00:00:07
- [Vivica]
Observing the signs. - [Darren] By putting
the head in the hands, that means that
that person's mind
00:00:12
cannot consciously carry on. - [Vivica] Detecting
changing stories. - It's a damning
piece of information.
00:00:25
- [Vivica] Spotting
when to hold back. - [Vivica] And when to close in. - It doesn't hurt
to change strategy
00:00:32
'cause it takes everybody
off their game. - I'm Vivica A. Fox. And I'm about to
take you on a journey
00:00:45
to uncover the secrets
of the interrogation room. We'll examine the signs
that someone is lying
00:00:51
and watch detectives
utilize expert techniques to uncover the shocking truth and get
an all-important confession.
00:01:01
- They cut right to the chase. And I'm gonna tell you why -
we have a missing child.
00:01:15
- [Vivica] Polk County, Florida. 25 year old Cheyanne Jessie
is emotional and exhausted.
00:01:21
Her father
and her six-year-old daughter
are missing and she's desperate
to find them.
00:01:26
Officers Newbold and Clarke
are trying to help the distraught young woman. - [Vivica] On July 18th, 2015,
00:02:00
Cheyanne dropped
her daughter Meredith off at her father's home. Mark Weekly had agreed to
take care of his granddaughter
00:02:07
for a week,
to give Cheyanne a rest. A few days later, Mark sent a text to
Cheyanne's boyfriend Cody,
00:02:14
saying that he
had been diagnosed with cancer. He told them not to worry and said he was
taking little Meredith
00:02:21
to visit family in Georgia. By August 1st, Cheyanne had been
unable to contact her father
00:02:27
for nearly two weeks. She called
the Lakeland Police Department to file
a missing person's report.
00:02:48
Later, she helped the cops
search her father's residence, then returned with them
00:02:53
to the Polk County
Sheriff's Department. Had Cheyanne's father Mark
run away with his granddaughter?
00:03:00
Or had a more sinister fate
befallen them both. - [Vivica] Despite
her vulnerable state,
00:03:21
lead Detective Newbold
has no time for niceties. - Sometimes he actually
forgets to charge it.
00:03:26
- The officers
would've been under significant pressure
from their peers to resolve this matter,
00:03:31
to find that child. That child's wellbeing
is paramount. - [Vivica] First, the officers
want to get a read
00:03:38
on the family dynamics, in particular between Cheyanne
and her daughter Meredith,
00:03:44
who'd previously been treated
for psychiatric issues. - [Maleary] Anything to do with
a child is very emotive,
00:04:14
understandably so. And you can understand
why the police are determined
to find this child.
00:04:23
It's quite evident that
the child has problems. But it's... it's quite sad because the issues that
she's describing for a child,
00:04:32
but I would imagine
these are issues that this woman has
gone through herself.
00:04:55
- [Vivica] Struggling to cope
with her daughter's behavior. Cheyanne had recently
asked her father
00:04:59
to consider taking
long-term custody of Meredith. - [Vivica] Cheyanne only became
concerned about her daughter
00:05:37
after her boyfriend Cody received a message
from her father about his cancer diagnosis
and their trip to Georgia.
00:06:12
- [Vivica] Two missing persons,
and the clock is ticking. But Officer Newbold
is struggling
00:06:16
to get any sense
out of Cheyanne. He asks about her education. - [Maleary] Cheyanne Jessie is
one of life's social misfits.
00:07:06
She has had no chances
in life whatsoever. I don't believe at any point
they've taken into account
00:07:12
that she struggles
with reading and writing, she's illiterate. - [Vivica] The police
have made certain
00:07:23
that Cheyanne is fit
to answer their questions, but they're left confused
by her often random statements.
00:07:28
Out of the blue,
she makes a bizarre claim about her father's girlfriend and her possible connection
to the disappearances.
00:08:03
- [Vivica] What began as
a missing person's case... - My father's missing.
My daughter's missing.
00:08:08
I need to find them. I want to
know what happened to them. What's going on?
Can you please help me?
00:08:12
I'm gonna cooperate.
I'll give you anything you need. Whatever you want, just so you
00:08:17
bring my daughter
and father home. - [Vivica] ...has suddenly taken
a sinister turn
00:08:21
as Cheyanne reveals
her suspicions that her father and daughter
may have been harmed
00:08:25
by her father's girlfriend. Why didn't she raise this
at the outset? - [Dr. Ross] Moreover,
if your child is missing,
00:08:35
why haven't you call the police? If you care about your child, why didn't you
go and see if she's okay?
00:08:42
It's like none of this
stuff is adding up. - Is Cheyanne a confused mom, desperate to find
her missing family?
00:08:49
Or could she know more
than she's letting on? Coming up,
Cheyanne's integrity is tested.
00:09:01
- There's inconsistency
in how she's behaving, which tells me it's
completely fabricated emotion.
00:09:07
- [Vivica] And the detectives
drop a bombshell. - The police, of course,
have been to her father's house,
00:09:11
and it doesn't smell too good
over there. - [Vivica] Cheyanne Jessie's
father Mark
00:09:29
had disappeared with her
six-year-old daughter Meredith. From the beginning,
the Polk County police
00:09:35
were worried that things
were not as they seemed. Could they get Cheyanne
to help them understand
00:09:41
what might have happened? - [Maleary] The officers appeal
to the good nature of Jessie.
00:09:53
They ask her to assist them
with their inquiries. They plead with her to show that
00:10:00
she cares about her
missing daughter and father. - (Cheyanne stammers) - Everything that's coming outta
her mouth indicates to me
00:10:48
she's lying, she's creating,
she's manufacturing. Certainly the police
believe that.
00:10:55
And that's why
there's no pretext of, "Hey let's all just get along "and solve this terrible mystery
of where everybody is."
00:11:02
They're not believing
a word of it. - [Cheyanne] I did find
rats there... - [Ciolino] Some people
watching this are gonna go,
00:11:20
"I mean, they went
hard at her, quick." There was no soft-shoe approach. There was no easing her into
00:11:24
this whole thing. Man, they cut right to the chase and I'm gonna tell you why. We have a missing child,
a missing vulnerable child.
00:11:35
Nothing gets
a cop's blood boiling quicker than a dead kid. And if they think they're
working a dead kid case,
00:11:41
the stakes raise dramatically. - It's my opinion that Cheyanne has suffered terribly
in her life
00:12:27
and has been
abused significantly. And the harder questioning from the one detective
00:12:37
is almost something
that she's used to. - [Vivica] When detectives
first met with Cheyanne
00:12:44
at her father's home
in Lakeland, Florida, they were confronted by
an overpowering smell.
00:12:49
Cheyanne said
she too had noticed it. But put it down to dead rats and the body of a raccoon
trapped underneath the porch.
00:12:57
- [Robyn]
There's definitely signs that something bad happened. They just don't know the extent.
00:13:03
There's a smell of blood, there's evidence of
a... ...possible homicide, and they've
got two missing bodies.
00:13:15
So now the hunt is on, and they need to find out
what happened to this child and what happened to the father.
00:14:02
- [Ciolino] The police,
of course, have been to her father's house, and it doesn't smell
too good over there.
00:14:07
In fact, it smells really bad, like, oh, I don't know, rotting, decaying human bodies.
00:14:14
The police aren't buying
the dead raccoon stunk story. They're thinking the worst.
00:14:18
They don't have any forensic yet
to back it up, but they know decaying flesh
when they smell it,
00:14:24
'cause they've all smelled it
at some point in their careers, and there's nothing like it.
00:14:27
Certainly not a dead raccoon. - When a person is lying, and they're thinking about
the story
00:15:00
as they're going along, it's really hard for that person to recall those facts when the detective
comes back to it.
00:15:09
A person who's
telling the truth doesn't have a hard time
remembering a story
00:15:14
because it's what,
in fact, happened. - I think that
the detective realized that the raccoon aspect of
her story
00:15:32
was very far fetched, and he wanted to trip her up
on that part of the story first
00:15:38
because that would allow him
to trip her up on other facts at a later stage. - [Vivica] Convinced
Cheyanne is lying,
00:16:07
and up against the clock, officer Newbold now
cranks up the pressure. - [Vivica]
As the interview continues,
00:17:29
Cheyanne becomes
visibly distressed, and withdraws into her shell. Officer Newbold demands that
00:17:35
she sit up and stay engaged. - The detectives
want her to sit up more because they want
to hear what she has to say.
00:17:41
They wanna watch
every reaction she has. Her body language,
what her face is telling them,
00:17:46
what her words are saying. If you're lying down
on the desk, it's very hard to hear.
00:17:50
You're mumbling. It's very hard to see
what your facial reactions are to questions.
00:17:56
So he wanted her to sit up so that they
can have a conversation. - (Cheyanne mumbles)
00:18:07
- [Newbold] Yes, you do. - [Darren]
Emotion comes in waves. But what I observed
from Cheyanne
00:18:12
was the fact that emotion was not driving that behavior. The officer pointed out to her
00:18:16
that she wasn't
producing any tears. So we can see there's
a complete inconsistency
00:18:21
in how she's behaving and the behavior
that she's producing, which tells me it's
a completely fabricated emotion.
00:18:47
- Within a police interrogation, it's all about
trust and rapport. So the officer
moving closer to her,
00:18:54
can basically operate
on two levels. It can increase
the amount of stress anxiety,
00:18:59
pushing her even more. But also, it can be like
a reassuring gesture. But I feel in
this particular context,
00:19:06
I think he's raising the stakes. - It's part of his strategy.
He's really hard.
00:19:11
This is the way
he wants to set the tone. "I'm in control. "You're going to listen to me
00:19:16
"and you're going to talk to me "the way I want you
to talk to me." (siren wailing)
00:20:01
- [Vivica] The whole
Polk County community is deeply troubled. Is Meredith still alive?
00:20:07
Can she be found
before it's too late? The police are
extremely concerned, and it's led them to take
an aggressive line with Cheyanne
00:20:15
in the interrogation. So far, it hasn't paid off. Coming up,
the detectives switch tactics
00:20:23
and make a breakthrough. - It doesn't hurt
to change strategy, because it takes everybody
off their game.
00:20:32
- [Vivica] And the boyfriend
Cody turns on Cheyanne. - The idea that he
was giving her up
00:20:40
was so devastating to her that she basically
lost her will to fight. - [Vivica]
Despite mounting evidence
00:21:15
and aggressive questioning, 25-year-old Florida mother
Cheyanne Jessie continues to deny
any involvement
00:21:23
in the disappearances
of her father, 50-year-old Mark Weekly, and her six-year-old daughter,
Meredith,
00:21:30
or any knowledge at all
of their whereabouts. - [Dr. Ross] Cheyanne's behavior
during the interview
00:21:40
is quite interesting. She is perpetually in denial. She never gives an edge. Everything she's accused of,
she denies.
00:21:48
She's not the problem, there's something wrong with
them posing these questions.
00:21:52
Like, "How could they?"
"What are you talking about?" That was her repeated response,
or "No, I did not do it."
00:21:59
And I'm wondering to myself, is it possible she didn't do it? - Okay. - [Ciolino] So the one detective
00:22:15
who's primarily
banging away at her leaves the room. And the other detective goes,
00:22:20
"Let me take the soft
approach, alright?" And this is a good approach, because they've got her
hyped up now,
00:22:25
they got her at
a heightened state of anxiety and they've been banging away
at her for a while,
00:22:31
and they've been calling BS on
almost everything she has said. And so now he's
gonna soft-shoe it,
00:22:36
and try and take
the soft approach with her. - It doesn't hurt
to change strategy.
00:23:03
You know, you're going hard,
going hard, and then you go soft
for a little bit 'cause it takes everybody
off their game, right?
00:23:08
It all of a sudden she's like, I'm used to getting, you know,
jumped on, and now I have this happening.
00:23:15
And guess what. Psychologically,
she appreciates that, because she's been under
immense pressure to this moment.
00:23:34
- Watching this interview
felt like the detective who was using
a softer approach with Cheyanne
00:23:40
was getting
a little further with her. I think she responded well
to it. - The officers begin to
show some caring
00:23:54
around her as an individual. Jessie explains that she
has been the victim of abuse
00:23:59
by her father. That her father was verbally and physically
abusive towards her.
00:24:06
And I think that this
is a genuine position that she found herself in. - [Vivica] Cheyanne
has opened up
00:25:16
about her father's abusive
behavior towards her, and it could prove
to be critical.
00:25:21
The officers
can use this information to try and draw the truth
out of her. - You must have been
in fear of your life.
00:25:28
It must be a self-defense case. Something must have happened
to make you do this.
00:25:34
And now what's the subject of
the interrogation thinking? "Ah, maybe I have my out here.
Maybe this is my out.
00:25:40
"Maybe this is how I justify "this horrid,
unbelievable behavior." - [Vivica] But first,
00:25:51
Officer Newbold
has another card to play. While his colleague has been
empathizing with Cheyanne,
00:25:56
he's been talking to
Cheyanne's boyfriend, Cody Munroe. Cody has told him about
00:26:02
some unusual questions
Cheyanne asked him about body decomposition. - To ask how long it takes
for a body to decompose
00:26:28
is compellable,
to say the least. It's a damning
piece of information, given that the father
and the daughter are missing.
00:27:00
- I think once Cheyanne
realized that Cody was giving information that was incredibly
incriminating against her,
00:27:08
this changed everything for her. - [Robyn] This was a man that
she totally loved,
00:27:52
and she was
willing to do anything to experience that love. And the idea that
he was giving her up...
00:28:00
was so devastating to her that she basically lost her will
to fight in the interview.
00:28:44
- [Vivica] Sensing that Cheyanne
is close to making a confession, Both detectives
leave the room to confer...
00:28:52
...and to give her
time to think. - Very often, detectives leave
a suspect in an interview room
00:29:01
to let them stew
with their own thoughts. It's a lonely room. Your mind is
playing tricks on you.
00:29:08
You're feeling more and more
isolated in that room. You're starting to panic. And that's what
they put you in that room for.
00:29:15
And they leave you there specifically for the purpose of creating that tension. So when you finally walk in,
00:29:22
they're almost relieved
to see another human being. - [Ciolino] A common way to
get people to admit
00:29:28
to a violent act is to help them justify it
in their mind, right? "We want to justify
your behavior."
00:29:36
And we start off with,
generally, "Hey, I know you're not
a really horrid person.
00:29:41
"Something terrible must have
happened to make you do this." They are now straight-up
accusing her of murder, right?
00:29:47
And they're putting it to her. But they're, they're
softening it with, "Hey, there's gotta be
a good reason."
00:29:53
Because what's our goal here? The goal is we need
an admission of some sort. We'll work from that
admission, back, okay?
00:30:00
But right now we
need an admission. So if we gotta be nice,
we gotta give you an excuse,
00:30:05
we gotta BS you a little bit
to get there,
we're gonna do that, because we need to break the dam
and get that first admission.
00:30:10
- [Vivica] With
their strategy set. The officers return and read
Cheyanne her Miranda rights.
00:31:38
- The officer's
basically making her stay very much in the interview. Not allowing her
to close her eyes,
00:31:43
put her head down and disassociate
from what she's being asked. Dropping someone's head down
00:31:49
or putting their head
in their hands, it's very much a sign of guilt and a sign that
she's being deceptive.
00:31:53
And that means that that person has come to such a point
in their mind that they're entering
another stage,
00:32:00
which we call
cognitive overload. And that just basically means that the mind cannot
consciously carry on.
00:32:06
It's like a computer
wanting to go into sleep mode. - [Newbold] Did you
have to stab him?
00:33:19
- Now the thing about people is
once they've given a little bit of information
or a little bit of truth,
00:33:23
they feel much better. The old expression is
"get it off your chest". Once she'd done that,
00:33:29
she began to unravel
quite quickly. (indistinct sobbing) - After nearly three
hours of interrogation,
00:34:49
Cheyanne has finally confessed to killing her father Mark
in self-defense. She also claims that
it was her father,
00:34:57
who, in the struggle, stabbed and killed her
six-year-old daughter Meredith. The detectives
now face the grim reality
00:35:06
of finding and recovering
the bodies after two weeks
in the Florida heat. - [Vivica] Coming up,
the detectives test the details
00:35:51
in Cheyanne's story. - [Darren] Now if the person's just come up with
that account on the spot,
00:35:59
or they're lying,
it won't feel natural. - [Vivica] And things get
physical in the interrogation.
00:36:06
- [Robyn] Her story
was so unbelievable. This was part of him
trying to break down
00:36:11
the self defence argument. - [Vivica] 25 Year old
Floridian, Cheyanne Jessie, claims she killed her father
in self-defense
00:36:31
after he stabbed her
six-year-old daughter Meredith. But will her claims
hold up to scrutiny?
00:36:52
- Her story of self-defense
was so unbelievable, the story she was giving him. This was part of him
trying to break down
00:37:00
the self-defense argument. - Now, if the person's just come
up with that account on the spot
00:37:53
or they're lying,
it won't feel natural. If it's an innocent person
that's said,
00:37:57
"This person came up
with a knife "and I just instinctively
lashed out," because it's the truth,
00:38:04
it will just come out
unconsciously. Whereas if someone's made it up, it will look clumsy,
it will look disjointed.
00:38:11
And that's exactly what happened when he ran that with Cheyanne. - [Vivica] It's clear
that Cheyanne
00:39:39
didn't kill her father
in self-defense. It was coldblooded murder. Even more shocking,
it's now clear to police
00:39:47
that she also stabbed and killed
her own daughter. - I personally believe that
these murders took place
00:40:02
for the following reasons, that the father had been
abusive towards the daughter
00:40:07
and she killed him. As simple as that. I think the murder
of the daughter was because she
stood in the way of happiness
00:40:16
between Jessie
and her boyfriend Cody. I believe that
the life experiences that Jessie had been through,
00:40:24
she'd never had real love. She'd never had anybody
show her true affection. And I think that Cody
was the person for her,
00:40:32
or she saw him as being
the person for her, and she would do
absolutely anything
00:40:38
to gain that love
on a permanent basis. - [Dr. Ross]
The Cheyanne Jessie case is an interesting case
because in this case,
00:40:45
it involves a daughter who winds up killing her father
and her own daughter, which is rare, very rare.
00:40:56
So begs the question
why would you kill your father? And, even worse, why would you commence
to killing your daughter?
00:41:02
What were the dynamics
of those relationships? What was going on that
brought her to this point?
00:41:08
- [Maleary] Cody had
given her an ultimatum that it was either him
or her daughter.
00:41:15
And she took the opportunity, having killed her father, to kill her child. (sobbing)
00:41:24
- [Vivica] Forensic examinations of the bodies
and the crime scene will ultimately tell a story
00:41:30
of extreme
and frenzied violence. Cheyanne's Father Mark was stabbed 12 times
in his chest,
00:41:36
and shot twice
in the back of his head. Tragically,
Cheyanne's daughter Meredith
00:41:41
was stabbed multiple times
in her neck and also shot
in the back of her head. - The level of violence that
has been administered
00:41:49
is overwhelming. She is small, by comparison,
to her father. And whether that's her payback
00:41:59
for all the pain that
he delivered to her in previous years, I don't know.
Only she would know this.
00:42:07
It's quite heartbreaking that she's done this
to her daughter. The level of violence meted out,
I can't explain.
00:42:16
At the conclusion
of the interview, you can see Jessie
clearly crying. (sobbing)
00:42:23
And she is crying
on this occasion. She's killed her daughter. She may have no remorse
for killing her father,
00:42:30
but she gave birth
to that child, and she's taken the life. - [Vivica] The crimes
were so shocking
00:42:39
that prosecutors
demanded the death penalty. Lawyers argued that Cheyanne wasn't
mentally competent
00:42:48
to stand trial. A psychological assessment found that she was. - [Juror] We the jury find
that Cheyanne Jessie
should be sentenced to death,
00:42:59
and the answer to that is no. - The jury in this trial found
Cheyanne guilty on both counts,
00:43:07
and recommended
the death penalty. The judge in this case
made the determination
00:43:12
that Cheyanne had suffered
enough in her life, and looked at the abuse that
she had suffered as a child
00:43:18
and decided, ultimately, not to impose the death penalty
in this case. - [Dr. Ross] As for
the case in general,
00:43:28
I think it's really unfortunate that a mother
would betray her own daughter in the interest of a lover,
or a man or a mate.
00:43:36
That's very rare,
to be quite honest. Most mothers protect their kids
to the bitter end
00:43:41
and they prioritize
their children over men, especially men they've just met. - [Vivica] Matthew "Cody" Munroe
00:43:47
denied any involvement
in the murders, and was never charged
or prosecuted. Cheyanne Jessie
was just 29 years old
00:43:55
when she was sentenced
to life in prison without the possibility
of parole. She will now spend
the rest of her life
00:44:03
in a Florida prison for women. (intense music)