Retired Detective Constable Ron is called to the scene of a fatal car accident. At first, the driver was nowhere to be found. Then suddenly, a man with marked “prison swagger” appears on the scene…or reappears, as it were. As Ron works to build a case against this driver, he reveals just how far quiet confidence will go when it comes to wrapping up a case.
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Read TranscriptYeardley: Small Town Dicks is going on tour next month. If you have ever wanted to see us live, this is your chance. All you have to do to get tickets is head to smalltowndicks.com/tour. That’s smalltowndicks.com/tour and you can get your tickets there. And just a heads up, our Portland show is almost sold out, so if you want to be there, don’t wait.
[music]Yeardley: Hey Small Town Fam. I just wanted to check in and say hi and let you all know what we’re up to here at Small Town Dicks HQ. So, it’s the dead of winter here in the Northern hemisphere, which can make spring and the beginning of our new season seem ages away. So, while the team gears up to go on our first ever live tour, we’re so excited. We thought we’d also drop a great little bonus episode right here, right now because we love our Small Town Fam. And you know what because we can. And it’ll keep your ears toasty while the team finishes up their work for Season 16.
Hey Small Town Fam, It’s Yeardley. How are you guys? I hope you’re all well. Today’s episode goes a long way towards illustrating how unique police work is. For instance, and I don’t mean to be morbid here, but when was the last time you saw a dead body outside of a funeral or encountered a just out-of-prison felon in the course of your regular workday? I’m guessing that most of you who’d sit on my side of the table on this podcast would have to think pretty hard to answer either of those questions if they had any relevance to your life at all. But in law enforcement, these details make up any given Wednesday and demand a neutrality and objectivity that I don’t think comes naturally to human beings when faced with worst case scenarios. And it is these personality traits that highlight the quiet confidence of our guest today and made me wonder if I could be as cool of a cucumber in the same situation. Here is Pokerface.
[music]Yeardley: Hi there. I’m Yeardley.
Dan: I’m Dan.
Dave: I’m Dave.
Paul: And I’m Paul.
Yeardley: And this is Small Town Dicks.
Dan: Dave and I are identical twins-
Dave: -and retired detectives from Small Town USA.
Paul: And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.
Dan: Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder.
Dave: Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare personal account of how they saw the crime.
Paul: Names, places and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.
Dan: And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-
Dave: -out of respect for what they’ve been through.
Unison: Thank you.
Yeardley: Today on Small Town Dicks we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.
Dan: Hello, team.
Yeardley: Hello. Were you going to say something else?
Dan: I didn’t expect to be first this time, but I am your husband, so I–
Yeardley: [laughs]You are.
Dan: Maybe I should expect it.
Yeardley: Sure expect nothing, my friend. We have Detective Dave.
Dave: Good afternoon.
Yeardley: Good afternoon, sir. And we have the one and only Paul Holes.
Paul: Hello, hello.
Yeardley: Hello. Hello. [Paul laughs]
Dan: Paul with a curve ball.
Paul: Hey. There you go.
Yeardley: All my favs. And Small Town Fam. We are so pleased to welcome back to the podcast, retired Detective Constable Ron.
Ron: Good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Yeardley: It’s such a pleasure to have you. Thank you for sitting down with us.
Ron: Oh, you’re very welcome.
Yeardley: So Ron, we’re going to start this one the way we start so many, which is please tell us how this case came to you.
Ron: I was working in patrol with another officer who is another experienced officer. And it’s a beautiful summer night, sunshine, still at 7 o’clock and we get a dispatch to an accident in the city where I work. We are told that ambulance and fire department are also dispatched, which means it’s a pretty serious accident. And it’s a four-lane referred to as a highway. It’s actually a nice-looking area of the city where you round a corner. It’s quite a tight corner, but there’s a marina and a lake that are right there as well. So enough to distract you. And part of it is the curve that’s in the road. Not corner but a curve in the road where if you’re not paying attention, you can overcook the corner and end up in the wrong lane.
Yeardley: Overcook, I like that.
Ron: Generally because cars are just going too fast. So, when we arrive, it seems to be a single car accident. The fire department’s already there and my firefighter friends are doing a great job destroying my crime scene, the accident scene, running over evidence, but they’re doing their job. They have a different set of goals, but they’ve already popped the hood to this car that’s damaged and disengaged the battery for fire purposes. And they’ve also done a good job actually of blocking off the road. And there’s a hotel right there, so appears as if the entire hotel is standing around the road looking at the car. When we exit, I see that there’s a person. His legs and a portion of his lower torso are still in the car, but his shoulders are on the roadway.
Yeardley: Oh.
Ron: Yeah. He’s at such angle that he’s not alive. Just not a natural sort of position for him to be in. He’s about 40 years old, very heavyset. And I find out later that his name is Tony. He is lying on the roadway out the passenger door. There is nobody else inside the car. The driver’s door is closed and it is a two-door Dodge Daytona. So similar to I guess a cheaper version of a Mustang, it is facing the wrong way on the roadway as well. So, I’m not at this point sure if there’s a second car involved. Lots of people standing around because there’s lots to see and a lot of rubberneckers that sort of thing are standing there.
And I couldn’t find any witnesses. I kept looking for witnesses because they’re like cold– anybody see the accident, what happened? And I could see that there was damage on the passenger side of the car, right by the passenger door. And I’m looking around right at the curve in the road opposite the hotel, there is a U-Haul truck rental place. And I could see a little bit of paint transfer on the right rear bumper area of the U-Haul. So, it appears as if the Daytona left the roadway, hit the right rear corner of this U-Haul truck and spun around and came to a stop. And then spilling out the passenger onto the road. The impact was enough that it killed him.
I could see that there was a star pattern above the steering wheel on the driver’s side. So, indication that someone, probably the driver had hit the windshield just above the steering wheel, but yet there’s no driver at this point. Keys are in ignition and the driver’s window was down. There are no witnesses to the accident. There is a lake right beside the roadway and there’s also a set of train tracks that are quite heavily used by passenger and freight trains. So, the lake is maybe 30ft away from the accident. The train tracks are about the same distance.
At this point, I’m looking for somebody with a head injury that has walked away from the scene, so I have a concern of that they walk into the lake, are they walking on the train tracks? Are they trying to escape on the train tracks? Are they booking it down the road, hitchhiking or trying to stop? So, I have dispatch contact taxi services to see if they picked up anybody in the area. If there’s been any suspicious calls of persons in backyards, think that they were in the process of calling one of our passenger train stations just to ensure there could be somebody on the tracks.
There’s enough activity at the marina that there was nobody looking disturbed, so I didn’t think the person was in the water either. I need to find this driver, assuming that they are hurt. While I’m making notes and my partner is taking care of the accident scene, I see a person walking towards me about half a city block away. And he’s walking on the roadway. The road’s closed, and he’s walking on a roadway towards me. One of the terms that we use in policing, he had a real goof strut.
Yeardley: What’s that?
Ron: It’s like a tough guy prison swagger. It’s like, okay, so there’s someone that’s either putting on a show or quite confident. I could tell as you walk closer that he was quite muscular as well, which is conducive of someone being in a prison sentence and lifting weights a lot. We get that a lot.
Yeardley: They call it prison strong on this podcast.
Ron: Prison strong. Okay. Absolutely, right. Takes about six months to lose that. He also had another tell-tale sign. Blue denim, running shoes with no laces. Nobody else I know wears these shoes, so that is a Prison Issue shoe. So, he’s walking towards me with that look, the shoes. And I thought, okay, this person is very interesting, and I’ll watch him. Well, they keep walking towards the Daytona in a direct line, like, wasn’t wavering, but in a direct line to this Dodge Daytona towards the driver’s side. And I’m about two car lengths back at my cruiser, just observing. And he stops at the door of the Daytona and reaches in and from under the driver’s visor, grabs a pack of cigarettes. Okay, that’s a bit of a clue for me. So definitely I want to talk to this person. In my opinion, you had to know the cigarettes were there. You had to been in the car to know there was a pack of cigarettes there.
Yeardley: It seems so casual. You have a really serious scene of an accident here where the road is blocked off, there’s a guy cut in half hanging out of the passenger side. And this dude is just walking up, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from the driver’s side visor. I’m stunned.
Ron: That’s a good description, actually. Yardley, he was definitely casual because you could see from his point of view as he approached the car, he would have been able to see Tony lying on the roadway, clearly dead. Yeah, definitely very casual.
So, I walked up to him. I’m in full uniform. The cruiser’s there. He would have no problem seeing me or the cruiser. And his name is John. I knew of him. I had never had dealings with him, but also knew that he could be a dangerous sort of individual as well. And I asked John, “Were you the driver of the car?” And his response to me is “Yes.”
Break 1
Ron: So, in Canada, in order to arrest somebody, if you don’t witness the crime, you need reasonable grounds. It has to be beyond mere suspicion, has to be reasonable to believe that person has committed that crime. But it also has to be what’s called an indictable offense. It has to serious crime. But in this case, because John said, “Yes, he was the driver,” I believe that gave me enough grounds to arrest him for failing to remain in dangerous driving causing death because he was the driver of this vehicle.
Dan: How much time had passed by before John showed up again?
Ron: The time that we were dispatched, the time he showed up, I would give that about 35 minutes from the time the accident happened to the time that John casually walked back to the scene.
Dave: The impact with the windshield on the inside of the vehicle. Is there evidence that ties John to being behind the wheel?
Ron: He wasn’t bleeding. John had a mark on his forehead, but I honestly would have thought it would have been more substantial.
Dave: So you’ve made the determination that more likely than not this person committed this crime. For us, it’s probable cause. What are the next steps because procedurally, there’s some differences in your country, in the United States.
Ron: Yeah. So, at that point, I do tell him he is under arrest for dangerous driving, causing death, and ask him to turn around, because I’m going to handcuff him. So, I handcuff him and I search him. When I was searching him and advising him of his charter rights, I could smell alcohol on his breath.So, I also advised him that he was under arrest for impaired driving and then we have to read a breathalyzer demanding that you accompany me for the purpose of having breathalyzer taken. My difficulty was that his speech was pretty good, he was pretty steady on his feet, and any unsteadiness could be taken away by the head injury. So, I knew the importance of getting the breath test.
So, at that point, my partner is busy with the accident. I’ve placed John in the backseat of my cruiser, and I’m about to go to the police station to have another officer do a breath test on him, and John complains of chest pain. So, because priority of life takes precedent, there’s still the ambulance in the area, and I have them come over, and they say, “We got to take him to the hospital.” I kept John handcuffed the whole time, I’m thinking he’s going to try to escape. So, I got to follow pretty close. When we get to the hospital, John says he wants to talk to his lawyer.
Yeardley: So when John says, “I want to talk to my lawyer,” is it the same as in the US? So, anything he says after that is inadmissible. Is that so?
Ron: Anything he says after that? Yep, inadmissible. So, I have to give him the opportunity to talk to a lawyer, and that’s in what’s referred to as our charter of rights, which is similar to your Miranda rights. So, the difficulty is we’re in a hospital, and John is entitled to a right to privacy, and I cannot hear his conversation. I’m able to talk to the doctors and nurses, so they’re able to give me a room where I can look in through a window. And he’s on the phone talking to his lawyer, but I had to be able to see him.
Yeardley: You’re afraid that John might flee, is that it?
Ron: Absolutely. And I really wanted this breath test. I thought he was faking with a chest injury. He has this massive chest from weightlifting. I think it’s a game. But again, I can’t take that chance. So, when he finishes talking to the lawyer, John tells me that the lawyer wants to speak to me. I actually have had John’s lawyer as a defense lawyer in some cases, so I was on a speaking basis to him and it’s generally fairly friendly. The lawyers tell me “I don’t want you to ask him any more questions, but are you aware that he just got out of the penitentiary three months ago for manslaughter?”
Yeardley: Oh, so this is what the lawyer is telling you about John.
Ron: Yeah. I’m not entirely sure why he disclosed that. I had run John’s name on our CPIC system, our Canadian Police Information System. Hadn’t got the results back because there was too much else going on. So, it was an incident, not in my city, but not far, where he was going to buy some drugs but was afraid of getting ripped off. So, he brought a sawed-off shotgun. The drug dealers tried to rip him off, so he shot one and took off. And the drug dealers put the injured person in a car. They dropped off the injured person at one of the local hospitals and took off and the injured person died. John got convicted of manslaughter and did several years for that.
So, the doctor gave John clean bill of health. She also confirmed that it would not be harm to his health to give a breath test. So, I had the okay from the doctor. I asked if they had taken a blood test and they said “No. John’s injuries didn’t warrant taking blood.” So, I wasn’t 100% sure if I applied for a blood warrant, if a judge would grant me a blood warrant. Yes, I had the car accident, but all the other factors like the walking, the slurred speech could be explained away by a head injury. I wasn’t 100% sure that I could get a warrant on that, so I really wanted the breath test. So, I’m now waiting for the breathalyzer technician to come with the device.
Yeardley: Ron, explain why getting that breath test is so urgent.
Ron: In Canada, we have what’s called a presumption that we have to get the breath test within two hours of the arrest. And I’m getting well over the one-hour mark here. So, the presumption is that if I can get the breath sample before the two-hour mark, then the breath reading will be deemed to have been accurate for that driving incident. And because John had his chest pains, I thought he is going to probably claim he can’t blow into the breathalyzer. I think he’s playing a game with me. And so, I get talking about him being in the penitentiary. I said, “Last time I saw you weren’t this big. You must push a lot of weights.” I said, “What do you bench? How much do you bench?” And in guy world, that’s a big deal, “How much can you bench press,” where you know, clearly that’s not one of my priorities.
[laughter]I was more of an aerobic guy. So, I said, “What do you bench 300? I’ve always tried to bench 300. I only get 200 pounds, like that’s my max.” I said “300, he kind of shrugged your shoulders at 310?” He goes, “Yeah, I can do 310, 320 on a good day.” “It’s like 320, like that’s almost twice as much what I could do, like, that’s huge, man. What do you curl?” He’s got big arms. You know, threw out some complimentary numbers and he’s nodding along.
By this point, the breathalyzer technician had arrived. And breathalyzer technician does a good job where I’m doing the talking. There’s no interruption. It’s a bit of a negotiation happening too, I guess. And I was also a qualified breath tech at this point, so I knew what was needed. The first time he attempted to blow into the breathalyzer, he just held his chest and said, “This hurts.” I said, “Come on, you can bench 320 pounds and you can’t blow into a breathalyzer.” So, kind of mocking his manhood. Eventually he gave me a breath sample. The first breast sample was about twice the legal limit. In Canada, it’s 0.08 or 80 mg, but our courts don’t charge until it’s 100. And he was at least 200 or 0.20, twice the legal limit.
Paul: That’s a significant amount of alcohol in John’s system. And the fact that he is able to walk and you being a trained observer, aren’t noticing that he is substantially impaired tells me he’s got a lot of tolerance. He’s a heavy, heavy drinker. How much does John weigh, would you guess?
Ron: Good question. He would be about 175 pounds, but he’s only about 5’8”. So he’s very short, very stocky.
Paul: And lean, right? Lean and muscular.
Ron: Lean, muscular.
Paul: Yeah. For him to get up to a 0.20, John is having to put down at least 10 drinks. And a drink being a beer, standard glass of wine, shot of 100 proof liquor. And that’s instantaneously, he’s drinking all that alcohol at once to get his breath alcohol level up to that 0.20 level. Now you factor in, you’ve waited so long before you can get that breath test. He’s eliminating alcohol. He’s got even more drinks in his system, let alone whenever he actually stopped drinking. So, you know, this is gross negligence on John’s part in terms of the amount of alcohol that he’s got in his system and is driving with it.
Ron: Absolutely. Too and the way we’re trained, the breathalyzer underestimates the breath sample as well. So, everything’s in the favor of the accused on this one. So, we also have to wait 20 minutes and do a second sample. So, the one has to be in correlation with the other. It has to be similar reading in order for it to be accepted by the courts as well. Same sort of banter is happening. We’re talking about John’s dead friend Tony. And John does give me a second sample. His second sample correlated with the first one. It was very close to what the first one was as well.
Just before we were about to leave, one of the nurses came in and said, “Can I talk to you?” And I said, “Kind of busy right now. Can it wait?” She said, “No, you need to come with me right now.”
Break 2
Ron: The nurse leads me to the waiting area, and there’s three teenagers, strapping young teenage boys sitting in the waiting area. And she says, “You want to talk to these young boys?” So, she didn’t want to disclose anything for medical purposes about why the teenagers were at the hospital. I could see one of them had a cut on his forehead. That was a pretty good gash. Okay. And I thought I was going to be– We got assaulted or something, but one of them says “We were in the car.” I said, “What car?” “The Dodge Daytona.” And they would have been in the backseat of a Dodge Daytona, all jammed in pretty tight. I’m not really sure how they would have fit in.
I said, “You were all three in the car when the accident happened?” And they all nodded. So, we couldn’t stop the bleeding, so we brought our friend to the hospital, and he had cut his forehead on the seatbelt post and I said, “Well, how did you get out of the car?” And they said, “Well, we jumped out of the open passenger side and ran off.” “So why did you run off?” “Well, we were drinking. We were afraid were going to be charged for underage drinking.” And they behaved like scared teenage boys. I said, “Well, I’m really glad that you came to the hospital.”
I got statements from them. They were hitchhiking a couple of miles down the road and John, who was driving, stopped and picked them up, and they wedged themselves into the back seat of this Dodge Daytona and he was driving so fast on the 60 km/hr four lane roadway that teenage boys who had been drinking said, “Yeah, this is good right here. Can you pull over?” They wanted him to pull over because they were so scared of his driving. So, when he pulled over, he mounted the curb and the passenger door collided with the U-Haul van, which caused it to spin around, which caused Tony to spill out onto the roadway. That’s when the teenage boys took off. And that was the only injury that they had. Nobody was wearing a seatbelt.
And I think because they were so large and wedged in, that the only injury was the head injury from going forward. Very fortunate. Before I left, I said, “Tomorrow morning, you all three need to go to church.”
So, I later went to their homes and spoke to their parents and assured them that, “No, you’re not going to be charged. I don’t care about the underage drinking.”
Yeardley: And were these teenage boys able to give you any actual information that would maybe help you build your case on John?
Ron: They could give evidence to the dangerous driving. They couldn’t tell me what he looked like other than the back of his head, but they could tell me that the heavyset fellow was not driving. It was a smaller person that was driving. They never really saw the driver, but they all indicated that, “Yeah, we were scared. Like we had him pull over because we’re scared of his driving,” which is kind of uncommon for teenage boys. So, after John gave me the two breath samples, I had enough to arrest him for impaired driving causing death. And we finally made our way to the police station.
Dave: And John’s aware that Tony is dead as a result of this car crash?
Ron: Absolutely.
Dave: Does John ever reveal why Tony is in his passenger seat? What’s the relationship there? And does John ever give you a heads up about what him and Tony were up to that day?
Ron: No. John never mentions Tony. Doesn’t even seem remorseful about it. Not sad at all about it. Like no tears, no shaking his head, “Oh, it should have been me.” Nothing like that. Just very cold, very casual, as Yeardley had mentioned with his walk. And it had no impact, especially me telling him, like, “You know that Tony is dead.”
Yeardley: Were you able to find out what happened that day leading up to the crash?
Ron: Turns out John and Tony had been shooting pool at the local pool hall and left there. And I couldn’t get any witnesses to describe their sobriety when they left. Very busy pool hall. So, I could retrace their steps from the pool hall to the road that they were on when they picked up the three teenage boys until where they ended.
Yeardley: Okay, so you’ve arrested John. You bring him to the police station. What happens after that?
Ron: So John spent time in jail until his bail hearing. And eventually he was released on bail after that lengthy criminal record. And then he disappeared for two years.
Yeardley: What was his lengthy criminal record?
Ron: So John’s criminal record included the manslaughter. It included some drug dealing. It included some breaking enters, it included some thefts. Very lengthy, very familiar person to the police. I found out during that lull that that was Tony’s car. And the dispatchers ran a check for me and found out that Tony was waiting charges, so was on bail for possession of child pornography. So, Tony wasn’t an upstanding citizen.
Dave: but Tony is a victim on your case.
Ron: Absolutely.
Dave: You’re going to figure it out either way. I mean, clearly John knows he’s in some deep trouble and realizes maybe I shouldn’t be showing up for my court dates. I’m getting out of here.
Ron: Yeah, absolutely. And again, nothing to lose. John knows he’s going to jail. I wasn’t entirely sure if he would fight the charge because no one actually can physically say that he was behind the wheel. I believe there was enough circumstantial evidence to convict him on it. I’m quite convinced of that. But two years later, when he gets brought back to my hometown and has trial, I do give evidence at his trial. And he is convicted on the impaired driving causing death as well as fleeing right on his bail charges.
Dave: Where had John taken himself to?
Ron: He somehow made his way around the Vancouver area, but a little bit more remote. So, John drew attention to himself and he got caught for shoplifting by some smaller town police. Then when it came up that, “Oh, there’s a warrant for his arrest for impaired driving causing death,” which that warrant does not expire in Canada for given the severity of it.
Dave: Nationwide extradition. You’re going back to where this originated?
Ron: Absolutely. I just wish they had asked me to go for the extradition portion of it, but not the case.
Yeardley: So, Ron, when was the last time you saw John?
Ron: The last I saw him was in court. And when he was sentenced for that impaired driving causing death. I did have a small conversation with Tony’s ex-wife and she said they were friends and that they had probably met in the penitentiary. She didn’t know John, but Tony had been in jail prior to that too as well.
Yeardley: So Tony’s wife is saying that John and Tony probably met in the penitentiary.
Ron: Yeah, she wasn’t very upset either. There wasn’t seemed to be a lot of tear shed for Tony. But at the same time, the job is to find and convict, who’s responsible for that.
Yeardley: And what was John’s sentence for this reckless driving and somebody died.
Ron: It was between five and seven years. Not substantial because it was a driving offense, not a manslaughter, not attempted murder. So, it’s fairly lenient in my opinion.
Break 3
Paul: Ron, your observations of John initially walking down the street, looking casual, just grabbing the cigarettes, if he had been drinking at this pool hall, the level, the 0.20, that’s a significant amount of alcohol in John’s system. And the fact that he is able to walk and you being a trained observer aren’t noticing that he is substantially impaired tells me he’s got a lot of tolerance.
Ron: I think they were drinking all day long and I think that Tony was probably too drunk to drive, so that’s probably why John was driving. But his tolerance, yeah, part of my training too is that during my breathalyzer training, we could be test subjects. And part of that you consumed alcohol, but it was an experiment. So, either five beers of a 5% 12 ounces or five shots of liquor. So, I’ve never had five beers in an hour before and I consumed five beers in an hour and the first two were okay, but the next three were like a chore. But I wanted to see what my breath reading was. And so all the rest of the class and takes breast samples from you, but one of the scientists there too, that’s at the Center of Forensic Sciences, takes your blood as well. And my blood alcohol content was 0.72, so I was under the legal limit and yet there is no way in the world I would have driven. My ability to operate a motor vehicle was impaired by alcohol for sure.
Yeardley: Interesting.
Ron: Yeah. So, it gave me a really good understanding that as Paul had said, if he’s blowing 200, he is definitely impaired whether or not there’s a lot of factors there, I don’t think I could even reach that level, nor would I want to.
Paul: No way.
Ron: That’s a hardcore alcoholic for sure. Yeah.
Paul: Early on in my career, I was a forensic toxicologist. And in California I had to become a forensic alcohol supervisor, which means, I was able to testify to impairment. And in order to get to that level of certification, I had to put on that type of drinking study that you were a participant in. So, I brought in participants and then would dose them up and we would use what’s called punctilious ethanol, it’s 100% ethanol, and then dilute that with orange juice. And then we knew exactly how much alcohol we’re giving the subjects.
And then observing their blood at the time, the urine, their breath, alcohol levels as they absorbed and then as they eliminated, but also put them through divided attention tests to watch the impairment and even brought CHP officers in so that they would administer the field sobriety test, so it’s very comprehensive. Well, several years later– quite a few years later, I became a participant. I was a drinker for one of the scientists now having to do the same type of study.
And to your point, they gave me a ton of alcohol and they could only get me up to an 0.7. And I was bombed. I was absolutely bombed. At that point in my life, I was what I would consider a naive drinker, so I didn’t have a lot of tolerance. And of course, the symptoms manifest themselves when you are a naive drinker, but when you are that tolerant alcoholic, you can get up to very high levels and you don’t manifest the same level of symptoms. You’re still impaired to drive, but it’s not as observable because this is how you walk around day in and day out and you’ve learned how to be able to balance and do relatively routine tasks without falling down on yourself.
Ron: Mm-hmm.
Dan: So in our state, Ron, if somebody is involved in an injury accident, they are the driver that by law we can request their blood be drawn and the hospital is supposed to do it. They don’t always do it. They always say, “Oh, do you have a warrant?” I said, “No, that’s not the law. The law is this is an injury accident and you have to draw the blood.” It doesn’t sound like that’s the case where you work.
Ron: I like that law, actually, I wish that was the case because it would have taken some, I guess the stress out of it too, right?
Yeardley: And one would assume that blood was more accurate than the breath test, that it was more precise at least.
Paul: Well, it is. So, when you start talking breath and blood, like in California, they revised the statute where it is specifically in blood. What is your blood alcohol concentration? When you start talking, blowing into an instrument, there is a partition factor from blood into your breath. And there are some variances, individual variances across people. Some may partition alcohol into their breath at a little higher level, some may at a lower level. So, when you get into a trial in which, let’s say somebody blew an 0.8, the defense is, “Well, my defendant’s partition coefficient is such that he really is an 0.7. His blood alcohol level is an 0.7.” So, there’s those types of games that are being played. Well, where did John go for those 35 minutes? Did he go and chug a bottle of vodka?
Most certainly that would be something that his attorney would use as a defense, saying he was completely sober when he got into this accident, and he was so distraught about Tony’s death that he went and chugged a whole bunch of alcohol. And so, when the breath technician with the portable alcohol device shows up, that initial breath test is done to say, where is John at this point in time? Then you wait 20 more minutes, because if John is still absorbing alcohol because he just chugged the whole bottle, then you’re going to see his blood alcohol level or breath alcohol level rise. And so that would support the defense theory that he just drank a whole bunch after the accident. So, there’s reasons for these steps that are being done from just the science standpoint in order to really know, well, what did John do? And based on what Ron indicated John was drinking well before that accident. And the two breath tests are telling me, yeah, he’s at the full absorption level and possibly at the elimination point.
Yeardley: I love having Paul as our science guy.
Dave: He’s pretty good.
Yeardley: So good. [Paul laughs]
Ron: I’ve never heard that before, actually, that’s fascinating. Yeah.
Dave: Paul, I want to have a bourbon wet lab where we [laughter] calibrate our absorption and dissipation rates. Maybe at our next meeting.
Paul: One of my party tricks is estimating your blood alcohol concentration based on your height, weight, and how many drinks you’ve had.
Yeardley: Really?
Paul: [laughs] Yeah. I used to have to do that all the time on the stand because the prosecution and the defense would throw what we call hypotheticals out. So, my client had five drinks over the course of four hours and had so much time between leaving the bar and the accident. What are you estimating? And so would have to go through those calculations.
Dave: And did jumping jacks between each drink.
Yeardley: Of course.
Dave: I’m also just thinking about criminal behavior fascinates me. So, you have John, who’s left the scene of a fatal accident, fatal crash, and wanders back so nonchalantly. Most people would stay way far away from the involved vehicle, and John just casually walks up and grabs some of his belongings. That kind of behavior. I can almost picture you, Ron, in the cruiser looking up, going, “What’s this guy doing?” A lot of people would go, “Hey, I need to interrupt that person before they get to the vehicle. That’s my crime scene. That’s my evidence.” But there’s also value in sitting back and seeing how something develops where that commitment of John to reach inside and grab an object or a belonging inside the vehicle is more evidence to suggest that John is familiar with the vehicle, that he’s returning to the seat that he just exited. All that leads to a building case of circumstance.
Ron: He certainly stood out certainly from a policing observation portion of it, absolutely. I’m glad he came back. Perhaps that spoke to his level of impairment. Maybe that added to the charge. You’d have to be impaired to come back or I suppose a defense lawyer could have argued– head injury.
Dan: I think the cautionary tale is especially younger folks. Believe us, we’ve seen these accidents and what speed does and how dangerous it is and just be careful out there. Please be careful. Wear your seatbelt, drive safely.
Ron: Pay attention. You have the ability to take a human life every time you drive a car. I tell my students that and they look at me in horror, but no, it’s true. Stay off your phones.
Dave: Absolutely.
Yeardley: And Ron, just finally, sort of, given that you were 32 years in law enforcement.
Ron: 32 years, yes.
Yeardley: That’s a long time. And you’ve seen a great many things. What about this case really stood out to you that you chose it for today?
Ron: One of the big reasons for choosing that, I guess, is the fact that have the accused come back to the scene, and given his history, I’ve never had that before. And had he not come back, we would not have had a conviction at all. We would have probably somehow found him as a suspect through family. And who was Tony seen with? Well, Tony left today with John, but we never would have had a conviction without John coming back to the scene. It would have been just an accident with a deceased person and a person of interest.
Yeardley: Right. Great. Well, I think we can put this one to bed. Really, really appreciate you sharing that with us today, Ron. That some good work and just never get enough of human behavior and what makes people do what they do.
Dave: Fascinating stuff, Ron. Really appreciate it.
Dan: Thank you. Thank you, Ron.
Paul: Yep. Thanks again, Ron.
Ron: Thank you for the opportunity.
Yeardley: Small Town Dicks was created by detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editors are Christina Bracamontes and Erin Phelps. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor. Gary Scott is our executive producer and Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell and our social media maven is Monika Scott. It would make our day if you became a member of our Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from you.
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