The Most Incompetent Murder Investigations in FBI History

0:00Hello, I've already walked back to another episode of the casual criminalist. As always, I love these ones. I'm your host, by the way. Simon, this has been written author, author, who wrote this? Your name isn't on the script, so how am I supposed to address you as? We'll just call you Bob. This is written by Bob. We don't have a right to call Bob. Maybe I have a right to call Robert. I don't know, probably. This is the shoddeus murder investigations in FBI history. These are some of my favourite episodes to do. So, relax and we'll get into it. Because the FBI, by the way, they're normally the eyes and it's like, oh no, the local police while they were supposed to leave the scene decammated. You know, they were supposed to leave it for CSI, but Officer Jeffrey went in and he got his blood everywhere, took us on the corpse and the other things. I was going to make a joke.

1:02It's probably a bit early in the episode to say that. Yeah. And then the FBI come in and they're like, what the f*** do Jeff? But we'll catch this guy because we the FBI. That rhymes. Anyway, we're all familiar with the federal Bureau of investigation, or simply the FBI. Even if you're not from America, the charges are you've heard about the FBI and the news or through popular television shows like MindTunter. If you haven't heard of the FBI, where have you been living? Even living under a rock? The owner, I mean, let's, there, if you live in a country where everything is dubbed, like Germany's mega into dubbing, right? Do they dub it FBI? Or do they give it like its own like, localized, dubbed version? But even then you'll be seeing their badges on the screen. Everyone knows you the FBI is. Whereas I couldn't even be confident in saying that Scotland Yard is the British equivalent of the FBI, like the police that sit above that the local boys, I don't know, and girls, until I said local boys, I meant everybody. The FBI is the premier federal law enforcement agency in the country.

2:03It has stated on the website under the heading, what is the FBI? They are a quote. National security organization with both intelligence and law enforcement responsibilities. It is the principal investigative arm of the US Department of Justice and a full member of the US intelligence community. The FBI has the authority and responsibility to investigate specific crimes assigned to it and to provide other law enforcement agencies with cooperative services. Yeah, those cooperatives are those. If you're a criminal and you're being investigated by the bobbies locally or the cops, I suppose it would be the American slang. And then it's like, ah, no, the FBI coming off. They might actually solve this murder I committed. With all of that information, one would probably assume that the FBI conducts itself with the higher standard and employees the best of the best. Surely it doesn't have an infamous legacy of controversial blunders with numerous types of corruption, right? I'm getting the feeling, ah, bobb, that it is going to have lots of controversial blunders and numerous types of corruption.

3:04Pretty cheap. See what sure you've seen something like overall, FBI comes out and they can pretty get. They're solved with the crimes. But of course, there are bad. What's that saying about apples being rotten? A rotten apple spores the bunch, is that a thing? Apples don't come in bunches. The apples come in bushels. Oh my god, get on with the episode Simon. Could you focus, please? While you'll be wrong, unbelievably wrong. In the script, I picked four instances where the FBI committed blunders that negatively impacted the outcome of several cases. The number of FBI controversies is vast. At this script can only be so long. Oh, if I didn't cover a specific mistake you were thinking of, this is why. Yeah, we're already doing, oh, how many we do? I thought we were doing five, but I might have just made them up in my mind. Please join me as we do this deep dive into the infuriating and shocking world of FBI blunders. Apologies in advance if I total any faith you may have had in the US Justice System. The murder of Viola Liu Zhu.

4:07During the civil rights era, there were numerous murders of activists that remained unsolved or completely botched by the FBI. This isn't even mentioning the countless racist lynchings and murders of Black civilians that remained just uninvestigated. At the time, the FBI was led by the ever so controversial Jay Edgar Hoover. Who for a really long time? There's that movie we read artist Gary who could Jay Edgar, which I've never seen. And in my vines, I'm like, yeah, Jay Edgar Hoover, the president. And I think I said that in a video, people were like, that's Herbert Hoover. And I'm like, I know. I know. Different people just with the same surname. Are they related to the guys who made Hoover's? Like the vacuum cleaner. It's America. It seems like, you know, you get these big names and then you find out, oh, they are responsible for that. They are as like someone seventh cousin. I don't even know who my second cousins are. Hoover was a deeply flawed man, but let his personal prejudice as effect his decision-making is the head of the top law enforcement agency in the United States. He largely considered the civil rights movement to be disruptive, a threat to national security and tied to communism.

5:08His disdain for civil rights leaders as well documented and the FBI's surveillance of these prominent figures is infamous in American history, just Google, Co-entel Pro or the assassination of Fred Hampton. It would be misleading to say that all of the unsolved murders or flawed investigations of civil rights activists were completely the FBI's fault. There were a lot of factors working against them at this time. Many of the murders occurred in the South where racism was ingrained in the community. Ah, well, that's okay then. The number of police officers and local officials who were members or supporters of the Ku Klux clan is inviurrating. When you add the lack of federal jurisdiction and their primary focus at the time being communism, it resulted in the failure of the Bureau to properly investigate and solve these crimes. But if they don't have federal jurisdiction, ways, that the right term they have federal jurisdiction, don't they? They don't have state-level jurisdiction. So if a crime is in a state and it doesn't cross boundaries, is the FBI doesn't get involved typically? Right?

6:08So if they don't have jurisdiction, there's nothing they can do. It'd be like, I'm really disappointed that the Spanish police didn't help with the murder of that French guy. Why didn't they investigate it? What? That does seem to do with Spain! One of the most infamous examples of the FBI completely botching such cases and intentionally altering the course of justice would be the murder of Viola Luizo, a white woman who is active in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965, 39-year-old Viola was a wife and mother to five children who lived in Detroit, Michigan. Always a passionate and outspoken woman, she had become involved with the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s because of her close friends, Sarah Evans. Sarah, who was black, had met Viola at the grocery store during the 1940s. The two women became fast friends and maintained a lifelong bond with Evans even working as Luizzo's full-time nanny and housekeeper. In 1964, while Viola, who was taking classes at Wayne State University, she and Sarah became involved with the Detroit chapter of the NAACP. NAACP? I think it's NAACP, right?

7:09That's the right. Pronunciation? It's a AA. NAACP. Ooh, which is the National Association for the Advancement of Colour People. She also began attending the first Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit. These two organisations were deeply involved with each other and worked for the cause of the Civil Rights Movement. By all accounts, Viola was a devoted artist, a woman who stood her grounds no matter what. She was valiant in her beliefs and fully threw herself into the causes she cared about. It was this passion for racial equality that would result in Viola being murdered. Just a comment there, the past was the worst. You know? But first, let me give you some much-needed background info about this period in the Civil Rights Movement. On March 7, 1965, an infamous moment in American history took place called Bloody Sunday. On this day, roughly 600 unarmed marches walked to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. A company by civil rights leaders such as John Lewis and Hosea Williams, the protest was in response to the February murder of Jimmy Lee Jackson, a young, back-black deacon

8:13who had been killed during a peaceful voting rights march in Marion, Alabama. The governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who was by any ethical historical measure, a real piece of it. Called the planned march, a threat to public safety. It's a very broad interpretation, Mr. Beesich. He then ordered the Alabama Highway Patrol to stop it by any means necessary. The 600 marches, who I want to once again emphasize, were unarmed, completely civil, and well within their rights to protest, isn't that in the Constitution? I feel like there's something about that in the Constitution, or something in the American Constitution that applies to that. They soon came upon a wall of state troopers waiting for them to cross the bridge. What happened next is one of the most shameful events in American history. Hosea Williams tried to speak with a commanding officer. He was told there was nothing to discuss. Though unprovoked, police officers began to shove and beat the marches, with the scene quickly devolving into a bloodbath. Unarmed protesters were hit with night sticks and are tackled by police officers.

9:14They troopers fired tear gas into the crowd and proceeded to charge them on horseback. The assault was brutal and by the end, 17 protesters needed to be hospitalised, with 50 others being treated for minor injuries, hence the day being labelled Bloody Sunday. Bloody hell. In response to the events of Bloody Sunday, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders in the civil rights movement, organised another march. The night before this protest, representatives of President Lyndon B. Johnson met with these leaders to negotiate plans for the protest being held the next morning. On March 9th, a court order had been issued, prohibiting the marches from once again crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Unbeknownst to many who participated in the March 9th protest, King agreed with Johnson's representatives to make a symbolic gesture. King and the other leaders led a crowd of 2,500 back to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but instead of proceeding across it, they stopped. A short prayer session was held, and then the crowd simply turned around and walked back to the churches where they originally gathered. The result has been labelled Turn Around Tuesday. Yeah, which is exactly what was going to happen the first time until the police got

10:16all violent. What the fuck? I say this with surprise. It's not a partite. Segregation. Segregated America? Unsurprisingly, the events of Bloody Sunday and Turn Around Tuesday were very moving for Viola. After partaking in a march held by her college, Viola felt called to do more. She made arrangements with Sarah and her husband, making sure that the kids were cared for. Viola then drove down to Selma to participate in the march on Montgomery. Simply put, she wanted to do as much as she possibly could for the cause that she was so passionate about. After a three-day drive in a 1963 Oldsmobile, Viola arrived in Selma on March 19th and immediately got involved with the plans for the protest being held on the 21st. After getting in touch with the SCLC, Viola was able to volunteer for them at hospitality desk where she welcomed and registered fellow marches. A local female activist offered her and a few other aid workers a place to stay during their time in Alabama, which Viola accepted. Over the next four days, Viola participated in the protest as a marcher and a working

11:21volunteer. On the day of the 25th, Viola continued to work for the march. Since she wouldn't be needing it, she had allowed a fellow aid worker named Lee Roy Motton to borrow a car so that he could shuttle people to the airport. At the end of the day, Motton picked up his final group of passengers and met with Luzo at a plan meeting spot. Viola took over driving duties and headed back to Selma with Lee Roy to drop off their latest batch of passengers. Lee Roy also had to get back to Selma to pick up a set of keys that the marches transportation team needed and Viola volunteered to drive him back to Montgomery after dropping off the other passengers. On her final way back to Selma, she would pick up any straggling protesters who needed to get back as well. She plans on leaving Lee Roy and Montgomery, heading back to Selma to pack up her things and she would leave from there on her journey back to Michigan. Despite a nerve wrecking trip filled with harassment from racist white people opposing the protest, the group made it back to Selma unharmed. After dropping off the other passengers, Lee Roy left Viola to pick up the car keys that

12:21he needed to retrieve. Meanwhile Viola grabbed dinner and then met back up with Lee Roy after 7 o'clock to make the final trip to Montgomery. Lee Roy remembered looking up at the large clock as he and Viola made the way out of Selma and noting the time. 7.34pm While Lee Roy and Viola were waiting at a stoplight, a carful of young white men pulled up next to them. Inside the car were four members of the Ku Klux Klan, 21-year-old Kolly Wilkins, 34-year-old Gary Row, 41-year-old William Eton and 43-year-old Eugene Thomas. The KKK members quickly realised that the car they had pulled up to was being driven by a white woman with a black man in the passenger seat. This blatant example of racial mixing greatly upset the Klan's men, so they decided to do something about it. For the next 20 miles, they trade Lee's car. Apparently Viola quickly caught on to what they were doing and began to speed and attempt to outrun them. The Klan's men were not phased by this. Gary Row later explained that they were trying to pull up next to the old mobile four separate times during the trace.

13:22It had also been reported that while Viola was speeding away from the assailants, she sang the civil rights anthem, we shall overcar them at the top of her lungs, which is pretty badass. Unfortunately, the men were able to catch up with Viola, pulling up next to her on a remote stretch of highway 80, halfway between Selmer and Montgomery. Row later reported that a startled Viola turned back to the men driving alongside her. He stated that she seemed to open her mouth, saying something to the effect of, oh my god, it was this point that one of the men in the car pulled out a gun and fired multiple shots into Viola's window. People of such pieces just cried Jesus Christ. Viola was struck in the head twice and killed instantly, and a car quickly veered off the road and into a ditch. The Klan's men pulled over and went to check on the victims. In the passenger seat, Lee Roy, who was covered in Viola's blood but otherwise unharmed, acted quickly and played dead, the men bought it off and god, and believing to have killed both passengers quickly sped away.

14:23After waiting a short while to ensure the killers were finally gone, Lee Roy exited the automobile and began running down highway 80 to flag down passing cars. Eventually a truck stopped for him. Fortunately for Lee Roy, the car was full of fellow protesters who gladly rescued the blood-soaked man. Once back in Selmer, Lee Roy went straight to authorities to report what he had just gone through. Oh no, oh no no no. I just realised this is about FBI blunders. These guys need to get in the chair and like the death chair, the electric chair, and they're going to bungle it somehow and these three douchebags are going to go free, aren't they? So what does the FBI have to do with this terrible murder and its subsequent investigation? Well, it turns out that Gary Row was working as an FBI informant and when I say that Row was a terrible choice for the role of informant, I mean it wholeheartedly. Wait, so one of the Klan's men dudes was an informant? Okay, why was he terrible? Yeah, okay, there we go, Gary Row, 41. At the time of his FBI recruitment in 1960, Gary Thomas Row was an eighth grade dropout

15:26veteran who'd moved to Birmingham, Alabama in 1957. It tried to begin a career in law enforcement but was rejected by the county sheriff's office. It said he found work operating as a balancer at the Birmingham Veterans of Foreign Wars Club. He also worked briefly with what would become the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms or the ATF, where he helped them crack down on illegal alcohol productions, aka moon shiners. In exchange for his assistance in these busts, Gary was given access to cheap guns. Only at a barricade. What? Yeah, and I know Gary were paying you in guns, mate. Gary would be like, what money? What's the supposed to do with guns? The VW club Gary Bounce that also happened to be one of the KKK's hangouts in Birmingham. It was here that he first came into contact with these pointy-hatted degenerates in 1960 and they soon began to court him as a member. Reportedly, the clan wanted to recruit him due to his law enforcement ties. Guess being rejected by the sheriff's office for not having graduated high school and helping the ATF bus moonshineers in return for cheap guns, counters legitimate ties to law enforcement.

16:31He was in the military now. Well, military's not law enforcement, is it? Yeah, he's a veteran. Military's not law enforcement. No, military's not law enforcement. They're not enforcing laws. But hey, no one's ever really accused the KKK of being smart. As it turns out, the KKK weren't the only people trying to recruit Gary Row in 1960. During this time, the FBI had been working throughout the South to try and gather more information about the possibility of infiltrating the clan. I'll also note that the agency was also in the South to try and gather more information on black activists that they believed had ties to communism because, of course, they were. This is by the 1960s America after all. Yeah, rather than going after the racist guys who were killing people, they're like, yeah, but what if those racists go as a communist? Dirty, dirty communists? That's the way your hardcore Kame works. Apparently, the FBI wanted to recruit Gary because of his ties to law enforcement. They also purportedly knew how much the clan had wanted Gary to become a member. In both his autobiography and later court testimony, Gary Row would claim that he did not

17:34want to join the clan. He only did so after being contacted by the FBI agents that wanted him to be their paid informant. Row agreed to their proposition and officially joined the clan in May 1960. Though some members were reportedly suspicious of Gary, who soon gained the trust of such high ranking members as the grand dragon of Alabama. That is cringe. That is just like, how old is this dude? He's got to be like in his 40s or whatever, right? Because we are Gary here joining the clan in the 40s. This guy's got to be old and he goes by grand dragon. Bro, you're like a 50-year-old edge lord. For those of you who don't know, in KKK speak, the grand dragon is the state leader. I knew that Bob. I know everything about the KKK. They're exactly leadership structure where I sit. Oh no, I ffff. The only person above them in the hierarchy is the Imperial Wizard, who is the national leader of the clan. A grand dragon is kind of like a state governor while the Imperial Wizard is like a country's

18:36president. And yes, they use nerdy ass to us like grand dragon and imperial wizard. It's like dungeons and dragons, I'm sure. Garyro operated as an FBI informant throughout the 60s. In her book, Mary Stanton claimed that Gary was known to participate in violent attacks on black people, civil rights activists and journalists. Allegedly, the bureau was fully aware of this. Gary, even himself, stated that his FBI handlers knew about his violent pastimes after they had told him to avoid any such situations. In May 1961, Gary helped a plan and took part in an attack on the Freedom Riders at a burning embustation. He claimed to have informed the FBI about this plan to assault three weeks in advance. The bureau could have done something to stop all of this, but of course, they decided to do nothing. It was also suspected that Garyro may have been involved in the 1963 bombings of Martin Luther King's house and room at the Gaston Hotel. There was even some evidence that it participated in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that resulted in the deaths of four girls aged 14 and younger.

19:37Polygraphs are notoriously unreliable, but apparently Gary failed two of them in relation to his participation in this bombing. I don't know FBI. It seems like your paid informants may actually be dedicated to the KKK's mission. Maybe we shouldn't let him and his associates be free on the streets just as thoughts. Yes, FBI. Come on. It's like Wins. Wins is like, he's just into it. The response to Viola's murder was swift. The March to Montgomery had been a highly publicized event that was plastered all over the news. As a result, the brutal murder of a processor got out quickly, or so hasten in the coverage and response to this crime was Garyro. Apparently, on the day of the murder, he had warned his FBI contacts beforehand that his fellow clansmen were planning on going to Montgomery to incite some sort of violence. Gary stated that he was unaware of any specific plans, but claimed that Grand Dragon Robert Creole told him. Something Tommy Littier is probably going to be one of the greatest days of clan history. It will probably be one of the days you will remember until the day you die.

20:39Instead of doing something about these warnings, the FBI reportedly told Gary to go with the clansmen observer. At this point, it had been working with the FBI for five years, and had a known history of ignoring their instructions to not partake in clan violence. I mean, also, if he is like undercover or an informant or whatever, it'd be a bit weird if every violent situation he was like, no, why is that? I mean, why did you join the clan, Gary? This is what we're into. We love beating up black people. It's our thing, Gary, and you're not even doing it. Not that I'm encouraging violence, but people go undercover and they do horrible sh- right because there's a big picture of play. Although it seems like the FBI just don't give a f-ck about the big picture here, so... What the f-? His pension for disregarding such advice was seemingly well established, yet they still decided he should join the group in their response to the march. I guess in the view of the FBI, his warnings about this response did not warrant any real action. Jim Clark, the sheriff of Selma, would go on to claim that Viola's murder could have been entirely prevented if the FBI had worked with his deputies on their clan investigations.

21:42At the time of the murder, Clark claimed that the car used by the clansmen, a Chevy Impala, owned by one of the perpetrators, Eugene Thomas, was already under surveillance by Selma police. He stated that the FBI were aware of this. In from Selma to Sorrow, Mary Stanton explained, quote, Sheriff Clark had welcomed the resources of the FBI, the state police, and the clan in his efforts to maintain a segregated Selma, but he wasn't going to get caught in their crossfire. It could very well be that Sheriff Clark, in an effort to redirect the blame for Viola's murder, used the FBI's escape-goat, perhaps Clark was lying to save his skin. The FBI vehemently denied any knowledge that the Impala had been under surveillance, they even claimed that it never was, but before you take the FBI at their word here, let me explain how they purposefully maligned the character of their victim and engaged in an attempt to cover up their involvement. Oh no. Why are you doing this to the victim FBI? What the fuck's happening? Shortly after partaking in Viola's murder, Gary Rowe alerted his FBI handlers about the crime.

22:43In less than 24 hours, they arrested him and his fellow clansmen responsible. With an hours of the murder, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was already working on the agency's response. Hoover sent an internal memo to President Lyndon B. Johnson about the situation. It would later be revealed that Hoover had already started to defame Viola's name in these memos by making insinuations about Halesman Jim. Jim was working for the Teamsters Union at the time, and Hoover apparently used this to make inferences that he was somehow an unsavory character involved in organized crime. You're the president, why are you going to involve with this? This seems below your pay grade, babe. He wasn't involved in organized crime. Despite these memos, President Johnson called Jim around midnight that very evening to express his condolences. Wait, in the meantime, you're like this unsavory guy. Let's tarnish his reputation. So it's okay that his wife was murdered by racists. How the fuck does that thought go through your mind? Oh, hello Jim, I'm so sorry to hear about your wife being murdered.

23:43Duschbag. Johnson was a famous Duschbag though, right, wasn't he? Literally. Linson Johnson? Famously a dickhead? Is that right? The next day, after Gary and his friends were in custody, Johnson publicly announced that the FBI had already arrested their suspects and that a proper investigation into the crime had already been launched. As it turns out, this statement was not exactly truthful. Once Jay had Gehover learned that an FBI informant had been involved in the murder of a civil rights activist, he acted fast. Hoover seemed to have realised his agency's culpability, at felt that he needed to divert the impending public backlash that would surely come if their involvement was fully exposed. For this reason, he launched a public sneer campaign against Viola, blatantly attempting to assassinate her character. Surely after her death, an inflammatory FBI memo was leaked to the press. In said memo, it was said that Viola had needle marks on her arm at the time of her death, indicating that she was an intravenous drug user. Even if this was true, which I don't believe for a second, it doesn't make a f*** difference.

24:43What the f***? This lie was completely untrue and her loved ones quickly came to her defence. Viola was not, and had never been a drug addict. Later on, her autopsy would confirm that she had no marks on her arm, nor had there been any drugs in a system at the time of her death. Further FBI material was also leaked, claiming that Viola had been having a sexual relationship with Lee Roy Motten, the black man who had survived the attack. After all, Lee Roy had been alone in the car with Viola at the time of her death. Right. Yeah, it's like, I must be having an affair with many Uber drivers then. This goes without saying, but once again, this claim was blatantly false. Viola and Lee Roy were simply two activists doing volunteer work together. God forbid a woman become friends with the black man, and then drive alone with him in the car. Even if they were having an affair, it still doesn't mean that you get to ignore her being killed. No, okay. Even if she was an affair having drug user, it doesn't matter. You still have to do your job. The smear campaign already egregious enough didn't stop there.

25:45Many began to call Viola an irresponsible mother who had abandoned her family to take part in this radical movement. No sensible white married mother of five could truly believe in racial equality. That would be outrageous. If so, it also must mean that she was a communist. Naturally. Again, this was patently false. Before leaving for Selma, Viola had been sure that her kids were in the care of her husband, Jim, and her friend Slashnani Sarah Evans. She left Evans with detailed instructions for their care that included a written copy of their schedules. Jim, Sarah, and Viola's eldest children, Penny and Mary all came to her defense over the allegations. Viola was very engaged, caring, honest and empathetic wife and mother. She loved her family dearly, and had simply found a cause that she was passionate about, the Civil Rights Movement. Before leaving for Selma, she told multiple family members that she would only be gone a week. She had not abandoned her family and fully intended on returning to them when the march was over. Yeah, of course. Additionally, no evidence was ever found indicating that Viola had any ties to or believed in communism.

26:49I mean, believed in? I believe in communism. Communism is a thing. But even if she was, even if she was a terrible mother, communist drug user, having an affair, you're still after we investigate her murder. What the... Further adding fuel to the defamatory fire, oh my god, how far are we going with this? The FBI was an FBI confidential dossier about Viola that had found its way into the news. Written by Marvin G. Lane, the police commissioner of Warren, Michigan and other Detroit detectives, this file would become known as the Lane Report. This report had been sent by the Michigan Police Officials to the Sheriff of Selma, the previously mentioned Jim Clarke. It contained sensitive information surrounding Viola's mental health and was used to label her as emotionally unstable. To be fair, Viola did have a history of some sort of mental health issues. Some people claims Viola had never sprayed down shortly before she left for the march. Had daughter Penny believed that her mother went through periods of depression in the past,

27:49as a result of losing four pregnancies. This included a stillbirth and a baby boy who lived for only a few hours after being born. Who wouldn't be affected by that? Yeah, because it's horrible. And it doesn't matter. Now this takes away from the fact that the murder obviously should have been investigated in just what the f***. But from what I can tell, Viola was just an independent, passionate, and outspoken woman who had faced some sort of depression after suffering four traumatic losses. Unfortunately, some people, including her biographer Mary Stanton, chopped all of this up to Viola having a nervous breakdown. The information in the Lane Report only further exacerbated the narrative the FBI had already established. I mean, maybe nervous breakdown. It wasn't so as... I don't know, it feels like not to rock a tree today, but it feels like painting mental health with a very broad brush. But maybe that was just a language that was available at the time. And Viola's murderers were they ever punished? Well, not really. Shortly after the four clansmen were arrested, Gary Rowe was quietly released on bond.

28:50He agreed to testify against his friends if he was given prosecutorial immunity. At the 1965 state murder trial of clansmen, collie walkins, William Eaton, and Eugene Thomas, both Gary and Leroy Motten testified about the event's survivor's murder. While on the stand, Gary claimed that it was walkins who had actually fired the gun on Thomas's orders. Instead of claiming their client's innocence, the clansmen's defense team focused on questioning the character of Viola and the prosecution's key witness. Apparently, the defense also went on long-rants, criticizing the civil rights movements and racial integration, which seems pretty standard for lawyers in the 1960s. Alabama, you have to go. I don't like the idea of this courtroom. I'll be here for blacks. What the... They should be tried outside in the garden. Sorry, I'll stop with my terrible Alabama accent. After hearing these arguments, the jury, which I would like to point out, was completely made up of white men from the local community. Because of course it was acquitted all three defendants. I mean, I want to fake being shocked because it's so shocking,

29:54but also I'm just not because it's like this. In a federal trial later that year, the clansmen were found guilty of depriving Viola of a civil rights, and was sentenced to the maximum punishment of 10 years in prison. One of them will be in need and died of a heart attack before he was able to begin his sentence. Oh no! In 1967, these convictions were upheld in federal court. Thomas, who purportedly demanded that they shoot Viola, only served six years. Wilkins, the man Gary claims to actually shot the gun, only served seven years. Having a laugh. And they would have killed that other guy too, who had a plate dead. You know it. As infuriating as the FBI led smear campaign and lack of punishment bestowed upon Viola's killers are, you might be wondering to yourself, well, what happened with Gary Rowe? You know, the informant, who was the real reason who saw the defamation of Viola, Lizzo's character as a way to distract from a huge FBI blunder? Well, excellent question dear listener. Let me tell you the answer. After testifying against the clansmen in their trial,

30:56Gary became a huge target for the KKK. Yeah, no... He's got a prize. He's got to go witness protection or something. He was quickly admitted into the federal witness protection program. There we go in 1965 and lived in anonymity for 13 years. After serving their sentences for their federal indictments, both Wilkins and Thompson came forward to state that it was actually Gary who had fired the shots that killed Viola Luzzo. When asked why they did not dispute his claims and it was Wilkins who shot her during the trial, the men alleged that their bid advised not to. Oh, whoa. They're not pointing the finger at him because they're going to prison anyway for a really long time. Well, naturally not a really long time because of the justice system, but they're going to go away for a reason for years, regardless of whether they call the trigger or not. Do you think that they were told not to point to Gary so Gary would get off and just get murdered by the clan? Because he would be harder to murder in prison, but surely not impossible for the clan. I guess sitting in prison while one of their accomplices was never charged and lived

31:57freely in government protection, it really began to bother Wilkins and Thomas. Oh, okay, it's a bit more mundane than my idea, though. As a result of their claims in 1978, the county district attorney, Jesse O'Brien, indicted, row, on first degree murder charges and unsurprisingly Gary denied them. But in a shocking move during the renewed investigation into his clan activities, he did confess to murdering a black man back in 1963 and reporting it to his FBI handlers. Duh. Like I won't Gary do in prison, sure, but like, that's a really pretty dumb. After looking for and finding a report matching Gary's description, they apparently called him to let him know that he had killed the man. All right, the police in 1978 stated that while they had no record of the homicide described by Gary, they could not rule out the possibility that it occurred. I have no idea why Gary Rowe confessed to another murder while trying to maintain he did not shoot the gun that had killed Viola. To me, it seems quite counterintuitive. Many have speculated that he was once again trying to gain some sort of immunity by leveraging the information about this newly revealed murder,

32:59or that he was desperate to seek some sort of sick publicity. He was never charged with the murder he reported. Though Gary was indicted for the first degree murder of Viola in 1978, his case never went to trial. In 1980, a federal judge dismissed the indictment in his ruling, the judge stated that since the one-hour 15 years from the crime, and he had already received immunity in exchange for earlier testimony, Gary could not receive a fair trial. Gary Rowe re-entered witness protection and would later die in 1998 at the age of 64, from a heart attack. The FBI's intentional sneer campaign was finally confirmed in 1978, after Luzo's children filed a freedom of information act request. Their request was granted, providing the maxest, the once classified documents, that included information about their mother's death. The FBI never apologized to Luzo family for their involvement in the sneer campaign, and the cover-up about their informants' involvement. The 13-year investigation into the murder of Brittany Drexel. Brittany Murray Drexel was born October 7, 1991 to John Carlow,

33:59and his girlfriend, Dawn Conley, in Rochester, New York. The couple were unmarried and quite young, with Dawn being only 20 years old at the time, and they eventually split up when Brittany was two. After ending the relationship, Dawn married a man called Chad Drexel. Chad Drexel sounds like a, uh, sounds like an action hero. Chad Drexel here. Chad Drexel here. Save the day. He adopted Brittany, and changed her last name to Drexel. Chad and Dawn would welcome two more children, another girl named Marissa and a son, Camden. Brittany also had siblings through her biological father's side as well, according to her family, Brittany adored her siblings and maintained a close relationship with them despite their larger age gaps. She was a feisty, energetic child with a warm disposition that one had many friends. Like many young girls in the United States, Brittany grew up playing soccer in the position of right-winger. Wait, really? Young girls grew up playing soccer in the United States. Is that true? I thought one, the Americans didn't really like soccer. Two, they liked it more recently, and this is back in the 90s.

35:01And also girls. I mean, nowadays, women's soccer is becoming a thing, right? But when I was at school, I don't know if they still do this. It was like boy sports and girl sports. You'd play sports separately from each other. We'd go and play rugby and cricket and stuff, and girls would play netball. I don't even know what the girls played. It was that divided. She had a natural prowess for the sport, and allowed her feisty personality to show on the pitch. Camden described his sister's playing style as powerful on the field, even though she was short. Her biological father, John, but also been a talented soccer player, and was able to use their shared passion to reconnect with his daughter a few years after she was adopted by Chad. By April of 2009, Chad and Dawn had decided to separate with the intention of divorce. Though Chad was not Brittany's biological father, he had adopted her at a young age and helped raise her. Brittany was incredibly close with both parents, so the undoing of their marriage was understandably difficult for her to adjust to. In response to the divorce, Brittany began to experience depression, causing her grades to fail. She also started to engage in more rebellious

36:01behaviours, like skipping school and hanging out with friends who were several years older than her. As a high school's spring break approached in 2009, Brittany asked her mother if she could join a few friends on a trip down to Mertel Beach South Carolina. Why they heard of Mertel Beach? Like I don't feel I know anything about South Carolina, but Mertel Beach sounds familiar. Dawn didn't know these friends well, and since she learned no other adults would be accompanying them on the trip she refused. Good. And as one would expect with a teenager just bit dulled she could not go on vacation with her friends, Brittany was very irritated. In the days leading up to the would-be departure date, the two argued frequently. On April 22nd, Brittany asked her mother if she could stay with a local friend for a few days. Spring break had just started, and she felt it would help her calm down about their disagreements. Dawn, who stated she had no reason to believe Brittany would disobey her refusal of the trip, allowed her to do so. Brittany would later call her mother then night to apologize for their earlier arguments. As it turns out, to the shock of nobody listening or reading this script,

37:02stay with a local friend in Rochester was not Brittany's plan. Instead, that night she and her pals left for Mertel Beach without telling Dawn, no, never. The friends arrived in South Carolina on the 23rd, where they stayed at the Bar Harbour Hotel on Ocean Boulevard. Two days later, on Saturday, April 25th, Dawn called to check in with Brittany, who told her mother that she was at the beach. Dawn unaware that a daughter had snuck down to South Carolina assumed that she was talking about Lake Ontario. Acai did roughly 23 miles from Rochester, Brittany had commonly referred to the shoreline of the Great Lake as the beach. So Dawn thought nothing of the comment, believing her daughter had just been staying with a friend and decided to spend the day nearby at a lake. In later interviews, Marissa, Brittany's sister, who was present with Dawn for the conversation, would recall, quote, I was like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, before she, Dawn, got off the phone. I forgot to say I love you. So she, Dawn, gave me the telephone, and I said that I love you. And I thank God that I asked my mom to grab the phone back, because that was the last time I talked to

38:03her. Oh. After taking her phone back from Marissa, Dawn spoke with her oldest child for the final time. And then Brittany says, okay, mom, I'll see you tomorrow. I love you. Those were her last words to me. On the night of the 25th at around 8pm, Brittany decided to go and visit another friend named Peter, who was staying at a different resort, roughly half a mile away. In their later review of the surveillance camera footage from the route she took, investigators were able to spot Brittany walking south on Ocean Boulevard toward Peters, the 807. After walking for roughly half an hour, she arrived at a destination, which was confirmed by CCTV footage of the hotel's front entry at 8.40pm. The same security camera is captured Brittany as she left the hotel by herself. This footage, which can be found online, looks rather unembarkable. Nobody seems to be following the young girl, and if he didn't know better, you would assume that this was just another totally normal video of a person leaving a hotel. But this was not the case. That footage

39:05would be the last time that Brittany Jacksell was seen alive. A few minutes after departing from Peter's day 48, Brittany began texting her boyfriend, John Greco. At the time, John was 19, and living in their hometown of Rochester. Though Brittany had asked him to join her on the spring break trip, he was unable due to prior work commitments. The two were in constant communication during the trip, and at 8.51pm, Brittany resumed their conversation. In these texts, Brittany indicated that her last night in Myrtle Beach had somehow been ruined, and she was pissed about something. John, who again was not on the trip, asked what happened to which she replied, I'll tell you later when you call me. I'm so heated. This was at 8.55pm. John tried his best to console her, at 8.58pm, Brittany texted that she now planned on staying in for the night and packing. This would be the last text message she ever sent. Brittany Drexel was never heard from again. John continued to text Brittany with no response at 9.15pm, he sent the following message. Babe, I'm concerned about you. Let me know what's going on. I don't want you out alone if your friends are being dicks, but I also don't want you to

40:08ruin your last night there. He received no answer. Along to my girlfriend's silence, John began calling the friends she was in Myrtle Beach with to see if they'd heard from her that they hadn't. Over the next several hours, numerous friends, including Peter, text did Brittany to ask where she was and if she was okay. With no one able to reach Brittany, John quickly made the decision to call Dawn and explain the whole situation. After speaking with her daughter's boyfriend, Dawn alerted her estranged husband Chad. They too began to text and call Brittany repeatedly, hoping for her to answer. But just as with the others, she never responded, which was entirely out of character. If Brittany had access to her phone, she would have answered it, especially once her family became frantically calling her. Phone calls made by Brittany's loved ones did go through her first, meaning her phone was still on. After a few hours, these calls began going directly to voicemail, indicating that Brittany's phone had either died or had been turned off. Once her parents realised that she wasn't going to respond, they decided to alert the authorities. They told Myrtle Beach Police that sneaking down to South Carolina was the only time Brittany

41:09had ever really received them. Most importantly, they were adamant that she would never run away. Though she had been going through a rough time, Brittany was not a troublemaker. In fact, she was so dedicated to her soccer career that she could completely avoid it alcohol altogether, unlike many rebellious teens that age. Even while on spring break, with older friends, Brittany didn't drink. Everything about the situation fell suspicious and seemed to indicate that something had gone very, very wrong. Despite telling all of this information to the authorities, Dawn alleged that The Myrtle Beach Police first reported Brittany as an endangered runaway. The next morning, Dawn knew that she needed to get down to Myrtle Beach to aid in the search for a daughter. She gathered a whole caravan of Brittany's loved ones, including John, a close friend, who was also unable to go on the trip, and her grandparents to make the 18-hour drive down to South Carolina. God damn, that's a long way. Their initial focus sent it on the last person known to have seen Brittany alive. Peter. Authorities interviewed him, and before other men sharing his hotel room. In addition to being the last person to see her, authorities also found

42:11Peter's behaviour following Brittany's disappearance. Ultimately, Peter and his roommates would be cleared after the police were able to verify their alibis for their movements after Brittany had left the hotel, apparently that in a party at the nearby coastal Carolina University. With this alibi and the CCTV footage confirming that Brittany had left the hotel alone, Peter and his friends were ruled out as suspects. Gotta be quite a relief for Ivy, yep, thanks for being there boys, and also the CCTV because I was the last person to see her. You'd be like, ah, and I didn't do anything. As they questioned Peter, the police also, although they said he was behaving weird, right? The police also conducted a thorough search of Brittany's room at the Bar Harbour Hotel. With the exception of her cell phone and the clothes that she was wearing, none of Brittany's belongings were missing. The friends staying with her were also questioned about her disappearance. They too had repeatedly tried to get in contact with Brittany to no avail, and had no idea where she was. Investigators quickly realised the magnitude of the problem. It had become all too apparent that they did not have an endangered runaway on the

43:12hands. Brittany Drexel, as emphasized by all who knew her, had gone missing after leaving her friend's hotel. Shortly after Brittany's disappearance, local police contacted the FBI for their assistance in the case. Investigators knew that Brittany had been on a cell phone when she went missing, and that would end up becoming central to their investigation. Through monitoring its things to nearby cell towers, officials were able to track movement of Brittany's cell phone roughly 50 to 60 miles inland along Route 17. Uh-oh. The phone's final recorded connection was to a cell to cell tower located near the Georgetown Charleston County Line. These things abruptly stopped in the early morning hours of the 26th, presumably after the phone's battery died. At the time, police officials conducted thorough searches of areas near the Georgetown Charleston County Line, where a body could have been dumped, as well as the immediate vicinity around the Mertle Beach. No body or any other type of evidence was found with essentially no verbal leads, the local authorities were stuck. Unless a major breakthrough happened, the case seemed destined to turn cold. Yeah, what can you do at that point? See if you can

44:14find any vehicles on cameras, heading out of town on that road, but there's going to be so many. Where did you look? You talked to the friends again. You talked to the guy who was a little bit weird at the hotel, like what upset her. You'd have to find out what upset her. We know she was upset. Lean on Paul pretty hard to find out what she was upset about. I suppose we'll be by next step. The first major break finally occurred in April of 2011. At the time of Brittany's disappearance, investigators had looked into registered sex offenders who'd lived near Burtle Beach or the area where a cell phone last pinginged. Yeah, could we see if there was another cell phone travelling with her cell phone? Is that something that's possible? Through this, they came across the name of a 49-year-old sex offender by the name of Raymond Moody, whose perverted criminal history was well documented. In 1983, Moody had been found guilty of violently sexually assaulting seven girls, some who were under the age of 14 in California. I'm not going to go into detail, but let's just say the charge is illustrating what he did a truly awful. For this crime, Moody, who was 23 at the time, was sentenced to 40 years in the California State Prison in Solano.

45:17Holy s**t, he did some derrubble s**t, 40 years in prison. I mean, good. Apparently, Moody had been given a determinant sentence, meaning that he had to serve a specific amount of time with a calculated release date before being eligible for parole. After serving 21 years of his sentence, Moody was mandatorally paroled in 2004. Mandatorally. Don't they get to assess whether he goes into his parole hearing and they're like, so, Moody, have you changed his line? I still love assaulting children sexually. I know. All right, well, we've got to let you go, Moody. Don't do anything bad, okay? Especially not in murder. Don't necessarily let your crime Moody. You're never doing that. Would you, Moody? No, my lord. They don't call them lords. What's the judge? No, my, my, your honor. No, no, your honor. Never. In California, inmates with determinant sentences had a pre-calculated release date, so the parole wouldn't have to be evaluated or voted upon by a parole board. So what's the point of calling it parole then? It sounds like

46:18I struggle to see why this would be applied to Raymond Moody. He was a known, repeat offender that had kidnapped and assaulted multiple children. Why the hell would he be given a determinant sentence when he could feasibly be released to offend again? Thankfully, California has since changed their laws on determinant sentences. Exgeneral California, because it's pretty fucked up in the first place. Once Moody was released, he moved back to his hometown of Georgetown, South Carolina in 2005 and remained on parole until 2007. During his time in prison, Moody had begun a relationship with another inmate named Ernie Merchant, who was serving time for drug charges. Merchant sentence was far shorter than Moody's and he claimed to have been unaware of Moody's status as a sex offender until right before his release. Which, yeah, if you're in prison for like assaulting children, you'd be like, no, no, no, there's a great, there's a great TV show. I don't know if it's a great TV show, but there was this line that sticks with me. There was a British TV show and his guy goes to prison or like a pre-prison jail like while his trial's going on, they don't give him parole, not parole, bonds, bonds, bail, bail. They don't give them bail.

47:23And he's in prison. And he's like, you know, obviously a little bit nervous. He's just a regular kid. He doesn't, he hasn't done this.cribe that he's been accused of. He's been accused of someone and he bumps into someone in prison and they're like, you're right mate. He's like, yeah, if anybody asks if you've done something weird, just say anything that you're robbed a post office in rural Wales, whatever, just don't admit to what you did. And then he later says, someone asked him what he did. And he says, yeah, I robbed a post office in rural Wales or whatever. And they just beat Dush out of him. And it's because the guy had set him up is just like this phrase or whatever that they use. And it's like everyone knows it's like that's the default thing that people use or whatever. And so they were like, we know you're in for a sex crime and they beat the shit out of him. And he didn't even do it. I'd probably remembering that half wrong when I was the gist of it. Well, are we talking about this? As merchant explained, in an interview for ABC's 2020, Moody had sworn to him that he was no longer that type of person. After any was released,

48:28he waited for Moody's parole, eventually moving with him back to Georgetown, South Carolina. Surely after Moody's finished parole in 2007, he began having an affair with a woman named Angel Wars. Ernie discovered this in Fidelity and by April of 2009, it had broken off the relationship with Moody. Yeah, wait, he's got to be on some sort of list, right? Although, if you start dating someone, do you check them out on the sex offenders list? Is that something people do? Because you could fight out later. You'll be like, oh, yeah, no, I've never done that. But I'm also, no, like to people, I mean, you should, I guess, because as long as you end up with someone like Medius, like, so watch your background like, ah, I was in the, uh, in the military. And by the military, I mean, I was in prison for assaulting children. They let me out, but who did, mate? Idiots. After his breakup with Ernie, Moody relocated to a nearby rundown motel in Georgetown. As you may recall during the investigation into Brittany's disappearance, officials attract us cell phone movements with the last connection the phone making, being with a cell tower near Georgetown County border. This border was suspiciously close to the motel Moody was staying at.

49:34Aware of his sex effect, the status investigators began to ask acquaintances for information, including Ernie. He told the authorities about their relationship and a strange phone call it recently had with Moody's new girlfriend, Angel, around the time Brittany went missing. Reportedly, Angel had called Moody's cell phone, and Ernie, who was present at the time, picked up the call. Ernie claimed that Angel sounded rather drunk or otherwise in bed and began to say some suspicious things about Brittany's disappearance. After hearing of this from Ernie, investigating officials knew they needed interview Angel Wars. On the 26th of April 2011, exactly two years after Brittany went missing, Georgetown County investigators interviewed Angel at the local sheriff's office. This interview was recorded and available for viewing online. In it, the two men began their questioning by bringing up the phone call Angel had with Ernie, where she had reportedly said wild things about the Drexel case. Angel's explanation was that she had been drinking and eating pills when she'd made the call and didn't remember what she said. Despite her apparent lapse in memory, Angel, who was still dating Moody at this point, claimed he had mentioned Brittany Drexel once during an argument.

50:38Angel told investigators that one time she had threatened to leave him, and Moody said something effectively to the point of he didn't want me to end up like that girls at the beach did. Jesus Christ. He's casually admitting to murder there, are we Moody? Idiot. When asked if she believed Moody could be responsible for Brittany's disappearance, Angel immediately responded with he could be responsible for anybody's disappearance. This is your current boyfriend to fuck you up to. Later on in the Names view, investigators asked if Angel was worried that he might do something to her if he found out about their conversation, which she said yes. During their relationship, Angel claimed Moody repeatedly shared with her some of his most violent thoughts and fantasies. He always had these fantasies about snatching girls off the street and taking them somewhere and dumping them. I mean he had those fantasies all the time. Oh my god, what are you doing? Why are you in this? What's happening? What? What? What? When asked or she thought Moody might have

51:45done, Angel said it probably done something, but she didn't know what or to whom. With the exception of a comment she alleged himaduring an argument, Angel did not implicate Raymond Moody in the disappearance of Brittany Drexel. She told investigators that if she knew he had done something, she would have told them. After Angel's interview, investigators executed a search warrant on the motel where Moody had been staying. In the search of his room, they found no evidence connecting Moody to the disappearance of Brittany Drexel. Now this search happened in 2011, two years after Brittany went missing in 2009 and Moody had moved out of the room at some point before it was searched. Were they expected to find his motel room? It's not necessarily surprising that no evidence was found. Ultimately, the Moody lead seemed like a dead end to investigators once again the case of Brittany Drexel grew cold and would remain so for another five years. Why can't they bring Moody in and question the sh- out of him? Like, why not? They took his girlfriend into questioning, that seems like probable cause to arrest this park or at least tell him down the station may.

52:45The FBI who did provide some assistance to the murder of each authorities in their initial 2009 investigation officially took over the case in 2016. In June of that year, the FBI held a public news conference stating that they had received information that led them to conclude Brittany Drexel had been murdered shortly after a disappearance. Agents claims that after being abducted from Mertel Beach, Brittany was taken somewhere in the vicinity of Georgetown, where a cell phone had pinged for the final time and died. The Bureau declined to reveal the exact information they had received just that they'd been given enough to conclude that Brittany had been murdered. They put up a $25,000 reward for any information leading to the resolution of the case. The public would soon come to learn exactly what the FBI had been told after it was leaked to a local paper. Given that this is the FBI's best episode, what did they screw up? In 2016, while serving a 25-year sentence for unrelated manslaughter charges, to quan-brown, aged 24, came forward to tell officials of a crimey had witnessed in 2009.

53:45It is believed that Brown provided this information in the hopes of cutting a deal with the authorities to reduce his sentence. Brown claimed to have gone to a drug stash house to pay a debt for the owed in late April of 2009. This house was located in McClellanville, South Carolina, roughly 23 miles from the last place Brittany's phone pinged in Georgetown. While walking through the house, Brown alleged that he saw a group of men including 16-year-old, De Shorn Taylor, sexually abusing Brittany Drexel. As Brown was standing in the backyard with the older Taylor, he claimed that Brittany attempted to run from the house before being pistol-wipped and taken aside. He then reported to a two gunshots ring out and assumed the girl had been killed. He then alleged that her body was wrapped up and taken away. One FBI agent claimed that several witnesses had reported that Brittany had been placed in a pit to be eaten by gators. In court, this agent claimed that investigators searched the stash house and several alligator ponds but found nothing relating to the Drexel case. Another inmate who was imprisoned at the

54:46Georgetown County Jail would corroborate Brown's story. This man alleged that De Shorn Taylor had picked Drexel up in Myrtle Beach before bringing her back to McClellanville to show her off. Oof. This inmate claimed that Taylor and a group of friends had planned on trafficking the young girl, but ultimately decided not to after the disappearance attracted media publicity. You are some disgusting individuals. The group of individuals then supposedly murdered and disposed of her body. At the time of these accusations, De Shorn Taylor had recently been sentenced to prohibition on robbery charges. Despite already being sentenced in state court, federal authorities got involved in Taylor's case and detained him on a federal indictment for interfering in interstate commerce by threat of violence. His lawyers described the added federal indictment as an attempt to squeeze information out of him about his alleged involvement in Brittany Drexel's murder. Yeah, his lawyers might describe it like that. I'd describe it as a bloody good tactic. Taylor vehemently denied any knowledge or participation in the Drexel case.

55:47The FBI denied this squeeze attempt and claims that they'd initially wanted to pursue federal charges against Taylor even before Brown's tip as they were dissatisfied with the sentence he received in state court. If I was the FBI, yeah, boy, we ceased him. Oof. It's called police work. I imagine there's some legal problem with that, but I have zero problem with it. The FBI even alleged it was Taylor who had masterminded the robbery he was convicted of and only received such lenient punishment because he had cooperated with investigators. Taylor was arrested on federal robbery charges in 2016 and released on bond. In October 2017, Taylor was again jailed for violating the conditions of his parole while awaiting sentencing. A federal court reinstated Taylor's bond in August 2018 and he was released on house arrest. The federal case finally finished in December 2019 when a judge sentenced him to time served. Through all of this, DeShorentayla was never charged with anything in connection to Brittany Drexel. And it turns out to quen Brown, the original informant, was busy changing his story.

56:49In February 2019, Brown gave a telephone interview with a news station from Brittany's hometown of Rochester, New York. In this conversation, Brown claimed to have actually seen her four times after a disappearance, not just the one time that he had previously stated. According to this updated story, Brown had first seen Brittany on April 27th in the stash house, where she was being sexually assaulted by several men, but he did not recognize who she was. A few days later, Brown said that he returned to the house. And this is when he actually saw Brittany try to run out of the back door before being grabbed back inside. Once again, Brown reported that he had gunshots and assumes that Brittany had been killed. Several days later, Brown stated that he went to visit a cousin in Jacksonboro, a rural area south Carolina, roughly 75 miles from McLellanville. Brown alleged that he saw Brittany at his cousin's house alive in Jacksonboro. The final time Brown reported seeing Brittany was in May 2009, when walking to the previously mentioned cousin's house. While on a wooded path near the property, Brown claimed that he and his

57:53cousin watched as a group of men took Brittany into the woods. A man he only identified as Nate, then purportedly shot her twice with a double barrel shotgun in order to avoid being further implicated in the abduction of murder, Brown told reporters that he and his cousin quickly fled the scene. Brought, you already very involved in that murder. He's like, well, if we leave now, it'll be alright. No mate. No, it won't. Unsurprisingly, the gen at the fly buzzing round is really big. You see that? No one cares about this. It's just really annoying me. That boy almost got him, but I wouldn't do anything with it anyway, carrying on. Unsurprisingly, the journalists who conducted this interview are unable to verify any of these new claims. Brown stated that the cousin whose house he had seen Brittany at, and later witnessed her murder with, had died of a heart attack. Unable to corroborate, Brown's revised story, the reporters contacted the FBI to ask if they still considered a reliable informant. While the

58:53Bureau would not confirm whether or not they still believed, Brown did state the agents had met with him in January 2019. In this meeting, Brown reported that he had not been promised any deals in exchange for his cooperation and had received numerous threats from other inmates for being a snitch. Due to Brown's inconsistent accounts, the FBI began turning away from him as a verbal lead in 2019, and as we will soon learn, Brown's story would prove to be entirely false. Dude, I feel like this isn't a very believable story. They're going to find out, dude. What are you trying? I guess it's like, well, I've got to lease, and as well, I'll give it a crack. The statements Brown made alleging that the Sean Taylor had been involved with Brittany Drexel's murder significantly impacted Taylor's life. To his credit, Taylor always adamantly maintained that he had absolutely nothing to do with Brittany's disappearance. He had never even met her. Taylor even onto enter polygraph test in June 2017 as part of his plea bargain negotiations for the federal robbery charges. Now, polygraphs are notoriously bogus, and unfortunately,

59:56the FBI examiners found several of his answers pertaining to the Drexel case to be deceptive. Guys, it was 2017, I know it's 10 years ago, but it's still relatively recent in the history of the polygraph. We know it's nonsense. Can we please stop? Dude is apparent attempted to seat. The government rescinded any plea deal and recommended he be given the minimum sentence of at least 10 years in prison. Throughout Taylor's entire federal robbery debacle, he and his family always maintain his innocence in the Drexel murder. In one interview to Sean Taylor's old reporter's quote, I sincerely apologise for their loss, and I honestly hope that they find dude did this and give them justice. But I honestly don't have anything or have any information to help them, because I honestly don't do anything. End quote. Fortunately, for both the Taylor and Drexel families, the matter of Brittany's disappearance would soon be resolved. In 2019, Dawn Drexel had become understandably fed up with the lack of answers in her daughter's disappearance. During this time, she requested that a new team of FBI agents take over the case which they agreed to do. This new team of agents began reviewing

1:00:58all available evidence. Yeah, sometimes it can be really helpful to just start again, but it gets some fresh eyes on the case. It was a pretty good move. Maybe it should have been done already by the FBI. Anyway, it was known from the CCTV footage of April 25th 2009 that Brittany Drexel had left her friend's hotel on foot. As the decade passed, the technology used to track Brittany's cell phone movements from that night had greatly improved. Oh wow! I didn't even realise that was possible. I kind of assumed that for something like that, the technology that they had available at the time was what they could use. They just stored this data and then were able to look at it later. That was pretty cool. I thought that was just something for DNA. You know, where they're like, yeah, we kept this. Do you remember before they did DNA? I mean, probably don't remember. But before they did DNA, they did blood types. They'd just be able to eliminate people or see if someone's more likely to be a part of the crime, but they didn't have DNA analysis. But then they could go back to that blood analysis stuff later. The

1:01:58biological material later and look at the DNA and then convict someone later. I didn't know that could do that with a cell phone data. That's pretty cool. From this analysis, they were able to deduce that she had been walking towards her hotel when she sent her final text at 8.58 pm. Earlier that evening, Brittany had been spotted on a camera near the intersection of 6th Street and Ocean Boulevard while walking to her friend's hotel. Through her cell tower data, the FBI noticed that just a few minutes after sending her last text at 8.58, Brittany's phone pinged a cell tower several blocked blocks down Ocean Boulevard, passed the camera that should have been spotted on earlier. In theory, if she had continued walking in that same direction, she should have passed this camera again between 8.58 and 903. But in the camera's footage from that specific time slot, Brittany never appeared. These phone movements and the Street Camera footage strongly indicated that at some point between 8.58 and 903, Brittany had entered a vehicle. Investigators believed that this was most likely involuntary. The FBI theorized that if Brittany had entered a car, it would have passed the camera at 6th

1:02:59and Ocean at some point between 8.58 and 903. That is a five minute window. I don't know how many cars are going to be going past at that time, but you could run all of the plates and see if they're connected to any weirdos. The footage from this camera was digitally enhanced to improve the visibility of the cars passing by. Really? CSI, zoom and enhance. Due to the amount of vehicles on the tape and the great equality of the footage, this process took several months to complete. After identifying the cars on the footage, investigators compared them to the records of persons of interests that they had in the case. Perhaps one of them, that either owned or accessed to one of the identified vehicles from the 25th of April 2009 tape. Once the car was identified, the FBI then had to make sure that anyone with access to it also had ties to the area near Georgetown Charleston County Line where Brittany's phone had last contacted a cell tower. This painstaking work would ultimately pay off after a few months. When agents were able to

1:04:02identify a unique Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer. What the hell is an Eddie Bauer? Why does he have a Ford Explorer named after him? One person of interest seemed to have access to this vehicle or one like it through his girlfriend, Angel Vos. Oh hello. This man's name? Raymond's Moody. Oh hello Raymond. You're sicko. The investigation's suspicions only grew once they realized that the motel Moody had been staying at in April of 09, always located in Georgetown, South Carolina, near the area where Brittany's phone last pings. Oh it's you, you sicko. Let's get him in the chair. This is in the South, right? They got it. They're gonna, yes. At its FBI, that's federal. Yes. Oh but this is bungled investigations. Around this time, agents received a tip concerning Moody and Angels possible involvement in the disappearance of Brittany Drexel. Unlike the previous jailhouse tip from T'Con Brown, this information would actually lead to a fruitful result. Apparently,

1:05:02Angel had mentioned to a friend that she and Moody might have had something to do with Brittany's disappearance. After revealing this to the proper authorities, investigators convinced this friend to record another conversation with Angel about what should previously share. Imagine that setup. It's like, hey Angel, you know you're talking to me the other day about that real serious crime that you think old Moody might have been involved in. How about you tell me that again, loudly. Angel was recorded saying that it was actually she who was responsible for the missing teen not Moody. Whoa, what? That is a twist I did not see coming. Investigators quickly dismiss this confession as a lie. Okay. She doesn't, it's a private conversation at least as far as she thinks. As it seemed totally out of line with Angel Vos's known history, it was more likely that she was trying to cover for a boyfriend who did have an established record of violence, sexual deviants, and kidnapping. What are you standing up for your piece of boyfriend like this?

1:06:02You are putting your neck fully on the line here. Since it was Angel who initially had access to a vehicle matching the identified Ford Explorer, investigators decided to bring her in for further questioning. Oh yeah, even if they think that she's not guilty, you've got to get her in for questioning to put the pressure on and get it to be like, yeah, yeah, it was Moody that piece. On April 27th, 2022, Angel Vos once again went to Georgetown County Sheriff's office to speak with officials about her boyfriend. This time, she'd be speaking to the new FBI team and taken over the case. As the interview began, the agent stated, they had simply decided to re-interview everyone who had spoken with authorities in the initial investigation. Angel agreed to do so, but after 10 years she couldn't promise that she would be 100% precise. When asked how she first came to know about the Britney Drexel story, Angel said that she'd either seen it on TV or heard about it at work. The agents then steered their questioning to the night of the 25th of April 2009. They wanted to determine whether or not Angel and Or Moody were driving a vehicle matching the known Ford

1:07:03Explorer in Mertel Beach around the specific time they believed Britney had been abducted. Isn't it? Oh, I suppose they would know because it was a big story. So they'd be like, oh no, I remember that story. I remember what I was doing because they'd heard of it. Although she said she'd heard of it later on TV, I guess that would be enough to lodge in your mind what you are up to at that time. Right? While Angel never explicitly stated that she'd been driving an Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer in the spring of 2009, she did reveal that she'd borrowed her brother's vehicle around this time. While she could remember its exact make or name, she said it was a Cherokee. Investigators knew that they were looking for the Ford Explorer, but they continued on with their questions anyway. Angel repeated the gay vague answers, seemingly trying to avoid implicating herself, and even when so far as to state that she'd been working on the night of Britney's disappearance. And this is when the interview began to take a turn as one agent decided to cut the bullshit. He got straight to the point. Was Angel in any way involved with picking Britney Drexel up on Ocean Boulevard? As one may expect, Angel denied any involvement.

1:08:05After this, the interview turned sour with Angel becoming increasingly agitated. She repeatedly denied her or movies involving with the case before abruptly ending the interview and storming out. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's probably the right move, and then you can come back in later if they arrest you with a lawyer. After calming down in the parking lot, Angel returned and acknowledged what she had said to her friend about the Drexel case. I mean, it's on tape. Angel stated that she had been out drinking with this friend who kept on asking her questions about her boyfriends. Repeat that conversation for me, Angel. Get loudly into my chest where I've got a microphone. I hope you're not recording this conversation. Good. In order to diffuse the situation and stop everyone from blaming Moody, she took the blame for Britney's disappearance. What are you up to? Angel stated that despite making this claim, she had nothing to do with the case as she would never hurt anybody.

1:09:07You had just said that you were responsible for her disappearance. She had no idea what really happened to Britney and did not know where Moody was on the night that she went missing, though he did have the card that she had borrowed at the time. When asked if the vehicle had been spotted on Ocean Boulevard around the time Britney went missing, would it have been Moody driving? To which Angel replied, yes. This confirmation was a huge break for investigators as all signs seemed to indicate that they were on the right track. But when they looking for a different type of car? Angel told investigators that though she did not know what happened to Britney Drexel, she did still have the phone that she was using in 2009 and that they could have it. Whoa, it's very generous. I'll say go your phone after I sp- Actually, to be fair, I'm probably on my phone and knocking around somewhere. She always feels weird to throw them away. Angel agreed to return the next day and appeared to be cooperative, but this would not be the case. In the following days, Angel began avoiding the investigators like the plague. Unfortunately for her, she had made the mistake of telling them

1:10:09that she still had her old cell phone. The investigators knew that they needed that phone, so they issued a warrant on Angel Vs. home. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, like you're facing some pretty serious charges here. I feel like destruction of that bone, or you don't even have to distract you be like, no, I thought I had it. I guess I don't. Meanwhile, there's the bottom of the fucking ocean smashed into a thousand pieces. You gotta do that. You remember those videos, like Will It Blend? Were they split the phones in blenders? Are these still happening just to show how powerful the blenders are? She needs one of those blenders. While on the way to search the home, the FBI agent spotted Angel and Moody in a nearby parking lot. After the agents pulled into the lot, Moody allegedly confronted them by walking right up to their window. While talking with the agents, while talking with the agents, he reportedly said, I got a big surprise for you guys. If on the police officer I'm going to be like, PANED drifting towards gun and undoing that little button thing. Gah, I almost got that fly. It's right in my face. I wish I had some.

1:11:11Poison spray or something. Moody Angel and the agents then returned to the house where the rest of the FBI team was busy conducting this search. After looking over a copy of the search warrant, Moody quickly contacted a lawyer and asked him to meet with the FBI. Okay? During this meeting, the investigators laid out all of their evidence and explained their theory to Moody's attorney. Moody then arranged a meeting with investigators at his lawyer's office where he confessed to abducting and murdering Brittany Drexel. Okay. Uh, all right. Unexpected twist, I suppose. In this interview, Moody explained that on the night of the 25th of April 2009, he and Angel have been driving down Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach when they spotted Brittany. The two pulled up to the young team and asked if she wanted to party and invited her to the Polyard Landing, a boat dock in Georgetown. Brittany agreed and got in the car. That seems extremely unlikely. As last. She doesn't seem like the sort of person who would do that at all for some weirdos. After arriving at the Polyard Landing, Angel left the group to run a quick errand.

1:12:13According to Moody, this is when he decided to assault Brittany, forcing her to address against her will before he raped her. While assaulting Brittany, Moody alleged that she was going to tell Angel what he had done. After hearing this, Moody claimed to panic and began strangling the young girl. Once Brittany had been killed, Moody explained that he hid her body from Angel near the boat landing and later returned to bury the remains. In subsequent interviews, Angel told a story similar to this and claimed she never asked Moody about what happened, Brittany that night. Why? Are you just so like, I just love this Moody dude, he's a sicko pervert. Like, now. Moody pointed out to investigators where it buried Brittany in her Polyard Landing and they conducted a full excavation of the site. After a three-day dig, officials finally located the remains of Brittany Drexel, 13 years after she went missing. Raymond Moody was subsequently charged with kidnapping first degree sexual misconduct and murder. On October 19th, 2022, Moody pled guilty and was

1:13:14sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus an additional consecutive term of 30 years. So yeah, he's never getting out of prison. Do you think he probably pled guilty to avoid the chair, right? Initially, in return for a corporation and since Moody alleged that she was not present for the murder, Angel Vos was not charged. But this wouldn't last. In November of 2024, an exchange for the Drexel family allowing a portion of Moody's property to remain in a trust for Angel Vos's grandkids, he agreed to provide investigators with the complete and truthful information surrounding their daughter's death. In Moody's 2024 confession, he claims that the night before the abduction, Angel had texted him, asking to go out and hunt for a young woman they could kidnap. On April the 25th, 2009, they had been out hunting when they spotted Drexel. The two of them lured Britain into their car by claiming that they were also tourists and volunteered to drive her back to a hotel. Don't get in class with people you don't know. Especially young women, please, just don't. Once she was in the car, Moody began to act lost and pulled off Ocean Boulevard so Angel could take over the wheel. In reality, the two had planned this move beforehand

1:14:18so that Moody could get in the back seat with the victim to restrain her. Moody claims that once he had Britain detained in the back seat, he told her not to panic and that he routinely kidnapped girls solely to demand a ransom of $5,000 from the city chamber of commerce. Angel then drove to the Polyard landing in Georgetown where she and Moody had set up a tent in the surrounding woods. After they had secured Brittany in the tent, Angel left the two in order to get the keys for their nearby apartment and took Brittany's cell phone with her. Moody even stated that before leaving, Angel told him to not-bri-t-le until she returned. Once Angel returned, Moody went to retrieve toys from the apartment, leaving her alone with Brittany. Instead of showing mercy and releasing Brittany, Angel kept the girl restrained until Moody returned. Oh, I had no expectation of Angel releasing her. She's the one who-she's equal parts in this. Like, she's a piece of it as well, an enormous, enormous, horrible piece of it. Moody then proceeded to sexually assault Brittany

1:15:19while Angel watched. After the assault, Moody then began to strangle Brittany with a nylon rope before ultimately stabbing her through the heart with an ice pick. Again, Angel was present for this, but did not actively participate and I care and I'm pretty sure the Lord doesn't care. In that case, you are also guilty of murder. Moody then reported that he later buried Brittany by himself so if Angel ever tried to turn him into the authorities, she wouldn't know where it did in the body. After Moody's full confession, Angel Vos was arrested in March of 2024 on three federal charges for lying to the FBI about Brittany Drexel's murder at a level of involvement. She pled guilty to all counts since September of that year and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. And who wrote this? It was a no-bob. Wrote this. Add, just says good. I'll be like, no, no, no. Good here would be life without parole and a conviction for murder. Because that's what she did. She's a murderer, in my opinion. Dawn Drexel has stated that she believes the case was solved because of the FBI agents who eventually took over in 2019. To this day, she remains close

1:16:20with them. Even still, the FBI team responsible for the 2016 Dequan Brown Informant debacle had a lot of explaining to do. In listening to Brown and pursuing his story, DeShorn Taylor was thrown under a cow out cloud of suspicion. DeShorn, who now goes by Timothy, lived under scrutiny for years. Yes, he was convicted of being a getaway driver in a robbery, but that is quite different to being suspected of abducting and murdering a teenage girl. Oh my god, it's an entirely different crime. One is a financially driven, desperate crime. The other is just sick, sick perversion. Oh my god, crazy story. A metamine, he was, there was a woman, another parent at his kids' school who was arrested for armed robbery. Bro, what the? He's like, yeah, she was the getaway driver. I'm like, allegedly. That is nuts. I don't know. I know I come from a very, very sheltered background, but still, holy shit. The closest I ever came to, or knowing, there was, how to describe,

1:17:24you know, the Scaretas raid, there was that big robbery in Kent. I grew up in Kent. I have no idea how much truth there was to it, but there was definitely what felt like more than a rumor going around the school where I was, where I went at that time, that one of the kids there's dad was like fairly heavily involved in that and then disappeared, or something. And yeah, I don't know what's true through this to that, but god, I've never thought about this in years, but that was definitely floating her out. It could just be one of those stupid school rumors, but I like, should look into who got convicted for that, but I can see if I recognize any of the surnames. Taylor's attorneys argued that the FBI exploited his prior offence to bring new federal charges in an attempt to pressure him into giving them information about Britney Drexel. Though the Bureau has denied this, one can say that they're timing and bringing federal charges against a man who had already played guilty too and receiving sentencing for a prior crime is rather

1:18:25convenient. Federal prosecutors are legally permitted to bring charges in cases where a defendant has already been prosecuted in state court. Even still, their decision to prosecute Timothy Taylor, after all of this, is difficult to ignore considering the FBI's concurrent investigation into him as a suspect in the Britney Drexel case, which again, who is based on a tip from an unreliable informant whose story had changed repeatedly. Taylor even had consistently stated that he never knew to quen brown. Timothy Taylor filed a lawsuit against the FBI for the handling of this matter in March 2024, and I for one, hope he gets a substantial payout. Yeah, no, this is not okay. Like, there should be some compensation for this. What also cannot be overlooked is the fact that, though he had been dismissed as a suspect due to lack of evidence, the Georgetown authorities were aware of Raymond Moody in their initial investigation. They had even interviewed his girlfriend, who had described him as a violent man that frequently enjoyed fantasizing about abducting and assaulting women. Yeah, we remember it well. He had even brought Britney up during a fight

1:19:27to the retina. The FBI was aware of all of this. They had even assisted on the case when it first occurred in 2009. Instead of using their data and resources, which are probably better funded, the Georgetown counties, just a little bit, to continue the investigation into Moody and Angel, the Bureau decided to pursue allegations or a prison informant with no established ties to the case. Perhaps if they'd kept their efforts focused on Moody and Angel instead of to Khan Brown, Britney's murder could have been solved years earlier. I agree, but, but they were also quite strapped for options. And while we all agree that Moody was a horrible piece of, was there a lot more that they could have gone on back then? The one silver lining I found in this case was the respect that Taylor and Drexel families consistently showed each other after this never-ending nightmare. During the investigation into Taylor, his mother continually claimed her son's innocence, but never directed her anger over the FBI's suspicions towards the Drexel family.

1:20:28Well, yeah, I mean, I can see why you'd be like, hmm, but logically you know that that's obviously not what's happening. After he was named as a person of interest in 2016, Taylor apologized to Britney's loved ones for their loss through his attorneys while maintaining that he was not involved. After Moody's arrest, the Taylor family held a press conference to speak about the impact the suspicion around him had had on their lives. This is really good. This is some really solid like, if I'm not family, I'll just be like, this, I just don't want to be involved with the horrible side of this ever again. I just want to remember the good times and I don't want to remember any of the other, but the fact that you can go forward and be like, yeah, they screwed up and this guy's life was affected really badly, which obviously is not the same as how badly your life was affected by the loss of your loved one. That is really impressive. Shout out. Here Taylor's mother expressed how sorry she was for the Drexel family's loss. She even stated that she could not imagine losing a child like that. Members of the Taylor family were present in court on the day of Moody's sentencing, wherein a victim impact statement, dormed Drexel

1:21:32stated to Moody, for 13 years, others were blamed for your actions. And for that, I'm so sorry for all they have endured. The two families met for the first time immediately following the sentencing, embracing each other on camera. They then spoke privately with each other, where Chad Drexel issued a personal apology for believing what law enforcement had told him. It can't blame you for that, Chad. Like, especially the FBI, you're kind of like FBI, you know what's up. I've seen the movies. As a result of an unreliable tip, a young man's life was greatly impacted after being falsely accused of kidnapping and murder by a man he claims he did not know. Mind you, Timothy Taylor was only 16 at the time of Britain's disappearance. Imagine being falsely implicated in such a heinous crime as a sophomore in high school. I don't know what sophomore in high school is 16, you're just doing your GCSEs. You are a kid. You are a kid. And even more importantly, the life of a young, energetic and caring girl was cruelly taken after she was forced to endure a brutal assault. Britney's parents, siblings,

1:22:35and friends have never, and will never forget her. Her sister, Marissa, summed up the resolution of this case by simply stating, my mum was destined to find my sister from day one, to this day, Dawn Drexel wears a necklace containing both a picture of Brittany and a vile of her ashes. In an interview following Moody's plea, Dawn summed up the whole situation by saying, no one wins, in cases like this. The flaws of FBI hair evidence analysis. In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences, or NAS, released strengthening forensic science in the United States, are path forward. Their report reviewing the forensic science measures used in criminal investigations and court proceedings across the country. This report was a landmark event in the world of forensic science. One specific area of focus featured on was the NAS's review of microscopic hair analysis as evidence in criminal cases. Microscopic hair analysis was a forensic technique used to compare the characteristics of a known hair sample with those of any unknown hairs found to crime scene to try and determine if they

1:23:40are consistent with originating from the same source. For many decades, microscopic hair analysis was a popular tool used in forensic labs throughout the US, with the FBI in particular utilizing this method in their criminal investigations. In addition to using this technique in their own cases, the FBI also made its laboratory services available to state investigators, examiners from the FBI labs frequently testified about the hair analysis conclusions in these trials. Well, in the NAS's 2009 report, this heavily relied on forensic investigatory measure was eviscerated by being labelled scientifically insufficient. Wow, okay, I just assume that was a thing. I believe in CSI. Wasn't there like, you know, in that the who played the song was called like the intro, the stinger, the, you know, the intro music where they have the credits, but it's not the credits, it's at the beginning. Whatever that is called, don't they have like that one scene where they're like lining up their follicles and it's like it's a match? I thought that was legit. Apparently not. The report specifically addressed microscopic hair analysis stating,

1:24:42no scientifically accepted statistics exist about the frequency with which popular characteristics of hair are distributed in the same population. There appear to be no uniform standards on the number of features on which hairs must agree before an examiner made a clear a match. Oh wow, so they're just like, yeah, this thing that we thought a thing is not a thing. Wow, oh my god, so many cases are going to be changed, right? Essentially scientists did not have an accepted statistical foundation to accurately determine how common or rare specific hair characteristics were within the general human population. Therefore, there was no consistent standard by which experts could determine two hairs to be a match. This analysis was even further discredited by the report when it stated quoting again, there is no scientific support for the use of hair comparisons for individualisation in the absence of DNA. Microscopy and mitochondrial DNA analysis can be used in tandem and may add to another's value for clarifying a common source, but no studies have been performed specifically to quantify the reliability of their joint use. Yeah, I mean, but then there's DNA in hair, right?

1:25:46Even I know hair is dead, but there's still DNA in it, right? So carmages DNA had instead of doing the like hair matching up thing, just you know, spent a little bit more money and effort. So without DNA testing, microscopic hair analysis alone could not be used to identify a specific person as the sample's original source. Utilising microscopic hair analysis, along with mitochondrial DNA testing could make this evidence more informative than using either method by themselves, but no scientific studies existed that definitively established just how reliable using this combination is. I thought DNA was pretty locked down. But maybe there's something different about mitochondrial DNA? As I previously mentioned, the FBI was notorious for relying on microscopic hair analysis as evidence of guilt and countless investigations, mainly in those pertaining to murder. Not only that, but there are laboratory experts who are also frequently called upon to test to find state prosecutions. The findings illustrated in the NAS report called the validity of microscopic hair evidence into serious question. Yeah, no, it seems like they just basically debunked it.

1:26:49It doesn't seem like serious questions like there's no statistics that we can pull on. It's junk science. It seems that's exactly what they're saying. This meant that the FBI may have possibly used an unreliable forensic technique to wrongfully convict hundreds of people for horrible crimes by overstating its scientific validity. And not as important to that, but really close to being as important is the fact that when someone is convicted of a crime, they stop looking for the person who committed the crime, assuming that they'd be the original person didn't commit that crime. Which is bad. Obviously. Thanks for stating the obvious sign. As a result of this report, numerous cases where microscopic hair analysis was used to convict defendants were reviewed. Between 2009 and 2013 alone, three men had been convicted and sentenced to lengthfully prison terms were exonerated as a result of their convictions being heavily reliant on microscopic hair analysis. In response to this outcry, the FBI, and the Department of Justice, or DOJ, agreed to collaborate with the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense

1:27:52Lawyers, or NACDL. They conducted a thorough review of cases where FBI hair experts had used these scientifically unfounded findings in their testimonies. Mightcundrial DNA testing of samples have become the new FBI standard for hair testing beginning in 2000, so this investigation would focus on cases that occurred prior to this. Wow, so these people were going to be locked up for a real long time. This 2009 to 2013, you spent nearly a decade to a decade plus in prison, and they're like, oh no, turns out they're the thing we convicted you on. This wasn't so legit. You just like, it told you. Or if you did commit to you, you'd be like, yes, right, am I free to go? By the terms of this agreement, the review process would go as follows. The FBI would identify each case where one of its lab experts had concluded that the suspect or victim could not be ruled out as the source of a hair found at the crime scene. Any given FBI testimony or lab reports relating to the evidence would also be reviewed. After their analysis, the FBI was then required to notify the NACDL and the Innocence Project of its conclusions.

1:28:56Atani's working for these organizations, but then conduct a separate review of the same reports and transcripts. After this independent review, the NACDL and Innocence Project would give their results back to the FBI. Any disagreements between the two sides, as to whether or not an FBI expert had made a mistake, would be resolved through a separate process. If it was concluded that the microscopic hair analysis had been used in error for a conviction, a notice of these findings would be sent to the prosecutor who had tried the case, the NACDL and the Innocence Project. The convicted individual themselves would then either be contacted directly by these agencies or through their attorney. The Innocence Project reported that the government had identified nearly 3,000 cases where FBI analysts may have submitted lab reports and or gave testimony that have been reliant on microscopic hair analysis. If there's a scrub like this and you've got 3,000 people who potentially are in their cases re-eared and they've been imprisoned for like a decade. Did they get a payout? How's that work? In April 2015, the Department of Justice and FBI

1:29:57announced their initial findings. The official press release, which is still available on the FBI's website, stated that through their partnership with the NACDL and Innocence Project, they had reviewed over 500 related cases at the time, 268 of which involved the testimony of FBI experts that implicated a defendant at trial. Of these 268 cases, it was discovered that FBI hair analysts had made erroneous statements in 257 or 96 percent of them, essentially microscopic hair analysis provided by the Bureau had been scientifically overstated in 96 percent of the cases it was used in. In at least 35 of these cases, the defendant was given a death sentence. Holy... See, now death sentences, right? When it's locked down like multiple things, I'm like, yeah, no. Like that moody guy from the last chapter? That guy killed him. He deserves to be killed. But if there's any, any, down what's so ever? No, no, no, no. It was then discovered that erroneous analysis were present in 33 of the 35 capital punishment convictions or 94 percent

1:31:03of those cases. Of the defendant's sentenced death based off of FBI hair analysis, nine people have been executed by April 2015, with five others having died on death row. But don't worry, the horror isn't over yet. The press release also stated that 26 of the 28 FBI agents slash experts had either provided testimony or submitted lab reports with erroneous statements. I don't have any words for this, but thankfully, be to Newfield, the co-director of the Innocence Project at the time did quote, these findings confirm that FBI microscopic hair analysis committed widespread systematic error grossly exaggerating the significance of their data under oath with the consequence of unfairly bolstering the prosecution's case. While the FBI and DOJ are commended for bringing these errors to light and notifying many of the people adversely affected, this epic miscarriage of justice calls for a review to discern how this started almost four decades ago and why it took so long to come to light. We also need lawmakers in Washington to step up and demand research and national standards to prevent the exaggeration of results in

1:32:07reports and testimony by crime lab analysts. In quote, did they know, did they know that they were on such shaky grounds because I'm just like, I know it's not my responsibility to this, but I just feel that that was fact. I thought I was like, yeah, that's that's good science, because they probably thought it was good science at the time, right? It wasn't like they most of them came up with it. In their press release, the FBI and DOJ committed to working with the Innocence Project and the NACDL to take the proper steps to fix these mistakes. Moving forward, the FBI and DOJ agreed to conduct an independent investigation into FBI laboratory practices, protocols, and procedures in order to determine how this monumental error occurred and why it was able to continue on for so long. Oh, I don't know, probably because the FBI hair analysts didn't want to admit that a significant amount of their careers had been built upon junk science and overstated testimonies, which had potentially ruined the lives of thousands of wrongfully convicted people. I mean, not just that, how many of them were executed or died on death row? Right? I feel that might have something to do

1:33:10with it allegedly. The FBI and DOJ also stated that they would continue to aggressively pursue their identification of other relevant cases. This review process would involve gathering lab reports and trial transcripts to determine a future of reparative action was needed where the microscopic hair evidence had been overexaggerated. Finally, they strongly encouraged states to conduct their own independent reviews of their examiners who had been trained by FBI officials. And that makes everything better for all of us all. So God, how many people were executed? Jesus Christ. The magnitude of the FBI's actions, unlike the scientific validity of its microscopic hair analysis, cannot be overstated. Potentially, there were thousands of criminal cases that relied heavily on the FBI's hair comparison testimony. Hundreds of these defendants may have been convicted of violent crimes with some even being sentenced to death. We may never know, just as many innocent people spend decades in prison or even executed due to this flawed forensic evidence. In order to properly

1:34:12illustrate the human cost of the FBI's failures, let's explore one of the first widely publicized wrongful convictions in the overturned hair analysis scandal, the Santa I Tribal case. In 1978, Tribal and his childhood friend, Cleveland Wright, would try to separate leave for the murders of two men in the Washington, D.C. slash Maryland area. In one case, Tribal was found guilty while Wright was acquitted. In the other, the opposite happened. Wright was found guilty while Tribal was acquitted. Both men were ultimately end up spending 28 years in prison, before being released on parole. Throughout all of it, both Wright and Tribal always maintained their innocence. In 2012, Santa I Tribal's conviction was so turned after further DNA testing disproved the FBI's microscopic hair analysis. Cleveland Wright's conviction would similarly be expunished in 2015. All right, great, now give them back 28 years of their life. Oh yeah, you can't. Santa I Tribal was born in 1961 and grew up in a working class Maryland family with a brother and

1:35:12two sisters. His father worked as a federal warehouse laborer, but left the family around the time Santa I began elementary school. The Tribal children were raised by their mother who supported the family by working full time and an assistant nurse in a nearby hospital. Despite the busy work schedule, Santa I later stated that his mother always made sure to be home to cook a children a proper dinner. Santa I dropped out of high school in ninth grade and maintained a variety of jobs like pumping gas and bussing tables. At one point during this period, he managed to move out of his mother's house. However, Santa I returned to his mother's home after his older sister gave birth to a second child, so he could help care for the kids. In the summer of 1978, Santa I Tribal was only 17, trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He had considered enlisting in the army like his brother, but could not do so as the military had begun to raise his education requirements and it dropped out of school. His sister suggested that he go back and earn his high school equivalency. At this time, Santa I was in a relationship and his girlfriend gave birth to their son, Santa I Jr. shortly after his arrest. Meanwhile, his childhood friend Cleveland Wright,

1:36:16age 20, also worked in the same area. Wright had grown up in North Carolina and despite relocating to a city, he was known to maintain his country roots with hobbies such as catching crayfish and squirrels in the local parks. Why are you catching and understand crayfish people eat crayfish? People don't eat squirrels, do they? Surely a squirrel does a day's good. It looks all wiery. Wright was also in a relationship and had two young daughters at home who he was working to support. Trouble and Wright spent their free time together with the dude developing a pension for playing street dice and cards. Wright would later admit that he did sell handguns to support his gambling habit and prosecutors would later use this information to implicate he and Santa in the murders. On the 23rd of July 1978, a 63-year-old taxi driver by the name of John McCormick was murdered in Washington, DC. Around 310 that morning, McCormick had parked his taxi a block away from his house. Police believed the while walking home, he was confronted by a man with a gun. The commotion woke McCormick's wife, Bevela, who said that she heard her husband begging for his life.

1:37:19She watched through the windows man wearing a stocking mask robbed her husband before shooting him and fleeing. Bevela immediately called the authorities as her husband laid dead on the front porch. By the time officers arrived, the mask gunman was long gone. However, a police dog was able to locate a stocking mask on the sidewalk, roughly a block away from the scene. This mask would later prove vital for the prosecution's case as 13 hair samples were recovered from its interior. Oh God, is that all they've got? This is 1970, so a 7-8-70, so we're not going to have DNA. Now it's going to be blood-blood time. They're going to convict on this. Oh God. Reporting from this time indicated that Southeast and DC was having a bit of an issue with violent crime. In April alone of 1978, two taxi drivers have been robbed and murdered, though police did not believe the slangs were connected to John McCormick's. However, police did note that McCormick may have been linked to two other street markings committed in June and July where both victims have been shot but survived. Another murder that was oddly similar to McCormick's had taken place just 12 days earlier in the nearby Mariner neighborhood

1:38:20of Sea Pleasant. Around 2.30am, on the morning of July 13, 52-year-old Flash-hop employee William Horn owes a walking from his car to his apartment building, when he too was approached by an unknown assailant and shot to death. Sea Pleasant also happened to be located a few blocks from where Santa I trouble lived with his mother. The bullets recovered from McCormick and Horn's respective murders led the Metropolitan Police to conclude that they had been shot with 32-calibur ammunition. The similarities suggested that both murders may have been committed with the same gun, though investigators could not conclusively prove so. I mean, these 32-calibur ammunition, particularly uncommon, I mean to me fair is not one that I've necessarily, you know, you think of like 50-cal or 22s? I'm sure 32s have heard come up before, but surely it can't be that uncommon. How many calibers are in common usage and even if it's not common usage, that still does prove it's from the same gun. Even still, the similarities between the murders pointed to them being connected. The 32-calibur bullet identification would be the lead

1:39:22to first bring Senai, Tribble and Cleveland Wright to the Metropolitan Police Department's attention. As part of their investigation into these crimes, authorities had contacted a local sex worker they had previously used as an informant, a wound by the name of Bobby Jean Phillips. Nine days after the murder of John McCormick, Phillips' old investigators, there are roommate, who was dating Cleveland Wright, had recently purchased a 32-calibur revolver from me and Tribble for $60. This roommate also happened to be dating Wright at the time. Yeah, we just said that right. Who was dating Cleveland Wright? Yeah, okay, sorry. Just double clarification there, I suppose I got it. She also provided them with spent shell casings that she claimed had been fired from a roommate's revolver. In her original statement, Phillips claimed that Tribble had admitted that he had been around when Wright shot a man with the details of this purported crime resembling the murder of William Horn. The authorities then took the spent casings, Phillips had provided to conduct a ballistic comparison with bullets recovered from both crimes. Firearms specialists were unable to link Phillips shell casings with those used to kill either

1:40:24McCormick or Horn. Okay, well, I mean that seems pretty assuming the bullet science thing is not bunk, then that seems pretty solid. That he didn't do it. Further implicating the two young men was 17-year-old Ronald Willis, a mutual friend of Tribble and Wright. Willis first claimed, Cleveland Wright was the one responsible for the murder of William Horn. He also maintained that Santai Tribble had not been involved. However, Ronald Willis and Bobby Jean Phillips would both prove to be unreliable witnesses, as he changed their stories later on in the investigation. Phillips would give a revised statement that directly contradicted her original information. In this version, she claimed that Tribble had actually admitted to being present when Wright had shot John McCormick, not William Horn. In a 2012 Washington Post article covering Tribble's exoneration, journalists noted that Phillips's revised accusations had conflicted in several ways with what police knew about the crime. Willis would also go on to a change story in November 1978 and testify to a grand jury that Tribble had told him that he had been

1:41:25operating his right lookout during the crimes. It's also worth noting that Ronald Willis himself was facing criminal charges when he provided this information. Apparently, Willis had been arrested on robbery charges and for violating his probation. On January 17th, 1980, the same day Santai Tribble's first degree murder trial began, Willis was sentenced to a plea agreement. After pleading guilty to reduce charges, Willis was given two years probation and released as a youth offender. Now, we can also say for certain that Willis's plea agreement directly influenced him to change his testimony about Santai Tribble, even still, the timing of this revised story and the favorable outcome of his own charges is something worth mentioning. Though the Metropolitan Police could not match the showcasing provided by Phillips, with those recovered from either crime, they still felt that they had enough reasoning to arrest Santai Tribble and Cleveland Wright for both murders. Sure, yeah, maybe they suspect them. You're like being arrested on suspicion a murder, right? But this is not enough to go on. And they're going to get their hairs and

1:42:25they're going to say that's enough to go on, but obviously it's not. As we now know, and as they found out, 28 years too bloody late, and let's not forget, William Horn had been murdered just a few blocks away from the Tribble home. Both men were arrested at their residences in August of 1978. Tribble would later recall that he had first assumed the police had come to his house over two unpaid parking tickets. Yet no reason to believe he was connected to either murder. During their search of Santai Sime, police found a box of 30-tikala bram munition in his closet. Examiners compared these with the cases provided by Phillips, and the ballistic evidence recovered from the McCormack and Horn murders. They were unable to determine if the ammunition found at the Tribble home had been used in either homicide. So then you've got some very, very weak sub-sap-circumstantial evidence of there being the 30-tikala bram munition, right? The 32-tikala bram of Olva Phillips alleged Tribble and riotered soul to her roommate was never recovered. Santai Tribble was the first defendant to stand trial, with proceedings for the murders of John McCormack and William Horn officially commencing in January of 1980. Tribble had been involved in either crime,

1:43:31even volunteered to take a polygraph exam and testified in his own defense. When questioned about his involvement in either murder, Santai never wavered with his response, being a definitive, no sir. Further testifying on Santai's behalf were his girlfriend, brother, and a friend who had been at the Tribble home on the night of Horn's murder. All three were adamant in their testimony. During the evening of July 12th and the morning hours of July 13th 1978, Santai had been with them at his mother's home. I mean, friends and family is not a good alibi. Friends are not a great alibi, but for multiple friends and families, pretty solid. Please come on. With this alibi and no ballistic evidence, forensically tying him to the crime, one might think that Santai actually had a genuine chance of being acquitted. I'd be surprised if he wasn't acquitted. And perhaps this would have been the case. Unfortunately for Santai, the prosecution had an evidentiary ace up their sleeves, their hares apples collected from the stocking mask discovered near the McCormack scene. No, he's gay. I know what's happening. I know he's going to get a centipres of 28 years on this

1:44:34bunk science, but it's self-sacst, dude. Me. Investigators that submitted this hair evidence to the FBI analysis lab, and one of these experts would testify at trial. This examiner performed microscopic hair analysis, comparing the 13 samples from the mask with reference hairs taken from Santai. He concluded that one specific stocking mask hair matched those provided by Santai. During testimony of the FBI analyst would state that that singular piece of recovered hair matched Santai's in all microscopic characteristics. During their closing statement, the prosecution specifically told the jury that there was one chance in a million that the strand of hair taken from the mask belonged to someone other than Santai. As we now know, this claim has no scientific basis. Because if you tell a jury, it's one in a million. And no one says, oh, wait a minute, then you're going to be found guilty. Oh boy. Santai Tribal's trial took three days, and the jury reportedly only deliberated for about two hours. This jury would ultimately find

1:45:36Santai Tribal guilty of murder of John McCormick but acquitted of William Horns. He was then sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. Cleveland writes trial was up next and it unfolded a bit differently, as the evidence against him was purely circumstantial. Bro, I feel like I know the Microsoft hair analysis that we like, that's not circumstantial. But god damn, wait, is this dude going to get convicted as well? What the, they don't even have the hairs for him? Like what the fuck? The prosecution never introduced the hair comparison from McCormick murder as evidence. Instead, it's the case essentially relied on the testimony of Willis and Phillips, both of whom had changed their statements during the investigation. No direct microscopic hair comparison was ever presented against Cleveland. Instead, Santai's conviction, which had largely been independent on hair analysis, strengthened the prosecution's theory that the two men committed the crimes together. Despite the charges against Cleveland, relying on inconsistent circumstantial evidence, the jury still found him guilty of armed robbery and the murder of William Horns. They acquitted him of the charges relating to John McCormick. I could not find a source confirming

1:46:38his exact sentence, but based off Santai's and the time Cleveland ended up serving, I imagine it was something similar to 20 to life. Santai triple served 25 years in prison before being paroled in April 2003. He was later found guilty of violating the conditions of his parole and served in additional three years. Based off my rough calculations, Santai was around 45 or 46 by the time he left prison. Cleveland Wright was patrolled in March of 2007 that either 48 or 49 after serving just over 28 years in prison. Both men and their respective families continually maintained their innocence throughout their incarceration. In fact, they could have been paroled years earlier had they admitted their guilt, but neither of them did. Or as I was like, no, you can only get out of your admission, I said, I didn't do it, I said, but in the eyes of the law you did. It did a matter of confessing that meant their release. Neither man was willing to admit to a crime they did not commit. Cleveland Wright watched his two daughters grow up from behind prison walls, though they

1:47:39visited frequently. At least, have known his children as a free man. Santai triple never got the chance his son was born after his arrest in 1978. He quite literally watched his son grow up from prison. Both Cleveland and Santai's parents and siblings remained by their sides throughout and routinely visited them. Trashically for Santai, he was still incarcerated when his father died in 1992, his mother in 1994, and his older sister, the one who had moved back, helped raise the kids and had encouraged him to get his GED passed in 1996. Santai was not allowed to attend any of the funerals. In December 2009, while reading the Washington Post, Santai came upon a story of another DC area man, Donald Gates, who had been convicted of murder based on FBI hair analysis. After the hair evidence underwent molten DNA testing, which is a far more accurate thing, yep, far, far more. Because one is science than the other is apparently not. Gates' conviction was overturned. Santai quickly contacted Gates' attorneys to see if they could review his case. In February 2011, Sandra Levyck, a public defender for the District of Columbia,

1:48:42filed a motion requesting that the hair evidence used to convict Santai be retested. The results came back in January 2012, where it was discovered that none of the 13 pieces of hair recovered from the stocking matched either Santai or Cleveland Wright's genetic profile. If they don't walk out a jail immediately with a fat paycheck, I'm going to be pretty disappointed. And this included the specific strand that the FBI had explicitly linked to Santai. In fact, these 13 hairs were determined to match the DNA profiles of three other individuals. One hair hadn't even come from a human, it was determined to have originated from a dog. And yeah, you might be wondering how the FBI's microscopic analysis didn't pick that up. And finally, after serving the majority of his adult life in prison for a crime he did not commit, Santai Trouble was fully exonerated and declared innocent. Once Cleveland Wright learned of Trouble's exoneration, he knew his conviction needed to be reexamined. In August 2013, he petitioned DC Superior Court Judge Laura A. Codero to review his conviction

1:49:43for the murder of William Horn. Attorney Sandra Levyck agreed to also take Cleveland on as a clad, and argued that the same logic used to exonerate Santai also applied to him, quoting, If neither of them was the mass murder of the first victim, then neither of them was the murder of the second, as the same gun was used to kill both men under similar circumstances. Clothes at End Quotes, and yeah, like bang on. While it had never been definitively concluded that the bullets used to kill John McCormick and William Horn were fired from the same gun, the firearm itself had never been recovered, the argument still held. Both murders have been closely linked, and the prosecution of both men had relied heavily on the same witnesses. Yeah, and they used the conviction of the first guy as a persuasion for the second case. So if the first guy is actually innocent, then that persuasion as evidence goes out the window. So yeah, let him out of prison right now. In January of 2014, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ronald C. McIntyne Jr., and Federal Prosecutors agreed to vacate Cleveland's murder conviction. Furthermore, in May of 2015, DC Superior Court Judge

1:50:44Codero fully exonerated Cleveland and declared him innocent. In her ruling, Codero specifically pointed out that the only evidence directly implicating him in the crimes had come from two unreliable sources. Though same witnesses had also implicated Santaid Trouble, Cleveland's co-defendant, but their claims had been severely undermined by the DNA evidence that exonerated him. Yeah, I don't think it's like that it doesn't matter about the unreliable sources, even if those sources have been pretty reliable, just like medium-level reliable. The hairs in the mask were not his. Someone else wore it. Under the unjust imprisonment act, both men were entitled to compensation of $50,000 each year they spent wrongfully imprisoned. Additionally, Santaid Trouble was awarded $13.2 million in compensation after filing a motion for wrongful conviction against the District of Columbia in 2016. Yeah, boy. Cleveland writes also far to Federal lawsuit over his wrongful conviction, which was eventually settled for an undisclosed sum. It's not going to be $13.2 million, but it ain't going to be shy of that, not much shy. Excellent. On June 24, 2020, the 59-year-old Santaid died after a long battle with

1:51:51an undisclosed illness. His son, Santaid Trouble Junior, attributes this illness to his father's time in prison. At the time of his 2013 petition, Cleveland Wright was living in the DC area and volunteering at his local Pentecostal church after rediscovering his faith while incarcerated. He also lived with his two elderly parents as their caretaker. And please remember, these are just two of the numerous wrongful convictions that relied on the FBI's flawed microscopic hair analysis lab. There are counters on the stories just as harrowing as this. Thankfully, many of these victims have been exonerated due to mitochondrial DNA testing of prior hair evidence, which is far more accurate than the junk science of microscopic hair analysis. The nationwide project that began after the Trouble case has largely concluded, but the broader effects to review cases in forensic errors remains ongoing. The FBI continues to assist with any such cases when new information is properly identified, both the NACDL and the Innocence Project continue their respective work in overturning wrongful convictions and advocating for improved forensic and judicial standards.

1:52:55The Comparative Lid Analysis scandal Okay, now it's time for another FBI forensic technique that was used to wrongfully convict numerous individuals that turned out to be even more junk science. Isn't it all just fun and not at all infuriating? Go FBI GO! Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis, or CBLA, also known as compositional Bullet Lead Analysis, was a widely used forensic measure for several decades. It was based on a theory that each batch of lead used in bullet production had its own unique elemental composition. So not bad theory, to be honest. By identifying these specific markers through chemical analysis, authorities could link bullets found in the possession of suspects to those recovered from a crime scene. The technique was first used in 1963 during the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and quickly became a popular tool in the arsenal of FBI labs. In 2005, an FBI press release, which was available online, stated, the FBI laboratory has conducted lead examinations in approximately 2500 cases submitted by federal,

1:53:57state, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies. They estimate that in less than 20% of these cases, their results were introduced as evidence trial. But this all stopped in 2002. After the FBI requested that the National Research Council or NRC, a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine at the time, conducted an independent review of the scientific validity of this process. The Bureau divided the bullet lead examination into three parts, the scientific method, the data analysis, and the interpretation of results, and had the NRC impartially review each area. This review took roughly two years for the NRC to complete, and they released their findings in a published report called Friends of Analysis Wailing Bullet Lead Evidence. With their findings, the NRC had finally burst the FBI's bulletproof bubble. The research into the FBI's use of CBLA took nearly two years to complete, with them finally releasing the report publicly in 2004. The NRC concluded that the chemical analysis performed through plasma optical emissions spectroscopy, commonly known as inductively

1:55:01coupled plasma optical emissions spectroscopy or ICP OES, where it was the commonly known one longer. To identify trace elements in a batch of bullets, we're done so correctly. If you like me, and you have no idea what ICP OES is, allow me to provide you with an explanation from Agilent Technologies quoting. It uses a high temperature argon plasma to excite atoms in a sample, causing them to emit light at specific wavelengths that are measured to identify and quantify elements. Well, there you go. It all sounds very scientific, doesn't it? In ballistic analysis evidence, ICP OES is the able to identify and measure the concentrations of multiple trace elements within a bullet lead sample. These elemental profiles could then be compared between bullet evidence to determine if they shared a similar chemical makeup. While all of the science behind the FBI's comparative bullet lead analysis was sound, the problem stemmed from how the results were interpreted. Okay. While CBLA could find similarities between bullet samples, it could not definitively prove that they'd come from the same batch or source. This meant that even if ballistic evidence had been recovered from a crime scene and was

1:56:05elementally similar to bullets found in the possession of a suspect, it did not prove that they'd come from the same batch. Yeah, proofs really hard to get to. While the FBI was doing wrong, was overstating the importance of these elemental similarities. Instead of accurately stating that the ballistic evidence shared a similar composition with bullets found in a suspect's possession, these results were sometimes presented in a way that suggested the bullets had come from the exact same source. A source, such as the same production batch of ammunition, which could have been packaged and sold together. This could give investigators and jurors the impression that if a suspect possessed bullets with a matching compositional profile, they must be connected to those used in a crime. The NLC advised that CBLA should be used and presented with extreme caution in order to avoid overstating its value, but the FBI had already used this technique and at least 2500 testimonies. You know, you could bet in testifying they're going to be looking to overstate, or at least state as much as possible, rather than be like, we're not really sure about this science.

1:57:06Essentially, this caveat about the limited scientific conclusions made using CBLA would relegate the significance of a match as being uncertain. The FBI could easily manipulate these matches to make them look more definitive. Oh no, don't be doing that. Come on. It's like, you can say this is indicative, but manipulation is just wrong. That's the defences. The NLC determined that the CBLA conclusions given by FBI experts at trial were vastly overstated. Once the NLC released their report, CBLA testimony became a major problem for the FBI. They would now have to revisit the cases where they used this evidence to implicate a suspect in a crime. And that's a lot of them. In 2005, the FBI announced that following an exhaustive 14-month review to study the recommendations offered by the NRC, they had voluntarily decided to permanently halt their use of CBLA. In their press release, the Bureau stated that it had sent letters outlining this information to approximately 300 agencies who had used the FBI's lab for CBLA

1:58:07analysis in 1996 and received reports indicating positive results. These letters were sent, so that the agencies could take a quote whatever steps they deemed appropriate, if any, given the facts of a particular case. The FBI also made sure to note that it had not determined that any previously issued bullet-led reports had been done so in error. Oh boy, you're kind of like, yeah, we can stop this now. But you've got, there's so much backlock here. However, investigative reports conducted by CBS News in the Washington Post in November 2007 would finally reveal the false scope of the FBI's use of CBLA and expert testimony. In an interview aired for 60 minutes, the former FBI lab director Dwighty Adams, who had ended the use of the technique, stated that the government had an obligation to release all relevant CBLA case files for independent review. He believed that expert testimony needed to be reassessed to determine if any errors had led to wrongful convictions that had been reliant on CBLA evidence. The Washington Post in 60 minutes identified at least 250 cases,

1:59:11spanning across the country, where bullet-led analysis had been used as implicating evidence. Of these cases, they had already discovered over a dozen where the court's ultimately reversed convictions, or were now doubtful about the guilt of several defendants. And doubtful is enough to get them out. All you need is reasonable doubt. Regular doubt definitely counts. Further damning the FBI with the internal memos discovered by journalists, these memos seem to indicate that the Bureau's managers were aware of overstated CBLA testimony that had been used in a large amount of trials by 2004, and this was before the FBI took any measures to investigate any wrongful convictions. Documents even allegedly showed that in a small number of cases, experts had actually made false matches based on faulty statistical analysis of the elements contained in different lead samples. So not only did they overstate the importance of this evidence, but they had also actually flat out gotten it wrong. A 2007 article from the Washington Post that was released a few days after the November episode of 60 minutes alleged there were documents that showed the FBI was aware of the dubious scientific validity of CBLA as far back as 1991,

2:00:16when a former FBI lab specialist first raised concern. This is so far back. Starf reporter John Solomon provided a chronological timeline of the FBI's concern surrounding the validity of CBLA. He stated that the Bureau first conducted a study on CBLA's reliability in 1991 that had alerted them to two potential flaws. Number one, this study discovered the bullets packaged 15 months apart, which most likely came from separate production batches, had the exact same composition. This challenged the theory that every batch of bullets had their own unique chemical identifiers. And, number two, bullets found in the same box often had several different elemental compositions. This further challenged the theory that each box of bullets would have the same uniform and specific composition. Upon this discovery, scientists cautioned that it could have a significant impact of the results in forensics cases. No, Sherlock. Stayed in the obvious a little bit there. Christ. In 1995 to 1996, Solomon alleged that the FBI had switched its bullet-led

2:01:21analysis method from neutron activation analysis, or ICP-OES, which I explained previously. Allegedly, this switch was made because ICP-OES allows examiners to identify more traceable elements within a bullet sample, which creates a more specific elemental composition. Despite this increase in measurable elements, the FBI still decided to double the margin of error that they used in declaring matches. Clifford Speegelman, a statistician at Texas AMN University, also reviewed the FBI's methods and stated that not enough suspects were being caught in the new net using seven elements, so they chose to use a big net. Yikes. Now theoretically, by expanding the range of acceptable deviation for declaring a match, the FBI increased the chance that the unrelated bullets could be identified as consistent with another one without establishing a common source. Ball matches meant more opportunities to connect recovered ballistic evidence with bullets found in a suspect's possession, which had similar compositions. I feel like this could be useful in the same way that the blood type thing was useful. Maybe it can rule people out or point a

2:02:25finger, like a very vague finger, toward someone, but it should not really be acceptable as evidence in a very good being in court, but it should be clearly shown as this is suggestive of, not like DNA, where it's like, this is a fact. In 1998, an award-winning FBI lab materlager named William Tobin retired from the Bureau. Surely before retiring, Tobin a bit approach by a woman who believed her brother had been wrongfully convicted on flawed bullet-led analysis. At the time, Tobin was still working for the Bureau, so he couldn't help the woman any further. Now that he was retired, there was no longer a conflict of interest, so Tobin decided to look further into the problems that this woman had alerted him to. Tobin partnered up with another materlager in this research, Eric Randich, who did not work for the FBI. By 2001, the two men had finished a study that directly challenged the key assumptions that the FBI had been making about bullet-led analysis. Tobin and Randich had discovered that bullets from the same batch did not always

2:03:25match, because subtle chemical changes could take place during the manufacture. Oh wow, so even my vague finger pointing is not so helpful. During the study, Tobin had also purchased ammunition from several different stores allocated throughout Alaska. He found that many of these bullets had the same composition and manufacturing date. This suggested that bullets were often sold at different stores throughout the same community, so it would be incorrect to assume a match between bullets could narrow down investigators to one source suspect. As a result of his findings, Tobin began to appear as a witness for defendants, challenging the use of FBI bullet-led analysis against them. The work of a retired FBI lab employee helping to discredit the agency that he once worked for raised a lot of uncomfortable questions for the FBI. Yeah, as it should, he should not be on the defense stand trying to persuade people that the FBI analysts are wrong, the FBI should be like, are you sure? This should be like science, this is science. He comes up with a theory,

2:04:26and now someone should try and, um, what's it called? Replicate, like replicable. That's part of science where you find out whether something's replicable. Please, FBI go and see whether it's replicable. Don't just be like, oh, I don't like that guy. He betrayed us. That is stupid thinking. You're the FBI, do better. By 2002, Dwight Adams, who was still operating as the FBI lab director, had initiated the review of the FBI's CBLA work by the National Academy of Sciences. And as we know, the study would result in the bombshell findings released in 2004. Many critics of the FBI's handling of this mess focused on the Bureau's laxadaisical effort to alert prosecutors or defense attorneys about the 2004 NRC's findings. They deemed the FBI's press release and letters sent to the 300 agencies who had used their CBLA services to be vague and uninformative. Famous defense attorney Barry Shek, who had served as the DNA and forensic expert on OJ Simpson's dream team and co-founded the Innocence Project. Whoa, the forensic expert on OJ Simpson's dream team

2:05:32founded the Innocence Project. I mean, OJ Simpson's dead now, but he did that, right? He even wrote that book was like, if I did do it, I did it like this, right? I've never read it. Of course, I mean, that's a deno I said, of course. Yeah, I just haven't read it, but it's kind of funny that he started the Innocence Project or co-founded it. He was one of the loudest of these voices. In a quote given to the Washington Post, Shek said, frankly, the letters that they sent them, the agencies, were minimizing the significance of the error in the first place. The letters said that our science wasn't really inaccurate. Our interpretation was wrong, but the interpretation is everything. The FBI would later state that its 2005 letters should have been clearer. Following this explosive expose, the FBI ultimately conceded that thousands of convictions they had assisted with may have relied on flawed or overstated analysis and testimony. The Bureau agreed to take concrete steps to help with the independent reviews of their experts testimony. On November 19, 2007, the NACDL, an Innocence Project, to organizations that had

2:06:37assisted the FBI in their review of microscopic hair analysis convictions, announced their formation of a joint comparative bullet-led analysis task force. Through this task force, both organizations would ensure any convictions resulting from FBI's CBLA testimony were properly reviewed and investigated further. They would also assist the FBI in visiting close cases and serve as a resource for any defendants who were possibly wrongfully convicted through FBI testimony. Barry Shek would go on to describe the FBI's plan to help in the review of CBLA convictions as good, but long overdue. Yeah, and Barry there is absolutely bang on, isn't he? There are thousands of people possibly sitting in prison on faulty evidence. You need to work quick on this. That's people sitting in prison. Come on. One of the first three cases to be overturned as a result of the FBI CBLA testimony was that of Scott Cannon. In 1998, Cannon was convicted in Oregon of a triple homicide, and the evidence used against him relied heavily on FBI bullet-led analysis.

2:07:39At the time of the crime, Cannon was a 32-year-old handyman living just outside the city of Salem. On the 23rd of November, Jason Kinzer, Susan Osborne, both age 26 and Celeste Graves, age 24, were found shot to dead in and around the mobile homes where they lived. The bodies were first discovered after a neighbor noticed smoke coming from the trailer. The mobile home was located on the property of Bim La Boyd near a house. After noticing the smoke, Boyd decided to confront her tenants, as she assumed they were using a wood-burning stove which was strictly forbidden. Boyd opened the trailer door and immediately saw Jason Kinzer lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, taking his last breaths. She quickly called the police to report what she'd found. By the time the authorities arrived on the scene, Kinzer had succumbed to his injuries. They quickly discovered the bodies of Susan Osborne and Celeste Graves outside underneath the trailer. All three had been killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. Initially, the only lead they had was Boyd, the woman who had discovered the gruesome scene. Boyd claimed that earlier that day, she had been driving up the road to her house, which was the same one leading to the trailer. A large tree branch had fallen and was

2:08:43blocking Boyd's path, so she'd got an out of her truck to move it when it carpooled up behind her. In the vehicle, two men on their way to deliver water to the residents in their trailers. After the three moved the branch, Boyd drove by the trailer as she proceeded home. She claimed to have noticed a maroon van parked outside the trailer. The two men were also questioned by the police and they claimed to have encountered Scott Cannon leaving the mobile home. When the two delivery men exited their car to deliver the water, they claimed Cannon warned them not to enter the trailer as Jason Kinzer was upset. Both also noted that in their view, Cannon's behaviour was rather odd. The two heated his warning and left the delivery outside and then left never entering the home. After receiving this information, the authorities brought Scott Cannon in for questioning. Cannon claimed that Kinzer was a friend of his and had called him to ask for an estimate on a plumbing problem the trailer was having. On November 23rd, Cannon met with Kinzer at the trailer to examine the issue. When Cannon arrived, his aura a spannic man he did not recognise speaking with Kinzer. Cannon proceeded to investigate the trailer's plumbing

2:09:43and soon noticed that the conversation between Kinzer and his guest had turned tense. Kinzer then asked Cannon to leave, which he did. As Cannon left, he reported he saw the two delivery men arrive as he packed up his van. Cannon stated that he had ever spoke to them and all three men left the scene at the same time. As the police continued investigating the murders, they contacted people who may have had information about the crime. At the time, authorities were already aware that Kinzer had allegedly been involved with the production and distribution of methamphetamine. In a trailer, never. After speaking with several people who knew the victims and Cannon, they learned some interesting things about the main person of interest. According to Steve Brobstin and inmate at the local jail and known drug trafficker, he had entrusted Cannon with taking care of his girlfriend, Celeste Graves, one of the victims, while he was incarcerated. Brobstin even alleged that he left Cannon in charge of a lockbox containing $16,000 that was meant to support Graves while he was away. How long did he wait for? It's not going to

2:10:44last very long, is it? The investigators also spoke with Cannon's girlfriend who claimed the deodorant home on the 23rd at around 4pm. Investigators learned through Brobstin and Cannon's girlfriend that he was a regular meth user, with information at hand and the fact that Boyd, the delivery man, and Cannon had all reported that he was at the trailer shortly before the crimes occurred, the police felt there had enough reason to take him into custody. I mean, yeah, maybe, but surely not enough evidence for this to stick, so then they're going to use the bullet thing which does out to be bunk. On November 24th, the day after the murders, Scott Cannon was arrested and interviewed by local authorities. They alleged that during his interview, Cannon repeatedly lied about several things, including his drug use and his association with Steve Brobstin. Police also obtained a search warrant for Cannon's home where they see several guns, ammunition, homemade silences, and Brobstin's lockbox, which was empty. On the 3rd of December 1998, Scott Cannon was indicted on three counts of aggravated murder and being a felon in possession

2:11:46of a firearm. If you didn't already know, felons are like the one group of America people who are not allowed to own guns. Oh wow, at all. So if you go to prison, if you're like a felon, it would be someone who can hit a felony, right? So that's a bigger crime. So you'll never allow to own a gun again. Is that what was our god? Is that what Hunter Biden was up to? Because he had a gun that he wasn't allowed to have right and he was a felon for... Was he a try? I don't remember, and I don't know enough, but there was something about this, right? Cannon's trial began on the 24th of January 2000 and the prosecution would rely heavily on CBLA analysis of the ammunition found in his home. Scott Cannon would plead not guilty. A local expert from the Oregon State University's Radiation Center testified about the metallurgical analysis of the ballistic evidence recovered from the victims and the bullets found in Cannon's home. The expert had used the comparative bullet-led analysis process so popularized by the FBI to determine the elemental composition of both samples. Through this, the expert testified, in his opinion, the bullets used

2:12:48to kill a kinser, Osborne and Graves were compositionally indistinguishable to those in a box recovered from Cannon's home. Even when so far as to testify bullets used by the killer had likely originated in the box in Cannon's possession, though none of the firearms that had also been found in his home could be linked to the crime. The jury found Scott Cannon guilty of all charges on February 28th, and he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Scott, whose initial plea was denied in 2003, filed a petition for a post-conviction relief in January 2004. The R.C.'s report criticizing the FBI's use of chemical bullet-led analysis was released the next year. The 60 minutes, and Washington Post expose a fully exposing the depth of the FBI's mistakes aired in 2007. He's been imprisoned by 9 years by that point, by the way. The State of Oregon would ultimately concede that scientific evidence used in Cannon's trial was unreliable and granted his motion for post-conviction relief in March 2009. Cannon's convictions were finally vacated in August of that year when the State prosecution agreed he was entitled to a new

2:13:52and fair trial. He continually maintained his innocence while incarcerated. It would later surface that in their original investigation, authorities had allegedly first sent their ballistic samples to the Oregon State Police Crime Laboratory for comparative bullet analysis. The Oregon State Police crime lab declined to conduct this analysis as it did not consider the process to be scientifically reliable. It was only after this initial rejection that the investigating official sent their bullet samples to the expert at Oregon State University who would later testify in Cannon's trial. In December 2009, the Oregon Department of Justice found that Polk County, where the crime and trial had taken place had destroyed the original evidence used in Cannon's trial. Why? The prosecutors from Polk County counted these claims by stating they had sent his evidence to the Department of Justice after they took over jurisdiction of Cannon's case. In response, the assistant attorney general Susan Gerber, who had been assigned to the case, maintained that she never received any evidence or records pertaining to the Cannon's trial. Regardless of what had happened to it, Sazamid destroyed is just they lost it.

2:14:54Allegedly, like it was either lost or destroyed, whatever it doesn't exist anymore. Fine. Regardless of what happened to it, the evidence was gone, and without it, the prosecution stated they could not properly conduct a retrial of Cannon. With this, all charges against Scott Cannon were dismissed, and he was released from prison on December 18, 2009, after serving over nine years in prison. Can you just imagine being regular Plummer Scott? And you go to prison for what you think is life. For something you didn't do. Christ. The evidence from Cannon's original trial was eventually recovered in 2011. In 2012, the then Polk County District Attorney stated that his office would review this evidence to decide if new charges would be brought against Cannon. After 14 years, I can find no reports of Polk County ever refiling charges against Scott Cannon. Pissed part, Cannon filed a federal civil lawsuit seeking damages for his wrongful conviction, but it was dismissed in 2014. Oh no. In 2022, Cannon filed a claim for compensation with the state of Oregon.

2:15:56Fortunately, this filing has a happier ending with Scott receiving a certificate of innocence and settling his claim for $925,000 in January of this year. That is not enough money for spending nine years in prison, but it ain't bad. Since his release and exoneration, Scott Cannon has been working as an advocate for other inmates wrongfully convicted on junk science like he was. As he summarised the experience in a 2025 article for a local Oregon news station point six, being wrongfully convicted sucks. It's probably one of the most helpless feelings you can have. Yeah, I mean, nail on the head, there's God. Cannon now works with organisations such as the Forensic Justice Project to lobby for a systemic justice reform and prevent the use of junk science in the first place. Oh yeah, we've got to stop this. What's out there now that we're using that we shouldn't be? It's really worrying. I think we can all agree that Cannon taking this travesty bestowed upon him and using a tell by the victims makes in a certifiable legend. It does indeed. The story of Scott Cannon is just one of many in the frustrating tale of the FBI's

2:17:00use of comparative bullet lead analysis. Unlike the countless convictions overturned because of FBI microscopic hair analysis, there are far fewer stories pertaining to the flawed use of CBLA. While specifics are much harder to come by, there have reportedly been numerous convictions overturned as a result of CBLA evidence. I think I speak for everyone when I say that I truly hope any innocent person wrongfully convicted on the basis of junk FBI science are released and given financial compensation. It's quite literally the least anyone could do. Yeah, well said. Wrap up. Though the FBI has been known to make serious errors in judgments and conduct itself rather poorly, that's not to say that it doesn't do important work. No, I think for the most part, they seem like we've done a lot of episodes in our casual criminalists of the most part. FBI's pretty good at their job. There have been numerous occasions where the FBI did catch criminals, expose fraud and contribute to public safety. And this isn't even accounting for all the

2:18:03classified cases that we remain unaware of. As with any other national institution, there is good in what the FBI does. I think that message can get a bit lost in all the criticism lobbed against it, even if that criticism isn't entirely valid. Even still, there is much room for improvement and the FBI could do a lot more to clean up its act. Unfortunately, such reparatory efforts are not up to me or anyone else in the general public. Change would either need to come from the government or within the agency itself. And it's no really see that happening anytime soon. This script was a bit of a bummer, but explaining the flaws of agencies like the FBI remains important. The only way to make real change is to first acknowledge the need for it. Hopefully, in some strange way, the script has done that. Yeah, I think, I mean, change within the agency itself or government change. I think, while it is obviously way too slow, the fact that those two things that were once science have been discarded and now people are getting out of prison ridiculously slowly and they should never have been there in the first

2:19:04place, but that does show that change is happening, which I think is good. Obviously. Thank you for watching. I'm Chrissy Champagne, host of Residue. The podcast for True Crime meets the movies. Every week, we break down films based on real life crimes, separating fact from fiction while honoring the victims behind the headlines and exploring the emotional residue these stories leave behind. Listen to Residue wherever you get your podcast. Hello there. I'm Dave and his game on my podcast, The Brain Food Show, our team, including the great Simon Whistler, our own devices, Jio Messier and Fact Fiends Carl Smallwood serve up fascinating facts and stories that will blow your mind. From ancient mysteries to scientific curiosities to deep dive history, we deliver knowledge that will help you become the star of

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