00:00:00
It was a camper who stumbled on the place. Deep in the Arizona desert, on the parched earth a few
00:00:09
miles north of the Mexican border. A pile of rocks under a Palo Verde tree, a cairn of some sort, a
00:00:15
monument. What was it? Did it signify something or some person so far from the prying eyes of
00:00:26
urban America, under those stones, was a terrible puzzle, a mystery, perhaps without solution.
00:00:35
Who would have believed what was in there? Perhaps the place to start is far from that
00:00:43
secret in the desert. Where the ocean meets San Diego is a hamlet called Kensington,
00:00:49
a slice of small-town life in the shadow of the big city. Modest Spanish-style homes,
00:00:55
trimmed front lawns, palm-lined streets, middle America by the sea. The place where Joy Risker lived with her husband and two little boys.
00:01:07
Sheila Goff lived there, too, also with her husband and little boy. And they were as different as chalk and cheese.
00:01:14
Quiet, generous Sheila, outgoing, effervescent joy. It was a fine arrangement. They shared the child care, the housework, the cooking.
00:01:24
and they also shared a husband. Sean Goff, handsome, engaging, persuasive, and deeply religious.
00:01:35
Sean is a former evangelical minister, and that's how he met Joy Risker, then just 16.
00:01:41
He was her youth pastor, married, yes, to Sheila. But by then he'd become interested in Christian polygamy,
00:01:49
which claimed to be based on the patriarchs of the Old Testament. and in the summer of 1997, three years after they met, he married Joy.
00:01:58
Not legally, of course, but it was biblically sound. How did she explain it to you?
00:02:06
Just like that. Yeah. That, you know, she had met someone and she was all in love with him
00:02:15
and she told me that he was her youth pastor and that her mom gave her blessing and everyone loved him.
00:02:24
He was the greatest guy that just happened to be married to someone else. Joy and Sheila, happy and obedient co-wives.
00:02:36
Joy was wife number two. There was already wife number one, Sheila. Was there jealousy there?
00:02:43
Sheila didn't seem jealous. I'm sure underneath there has to be some part of her that didn't appreciate what was going on.
00:02:54
But she seemed to love Joy. How did Joy feel about Sheila? Oh, Joy never would have been jealous of Sheila because Joy was Sean's favorite.
00:03:04
Sheila stayed at home, rarely going out with her husband. Well, Joy, with her outgoing, bubbly personality, became Sean's public wife.
00:03:12
They took romantic trips. They went out dining and dancing, often. Always happy?
00:03:19
Always happy. Or at least appearing to be, you know, unless she's having a problem and she's talking about it, you know.
00:03:25
But people grow. Things change. Joy began to resist the structure Sean Goff established in the house in Kensington.
00:03:35
What did she say about her unhappiness? She just said that Sean was really controlling and she wasn't in love like she used to be.
00:03:46
She told friends she wanted to travel, maybe go to Europe, and she wanted to go back to school and make a career for herself.
00:03:54
Did she tell you how Sean felt about that, about her going to school? He seemed to be okay with it.
00:03:59
He was okay with community college because it was local, but he didn't want her to move out to L.A. to go to makeup school.
00:04:07
That was her dream. She wanted to be a makeup artist. So she was ambitious to do something with her life.
00:04:13
She was. And then in late September 2003, Joy quite suddenly stopped calling her friends.
00:04:21
And when they tried to contact her, Sean, crying on the phone, had shocking news.
00:04:28
Joy had left him, left him and the children, and had run off to Europe with an old boyfriend.
00:04:34
I don't know. We just thought everything was so weird. We didn't know how to really take it in.
00:04:39
We were still just, yeah, trying to take it all in. It was strange, though. Definitely.
00:04:45
Strange indeed. She wouldn't leave her sons, would she? And wouldn't she call her friends?
00:04:51
It wasn't like her. And far away in the desert, that strange monument guarded its mystery.
00:05:04
Sean Goff, the San Diego Youth Minister and polygamist, was an emotional wreck. His junior wife had run off to Europe with a boyfriend, had abandoned him and their two sons,
00:05:22
and that other wife. Her friends were confused. They knew she'd had some problems with Sean,
00:05:30
was even thinking about leaving him, but this way? It didn't sound like Joy at all, especially as she hadn't said a word to them.
00:05:39
No, she would not run off without her kids. That's the whole reason she even was sticking around towards the end,
00:05:47
because she was really unhappy with Sean. Then out of the blue an email to a friend that seemed to explain everything Joy on why she left I just needed some time away on a mystery man And Jason I never been able to get Jason out of my head On her secrecy The reason she hadn warned her friends like Jill I really can talk to Jill right now because she be against my decisions Did you try to contact her We did I called her every day And after a while we started emailing her
00:06:21
In emails, they begged her to call so they could hear her voice. But Joy's reply was uncharacteristically angry.
00:06:30
I'll talk to you when I'm ready. She was saying, you know, stay out of my business, and I'm an adult, I'm grown,
00:06:38
I don't have to call and tell you guys anything, and that's just not how she was.
00:06:42
If she knew we were worried, she'd call. She would. The email was so angry at us.
00:06:46
She just wouldn't have been mad at us for wanting to know where she is. To ease their growing worry, the friends went to visit Sean at home.
00:06:55
How did he receive you? Was he friendly? He tried to be. He told them he'd spoken to Joy, and she was fine.
00:07:02
But the whole house seemed somehow different, as if Joy had never lived there. What did it seem to you? What was the atmosphere like?
00:07:11
Everything was closed up, and it was really, really dark. It had changed somehow.
00:07:16
It had changed. The visit was strange. The girls had been close to Joy's children.
00:07:22
They asked to see the boys, and Sean refused. After that, we were out of there because we just knew something was not okay.
00:07:33
Weird. Very. Jill couldn't shake a feeling of dread. She finally brought herself to call the police, missing persons.
00:07:44
Linda Cousin, then a San Diego police investigative aide, got the case. She began by calling Sean.
00:07:51
In talking to Sean, you know, he was very credible what he said. Joy, you know, didn't want to be here anymore.
00:07:58
She took off. I'm very upset. She left her kids. I just don't know what to do. She took money out of the bank account.
00:08:07
She had always talked about backpacking in Europe. She left me. Linda telephoned many of Joy's friends.
00:08:15
Everyone said she had plans. She wanted to go to Europe, but she wasn't happy at home.
00:08:20
Sean gave police this email he said Joy sent him. Sean, I know this is hard, but I'm leaving for Europe tomorrow.
00:08:29
Again, it seemed incredible. She said she was leaving, and he received an email that she left.
00:08:34
But then Linda checked Joy's cell phone records and discovered something very suspicious.
00:08:39
Activity on Joy's phone, usually almost constant, came to an abrupt halt on September 19, 2003 at 9.36 p.m.
00:08:48
And the last call she made was to Sean. He never mentioned that call. It's so important.
00:08:57
Linda confronted Sean with that omission, and cornered now, he revealed a little more.
00:09:03
Sheila had been out of town with the kids. He and Joy decided to have a candlelight dinner and rekindle their relationship.
00:09:11
But later that evening, they argued. Anne said John he woke up in the early hours of the morning to see Joy with two suitcases getting into a car with a man.
00:09:23
Why leave that out? I mean, that should have been our first conversation. Yeah, she left. She packed her suitcases and she left. We had an argument.
00:09:32
Why not mention that? Linda was also discovering that other pieces of information were missing or just didn't fit.
00:09:40
For one thing, Joy didn't have a passport. How could she travel to Europe without a passport?
00:09:46
And the old flame with whom she'd supposedly run off to Europe? Linda found him in Boston.
00:09:54
He didn't have plans to meet up with Joy. By now, the investigator was convinced something had happened to Joy.
00:10:01
She hadn't simply run off with a man to Europe. Linda suspected some kind of foul play.
00:10:09
She began preparing her findings. She recommended that homicide detectives get involved.
00:10:15
And then a dramatic and utterly unexpected appearance. Was it Joy back home? No.
00:10:24
It was Sean Goff at the San Diego Police Department. And what he was about to say was stunning.
00:10:32
I came down here to turn myself in. Okay. Because I killed Joy Risker. He killed her?
00:10:41
Surely not. Here he was, confessing. But was it murder or had there been an accident?
00:10:49
How did this happen? How did you end up hurting her? The sudden, bizarre confession was over.
00:10:55
He wanted a lawyer. Also probably things I'd rather talk about with an attorney.
00:11:01
What exactly had happened? Did they actually have a crime here? And if Joy was dead, what happened to her body?
00:11:10
I mean, if that's the way you want to leave it. Sean Goff was booked for homicide,
00:11:14
and the cops began looking for some evidence that could tell them what happened.
00:11:20
So the first thing I was looking for was blood somewhere in the house. Detectives descended on the house in Kensington Hamlet.
00:11:27
turned the place inside out. Once you find a little bit of blood, rule of thumb is you're going to find a little bit more.
00:11:33
They found tiny blood spatters in Joy's bedroom and in the bathroom. A few drops of Joy's blood confirmed by DNA.
00:11:41
But if Sean had actually killed her, as he said, where was the body? Sean Goff sat in jail, revealing nothing.
00:11:51
Sheila packed up the children and went to stay with Sean's parents out of state.
00:11:55
The investigation stole Months ticked by No one in San Diego remotely aware that deep in the Arizona desert
00:12:05
quite another mystery begged for a solution. The mystery of the astonishing contents of the stone cairn
00:12:12
out under the Palo Verde tree. The desert wind blows cold in the winter along the strip of scrub just north of the Mexican border.
00:12:30
Sean Goff sat in jail in San Diego and said not a word as police scoured what leads they could find
00:12:35
in their search for the wife he told them he'd killed. And in the desert, that pile of rocks under the Palo Verde tree
00:12:42
was attracting attention. An old desert hand named Ruben Condé got a bad feeling when he saw the place.
00:12:50
It was too big to have an animal or a dog or anything buried there, which we first thought.
00:12:56
And then I got to smelling, and you could smell a different smell than animals. Condé was a hunting guide.
00:13:04
He'd smelled death before. He called his son a federal ranger with the Bureau of Land Management.
00:13:11
The next day, January 10, 2004, the ranger gingerly moved aside a few rocks. And that's when he found it.
00:13:19
I found a partial portion of a head and a torso. And it just became apparent when I found those parts that it wasn't an animal of any kind.
00:13:30
Was it a man or a woman? Young or old? What was the cause of death and who, out in the middle of nowhere,
00:13:38
had gathered together hundreds of pounds of rocks and carefully crafted a tomb? A Maricopa County Sheriff's detective brought the badly decomposed remains
00:13:48
back to the medical examiner's office in Phoenix for an autopsy. The first thing that we do when we get a skeletal remain is lay it out in anatomical position
00:13:56
so that we can inventory the remains, figure out what's there and what's missing.
00:14:01
Dr. Laura Fulginetti, Fulgi to her colleagues, is a forensic anthropologist, an expert at identifying bones.
00:14:10
Some answers came quickly. Fulgi determined, among other things, the victim was young and female and African-American.
00:14:17
She'd given birth at least once. She was somebody's mother. From here on, the discoveries were increasingly alarming.
00:14:26
The victim's skull and ribs bore witness to a violent death. She'd been stabbed at least 12 times in the chest,
00:14:35
the bones of her face wrecked by blunt force. And as Fulgi examined the bones more carefully,
00:14:40
she began to find things she'd never seen before. There were elements missing from her, key elements like her teeth.
00:14:47
Her jaws were literally the teeth, the level of the bone of her teeth had been excised.
00:14:54
On a hunch, the detective observing the autopsy asked Fulgi to check the victim's hands.
00:15:01
And I looked, and sure enough, the tips, the bones of her fingers, not her fingertips, not her fingernails.
00:15:07
Remember, she's a skeleton. The actual bones had been sliced off. Something awful, sinister, deliberate had been done to this woman.
00:15:17
Dr. Fulgi was outraged. The MCSI, because that was clearly what had happened. Somebody had watched too much TV, and they knew exactly what to get rid of to try to thwart us.
00:15:31
No fingerprints, no dental records, quite possibly not even DNA, since getting DNA from such badly decomposed remains was very difficult and quite expensive.
00:15:42
They'd have to start out low-tech. They'd go back to the drawing board, literally.
00:15:48
Initially, we had thought that a forensic artist's reconstruction would not be possible
00:15:53
because we had pieces of her face, and they were disfigured and distorted, and we weren't sure what we could do with it.
00:16:00
Still, forensic artist Bob Powers, then a detective with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, was keen to try.
00:16:07
This is a last-ditch attempt at an identification, and if it fails, then the odds are that this person will never be identified.
00:16:14
He and Fulgee had had success in the past, but this was a long shot. Still, it was like an oval jigsaw puzzle.
00:16:22
They pieced the skull bones together, used clay to fill in the missing pieces and recreate teeth.
00:16:29
And I'll start sketching in, starting very light at first. And the first thing I want to do is get the placement of the features, the eyes, the nose and the mouth.
00:16:38
Finally, a sketch. But months went by. Apparently, it looked like nobody. And then, by sheer luck, Bob Powers spotted a picture on a missing persons flyer,
00:16:52
and it reminded him of his sketch. There's a resemblance. It could be her. The possibility was enough.
00:16:58
To go to the expense of getting a DNA sample, sheriffs contacted the woman's family, obtained her DNA,
00:17:04
and, disappointment, it wasn't her. But by now, that sample had made its way to an FBI database, and there she was.
00:17:16
We were right. Putting her face back on her is what gave us her story. Eight months after she emerged from that pile of rocks in the Arizona desert,
00:17:25
the woman had a name, a name you know by now. Did the ex-youth pastor, the loving, polygamist husband and father, also know?
00:17:36
the horrifying story her bones were about to tell? In the summer of 2006 two years after Joy Risker bones were identified three years after her killing
00:18:05
Sean Goff went on trial in San Diego for murder. It was Deputy DA Matthew Greco's very first murder trial.
00:18:15
Well, there's only two types of murders. There's whodunits and what-isits, and this was a what-is-it.
00:18:21
That is to say, was it murder at all? Or was it an accident? Or self-defense? An experienced and wily defense attorney Greco knew
00:18:30
was standing by to argue those very things. So the prosecutor went all out. He planned it and he killed her.
00:18:41
All because he wanted control over Joy's life. This, the prosecutor said, was the worst kind of murder.
00:18:48
Sean Goff demanded control, and when Joy defied him, he carefully assembled his plot to kill her and make her disappear forever.
00:18:57
I thought he was the scariest defendant that I've ever seen in my career. What he was capable of and the way he presented himself was absolutely chilling.
00:19:13
Proof of that, claimed Prosecutor Greco, was in the horrifying story told by those bones
00:19:19
recovered from beneath the pile of rocks under the Palo Verde tree. So this was a stab wound directly to the heart?
00:19:25
Yes. The anthropologist testified that Joy had been savagely, systematically mutilated.
00:19:32
My opinion was that someone was trying to obliterate her face. It was a litany of brutality.
00:19:39
This mark right across the middle of the hyoid is not a natural feature of the bone.
00:19:45
It's as if the implement was doing this. What would be the result if that hyoid bone was entirely sawed through?
00:19:55
In essence, you would end up decapitating the person or cutting their head off. Prosecutor Greco was about to present some chilling evidence
00:20:02
that Sean had been methodically planning the murder for many months. Sean's college friend, a writer, told about a brainstorming session the year before Joy's death.
00:20:12
They were working out the story plot for a book or a movie. What was the subject matter that you were discussing?
00:20:20
It was how to have the antagonist in the movie or book watch forensic-type shows on TV
00:20:28
and learn how to commit the perfect murder. And the best ways to hide the body. Was there any discussion of putting the body in a place where it would never be found?
00:20:38
Yes, yes. The ideas from television shows. Like the FBI files and forensic files, things like that.
00:20:47
And remarkably, weeks before Joy's death, the friend testified, Sean foreshadowed his own motive for murder.
00:20:55
Essentially, he said that it was not working out with Joy, that she was sloppy and lazy,
00:21:01
and that he was going to have to get rid of her. Sean's colleague testified that he was dissatisfied with Joy.
00:21:08
He had plans for her. Joy had very little time. Two or three weeks to shape up or ship out.
00:21:18
Joy's friends testified Sean had always let it be known that if he and Joy ever split, he would keep the kids.
00:21:25
Would you ever discuss hypothetically what would happen if Joy left him. Essentially that you wouldn't allow her to have the kids.
00:21:37
And another friend testified that Sean seemed to be building an excuse in advance
00:21:43
to explain why Joy might disappear. He told me that he thought that she was the kind of person
00:21:50
that could just take off and leave all of a sudden and never look back again. And as for those emails that seemed to come from Joy in the weeks after her disappearance,
00:21:59
A forensic computer expert testified they were all a digital deception. They'd all been sent by Sean.
00:22:07
And then a surprise. The one witness who knew Sean Goff better than anybody. The one who might be able to explain the man.
00:22:14
The woman who as a teenager had become wife number one, Sheila. Now a witness for the prosecution.
00:22:21
So many questions, such as why did she agree to his polygamous demands? I felt I didn't have a choice.
00:22:27
that it was, this was what God wanted us to do. And then it was either that or lose my son and the relationship I had with him.
00:22:42
By now divorced from Sean, Sheila had put certain of his activities that September of 2003
00:22:48
into a new context, like a curious shopping spree six days before Joy disappeared.
00:22:54
He had brought home with him a chisel, a handsaw, a pickaxe, a sledgehammer, duct tape, plastic sheeting, a shovel, a cooler, butcher block, a butcher knife, among other things.
00:23:09
Was he the kind of person that had other hobbies like woodwork? No. Plumbing? No.
00:23:18
Landscaping? No. What was his level of being a handyman? none. All those items, argued the prosecutor, were part of a deliberately assembled murder
00:23:30
and dismemberment kit. And the weekend of September 19th, with Sheila and the kids on
00:23:36
a trip to Santa Barbara, he put his plan in motion. He took Joy to an expensive restaurant
00:23:41
for a $229 last supper, Kobe Beef. At 8.36 that Friday evening, Joy called Sheila to say good
00:23:51
to her boys. Could you describe her tone? I'm happy. Did she, on Friday the 19th, did she sound like she was angry?
00:24:07
No. Upset? No. Distressed? No. And later that night, back at home, said the prosecutor, Sean stabbed Joy to death.
00:24:18
He sawed out her teeth and chopped off fingers that might identify who she was. He stuffed her body in a container in the back of a rented SUV.
00:24:26
He drove five hours to the Arizona desert and buried her there under a Palo Verde tree.
00:24:35
Sean called Sheila on Sunday as she was driving back from Santa Barbara. He told her, she said, that he and Joy had broken up.
00:24:43
Did the defendant tell you that Joy had cut herself? Yes. Did he ask you to do something?
00:24:48
Yes. What? Clean up. And so she did. cleaned up the blood in Joy's bedroom and in the bathroom.
00:24:57
And when Sean finally arrived back home in that rented SUV, it was Monday, and Sheila helped him clean out the dirt and debris
00:25:04
and chose to believe his lie, that he'd simply gone for a long drive to deal with his grief at the breakup.
00:25:11
Because I really didn't believe he would do something like that to her family. A damning story, with a villain right out of Silence of the Lambs.
00:25:20
But was it true? Was Sean really such a monster? Now, finally, after years of silence,
00:25:27
the polygamous preacher would tell the story himself. He'd killed her all right.
00:25:34
But now he was about to say he had a very good reason. I saw her in the door. She had a knife.
00:25:51
Mr. Arena, you're opening, sir. Thank you. Albert Arena is an engaging man. He's a defense lawyer.
00:26:01
He's paid his dues in San Diego, represented the good to the bad and the ugly as best he could for decades.
00:26:07
But the case of the polygamist wife killer was about to test his skills as never before.
00:26:13
The prosecution's case had been thoroughly damning. What could Arena say? Indeed, the evidence will unfold.
00:26:21
and show you that those things did happen. Agreeing with the prosecution? Well, not exactly.
00:26:28
Pay particularly close attention to that work post-mortem. Albert Arena told the jury the prosecutor had it backwards.
00:26:36
It wasn't a cold-blooded planned killing. It was Joy who launched a brutal attack, he claimed.
00:26:41
Sean killed her in self-defense. And his desecration of her body? Only a misguided attempt to ensure their children did not lose a father
00:26:50
as well as a mother. It would be, arena new, a hard sell. It's almost too disgusting to tell.
00:26:58
What you do is you take it, you separate it, you put it aside. You know it's there.
00:27:01
It's like you have an elephant in the living room, but for now we're going to ignore the elephant.
00:27:05
But eventually he and his client had to face that elephant. I have to humanize him.
00:27:11
Humanize him and let him tell his story. And so, Sean Goff took the stand. I gave my life to Jesus when I was six.
00:27:20
He played up faith, downplayed polygamy. We were not hiding the fact that we were engaging in plural marriage from anyone.
00:27:27
And mostly, he tried to sell the jury on his own story of what happened that dreadful weekend.
00:27:34
He really was a handyman, he told the jury, and that so-called murder kit the prosecution displayed
00:27:40
was actually, claimed Goff, for a weekend home improvement project. The hacksaw.
00:27:46
There was in the front yard a pipe that stuck out of the ground. The plastic sheeting.
00:27:51
He didn't want to get paint on the floors. And the butcher knife wasn't even for him.
00:27:57
Who selected the knife? Joy did. And now Sean Goff played his biggest card. He accused Joy of child abuse.
00:28:06
On that last romantic evening, he said, Joy became threatening. She said, well, you're not going to take the kids away from me.
00:28:13
Why? Because he claimed he had confronted Joy that night with a photograph proving that she beaten their youngest child I said you know you not even going to have to worry about the kids because I had taken a Polaroid of some bruises
00:28:29
I told her about that, and I said, that's all there is to it. Where was that picture?
00:28:37
Well, the defense never produced any such photograph. But that is what set her off, claimed Sean.
00:28:44
he told her he'd keep the children and kick her out. The gravy train would be over.
00:28:49
And that, he said, is when she attacked him. And she had a knife. What happened?
00:28:55
She, uh... She... She yelled at me and then she swung the knife at me. Was she saying anything when she swung the knife?
00:29:14
Yes. What was she saying? She said, She said, you son of a bitch, I will kill you.
00:29:25
He punched her twice, he said, but she kept coming. At this point, I was frightened.
00:29:29
I thought, well, she's serious. And then, struggling for his life, claimed Sean,
00:29:35
he grabbed the hand holding the knife. I got it turned around toward her, you know,
00:29:42
and we're still fighting over the knife. and I pushed the knife into her. At some point I took the knife away
00:29:49
and then I stabbed her again. Where did he stab her? Do you remember? At that point it was up here.
00:29:55
Stabbed her here? Yeah. Okay. Up near my left shoulder? Somewhere in that area. What happened then?
00:30:06
At that point she kind of just went limp. Then, claimed Sean, though panicked and in shock,
00:30:12
He bent down and tried to save her life to give her CPR. I pulled the knife out and a lot of blood came out with it.
00:30:22
And I checked her breathing in her pulse again and she didn't have either at that time.
00:30:28
Then he said he wondered, should he call the police? She's dead and I'm there and she's a woman.
00:30:36
Who would believe that she attacked him? He feared for himself and his children.
00:30:42
I thought about, you know, this is Stone and Onyx's mother. And they were going to have to live without her.
00:30:58
And, you know, I felt like, well, they're probably going to live without me, too.
00:31:07
And so it was a moral dilemma, said Sean. A deeply religious man, remember. What was the right thing to do?
00:31:16
I decided that I needed to cover it up. And inside the tiny bathroom, Sean Goff began the grim task of erasing Joy Riskers' identity.
00:31:30
I knew that I had to move her fingertips. What were you feeling at that point in time?
00:31:37
I felt horrified. Yeah, I felt frightened. I felt sickened. But there was more to do.
00:31:49
And I decided in order to cover up her identity, I would have to remove her teeth as well.
00:31:55
He used an old saw from the garage, he said. Not the brand new hacksaw he just bought.
00:32:01
I couldn't look at her. I arranged the towels where I wouldn't see anything except what I was cutting.
00:32:13
He struggled to get his junior wife's remains into a large plastic container and into the rented SUV.
00:32:21
He cleaned the house, disposed of the saw, the knife, the bloody towels, and took a shower.
00:32:27
I sat down in the living room, horrified by what had happened. and I was trying to wake up hoping it was a dream At daybreak he said he drove aimlessly ending up 250 miles away beneath that Palo Verde tree in the Arizona desert
00:32:51
And one rock at a time, entombed Joy Risker in that elaborate cairn. After everything I had done, it was like the only way I could show some respect for her body.
00:33:05
And that was Sean Goff's story. Self-defense. An accident, really. The rest of it just a misguided effort to protect his children from a life without their father.
00:33:15
The prosecutor did not try to hide his disgust. Mr. Goff, you lie to avoid accountability for your actions.
00:33:28
True? That's correct. As harsh a cross-examination as the prosecutor could muster.
00:33:34
The truth that Joy Risker had been dismembered and lying dead in the back of the Durango, that truth would hurt you. Correct?
00:33:49
She was dead. Defense attorney Arena turned to the jury and took his best shot. And you have to be convinced beyond the reasonable doubt that it was not possible for Joy Risker to have introduced that knife.
00:34:04
into the bedroom. But I wasn't there. Mr. Greco wasn't there either. Everything that Mr. Greco
00:34:12
has talked to you about is his theory of the case. But Prosecutor Greco had the last word,
00:34:19
the last question. What would Joy say? She would say, I've already told you. I've told you with my blood in the house.
00:34:32
And I have told you that this crime is so unspeakable with my hands and my fingers missing.
00:34:41
Hear her. Hear her. The details had been horrific, stomach-churning. But as jurors left the courtroom, they still had to decide.
00:34:54
Whom did they believe? I killed Joy Risker. By his own admission, Sean Goff was guilty of killing and dismembering Joy Risker.
00:35:22
That much the jurors knew. But was it a cold calculation or self-preservation? First degree murder? Second degree manslaughter?
00:35:32
Or should he walk? It was a surreal experience. It felt totally surreal. It still feels surreal, like it didn't happen to me, like it was a dream or something.
00:35:41
I had this awful feeling we'd be there for a couple of days. Had defense attorney Arena succeeded in planting some doubt?
00:35:48
My impression has changed. and I just understand the concept of a defense attorney now.
00:35:54
Mr. Arena was a good guy. Arena had a very big mountain to climb and on some days he managed to climb pretty far up.
00:36:01
Yeah, I think he planted some great seeds though as far as trying to create that reasonable doubt.
00:36:06
But was it enough? Dateline's conversation with eight of the jurors sometimes seemed like group therapy.
00:36:14
Everything was so unusual. The cruelty of it. Some of the stuff that occurred, some of the stories you heard, some of the evidence you saw must have been.
00:36:28
It was hideous. It was just horrible. I lost sleep over it. It was your last thought and your first thought.
00:36:34
Yes. It was your last thought when you went to bed and it was your first thought when you woke up.
00:36:37
It just consumed you. It overtook your whole life. But they listened carefully, especially when Sean Goff took the stand and claimed he was defending himself.
00:36:47
It was insulting, his lies to us. He thought he had it all wrapped up, though. You know, he was so full of himself.
00:36:53
I definitely got the impression that it was his world. And we're all very arrogant.
00:36:57
Right. Yeah. And then there was the question of Sean tears or actually the lack of them even as he portrayed all that emotion Like come on just give us one And then finally he got it so he quickly picked up a tissue
00:37:13
and just tried to blot. Nothing, it was all just for show. They just didn't buy it.
00:37:20
And so within two hours, they had a meeting of minds and handed the judge their verdict.
00:37:26
We the jury and the above entitled cause find the defendant, Sean Barclay Goff, guilty of the crime of murder.
00:37:32
In September 2006, Sean Goff was sentenced. The sentence imposed is 25 years to life.
00:37:38
And a few days later, we went to visit Mr. Goff in the local jail, where he awaited transfer to the state prison.
00:37:46
It just happened to be the 19th of September, a day with a certain significance.
00:37:52
Three years ago today is when Joy died. Do you feel you have to put it that way?
00:37:57
It's hard to say three years ago today is the day I killed Joy. Well, when it has been necessary to say so, I have.
00:38:06
It's an unsettling business, talking to a person like Sean Goff. Bright, glib, a man capable of chopping up his own spouse's body and still finding ways to excuse himself.
00:38:19
Were you in love with Joy? Yes. Yes, I was. Smitten? Yes. She blew you away? Mm-hmm.
00:38:26
So this was a love match. Yes. But it was he who suffered, said Sean. His pain, his grief, his ordeal, for which he blamed joy.
00:38:38
Joy who could not be allowed to oppose his will. You can't let her have her way if she really cares for that?
00:38:46
No. In this situation, it would have destroyed the rest of the family, giving her what she wanted.
00:38:51
So I'll kill her instead? No. How many times did you stab her? I'm not aware of that.
00:38:58
A dozen times or something. Her sternum sliced off as part of the attack. So when we look at that evidence,
00:39:07
any sane or rational person would say, this wasn't just self-defense. He lost it.
00:39:13
I mean, he lost it like he probably has never lost it before nor ever will again.
00:39:17
And it was like the Super Bowl of losing it. I'm not averse to confessing something bad that I've done.
00:39:25
It's not that I don't believe I'll be forgiven. The fact is that what typifies this event as self-defense is how it began, not how it ended.
00:39:37
He had found peace, said Sean Goff. Remember, he was a pastor once. Do you think your God forgives you for what you did?
00:39:46
For the things that I did wrong, he sent his son to die for. And he's not going to waste his son's life.
00:39:53
Time and again as we spoke, he took pieces of the story of what happened and related them to his central theme, a religious certainty.
00:40:01
It has to do with me fulfilling the purpose that I was created for. It's a pretty shocking idea that maybe, and I don't mean to sound mean here, but you were created for the purpose of killing joy?
00:40:12
No, that's not what I'm saying. Well, you did. I realized that. What he meant, he said, was that he re-embraced his Christian ministry.
00:40:21
When we spoke to him, he said he had a new purpose, to help his fellow prisoners seek and accept God's forgiveness.
00:40:29
Do you believe in heaven? Yes. And do you believe joy is there now? Yes, I do. So what will you say to her when you arrive there in heaven?
00:40:39
I'll tell her I'm sorry. And I'll tell her that I love her. What would she say to you?
00:40:47
Being there, I think she'll forgive me. Among her friends and family, the pain of her death, the horrific story, was raw.
00:40:59
Joy was life, they said. How could such evil be caused by a man who claimed to live by God's laws?
00:41:08
She was wonderful, and she didn't deserve that. Especially not from him. you