Yeardley:  Hey, Small Town Fam, it’s Yeardley. How are you guys? Listen, before we get started with today’s episode, you might want to sit down because I have some huge news. Next year, we’re going on the road for the very first time. Seattle, Portland, Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. Get ready for us because we’re bringing Small Town Dicks live straight to you. So, here’s the deal. We’re officially announcing the tour dates on Monday, November 18th, but we’re giving you our super-duper fam, the Super-Secret Squirrel heads up now because you guys get first crack at our live show tickets. That’s right. If you go to smalltowndicks.com/superfam and you join at the super-duper fam level, then on Monday, November 18th, you’ll be able to secure your tickets to one of our shows five days before anyone else.

 Tickets go on sale to the public on Friday, November 22nd. Next week we’ll be posting tour details on our Instagram. Oh, we are so excited for this and we can’t wait to see you out there, Small Town Fam, woohoo. Let’s do this.

 Hey, Small Town Fam, it’s Yeardley. I want to remind you that if you want access to bonus episodes and regular episodes a day early and ad free and our community forum and other behind-the-scenes goodies, you got to go to smalltowndicks.com/superfam and then in the top right-hand corner, hit that little tab that says join and then listen to the end of today’s episode for a sneak peek at today’s new bonus episode.

[music]

 Hey, Small Town Fam, it’s Yeardley. How are you guys? I hope you’re all well and I hope you’re doing something that you enjoy. So, by the end of this season, Season 15, we’ll have 200 episodes of Small Town Dicks, which is an impressive milestone for a podcast that started in my dining room and is still very often recorded here. It also means that if you’ve been a listener since day one, you’ve heard a lot of stories about the worst things people do to each other. Now you can add this episode to that list. While it’s true that we’ve covered more gruesome, heinous crimes on the podcast than the one you’re going to hear today, there is a level of cruel indifference in this one that hit me really hard about halfway through when Detective Matt, our guest today, describes the living conditions of the teenage girls who are being trafficked in this case. The sexual violence that’s being done to these victims is horrific.

 But it was Matt’s description of the bare room the girls are kept in. No mattress, nothing to sleep on or under. That, on top of everything else, must have felt like the last brittle piece of straw and confirmation to these girls that nobody gave a shit about them. And I wondered, how can people be so God awful to each other? What is the why? As rattled as this episode left me, it wraps up with an extremely thoughtful, honest conversation between the detectives about what it’s like to grapple with and never fully understand that why in this very unusual job called law enforcement. So, you definitely want to stick around for that. Here is Psycho.

[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.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Dave:  Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare, personal account of how they solved 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. I’m very pleased to tell you Small Town Fam, we have the usual suspects. We have Paul Holes.

Paul:  Oh, you’re trying to catch me off guard. [Yeardley laughs] Hey, hey.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  And I did. We have Detective Dan.

Dan:  Hello.

Yeardley:  Hello. And Detective Dave.

Dave:  Hello, hello.

Yeardley:  Hello, hello. They’re all scrambled now, folks. They’re all completely discombobulated. Makes me so giddy. And Small Town Fam we are super excited to welcome back to the podcast one of your fan favorites. We get a lot of mail about this guy, Detective Matt.

Matt:  Hello, and thank you for having me.

Yeardley:  Oh, we’re so happy you’re here. For those who are just tuning in to the podcast for the first time and/or if you’re a longtime listener. And now we have quite a few cases and you just don’t remember, Matt has given us cases in Season 10, Season 11, Season 13, And Season 14 as well. He’s one of our undercover guys. Always worth listening. He’s a fantastic storyteller and some of the shit is going to set your hair on fire.

Dan:  Matt, I know you had a recent TV appearance too.

Yeardley:  Oh, and it’s a great show. Dan and I were watching it. Tell us about that.

Matt:  Absolutely. It was on A&E and it’s called Undercover: Caught on Tape. And I actually got to do the season finale, which pretty happy about. It’s actually the politically incorrect case that we talked about. It’s just a shortened version of that and it actually should be on repeat, so you may be able to still catch it.

Yeardley:  Oh, I’m sure Dan and I actually watch that show. It’s really, really well done. One of my favorite things about it is they take the actual audio from the case that, for instance, you would have investigated, Matt. And then because they might not have video, they’ll have the actors reenact that, but you have the actual audio. So, it gives it this whole extra layer of authenticity that I think is very effective. And also, I’ll tell you that in show business order is everything the fact that you’re the season finale is a big deal.

Matt:  Oh, that’s very nice. Thank you.

Dan: As long as the show doesn’t get canceled after that episode, right?

Matt:  That’s right. [laughs]

Yeardley:  Well, and then of course, there was a period of time and maybe it still happens where after the pilot and you’re like, “Oh, my God, I got a pilot. And it got picked up” and then they fire everybody except the person for whom the whole show was created. You’re like, “Fuck, great.” So, no job security ever.

Matt:  I was happy though, because the actor that they used to play me seems to be a pretty good-looking guy. [Yeardley laughs] So, I was like, “Oh, okay, well, I’ll take that. You know what? That’s a positive.” Okay.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  That’s fantastic. I love it. Well, Matt, you’re an old hand at this, so I’m going to hand it over to you. Please tell us how this case came to you.

Matt:  This case occurs in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m going to start by talking about the victims and a little caveat. The two victims we’re going to talk about, one was a confidential informant of mine and her name is Rachel. And the other victim we’re going to talk about was an underage. When I say underage, I’m talking about somebody under the age of 18. In this particular case, 15 years old. And her name was Lisa. This is a human trafficking case. And what’s important to note when it comes to this, the guys that do the human trafficking, the ones that refer to as pimps, there is a method that they have and a way they go about it that is sinister and evil to the T. And this goes into how Lisa got involved in all this. This actually started when she was 14.

 Lisa was your typical girl who fell in love with a boy and thought the boy loved her back. But what the boy was actually doing was setting her up and eventually convinced her to leave the house and run away and meet him out and have sexual relations with him. Lisa thought the boy loved her, and everything was great.

Yeardley:  And how old is the boy?

Matt:  He was under 18. I believe he was 17. He wasn’t much under 18, but he was under 18. This boy takes her out, gets to know her. He happens to be a member of a gang called the Gangster Disciples. That gang originated in Chicago. It’s grown all over the United States. It is a very violent and brutal gang. And like most gangs, they make their money off of illegal activities. Their two main sources of income are narcotics and human trafficking. So, Lisa is being wowed by this person that she thinks is in love with her and keeps running away from home. And unfortunately, in law enforcement, you hear this story all the time. When somebody becomes a frequent runaway, it goes down on the burner, unfortunately. Gets lost in the shuffle because you have so many runaways in a city that, unfortunately, you have to prioritize. There’s not enough detectives to work all of them vigorously.

Yeardley:  So, you’re saying if Lisa’s mother says, “My daughter has run away, but there’s a history of her running away,” then she might not be a top priority because this is something that’s happened before and she has returned.

Matt:  Correct. Basically, in some of these cases, like this one, she’s running away to go meet this boy who she thinks loves her and who she’s deeply in love with. Well, what he will do eventually is you need to start making money for us. I’m out here trying to earn money, and you’re not doing anything. You’re living off of me. You need to also support us. And we’ll literally convince her to sell her body and to start making money that way, that if she truly loves him, she’d be willing to do this for them.

Yeardley:  For the gang, you mean?

Matt:  Well, usually it starts out for this particular person. They won’t mention the gang. She’ll know he’s a member of the gang, but not that she’s a part of it. It’s a staged process.

Yeardley:  I see.

Matt:  So, first she’s just doing it for him. Once he gets her to do that, then he’ll usually convince. “Well, here, take this, because it’s going to help you to deal with some of this. And that it won’t be a big deal.” And get her using drugs, in this case, crack cocaine.

Yeardley:  Ugh.

Matt:  In short order, she’s addicted to crack cocaine. Now he’s got her. And now, all right, you work for the gang. I’m not in love with you. Now the beatings start, and now you belong to the gang and you prostitute for them.

Yeardley:  Was that Lisa’s trajectory, that sort of general scenario?

Matt:  That’s exactly how it happened. By the age of 15, Lisa belonged to the Gangster Disciples and was what we call turning tricks but prostituting for them.

Yeardley:  Ugh.

Matt:  So, the other victim that I talked about, who was a confidential informant of mine, Rachel. Rachel had been prostituting for the Gangster Disciples for a long time. Rachel had developed a crack habit early on. Not quite the same circumstances, kind of similar. They weren’t involved in her getting in the habit, but they found her at about the age of 18 with a crack habit and basically took her into the gang.

Yeardley:  And how old was Rachel?

Matt:  Rachel, when she started working for the gang was about 18. When I met her, she was about 21, 22. And so, when I first started on patrol in David 3, which was the precinct that I worked at in Charlotte, North Carolina, which was the most violent area in Charlotte, and it was known for murders, robberies, narcotics activity, every violent crime, you name it, that’s where it happened. Rachel was living in that area at that time in one of the hotels, and basically was working for the gang. When I first ran into her, I was probably three years on patrol, two years on patrol. And she was someone that would give you some information, but not give you the whole story. Other officers wouldn’t talk to her, wanted nothing to do with her. Especially when she was high, she could drive you a bit insane and be off the walls, but couldn’t even tell you for sure. But I definitely had a little bit of a soft spot for her.

 You could tell she’d had a troubled life and probably was never dealt a fair hand. She would definitely give me some information sometimes that I was able to use either find a vehicle at a traffic stop that would have dope in it, some names of some drug dealers, that kind of thing, things that were useful. And Rachel was the first one to tell me about Psycho. And she described Psycho as being the leader of the Gangster Disciples and the devil himself is how she described him. And I grew over the years to find out that that was very, very true.

 The problem was when I was on patrol, couldn’t even get a real name on the guy. Nobody seemed to know who he was. He was like a ghost, and it was aggravating. No one would snitch on him. You could not find anything. But all you would hear are all the girls working in this one area, around this one motel, were all with the Gangster Disciples. And Psycho was the leader of the Gangster Disciples and the one who would also do all the enforcing in terms of a girl stepped out of line. He was the one who would punish them, beat them sometimes quite severely.

Dave:  Hit on a couple little things that you know of what constitutes getting out of line for these women.

Matt:  Getting out of line for these females can be something as simple as back talking and can go from everything to saying, “I’m not going to sleep with a client,” saying, “No, I don’t want to do it.” There is nobody you’re allowed to say no to, unless the gang says, “You don’t have to sleep with that person.” You have to sleep with that person, it’s not an option. Psycho was known for having that behavior to the T. He had a very, very heavy hand. And many times, we would see the females, black eyes, bruises on their arm, the typical behavior, and none of them would ever cooperate at all.

Yeardley:  And how old was Psycho?

Matt:  Psycho was in his 30s.

Yeardley:  Okay.

Matt:  So, Rachel had become a more steady informant of mine. She would never, ever talk anything about the gang. And I knew I could not bring that up. I couldn’t talk about the Gangster Disciples. She was not willing to give information on that. And she was one of those informants that she would give me a lot of work for a month, and then she would disappear for four to five months and then pop back up, which is not uncommon, especially when you’re talking about informants with drug habits, that’s kind of the norm.

[Break 1]

Matt:  Towards the end of 2007, I was approached by the ATF.

Yeardley:  ATF is The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive. Yes?

Matt:  Yes. And said, “Hey, there’s some guy supposedly called Psycho that works out of this motel. We have information that he’s trafficking underage girls. There’s a lot going on. Can you help us and see if you can work some cases out of that motel and see what it leads?” So, absolutely, I started picking up prostitutes or sex workers from the motel.

Yeardley:  And when you say picking them up, you’re undercover at that point and you’re trying to get information from them?

Matt:  Yeah. It’s going to been over 20 sex workers that I picked up from the Motel. Not one would tell me who they were working for. Not one. It was pretty discouraging. So, I ended up talking to Rachel and pretty much laying it out to her that I know she doesn’t want to talk about this, and I understand why she doesn’t want to talk about it. But I need her to get strong and talk about it. And it took some convincing, it didn’t happen right away.

Yeardley:  And I’m guessing the reason none of these sex workers want to talk about Psycho is that the intimidation factor is so high, they’re afraid they won’t survive that conversation that they’ll be killed.

Matt:  Right. If he gets wind that they cooperated, they’re dead. I don’t have a question in my mind about that. Best case scenario is they’re beaten into a coma.

Yeardley:  God. So, how do you get Rachel to see it your way?

Matt:  So, I actually brought her into the office finally and sat down with her, just the two of us. We have an area in the office that is away from everybody. No one could see her. And I laid out a small amount of information I had that Psycho was prostituting underage girls, that he was trafficking these young girls and ruining their lives and getting them hooked on cocaine.

Yeardley:  Matt, you mentioned when you finally bring Rachel down to your police station to sit her down and say, “Listen, this is really serious. Here’s why I need your help. And you’re the only one in this case who can help me.” Why don’t you want the rest of the squad to see her?

Matt:  That’s actually a great question. And the more people know something, the bigger the risk, no matter who those people are, and that includes law enforcement. I’ve had it happen to me personally in cases. I had the one undercover case where an officer’s calling me out by name.

Yeardley:  And you’re undercover. I remember you were at a club or something, right? And they’re like, “Hey, Matt,” I remember you telling us that moment. We were like, “Oh, shit.”

Matt:  Yeah, I’m right next to my drug deal buddy. Luckily, he’s the one who called Mouth. It was terrifying. But that’s kind of the thing, for Rachel’s protection, nobody needs to know who she is. They may get out with her on the street and then start whispering to everybody, “Hey, that’s an informant. Let Rachel go” or something like that. Well, if somebody hears that, she’s dead. So, the less people that know it, the better.

Yeardley:  Just as a reminder, Rachel herself is only 18, but she knew that there were underage girls being trafficked.

Matt:  She knew there were underage girls involved. She started to break down at that time and said that, “Yes, Psycho uses underage girls. He’ll use any girl he can find.” She basically said, “Give me some time to think about it,” and said, “This is probably going to get me killed if I do it.” And I said, “I understand your fear, and I can’t try to convince you that your fear is not legit, because it is.” And I was completely honest with her that I understand where you’re coming from, and if things go wrong, I unfortunately would have to agree that you could be in harm’s way. But I also told her, that I’ve done everything the right way by you up to this point. Never put you in a bad spot. I’m not planning on starting now.

 She gave me one name and it was Sarah. She’s actually in jail in another county. You may want to go talk to her and see what she’ll say. So, literally, the next day, I’d take off for this other county and go up to go talk to her, get permission to see her.

Yeardley:  How long was Sarah in jail for?

Matt:  Sarah had 5 to 10 more years to do in jail.

Yeardley:  I see.

Matt:  Which the reason that was great for me was that also meant, for the most part, she was protected from Psycho, so she was willing to talk because she hated him.

Yeardley:  Did you say what Sarah was arrested for?

Matt:  No, and I actually don’t even know what Sarah was arrested for.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Matt:  So, Sarah had worked for Psycho and was actually what is referred to as a stable girl. So, she was in charge of all the girls for him for a while. If somebody got out of line, she’s the one who reported it to Psycho. She’s the one who made sure the money was right when they finished a trick, when they finished with the client. So, she had a ton of information. And she had been severely abused by Psycho, including one time where he took her hand and smashed every single one of her fingers with a hammer.

Yeardley:  My God.

Dave:  Is this a situation where Sarah is in the madam or mom-type role for the rest of these girls? And if the girls step out of line, Sarah’s probably on the hook for some of that behavior as well. So, the sex worker who gets out of line is going to be dealt with a physical beating, and then Sarah’s probably going to get something as well.

Matt:  That is exactly right. Especially, if the money’s not right at the end of the night or if they didn’t make what they should have made that night. She’s going to take a beating for it.

Yeardley:  So, Sarah pays the price as well?

Matt:  Yes. So, I got extremely lucky. Because to my surprise, Sarah was even willing to testify on everything and was not looking for it to go anything towards her jail sentence. Sarah just wanted Psycho to pay, which is perfect. Female scorn is not a good thing sometimes.

[laughter]

Paul:  Matt, with Sarah, I imagine that she also probably started out on the front lines, had been procured just like Lisa had been procured and that at a certain point had earned a trust and a certain status that allowed Psycho to in essence, entrust her with running the operations with the girls, right?

Matt:  That’s correct. She’d been with Psycho a long time. When I went to see her, she had to be pushing 40 at that point. So, yeah, she had, I don’t want to say developed his trust, but he knew he could completely control her, so she would do whatever he said. Another part that I think is important to bring up this particular motel that they were operating out of, the Gangster Disciples, basically, I won’t say owned the motel, but they paid the owner of the motel handsomely to handle everything in the surrounding. And then the Gangster Disciples a lot of times would provide security for the hotel. So, there was a whole different atmosphere in that, which made our jobs that much harder.

Yeardley:  Sure. And are you undercover?

Matt:  Yes.

Yeardley:  So, Rachel knows that you’re a cop. So, she knows you’re going to try to infiltrate as a client this sex trafficking ring by this gang. She’s going to keep her mouth shut and you’re going to go in there as John and try to get information from these girls. Is that how it works?

Matt:  So, this is where it gets very difficult and where game planning comes in. And I got to a point I only wanted to work when it came to prostitution stuff. I only wanted to do it if it was human trafficking related like that. And the massage parlors were another big human trafficking thing. The problem comes in is you have to figure out a way to handle it because it can be a one-shot deal. Number one, you can’t go through with the act.

Yeardley:  [laughs] Right.

Matt:  Can’t stress that enough. I cannot have a sexual relation with anybody that’s involved in this. So, at some point I’ve either got to be able to talk my way out of it. Easy to do with the massage parlors. I never had an issue there, but a lot harder on the prostitution side of things. So that’s where we had to come up with a game plan. We actually decided to start the dope route and to start buying. Basically, I was Rachel’s client. We went with that ruse for a while. So, all of a sudden, I started being seen with her, dropping her off at the motel, paying as if I’d had a relationship with her so that she was giving the proper money back. Everything looked on the up and up and then also ran it, where all of a sudden, I started wanting dope.

 And Psycho was more protective of the dope in terms of he or one of his men had to be with the dope. The girls weren’t allowed to just have the dope. So, that gave me more of an access to them in the dope route just to be able to get more visibility at this point. That actually went on for months before we could find Lisa. So, the Gangster Disciples had the motel, and they had a house on the other side of the town. You only worked out of the motel, and then you lived in this house for the underage girls. All the other girls stayed at the motel all the time, but the underage girls would go back to the house, and they were very good about getting them in and out of the motel.

 Eventually, Rachel asked her, you’ve got to work it back to the house. You have got to get to the house. Honestly, to this day, I wish I’d never told her to do it.

Yeardley:  Can you say why?

Matt:  Yeah, I’ll get to that. So, eventually, Rachel did exactly what I asked her to. She got back to the house, and so she gave us the address, and we started surveillance on the house. We saw what looked to be underage girls, but weren’t able to identify them. We couldn’t get them off a runaway. We couldn’t find anything that– So, Rachel had come to see me and said the girls are definitely in there, I see them. And I was actually going back and forth at this point with AUSA, which is a federal attorney. I felt we had enough at that point to serve a search warrant on the house. The feds were saying, “No, I couldn’t get it.”

Yeardley:  How many girls roughly in that house?

Matt:  Six, six underage.

Yeardley: : Mm.

Dan:  So, Matt, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to create a nexus between the motel and the house. Because I’m assuming you got to link this so you can write paper, write a search warrant for the house so you can go rescue these girls. You said Rachel got you to the house. How did she do that?

Matt:  Rachel was able to talk some of the other guys. Well, she let them do stuff to her, and they wanted to do that back at the house. So that actually became a regular thing at that point as well.

[Break 2]

Yeardley:  Okay, so let me just get my ducks in a bucket here. Rachel is putting herself out there as a sex worker so that your team can find the house the Gangster Disciples are using to traffic the underage girls because the young ones are not at the motel. And even though Rachel is 18 and not working out of the house, she manages to get herself there. My question is, does she find the underage girls at the house? And if she does, just her word be enough to get you a search warrant for the house?

Matt:  So, seen her a few times, and she was swearing up and down that these kids were in there. We saw what we thought, but the federal attorney was not going for it and we needed something else. We had the gang members, not Psycho himself, but we had other gang members that we videoed going back and forth. We even pulled them over, didn’t find any dope, but we did find money.

Yeardley:  And that still wasn’t enough for the federal attorney?

Matt:  Without being able to positively ID One of the kids underage. They just would not go for it. And not having dope from the house, any buy I ever did was from the motel. It was never, ever from the house. And since we didn’t find dope in the car, we were shut off on that round.

Yeardley:  And, Matt, are you saying that people other than the Gangster Disciples were raping these little girls at the house? There were other gang members or was all Gangster Disciples?

Matt:  So, all the Gangster Disciples, I’m sure, had their way with the girls. But no, they would bring Johns. Other Johns would pay to do things there. It would be a different clientele. But no, they were definitely having other people come.

Yeardley:  Okay.

Matt:  Just to clarify, because I know one of the questions asked would be F stopping those Johns and trying to get a cooperation through there. The problem with that and the reason we didn’t do it, the sentence or anything is minute. And if they tell us to go pound sand and let Psycho know, then we could lose the whole operation, they’ll move to another house, and we’re starting back at square one. And it could also, obviously, give up Rachel and put her in a dangerous spot. I was not comfortable at all going that route.

 Again, this is the narcotics world and the undercover world on surveillance pretty much 24/7 almost every single day trying to find something.

Dave:  I’m guessing that’s a tough neighborhood. You’ve got this house where it’s frequented by Gangster Disciples. The neighborhood is probably aware of who lives in that house. And that the Gangster Disciples, much like they’re doing at the motel have people in the neighborhood on the payroll to keep eyes out for law enforcement. It’s got to be really difficult to do surveillance there.

Matt:  Yeah. And so, there are a couple techniques I can’t go into that we would use. But yeah, it’s not easy.

Yeardley:  So what can you do? And are Rachel and Sarah able to help?

Matt:  Rachel had disappeared again for a little while and then ended up coming back, called her, and she agrees to go back to the house again. She goes back to house and then I don’t hear from her again. And I’m like, “That went well. She is binging again. By binging, I mean she gets high and does her thing for a while and I’m going to have to wait.” About five days go by and I get a call from her and she’s like, “Yeah, let’s meet up.” And we meet up and half of her head is shaved and she has staples going down the side of her head. And I’m basically, “What the hell happened to you?” And she said, “Well, I went back to the house and Psycho wanted to have anal sex. And I told him no.”

 This is a two-story house, by the way. Psycho grabs a hold of her and punches her through the wall upstairs, pounds her and then throws her down the stairs. She had several broken bones and then obviously she fractured her skull down the side. I took the latest information with that to the federal attorney and that’s when we got a search warrant to hit the house.

Yeardley:  And what are you searching for? Because sometimes it’s property, but in this case, you’re specifically searching for underage girls. Is that so?

Matt:  We put that in there, but technically that wasn’t the primary for this search warrant. The primary was evidence of the battery.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Matt:  Because Psycho put Rachel’s head through the wall. All right, well, we have a hole to go find in that house.

Yeardley:  I see.

Paul:  And I was just going to say in terms of the level of violence, this could be characterized as an attempt homicide. When you’re slamming somebody’s head into the wall, you’ve got studs in the wall, 2x4s. It’s the same thing as if you were to take a 2×4 and hit somebody in the head. I’m considering she had the fractured skull, the broken bones, I mean, this is a pretty serious level of violence that’s being inflicted. And there could be blood, there could be other types of evidence to help support this violence inside that house.

Matt:  That’s exactly right. As a matter of fact, with her permission, we got her medical records from when she went to the hospital. So, we line up, we hit the house and the good and bad, the only girl in the house was Lisa.

Yeardley:  And Lisa, just to remind everyone, is the girl you told us about at the beginning of the story, the one who ran away with her boyfriend and was brought into the gang that way.

Matt:  Yes, we had one underage girl. The rest were not at the house at the time. Psycho was in the house, which was great. So, we arrested him that night. And then a couple other Gangster Disciples were arrested as well. It’s funny because I still see this sometimes in nightmares and stuff. I can picture now just as well as then. So, I go upstairs with the search warrant and you get to the top of the stairs and on the left-hand side, if you’re facing down the stairs, is a hole, not quite a foot in diameter, I would say. And all kinds of blood all over the carpet and blood around that. It was Rachel’s head. You could definitely see where that was where he put her head through the wall. And then you could see the blood just all the way down the stairs.

Dave:  Matt, try to describe what the living conditions are like in this house. Is it a five-bedroom house and each girl has her own bedroom?

Matt:  The house, when you walk in, the stairs are going to be a little bit to the right. You have a living room off to the left with one couch in it. There is no TV, anything like that. There was a kitchen, basically nothing in the kitchen. And then you go up the stairs and there was one bedroom straight ahead. That was Psycho’s room. That room had a bed in it. Then you would go like right off of his bed, to the left was the bathroom. And then there was a little hallway and then there were two more rooms and a bathroom between those two rooms. Those rooms did not have any furniture in the middle.

Yeardley:  No bed, nothing?

Matt:  No, that’s where the girls would sleep were those two rooms. When we hit the door, Lisa was in the living room just sitting on the floor. And then in the two rooms that you would put the girls, you did have a bunch of clothes and stuff like that. And we tried to use that to help with [unintelligible ] because a lot of the clothes were, you say, well, it’s got to be for an underage girl. There’s most likely that’s not going to be for an adult. So Psycho was arrested on attempted murder.

Yeardley:  For what he did to Rachel.

Matt:  Yes, originally Lisa cooperated and gave a statement, so we were able to get Psycho on trafficking. She had also said that he’d had sexual relationships with her. So, we were able to get psycho on sex with an underage girl as well as the two other Gangster Disciples that were in the house at the time. So, we were able to arrest all of them. And they were all in their 30s, so threshold was definitely met there.

Yeardley:  So, all the gang members were grownups in their 30s?

Matt:  Correct. We did try to interview the Gangster Disciples, not one of them would talk, they immediately lawyered. And as shocking as it’s going to be, the gang had its own lawyer. [laughs] For those of you who don’t know, it’s very common for a gang to have a lawyer. And that lawyer will be called immediately and show up and it’ll be the scummiest lawyer that you have in the city.

Yeardley:  Really?

Dave:  On retainer.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Matt:  Yeah, exactly. [laughs] Frequent business. And they make a lot of money off the gang to give people how much of a business this is. So worldwide, I just saw this statistic the other day. I think it’s 150 billion right now in human trafficking. That’s how big of a business it is. It wasn’t quite that big back at this time, 2008, 2009, but it was still a very large business. So, this gangster disciple group that was there were making probably six figures, like close to a million a year, I would assume, if not more.

Dave:  So you’ve rescued Lisa from this Gangster Disciples’ house. What was her reaction to you guys taking her away and then reuniting her with her family?

Matt:  I would love nothing more than tell you that it was a great moment and that she was thankful that was not the case. She was hesitant from the very get go. Again, it’s not her fault. I don’t want anybody to ever think that it’s her fault. I mean, she is 100% a victim. And you’ve got to talk about the mental brainwash and the torment that they go through. Like it is unfathomable. That’s why it’s one of the most difficult things to work and it’s just emotionally taxing because it’s so hard to get the girls to cooperate. And this is an example, I’d love to tie this case, I mean, it does have a happy ending, but for different reasons. So, when the federal attorney goes to interview Lisa again, Lisa shuts down. I made it up. Psycho never touched me. Neither did anybody else. I made the whole story up. I had run away from home and they were taking care of me because I ran away from home. So, our case just went, you’re done. All that work goes for naught. We still had the attempted murder.

Yeardley:  Again from Psycho, putting Rachel’s head through the wall.

Matt:  Yeah. But we had a problem with that because of Rachel’s past. And this is the part that really, really sucks and pisses you off. Because Rachel was a prostitute for so long and been arrested numerous times, was a drug addict. You’ll talk to any attorney and they don’t want to usually touch it with a ten-foot pole. They need somebody else. They won’t use just a one. So, obviously we had Sarah, the person in jail. But according to the feds, it’s two bad witnesses without one good witness and one witness that you thought was going to be a good witness with underage that’s now saying the whole thing is made up. So, they end up deciding that they were going to drop the case.

Yeardley:  The AUSA?

Dan:  Yeah. Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Matt:  Yeah. We also looked to see if we could take it to state and I knew this was never going to work, but state was going to have nothing to do with it either.

Yeardley:  Why? Because these girls wouldn’t talk.

Matt:  Yeah. As soon as you have one girl that contradicts the other two and she had the best record out of all of them, which she was clean. Like all she was a runaway. She didn’t have any arrest.

Yeardley:  You’re talking about Lisa.

Matt:  Lisa, yeah.

Yeardley:  And you weren’t able to track down any of the other underage girls who were living in this house. And even if you were, presumably they wouldn’t talk.

Matt:  Yeah. And that’s one of the things you realize if you don’t get them that night, they’re gone. Because that house is done. It’s out of play. They will shut it down immediately. They will open up at a new spot.

Yeardley:  So, what happens to Psycho then?

Matt:  This is the only thing that makes me smile in this case. So, a couple years go by and Psycho goes back to his normal behavior and also decides to Mouth off to a rival gang and gets himself shot and killed.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Matt:  That was the only saving grace in the whole thing. And with the leader done, the actual Gangster Disciples fell apart after that. In short, they didn’t have a large number and we had a growing influx of MS-13, Sur 13 and Bloods. So, they kind of got ran out.

Yeardley:  Oh my God. It’s not like they got run out by law enforcement. They just got run out by rival gangs.

Dave:  It just accentuates the point that one group committing horrible crimes goes away. There’s always someone there to fill in the vacuum. And that’s more money for these rival gangs. So, this is the frustration with law enforcement, is we’re reactive by nature, and we’re always one or two steps behind the commission of crimes. And so, how do you prevent that? It comes down to people.

Matt:  Yeah.

Dan:  Are there good people in the world that aren’t going to commit these crimes? Because law enforcement, we can’t do anything until something happens.

Yeardley:  Right.

Dave:  You can think about doing horrible things. We can’t arrest you. We have to have an act that we can go, well, that’s against this law, and we can arrest them. Not to mention the fact that you have attorneys who have to put these cases in front of jurors, and jurors are a squirrely bunch. So, what one jury might think is nothing about Lisa recanting her initial statement. Another jury might be like, “Well, she said it didn’t happen, so we can disregard the rest of the facts that the state or the feds are putting forth, because, look, they’ve got liars on their side, and so it really is a crapshoot. You only get one shot at these things. So, you do get a lot of cases that never make it to a courtroom.

Yeardley:  Right.

Matt:  Yeah. And with the feds, they don’t bring it up unless they’ve got[unintelligible ] case. They’re known for that, obviously. And the other problem, like human trafficking, I mean, it’s probably my biggest pet peeve. We need to raise awareness. I know there’s a lot of people out there, but it’s like everybody gets shut down talking like it’s one of the worst crimes out there. To see the abuse and what they have to go through is insane.

[Break 2]

Yeardley:  And do you know what became of Rachel and Lisa? And is Sarah out of prison now?

Matt:  I believe Sarah’s out of prison. I don’t know that for sure. I never had any more contact with Sarah. Rachel, up until I moved, I had contact with. She unfortunately, probably will never kick her habit. But on the bright side, she was not owned by the gang anymore. So, there is a definite silver lining there because they fell apart. They also cut house a little bit after the search warrant. There were some good things that happened out of it because, now you think everybody is telling on you kind of thing is snitching on you. So, you’ll dump things and dump people a lot, which is somewhat a win for us in that case.

Yeardley:  So, maybe a lot of the girls who lived in that house would just be allowed to go into the wind, even though a lesser of two evils.

Matt:  Correct. Probably better than they had it. It is the good side still not a great situation. And unfortunately, if I’m being honest about it, they run a very high likelihood of being picked up by another gang or another group that’s trafficking.

Yeardley:  Right. That was my question. And what about Lisa?

Matt:  So, I know, obviously Lisa was sent back home after all that. I know she was a continued runaway from that point forward. Especially, when you have somebody that young that’s hooked on crack cocaine. You know that age is a rebellious age as it is, and now you’ve got a habit that’s warming on top. It is a very bad situation.

Dave:  I’m struck by Rachel really put herself on the tip of the spear here going after Psycho. And I’m assuming this is the regret that you have is that you knew it was a dangerous situation. Rachel, I’m sure, put herself in a situation much deeper than she hoped to be. But I believe Rachel did all this because she recognized the bigger picture here is I’ve got a bunch of minors that are being raped by all these men, and they have no say in their life. I think Rachel really dove on a hand grenade.

Matt:  I completely agree with you. I have no question that’s why she did it was, she thought she’d be able to save these girls and give them a chance at life that I think she knew that her life was never going to be what she wanted it to be. The cards for her at that point were dealt out.

Yeardley:  That kills me. I can’t imagine how you felt when you first saw her.

Matt:  When I first saw her with the staples, it like hit me halfway at that time. That’s almost like the anger. I can’t believe Psycho did this to her. But there was a sense, I’ve got him now, I’ve got the search warrant, what she went through is going to pay off for everybody. And then when we hit the house and I saw top of the steps, that killed me. Okay, this actually happened. She experienced something unbelievably horrible. And you go through the whole mental side of, “Well, I put her in that situation.” I’m partially responsible for what happened to her and that’s the hard part.

Dave:  I don’t have answer for you, man. I’ve got a few of those myself. That you’re just like, “I’m maybe never going to get resolution on this, on how I feel about it.”

Matt:  Exactly.

Dan:  It’s definitely a thing to step into a space where you have an idea of what happened in that space. But when you’re actually standing in it and you can see it through your own eyes and what that does to you is quite a bit different. You see that hole in the wall, you see the blood, and then you look down the stairs and try to imagine what Rachel was going through and how scared she was when these things were happening to her that psycho was doing to her. It’s just a horrible thought.

Dave:  And I don’t picture this household as being too concerned about calling 911 for someone with a fresh skull fracture, likely some bleeding intracranially. And we know that’s a pretty emergent situation for Rachel. I’m guessing they weren’t calling 911. If Rachel even got a ride to the hospital at all, she probably dumped out in the parking lot. We see that all the time, especially from the drug community. They have someone overdose in their house, they scoop them up, throw them in the car, go to an ER and just dump them onto the pavement and drive off.

Matt:  Yeah. I’d like to be able to tell you that they at least did that, but they did not. Rachel found something to wrap her head with and then called a cab and had a cab take her to the hospital.

Dave:  Lovely people.

Matt:  Yep.

Yeardley:  Right. We’ve often talked on this podcast, Dan, Dave, and Paul, and also our guest mentioned that there are things, and you mentioned it briefly a second ago, images, smells, even though you’re not in the situation anymore, that never leave you and it sounds like this case has left you with some of that residue.

Matt:  Absolutely, this is actually the second, you know, which images you can’t get out of your head the most. I worked a drive by shooting where a three-year-old was killed. And that’s the number one that I can’t get out. But this is number two.

Yeardley:  All of the detectives nodded when you talked about that three-year-old.

Matt:  Yeah, that one. It doesn’t go away.

Dave:  Kids.

Matt:  Yep.

Dan:  A couple months ago, I was going through some psychotherapy and I was basically hypnotized and going through this session. And during this journey that probably lasted about an hour, the things that I saw in my mind when I was going through this session, like a standing in the hallway and a flood of what I thought was water at first, but it turned out to be blood flowing around me, rushing past me. And then coming out of this session and realizing I have some issues I need to work on–

[laughter]

 And just being cognizant of it, I think is really a big step, is knowing that you have some issues you need to work on and then moving forward with them, I think, is what all of us in law enforcement, we’re encouraging our brothers and sisters to do. It’s just super important work that you have to do at some point in your career or at the end of your career, you have to address these things. And it really seems like you are.

Matt:  Yeah, that’s one of the things I’ve been working with and getting involved in a couple organizations. And it’s getting better. I will give props there it is I think, headed in the right direction, but you’ve got to start handling stuff like before you retire, before it catches up to you, because y’all are learning too. It’s a lot worse when you’re catching on the back, and you got to try to get from it from there. If you can get it early, I think it’s a lot better.

Dave:  I think about the patrol car that I used to drive around, and there was always a sticker right below the odometer that told me when I had to take the car back in for maintenance. And I think about that and relate it to my own brain and all the shit we see. And I was like, “I never took my car in for maintenance until I retired.” So, I put however many hundreds of thousands of miles on the car. And then later on I was like, “Why is it broken?”

[laughter]

 Well, you didn’t fucking take care of it, dumbass. It’s that stuff.

Paul:  Yeah.

Matt:  That’s hard because you have to find even the right person that you can talk to and everything like that. When I finished the second case, the agency sent me to a psychiatrist, and firsthand there she was like, “Well, tell me why you’re here.” And first of all, agency told me, I’m coming here first, foremost. [Yeardley laughs] But she’s like, well, “Why did they want to send here?” And I said, “Well, I’ve done a couple deep cover cases back-to-back, and I do have some paranoia issues and some stuff there. And she goes, “Well, why do you have issues?” And I said, “Well, from the two cases, there’s a lot of people that are still walking, and they find out who I am, they’re going to kill me.” And she goes, “Well, you have every right to be paranoid.”

[laughter]

 Thanks, that’s helpful. I can feel my life improving already.

[laughter]

Dan:  Definitely have to find the right therapist, that’s for sure.

Matt:  Yeah.

Paul:  I’ve been debating because I recently joined the Board of Directors for Cover Now.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Dan:  Congratulations.

Paul:  The founder, Jeff Stein, he initially started Cover Now to help families of officers who commit suicide. And obviously we know sort of the path that officers have a tendency to go down because they don’t seek help out of fear that their agency will take their gun and their badge, and they also don’t recognize the harm that they have experienced because of on-the-job injuries, psychological injuries. We’re really focusing in on trying to prevent officers from getting to that point. We want to get people to seek help. And part of the real complexity is that if you seek help through your own agency, the fear is that at a certain point, something is going to become known to administration, where now administration has concerns about your ability to conduct this job. And so, now it’s okay.

 We need to find a mechanism in which there is a curtain, if you will, anonymizing curtain in which now law enforcement personnel can get help as well as having funding to be able to permit that help to go forward, because either the officers can’t afford it, they can’t burn their accruals, because now you’ve got an issue. And you also have the other side. You know, specialized therapists we were talking, just a standard psychologist, and it’s like, “Well, yeah, you would be messed up if you dealt with this.”

 You need to have people who understand how to treat these situations. This is where we are really trying to work to get that type of mechanism in place on both specialized therapy side, as well as to permit law enforcement personnel to get this treatment without it jeopardizing their careers.

Yeardley:  We actually did an interview with Jeff Stein in Season 6 about Cover Now, and we actually called that episode Cover Now. Kevin Pollak, who’s an old friend of mine brought Jeff to us. He’s part of the conversation as well. It’s worth a listen, for sure.

 Matt, thank you so much for bringing that to us today. It’s always so great to see you. We wish on this side that there was something we could say to ease whatever measure of regret you have for what happened to Rachel. But also, there’s nothing you can do until the crime is committed. I mean, it’s such a rock and hard place. We’re just happy to see you and that you’re safe and for your service, thank you.

Matt:  Well, thank you all so much.

Paul:  When you think about it, obviously this case didn’t end up with the criminal charges, the convictions, the happy ending that you hope. But you have to think about it this way. This gang that was running this human trafficking program out there. They disbanded as a result of Matt’s efforts. How many girls were saved from being subjected to this condition as a result of Matt’s efforts? There is still a public safety enhancement as a result of working the case. And we also got the good news that Psycho is no longer with us. So, again, Matt, great job.

Matt:  Thank you. I appreciate it very much.

[music]

Dave:  Nice work, Matt.

Matt:  Thank you.

Dan:  Yeah, really well done. The only thing I can say to you is the thing you’re dealing with and the guilt, I don’t know that I can make it better. I just want you to know that you’re not alone and we all get it.

Matt:  I appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeardley:  Now for a sneak peek at today’s new bonus episode.

Dave:  I haven’t searched a landfill, but I know many people who have. And from what I understand, it’s the most miserable, horrible work you can do. You think about a pile of rotting, festering trash debris and how it breaks down. That’s all amplified when you’re in a landfill environment. So, it’s pretty crazy how things can disappear after just a few days in a landfill.

Yeardley:  To listen to to[day’s bonus episode and access hundreds more, go to smalltowndicks.com/superfam and hit that little join button.

[music]

 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.

 Oh, our groovy theme song was composed by John Forrest. Also, if you’d like to support the making of this podcast, go to smalltowndicks.com/superfam and hit that little join button. There, for a small subscription fee, you’ll find exclusive content you can’t get anywhere else.The transcripts of this podcast are thanks to SpeechDocs and they can be found on our website, smalltowndicks.com. Thank you SpeechDocs for this wonderful service. Small Town Dicks is an Audio 99 Production.

 Small Town Fam, thanks for listening.Nobody is better than you.

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