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I have something to say, and I hope you'll indulge me for a minute. After the tragic and horrifying events of last week, I wanted to give up.
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I feel as though I'm such a bad communicator, and so bad at my job, my only job,
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that I end up arguing with my audience on social media rather than convincing them of my points here on my program.
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But after a lot of self-reflection, a lot of what I guess they would call soul-searching,
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and the love and support of those closest to me, I've come to realize that this is just the beginning, not the end.
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Evil flourishes in darkness, in complacency. There is more work to be done. There is more truth to be spread.
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And if I'm not equipped to effectively do my job, then I simply need to work harder and get better at it.
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So here's a little bit of truth for you. here's the hot take I've come up with. If you celebrate the murder of someone
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simply because they have different beliefs than you, simply because of their words,
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simply because they hurt your feelings, then you are the problem. You are the monster.
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Period. there's no logical reason why that should need to be said. Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence
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and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Denied and denied and denied and then, but in the end,
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the problem comes out. You guys keep saying she's dead. You guys know something that I don't know?
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Like, I mean, she's dead. Well, we do know a lot of things about her. She's the latest way that she's no longer with us.
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I'm out. Mid-2016 in Seattle, Washington. The sun hangs lazily in the afternoon sky, but a stubborn layer of fog still clings to the top of the trees.
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The Central District is starting to wind down after another Monday. Ferry horns blaze faintly in the distance as commuters pull into their driveways, tucked away in one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.
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One resident on 21st Avenue has traveled more than most, after returning home from an out-of-state work trip.
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He steps out of his car and exhales a sigh of relief, right before noticing that his trash bins are out by the curb.
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What a pain in the ass. It's one last chore before he can go inside and relax. He walks over and reaches for the recycling bin and starts to pull it towards his house,
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but immediately stops. It's heavy, and all of a sudden he's annoyed. The city must have skipped over his house while he was away.
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I'll tell you, you just can't find good help these days. When he lifts the blue lid, he only becomes even more frustrated.
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Peering down into the trash can, he sees that there's three landscape-sized trash bags stuffed inside.
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They didn't even bother to put it in the right bin. He reaches inside for the top bag, but when he tries to pull it out,
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the tie snaps, causing the barrel to topple over onto his lawn. Talk about annoying.
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As he rounds the front of the bin, his breath catches. And then he sees it. Something that can't be mistaken for anything.
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But a female's foot, lying in his driveway. The End It's the kind of place where you'd expect life to be quiet.
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Forested back roads, small towns, that sort of thing. But like anywhere else this area of the Pacific Northwest has seen its fair share of let say darkness Unsolved murders and a growing list of people who vanished here
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have certainly made this region appear a little less pretty. In June 2016, that list of missing people got just a little bit bigger
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when a 27-year-old mother named Jamie Haggard mysteriously disappeared without a trace.
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It just seems very unusual that nobody has heard from her for so long. It's not like her at all.
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The last time anyone saw Jamie was on June 9, 2016. The next morning, she was scheduled to pick up her boyfriend from jail.
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He was set to be released on misdemeanor charges. Unfortunately for him, he wouldn't be getting out as early as he thought.
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He was forced to find another ride home when Jamie never showed. I fear the most that somebody hurt her.
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She doesn't deserve that. She has two little girls so much. And she has a family that loves her so much.
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When word inevitably reached Jamie's friends and family, they started calling and texting her phone, but received no answer.
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When days turned into a week and they still hadn't heard from her, Jamie's father finally decided to take the short drive over to her home in the town of Kenmore.
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That was on June 17th. Jamie's dad knocked on the front door, but no one answered.
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When he felt he had waited long enough, he picked up the phone and called the King County Sheriff's Office to report her missing.
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We think it's suspicious for a number of reasons. First, her family says that she usually contacts her mom at least every other day and they have a conversation.
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Additionally, she hasn't used her cell phone since she's been reported missing. What was even more suspicious was that even though Jamie was reported missing in late June,
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the public wasn't made aware of her disappearance until nearly a month later. Now, we asked the sheriff's office why it's taken a month to get this missing person's case out to the public,
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and they tell us they were hoping that in the meantime she would surface, but without any leads, they are now turning to the public for help.
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During an early interview with a local news outlet, Jamie's cousin told reporters that despite their concerns,
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the family was still hopeful that Jamie would make a safe return. I really hope that with all this, hopefully we'll get a phone call from her
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saying, hey, I'm fine, you guys can relax. I hope so. When police attempted a welfare check, the home was vacant.
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What they did notice, though, was a large pile of dirt in the front yard. When authorities walked around the back, they located a massive hole dug in the yard that had been recently filled in.
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Because they didn't have a warrant, police left without any answers. In the days that followed, rumors started to circulate online.
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Jamie's sister received several messages on Facebook from people who claimed to see Jamie alive.
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walking around downtown Kenmore. After following up on these potential sightings,
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driving countless hours throughout northern Washington, and traveling as far as the Canadian border,
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her family came up empty-handed each time. Unfortunately, as we mentioned earlier,
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Snohomish County isn't exactly foreign to folks falling off the face of the earth.
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It's practically the edge. so if you wanted to make someone disappear this was the place as far as missing persons go
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dating back to the 1960s the local sheriff's office has faced the daunting task of investigating over
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65 unsolved homicides to generate leads on such cases investigators decided to implement a
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technique that was previously successful over 3 000 miles away on the east coast which believe
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it or not, was a set of playing cards. The hope is to elicit new tips from the inmate population because, as we know, inmates like
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to talk about each other's crimes, sometimes brag about each other's crimes, half the day
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playing cards. In 2005, a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement came up with
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the idea of printing playing cards that showcased all the people that were missing in the Sunshine
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State. Interesting collectible for my murderatorium. Ooh, can you imagine a sword and scale museum with a murder-themed lounge?
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Murder docs playing all day with murder-themed drinks and maybe a murder cafe and a gift shop.
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Anybody out there with a lot of money to burn and a background in hospitality, hit me up.
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Anyway, ultimately, Snohomish County followed suit years later and created a card game of its own.
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In 2008, authorities in Washington State distributed these cards to inmates in local jails and prisons.
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Anyone who happened to come back with information leading to an arrest or a conviction in these cold cases was promised a $1,000 cash reward.
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a card game that actually makes you money. Take that, Vegas. Eventually, the playing card technique was adopted by law enforcement agencies nationwide
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because it seemed to be working. It's a deck of cards that will soon be in every Idaho prison and most county jails.
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On each card a different cold case whether it be a wanted person a missing person or an unsolved murder the cards generated an impressive amount of tips throughout the U This unorthodox marketing gimmick actually worked
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Can you imagine that? It helped resolve three cold cases in Snohomish County alone.
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Unfortunately, Jamie's was not one of them. As creative as the idea was, her face never earned a spot on the deck of cards,
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which only led her loved ones to question the efforts of local law enforcement. As they often do, authorities kept their cards close to the vest.
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Sorry for the pun. Jamie's family was rightfully concerned, though. She was a nurse who rarely missed work and had two kids who meant the world to her.
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While the worry and frustration of her loved ones grew day by day, that didn't mean investigators didn't already have a person or persons of interest.
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in the case. You see, long before Jamie went missing, she had her fair share of problems.
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In addition to having a criminal for a boyfriend, she hung around with some other very, let's
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say, seedy characters. And one of those men was a guy named Jason Nolte. Can you just say your full name for the recorder?
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Jason Todd Nolte. Okay. And Jason, is it okay that I'm recording this? Mm-hmm. Okay.
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Jason Nolte was good friends with Jamie's half-brother, David Haggard, with all three living under the same roof.
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When investigators followed up on Jason, they learned he'd just recently gotten out of jail, coincidentally for an incident involving Jamie.
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I mean, I was living here, I've been here probably a month, and I was introduced from a friend to David.
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He had nowhere to live or anything. A couple weeks had gone by, and he kept asking me for a place to stay just for a little bit.
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I kept telling him no. Why'd you keep telling him no? Because he didn't have a job.
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He didn't have nothing. So basically, he'd be for free. At least he wasn't productive.
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Okay. And he finally got a job. He asked me again. I said, look, I'll help you out for a month.
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And then, you know, I'll let you stay here for a month. You know, they'll pay me no rent.
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he's here maybe two days, loses his job, and I go home from work one day, and he's got his girlfriend here.
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And what loses his girlfriend? Carly. Same one, okay, we talked about it, okay. Mm-hmm.
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A couple days later, here comes his sister. Jamie. Mm-hmm. Let's see, I know she's living there.
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When was this that she started living here? Mm-hmm. Probably like... May? Yeah. Wait, no.
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Is it May? Yeah, probably May, I guess. Jason tends to mumble and chew gum, so if you didn't catch that, he told investigators that he was the original tenant of the Kenmore home.
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Then came David, who was down on his luck and allowed to move in temporarily while he got back on his feet.
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A few months later, David's sister, Jamie, moved in. That May. Less than one month after that, Jamie vanished.
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never to be seen again. From the very start of the interview, police were suspicious of Jason.
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He'd been arrested for domestic violence several times in the past, which certainly wasn't doing him any favors.
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Even though he was locked up at the time Jamie went missing, they had a feeling he knew a lot more than he was letting on.
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According to him, this whole ordeal started in early June, when David and Jamie started arguing constantly.
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One day, it was fighting about the roommates stealing from each other, and the next, it was disputes over who was supposed to be living there in the first place.
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While Jason had trouble remembering certain details, he told investigators that days before Jamie went missing,
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she and David got into a physical altercation in the garage, where David allegedly knocked her unconscious.
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What a gentleman. The police were never called, but when Jamie came to, she left the home and told several of her friends what happened.
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In the hours that she was away, Jamie texted David, called him a worthless piece of shit, and told him to go fuck himself.
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Jason claimed that this only infuriated David further, but went on to suggest that someone else might be involved.
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Let me ask you this. Do you guys know who Scott is? I don't know Scott's last name.
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Scott Barnes. Scott Barnes. And why do you bring him up? What's your gut tell you?
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My gut tells me Scott did it. Scott did something to her. Okay, how come you didn't call me with that?
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You've told me that your gut told you David did it. Well, until me and Dave sat down and talked to the other night.
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Okay. And I don't know. Personally, this is what I think. Personally, this is what I think.
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I think they both did something. I think they both know something. That's what I think.
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Okay. Because of the comments that Scott had made to me one night. Scott Barnes was another one of Jason and David's piece-of-shit friends.
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A criminal and self-proclaimed Hell's Angel known to hang out at the Kenmore home.
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Seems like garbage attracts more garbage. Apparently, Jamie's brother David told Scott that he wanted to kill her following the incident in the garage.
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and depending on who you ask, Scott supported the idea. According to Jason, Scott relayed this comment to him
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who in turn told investigators during the police interview. Hours after Jamie was knocked unconscious in her garage she returned home When David awoke on the morning of June 8th he was enraged
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According to Jason, that is. Not wanting to get involved, Jason said he left the home,
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only to receive a text message from Jamie's phone a few hours later. I got a text message, picture message of Jamie tied up in the tub.
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Tied up? You know, with a caption, it says, I did it. I finally did. What did I say?
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I can't remember. I did what you wanted or I did. I can't remember exactly what it said.
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Something I did what you wanted. Now look at her. I was like, what? This is from Jamie's number?
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It's from Jamie's phone. Investigators chose not to interrupt him during his interview.
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I mean, after all, when someone's burying themselves, let them do it. And they did notice a potential slip-up when he said that the text message read, quote, I did what you wanted.
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Hmm. Interesting. Going by his version of events, after receiving the photo of Jamie tied up in the bathtub, Jason called police.
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while authorities were en route to the home david called another friend who answered the phone
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to hear jamie screaming in the background meanwhile david laughed and called his sister a bitch
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repeatedly according to what this friend told police he tried to calm david down and asked if
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he should come over and help defuse the situation david allegedly responded by stating that it
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wouldn't be necessary in that he had, quote, never been more focused in his life. Whatever the fuck
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that meant. Minutes later, officers arrived at Jamie's door. When they tried to contact her,
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she wasn't bound and didn't appear to have any visible injuries. They only spoke with her briefly,
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but Jamie assured the officers that she was fine, so they left. Less than an hour later,
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and that's how it always goes with these sort of situations. It's never just one phone call.
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Jason arrives back home and the police are called again. This time by David. According to Jason, David knew he had an outstanding warrant
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for an unrelated 2014 incident in which he allegedly tried to murder his ex-girlfriend with a hatchet.
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Yep. Yep. Yep. So naturally, David was pissed that Jason called the cops on him.
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So, to get back at him, he called the police in retaliation. Like it's a fucking game.
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When police arrived for their second visit that day, Jamie was in much worse shape than she was before.
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She was in hysterics and had fresh marks on her face, neck, and arms. Jamie's injuries were photographed, and pictures were taken of each room of their home.
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Jason swore up and down that he never put his hands on Jamie. But when police took her aside, she told him that he was the one who had attacked her, not David.
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I don't touch her, you know? So she gave a statement saying you beat her? I guess. I don't know exactly. I was told that they both gave statements that I beat her.
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Now, I'm not a polygraph machine, but clearly someone here is lying. As a result of the bathtub incident, Jason was taken into custody.
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Will they arrest me? I've never seen her again. According to another witness, Jamie then left the home in Jason's Acura
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and drove to a friend's house where she spent the night. While there, she called her boyfriend in jail.
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Now, here's where it gets confusing. On the recorded line, Jamie told her boyfriend what happened back at the house, but never mentioned Jason's name.
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Instead, she said that it was David who punched her in the face. So she told police one thing and then told her boyfriend something else.
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He said that David had hit her as hard as he could in the stomach and that he tried to kill her.
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Why Jamie provided contradicting statements to police and her boyfriend is unclear.
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but more than likely, she was scared. During the jailhouse call, her boyfriend pleaded with her not to return to the Kenmore house.
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When she woke up at a friend's house the next morning on June 9th, she called her boyfriend again.
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During that call, she told him she was going anyway, and planned to kick David out for good.
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As for Jason, he wasn't being ruled out just yet. perhaps his only benefit was that he was locked up hours before jamie disappeared
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and wasn't released until late june he was also somewhat cooperative with police and
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told detectives that david had mentioned his inability to pass a lie detector test
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weird and dave told you he wasn't gonna pass the pond graph right dave told me that there's no way
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investigators then asked what was up with the hole in the backyard how much of the backyard
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was dug up other than that hole look okay i dug remember that mound in front you told me about yeah what do you think about that i have no idea
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where that dirt came from he had no machines and it's crazy okay yeah i have no idea why that's
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Okay. That was done at the same time the bag was filled in. Okay. Jason elaborated that he dug the hole
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in an attempt to fix a broken septic. But when he returned home from jail, Jamie was gone and the hole had been filled in.
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Look underneath the shed too. the shed look under the shed too for some reason i don't know has that come up in a conversation
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no but i heard something nothing but i just just looked at the shed now's not the time to say oh
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nothing it might be nothing i know right right might be nothing but if you heard it doesn't
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mean that it's true but you're living here the day he was released jason said police were already
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at the house looking for Jamie. David and his girlfriend were there, who Jason claimed stole some rather interesting items
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that belonged to him. When I got inside, all my stuff was gone. Pretty much. I mean, I have my TV still and my video games, but...
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What was missing? Okay, my DVR. I have a DVR for my security system. It's gone. All my cameras are still there,
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but my DVR is gone. Have you heard what happened to it? Nope. Pissed me off. My DVR is gone, all my clothes are gone, a bunch of my toys, I mean, I know what he did.
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Since I went to jail, he went through my shit, took my shit. Sold it, made money, yeah.
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Nearly all of Jason's things were gone. Not just his home security system, but his clothes, suitcase, and even his bedsheets were missing.
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After about an hour of speaking with him, Jason gave authorities consent to search the property.
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As for David, he had a checkered past of his own. The now 42-year-old had been in and out of jail since he was a juvenile.
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Dating back to 1995, David managed to rack up charges including grand theft auto, burglary, and many, many more things.
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David's troubles with the law started to ramp up a year before Jamie disappeared.
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In 2015, David was arrested for unlawful possession of two firearms. During a traffic stop, he was pulled over for driving a stolen vehicle.
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When police searched the car, they found a .44 Magnum revolver and a pump-action shotgun.
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As a result, he served 12 months in prison and was released around the time he moved into the Kenmore home.
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With that being said, there was much more evidence authorities had already obtained concerning the potential link between David and his sister Jamie's disappearance.
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Information that investigators weren't willing to reveal until they got a chance to speak with David themselves.
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The End mysteriously vanished from her home in Kenmore, Washington. When she failed to pick up her boyfriend from jail on Friday the 10th,
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phone calls and texts went unanswered. A week later, her father visited the home she shared with several others,
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but found no trace of Jamie. After reporting her missing on June 17th, the police search for a young mother came off as an inconvenience
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more than a priority to Jamie's loved ones. Days quickly turned to weeks, until nearly a month later when authorities finally acknowledged her disappearance publicly.
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Without the family's knowledge, investigators had been actively gathering information behind the scenes.
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An early interview with Jamie's roommate, Jason Nolte, ultimately painted a dark picture that curiously lacked critical details.
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Fights, tensions, and violence were just a few of the red flags early on One name came to mind out of the mouths of nearly every person in Jamie's circle
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And it made it hard for investigators to ignore it That name was David Haggard, her own brother
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Shortly after his so-called friend Jason threw him under the bus David was brought in for questioning
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While he sat across from three detectives in an interrogation room at the Kings County Sheriff's Department,
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he was asked to take a polygraph. Without a lawyer present, David agreed. But in retrospect, maybe he shouldn't have.
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So, I went through my charge. You didn't pass your test, did you? Okay. This is what my computer algorithm was telling me.
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Okay? That means probable deception indicated, meaning that there's indications that you've not been truthful with us.
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Okay? David can be seen in the CCTV footage struggling to comprehend how he failed his polygraph.
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You can almost see the gears turning in his dumb head. He doesn't appear to be reading the graph on the page in front of him as much as he is thinking of what to say next.
00:29:28
Yeah, I don't know. Do you ever know her? I know men in your position that have been under suspicion due to circumstances,
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and they're denied and denied and denied, but in the end, the fucking truth comes out.
00:29:41
One way or the other. I don't know anything, sir. Let's just face the legal side of this thing.
00:29:47
What's the crime of disposing of a woman that ODs? I have no idea. It's fucking gross misdemeanors.
00:29:53
I have no idea, sir. So I telling you that because I don want you or anybody else overly freaked out about an OD death and guys panicked and got rid of the body
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You guys keep saying she's dead. You guys know something that I don't know? I don't even know that she's dead.
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Well, we do know a lot of things about her. She's going to lead us to believe that she's no longer with us.
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Now, what would lead authorities to think such a thing? Surely Jamie's home life was extremely toxic, but maybe she just needed some time to cool off and get away from all the drama.
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To be clear, we were still working this case as though she could still be alive.
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It was a two-pronged approach. So one approach was, OK, if she's deceased, we need to find her remains.
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If she's alive, we need to find her. according to david the last time he saw jamie was on june 9th when she allegedly walked out of their
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home and got into a car with a mexican man i'm not even gonna go through this man i have nothing
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to do with my sister nothing to do with her disappearing whatsoever man i love her to death
00:31:08
where the fuck is she i don't know where she's at i don't know where she's at i don't know what
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the last six months of lifestyle she's taking on with all these brown people i don't know the
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The next kid that she's been hanging out with, I don't know any of that shit. The last two months, I fucking cut her off, pretty much.
00:31:23
Is a person in your house? No. Is a father in your house? No. David, who's obviously racist, claimed to have no idea where Jamie or her phone was.
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Whether he was telling the truth or not didn't really matter, since investigators were currently filing subpoenas for the phone records of various individuals.
00:31:48
They'd find out soon enough, that's for sure. One of the things that we're doing today is we survey search warrants on a variety of phone companies,
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including your phone, including Jamie's phone, including some other people's phones.
00:32:03
The reason I say this thing's going to be done today and solved today is because we're going to know where she's at today.
00:32:09
We have to clear the people around her from suspicion. You're unfortunately very difficult to clear.
00:32:14
According to David, he left a short time after Jamie did. But when he came home, he noticed a fire smoldering in a burn pit in their backyard.
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fucking investigations started taking off. Other than that, I don't know anything else.
00:32:49
Who was that? Why do you think that's relevant? Because it was just, because you guys keep asking
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about that backyard and about why we buried or, you know, what we buried and burned there.
00:33:00
You know, it's just weird. I don't know. Seems like something I should say to you.
00:33:03
Well, most guys would have a standard burn pile, right? Well, yeah. You know, you're not going
00:33:07
to burn next to the house. Yeah, you're not going to burn next to the house. So are you saying
00:33:10
this is something different? Yeah, I was totally flabbergasted. it was in the hole that we had for the septic that's been messed up there.
00:33:18
So we got out of the trench line. That's how that whole yard got tore up to begin with,
00:33:23
because the septic was fucked up. Septic or sewer? Sewer. Yeah. Sewer was fucked up.
00:33:29
I didn't even fuck up. So I got there. Like I said, it was weird. Carly showed up right after me, and I even said something to her,
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you know, like, this fucking boy, she burned right next to the house for, you know, she just kind of pissed me off, you know.
00:33:41
I didn't think anyone had it done. Whose fire was it? I thought it was Jamie's. I thought Jamie was on fire.
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What day was that? That day. The night. Yeah, the day. The last time you saw her?
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Yeah. While David admitted to filling the hole, he seemed to have trouble answering whether he or Jamie lit the fire.
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Kind of a weird thing to not remember, huh? The more detectives asked about it, the more upset he became.
00:34:09
I'm telling you right now, I don't know where my sister is. If I did, I would tell you.
00:34:12
I would tell you if she OD'd in front of me I would tell you I don't know I don't know
00:34:19
did you end up fighting with her on the last time you saw her? the no the day before
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we were fighting did you turn physical? no not any more than no well what does that mean?
00:34:32
I mean yeah I mean it was physical at first but I mean I was just getting to the truth of the matter
00:34:37
I mean I was just I was you know on top of her but it was nothing there was no fucking violence
00:34:42
or anything, the cops came there. I know that. And the cops checked her out. And I was fucking cleared.
00:34:47
I didn't do anything to her. 24 hours later, though. 24 hours later, she wasn't at home.
00:34:52
Right. She was gone all night. She was gone all night. I guess we'll find out when we get the phone records today.
00:34:59
Yeah, we'll find that out. Without being asked, David decides to bring up the bathroom incident himself,
00:35:07
where he allegedly attacked Jamie and tied her up in the tub. If you hadn't already guessed,
00:35:15
his story was much different than his buddy Jason's. David goes on to tell detectives how his sister
00:35:21
tried to kill herself that day before she went missing by swallowing a bunch of pills, allegedly.
00:35:28
The cops come, and at this time I'm dealing with my sister. She's in the bathtub.
00:35:34
The whole time I'm thinking that she's taking a bunch of pills, and I don't know what pills she takes,
00:35:39
but I know she gets some gnarly fucking stuff. So I'm not sure, you know, I went from rage
00:35:44
to empathy here, and of course, they didn't call the cops, they should have called the
00:35:48
cops, but I get her to fucking throw up, or I'm threatening to stick my finger down her
00:35:54
because my little sister she bite my finger off so she mad at me you know what I thinking I get a spatula She said no I throw up You know I was going to take her to the shower I get her in the shower I on the phone with Carly and King County Sheriff or the Sheriff are walking up
00:36:08
So I go back to the bathroom. And at this time, the bathroom door's not open anymore.
00:36:13
It's partially shut. I open up the door. Now, here's this girl that was supposed to be took a bunch of pills, was laying in there,
00:36:22
fully clothed. At one point, the tub was filling up and I realized that the little stopper
00:36:28
that stops the water was up. And I put it down and I slapped her on her arm and said,
00:36:34
not on my watch, James. You better stay with me. What the fuck is... So when they came in,
00:36:40
they said, we got an anonymous call that an anonymous person received the text message.
00:36:44
The only one I sent the text message to was Jason. Backs up my theory that they're playing
00:36:48
fucking games here. He's playing it. He's a manipulator here. Notice how he doesn't bring up the photo of Jamie tied up in the bathtub, and detectives don't bother to ask.
00:36:59
Speaking of suicide, they were curious about a note they'd come across during one of their earlier visits to the home.
00:37:07
So my partner just texted me this picture of a note that you left on the garage for your girlfriend.
00:37:16
It's a suicide note in my reading of it. He said I don't want to talk anymore. The suicide note made out to David's girlfriend Carly was written days before Jamie vanished.
00:37:29
Police had already learned that on June 6th, one of his closest friends found him in the garage with a chain wrapped around his neck.
00:37:37
Aside from his sister going missing, David had plenty to be depressed about. I mean, by all accounts, his life was pretty much shit.
00:37:46
Maybe the suicide note meant nothing, but at the very least, it certainly indicated the poor headspace David was in
00:37:53
leading up to Jamie's disappearance. Meanwhile, Detective Kathleen Decker and the major crimes unit
00:38:01
were already inside the home searching for clues. I think he may have put her potentially in the crawl space.
00:38:08
We didn't find any evidence of that, but if she was wracked, we wouldn't have found any evidence of that.
00:38:13
We did have two HRD dogs work that property, and both dogs, independent of each other, did have a behavior change at that crawl space point in the bedroom.
00:38:25
We also had a mattress leaning up against the wall there that had some pinpoint drops of blood on it, which may have been what caused the dogs to react the way they did.
00:38:36
Kathleen Decker was brought on the case early on. Originally cutting her teeth as a homicide detective, she later became an expert tracker and processor of outdoor crime scenes.
00:38:48
That's actually the reason I was brought into the Jamie Haggard case to begin with was because of my familiarity with search and rescue resources and my familiarity with the process of how you organize and coordinate and get a team together to do a search.
00:39:04
And that is why I was asked to participate and help Detective Bartlett, who was the lead detective at the time that Jamie went missing.
00:39:17
In her 34 years plus with the Kings County Sheriff's Office, she earned her reputation by helping solve some of Washington's most high profile cold cases.
00:39:28
In other words, if anyone was going to find out what happened to Jamie, it was her.
00:39:33
after failing to find any substantial evidence inside the kenmore home kathleen directed her
00:39:40
team's efforts outside as they prepared to excavate the backyard in fact that's why we're
00:39:46
only out of your house today sure so we're going to check it we're going to be checking
00:39:50
equipment we're going to be doing with the cadaver dogs we're going to be we're going to be covering
00:39:55
in that case today. 100%. And if she is found out there, somebody's got something
00:40:01
explaining to do. You know you're not under arrest, right? I haven't done anything
00:40:06
with my sister. Do you understand you're not under arrest? I'm not under. Okay. Well, let's get out here then.
00:40:12
I hope you're right here. I wasn't there. But in the end, if she's somewhere because she OD'd,
00:40:19
I would assume that at this point you got the message and you need to tell us. you should die under other circumstances
00:40:25
you know it'll come out when David asked for a lawyer technically that's it interview over
00:40:35
at least it should have been but he keeps talking and just like his buddy Jason did
00:40:42
he mentions the name Scott Barnes where's Scott at? we got other teams doing other things
00:40:51
Do you want to tell me the story about Scott? No, Scott needs me to check. You're suspicious of Scott?
00:40:57
Yeah, really. Is he taking a reason? Because he's like fucking admitted that he's done something there.
00:41:01
And Jason told you about that? Yes, yes. He's, I think Scott did something with his sister.
00:41:08
They were already looking into Scott. But fact that his name came up certainly raised a few eyebrows.
00:41:15
Despite what they suggest to David, authorities have no proof that Jamie's dead.
00:41:21
To make matters worse, the only thing clear was that David, Jason, and Scott were all liars.
00:41:29
It really was difficult for us as we're trying to push this forward, dealing with people that, by nature, lying is so normal to them that it just happens.
00:41:42
And so a lot of what you hear isn't factual. A lot of it might be lore. A lot of it is rumor, speculation, so you have to really sort through all of that to
00:41:53
get at what is truth and what factual During this period bodies were turning up left and right across all of northern Washington and a lot of them were women
00:42:06
After a severed foot was found inside a recycling bin in Seattle, authorities arrived to find even more body parts in the remaining trash bags,
00:42:15
including an arm, a leg, another foot, and a woman's head. About a week later, additional remains were discovered in a different trash can nearby.
00:42:28
We are confident that it is connected to last week's homicide investigation, which was only about three blocks away from where we're standing right now.
00:42:39
The autopsy suggested that the woman was somewhere in her late 20s to early 40s.
00:42:46
Eventually, she was identified as a local nurse and young mother, but it wasn't who you think.
00:42:52
In this case, 40-year-old Ingrid Lyne was lost, a mother of three, a nurse at Swedish First Hill.
00:42:59
She was reported missing Saturday in Renton. Almost exactly two months before Jamie vanished, the body parts found inside the trash cans were confirmed to be those of 40-year-old Ingrid Lyne of Renton, Washington.
00:43:15
Luckily for David, Ingrid's killer, a man she met online, was already in custody.
00:43:21
Still, the similarities between Ingrid and Jamie were chilling. If nothing else, it spoke to the dangers women in this area were facing at the time.
00:43:32
During David's interrogation, detectives decided to push a little harder. They brought up a few other cases.
00:43:40
Specifically, two women found stuffed inside suitcases the year before. Jesus, man. Last year we found two fucking people in suitcases because their friends panicked,
00:43:51
didn't know what the fuck to do with bodies, and folded the chicks up in suitcases and dumped them.
00:43:58
Jesus Christ, just call and say, you know what I'm saying, just fucking deal with it.
00:44:03
Authorities had no reason to believe these cases were connected, but they did offer their theory on what they thought had happened to Jamie.
00:44:12
Here's what I think happened to her. I mean, it's really only two scenarios. She can OD someone, it's likely the house.
00:44:18
Somebody freaked out and fucking had to get rid of her. Or somebody beat the fuck out of her and killed her.
00:44:26
Whether that happened to your house or not, I don't know. But the crime letter's going to figure it out.
00:44:32
Yeah. In the end, you're not passing the polygraph. The simplest polygraph we could design for a man like you in your position.
00:44:46
One that you absolutely should pass. I don't want to talk about the polygraph anymore.
00:44:52
Okay, let's talk about that. If you want to be done, you can go on. I don't want to be done.
00:44:57
They didn't have enough to hold him. and after asking for an attorney a second time, the interview was forced to end.
00:45:05
While heavy machinery dug up the soil at his residence a few miles away, David was ordered to stay away from the Kenmore property.
00:45:14
For the next several days, Kathleen and her team combed through piles of burnt trash and debris,
00:45:21
searching for any shred of evidence that might lead them to Jamie. Tonight, King County detectives are continuing to look for a missing Kenmore mother of two.
00:45:32
27-year-old Jamie Haggard disappeared around June 8th, and they are calling it suspicious.
00:45:37
The major crimes unit worked day and night at the Kenmore home, using their backhoes to tear up every square inch of earth.
00:45:47
But after days of relentless excavation, the only thing they turned up was a pair of burnt construction coveralls.
00:45:56
reeking of diesel fuel. Those search efforts really didn't produce a whole lot of clues or
00:46:03
information that was going to be terribly helpful. The burned clothing was certainly odd at the time
00:46:10
that we found it. We didn't know what to make of it. And that diesel smell was interesting. So we
00:46:16
took those items as evidence because they did not fit. There was no readily explainable reason for
00:46:24
them to be there. So we seized those as evidence. We took photographs and just kind of noted it.
00:46:31
When the scene was finally cleared, David was allowed to move back into the home.
00:46:37
As investigators widened their search across both Snohomish and King County, tips from the local community started pouring in. So we spent a lot of time following up on tips,
00:46:49
people who saw someone who looked like Jamie or they thought it was Jamie seen at this place at
00:46:56
this time there were a lot of rumors and speculation amongst the people that she associated
00:47:03
with as to what had happened to her I hey I heard a rumor that she was cut up in a chipper hey I
00:47:11
heard a rumor that she was thrown in the river hey I heard so we had to follow up on all of these as
00:47:17
best as we could to determine if there was any validity to them. Meanwhile, we're also conducting
00:47:24
numerous searches, trying to find her if in fact she was deceased. Investigators chased down all
00:47:32
these leads, but found nothing. So this week they searched in and all around Arlington after getting
00:47:38
several tips that she was spotted there. But detectives say it wasn't her. So they are asking
00:47:44
everyone to be on the lookout. And while it's great that a lot of people have been sharing her
00:47:48
photos on Facebook, detectives are asking you to call 911 or Crime Stoppers if you have any real
00:47:55
information. They're spending a whole lot of time tracking down rumors instead of dealing with
00:48:00
actual facts and people they can interview. Now, last Friday, deputies searched her property, but they came up empty,
00:48:06
even using a backhoe to sift through the piles of trash in the backyard of the home
00:48:11
and a recently filled in hole as well. When the phone records finally came back,
00:48:17
authorities learned that on June 9th, 2016, at 1.05 p.m., David's girlfriend received a text from Jamie.
00:48:25
it was aggressive demanding that david leave the house before the weekend was over
00:48:30
and that it better be clean before he was gone the tone was completely out of character for jamie
00:48:37
and even stranger the text misspelled david's girlfriend's name when authorities brought
00:48:44
david's girlfriend in for questioning she revealed that at around 8 45 on the morning of june 9th
00:48:50
Jamie walked through the door of the Kenmore home and confronted her and David. According to her statements to police, Jamie screamed at David.
00:49:02
Told him things were going to be different and that he should either get out of her way or quote, get on down the road.
00:49:11
David's girlfriend also explained that she left the home a short time later to drive her child to school, leaving Jamie and David alone.
00:49:20
in the house. In piecing together their timeline, investigators also learned that Jamie called her
00:49:27
boyfriend in jail at 9.32 a.m. that same morning. The call lasted roughly 15 minutes, where Jamie
00:49:35
was heard finalizing her plans to pick him up the following afternoon. That was the last time he
00:49:42
heard from her. From the time she spoke with her boyfriend to the time David's girlfriend received
00:49:48
the text message, there's over three and a half hours of radio silence from Jamie's end.
00:49:54
When David's girlfriend returned to the home at around 1.30 p.m., Jamie was gone, and David
00:50:01
was in the backyard. We received information from David's girlfriend, Carly, that she had come home
00:50:09
and found David out in the back burning something or doing something with fire in the area where we
00:50:17
had found those burned clothes. So that kind of fit. We still didn't really know what that meant.
00:50:25
And today I don't even really know what that was all about. But I believe it is important. It's
00:50:31
related. It's relevant. I just don't know how it fits in the puzzle. When David's girlfriend
00:50:36
approached him by the burn pit, she told police that he said Jamie started the fire right before
00:50:43
she walked out the door and left with the unidentified Mexican man. David's story would
00:50:49
later change altogether by allegedly telling other witnesses that there was no Mexican man,
00:50:56
and instead, Jamie walked off on foot on June 9th, never to be seen again. There was some inconsistent statements that David had made about when he had last seen Jamie.
00:51:09
he just seemed to be a little bit of all over the place and it was really David's just inability to keep his story straight
00:51:18
that caused David the most problems. As for the fire, this wasn't something Jamie was known to do
00:51:25
let alone in the middle of the day. Something else that stuck out as strange to David's girlfriend
00:51:32
were the items Jamie left behind. He had left behind some personal effects that most people wouldn't leave behind.
00:51:41
Her, I think it was like a purse, there was a phone, her prescription, medications, those kinds of things.
00:51:50
It just seemed odd that she would not be coming back for those items. And so that piqued our interest.
00:51:58
David's girlfriend recalled seeing Jamie's phone on the kitchen counter. but by the time police finally searched the home, it was no longer there.
00:52:07
Weeks later, on June 23rd, Jamie's sister also received a strange message. The person on the other end claimed to be Jamie,
00:52:15
stating that she was fine and just needed some time to figure things out. But the message wasn't sent from Jamie's phone.
00:52:23
Instead, it came from Jason Nolte's device, who was still behind bars. Weird. Jamie's sister wanted to believe it was her.
00:52:35
While her family continued searching, Jamie's father posted videos to his Facebook daily,
00:52:41
pleading with his daughter to come home. Sitting here at the desk, drinking a little glass of whiskey, had a nice dinner.
00:52:53
Miss you, Jamie. I love you. The clip shows Jamie's father watching an old western with the caption that reads,
00:53:03
Doors unlocked. Jamie. Honey. Unbeknownst to Jamie's loved ones and the general public, evidence was still surfacing,
00:53:13
most of which pointed to none other than David. A friend of his girlfriend eventually came forward and told investigators that on June 9th or 10th,
00:53:24
She witnessed David at a car wash in a nearby town of Woodinville, driving Jason Nolte's Acura.
00:53:32
And with him in the car was his buddy, Scott Barnes. Meanwhile, Jamie's father continued to show up for his daughter,
00:53:42
holding her missing persons flyer up for the local media cameras whenever he had a chance.
00:53:47
I will find you, Jamie. I love you. Dad is coming, and I'll never stop. Weeks turned into months Headlines of Jamie disappearance became few and far between The public interest in Jamie case inevitably dwindled and was soon overshadowed by the hot new
00:54:08
whatever it is in the news. Probably some local broadcaster bitching about Trump.
00:54:14
Anyway, roughly one year after she was last seen, authorities were able to secure a second warrant
00:54:21
to search Jamie's property. And in May of 2017, the yard at the Kenmore home was dug up once again.
00:54:30
This time, they focused on a few areas left untouched during the initial search.
00:54:36
A narrow patch of dirt near the back fence. Shovels hit earth, a cadaver dog circled the perimeter,
00:54:44
while a backhoe tore into the ground. Then, a hard clunk. The machine jolts to a stop and investigators exchange glances.
00:54:58
The operator steps down to join Kathleen and her crew, standing at the edge of what's buried
00:55:06
beneath the surface. Jamie Haggard's disappearance in June 2016 left more questions than answers.
00:55:41
When she failed to pick up her boyfriend from jail, her family knew something was wrong.
00:55:48
Investigators zeroed in on three men. Jamie's roommate Jason, who was known to be violent towards women,
00:55:55
a local biker named Scott, and Jamie's half-brother, David. All three had been on law enforcement's radar long before Jamie vanished.
00:56:06
All of their stories were filled with bigger holes than there were in the backyard.
00:56:11
The only common thread being their willingness to point the finger at each other.
00:56:16
There's no honor amongst thieves, they say. Burn pits and ditches dug for a do-it-yourself sewage repair quickly became the focus of the search.
00:56:27
All that was found was a pair of men's coveralls burnt and reeking of diesel. When the excavator's bucket struck something during their second search,
00:56:38
They found nothing but planks of wood and an old TV buried in the dirt. Who the hell buries a TV in the dirt?
00:56:48
The fuck is wrong with these people? In hopes that maybe they would find her somewhere in there, that didn't happen.
00:56:55
Meanwhile, Jason Nolte, Scott Barnes, and David Haggard remained suspects. But without a body, law enforcement's hands were tied.
00:57:04
So we would constantly offer up opportunities for David to meet with us, to have conversations, to have phone calls.
00:57:12
Sometimes he would engage, other times he would not. For nearly two years, the investigation went nowhere, except in circles.
00:57:21
And the case lingered in limbo. That is, until one sunny morning in May of 2018.
00:57:34
It was the morning of May 9th, and along the desolate stretch of road that makes up Route 522, a team of four city workers had just started their normal trash cleanup along the interstate in Snohomish County, Washington.
00:57:51
After hopping out of their van, the group starts jabbing at the earth with their litter pickers and grabbing claws to gather fast food wrappers and other debris strewn across the freeway.
00:58:02
who are these assholes that tossed their burger wrappers out the window seriously get some fucking manners anyway after making their way south through the shoulder
00:58:13
of downs road the workers eventually spread apart to cover more ground as one man makes his way to
00:58:22
a nearby field he notices a small carry-on suitcase resting in a patch of overgrown grass
00:58:27
at around 7.15 a.m. After hauling a few discarded tires nearby, he reaches down to pick it up,
00:58:37
and to his surprise, it's heavier than he expects. Still, he manages to drag it roughly 10 feet to the roadside
00:58:45
and leaves it by the guardrail. It wasn't put in a bag, and I just left it out there.
00:58:51
I don't want to touch it. No particular reason. I just didn't carry it on. After about two more hours of cleaning, the crew hurls what they think are the last bits of trash bags into the trailer.
00:59:05
By now, a few of the crew members had already gotten back into the van, ready to head to their next location.
00:59:13
But before they did, the man remembers he'd forgotten one last piece. That old suitcase.
00:59:19
case. I noticed the luggage was pretty heavy, and I had my picker, litter picker, and I kind
00:59:28
of disturbed it, and as I picked it up, it just ripped apart. It just clicked into my head that something was wrong there because of the amount of work
00:59:38
that was involved into packaging whatever was in there. I immediately got on my radio and contacted my lead driver.
00:59:48
And I said to her I really hope this is not what I think it is but I think this is a body inside of this She goes you gotta be kidding me After radioing his supervisor the man crouches down to the bag again
01:00:05
And his curiosity gets the better of him. I opened it up and I saw the hair and I said, oh crap, something smells in there.
01:00:13
I ripped it apart just to see, you know, hoping to see a carcass of a deer or something, possibly a dog.
01:00:21
And I opened it to more, and we left it alone and called the sheriff's department.
01:00:27
After nearly vomiting from the stench, the worker runs to the van where he joins the rest of the crew while they wait for the police to arrive.
01:00:39
Within minutes, the area was swarmed with sheriff's deputies. Once the perimeter was secured, they made their way towards a suitcase and started peeling back the layers.
01:00:48
the first was a black trash bag with a distinct blue plastic tie inside it was commercial grade
01:00:57
construction wrap the third and final layer was a burnt red bed sheet partially stained with blood
01:01:05
it's at this point that authorities know this is no dead dog instead they're looking at a pile of
01:01:13
human bones inside the bag. At the point that I learned about this, I just knew it was Jamie.
01:01:20
I just knew it was her. Whoever this person was, it was obvious they'd been out there for a while,
01:01:27
but preliminarily making an identification seems impossible. Not only because they'd been subjected
01:01:33
to the elements for what appeared to be months, if not years, but the skull and other various body
01:01:40
parts were missing. I believe that there were parts of her hands and feet that were missing.
01:01:47
She had been dismembered. She had been burned. There may have been some disarticulation that
01:01:53
occurred too just naturally from the decomposition process. Also in the suitcase were several pieces
01:02:00
of melted hard plastic, along with a necklace attached to a small round pendant. Once the
01:02:08
remains were transported to the medical examiner's office, the autopsy results didn't yield much
01:02:13
information aside from what investigators already knew. Only from a partial pelvic bone were they
01:02:20
able to eventually determine the gender. While the female Jane Doe had an age range of 24 to 44 years
01:02:29
old, there was still a great deal of work to be done. So we basically had to peel back everything
01:02:36
and look at every single thing that we could determine if it had any forensic value.
01:02:43
Could we get anything from any of this? Fingerprints were going to be out because of kind of how it was all compressed.
01:02:52
And it was just a mucky mess. We talked about DNA extraction. There was human hair.
01:02:59
Could we get DNA from the hair? So we had discussions about that. It was decided the best opportunity for DNA is going to be just bone extraction from the femur that was in the suitcase, which is what we ultimately ended up doing.
01:03:14
DNA testing would take several more weeks. While waiting for the results, Kathleen Decker revisited the evidence locker several times.
01:03:24
After laying out the burnt items on a stainless steel table, she placed a series of photographs next to them, searching for any clue that she may have missed.
01:03:35
In one police photo taken during the domestic incident the day before Jamie vanished, she's seen wearing a pendant necklace.
01:03:45
In another, taken inside Jason's room, were red bedsheets seen covering his mattress.
01:03:54
After comparing the images to the items found in the suitcase, they appeared to be a match.
01:04:00
But because they were so damaged, investigators had no way to be sure. In cases like this, DNA is everything.
01:04:10
And the bone fragment analysis was their last hope. When the results were finally returned, they confirmed the grim truth.
01:04:18
Jamie did leave her home, but only after she was murdered, dismembered, incinerated,
01:04:28
stuffed in a suitcase, and left to rot by the interstate. In details today, we learned the remains of a missing mother identified yesterday were found inside a suitcase.
01:04:40
When Jamie's remains were positively identified in July of 2018, you would think that's it. Case closed.
01:04:48
Authorities had their suspects. Surely they had enough to charge at least one of them with murder, right?
01:04:55
Well, not really. Even though Jamie was the confirmed victim of a brutal homicide, investigators still had a pretty hefty burden of proof to overcome.
01:05:09
Luckily for Jason Nolte, he was behind bars at the time Jamie was last seen. But did he help facilitate a plot to kill her before he was locked up?
01:05:20
We told Jason right from the get-go that the best thing that ever happened to him
01:05:23
was the fact that he went to jail for a crime he didn't commit on June 8, 2016, because he literally was physically incapable of having killed Jamie.
01:05:34
He was in jail. Okay, fine. But what about Scott Barnes, the Hell's Angel, the one everyone keeps mentioning?
01:05:43
allegedly he was in favor of getting rid of jamie before he and david were seen scrubbing down the
01:05:50
acura at the car wash were all three guilty or did david act alone scott barnes yeah he was definitely a character to be concerned with in part because David was saying hey Scott did it
01:06:06
Well, okay, that's great, but we need a little bit more information. Why do you say that?
01:06:12
Give us something besides the fact that Scott's a bad dude, that he's crazy violent.
01:06:19
I need more than that. So we were always open to that being a possibility, and we had to try to eliminate Scott as best we could.
01:06:28
And the only way you can really do that is through interviews, you know, potentially polygraphs, those kinds of things, and evidence.
01:06:36
I mean, is there any physical evidence to link Scott Barnes to Jamie's murder? And there really wasn't, you know.
01:06:45
Everything kept coming back to David and the Kenmore house. Something else investigators were forced to consider were the ongoing statements from Jamie's own family.
01:06:57
Her sister in particular outwardly expressed her belief that David had nothing to do with it.
01:07:03
Sure, he had a long rap sheet and short views, but so did all his friends. He and Jamie also had repeated arguments and sometimes physical altercations about their living situation.
01:07:14
situation. But according to the victim's sister, that didn't mean that he killed Jamie. In her eyes,
01:07:21
David was a good man and a good brother, despite his troubled past. Let's face it, no one wants to
01:07:28
believe that a family member could kill one of their own. Denial is more than just a river in
01:07:35
Egypt. It's one hell of a drug. But despite the incriminating text messages, the red bedsheets,
01:07:43
the fires, and all the other stuff. All this evidence was circumstantial. Unfortunately,
01:07:50
when someone turns up dead, it doesn't matter what you think you know. What matters is what
01:07:56
you can prove in court. If this case was ever going to be solved, investigators had to get
01:08:03
creative. Not by playing a missing person's card game, but by finding something concrete,
01:08:10
Something substantial. They had to fight fire with fire. This is a horrible case.
01:08:16
I mean, Jamie is very tragic. She had two daughters and, you know, has a family that cares a lot about her.
01:08:22
So something like this is heartbreaking. And, you know, to get a little bit of closure to find at least her remains.
01:08:27
But we still have a lot of work to do because we still need to find out who's responsible for this.
01:08:32
Unable to charge David with murder, investigators started looking at some of the other crimes he was suspected of committing.
01:08:39
About four months before Jamie went missing on February of 2016, he allegedly broke into a mobile home in the town of Duval and stole a refrigerator and other appliances.
01:08:51
Later that same day, he returned to the mobile home, crawled underneath the trailer, and lit two cushions on fire, causing it to burn to the ground.
01:09:01
Then, just days before Jamie vanished, David was suspected of another fire. On June 5th, he allegedly broke into a construction yard where he and Jamie's father worked in the nearby town of Woodinville.
01:09:16
According to Jamie's father, David had easy access to heavy machinery there, but also materials like commercial-grade construction wrap, for example.
01:09:27
You know, the kind that Jamie's body was found in? In the suitcase? During this incident, he allegedly used a $140,000 forklift to steal a commercial welder by loading it on the back of his truck.
01:09:42
He then proceeded to dump gasoline into the forklift's cab before setting it ablaze.
01:09:49
Ultimately, David's girlfriend and his roommate Jason both ratted him out to police, claiming David bragged to them about the fires.
01:09:58
But he was never charged. in Washington? imagine that not long after Jamie's remains were identified
01:10:06
investigators received another tip this time from David's uncle according to him
01:10:14
the same day Jamie went missing David called him and said he was hiding out in an abandoned barn
01:10:20
when investigators revisited the area where Jamie's remains were found they noticed a dilapidated barn
01:10:27
less than 100 yards away After combing through the abandoned structure, they found another burn site, a melted gas canister and a black trash bag with blue plastic ties, consistent with the one they found in the suitcase.
01:10:45
These were all pieces of a much larger puzzle, but so much time had already passed.
01:10:51
The longer investigators waited, the more time David and his friends had to potentially destroy more evidence.
01:10:59
Not willing to let that happen, Kathleen Decker submitted her probable cause affidavit.
01:11:06
Then in October of 2018, David was arrested for arson. Roughly one year later, right before he was set to be released, his charges were upgraded to second-degree murder.
01:11:18
Today, prosecutors charged Jamie's older brother David with her murder. They say the siblings who lived together had a history of violence.
01:11:26
Twice, police dug up the yard at the home they shared, searching for clues after her disappearance.
01:11:32
Friends and roommates say David threatened to kill Jamie and beat her up repeatedly,
01:11:37
at one point hitting her hard enough to knock her out. It took roughly three years to charge Jamie's half-brother with murder.
01:11:47
But a charge doesn't always mean a conviction. In the meantime, authorities were forced to explain why the hell their investigation took so long.
01:11:57
All the witnesses were very suspicious of David. But we had to get to a point where we actually had probable cause to feel that he was actually responsible for the murder.
01:12:06
Although a trial date had been set and David was behind bars, investigators were far from finished building their case.
01:12:15
Over a year later, in December of 2019, Kathleen Decker made one last visit to the evidence locker.
01:12:24
She wasn't interested in bedsheets. Instead, she wanted another look at the burnt plastic fragments found in the suitcase.
01:12:33
Early on, investigators suspected that these may have been pieces of a cell phone,
01:12:39
but it was so badly damaged they assumed it was useless. That's when Kathleen spotted something.
01:12:46
A tiny section of what looked like a melted motherboard fused into a piece of shrapnel.
01:12:53
So we were stymied for a little bit of time until we were able to identify someone through the FBI that was able to provide us that ability.
01:13:04
And we were really happy when we heard that there was someone out there in the world that could potentially do something with this.
01:13:11
And that was huge when that happened. Roughly three years after Jamie's disappearance, the destroyed plastic was finally sent to the forensic experts at Quantico, Virginia.
01:13:24
Even the technicians working for the FBI characterized this as one of the most damaged phones they'd ever seen.
01:13:31
Somehow, after months of trying, they successfully extracted some data. In April 2019, the recovered contents were handed back to investigators in Washington with confirmation that it was, in fact, Jamie's phone.
01:13:48
and buried within a cache of binary code was a voice memo. But it wasn't Jamie. Instead, the voice recorded on her device was a man's,
01:14:04
later determined to be her half-brother, David. Not only that, but the voice memo was an exact replica
01:14:14
of the text message sent to David's girlfriend from Jamie's device on June 9th, but instead it was in audio form.
01:14:26
The timestamps were also a match. Investigators theorized that David must have used the speech-to-text function
01:14:34
to compose the message and accidentally saved an audio version while pretending to be Jamie,
01:14:42
who by that point was already dead. A selfie was also recovered from the device.
01:14:50
It was a photo of David, with his eyes wide, pupils dilated, and sweat dripping from his forehead.
01:14:58
Investigators referenced wooden beams in the background of the image, verifying that the photo was taken inside the Kenmore home, possibly minutes after Jamie was killed.
01:15:09
The data recovered from Jamie phone combined with all the other evidence that took years to piece together finally gave prosecutors the confidence to bring their case to court
01:15:23
At his trial in September of 2022, the state laid out the brutal details of Jamie's death.
01:15:32
how she was likely beaten, dismembered, burned, stuffed into a suitcase, and dumped on the side of the road.
01:15:43
Forensic analysis linked the red bedsheets from the suitcase to Jason Nolte's bed.
01:15:49
Witness testimony placed David at the car wash, scrubbing down the Acura following Jamie's disappearance.
01:15:57
Text messages and recovered voice memos captured David's voice. All of this was crucial in court.
01:16:06
Despite all the evidence, there was no smoking gun. There was no murder weapon. Still, Kathleen Decker, who had worked for years on this case,
01:16:18
was confident that the jury would make the right decision. I felt really solid about this case,
01:16:27
and I trusted that our justice system was going to work. I trusted that the jury was going to hear the facts they needed to hear to come to the right conclusion.
01:16:37
So I didn't feel like he was going to get away with it. I don't know why. I just felt like, no, we did our job.
01:16:44
We worked really hard. This is going to come out the way it's supposed to come out.
01:16:50
Her intuition was right. And after weeks of testimony, David Haggard was found guilty of second degree murder.
01:16:58
ahead of sentencing Jamie's family members provided victim impact statements her sister
01:17:06
who wanted desperately to believe David all along expressed how Jamie's children
01:17:12
would not only grow up without a mother but without their uncle as well you might not think that this is fair
01:17:20
but it's not fair for Maddie and Dilly either they miss their mom they don't even remember the things I remember
01:17:27
it's not fair that my kids don't grow up get to grow up with their aunt jamie or their uncle davy
01:17:33
it's not fair their choices these choices tore our whole family apart oh did you think this case
01:17:40
was going to be wrapped up neatly what do you think this is forensic files 48 year old david
01:17:47
was later sentenced to 15 years in prison a punishment that jamie's family said would never
01:17:52
truly bring them closure. Jamie Haggard's case was filled with dead ends and frustrating false leads.
01:18:00
It took over six years to go to trial, but that doesn't mean everyone involved faced consequences. Despite their proximity
01:18:09
to this case, Jason Nolte and Scott Barnes were never charged with a crime. Justice is a
01:18:16
real elusive bitch sometimes. Justice is like that ex that dumped you after saying she loved you and then ghosts you.
01:18:26
And that's it. There's nothing else you can do. Yep Justice is a real cunt Now that doesn mean that there isn out there someone else who had involvement I not going to say that David is solely involved and responsible
01:18:42
It's possible there might be others out there. We were never able to make a case strong enough to charge anyone else.
01:18:51
And, of course, David was never able to give us any information beyond, well, Scott did it.
01:18:57
okay well why are you saying that give me something i can work with something that's tangible and he
01:19:03
never was able to to do that i don't know there's definitely more to the story that than what we
01:19:09
know there's other chapters that we haven't yet addressed or figured out and let me also say to
01:19:15
this day we don't know where her head is her head was not in the suitcase so um that is somewhere
01:19:21
are out there. I hope and pray that at some point and someday we will have that recovered.
01:19:28
It's important for the family to have all of her back. And maybe at some point we'll get that.
01:19:36
Before we let Kathleen go, we wanted to know what she thought happened to Jamie.
01:19:41
Her personal theory never reached the media, nor was it present in court. But in terms of motive, it might just be even more disgusting than the murder and dismemberment
01:19:52
itself. So we had information from one of Jamie's friends that Jamie had been raped by David.
01:20:03
And we knew David had raped Carly before. She disclosed that to us. So we had reason to believe
01:20:10
that Jamie and David had an incestuous relationship and that that had been going on for several years.
01:20:15
He was very jealous of her, jealous of any boyfriends that she had, which is why I think that argument probably happened on the 9th.
01:20:23
There's no doubt that there is that relationship going on between the two of them.
01:20:28
Bet you didn't see that one coming. Forensic files eat your heart out. So I think probably what happened is that David and Jamie got into another argument.
01:20:37
We know she'd been on the phone with her boyfriend who was in jail due to get out and that she was supposed to pick him up, that she was going to move him into the Kenmore house.
01:20:47
So I think that David may have sexually assaulted Jamie. I think that during that, that he strangled her.
01:20:56
I think that after he ended up killing her, he may have panicked a little bit because he would have known that Carly was due home.
01:21:04
Carly had left that morning to drop off her child at school because it was 830-ish in the morning, and Carly was due back home noon-ish.
01:21:13
Carly was delayed coming home because she had stopped at a store on the way home.
01:21:18
So I think what he did at that point was somehow wrap the body up in the sheets that he got off of Jason's bed.
01:21:26
I think cutting her up was probably just ease of transport. That's typically why we see somebody utilize dismemberment.
01:21:33
It just makes it easier for transportation. So I think that's probably why he did that.
01:21:39
Put her in the suitcase. I think the suitcase came from the house there in Kenmore.
01:21:45
And would it surprise me to learn later on that Scott had not only knowledge but participated in some way shape or form before the fact during the fact or after the fact No it wouldn I don know if we ever will get to
01:21:58
that point, but that's still another mystery. Jesus Christ, how's that for an ending?
01:22:05
Violent offenders, habitual lies, and incest, of all things, are just a few of the potential
01:22:12
factors that make Jamie's murder a mysterious one almost nine years later. These backroad country
01:22:20
white folk or something else, I'll tell you. I mean, I do love Cracker Barrel, but damn.
01:22:25
Like Kathleen said, we might never actually find out what really happened to Jamie that day.
01:22:32
Still, you have to wonder, did justice really prevail? Or is this case just another reminder
01:22:40
that some people are better at getting away with murder than others. Either way, it sure does make you look at this case a little differently
01:22:49
when you remember what David said. I have nothing to do with my sister. I love her to death.
01:22:56
Ew. Ew. Ew. Gross. Well, that's going to do it. I've got to go watch some cartoons.
01:23:10
Thank you. Thank you. This episode was written and produced by Mike Dunphy. If you like what we do here,
01:24:22
be sure to check out Sword and Scale Television at swordandscale.com. Thank you.