Zibby:  Monster is a case we cover over two episodes. This marks part two of two. Please be warned that the details of this case are graphic and often difficult to hear. It is not an episode for young listeners.

 Previously on part one.

Carl:  There were several calls coming in to the 911 center, “That a child had just been abducted.”

Female Neighbor 2:  My daughter saw the child, the girl screaming and running and the car chasing after.

911 Operator:  Really?

Male Neighbor 2:  He grabbed her by the hair, threw her in the back of his car and took off.

Carl:  Every cop in the world now is trying to flood this area. Fortunately, our deputy found him. It almost immediately turns into a pretty significant car chase. We have to stop him. If we don’t stop him, this little girl’s dead. The car goes into the ditch and rolls up onto its side. We have her. She’s okay. We’re like within 40 minutes of the abduction.

 Everybody’s happy and sad all at the same time. About that time is when the shoe drops. He raped the little girl. I’m like, “What are you talking about? 40 minutes. This couldn’t have happened. How the hell did that happen?” “This is the deal, dude. We’re going to take swabs of your penis,” because I know that he just raped this little girl, that there’s going to be evidence there.

 Somewhere in this process, it’s almost like you see a light click in his brain. He’s caught red handed. And at that point, he changes his whole demeanor, and he tells me, “Did I tell you I hear voices?”

Yeardley and Zibby:  Oh-

Yeardley:  -brother.

Zibby:  -fuck off.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley:  I’m Yeardley.

Zibby:  And I’m Zibby. And we’re fascinated by true crime.

Yeardley:  So, we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  To sit down with us, and share their most interesting cases.

Dan:  I’m Dan.

Dave:  And I’m Dave.

Dan:  We’re identical twins.

Dave:  And we’re detectives in Small Town, USA.

Dan:  Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave:  Dan investigates violent crimes. And together, we’ve worked on hundreds of cases, including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse and child abuse.

Dan:  Names, locations and certain details of these cases have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

[music]

Yeardley:  The following is an excerpt from Detective Carl’s suspect interview after Michael was released from the hospital and into the custody of this Small Town police agency.

Carl:  The truth of the matter is this. Tonight, you ran into a little girl on her bicycle. Then you grabbed her and put her in your car.

Michael:  I didn’t do it.

Carl:  You did. That’s not up for grabs. That’s what happened. Then you took her someplace, and you did something with her and then you drove. And the police tried to stop you and the police ultimately crashed into you to stop you.

Michael:  That’s not what I did.

Carl:  Well, what did you do? That’s–

Michael:  I was driving along and then fucking someone’s–

Carl:  So, did you get so pissed off that when you saw little kids annoying you anyways that you decided to drive her?

Michael:  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Carl:  Right now is your opportunity to explain why. We know what happened. It’s your opportunity to explain why it happened, because that could change things a lot. The deal is this. Follow me, okay? You can right now, choose to admit to your mistakes, explain why this stuff happened tonight. Let us be your voice. Explain why stuff happened tonight, or all we’re going to have to go on is what other people tell us. This is your opportunity.

Michael:  I imagine if it did happen is because I got pissed off because–

Carl:  Okay. And so, you still pissed off when you ran into her with your car?

Michael:  Yeah, must have been.

Carl:  You must have been? Were you still pissed off when you got out of the car and you ran into her–

Michael:  Yeah.

Carl:  And so, that’s when you put her in the car?

Michael:  Yeah.

Carl:  Okay. Were you still pissed off when you took her someplace and told her to get undressed?

Michael:  Yeah.

Carl:  Were you like enraged?

Michael:  Yeah.

Carl:  Yeah?

Michael:  That’s what I did. Yeah.

Carl:  That’s what you did. But you need to tell me why.

Michael:  Just because I was pissed off, because I’m tired of fucking. It’s like, fuck it. You know what I mean? [unintelligible  In my head I’m always thinking, you know, when you’re fucking driving by me when I’m on the side of the street– [beep]

Carl:  You must get beyond that, okay? I understand that you were pissed off when those cops drove by, okay?

Michael:  Well, it goes way beyond that, dude. It goes– I have no freedom or nothing, dude. Even when I’m fucking walking around and you say, “Oh, you have another chance.” Okay, you’re telling me I have another fucking chance. I don’t feel like I have a chance to meet. So, I’m walking down the street, and you like, “You have another chance. Why are you so worried?”

Carl:  When you saw that girl tonight, were you pissed off?

Michael:  Yeah.

Carl:  Is that why you hit her with a car?

Michael:  Yeah.

Carl:  Okay.

Michael:  If that’s what I did, yeah. [beep]

Carl:  We know you did that. You know you did that, but you need to see– [crosstalk]

Michael:  No, I don’t.

Carl:  Okay.

Michael:  And that’s funny, because I really don’t fucking–

Carl:  You ask me about it, right?

Michael:  I really don’t, dude. You guys believe in psychics and shit? Why don’t you go get one of those and bring them in here? You believe in fucking polygraph tests? Why don’t you go get one of those, dude? I’ll prove it to you right now, dude. I do not remember doing that.

Yeardley:  So, now that he’s using the crazy card, “I don’t remember,” how do you proceed?

Carl:  We obviously figured out where his defense was going to be, because he told us. Sometimes you have to wait and see in trial. In this case, we knew which direction were going. So, we put a lot of effort into tracking all of his previous records. I mean, that’s where our investigative efforts really laid, is dealing with managing the little girl and getting history.

 So, we found out that he’d been arrested in the adjoining county for having a stolen car they stole from another state. The car that he was found in and they did the kidnapping in had been stolen in that area. So, in essence, what we figured out is, shortly after getting released from custody, he went and stole this car.

Yeardley:  Shortly after getting released from custody for stealing the first car.

Carl:  Right.

Yeardley:  Okay.

Carl:  He stole his car. There, he left a bike behind. And the bicycle that Michael left behind, the officer, I’ll be perfectly frank, it’s not something we would do, we wouldn’t seize a bicycle, because it was left behind at a stolen car site. But he did, and we had it fingerprinted and it came back to Michael. So, we were able to start putting a timeline together. We figured out that he’d been in custody in another state, that he’d gone to prison. We just started determining that he had this long cycle of antisocial behavior.

 While we’re doing this, obviously, this is pretty big news at that point, his pictures put on the media, we get information from the adjoining county that they had an attempted rape of a pregnant gal who worked at a tuxedo shop in the adjoining county.

 A guy came in the store as she was getting ready to close it up, and attacked her, and tried to rape her, and ultimately was unsuccessful and left. So, we know that that’s him, but our evidence on that is solely, because they saw his picture in the paper and think that’s the bad guy.

Zibby:  I have questions about why he was unsuccessful.

Dan:  Well, funny enough, how and why he was unsuccessful ends up playing into this prosecution down the line.

Yeardley and Zibby:  Oh.

Zibby:  Okay. Got it.

Yeardley:  So, now you have evidence of his past, which tells you that he’s a repeat offender, so now what?

Carl:  And the reality is that that’s bad evidence.

Yeardley:  That’s bad evidence?

Carl:  That’s bad evidence, because all that we have is somebody who’s seen somebody on the news who’s been accused of a crime is now saying, “That’s the guy did to me.” That’s not helpful. It would not be allowed to be used as an ID, most likely.

Yeardley:  Why is that?

Erik:  Yeah, there’d be some real problems with it, because it’s of the suggestion.

Yeardley:  Oh, bias.

Erik:  The suggestibility, it’s like, we know that man got arrested for committing a violent sex act against somebody-

Yeardley:  I see.

Erik:  -an hour away from here. I see his picture in the paper. The features look like the guy that I remember, and I think that’s the guy. Well, yeah, but you’ve have some-

Yeardley:  Sure.

Erik:  – reason to suggest that it might be the guy, because he’s making other terrible decisions.

Zibby:  Okay. So, if it’s considered bad evidence or suggestive evidence, what does the department in that county do with the claim?

Erik:  Yeah. So, they take no action on that for the time being. He’s inaccessible to them. Their investigators, no doubt, wanted to talk to him about that, but he now is in our jail with a lawyer telling him, “Don’t talk to anybody. That’s not me.” At that point, there wasn’t a case made against him for that conduct.

Yeardley:  Were the history of his offenses mostly things like car theft and drug abuse, or were they sexual?

Erik:  He didn’t have a sexual crime on his record. We got to hear a little bit of his sexual history when we finally got to court. But his crimes were really– Like I said, they weren’t the type that suggested to us that this was the type of predatory offender. If we were looking in an area going, gosh, who might be a predator in this area based on their record, that we should start looking at during that time. He had disorderly conduct. I think he did have an aggravated battery case, but it wasn’t sexual in nature.

 But interestingly, he had a pretty lengthy– For the amount of time that he spent in prison in that adjoining state, he had a lot of documentation of his stay there, including behavioral issues while he was in there.

Yeardley:  What does that mean, documentation of his– Like, bad things he’d done in prison?

Erik:  Yeah. Well, medical record, mental records and then misconduct records. And so, for a guy who was only 25 years old, had pretty limited time in prison, he made quite a splash there. We had hundreds of pages of documentation of his medical complaints, his mental complaints–

Carl:  His wise.

Erik:  Yeah. Well, in fact, that’s what it turned out to be. It was golden for us ultimately, because time after time, he was found to be malingering. He was found to be exaggerating symptoms, trying to lie about things, so that he could get into the infirmary at the prison, that he could try to get medications. And ultimately, we had a laundry list of individuals who’d weighed indicating that they thought he was either malingering or manufacturing symptoms or such. They seemed to come and go depending on if he wanted something or not.

 Both of his claimed defenses would either be, one, “I hear voices,” or two, “I have no memory of it.” They both related to his head. And so, we knew this was going to be the forensic psychological evaluators that both sides used were going to be really where the battle lay in this case. We knew equitably we had a fantastic case, that from the outset, anybody in the community who heard this story was going to be outraged and not like the prospect of somebody trying to evade responsibility or accountability for it.

 So, I think we had a psychological advantage going in, if I can call it that, just because the case was so bad. Again, the path that he was wanting is, “Just put me in a psych hospital until they say I’m good enough to get back in the community.” And the path we were going is, “We want you in prison for life.” It was interesting, just around that time, the Supreme Court had finally taken away our last state’s ability to impose the death penalty for this type of contact. They said, “No, you have to take a life in order to do that.”

 From our perspective, this guy did take this girl’s life. He confined her to a lifetime of that being her first sexual experience and all the trauma that went along with that. So, I guess I don’t split the hairs that the US Supreme Court does. I felt like he had taken something significant away from this girl, from this family, from this community, and does not deserve to be, at any point, ever circulating around again.

 So, we knew that obviously most cases, we start talking settlement with the lawyers, “Hey, can we come to some agreement?” And I, in talking with Sergeant Carl and his partner, said, “I’m not going to engage in those discussions. If this guy doesn’t deserve the maximum, who does?” And so, we knew we’re going to be in court fighting this case at some point, because there was nothing that was going to convince us that he deserved any less than spending the rest of his life in prison.

Yeardley:  So, if this was on the news and the story is horrific, everybody’s heard it, how do you even go about finding an impartial jury?

Erik:  That’s a great question, but you’re making some assumptions that people pay attention. That’s a fair assumption to make. I have made that same assumption. But I’ll tell you, we’ve had even some more notorious cases than this. It’s amazing how many people don’t follow the news, don’t read the newspaper, don’t keep up on what’s going on in their community. It’s amazing how some people, their makeup is such that when they see abduction, child abuse, they don’t want to read one word of it.

Yeardley:  Right.

Erik:  I had a case with Sergeant Carl in which we had a letter to the editor at one point. We were trying a very sad, tragic homicide where a mother had tortured her daughter to death. The newspaper reporter who was covering it during the trial ended up writing some fairly graphic details about how that happened. The response by one reader was, “I understand you need to write a story like that, but why do you write it with the kind of force that makes me want to vomit in my Cheerios? Please tone down the details.”

 I think that’s an exaggeration of what is commonly out there though, is if we really in detail, if people dug into knowing what’s going on around them, it could really significantly affect your own mental health just hearing these stories. I know it has with the four of us that are talking- [laughs]

Zibby:  I was going to say.

Erik:  -that investigate this, because we get a steady diet of this. Detective Dave and Detective Dan, Sergeant Carl and I, that’s what we deal with on a daily basis, is the type of stories that not everybody wants to hear, not everybody wants to know about, but that’s what we’ve signed up to do. And so, it’s a very fair question. How do you pick an impartial jury when there’s this monstrous situation? I think when we were selecting the jury that there was less than 20% of the people in the perspective panel that had ever even heard of it.

Yeardley:  Really?

Erik:  Yeah.

Zibby:  I find it worth remarking, that even though you say your job is to deal with the type of stories that not everyone can or wants to deal with, we noticed, Erik, that you got choked up when you were describing Ashley’s account of the day.

Yeardley:  Yeah. Just because you deal with it, you’re not actually immune to the impact of it.

Erik:  Yeah. Actually, as I recall, I teared up when we were talking about her opinion that she was going to die. Yeah, I can’t help it. When I stop feeling that, then I need to stop this job. But I still feel it. I’m glad I do, but I do feel broken. I think anybody who’s in this business for decades, like we’ve been, gets broken. There’s no other way to describe it, because you feel helpful when you absorb these stories. Most people read this story and go, “Oh, my God, that’s terrible.” They don’t have, really, an outlet for it.

 We have that outlet, and that is just the determination to hold somebody accountable for what they’ve done. We’re tasked with that. That’s such a privilege to have been entrusted with that position by the public, by my bosses over time. But it comes at a cost. You don’t see the world the way everybody else sees the world. You don’t get to, because you always have to be looking at what people’s motivations are.

Carl:  I remember going home eventually, probably 24, 48 hours later, and my daughter was like seven at the time, just going and picking her up out of bed and giving her hugs, and she’s like, “Dad, leave me alone.” [chuckles]

Yeardley:  And you’re like, “Oh, you have no idea what I’ve seen and what I’ve been dealing with the last 48 hours.”

[Break 1]

Zibby:  So, how long between the time he’s arrested, and then when this goes to trial, really, is there another step in between? Because I never really know how this all–

Erik:  Yeah, it was about nine months.

Zibby:  Wow.

Yeardley:  And he’s in prison the whole time? [unintelligible  

Erik:  Well, he’s in jail in our local facility.

Yeardley:  Okay.

Erik:  Prison is reserved for people who have been sentenced. Our local jail is utilized for sentenced offenders on lower-level offenses as well as pretrial holds.

Yeardley:  So, you make a distinction between jail and prison. I think at laypeople-

Erik:  We do.

Yeardley: -were like, “It’s the same. It’s just a different word.”

Zibby:  I only know that now because of watching Locked Up.

[laughter]

Carl:  Great.

Zibby:  Yeah. Because Locked Up is jail. Everyone’s waiting their sentencing, and shit goes down there.

Yeardley:  Copy that.

Erik:  Right.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Dan:  And you only go to prison for felonies.

Erik:  Yes.

Zibby:  Oh, that I didn’t know.

Yeardley:  Oh. Okay. So, he’s in for 9 or 10 months before he goes to trial?

Erik:  Yeah. During that 9 or 10 months, obviously, a prosecutor has a responsibility to turn over all of the documentation that we intend to use as trial or anything that might be exculpatory to the defendant. Meaning, might help his case, might help his lawyers with a defense. So, all of those mental health records and medical records we needed to turn over.

 Even the stuff that we thought was bullshit where he’s claiming to have heard voices, it still plays into his defense. And so, we have a responsibility to turn that over to them, and knowing that they’re going to use that, obviously, as ammunition to support their defense. But we were aware that he was being seen by the jail psychiatrist, and we were further aware that the defense had brought in one or more forensic psychologists to evaluate him. In fact, they shared a report with me from a very well-known forensic psychologist in our state that does 100% criminal defense work.

Zibby:  Huh. Which it sounds like you have an opinion about.

Erik:  Well, they make their money if they come back with a favorable decision. There is that natural, I think, pressure if somebody depends on business by solicitation, that they offer up something that’s favorable to the consumer, the consumer being the defendants and their attorneys.

Zibby:  Right. So, what did this forensic psychologist come up with?

Erik:  He came back with a very generic evaluation, but ultimately concluding that he does qualify as guilty, except for insanity. In his opinion, he did not form an opinion as to what that mental disease was that gave him a qualification for it, but indicated because he had a half-brother who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, it added to his conclusion that he probably suffered from a mental disease, which was very easily taken apart by our forensic psychologists.

 But he gave him a defense. He came back and said, “I think he qualifies as guilty, except for insanity. But I have to acknowledge that these crimes are so bad that a conditional release up front is not appropriate. He should at least start off in the state hospital,” which I read, and laugh and share it with the detectives who are like, “He’s not going to get off on a mental defense in this case, is he?” And I said, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

 So, we felt very strongly that there was some factual things that countered his ability to qualify for guilty, except for insanity or guilty, but insane. Because in our state, in our jurisdiction, it’s really a two-step process. One, they have to have a qualifying mental disease or defect, but then the second is, as a result of that mental disease or defect, they have to either not understand or appreciate the criminality of their conduct or not be able to conform their conduct to the requirements of law.

 And so, we knew that even with this mental disease finding that that didn’t end the inquiry, the next step in this process was going to be, even if that were true, which we don’t buy, they still have to show that he couldn’t appreciate the criminality of his conduct. Well, then why is he invoking his right to a lawyer, ultimately? Why is he claiming that he was blacked out during that period? Why is he running away from the police if he didn’t know what he was doing was wrong?

Yeardley:  And why did he ask about the girl as-

Erik:  Yes.

Yeardley:  -soon as you took him out of his overturned car?

Erik:  Yes. So, all of those things were, as Sergeant Carl indicated, really important to rebut that second step or that second aspect. We didn’t buy he even had a mental disease, but we were going to wait till we heard from our forensic psychologist before that, but obviously went into that discussion as we employed another very well-known forensic psychologist in the state whose work was mixed, worked for both the prosecutors and for defense lawyers. We reached out to him. I had the utmost respect for his work and said, “This is what I’m seeing. Tell me if I’m wrong.”

Carl:  Well, and to be fair, we had decided that the doctor that we hired had such a good reputation with us, we were basically under the belief. If he said, “This guy’s crazy,” that was the route we’re going, “This guy’s crazy.”

Yeardley:  Interesting.

Dave:  So, Michael ends up taking the stand in his own defense during the trial. Is that because it’s a guilty by insanity case and he’s got to demonstrate his crazy on the stand?

Erik:  I think he wanted to tell his story. I think he wanted to be involved in selling that aspect of the story. And so, ultimately, it was a gift to us. Most defense lawyers in most cases caution their clients against subjecting themselves to cross examination by–

Yeardley:  Somebody like you.

Erik:  -a trained prosecutor. Yeah, exactly. But in this particular case, the activity was so horrendous. I think that’s true a lot of times in child sexual abuse cases, even with familiar perpetrators, is that if a child gets up there and says, “This happens to me,” the judge can tell a jury all they want about, “Hey, the defendant didn’t testify. You can’t hold that against him. You can’t comment about that.”

 But as a real person who goes back there using their common sense, most of them are going to be thinking, “If some child was getting up there saying, ‘I did this and I didn’t do this,’ why would I not get up, and profess my innocence and give some explanation why this child might have an axe to grind with me?” And so, I think the dynamic of this kind of case, the sexual assault of a child, does, oftentimes, more than in other types of cases, press a defendant into having to proclaim their innocence somehow. Factual innocence was not going to work with him in this particular case.

Yeardley:  Did Ashley actually testify on the standard? Did you have a video testimony or something?

Erik:  Both.

Yeardley:  Oh, both.

Erik:  Both. The video testimony was that forensic interview that-

Yeardley:  Right.

Erik:  -I described that we did the day after the event had occurred to. Our rules of evidence allow those forensic interviews to be used in court. However, our state, like many states, has interpreted that the constitutional right to confront witnesses that a defendant has to require us essentially to put the child on the stand to at least adopt that statement and be subject to some cross examination by the defense lawyer.

Zibby:  Wow.

Yeardley:  Really? That’s harrowing for her, I should think.

Erik:  Yeah. I’d have to say though as a prosecutor, that I have– even if the rules didn’t provide for it, I would say the overwhelming majority of the cases, I would rather have the child come in. We work diligently to make that as comfortable a situation as it can for the child. Ironically, sometimes it’s harder for them, when the perpetrator is a family member, to sit in the same room and say those things that-

Yeardley:  Sure.

Erik:  -they’ve been sworn to secrecy to do. That wasn’t the case with this young lady, of course. This child, this was a complete stranger abduction. Actually, my recollection of her trial testimony was, it was more expansive than it had been the day after when she was talking to the forensic interviewer, where it was such a new situation, and being thrust the day after being subjected to that kind of event into a circumstance where they’re having to talk about it. She was a lot more shielded with the forensic interviewer than ultimately, she was with me, who had a chance to build up a rapport with her over those months.

 I don’t spend a lot of time with the child, because I don’t want to ever be in a position where the child is referring to me by first name. Like, she’s just doing what I want her to do.

Yeardley:  Right.

Erik:  Because that’s not how we conduct business. The number one rule, I always tell a child is, “I don’t want you to say what you think I want you to say. I want you to say the truth.”

Yeardley:  Still, that’s a pretty harrowing task having to relive it for anyone in front of you on the stand. I can’t imagine.

Erik:  As I recall, she was very uncomfortable being in the same room with this man who, the last time she’d seen him, had done some pretty horrific things, including– Just intentionally ramming her off a bicycle with his car would have been terrible and scary to talk about. Then being dragged down the street by your ponytail would have been hard to be in the same room with that man, and then him speeding away and driving crazy and you not knowing whether you’re going to die in a car accident would have been harrowing, and then stopping and being sexually assaulted and then not just being left off there, but then him getting back in the driver’s seat to drive you to what you suspect is going to be your death. That was a bad situation for this child to be in and have to talk about. But she did a great job.

Zibby:  She sounds like a brave and brilliant little spirit.

Erik:  She was. She was.

[Break 2]

Yeardley:  Tell me, what is most memorable about Michael’s testimony to you?

[laughter]

Erik:  Well, we went into it with me hating him or despising him, unlike many others that [laughs] I’ve ever had that level of despise for. He didn’t do himself any favors.

 Interestingly, procedurally, this case went a little differently too. His lawyer decided with him that our facts were so strong. They didn’t want to fight him. They didn’t want to make it seem like, “We’re going to fight that I even did this. And then if the jury doesn’t buy that, then we’re going to try to convince him that I shouldn’t be held accountable as a normal citizen by virtue of my mental defect.” They decided to fall on the sword right out of the gate.

Yeardley:  Despite his saying, “I hear voices.”

Erik:  Yeah. So, he stipulated that he did all the things that he was charged with-

Yeardley:  Wow.

Erik:  -right out of the gate. Again, that’s not a bad tactic by the defense. Just psychologically, it puts you in a better position to argue, “We’re not claiming we didn’t do this. Of course, he did this. Of course, Michael did this. What we’re challenging is his level of responsibility in this, that this wasn’t of–

Carl:  His attorney literally said, “We’re not going to argue that he’s dangerous. We just want to argue that the place that we want him to go is better than the place that you want him to–

Yeardley:  Oh, I see.

Erik:  “It’s more humane under his circumstances to put him in the state hospital than to put him in prison.” It was a good tactic. It just put us in a different position where they really started out the case. That’s not typical. It’s usually the state has to put on the case first and prove that a person’s guilty. Then the defense gets to defend themselves, and then we get to rebut that. Instead, it put us in the position where they started out the case, and then we got to rebut that. We got to rebut that with everything we would have used in the case upfront. So, it didn’t really save the defendant from having the jury hear all the facts of the case.

Yeardley:  So, just to be clear, if you can say, “Yes, I did it, but I’m not responsible,” and that still is a not guilty plea?

Erik:  Yeah. Well, what he did was a little different than that, procedurally. He didn’t plead guilty. He didn’t say he did it. But what he said is, “I’m agreeing that I can be found guilty of that that the state has enough evidence to prove me guilty. I’m not going to put them through the paces of proving my guilt up front.”

Yeardley:  Uh-huh.

Zibby:  Mm-hmm.

Erik:  And so, we moved straight into, “But here’s my defense.”

Zibby:  I want to know what he was like, and what it was like to hear his testimony.

Erik:  He, out of the gate– His lawyer was very folksy with him and just said, “Hey, you know, tell us a little bit about yourself, and tell us about your family upbringing and tell me about your mother.” I think he may have even called his mother a bitch or something, he said. But in the end, he hated her, and I objected to that. It doesn’t matter how he feels about his mother, “Why don’t we get to the case,” type of thing.

[laughter]

Erik:  So, we had a lot of back and forth there. Then she said, “So, you hear voices. Tell us about the voices.” Again, we were all skeptical of it to begin with. You’re never quite sure how it’s playing with the jury, but he launches into what I thought was a pretty uncompelling rendition of voices in my head. His speech was more disjointed in his testimony than we knew he was capable of. And so, again, it appeared to–

Zibby:  You mean, his theatrics were good.

Erik:  Well, no, just the opposite. His theatrics were not good.

Zibby:  Oh, I see.

Erik:  But he was trying to be good.

[laughter]

Zibby:  Oh, he was just a really bad actor.

Erik:  That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. It really was trying to sell the legitimacy of his history of having been compelled to react to the voices who were instructing him what to do. Amongst his testimony, there was some pretty entertaining things as Sergeant Carl was talking about, including his routine ability to offend jurors, in fact. [laughs] Actually, I’ll let Carl talk about one of them, because it’s his personal favorite.

Carl:  This is one of my favorite stories, actually, of all time. He was being questioned by Erik about why he chose this little girl versus somebody else. And in essence, he started saying, “Well, you know, the voices told me to do this. Every time I saw somebody, they were either fat or old or ugly.” Now, not to sound offensive, but our jurors had several women on the jury who were a little bit older and maybe not as physically fit as they once were. [Yeardley laughs] He stopped right after saying, “You know, they’re either fat or they’re ugly,” and he turns to the jury and like, “Oh, but no offense.”

[laughter]

Zibby:  Oh, my God. That’s outstanding.

Yeardley:  By the way, the rule is, as soon as somebody says, “With all due respect, they’re about to disrespect you.” So, somebody says, “No offense,” they obviously realize that they’ve completely offended you.

Erik:  Right. Well, to highlight that that’s what he was thinking. Yeah, “The voices don’t tell me to rape overweight women. No offense.” [Carl laughs] He was not doing himself any favors with the group. Not that he was, anyway, but there were many points within his testimony that he clearly was not the salesman he intended to be.

Zibby:  Was he arrogant? I’m trying to cast him in my head.

Dave:  I give him John Malkovich, Of Mice and Men.

Yeardley:  Oh. Or, would it be classic creepy Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son, depressive and brooding, capable of harm guy?

Carl:  That’d be a good casting, but a little bit older. Yeah.

Erik:  He literally had been the bushy haired stranger too.

Carl:  Shaved his head.

Zibby:  Wow.

Erik:  At the time the offense occurred, but then cleaned himself up for trial. There’s only so much he could clean up though.

Carl:  He really tried to play the pitiful role, like sad, feel bad for me, kind of thing.

Zibby:  Right. Okay.

Yeardley:  So, you mentioned earlier that the attempted rape accusation that came about after his face was all over the news, the one in the other county that that played into Michael’s story down the line. Did it show up here at the trial at all?

Erik:  So, he didn’t offer that little story up during his direct examination. So, of course, as a prosecutor who’s thinking in my mind, as he’s saying, “I don’t have any choice. When the voices tell me to do something, I have to do it until I’m finished. They’re very result oriented. They’re very goal oriented. I’m compelled. I can’t stop. I can’t do it.” Well, we had obviously read the reports and suspected his involvement in the tuxedo shop attempted rape, and we knew that had stopped.

Yeardley:  Right.

Erik:  He was not able to forcibly subject her to sexual intercourse. And so, we’re somewhat curious what prevented that from happening, because as the woman reported it, she essentially just pleaded for her life–

Carl:  And her baby.

Erik:  Right. She tried to use that as a guilt mechanism, a sympathy mechanism, hoping that that would prevent him from forcibly raping her. Whatever set of circumstances occurred, he stopped and fled.

 So, suspecting that he was probably responsible for that crime, even though we’ve been unable to interview him about it, and suspecting that that didn’t play into his storyline, that whatever the voices tell him to do, he has no volition to stop, he’s compelled to do them. I put those two things together in my mind and thought, “It might be good to talk to him about that particular [Zibby laughs] circumstance.” And so, I did.

 His lawyer clearly did not want me to talk to her client about uncharged criminal conduct, that could land him facing a pretty serious charge of attempted forcible rape in this other jurisdiction. But it was too late. Her client had opened the door to that conduct. And so, I got to go straight into it. And out of the gate, I said, “Well, you tell us that you can’t stop once the voices have told you to do this. But that’s not true, is it?” He goes, “Oh, you mean the girl in the tuck shop?”

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Zibby:  No way.

Erik:  Which was like–

Zibby:  He just handed it to you.

Erik:  Yes.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Erik:  And I said, “That’s exactly who I’m referring to.” We got into that, and he laid out his version of the story and his version of events. Of course, I challenged him with what I knew that that victim had related to.

Zibby:  But what was his version?

Erik:  He acknowledged it, “The voices told him to do it.” He found that it was close a business. She was the loan employee left in the business. She was attractive. And so, it fit his standards of what the voices tell him to do versus the ones–

Yeardley:  Versus the older, fatter.

Erik:  Yeah, the older fatter ones that the voices save him from. He acknowledges all of that and indicates that he forced her into the back– I think it was a stairwell, if I remember correctly, and that his intent was completely to try to rape her, because that’s what the voices told him to do.

Yeardley:  Why did he say he stopped?

Erik:  Well, that’s a good question, and of course, one that was posed to him. I don’t think that he ever gave us a particularly satisfactory explanation for that, which, of course, was equally helpful for what I was trying to establish, which is, “So, you can stop.”

[Break 3]

Dan:  Carl, I remember you saying it was in that moment you saw a light bulb go on in Michael’s head as he was realizing, “Oh, shit, I shouldn’t be talking about this.”

Carl:  Right.

Zibby:  Can that sworn transcript from your trial be used against him in that other county for that attempted rape?

Erik:  Yes. They charged him and convicted him of attempted rape-

Zibby:  Yes.

Yeardley:  Oh, well.

Erik:  -of that girl down there as well.

Carl:  Like I was saying earlier, we didn’t really have anything, but now we have a sworn confession.

Zibby:  Right.

Yeardley and Erik:  right.

Dave:  So, I’m curious. He hands you the tuxedo shop answer, and one of you guys had to have looked at the jury.

Carl:  Oh, hell yeah. The jury very early on showed their contempt for Michael. And it just continued. The whole time, it was just like, you could just watch them hate him more. I’ve only experienced that to that degree in one other case.

Yeardley:  Wow. When it was time to make a decision, how long was the jury out for?

Erik:  As I recall, it wasn’t long.

Yeardley:  Like, days or hours?

Erik:  It was less than two hours, for sure.

Yeardley:  Oh, my.

Erik:  It might have been less than an hour. I can’t remember now. But they weren’t in a position where they needed to find his guilt necessarily on each charge, because he’d acknowledged that we’d prove that. They just had to decide whether he had proven that he qualified for the mental defense.

Zibby:  It seems obvious, but what did they come back with?

Erik:  He was found guilty, and the jury rejected his mental defense.

Yeardley:  We read in the report, that the case wasn’t actually over for the jury at this point, because the judge sent the jury away, told them to come back in a few months’ time, at which point they would deliver a sentence.

Zibby:  Right. Because the state now needed to exercise their right to give a full forensic evaluation of Michael, since those results were going to determine just what kind of sentence would be imposed on him, right?

Erik:  Right.

Carl:  I think it’s important to know that he didn’t just do reviews of records to come up with that too. He, our psychologist, actually got to interview him and put him through tests. I got to watch him make his clinical review of Michael.

Yeardley:  Is that partly why you said to the jury, “It’ll probably be several months,” is because you wanted to give due time to make a proper assessment of Michael?

Erik:  Sure. And it’s not just our time that’s factored in there. But we resumed back in January, and all the jurors came back for part due. [Yeardley chuckles] And now they were tasked with a different question. It was much more limited in its scope. Actually, two questions, as I recall, because I’d also claimed that there was a procedure that we could use to enhance his sentences, because he was already on probation and parole when he committed these crimes. That’s something that a judge can take into account if it’s established.

 The second one, the more important one to us, because it meant a much more significantly enhanced sentence, was the dangerous offender piece of this. And so, the jury had to decide whether or not, in fact, he suffered from a severe personality disorder, which made him a continuing threat to society in lay terms.

 And so, we put our case on that. Our forensic evaluator testified, as I indicated, he said that, “Michael was manipulative. He seemed to conveniently have voices appear when he needed something or needed out of something, and that other times, he seemed to function just fine without any notable signs or symptoms of a mental disease.”

 But more importantly to this piece of the proceeding, he also concluded that he had given him a battery of tests that are standardized in the field of forensic psychology to determine whether or not somebody’s a psychopath. He explained that if a person’s over a certain score, that they qualify for a diagnosis or in forensic psychologist terms, they meet criteria for being diagnosed as a psychopath. And in fact, Michael didn’t just clear the bar. It’s like he hopped over the bar-

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Erik:  –with both feet. Our forensic psychologist says, “He obviously meets the criteria for being a psychopath, and as such, constitutes a continuing danger to commit violent criminal acts in society.”

Zibby:  I’m assuming he gets the maximum sentence, yes?

Erik:  Well, that’s an interesting question. So, Carl likes to rib me about this, because we had a judge in this case who was a former prosecutor, not just a former prosecutor, but a former major crimes prosecutor and sex crimes prosecutor, and had made at least the first part of her career dedicated to holding such people accountable.

 So, it wasn’t probably the best, the luckiest draw for Michael when it came to her being in a position, having the tools to sentence him. That really is how it played out. I came in, I had charged the case in a way that was pretty aggressive. I claimed that three different kidnaps had occurred. I basically broke the charges down, amongst the assault with the vehicle and kidnapping. I claimed that he’d kidnapped her with a couple different purposes. If the jury rejected one, I still might have the other one, that would allow for a lengthy sentence. And then the sexual assault, of course. But then I claimed that after he’d finished the sexual assault and got back in the driver’s seat and drove away, that he kidnapped her again.

 I did that, because my feeling was that his intent had changed at that point, very much like Ashley had described. The investigators and I felt that she was being driven to her death. The only thing that she got wrong is she wasn’t going to his house. She was probably getting driven out into some remote location where it would be sometime before her body was discovered, if ever. In fact, his driving pattern would suggest that that’s exactly where he was headed.

 In our jurisdiction, there was no reason for him to be on the country road that he found himself on if he had any intent of returning her to civilization. He was in no position to contradict it, because he had no memory of why he was driving her around. I had a very compelling case to try to convince the jury that that was a separate kidnapping. In fact, he agreed that I could prove through the facts. I told you up front, he didn’t challenge his guilt in any of this. He stipulated we could prove those. He agreed upfront.

 Now, when we get to sentencing, of course, his lawyer took a different posture on that and indicated that the court should merge that conviction with the others. I agreed that the two kidnapping theories should merge, the ones where he abducts her and takes her to be sexually assaulted. But I maintained that that second kidnapping, he had time to pause and reflect. He could have dumped the little girl out of the car at that point and driven off, having accomplished what he set out to accomplish without needing to kidnap her and take her from one place to another further. And the judge agreed with that.

 So, I was pretty pleased with the tools I had available. I came in, I tried to be fairly conservative and say, “Judge, I am asking you to make these findings to run this consecutive to this, consecutive to this.” And at the end of that, I thought, “Well, geez, I wonder if she’s going to go along with this 109-year recommendation where he would have to do every day of it.”

Zibby:  A 109.

Carl:  Hold on. It gets better.

Erik:  Yeah. This is why Carl likes the story so much. So, I come in with this recommendation of 109 years thinking, “I’m being all clever and conservative, and hey, I think this is going to stand up on appeal. I think we’ve laid a good foundation for 109 years.” She essentially said that, whereas she respected my recommendation, she was curious why I wouldn’t have asked for everything, and she ended up imposing 130 years in prison.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Zibby:  My God. Now, that sounds like justice.

Erik:  It was justice.

Yeardley:  Did the judge have anything to say to Michael or the courtroom during the sentencing?

Erik:  Amongst the comments she made, is that, “Monsters don’t just exist in children’s fairy tales and nightmares. They really do exist.” A consistent theme with our discussion today that this really was as monstrous as somebody’s conduct could get.

Zibby:  What about Ashley now? Do you have a sense of how she’s doing 10 years later?

Erik:  From some updated information I’ve gotten over the years from Sergeant Carl, it hasn’t been a complete happy ending for the child. Michael took a child that was on course to have a fairly normal existence, and she has been subjected to and engaged in conduct that oftentimes frequently, unfortunately, we see from people who’ve been sexually victimized and–

Carl:  That actually just destroyed the whole family, afterwards.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Carl:  Everything fell apart afterwards.

Erik:  So, it saved her life. But that brings me back to the comment I made earlier about how our US Supreme Court has said that we should reserve the death penalty for people who actually take somebody’s life. And my opinion? He did.

[music]

Yeardley:  Small Town Dicks is produced by Zibby Allen and Yeardley Smith, and co-produced by Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  This episode was edited by Logan Heftel, Yeardley Smith, and Zibby Allen.

Yeardley:  Music for the show was composed by John Forrest. Our associate producer is Erin Gaynor, and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Zibby:  If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, head on over to smalltowndicks.com. And become our pal on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from our Small Town Fam. So, hit us up.

Yeardley:  Yeah. And also, we have a YouTube channel where you can see trailers for past and forthcoming episodes. And we’re part of Stitcher Premium now.

Zibby:  That’s right. If you choose to subscribe, you’ll be supporting our podcast. That way, we can keep going to small towns across the country and bringing you the finest in rare true crime cases, told, as always, by the detectives who investigated them. Thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.

Yeardley:  Nobody’s better than.

[music]

 Hey, Small Town Fam. It’s Yeardley. I hope you’re enjoying Beyond Recognition, our special six-part limited series from all of us here who bring you Small Town Dicks. And for anyone who’s wondering, and it does seem like a few of you are wondering, I want to assure you that Small Town Dicks is coming back in September as usual, per normal, with a full season of great cases, told, as always by the detectives who investigated them. So, don’t fret. Small Town Dicks isn’t going anywhere.

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