear. The victim was her eldest child.
01:29:50
I just wanted to hold her. I couldn't believe it. Betty says she spoke with her daughter
01:29:58
the day before her murder. Jeanie, she says, wasn't expecting visitors because she was nursing a
01:30:05
toothache. What were her plans that weekend? She went to the emergency room. She was in so much pain. Jeannie always
01:30:13
had problems with her teeth. And I don't know why. So I said, "Let me come and get you." No, Mom. Stop worrying about
01:30:21
me. Jeanie was dead by Sunday afternoon. As the crime investigation continued, authorities focused on gathering
01:30:31
evidence. A blue washcloth, a red t-shirt, a bath towel, blood scrapings from the sink along with a comforter
01:30:42
were collected and taken for DNA testing. Investigators observed dishes in the kitchen sink and a knife in the
01:30:51
drying rack. Did you take that knife in? Did not take that knife in. I looked at
01:30:56
it and there was no apparent blood on there. We never found any uh actual weapon there that uh was a murder
01:31:04
weapon. Investigators were able to identify some blood stains found in the stairwell near Jeanie's 21st floor
01:31:13
apartment. Did any of the blood belong to the victim? Genie child. Do you think it's
01:31:19
possible that the person who stabbed her was also cut? Well, it it could be. That's why we took the samples. Epsign
01:31:27
says whoever murdered Jeanie Childs unknowingly left behind something investigators rarely
01:31:34
encounter. Bloody bare footprints under the bedroom window. That drew my attention right away. And
01:31:42
right next to it, I see the socked foot of Jeie Childs. The footprints were dusted with black powder at the crime
01:31:50
scene. When you first saw these, you said because she's wearing socks, this these belong to the killer. That that
01:31:58
would be my feeling. That's most likely the perpetrator's footprint. If there's the friction ridge on the feet, like the
01:32:05
friction ridge on your fingers, there's potential to identify the person's foot that made them. That was very, very
01:32:14
significant. I knew that God was going to make sure that I was going to know what happened.
01:32:28
[Music] Everyone said she looked like me. These are pretty [Music] precious. Very few pictures I have of us
01:32:46
together. Cindy Blummer remembers the deep loss she felt after the murder of her big
01:32:53
sister, Jeanie. A lot of sadness when you wanted to pick up the phone and call your sister. I needed my sister. I
01:33:00
wanted to talk to her. Wondering what actually took place. Who did this? Although her sister was 12 years older,
01:33:09
Jeanie's playful spirit made an impression on Cindy growing up. Lo Richie was one of her favorite. And as
01:33:17
soon as she would hear him play, I mean, her fingers would start snapping and she
01:33:21
would dance around. But those good times were few and far between. Betty Eggman says she first
01:33:29
noticed a change in her eldest daughter when she was a pre-teen. She kind of lost her way when she was
01:33:39
probably around 12, 13. Betty says it wasn't until decades later that Jeanie claimed she had been abused by a male
01:33:47
relative. Jeanie started running away from home. I took my life in my own hands many a times to track her down. I
01:33:57
could have been killed, but I had my great Dne and a gun. Would you sometimes find her? Oh, yeah. When she would come
01:34:06
home, she was like a cat on a hot tin roof. She was so antsy she couldn't stay very
01:34:13
long. [Music] As the time passed, she feared her daughter was using drugs and soon
01:34:22
learned how Jeanie was making ends meet. And what did your daughter do? Prostitution. I just hoped and prayed
01:34:32
that she would stop. At one point, it seemed she settled down long enough to get married, but her
01:34:41
family says it didn't last long. Soon after, she married again to a man with children, and Jeanie became a stepmom.
01:34:50
And they depended on her. She was the only mother they really knew. Even when Jeanie split with their father, she
01:34:58
remained in the children's lives. They needed anything, they knew how to get a hold of her. She was really good that
01:35:04
way. At the time of her murder, she was living with a man named Arthur Gray at that apartment
01:35:14
complex. After Jeanie's murder, he became a person of interest. Investigators immediately looked at uh
01:35:23
whether Arthur Gray was involved in the murder. Retired FBI agent Chris Boers would
01:35:29
later join the investigation. According to police reports, Jeanie, who was a sex
01:35:35
worker, claimed she worked for Gray and there was a history of violence between them. At the crime scene, authorities
01:35:44
found hairs stuck to Jeanie's left hand, and one of those hairs matched Gray. But
01:35:50
Boer says the case against Gray started to fall apart pretty quickly. Arthur Gray as a resident of that
01:36:00
apartment, uh, it makes sense that his hairs would be throughout the bedroom. And Arthur Gray said he wasn't even in
01:36:07
town, but on a motorcycle trip in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the weekend Genie was murdered. He had a really solid
01:36:15
alibi that he was out of town that weekend. Um, that was corroborated by others. Authorities compared the unknown
01:36:22
bloody footprints in the apartment to Gray's footprints and determined they weren't his. Do you know how many other
01:36:31
possible suspects, persons of interest, whose footprints were compared to those left in Jeanie's apartment? There were
01:36:39
multiple people whose footprints were compared to the footprints that were left in Jeanie's apartment. You could
01:36:44
see that in the case file that a lot of effort was put in attempting to solve Jeanie's case.
01:36:53
According to the case file, on the day of the murder, a witness in the apartment building told police she saw
01:37:00
Jeanie with a tall blonde man wearing a trench coat. We had no way to track down who that may
01:37:08
or may not have been. Investigators never found the man despite efforts to find Jeanie's killer.
01:37:16
The case slowed to a crawl. Months turned into years and then decades. How often would you call the
01:37:26
police trying to get an update to find out if they had anything new on this case? Many times as I could, but I never
01:37:33
let a year go by without reminding them. [Music] In 2015, the Minneapolis Police
01:37:42
Department began digging deeper into unsolved cases, and Jeanie Child's murder was one of them. Jeanie's family
01:37:50
had no idea, but investigators were hoping science would help them solve the case.
01:37:58
Technology is so much more refined and rigorous than it was in 1993. Agent Boker says they discovered that a
01:38:09
blood sample found near Jeanie's blood in the stairwell of her apartment building had matched to a man named John
01:38:16
Eswine. In 2015, investigators interviewed Eswine, who was in prison for violating
01:38:24
probation on a drunk driving offense. Do you have any idea why your DNA would be
01:38:30
in that building? Your blood would be in that building? No. Okay. My blood was in
01:38:35
that building. Yeah. If you found my blood somewhere, all I can think of is that I I must have fallen down
01:38:41
somewhere. And Eswine told investigators he was in the building once in 1991, 2 years before Jeanie's murder. He
01:38:51
easily volunteered his DNA. He also uh allowed himself his footprints to be taken. Then his footprints were compared
01:39:00
to the foot bloody footprints in Jeanie's bedroom. According to a lab report, the
01:39:06
footprints were inconclusive and Eswine's DNA was not found inside Jeanie's apartment. The mystery only
01:39:17
deepened. Investigators knew from the case file that there were DNA profiles discovered at the crime scene that had
01:39:25
never matched to anyone. Andrea Fya, a forensic scientist with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,
01:39:33
performed additional testing on the evidence that was collected back in 1993. And she noticed something unusual
01:39:41
about one of the unknown DNA profiles. That DNA profile repeated itself throughout the crime scene. It was on
01:39:50
the comforter. It was on the blue towel. It was found on the blue washcloth and the red t-shirt. Correct. And on the
01:39:58
sink. Yes. Those were the only areas that we tested that ended up matching each other essentially. Investigators
01:40:07
then turned to investigative genetic genealogy for answers. The unknown DNA profile was submitted to genealogy
01:40:15
websites, including myheritage.com. The forensic genealogologist indicated that she had a match, potentially two
01:40:24
brothers here in Minnesota. And one of the brothers was a man named Jerry Westerm.
01:40:32
He was a wellrespected member of the community. People were surprised. [Music] [Music]
01:40:55
More than 25 years after Jeanie Childs was murdered, unknown DNA at the crime scene was matched to 52year-old Jerry
01:41:03
Westerm. What did you know about him? He was living north of Minneapolis St. Paul. That he was working for a company
01:41:11
up in St. Cloud, Minnesota area. He'd been a businessman. Retired FBI agent Chris Boker says the married father of
01:41:19
three wasn't hard to find. Had a Facebook account that we could follow. He was leading a seemingly normal family
01:41:28
life. Westerm had grown up in rural Minnesota. He and I were on a 4-H trip when we were
01:41:35
14 to Washington DC. Wayne Triplet and Jerry Westerm were farm kids. They later became college buddies. And when Wayne
01:41:44
got married, he was one of the groomsmen in our wedding. That means he was a good
01:41:50
friend of yours. Yes, that's true. He got along well with a lot of people. Very low-key gentleman. Easily could
01:41:58
make friends with people. Westerm and his family were well respected inanti Minnesota about 40 miles away from
01:42:07
Minneapolis. They owned a Sears store. And in the year 2000, Westerm built his own Field of Dreams, a convenience store
01:42:16
and gas station known as Westerm's Corner. But in 2008, the turbulent economy took it all away. Was that tough
01:42:26
on him to lose Westerm's Corner? I think it was tough on him. It'd be tough on anybody.
01:42:33
Westerm returned to his roots. He began raising organic corn and soybeans and cultivating a business selling crop
01:42:42
insurance. He's a very good salesperson. He understands the need to fill the need. He understands how to communicate
01:42:50
and people have to be comfortable with you to close on business. Wayne never imagined that the
01:42:56
eventempered friend he's known since their teenage years would become the prime suspect in a violent murder case.
01:43:05
Did he have any history of violent crimes? No apparent criminal history involving violent crime. Jeie was
01:43:13
stabbed over 60 times and here's this man and no history of violence and this is the guy who might have killed her.
01:43:23
Well, it gave some pause that that level of violence and that type of crime. We kind of expected it would be somebody
01:43:30
that maybe had been arrested multiple times. So, yes, that does give a little pause.
01:43:38
Investigators were anxious to confirm that the unknown crime scene DNA was indeed Jerry Westerms. But to do that,
01:43:47
they needed to track him down. We needed to obtain DNA from Jerry in order to compare it to the unknown DNA from the
01:43:58
scene. Forensic scientist Andrea Feya. And what did you tell them would be the best DNA
01:44:06
if they could get it? Best DNA is something that has been in a person's mouth. Like if they drank out of a
01:44:13
drinking container, a straw, if they spit out chewing gum, anything that could have saliva on it. Why is saliva
01:44:22
the ideal? Why did you say get something that had touched his mouth? There's a lot of DNA in saliva. Westerm, a devoted
01:44:31
hockey dad, frequently attended his daughter's college games. In January 2019, Westerm traveled to a game in
01:44:40
Wisconsin. Agent Boers along with his partner surreptitiously followed him there. Westerm went out to the lobby
01:44:49
concession stand and made a food order. We watched him sit at the table and eat his order. And when he finished, he took
01:44:57
a napkin and he wiped his mouth. Westerm tossed that napkin and food container in the garbage can. And when
01:45:06
he returned to the rink, Agent Boers made his move. I was gloved. I just reached down and got the container and
01:45:15
we bagged it up for evidence. I tested and got a DNA profile from that napkin and compared it to the unidentified
01:45:24
profile on the comforter and the blue towel. And what was the result? They were consistent with each
01:45:32
other. A month later in February 2019, Jerry Westerm was arrested and charged with the murder of Jeanie Childs. As you
01:45:42
sit here right now, Wayne, do you believe that Jerry Westerrom is the one who killed Jeanie Child? Definite no.
01:45:49
Not a chance. Definite no. Definite no. Not a chance. In a videotaped interview at the jail, Agent Boers and his partner
01:45:57
question Westerm. Does this lady look familiar to you at all? Okay. Her name is Jeannie Childs. Okay.
01:46:06
And she was found in her building in her apartment deceased. Do you know anything
01:46:11
about that at all? No. Okay. Do Do you think you would have ever had sex with her?
01:46:16
I doubt it. In 93, would you have been with a prostitute? No. No. WCCCO TV senior investigative
01:46:27
reporter Jennifer Mayorly. He doesn't give much in the interview, but what he doesn't say almost says more. What do
01:46:34
you mean? He doesn't ask any questions about what happened, about why he's there, about why they're looking at him.
01:46:43
Jerry Westerm had no history of violent crime, but it seems he had been keeping a few secrets from his friends. Westerm
01:46:52
had told Wayne about two DWI arrests, but never shared he had been arrested twice for soliciting sex workers. You
01:47:01
didn't know anything? No. What was your reaction? It was hard to understand. That's the hard pill to
01:47:09
swallow. Meaning, how does a person with a good family and loving wife has the need for solicitation? What's going on
01:47:16
there? Investigators questioned Westerrom for 11 minutes until he asked for a lawyer.
01:47:24
He was then handcuffed and spent the night in jail. And the following morning, we went to the jail with
01:47:31
Minneapolis Crime Lab personnel and they obtained his footprints. 48 Hours legal
01:47:38
consultant Julie Rendleman says the footprints were important because Westerm's DNA was not the only DNA
01:47:46
recovered there. DNA that was recovered was from multiple individuals. If you don't have anything else, that in and of
01:47:53
itself does not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Jerry Westerm is the person that committed this crime.
01:48:08
[Music] For more than 25 years, Betty Ecman had prayed for a break in her daughter's
01:48:22
unsolved murder case. In February 2019, her prayers were answered. I got phone call and he said, "I'm the
01:48:32
detective that worked on your daughter's case." And I said, "Okay, what's going on?" We found him. And I I got
01:48:44
goosebumps all over me. And I said, "Are you sure?" He said, "Yes, we got him." But when Cindy Blamer learned the name
01:48:56
of the suspect in her sister's murder, she had trouble believing it. I said, "No
01:49:02
way. No way." Jerry Westerm was a familiar face who lived in their town of Santi, Minnesota. I'd seen
01:49:12
Jerry because our boys played hockey. He's tall. He kind of stands out. He also owned the business, the gas
01:49:20
station. The hockey dad and local businessman was now charged with murder. Westerm was
01:49:28
later indicted by a grand jury and pleaded not guilty. Westerm's DNA, according to forensic scientist Andrea
01:49:36
Fya, found on the comforter and towel in the bathroom, was identified as seaman.
01:49:44
But she says her team couldn't determine the type of DNA that she says Westerm left on the red t-shirt, the bathroom
01:49:52
sink, and the washcloth. You can't say definitively that his blood or any other kind of DNA was found at the scene. You
01:50:02
know, it's his DNA, but you don't know what kind. Is that correct? Correct. I don't know how it was deposited.
01:50:08
Essentially, you say DNA to General Joe Q public. Well, that's a slam dunk. Wayne Triplet, however, has questions
01:50:16
about how and when the DNA was left there. There's no timestamp on DNA. Despite advances in DNA technology,
01:50:26
there's no way to know how long Westerm's DNA had been there. And Wayne says the evidence only suggests one
01:50:34
thing. That just doesn't mysteriously show up. He had to be there. So, you think he probably was in that apartment
01:50:40
at some point? You know, you can't run from that evidence. He had to been there. Don't
01:50:47
get there by accident. You don't believe he was there the day that Jeannie Childs
01:50:50
was murdered? I I don't. 48 Hours legal consultant Julie Rendleman says the evidence in this case
01:51:00
does raise questions. According to lab reports, there was other DNA from Seaman discovered on Jeanie's purple panties
01:51:10
that does not match Westerrom. Whose DNA it is remains even today a mystery. And
01:51:18
that wasn't all. There was DNA from other individuals that did not belong to Jerry Westerm, but clearly belonged to a
01:51:25
male source. Rendleman points to that DNA found in the stairwell close to blood stains identified as belonging to
01:51:33
Genie Child's. Jerry Westerm's DNA is not in the stairwell, but we know that there's at least one other person whose
01:51:40
DNA blood is found in that stairwell. Remember that stairwell DNA matched John Eswine. When investigators
01:51:51
interviewed him, he couldn't recall how his blood ended up in the stairwell not far from Jeanie Child's apartment on the
01:51:59
21st floor. His answers were a bit peculiar. I I found and the reason I say that is because he actually describes
01:52:07
being there one time. And why does that bother you? So, it bothers me because how the heck would he remember when he's
01:52:13
interviewed all these years later that he was there but only there once and the one time he says he was there was years
01:52:18
before the murder. It just it felt a bit convenient. We reached out to John S. Wine for
01:52:24
comment, but he didn't respond. He has never been charged in this case. Rendleman also points out that before
01:52:32
Jerry Westerm's DNA was identified at the crime scene. Authorities had discovered a mixture of DNA types on the
01:52:41
comforter. According to a 2012 lab report, a man named James Luther Carlton couldn't be excluded as one of the
01:52:51
contributors. We know this is an individual that had committed multiple sex crimes in the past. And what makes
01:52:57
Carlton so significant? A little more than a year after Jeanie Child's murder in July 1994.
01:53:05
Sometime between last Thursday and Monday, someone entered this one-bedroom uptown apartment and murdered Jodie
01:53:11
Dover. 26-year-old hospital worker Jodie Dover was stabbed to death in her Minneapolis apartment. Jod's murder was
01:53:21
eerily similar to Jeanie's murder. Jod's killer had also left behind bloody footprints.
01:53:29
Authorities arrested Carlton and determined a footprint found inside Jodie Dover's apartment belonged to him.
01:53:37
He was convicted of her murder in 1995 and is serving a life sentence. 48 Hours can't confirm if he was ever questioned
01:53:46
around the time of Jeanie Child's murder. We reached out to Carlton. He declined our interview request.
01:53:54
Carlton's criminal history was a red flag for Westerm's defense team. Attorney Steven Meshbasher told our CBS
01:54:02
station WCCCO that it was a rush to judgement in this case. You need to do the investigation first. Find out what the
01:54:12
facts are. Find out what the evidence is and then determine the charge. Now they're charging it first.
01:54:19
Were the footprints Jerry Westerms? As both sides prepared for trial, it became clear that it would all come down to
01:54:28
this unique evidence. In Minnesota here, people are not committing crimes a lot of times with their socks and shoes off.
01:54:37
Mark Olrich, a supervisor with the Minneapolis Police Forensic Division, examined the footprints. He says he
01:54:45
focused on the friction ridge skin, the arrangement of ridges and furrows unique
01:54:50
to every person. Friction ridge skin is found on your fingers, your palms, and the soles of your feet. Seven bloody
01:54:57
footprints were photographed and labeled A through G. Defense attorneys hired their own forensic scientists, Alicia
01:55:05
McCarthy, a professor at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, to analyze the bloody footprints for them.
01:55:14
You call this case a beast. It was a beast. It was definitely very challenging. What conclusions would the
01:55:21
experts reach? [Music] Was Jerry Westerm just a customer who had left his DNA in Jeanie Child's
01:55:45
apartment previously? Or was he the one who stabbed her to death more than 60 times?
01:55:54
Investigators believe the bloody footprints found in her apartment would provide the answer.
01:56:01
That looks like a left foot. Correct. I completed the reference files. Mark Olrich at the Minneapolis Police Lab was
01:56:09
tasked with comparing the crime scene prints to Westerm. He determined that four of the seven prints were suitable
01:56:17
for comparison. One of them, he says, revealed the impression of a left foot. He labeled the heel E1 and an area below
01:56:26
the big toe as E2. When Alrich analyzed it, this was his conclusion. E1 and E2 were identified to Mr. Jerry Westerm.
01:56:37
And he says there was more. This one B, that one was identified to the right foot of Mr. Jerry Westerm. Although
01:56:44
believed that all four prints, E1, E2, B, and another left footprint he labeled D1 belonged to Westerm.
01:56:58
As the trial date approached, forensic scientist Alicia McCarthy, who had been hired by the defense, was asked to
01:57:06
verify work. They wanted me to come in and look and doublech checkck the work that was done by the Minneapolis lab.
01:57:15
McCarthy believed that only the print labeled E2, the area below the left big toe, was suitable for comparison. This
01:57:25
is the crime scene photo. This is E2 crime. During her analysis, she began comparing E2 to the footprints of
01:57:34
alternate suspects and didn't get anywhere. I was sort of in limbo for about a year where I was comparing to
01:57:42
other people. And then I said, I'm inconclusive. I can't say it's these people. I can't say it's not these
01:57:50
people. McCarthy showed us what unique characteristics she was looking for. We have um what we call a recurve. Yes. It
01:57:58
comes down and recurves back up. And for a friction ridge examiner, that's pretty
01:58:02
exciting. When she compared E2 to Jerry Westerm's footprints, she followed the curves. And finally, and who do you
01:58:13
believe left that footprint at the crime scene? That was Jerry Westerm's left foot. And you're sure of that? Positive.
01:58:23
McCarthy agreed with Mark Olrich. E2 the small area below the left big toe had been placed there by Jerry Westerm, but
01:58:33
she disagreed with Rick on the other three footprints. I went through and did the comparisons um that Mark had made
01:58:42
identifications with. I didn't agree with him. She believed those three prints didn't have enough detail. there
01:58:48
wasn't enough for that very high threshold to say an identification and go to court in front of a jury and tell
01:58:54
them that this impression belongs to Jerry Westerm. That's her decision and I have no qualms about what she did. I
01:59:00
just know the quality of my work and I know what I stand by. When McCarthy determined E2 belonged to Westerm, she
01:59:08
was immediately released by his defense team. Both experts would then testify for the prosecution. Opening statements
01:59:17
today in the trial of a hockey dad accused of a murder nearly 30 years ago. In August 2022, Jerry Westerm went on
01:59:27
trial for Jeanie Child's murder. He had been out on bond. The judge ruled there'd be no cameras in the courtroom.
01:59:35
48 Hours asked Westerm and his family for on camera interviews, but they declined.
01:59:41
Jerry's wife and three kids were there for most of the trial. Jennifer Merrily covered the trial. Jerry and his wife
01:59:50
would walk into the Henipin County Government Center holding hands. In the courtroom, prosecutors painted a
01:59:57
different picture. They said the evidence points to Jerry Westerm is the killer. The bloody footprints combined
02:00:04
with his DNA is proof, they said, that he was in her apartment when she was murdered.
02:00:12
The bloody footprint put a timestamp of when the killer was there. But the defense tried to poke holes in the
02:00:19
footprint evidence. They also called that witness who had told police she saw Jeanie Childs with a blonde man wearing
02:00:27
a trench coat the day she was murdered. And she said she saw the same man later running down the stairwell without a
02:00:35
coat. Jerry Westerm has dark hair. There's no evidence he ever had blonde hair or anything like that. The defense
02:00:42
also named Arthur Gray, who died in 2012, as an alternate suspect. Jeanie had accused him of domestic abuse. And
02:00:51
then when you put the hair of Arthur Gray in her hand, it starts to become more significant. The defense, who
02:00:58
declined our request for an interview, was dealt a blow when they couldn't introduce James Luther Carlton and John
02:01:06
Eswine as alternate suspects. The judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence against either man, and prosecutors
02:01:14
cleared them both. So, the jury never heard that expert analysis of their footprints had been inconclusive.
02:01:23
I think it was incredibly damaging to the defense's case. Prosecutors declined our request for an
02:01:31
interview. Jerry Westerm did not testify and after 8 days, the jury quickly reached a verdict. Guilty. The jury
02:01:41
first and second degree murder. The jury came back quite quickly and convicted Jerry Westerm of the top count, which
02:01:47
was murder in the first degree. They also found him guilty of murder in the second degree.
02:01:51
Prosecutors didn't present a motive. Wayne Triplet says he still believes his lifelong friend is innocent and says
02:02:00
that both families have paid a terrible price. The victim didn't deserve what they got. It's terrible sitting here and
02:02:08
Jerry's paying for that, but it's not Jerry. On September 9th, 2022, Jerry Westerm was sentenced to life in prison
02:02:17
for the murder of Jeannie Childs. As we said in the beginning and we're saying now, you've got the wrong
02:02:26
guy, we are sorry for the loss of Genie Child's life. Jeanie's mother, Betty, believes justice
02:02:36
has been served and that the right man is behind bars. But her grief will always be there. She poured her heart
02:02:45
out in a letter, a love letter she never got to send. My emptiness will never go
02:02:52
away since you were taken that fatal day. It wasn't fair you had to die. I never got to say
02:03:05
goodbye. I love you and miss you so much. Love and peace, Mom. [Music] [Music] I can only describe it as evil,
02:03:32
something horrible. From 48 hours, this is trained to kill the dog trainer. The aerys and the bodyguard. He couldn't
02:03:40
control his obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen on the free Odyssey app or
02:03:48
wherever you get your podcasts. [Music]