This is Part 2 of Detective Jay’s three-month investigation into the murder of a homeless man who was viciously stabbed to death in a public park restroom. With the help of two confidential informants, detectives close in on three men suspected in the killing.
Special Guest: Detective Jay
Detective Jay has been in law enforcement for 18 years. He began his route into police work at age 19, when he joined the Explorers, or Youth Volunteers, and started going on ride-a-longs with law enforcement in his hometown. In 2004 he became a sworn police officer and for the next 10 years served on Patrol. In 2014, he was promoted to Detective in the Person Crimes department where he now investigates homicides, assaults, and sex crimes in his Small Town.
Read Transcript[00:00:18] This is Part 2 of our story, Bad Company. If you haven’t listened to Part 1, we highly recommend you go back and start there. Trust us, you’ll be glad you did.
Dan: [00:00:30] Previously on Small Town Dicks–
Citizen: [00:00:33] There’s a guy laying in the middle of the road sits right by the bridge.
Jay: [00:00:37] Steven’s laying halfway in the roadway. He is covered in blood, and he had been stabbed multiple times in the abdomen. Steven’s pronounced deceased a short time later.
Yeardley: [00:00:47] Oh, no.
Dan: [00:00:48] This guy’s covered in blood and he landed here. How did he get here?
Jay: [00:00:51] This park and its bike paths parallel the river.
Dave: [00:00:55] Your search area, it’s going to be wide. We’re talking miles.
Jay: [00:00:58] Yeah. Two guys on bikes ride by and identify themselves as friends of Steven. Steven had been camping with them and another guy named Aaron in the park, inside the bathroom. There’s a huge amount of blood contained within the bathroom. Aaron told them that Steven had been attacked by three masked men. Aaron said the men told him to stay out of this. And they also said, “This is for Andrea.” Steven had sexually assaulted Andrea. Andrea, she’s 15. She doesn’t live with her parents. She’s currently seeing a guy named Don.
Dave: [00:01:36] Andrea is 15?
Jay: [00:01:38] Yes.
Dave: [00:01:39] Don is 46?
Jay: [00:01:40] Yes.
Dan: [00:01:41] And they’re a couple.
Yeardley: [00:01:43] So, that’s a crime.
Jay: [00:01:45] So, then we happen to get a call from the hospital, and they said that the morning of the murder about 06:15, they get somebody who had a laceration to their left wrist and he identifies the patient who showed up as Herman.
Yeardley: [00:02:00] Herman.
Jay: [00:02:01] Herman.
Yeardley: [00:02:02] So, not Aaron. I was hoping it was Aaron.
Jay: [00:02:05] It’s never that easy.
Yeardley: [00:02:06] Never that easy. [giggles]
[00:02:14] When a serious crime is committed in a small town, a handful of detectives are charged with solving the case. I’m Yeardley, and I’m fascinated by these stories. So, I invited my friends, detectives Dan and Dave, to help me gather the best true crime cases from around the country, and have the men and women who investigated them, tell us how it happened.
Dan: [00:02:39] I’m Dan.
Dave: [00:02:40] And I’m Dave.
Dan: [00:02:41] We’re identical twins.
Dave: [00:02:42] And we’re detectives in small town USA.
Dan: [00:02:45] Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.
Dave: [00:02:47] Dan investigates violent crimes. And together, we’ve worked on hundreds of cases including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse, and child abuse.
Dan: [00:02:56] Names, places, and certain details, including relationships have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families. Though we realize that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we hope you’ll join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they’ve been through. Thank you.
[music]Jay: [00:03:25] So, I start to look up Herman on social media. I’m trying to figure out where he’s at. He’s definitely a person of interest in this case. One of the things I come across is that he has gone to this adjoining state, and he posts about his lifelong dream that he’s now fulfilling doing standup comedy.
Dan: [00:03:45] Standup comedy?
Jay: [00:03:46] Standup comedy. He’s wanted to do this for a long time and he’s going to various comedy clubs throughout the state. He’s been to the largest city in the state and the second largest, and performed.
Dan: [00:03:57] The very last time I contacted him, this is obviously before this homicide case. But I knock on a door and I’m looking for this wanted guy, and Herman answers the door. Herman actually looks, like, I’ve never seen him look so good. He looks clean. I go, “Herman?” He’s like, “Yeah, what’s up, man?” I said, “Dude, what’s your deal? You look great.” And he goes, “Oh, yeah, I’m doing really good. I’m not out committing crimes.” And I said, “Well, are you still on parole or probation?” He goes, “Hell no. I outran that shit.”
[laughter]Dan: [00:04:26] He’s got jokes, man. He’s pretty funny.
Yeardley: [00:04:28] [laughs]
Jay: [00:04:30] A lot of people I’ve talked to about this case said that, “Yeah, he’s funny. He is a funny guy.” So, we’ve got a much better picture now than Aaron alone in the bathroom committing this crime.
Dave: [00:04:41] Well, and you’re probably confirming some of your suspicions about the shopping spree with the steaks?
Jay: [00:04:46] Yes.
Dave: [00:04:47] Like, “Okay, he did leave town.”
Jay: [00:04:49] He did leave. We later found out it was about two days after. So, that night would have been the big send off for him. We have now an Andrea connection. Our jailhouse informant had told us that Andrea had been sexually assaulted by Steven. Now, Don is dating Andrea. So, we’re able to piece a few things together. Herman abruptly left the state and we think they’re involved. All the videos confirm us that they’re coming from the crime scene just minutes after this occurred. So, we’ve got a good start in this, but we don’t have enough. There’s a lot more information we need before we could even consider making unrest.
[00:05:25] So, we continue to watch this house. One of our detectives sees a person leaving the house and that person is Timothy. So, he’s in a vehicle, and Timothy, he’s a passenger in the vehicle. They pull it over and contact Timothy. It turns out he has, what’s called an ATL, attempt to locate. One of our financial crimes’ detectives had tried to find him because he had stolen some stuff from a car, and then went to a store and bought some items with a credit card that was stolen. Our financial crimes detective starts to interview Timothy and tells him that, “Hey, you’ve got these cases. Do you have anything else for us?” He’s like, “Yeah, I know about a murder.” So, that detective tells me. I’m like, “Absolutely. I’m interested. Tell me more.” He’s like, “I’m not going to tell you anything until I talk to a lawyer.”
[00:06:12] So, we got to look into who Timothy is. He’s 48. He’s from another state. He has also a racist prison gang association. He has committed assaults and thefts, and he basically steals everything he can. One of the things we do in looking up his background is we looked at his criminal history. And listed are carpet worker, disabled, and meth lab chemist.
Yeardley: [00:06:37] Wow.
Jay: [00:06:39] It says it right there in the criminal history.
Dave: [00:06:41] For that to land on your CCH, your computerized criminal history, that’s priceless.
Jay: [00:06:48] Yeah.
Yeardley: [00:06:49] And who would put that there? Law enforcement?
Jay: [00:06:51] Yeah, exactly.
Yeardley: [00:06:52] Okay.
Jay: [00:06:52] Law enforcement in whatever agency he was arrested at for that crime. At the time, they believed that he was working as a meth lab chemist. So, he wants a lawyer to help him through this process. It’s Friday. It’s very difficult getting a lawyer for somebody who hasn’t been yet criminally charged, because he hasn’t been arraigned. Now the financial crimes detective had enough to arrest him, but he hasn’t been arraigned and appointed counsel. So, our prosecutor in the case goes around the courthouse trying to find an attorney who will represent him and they’re like, “No way. I’m not going to do that. I need to get paid.” He needs to have a case against him because they don’t get paid just to represent people.
Yeardley: [00:07:30] Wait, what? I’m confused.
Dan: [00:07:32] So, Timothy’s been arrested and charged by the police. But to be formally charged, the district attorney writes up, it’s called a charging instrument. That can come in different ways. That could come from an indictment. But for him to actually be appointed an attorney, he has to be arraigned first, and that is done by the court. The court appoints the attorney.
Yeardley: [00:07:53] He isn’t afforded that until he’s formally charged by the DA.
Dan: [00:07:58] Yeah, we don’t just have a bullpen of attorneys waiting around. We’re like, “Hey, this guy needs one. Come on in here.”
Yeardley: [00:08:04] “And help him figure this out.”
Dan: [00:08:06] “Yeah, we want to talk to this guy. Get your ass in here.”
Yeardley: [00:08:08] I see. [laughs] Okay, I get it. That’s helpful, actually.
Jay: [00:08:13] Well, after extensive exhaustive effort, our prosecutor did find somebody and he was appointed to represent Timothy. Once the ink is signed on the deal that he wanted, he didn’t want to go to prison, he wanted a suspended sentence. And then we interview Timothy at the police station. We think we know what murder he’s talking about because we’ve been working it for some time at this point, but he won’t give us any preview whatsoever.
Dave: [00:08:39] And he wants a suspended sentence on this ID theft credit card issue.
Jay: [00:08:43] Yes.
Yeardley: [00:08:44] And he thinks the information he has for you is valuable enough that that would warrant him getting a suspended sentence.
Jay: [00:08:50] Exactly.
Yeardley: [00:08:50] Do you have to wait and see what he has before you can grant him that, or do you have to cut that deal before you see what he has?
Jay: [00:08:57] So, that only addressed the charges that he was looking at and gave no immunity for crimes of violence.
Yeardley: [00:09:02] Okay.
Jay: [00:09:03] So, we don’t know what his role is at this point, but he might be able to tell us. We talked to him for a while, and he spins this ridiculous yarn to us about when this crime occurs, there’s some mysterious person involved and he doesn’t know who this person is. He tells us that he’s at Don’s house with Herman and they go on a bike ride. Don tries to sell some heroin for him and they end up at this park where this crime occurred. From a vantage point, that’s difficult to understand from his description. He’s able to see that Herman and Don ride their bicycles towards this bathroom in the park. This third mystery person also joins them and drives up to where this occurred.
Dave: [00:09:50] But for this guy to have credibility to his story, you need corroboration that you haven’t fed him and he’s saying, “We’re on bikes. I’m with Don. I’m with Herman.” They go up to a bathroom in a park. You’re like, “Now, we’re checking boxes again. We’re on the right track.”
Jay: [00:10:06] Yeah, he knows what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the same case. The very first thing after the deal signed out of his mouth is he tells us Don’s name. He just spits it out, and then he goes from there.
Timothy: [00:10:23] This fucking ego was running us around is what I felt like. You need to fucking take a nosedive off his fucking ego and land it on his IQ. Okay. Cruise down, try to get this straight. Cruise down underneath because I know the details are important, but I know that [beep] comes cruising this way with some guy, either [beep] is with some other guy at this point, and here comes this other third individual who is [beep].
Detective: [00:10:47] You said there was a guy who rode up on the bike. Who is that?
Timothy: [00:10:51] I’m not sure.
Detective: [00:10:52] What did he look like? How old?
Timothy: [00:10:56] I can’t really tell you. It was the distance on us was far apart, when he rode the bike thing.
Detective [00:11:02] Did you hear him call the other guy anything?
Timothy: [00:11:06] I think the guy had nothing to do with anything. He just happened to be somebody to tell you anything. I don’t think the guy had anything to do with anything. I shouldn’t even brought the guy up, because this guy seems to be more in question than what really happened, and I think he’s material and irrelevant.
Jay: [00:11:25] So, Timothy is trying to do his best to describe what occurred while leaving himself out as the third individual, because the third individual he’s describing is himself.
Dave: [00:11:36] He hasn’t given this any thought. He’s like, “How do I step through this without me being implicated?”
Jay: [00:11:41] Yeah, and he’s claiming that he viewed it from some other vantage point. He says that Don had this knife, and he describes Don holding the knife up when there’s blood glinting off the streetlight. It’s this really epic theatrical presentation he’s trying to give us.
Timothy: [00:11:57] He has a knife in his hand and he’s wiping it off on the grass. I’m like, “What the fuck?” It’s not light, but I can see from the lighting in the fucking park that this dude has got a knife and he’s got blood on it. The only reason I could tell it was blood was because the angle is light from the streetlight or whatever, because it’s a traumatic experience for me also.
Dave: [00:12:31] Does he indicate whether or not they’re wearing masks?
Jay: [00:12:34] He does not. So, at this point, we don’t know if that story about three masked men is true.
Dave: [00:12:41] I like how Timothy is asked, “Well, what did he look like?” “I can’t really tell you.” “How old was he?” “I don’t really know.” And he’s thinking, “Don’t give him any details that makes it sound like me.” I was waiting for him to say, “Well, he’s got a goatee.” Did he spent some time in prison?
Dan: [00:12:55] Real good-looking guy.
Jay: [00:12:56] Is he a chemist?
Dave: [00:12:57] Yeah.
Yeardley: [00:12:58] He draws his own conclusion for you. He’s irrelevant. You don’t need to bother about him.
Jay: [00:13:02] He talks to Detective Matt in there and he’s just trying to exclude himself, and he’s like, “Don’t even pay attention to that guy. I shouldn’t even brought him up.”
Dave: [00:13:09] It’s self-preservation. Well, and you’ve got this deal on the downward departure, the suspended sentence on this credit card stuff where the fine print says, “By the way, you’re not getting any immunity from anything if it’s a violent crime.” And he’s like, “Well, shit. Hmm. How do I get around this? Oh, there’s this mystery guy. And I’m way back there. I wasn’t part of that. I was just in the park.”
Yeardley: [00:13:32] Right.
Jay: [00:13:33] So, one of the things that Timothy agrees to do is to wear a body wire. This is a device that’s concealed on his person. He agrees to go contact Don and see if Don will talk about the case with him. Our first application for the warrant was 25 pages long. We are usually somewhat circumspect about what we put into the warrants, but in this case, because of people like Timothy, we just laid it all out. We had to put absolutely everything in there, and that’s what made it so long.
Dave: [00:14:02] All the Brady stuff.
Jay: [00:14:03] Exactly. The good with the bad.
Yeardley: [00:14:04] What’s the Brady stuff?
Dave: [00:14:06] So, Brady would be exculpatory info. When this judge reviews this search warrant affidavit, you have to put in all the good and all the bad, so they have a full picture of this information source that you are using to get this search warrant.
Dan: [00:14:21] His credibility.
Jay: [00:14:22] Yeah.
Dan: [00:14:22] Has he been convicted of lying to the police before and giving false information? All of those things have to be included in this warrant for them to make an objective decision on his credibility.
Yeardley: [00:14:33] I see.
Jay: [00:14:45] So, ready, set, fail. This is how I describe what happened next.
Yeardley: [00:14:50] Oh, no.
Jay: [00:14:51] We get Timothy out of jail, and he is brought down to the second worst motel in town.
Yeardley: [00:14:56] The second worst?
Jay: [00:14:57] The second worst. It’s bad, but it’s the one I think you guys are staying at.
[laughter]Jay: [00:15:05] It’s really bad, it’s disgusting, and we also get a room right next door. The plan is to have Timothy contact Don, call him up, say, “Hey, why don’t you come on down, let’s hang out?” So, we sit there over a period of two and a half days, 24 hours a day. We had detectives out on surveillance, sitting in cars. One of the things that we have to be concerned about is the safety of Timothy while he’s wearing the wire, because Don has killed somebody. It’s likely he’ll probably kill somebody again. So, we need to protect Timothy like he’s one of our own. So, we also had to have the SWAT team on standby. The SWAT team was all suited up, ready to go. If Something happens in this motel room, they’re going to run through the doors and become the heroes for the day.
[00:15:47] So, it’s impossible to control Timothy, because he wants to do what he wants to do. He wants to use dope, he wants to live the cool life, and isn’t really wanting to follow through. But also, his motivations are impure. He doesn’t want to do this to help us out. He wants to get away with what he’s done and not go to prison for the prior charges.
Dan: [00:16:07] Plus, he’s got to worry, if Don does open up, Don’s going to talk about Timothy’s role in this too. Don would say, “Well, why are you asking me questions? You were right there.”
Yeardley: [00:16:15] Exactly.
Dan: [00:16:16] So, this is a huge gamble for him.
Jay: [00:16:18] Yeah. So, it works out. Tim is able to get a hold of Don and he agrees to show up at this hotel. It’s like 03:00 in the morning or something. We’ve been up for a long time and we’re exhausted. So, these guys roll in the bikes. We had a hidden camera mounted in the room. And so, we’re sitting in the next room and my heart’s beating quite rapidly. Then Don pulls out a bag of meth, and we have Timothy in there, who’s supposed to refrain from partaking in illegal controlled substances, especially while the police are in the next room.
[00:16:53] Well, that doesn’t deter him. He ends up doing a line off the microwave stand right in front of us as we watch, and you can hear us on the video, we’re saying, “No, no, no, no.” Timothy is Timothy, and there’s no way about changing him. So, this was a total bust. They don’t talk about the case at all.
Yeardley: [00:17:10] Oh, shit. So, what do you do? Do you just give up on Timothy?
Jay: [00:17:14] No, because we’re stupid, we wanted to try again [Yeardley laughs] and see if we could get him to wear a wire to Don’s house. So, we take him to the house, and drop him off in the area he walks in, and the plan is to lure him away to a hotel that we had in a different location, so they could talk about the case.
Yeardley: [00:17:35] Why is that? Why not talk about the case in the house?
Jay: [00:17:37] Because we had desire to arrest Don, if he confessed.
Yeardley: [00:17:42] Okay. And it’s safer in a place you can control.
Jay: [00:17:45] Yes.
Dan: [00:17:46] And Don’s already been involved in a SWAT standoff and he shot people.
Jay: [00:17:49] Yep. He’s already killed one person.
Dan: [00:17:51] So, you separate him from where he’s comfortable and where he has access to weapons.
Yeardley: [00:17:55] I see.
Jay: [00:17:56] So, this was a total fail. During the operation, Timothy turned off the recorder and wouldn’t answer his phone, and then he got high and we got nothing out of it. So, we took him to a hotel because we had agreed to do that prior, and he got to spend the night there, and that was the end of that.
Yeardley: [00:18:14] Why do you have to hold up your end of the bargain for an informant if they don’t hold up theirs?
Dave: [00:18:22] You’re trying to hold up your end of the bargain, because it’s credibility for you. It shows follow through, it shows that you can be trusted even when they don’t come through that you’re going to do what you said you were going to do.
Yeardley: [00:18:33] In case you might need them down the road or something or–?
Dave: [00:18:36] Right. It’s credit.
Yeardley: [00:18:37] I see.
Dave: [00:18:38] You’re buying credit and you’re buying their confidence.
Yeardley: [00:18:40] It’s still got to be frustrating though.
Dave: [00:18:42] Yeah. The amount of times that we’ve gone out on drug buys and nothing happened, and the next day the guy says, “Hey, I’ll do it today.” And then we do the whole drill over again.
Yeardley: [00:18:52] Wow.
Jay: [00:18:53] Yeah. Timothy soon went off the radar, and went AWOL on us, and we don’t hear from him for a month. Then he just happens to get arrested by Dan-Dave’s agency. I end up talking to him with Detective Matt at the jail after he gets arrested on a warrant. He claimed that he had a nervous breakdown and he lost all memories for the previous 30 days. What he describes is he was down by the river. Essentially, he describes a vision quest that he was on. In reality, he was really on a meth bender and that was the end of that. So, we didn’t use him again and he sat in jail.
Yeardley: [00:19:29] Okay. So, he got immunity for his financial crimes, but– [crosstalk]
Jay: [00:19:33] Well, he did have that, but the other part was he had to be truthful and stay in communication with us. So, he violated every part of that agreement. So, we were able to revoke that.
Yeardley: [00:19:42] Oh, okay.
Dan: [00:19:43] I love the strategic purge of memory. “So, when was the murder? Yeah, that was 30 days ago. I’ve lost everything since then.”
Yeardley: [00:19:51] “I remember nothing for 31 days.”
Dan: [00:19:53] Yeah, you can’t make this shit up.
Yeardley: [00:19:54] So, where do you go from here?
Jay: [00:19:56] I had to go to another state for a training class that was prearranged. It was a homicide class, because I’m there, it’s three hours ahead. I end up checking Facebook, and I see that Don has put up a powder blue bicycle for sale. So, I called Detective Matt and told him that we want this bike because this is the one he’s seen on the surveillance video riding around in. They put together an operation where Detective Rick from property crimes contacts Don, who’s trying to sell this bicycle and agrees to buy the bike.
Yeardley: [00:20:27] So, Don is selling the powder blue bike that Herman was riding.
Jay: [00:20:31] Yes.
Yeardley: [00:20:32] Got it.
Jay: [00:20:33] Because it’s Don’s bike, he had just loaned it out to Herman.
Yeardley: [00:20:36] Okay.
Jay: [00:20:37] So Detective Rick meets Don at a location near Don’s house, and he gets the bike. One month and three days after, we own the bike that was used to convey Herman away from the crime scene. We immediately take it to our lab, and they put some more of the amido black on there, and there is visible blood on that bike. Now, remember that he was bleeding substantially from this cut. So, we now have the bike and all the blood.
Dan: [00:21:04] Is the lab work done on that blood in the bathroom also?
Jay: [00:21:07] No, not at this point, it’s not done. The lab that we used for DNA processing is very selective on what they’ll process. The problem we had is that this is a public restroom. How many people’s DNA is in there? Probably hundreds, if not thousands.
Dan: [00:21:22] How many hundreds of people have shot up drugs in there too?
Jay: [00:21:25] Exactly.
Dan: [00:21:26] So, there’s going to be blood from a lot of people in there.
Jay: [00:21:28] Yep. So, that was a problem we ran into, and we had some resistance from them and testing that. So, Detective Rick, he is working on a totally unrelated case in Dave’s jurisdiction, and it has to do with theft of a laptop that occurred in our jurisdiction. Detective Rick goes to this house where this gal, Wendy is staying. He knocks on the door. Wendy doesn’t want anything to do with the police, but she remembers Detective Rick from prior interactions in prior cases, and she stated that, “Detective Rick is very nice, and he’s always treated me well, so I’ll talk to him.”
[00:22:03] So, they start talking about this laptop, and then Wendy drops the big one. Wendy says, “I got some information on a murder.” So, I look at Wendy. We do a background on her. She’s a drug addict. She uses heroin. She’s a property crimes offender. She’s currently houseless. The big thing is, she has a moral objection to murder. Now, I don’t throw that around loosely, but her grandmother was the victim of a homicide in our city. So, since then, she has always viewed murder in a different category than other crimes.
[00:22:36] Her grandmother had been tied up with duct tape and a dog toy with her arms behind her back. It was wrenched out to the point where her shoulders were dislocated. She was tortured to death. This was done by a person who her grandmother had let stay at her house and was about the same age as Wendy.
Yeardley: [00:22:53] Good God.
Jay: [00:22:55] So, she’s been affected by senseless murder and she wants to help. Well, the cool thing is that she’s best friends with Don. And she said, “Yeah, I was over at Don’s house the other day, and he starts talking about this homicide that occurred with Steven. And so, I started to record it.”
Yeardley: [00:23:14] Go Wendy.
Jay: [00:23:15] Yes. So, she records this whole thing and he confesses to killing Steven. And Don also says that he’s claimed to have killed a bunch of other people in another state. He’s just aggrandizing his story, and he said a lot of these homicides he committed were in prison, when he was in prison in another state. So, we’ve got a recording now of our suspect confessing to the murder.
Jay: [00:23:49] So, we’ve got a recording now of our suspect confessing to the murder. Problem is, it was done surreptitiously, and he was not informed he was being recorded. As such the law in our state, you cannot record somebody without their knowledge that they’re being recorded. But our theory is if he’s talked once, he’ll talk again, and she’s willing to wear a wire.
Dan: [00:24:09] You got to write another warrant.
Jay: [00:24:10] We got to write another warrant, which I think this one ended up being 35 pages to say that, “It’s okay for you to record him for purposes of this investigation.” Now, it’s not just an open ended I can record any time. It has to be specific. The statute that outlives this says that you need to identify the person who’s doing the recording, the person who’s the target.
Yeardley: [00:24:30] And the subject matter.
Jay: [00:24:31] And the subject matter and what’s it about. So, it’s not an open-ended thing. It’s a limited focus.
Yeardley: [00:24:36] And about how old is Wendy?
Jay: [00:24:38] Wendy is 28 years old.
Yeardley: [00:24:39] Okay, so she’s more than a decade older than Andrea, but she’s still younger than Don.
Jay: [00:24:46] Correct. So, we write this warrant and it was massive. And then we have to put in the same precautions as we did with Timothy. We need to have a SWAT team on standby, we can’t let anything happen to our person who’s wearing the wire. So, we get the SWAT team, we contact Wendy, and we drop her off in the neighborhood. She walks in and she strikes up conversations with Don, trying to get him to talk about the case. So, this went on, I think, six times, six different days where we had wired her up, driven her to the location, dropped her off, sent her in to try and talk. And every single one of them didn’t produce anything.
Yeardley: [00:25:21] Is she suspicious now, “Why do you keep asking about that?” Or, does she not even get up close to it?
Jay: [00:25:27] She talks with him, but at the times when she’s talking with him, there’s other people in the room and she can’t get him away. He’s not going to likely talk about this in front of people he doesn’t trust, because he trusts Wendy. So, we have a 30-day window that we can do this wire in. One of the problems we have is that Wendy is also houseless. She lives in a van, and we don’t know where she’s staying. She stays from one parking lot to another all over town, different nights. We can’t coordinate with her because she doesn’t ever answer her phone. Her phone’s always dead. The battery is dead. So, we’re having a hard time trying to figure out where she’s at.
[00:26:04] Well, our solution is to go buy her a hotel room, so that we’ll know where she’s at. So like, “We’ll check out times at noon, we’ll come by at noon, we’ll pick you up, we’ll drive you to Don’s house, you can go in, try and record the conversation.” Well, the problem is that management at the police department is concerned about the cost of buying a hotel room. They want this quid pro quo, like, “Well, if she produces information for us, then we’ll buy her a hotel room.” But we’re stuck in this catch-22, because we can’t find her to go produce, so we can get her a hotel room. That’s why we want the hotel room ahead of that. My partner and I, Detective Matt, we spent endless hours driving around just trying to find her, trying to set something up for the next day. And sometimes she’d be in town, sometimes she wouldn’t.
[00:26:49] So, as we approach the end of the wire, we can get an extension on it if we want, but we don’t really want to if we don’t have to. One day, we finally got everything together. We dropped her off, and she contacts Don at his house. While they’re there, they end up going for a walk by themselves to the store, which is just around the corner.
Yeardley: [00:27:08] And she’s wearing a wire?
Jay: [00:27:10] She’s wearing a wire.
Yeardley: [00:27:11] And for our listeners, because Wendy and Don are walking by a busy road while they’re having this conversation, some key parts of the recording are very hard to hear, but we got you covered.
Wendy: [00:27:27] I’m just worried. I’m just fucking– I’m just worried, because I don’t like the fact that [beep] in jail. I don’t like it. It just makes me uneasy because I don’t fucking like him.
Don: [00:27:40] Yeah.
Wendy: [00:27:40] I think he’s evil, and I think he’s going to fucking open his fucking fat mouth. So that’s just mine. It’s only probably because I had sexual relations with him, and I think he’s a big piece of shit because he threw a bike at me.
Don: [00:27:55] Yeah. Check this out. If he did say something, he was complicit in the crime also. He was also there. He kicked it off. He went in there and kicked the guy in the head, and then he took his bag, and then I killed him.
Yeardley: [00:28:20] He went in there and kicked the guy in the head and took his bag, and then he took off. And then I killed him.
Don: [00:28:29] I’m not worried at all.
Wendy: [00:28:33] If you’re not, then I will attempt not to be.
Yeardley: [00:28:37] Don says, “I’m not worried at all.” And Wendy, doing a masterful job of keeping it together, says, “If you’re not, then I will attempt not to be.”
[00:28:53] He is a cool customer, isn’t he?
Jay: [00:28:54] Oh, yeah. Yep, years of this, acting like this, it’s conditioned him to just be nonchalant about killing this kid. And unfortunately, right when he says, “and then I killed him,” a car goes by. Of course, Murphy’s Law, why not? If it can go wrong, it will. Well, what we had to do is we had to send this out to the FBI, and then they were able to remove part of the noise of that car going, or at least lower it, so we were able to hear what exactly he said. I remember sitting in my surveillance car when this occurred, and I was listening trying as hard as I could, I had my device pressed up to my ear, trying to listen, and I’m like, “I think he just confessed. I’m not sure. I didn’t know.” So, we had to wait till we got back to play the recording. He says that, Timothy went in, kicked this kid in the head, which explains the broken orbital socket that Steven had, stole his bag, and then Don stabs Steven after Timothy leaves.
Dan: [00:29:48] So, now you’ve got Don confessing on a wire. You’ve got Don implicating Timothy. Timothy has confirmed his presence at the park, but stepped away. And basically, he’s a spectator during this. You’ve got Herman, who, according to his Facebook, he’s starting his second career as a standup comedian in another state. So, now you’re herding cats.
Jay: [00:30:13] Exactly. So, we play it slower now. We want to do a search warrant of Don’s house, because there’s likely to be evidence of this crime there. We get all the paperwork done for that. We have a date picked out. It’s the next week. We’re looking for cell phones, DNA, trace evidence, bicycles, BMX bikes. We actually want to catch him at the house. So, we’ve got this excellent plan laid out. SWAT team scouts everything, and they’re going to go hit it. And then the day before, patrol finds a stolen car rolling downtown and they pull it over. And then who is walking out of the car? But Andrea and Don. So, they both get arrested for the stolen car. So, it’s not how we planned it, but we’ll roll with it. We take them both down to the police station, and then we interview both Andrea and Don.
Dan: [00:31:04] Do they give you information or do they shut down?
Jay: [00:31:06] Andrea gives us a lot of information. In fact, she tells us the whole thing, everything that happens in this case.
Andrea: [00:31:17] It was actually after somebody that had raped me not a while back, but almost about a year. Now because it took forever for people to start finally actually doing something about it. Only good for three days pretty much dosing me with heroin the whole time when I was out of it. So, I didn’t know until after a good three days later, maybe almost a week, I was able to wake up and run out of there when nobody was there.
Yeardley: [00:31:48] To paraphrase, Andrea says, “She was held captive for what she thinks was about three days, during which time she was constantly being dosed with heroin.” She says, “She was out of it till she woke up, and then she ran out when nobody was there.”
Detective: [00:32:03] You know what’s going on, you’re a very, very super smart young lady. You’re very articulate, got all these things going for you. And so, I don’t want it to look like you’re lying. I don’t want it to look like you’re lying.
Andrea: [00:32:16] Yeah, basically the night before it happened, that morning it happened, they went [beep] and then later on in the morning, I even look at it, and that’s when I saw the report by the man who has raped, and I was like, “Oh, my God.” I started crying. I was like, “They did it.”
Jay: [00:32:49] She ends up agreeing to testify at grand jury, she tells us that she had been raped by Steven some time ago and was dosed with drugs in a tent in one of the local parks. As a result of that, when she started dating Don, he found out about this and he became upset, and that’s why Don went to go kill Steven as a payback for this.
Dave: [00:33:12] And so, Don recruits his two buddies and says, “Hey, let’s go take care of this guy.”
Jay: [00:33:16] They’re all using meth that night and they said, “I think I know where he’s staying,” and they were right.
Yeardley: [00:33:21] Did they consider this sort of a vigilante killing? “You did a bad thing, we’re going to do a worse thing to you.”
Jay: [00:33:28] Yeah, basically.
Dave: [00:33:29] The irony on this is Don goes to kill this guy who has committed sex crimes against his girlfriend, Andrea. And Don’s 46, and she’s 15.
Yeardley: [00:33:40] Right. So, Steven has committed a sex crime against an underage girl. Oh, by the way, Don is committing a sex crime against the same underage girl.
Dave: [00:33:50] Yes.
Jay: [00:33:51] So, the thing that I haven’t covered yet is that Andrea is visibly pregnant.
Yeardley: [00:33:57] Oh, no.
Jay: [00:33:58] And during the interview with Don, he says that, “Oh, yeah, I’m the father of the baby.” She’s 15. So, they both went to jail and she ends up going in the juvenile detention. She is given a bunch of tests because she’s pregnant. One of the things they find out that she has HIV. Well, Don, his name is Infectious because he has HIV.
Yeardley: [00:34:24] No.
Jay: [00:34:26] And she has contracted that and she’s pregnant. While pregnant, she has to take these antiretroviral drugs to prevent the baby from also contracting HIV. Well, there’s a good shot. They said that the baby would not have HIV. The problem is that she waited so long to seek medical attention while pregnant that when the baby was born, he was born with HIV as well.
Yeardley: [00:34:47] Oh, dear.
Jay: [00:34:48] So, we discussed with her how she might have contracted this, and they said they had unprotected sex. When they would inject drugs together, Don would always inject her first. Then when they asked, “What would you do if you guys didn’t have any clean needles?” She’s like, “Oh, well, he’d inject me first, and then he’d use.” Well, she’s young and naive. She didn’t quite get that that used needle had already been injected into Don’s body. So, that’s a possible source of transmission for her. So, she has a condition now that she has to live with at 15. That’s going to affect her for a long time.
Jay: [00:35:34] So, Andrea, she agrees to testify at grand jury. After grand jury, she’s like, “Oh, yeah, by the way, Don showed me where the knife was.” And we’re like, “Oh, really? Where’s that?” She’s like, “Oh, it’s at this hospital that Herman had been to.” So, we grab her, we convoy over to the hospital, and when we get there, she started walking around the building, she’s like, “Oh, yeah, it’s down that shaft.” Well, it’s down this ventilation shaft, and we ended up having to send our forensic supervisor down there to retrieve the knife.
Yeardley: [00:36:04] So, Small Town Fam, we’re looking at a photo on Detective Jay’s computer and this shaft is outside the building in the ground.
Jay: [00:36:14] Yeah, it’s about two by two with pipes in it, and our guy had to shimmy down, and the knife is about 10 inches long.
Yeardley: [00:36:22] That’s a hell of a knife.
Jay: [00:36:23] Yep. On the handle, it has a bunch of skulls.
Yeardley: [00:36:27] Wow.
Dave: [00:36:28] They rode their bikes over a river, but threw the knife into a shaft, a concrete shaft next to a hospital.
Yeardley: [00:36:35] It’s a good point, Dave.
Dave: [00:36:37] Good God. [Yeardley laughs]
Jay: [00:36:38] Planning was not at the root of this crime.
Yeardley: [00:36:41] Meanwhile, is Herman still in another state?
Jay: [00:36:44] Yeah. Eventually, we end up having to go to the other state where Herman is doing his standup. We contacted the US Marshal’s office and they helped us. So, we’re doing surveillance where we think he’s staying. We’re watching the house, we don’t see any sign of him. The sheriff’s office is helping us out. Well, one of the guys like, “Hey, I got to go, guys. I’m sorry.” He’s like, “I got to do a patrol check at the casino.” I’m just like, “Really? We’re looking for a guy who kills people, and you need to go walk through a casino?” He’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m sorry.” So, we’re aggravated about that. But then he gets on the radio, he’s like, “I think I just saw Herman in the casino.”
Yeardley: [00:37:19] Playing the slots or something?
Jay: [00:37:20] Playing the slots.
Yeardley: [00:37:21] Okay.
Jay: [00:37:22] And then when the US Marshals went through the front door of the casino, Herman tried to run out the back and was tackled into the alleyway and taken into custody. So, he was brought to that sheriff’s office where we interviewed him, and he gives us quite a story.
Herman: [00:37:41] Well, I have nothing to do with that shit. You know what I mean? I was in the wrong fucking place at the wrong time. I know that.
Detective: [00:37:46] Tell me what happened, because I’ve got what the other stories have happened, what they’ve said. If there’s a different version there, this is your time, because that cut, maybe you did to yourself while you’re stabbing, maybe it happened accidentally, maybe it was intentional. [crosstalk] The important thing is that we have the other two sides to this. We know [beep] did in there. Well, it depends on who you believe [beep]. And then there’s you. You ready? Go for it. Share it out.
Herman: [00:38:19] So, you obviously know [beep] girlfriend or whatever, right?
Detective: [00:38:22] Mm-hmm.
Herman: [00:38:26] As far as I knew, like, [beep] “Hey, man, you want to go on a bike ride?” I was like, “Where are we going?” “We’re going down by the river.” You know what I’m saying? Well, I’m from down there, you know what I mean? So, I’m like, “Yeah, I got to get back down there because I had to check on some other shit.”
Detective: [00:38:41] [crosstalk] -that guy who was in the bathroom?
Herman: [00:38:43] Oh, yeah. [beep] that’s his name. So, you’ll figure that out anyway.
Detective: [00:38:49] He saw what happened. What you’re telling me about you standing behind [beep] is not correct. We know you were holding [beep] when [beep] stabbed, and that’s how you got cut.
Herman: [00:39:04] No, dude, I wasn’t holding him for shit.
Detective: [00:39:07] There’s a big difference between you plunging a knife into him and you holding him. Big difference. So, we know you were holding him, and that’s how you got cut. So, that’s why we need to know what really happened to there in the bathroom. I’m telling you what we know, and you can tell me that’s not what happened, and that’s fine. But I know you were holding him when you got cut.
Herman: [00:39:43] I wasn’t holding that dude for him to cut, dude. You know what I’m saying? That wasn’t my fucking– That wasn’t like– It’s not like, I went in there to hold him, so fucking [beep] his ass.
Jay: [00:39:56] I’m trying to get him to tell us that they knew they’re going to the park to kill Steven.
Detective: [00:40:01] They talked about what was said before you guys left the house. And they said that they were going to kill.
Herman: [00:40:13] If they said they’re going to kill, [beep] dude, it wasn’t while I was in the room, dude. I was out working on the bikes. They were in his room. So, I don’t know what the hell they were talking about. You know what I’m saying? I really don’t.
Detective: [00:40:29] Your name was mentioned during that conversation.
Herman: [00:40:34] What conversation?
Detective: [00:40:35] About who was there when they talked about killing [beep].
Herman: [00:40:40] I was there. I was in the living room working on the bikes. You know what I’m saying? I wasn’t in the room during that part of their conversation. [beep] told me, he goes, “I know where the guy is. That raped [beep] I want to go fucking kick his ass.”
Detective: [00:40:55] Well, you just started to say kill there a second. Is that what he said?
Herman: [00:40:58] No, I’m not going to say that, dude. I’m done, dude.
Detective: [00:41:00] If he said that— Okay.
Herman: [00:41:02] I’m done, dude. You know what I mean? Like, you want me to fucking say this shit.
Detective: [00:41:05] [crosstalk] Okay. You don’t have to talk to me. But if he said that– [crosstalk]
Herman: [00:41:09] I didn’t really believe he was going to go kill the guy. You know what I’m saying? Everybody says, “Well, I would kill the guy, dude.” This is just fucking anger or some shit. You know what I’m saying? I didn’t believe then at the time, before we even left that fucking, we were going to actually go out and kill this motherfucker. That’s important to know. You know what I’m saying? I didn’t know that.
Detective: [00:41:31] There’s a big difference.
Herman: [00:41:35] I don’t know.
Detective: [00:41:37] He should own his shit, sure?
Herman: [00:41:39] Well, I agree 100%. You know what I mean? I’ll own punching the guy. Yeah, I did. You know what I’m saying? It wasn’t all three of us punching him at the same time or nothing like that. It was like [beep] kicked him in the side a couple of times, took the sack off him, walked out. I walked up, I hit him three times, and then fucking [beep] goes ballistic with the blade, dude. You know what I’m saying? He should own that. You know what I mean? It’s not like it was like, “Okay, here, it’s your turn,” or any shit like that.
Detective: [00:42:07] God damn it.
Herman: [00:42:08] You know what I mean? That’s all I was. I have no problem owning punching the guy in the face. You know what I’m saying? I did that. You know what I’m saying? [beep] own booting the dude two times in the ribs, awake and peeling his sack off his back. [beep] own stabbing him. You know what I’m saying? Because that’s his shit.
Jay: [00:42:31] So, one of the things that we find out from Herman’s interview is that they were wearing masks.
Dave: [00:42:36] Okay. So, Aaron, after lying about stuff, is giving some good information.
Yeardley: [00:42:42] Just to refresh, Aaron is the guy who gave us a story about the masked men originally.
Jay: [00:42:46] Yeah, he gave us this preposterous story about the three guys on bikes wearing masks. That is a difficult pill to swallow, but well, it’s true.
Yeardley: [00:42:56] Did you go to trial? What happens?
Jay: [00:42:58] No, we did not go to trial. This case goes through the court system. And about a year later is when Don pleads guilty. Throughout the whole case, he’d been talking with his wife on the phone.
Yeardley: [00:43:10] He’s married?
Jay: [00:43:11] He’s married with an 18-month-old child at the time. Don chose dope and the lifestyle over being a father. I think that child is one of five kids that he doesn’t necessarily have much contact with. So, he pled guilty on a Friday, and this call was on Saturday.
Don: [00:43:33] Don’t tell the DA that– I doubt if they’re going to be listening to my calls anymore. Now they don’t even care. Oh, I took the deal. Fuck them. Yeah, I stabbed him. Fuck it. [laughs] [crosstalk]
Don’s Wife: [00:43:50] They haven’t convicted you yet. [crosstalk]
Don: [00:43:53] They have. Monday, I go [crosstalk] I signed the papers.
Don’s Wife: [00:43:57] They can’t change it on you or anything?
Don: [00:43:59] No, they can’t change it.
Don’s Wife: [00:44:01] I’m so proud of you. [laughs] I’m so proud of you.
Yeardley: [00:44:07] So, he’s married, he has multiple children, he’s dating an underage girl, and he gleefully admits to killing Steven on a call he knows is being recorded after signing the plea deal. Wow.
Dave: [00:44:21] I think he has some integrity issues.
Jay: [00:44:23] It’s a fair assessment.
Yeardley: [00:44:25] How much time did they get?
Jay: [00:44:27] Don is given a life sentence, including the sex offenses for the statutorial rape of Andrea. And then Herman is given 15 years for manslaughter. What he did during the case is he ended up holding Steven while Don stabbed him.
Dan: [00:44:44] And Don missed.
Jay: [00:44:46] That’s how Herman got the cut to his wrist.
Dave: [00:44:49] Friendly fire.
Jay: [00:44:50] Yeah. So, as he was holding him up against the wall in the bathroom, and you remember that gouge in the wall I talked about earlier, that is from the knife. Herman still has the scar right next to his tattoo from where he got hit, and he showed us that.
Yeardley: [00:45:05] Right.
Dan: [00:45:06] And then Timothy?
Jay: [00:45:07] So, Timothy refused to plead guilty to anything involving manslaughter or murder. We still had the same amount of time we’re looking at getting him for, which was about 10 years for his role, because he was not there when the murder occurred. He was there. He assaulted Steven, kicked him in the head, and then took off. Well, he pled to conspiracy to commit assault in the first degree, and he was given 10 years for this.
Dave: [00:45:31] That’s pretty good for a conspiracy case.
Jay: [00:45:33] Yeah.
Dan: [00:45:33] And Steven’s family?
Jay: [00:45:35] I was in touch with his mother. I called her multiple times over the years, and we’ve since lost touch, but she was pleased with it. There wasn’t much anybody else involved from the family that really wanted to know what was going on. So, I get the picture that maybe things weren’t all rosy at home and maybe that’s why Steven had ended up in the position he was in.
Yeardley: [00:45:58] That is a massive cast of characters, and there’s a lot of tragedy all around.
Jay: [00:46:04] Yeah, it took a lot out of us, but everybody pulled through. I work with an excellent bunch of people. We had help from agencies all over our area, and the federal government assisted with this too. I have to thank my wife in this case. She was extremely supportive of me working on this case with my teammates, and she sacrificed a lot. I wasn’t there for a lot of home life while this case was going on. So, I thank her very much for everything she did.
Yeardley: [00:46:32] We’re always interested in that. There are a lot of unsung heroes at home who support you guys, so that’s lovely.
Jay: [00:46:41] Thank you.
Yeardley: [00:46:43] Well, Detective Jay, I don’t know how you keep it all straight, but that is the job well done. Thank you so much for joining us.
Jay: [00:46:52] I appreciate it.
Yeardley: [00:46:57] Small Town Dicks is produced by Gary Scott and Yeardley Smith, and coproduced by Detectives Dan and Dave. This episode was edited by Logan Heftel, Gary Scott, and me, Yeardley Smith. Our associate producers are Erin Gaynor and the Real Nick Smitty. Our music is composed by John Forest. Our editors extraordinaire are Logan Heftel and Soren Begin, and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.
Dan: [00:47:25] If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, visit us on our website at smalltowndicks.com. And join the Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from you.
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Yeardley: [00:47:52] That’s right. Your subscription also makes it possible for us to keep going to small towns across the country-
Dan: [00:47:58] -in search of the finest-
Dave: [00:48:00] -rare-
Dan: [00:48:00] -true crime cases told as always, by the detectives who investigated them.
Dave: [00:48:05] So, thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.
Yeardley: [00:48:07] Nobody’s better than you.
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