Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam, it’s Yeardley. How are you, guys? I hope you’re all well. We have a very dark, but very compelling episode for you today. So, you’re probably wondering why I say this particular case is dark when really everything we talk about on this podcast is deeply disturbing in its own way. But this case stood out to me because of the lackadaisical attitude that the teenage suspects and their parents showed when the teenagers revealed their master plan to police.

I’m not kidding. You’d think these boys were ordering takeout, not discussing a rape murder plot. And so, it brought to mind the age-old question, how much of a person’s behavior is due to nature and how much is nurture, particularly when that behavior is aberrant or cruel?

Personally, I think it’s a combination of both. Therefore, if we assume that’s true and nurture is definitely part of the equation, then who’s responsible when shit goes terrifyingly sideways, like it does in this case? And does it matter? I feel like at some point, it does, but then what? Things rarely change, just because we think we know who to blame. I don’t know. Anyway, I’d be curious to know what you all think. Here is What Went Wrong.

Hi there. I’m Yeardley.

Dan: I’m Dan.

Dave: I’m Dave.

Paul: And I’m Paul.

Yeardley: And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan: Dave and I are identical twins-

Dave: -and retired detectives from Small Town, USA.

Paul: And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.

Dan: Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder.

Dave: Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare, personal account of how they solved the crime.

Paul: Names, places and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.

Dan: And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-

Dave: -out of respect for what they’ve been through.

[unison]: Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley: Today on Small Town Dicks, my friends, it’s such a good day, because we have the usual suspects. Ta-da. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: Hello there.

Yeardley: Hello. Hello, hello. We have Detective Dave.

Dave: I am here as well.

Yeardley: Ah, yes, you are. I’m so very happy about that. And we have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul: Hey all. How’s it going?

Yeardley: Hey. PH, so good to see you. As I like to do for our listeners, we’re actually not all in the same room. Sad day for me, but I’m happy to have the A-team, however I can get them. And Small-Town Fam, it’s a great day because we’re very excited to welcome a new guest to the podcast, D. C. Dan:.

D.C. Dan: Hello. Happy to be here.

Yeardley: Thank you so much for joining us today, Dan. As I like to say, thanks for giving up one of your ever so precious days off. I know those are few and far between.

D.C. Dan: Of course. This is fun. I’m happy to be here.

Yeardley: Thank you. Yeah, I have a lot of Dans in my life. [D.C. Dan laughs] There’s you, there’s Detective Dan and then outside of the podcast, there’s at least three or four other Dans. I’m flush with Dans. I love them all though.

So, Deputy Chief, maybe I have to call you that, so we don’t get confused with Detective Dan, D.C. We like to start off, because you actually have a personal connection to this team. I’d love for our listeners to hear how you end up on our podcast today.

D.C. Dan: A coworker of mine has done a couple of episodes for you.

Yeardley: Detective Bon.

Dan: Detective Bon. Yup.

Yeardley: Love him.

Dan: So, that’s how I first learned of the podcast. And my wife is heavily into the true crime type of stuff, the shows and the podcasts. So, she’s a regular listener. She mentioned that this would probably be a good case. And yeah, I talked to Bon a little bit about it, and he filled me in on his experience, how much he enjoyed it.

Yeardley: I love it. I love it. We are always grateful when new guests are willing to come on. As I like to say, law enforcement, you’re a squirrely bunch. And I get it, because you’re held to a different kind of extraordinarily high standard. And so, we’re very honored and delighted to have you.

D.C. Dan: I’m honored to be here.

Yeardley: So, D.C. Dan, as I’m going to call you, give us a little thumbnail of your career.

D. C. Dan: Oh, gosh. Okay, so, I’ve done a little bit of everything in public safety. This is my 29th year. I started in the fire service, actually. Was an EMT, worked on an ambulance. I did a little bit of time in Dispatch, and ultimately 18 years ago, went to the road on the law enforcement side. I’ve worked for a couple different agencies and got to do some cool things, patrol and detectives, and now an administrator. So, I’ve loved every bit of it.

Yeardley: That’s incredible. I bet that all those different disciplines have served you remarkably well. It’s like, when you end up being head of a company but you started in the trenches. Now, you really know how that company, that system works.

D.C. Dan: Yeah, for sure. I’ve especially noticed it in the last three or four years, doing more emergency management, unified command stuff with our fire department and EMS, and just having that background and understanding what they’re talking about and how they do things. So, understanding both sides of the process has really helped.

Yeardley: Yeah, I can only imagine. D.C. Dan, please tell us how this case came to you.

D.C. Dan: So, this was a department I used to work for. I was in patrol. It’s a small agency. It was like nine sworn. So, I think this was a Friday night, if I remember right. There were two of us working. So, we get dispatched to an assault with a weapon. It was a stabbing. The other officer on duty happened to be right in front of me, wherever we were at and so we both responded together.

Yeardley: So, all dispatch says is, is it’s a stabbing. You don’t get any other details before you arrive.

D.C. Dan: There wasn’t a whole lot of information. It was pretty vague. It was just somebody who heard a person screaming for help and ended up in front of their house on the sidewalk, bleeding. So, we didn’t have a whole lot to really go off of to begin with. So, we got there. Like I said, it’s a small town, so we were there in just a couple of minutes. So, we pull up, find the victim on the ground. She’s still conscious, bleeding from several different areas. The first thing we want to know is, “Hey, while you’re still conscious, who did this to you?” And she said, “It was my nephew John and his friend.”

Yeardley: And what’s our victim’s name?

D.C. Dan: Her name is Mary. I asked Mary where they went, and she didn’t know. As soon as we realized that the suspects weren’t around any longer, we had EMS come in. We assumed that Mary lived in the house we were in front of, but I said, “Is this your house?” And Mary said, “No. I live–” And she gave me the address. It was less than a block away.

Yeardley: That’s really far to travel when you have multiple stab wounds, it seems, isn’t it?

D.C. Dan: It was. It was actually pretty amazing what Mary was able to do. We’ll get more into that. But at that point, I said, “Is there anybody left in there?” And Mary said she didn’t think so. So, we had officers go clear the house, lock that down until we really figured out what else we had.

Mary was taken to the hospital by ambulance. Before she left, they said she had at least four stab wounds. She was bleeding from her chest, her arm and her back. Mary told us that John was in his car. So, we tried to get a description of John’s car. Mary wasn’t really able to tell us at that point, because she was being loaded up in the ambulance. But she had given us John’s last name. So, we were able to find where John lived.

So, I think I mentioned it, but John was Mary’s nephew. We found John’s address. I sent a sheriff’s deputy to that house to see if John’s car was there. He said, it was not. But the deputy spoke with John’s dad, who gave him a description of John’s car. Dispatch was able to find the license plate information for that car. So, I immediately put that out to the surrounding counties.

Yeardley: Was John’s dad at all surprised to have police knocking on his door going, “What does your son’s car look like”?

D.C. Dan: No. So, the sheriff’s deputy thought pretty quickly and said, “Hey, we’re looking for John. We got a report that he was driving kind of crazy.” Really downplayed it. So, John’s dad was like, “Oh, okay,” [laughs] kind of thing.

Yeardley: Such a dads.

D.C. Dan: Yeah. So, I asked the deputy to just remain there at John’s house, because I didn’t know where his evidence going to be and where we were going to have to get into later. So, the deputy stayed there at John’s house. I sent the other officer that was working with me up to the hospital with Mary. He got some more information as Mary went into the ER.

I went over to Mary’s house and looked through there briefly. There was a trail of blood that was easier to see in the daylight, but we could see it on the sidewalk from where Mary ended up back to Mary’s front door. And just inside of it, there’s blood on the floor. Not a lot inside the house, most of it was outside.

Mary had a pretty significant injury to her left upper arm that was pretty wide open and left some tissue on the couch in her living room. Nothing else really at the house. I already knew that we were dealing with her nephew John. But you never know what the motivation is behind these things. No property was obviously gone. Nothing was turned over. It didn’t look like a robbery attempt or anything like that. So, all I knew was, okay, John decides to come and stab his aunt. Why? This is just weird.”

So, there was obvious tracks in Mary’s driveway that it was obvious John took off at a pretty high rate of speed. I left the other officers at that house just assuming that, hey, we may need a search warrant, so I just locked it down.

Yeardley: You locked down Mary’s house?

D.C. Dan: Mary’s house, yeah. Even though we had consent to go in, you never know are we going to need to back it up with a search warrant later. So, I talked to just a couple of witnesses who had come out. Nobody saw anything, everybody had just heard her screaming. That’s all I could get from anybody. Nobody saw the car that left.

So, at that point, the only tie that we have to John is Mary’s statement. She did end up telling me that John and his friend, she only had a first name of Scott, showed up at her house, asked to use some type of car cleaner, and she said, “Let me get it for you.” Went to the back of her house to get that. When she came back, she said that’s when John hit her over the head and then Scott stabbed her. But she was able to fight him off and get away.

So, at that point, we knew that, okay, yeah, John was part of this, but now we know, for sure, Scott was as well. She said Scott stabbed her. So, do we know of a Scott who’s related with John? So, they’re looking through files, and they found somebody named Scott who had been associated with the car. It turned out that wasn’t the right Scott, but we didn’t know it at that point.

Dave: That’s how those things go, right?

D.C. Dan: [laughs]Yeah, all the time. So, of course, he gets a knock on his door. He’s 3years older than the guy we’re looking for [Yeardley laughs] and we’re like, “Okay. Well, sorry.”

Yeardley: Sorry. Wrong Scott. Sorry, dude.

D.C. Dan: It’s not you. Yup.

Yeardley: As you were.

D.C. Dan: Yeah. “Sorry to bug you.”

So, I’m at the hospital. I was able to get a recorded statement for Mary at that point. That’s when I learned how bad Mary’s injuries really were. They had put a chest tube in her, because one of the stabs had gone through Mary’s lung, completely severed her left bicep and tricep. One of the stabs that went through her chest cut through one of Mary’s ribs. That’s how forceful Scott was stabbing. One of them caught her subclavian artery, so she went straight to the OR at that point.

Yeardley: What is a subclavian artery?

D.C. Dan: It’s one of the main arteries that comes off the heart.

Yeardley: Oh.

Paul: So, when you think about the heart is pumping, and the primary artery, of course, that helps distribute blood throughout the body is the aorta. Well, the subclavian artery literally branches off the aorta to go out to the arms. So, of course, if it’s nicked or if it’s transected where it’s completely cut, you can bleed out the very, very quickly from something like that.

Because it’s internal and she’s probably got clothes on and everything else, it’s not necessarily a tremendous source of blood at the crime scene. But she’s got a lot of blood that is now going around into the upper thorax, the internal part of her body. Mary could literally bleed out inside. You don’t see a lot of the blood outside versus what D.C. Dan was saying, the stab to the upper arm that is now cutting through both the biceps and the triceps, this could be a significant source of blood at the crime scene. And depending on what artery or vessels are cut in the upper arm, it also can be a life-threatening injury as well.

D.C. Dan: Paul, you’re absolutely right, because what it looked like was the blood that we saw from where we found Mary to back to her house, it was drops from her left arm running down her hand. And though there wasn’t a lot of blood from the chest wound.

Dave: I’m thinking back to some of the autopsies I went to for stabbings or shootings where someone gets shot in the chest and there’s a ton of bleeding internally, but not a whole lot externally. Once they cut open the chest cavity, you see this pool of blood and try to imagine when someone’s alive, the pressure that builds up internally and how that affects organ and organ function. What a miserable way to go.

Paul: Mary’s got a stab through the ribs and into her lungs. Now, her lungs are potentially filling up with blood. This can become a source of expiratory blood patterns where Mary is now starting to cough. When you’re struggling to breathe, now you’re literally coughing out blood. It’s like this mist and can leave pretty distinctive looking patterns, oftentimes confused for blood spatter, like a blow to a bloody pool source.

So, this is where part of assessing D.C. Dan’s observations. We have blood inside the house. There’s a blood trail leading out to where D.C. Dan meets Mary. Well, knowing her injuries is absolutely critical to understanding, well, what is the source of the blood?

Dave: Deputy Chief, I’m sure in a small town, you know all the players. And I’m wondering what your agency and your personal history was with John and Scott. Did you have familiarity? Are they usually coming across the initial reports?

D.C. Dan: No. Oddly enough, these two, other than I think a traffic ticket, they were not on our radar. I didn’t know who they were. Never dealt with them before. Because you’re right, typically, especially the violent stuff, you know who’s involved and what’s going on, but this one was just out of left field.

[0]

[Break 1]

[0]

Yeardley: So, Mary, where we left off, they’ve had to put a tube in her chest because of this subclavian artery injury.

D.C. Dan: Yeah. Paul, you mentioned the pressure of the blood in the chest, and that was the doctor’s concern. One of the stab wounds had gone through her lung, so her left lung had collapsed, and they were afraid that all the blood buildup would do the same to her right lung. Of course, they took her away to the operating room immediately. So, we ended our contact with Mary at that point.

Yeardley: It makes it all the more remarkable, hearing the extent of Mary’s injuries, that she was able to get out of the house at all and down the block is just incredible.

D.C. Dan: Yeah, the strength of this woman was remarkable. Scott and John were, they’re not small boys. I think John’s over six feet, 19pounds, 20pounds. So, she was able to fight both of them off, get out of her front door, and a block and a half down the road. Yeah, it was just amazing.

Yeardley: How old are John and Scott?

D.C. Dan: John was 18, Scott was 19.

Yeardley: And how old is Mary, roughly?

D.C. Dan: 50-ish.

Yeardley: Go, girl.

D.C. Dan: Yeah. So, Mary went to the operating room. I left the hospital at that point and was going to head back to Mary’s house to finish up the crime scene stuff there. I had never had this happen to me before at this point. Dispatch calls me and says, “Hey, we got this kid named John on the phone who wants to talk to you.” [chuckles]

Yeardley: What?

D.C. Dan: I was like, “Okay, he’s coming to me. That makes it easy.” So, I record it. John says, “Hey, I hear you’re looking for me.” I’m like, “Yeah, we need to talk.” “What’s this all about?” I said, “Well, you know, I think the deputy probably talked to your dad, and we got a report of your drive, and I just need to meet up with you and we need to figure out what’s going on.” And he says, “Well, my cousin called me and said it was really bad.” And I’m like, “What did he tell you?” “He just said it was bad. He said, “It was bad enough I should wipe my phone.”

Yeardley: Oh.

D.C. Dan: Okay. So, somehow, maybe John’s cousin figured it out. I don’t know.

Yeardley: This cousin is not Scott. The cousin’s a different person.

D.C. Dan: Yeah. So, Will is the cousin. This was the first time Will had come up in this case. So, he says, “Yeah, Will called me and he said that the police are looking for me, that it’s really bad and I should wipe my phone.” And I said, “Well, before you do anything, why don’t we talk?” And he said, “Well, okay, as long as I’m not going to prison.”

[laughter]

I’m like, “John, what in the world would make you think you’re going to prison for a driving complaint?” Just trying to downplay it again, so you know stay on board with this. At the same time, I’m on my other phone. I mute John. I’m on my other phone calling dispatch, saying, “Hey, send this other police department over,” because he had decided to go see a movie at this point. John and Scott said, “After all this, we’re going to go watch a movie. We’re going to go to the movie theater.”

Yeardley: Are you kidding me? After they almost fatally stab Mary, John’s aunt, they just go to the movies?

D.C. Dan: Yeah.

Dan: It’s a classic alibi.

D.C. Dan: This will get much more sick and twisted, but this just begins to show you how just off these two are. So, they go to the movie theater. And I said, “Hey, I’m going to have an officer meet you there, but I’m on my way to talk to you. Where can he meet you?” And John says, “Oh, I’ll be out by the ticket booth.” I said, “Okay.” I’m about ready to hang up and he goes, “Well, do you want to talk to Scott too? Scott’s with me. I’ve been with him all day.” Perfect.

[laughter]

“Yeah, I would love to talk with Scott.”

Dan: So, at this point, you have figured out who Scott is.

D.C. Dan: No. So, we actually hadn’t. I had not identified Scott. All I knew is that Mary told me Scott stabbed her after John hit her over the head. So, I knew I had probable cause for both of them, because they’re both involved, but Scott was still just a first name at this point.

Dan: So, when John says, “Hey, do you want to talk to Scott too,” you’re thinking, “Hell, yeah, I want to talk to both of you.”

D. C. Dan: Absolutely. And then, he says, “I’ve been with Scott all day.” I’m like, “Okay. Well, you can’t change that later. This is–” [crosstalk] [laughter]

Yeardley: That’s so crazy to me.

Dave: Lock them into a story. It’s like the biggest thing that we pound into patrol officers. Lock them into a story.

D.C. Dan: Yup, absolutely. So, I said, “Yeah, I want to talk with Scott too.” I called the other police department officer that was headed over there, and said, “Hey, I’ve got probable cause for both of these guys. So, if they’re both there, just grab them up, I’m on my way.”

John had said they’d be by the ticket booth. Of course, shocker, that’s not where they were. The other officers found them coming out the back of theater and they just scooped them both up.

So, I pull up there, and they’ve got John and Scott separated in two of their patrol cars. I had gotten ahold of our chief of police at the time. And in our area, we have a major crimes team and I’m sure there’s something similar all over, but several different agencies will throw detectives at this type of incident and help out.

So, our chief said, “Hey, I’m going to call and get this started, because this is a good use of that team.” So, we got that ball rolling. I went over. I positively identified Scott at that point and found out he’s the 19-year-old kid, not the mid-40s guy in the neighboring county. [Yeardley laughs]

Yeardley: Did both Scott’s though have the same kind of car, which would account for some of the confusion as to who is who?

D.C. Dan: No, I think if I remember right, the Scott in the neighboring county–

Yeardley: The old Scott?

D.C. Dan: Yeah, the old Scott. He was somehow associated with John or John’s dad just from an old incident. Just an oddball coincidence that this other Scott was associated. So, I at that point, just Mirandized both Scott and John, and just let him sit at that point, because I knew detectives were coming in. I was not a detective at the time, so I don’t know if I’m going to hand this off or what’s going to happen at this point.

And their car was there and I knew that it was involved. I knew that I needed to seize that. So, we roped that off, called an evidence tow for that car. I asked John, I said, “Hey, we’re going to tow your car out of here. Do you have the keys, so they don’t have to break the door or window?” And he says, “Yeah, I got the keys around my neck.”

Well, he points to a lanyard on his neck and I look at it and it’s covered in blood. So, they had clearly just gone from assaulting Mary, straight to the movie. [chuckles] We’re just going to go sit in the movies with our bloody clothes.

Dave: Do you remember which movie it was?

D.C. Dan: It was Mockingjay.

Yeardley: Oh, Mockingjay, one of the Hunger Games episodes.

D.C. Dan: Yeah.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Dave: Uh-huh.

Yeardley: How apropos.

D.C. Dan: I remember when I was talking with John on the phone, he’s like, “Well, I guess I can miss the very beginning of the movie, so I’ll talk to you, but I don’t want to miss the whole thing.” I’m thinking to myself, well, you’re going to. [Yeardley laughs]

Dave: Yeah. This could be the last movie out of custody you ever experience.

D.C. Dan: So, I didn’t use the keys, because I didn’t want to wipe any of the blood off. So, luckily, the tow company, they were able to pop the door without causing any damage to the car. So, we transport John and Scott back to the police department for interviews. I had four other detectives show up to help out.

We get John and Scott back there in separate rooms. I brief the team on what’s going on and they said, “Hey, if you want to keep this as case agent, we’ll help you out.” And I was like, “Absolutely. This is awesome.” So, they helped out with the interviews and then I remained case agent on it. At that time, I was an eight- or nine-year cop, so I was like, “Yeah, this is great.”

So, we start the interviews. While they were doing that, I wrote search warrants for the car and for Scott’s house and John’s house. Because at this point, we didn’t have the knife. Mary had told us that she was hit over the head with a gun, so, we didn’t have the gun. But when I went into her house, there was a piece of a what looked like a pistol grip, like the side of it that was on the floor. When you look at it, it looked like it had screws in it, but they were fake. It was like a plastic piece. So, I’m like, “Eh, I think it was an Airsoft gun. I don’t think this is actually a firearm that she was hit with.”

Yeardley: But there’s no way to know that in the moment.

D.C. Dan: Oh no. No, she had no idea. So, we figured that there was more evidence in the car. John’s dad, when the deputy was speaking with him, had told him that somebody had come into the house about 2minutes before the deputy got there and he didn’t know who it was, but he said, “Somebody came running in and ran right out real quick and left.”

Yeardley: And John lived with his dad?

D.C. Dan: Yeah.

Yeardley: Wow. So, Mary’s assault is basically being reported in real time.

D.C. Dan: Yeah, it was probably right after this had occurred. So, we didn’t know if John or Scott had left something behind in that house or if they grabbed something we didn’t know. So, I still had the deputy there and wrote a search warrant for that house as well. The other detectives were interviewing John and Scott. After their interviews, we all got back together and they filled me in on what John and Scott had to say.

[break 2]

[0]

Yeardley: D.C. Dan, Scott and John might be in their late teens, but that is still so young. And they don’t have any violent offenses in their past that you know of. So, I’m curious, what was their demeanor like in the interview room?

D.C. Dan: So, ultimately, Scott was a little less forward with things. He took a little coaxing. He would talk in circles, and then would start to say things like, he told one of the detectives, “Every time I look at your face, it melts. I think I’m crazy.” Just going off in weird tangents. But John was very open with detectives and said, “Okay, well, you’ve already caught me, so I’m going to tell you everything.”

Yeardley: Do you think that’s a function of a first-time criminal when the offense is so grave? We’re not talking like, “I shoplifted a pack of gum, I’m part of stabbing my aunt.”

D.C. Dan: Yeah. I think throughout the entire case with these two, they had no idea what they were in for, I guess you could say. They just didn’t put together how serious this was. Part of that, I think along the way, they would ask questions about Mary, is she still alive? We want to keep it light. We want to keep them talking, so we’re going to tell them what they want to hear. And at that point, it seemed like that was working to say, “We think she’s going to be okay.” And then, they, “Oh, okay, well, good. As long as she’s going to be okay, I’ll keep talking.”

So, to keep it not like, “Hey, yeah, this is a murder investigation,” and they clam up. The whole time, it was just like– I don’t even know how to put it. It was weird. The complete disconnect that they had with how serious this whole thing was and what they did.

Yeardley: Yeah. The fact that after they stabbed Mary, the boys go to the movies and they’re still wearing their bloody clothes?

D.C. Dan: Yeah.

Yeardley: Like, what is that?

Dave: That’s what I’m curious about. You mentioned Scott making a statement about looking at the detective and saying his face looked like it was melting. That reminds me of a few suspects in my past that later on at trial claimed meth-induced psychosis. I know that that’s heavily used as an affirmative defense. But I’m wondering, in your interactions with John and Scott, did you pick up any methamphetamine or hallucinogenic drug type of use?

D.C. Dan: No, they smoked weed and that was about it. Later, Scott admitted that he was going to try an insanity plea. And so, he wanted to make it seem like he was crazy. He knew he was on video in the interview room. And so, when detectives would leave for a break or go to get him water or coffee, he would talk to himself and just trying to play up the whole, you know, I’m crazy kind of thing.

But we didn’t get far with Scott initially. John was the one that said, “Well, no, I’ll tell you everything, because I’m really sad what happened to my aunt.” So, he laid the whole thing out and he said that over Christmas break, so the previous couple of weeks, he and Scott had been smoking weed in the garage. Scott came up with this crazy idea that since they were both self-proclaimed loners, they had a hard time getting girlfriends. So, for them to have sex with girls, they would have to kill them and just have sex with their bodies.

Yeardley: Oh, my God.

D.C. Dan: Yeah, these guys are something else. So, John says, “You know, at first, it was just kind of a ha-ha, that’s gross.” But Scott kept bringing it up and kept bringing it up and ultimately talked John into it. So, John said that they were in John’s room one day, and Scott was going through John’s social media profiles and found the profile of John’s aunt, Mary. Scott took a liking to her and said, “This needs to be number one.” John says that initially he kind of blew him off, but again, ultimately Scott talked him into, “We’re going to try this with your aunt.”

So, John says that they get in the car that night and they start driving toward Mary’s house. He says that they have to stop a few times, because John just can’t wrap his head around doing this, but ultimately, they’re down the street from Mary’s house and says, “We just decide to do it.”

So, John said they pulled into Mary’s driveway, knock on the door and tell her, “Something’s wrong with my car. I need WD-40.” And John says, “I know that she keeps this stuff at the back of her house. We didn’t want anybody from the street to hear what we were going to do, so we wanted her at the back of the house.” So, he says that Mary goes to get this WD-40. John and Scott follow her through the house to the back.

And when she turns around, John tries to hold her in the kitchen. She freaks out and is like, “John, what are you doing?” And he says, at that point, Mary got past him toward the front of the house. As Mary reached the front door, John hit her over the head with this Airsoft pistol.

His thought, because he’s 18 and never done anything like this, is that was going to knock her out, because that’s what happens in the movies. He said, “I hoped that that would knock her out and I wouldn’t have to kill her.” It didn’t knock Mary out. John got freaked out, because it didn’t work. And he said, “Next thing I know, Scott pulls out a knife and starts stabbing Mary.”

Scott is yelling at John to hold Mary down, and John says, “I didn’t really want to be involved anymore at that point, so I pretended I was holding Mary down, but she got away.” John and Scott both got freaked out at that point, according to John, and they decided, “Oh, okay, it’s time to take off. Mary got away. Let’s go.” And so, they jump in the car and peel out of the driveway. They didn’t go straight to the movie. John says that they drove up to where they had planned to dump Mary’s body, and that’s where they dumped the knife. They sat there and smoked some weed and then decided, “Yeah, let’s go see a movie.”

So, then they drove from there to the movie theater in their bloody clothes. John tells us that they had a plan to do this with several other people. Mary was just the first one that they tried.

Yeardley: Oh, my God. Did Scott and John know who the other victims would be?

D.C. Dan: They did. We never did find that list.

Yeardley: There was an actual list?

D.C. Dan: Yeah.

Yeardley: That is dark. Ugh. Did Scott and John say what they were going to do with Mary’s body, if they had actually been successful in this rape murder plot?

D.C. Dan: So, John told us that the plan was for them to stab Mary. They were going to roll Mary’s body in a carpet, put her in the trunk of his car, and take her up into the woods, and they planned to have sex with Mary’s body, and then dump Mary’s body into the creek and go on to the next one.

Yeardley: Good God.

D.C. Dan: So, the next day, served warrants on Scott and John’s rooms. They both lived with their parents, but their rooms we served warrants on. I think I collected 24 pieces of digital evidence, computers, phones, thumb drives. Because they had admitted to some text conversations about this and things like that. So, we had a nexus to all that. We have a high-tech crimes task force that specializes in that kind of stuff, and they withdraw all their devices and we never did find that list. So, it sounded like it was most likely a hard copy somewhere that Scott had gotten rid of before they committed the crime or–

Yeardley: When they knew you were coming for them.

D.C. Dan: Yeah. So, Scott was a smoker and had specifically researched on his computer how to not leave DNA behind on cigarette butts. When we searched both of them before we took them to the police department, they each had two condoms in their pockets. John later admitted that they had planned to use condoms, so they didn’t leave DNA evidence behind on Mary’s body.

John had told us that initially Scott wanted to use a baseball bat to knock Mary out, not the Airsoft pistol, but he thought that would have been too messy, I guess more messy than stabbing.

When I served the warrant on the car, I found the carpet that they were going to use to wrap up Mary’s body. The baseball bat was in the car. The Airsoft pistol was in the car. And then, John actually agreed to take detectives up to where the knife was dumped, where they had planned to dump Mary’s body. So, he took detectives up there, and they recovered the knife. It still had a Lysol wipe around it, because they said that they wiped it with Lysol to try and get their fingerprints off of it, which they were successful in getting rid of their fingerprints, but Scott’s DNA was still on the knife, his and Mary’s, so that was helpful.

So, eventually, when John had told us everything and they told Scott, “John told us the whole story, we know what’s going on. He’s actually leaving right now with detectives to take us to where you were going to dump the body.” At that point, Scott’s like, “Oh, well, okay.” And then, Scott gave us his version, which was very similar, just with the I think I’m crazy, that kind of stuff. Scott in his interview, drew some picture depicting the devil, saying, “You belong to me now,” this kind of stuff. And then, John actually told us in his interview, he said, “You know, Scott’s been talking about wanting to say that he’s crazy. So, if he tells you that, it’s all bullshit.

[laughter]

He’s not crazy. This is just a story that we talked about on the way to the movie.”

Dave: There’s levels of trying to be sophisticated as evildoers where they’re thinking about DNA and they’re thinking about concealing their crimes. And then, there’s just keystone cop like criminal stuff where you’re just like, “Uh, if you’re going to do that, maybe don’t do it in your hometown and do it to somebody that you know.”

The 18-year-old criminal mind at work, they’re so overwhelmed by what they’ve done. They had no clue all the aspects of what they’re going to have to cover up.

Yeardley: It’s really true when you think about even though they used the Lysol wipe to wipe the knife, wipe their fingerprints– Look at Paul holes and he’s smirking, because sure, maybe you wipe the knife, but your fingerprints are also all over Mary’s body, right, Paul? As Dave says, these boys were absolutely overwhelmed.

Dave: That’s why I like having Paul. He talks about these well thought out previously, but then spontaneous and oh shit, what do I do now, that kind of behavior that Paul has seen over and over again.

Paul: It just really underscores that people even when they are really thinking ahead, really trying to figure out how can I commit the perfect crime, very few people can pull something like that off. There’s so many complex aspects and there’s the dynamics. You know, Mary fights. Now, you don’t know what’s going to happen at that point. Mary’s able to get away. Post defense behavior. Now, John and Scott, they’re covering their tracks to the best that they can think of how to cover their tracks, but then it’s like, “Well, let’s go to the movie.” [laughs]

Yeardley: Andthere’s so much they couldn’t account for. The perfect crime, you have no idea what your victim is going to do is a lot beyond your control.

Paul: This is just where no matter how sophisticated the offender is, there’s always that human dynamic element that they cannot necessarily control and account for. You could have somebody who’s committed multiple crimes like this in the past thinking, “Oh, I’ve gotten away 1times, 2times.” And then next time they go in to commit a violent crime, the victim kicks them in the nose and now they’re dripping blood all over the place. [chuckles] So, that’s what we hope for, as investigators and as forensic scientists, is that the offender had something happen that he couldn’t control and now his identity is left behind.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Dave: I think John and Scott forgot that Mary gets a vote.

[Break 3]

[0]

Dan: D.C. Dan, when you had spoken to Dan John on the phone, he mentioned that his cousin Will said, “It’s bad, you should wipe your phone.” Did you ever speak to Will?

D.C. Dan: I did. So, Will is Mary’s son. So, later, we found out Will had messaged John and told him about the driving complaint, the reckless driving. Apparently, Will and John had dabbled in some pills previously, and Will assumed that John was driving under the influence and that was the reason for the reckless driving report.

So, Will had absolutely no idea at that time that his mother was on the way to the hospital and was just concerned that, “Hey, the cops are going to get your phone, John. You need to wipe it. So, they don’t know about the fact that we’re buying oxy or whatever it was.”

Yeardley: Oh.

Dan: There’s always an explanation, and it’s not always the explanation that you’re expecting. I’m also curious, you’ve got a deputy sitting out at John’s house, at his dad’s house, and his dad’s thinking, “Oh, there’s this driving complaint.” And then, at some point, John’s dad’s going to go, “There’s a little more to this story.” I’m wondering what John’s father’s reaction to, you guys are writing a search warrant for his house.

D.C. Dan: So, John’s dad was pretty disconnected himself. It was a very odd dynamic. So, John lives with mom and dad, but mom and dad are not married, don’t even really do anything together. Mom was a traveling nurse and was never home. John pretty much raised himself, it appeared, for the last several years. Was a hermit in his room. I mean, John’s dad was cooperative, but he never was really like, “What? He did what?” That was never a reaction that we got from him.

I didn’t really have a nexus to the rest of the house, because he said, “Yeah, somebody came in, ran into John’s room, ran back out.” So, there was nothing really in the house that I was really interested in anyway, so we just stuck the warrant to John’s room.

And same with Scott’s house, actually. He lived in a studio part of the house that was away from the main living area. When we got there to serve that warrant, nobody was there. It was a nice house. I didn’t want to ram the door if we didn’t have to. So, I actually got ahold of Scott’s dad on the phone and said, “Hey, this is what we have.” And he’s like, “I’d absolutely just come let you in, but we’re out of town.” So, we ended up having a lock pick get us in there, so we didn’t damage anything.

Yeardley: And was Scott’s dad alarmed that you had a warrant to search his son’s room?

D.C. Dan: Not really. I think both of these guys, Scott and John, like I said, they were outcasts, they smoked weed, they were into magic and stuff. Nobody was really surprised. Maybe a little bit surprised, but nobody was like, “Absolutely not, they could not have done this.” We didn’t get that reaction from anybody.

Dave: There’s some incel aspects to this that we’ve seen an increase over the last 1years or 15 years, and that’s fascinating to me.

Paul: You hit the nail on the head with that. Here, John and Scott are commiserating with each other about, you know, they’re loners, they can’t have sex with girls. And then, they develop this plan for a way for them to be able to have sex, and it requires them killing the female that they want to have sex with. So, it just shows that they perceive that they have their own inadequacies even when they are going to go and commit a crime to have sex, they’re not going to be able to accomplish that unless they actually have a dead body to have sex with.

One of the things that I’m keying in on though, there’s no question about the dynamic between Scott and John. Scott is alpha, John is the follower. John is an incel. No question about it. Scott is the one that is influencing John in order to commit this crime. Scott, there’s an incel component.

However, I’m wondering if there’s something deeper, if there’s fantasy involved with Scott and part of evaluating, like, what’s in Scott’s room, what kind of books he has, what kind of computer searches he’s doing, what is he looking at? There may be an incel aspect to Scott, but he may also have a burgeoning fantasy life to commit violence in order to have sex. This is now what I would term as your pre-predator. [chuckles]

He’s now in this evolution of, “Okay, this is what I’m fantasizing about.” And then, when he’s smoking weed with John, he devises a plan, I got a guy that’s going to help me do this. And so, I’m curious, D.C. Dan, was there anything that indicated that Scott was looking up sexual assault on women, whether it be violent porn or various different things. Even such things as extreme as having sex with animals. This is where now somebody crosses a line psychologically into, “Okay, I’m now thinking, this is what I need to do in order to satisfy my own internal psychosexual needs.”

D.C. Dan: Yeah, Paul, you’re absolutely right. So, when we analyzed both of their computers and phones, we know that Scott had access to John’s computer. I can’t definitively say who looked it up, but on both of their devices, there were searches for rape fantasy porn. Gosh, there were certain videos that they looked up that were kill fantasies, murdering and then raping the bodies. There was some animal stuff, but it wasn’t like bestiality, like you would normally find on– I say normally–

[laughter]

Dan: Normal in our world. Yeah.

D.C. Dan: Yeah. But they were into this My Little Pony porn, where the ponies would rape each other and decapitate each other and then rape the decapitated heads and sodomize with a unicorn horn and that kind of stuff. So, they were, yeah, very much so headed down that path.

Paul: There’s definitive paraphilias across multiple spectrums that whoever is making these searches, they’re exhibiting that. This is what people who have young boys in their house, and if they run across something where they’re looking up cartoon characters raping each other and decapitating each other, that’s a red flag. You need to get that boy some psychological help now, because it’s just going to grow into something where now they’re committing violence on real people.

Yeardley: My hair is on fire, by the way. I just can’t even believe what I’m hearing.

Dave: Yeah, it’s interesting. I would have cases where you’d have a child who gets forensically interviewed or they’re doing evaluations and they’re saying, “Oh, this child is talking about this and this and this and this.” And it’s horrible, like sexual stuff for an 8, 9, 10-year-old.

Typically, in our world you think, there’s no way that child knows about that unless they’ve been physically introduced to it by someone else. That’s just not the case with phones and lack of supervision. Kids back in the day didn’t have access to these types of media. And so, now, a lot of people will say, “Obviously, that kid’s been sexually abused.” And we all say, “No, no, no, no, you can’t make that leap.” That’s a big leap.

You have to look deeper at the types of things that Paul is talking about that are actual behaviors that turn into red flags that have nothing to do with influence by somebody else. They’re not a victim of anything. This is a wiring thing. This is what this person is starting to show interest in.

Paul: Nowadays, these burgeoning predators have access to content at their fingertips. They seek that content out. We brought up incels. We are getting into a dark, dark space in terms of criminality and human psychology. These incels find each other. They have forums that they communicate to each other, and they talk about their inner fantasies, about how they want to go and do mass shootings or commit violence against girls. It’s like a support group.

Same thing with the various types of paraphilia that D.C. Dan was bringing up. These individuals seek that out, because they know what is somehow psychologically arousing them in terms of their fantasy and usually there’s a sexual aspect to it.

Yeardley: D.C. Dan, did this case go to trial or did John and Scott take a plea?

D.C. Dan: John and Scott both pled guilty, actually. We had just an enormous amount of evidence against him. And both their attorneys said, “Oh, we just need to be done with this.” So, here in this state, attempted murder, mandatory minimum is 1years, and that’s what they got.

I don’t know, for sure, if there’s an aspect of therapy that’s required in prison or when they get paroled. I would certainly hope so. I know they’re both registered sex offenders after this for the attempted abuse of a corpse and attempted rape one, but they’re both scheduled to be released.

My concern is that they went in at 18 and 19 years old, and they’re coming out at 28, 29 years old, very capable of trying this again. So, I sincerely hope that they’ve gotten the help that they need in there, but who knows?

Dave: Most states, their Department of Corrections are not structured and funded in a way that inmates are getting the resources they all need. There’s lots of excuses for that. But there’s also this aspect that what can you do for some of these folks? You can just monitor them. Because in my experience, I’ve had several sex offenders who came back out, reoffended, went back in and then you get into their history when they were in custody, and they didn’t participate at all in the programs that they were offered. So, it’s up to the individual, when do they want help and do they recognize they have a problem. If they don’t, then you’re counseling a brick wall.

Yeardley: Yeah, they are coming out in the prime of their lives, as you said, D.C. Dan being only 29 and 30, respectively. D.C. Dan, how is Mary after all this?

D.C. Dan: So, Mary had about six months where she couldn’t use her left arm from the injuries there. As soon as she got released from the hospital, I reconnected with her and just did a walkthrough with the DA who was assigned to the case at Mary’s house and said, “Okay, walk us through the whole thing.”

It was, as you can imagine, quite difficult for her to relive that, but it was very helpful for the case and to just put everything into perspective and it was recorded. And that was after the crime lab had been there, so we could tie everything that she said with the sketches and the diagrams and everything that the crime lab had done. At that point, she couldn’t use her left arm at all. She told me that the doctors told her that when she was in the operating room, she actually died twice, because she lost so much blood and they were able to revive her each time.

So, just the significance of what these two did to Mary– That’s part of the reason why it didn’t go to trial. I think any 12 people who sat here and listened to this story, [laughs] I think you could figure out what the outcome would be. So, I spoke with her maybe a couple of years after that. She was doing well. She moved away, understandably. But physically doing well, still working through some PTSD, as I’m sure anyone can imagine, but doing okay.

Dave: Well, Mary, just by virtue of fighting back and getting away, how many lives did she save, potentially?

D.C. Dan: Right.

Dave: It’s enormous.

D.C. Dan: Yeah, absolutely. If Scott and John would have gotten away with this– I think they said there were 12 total that were on the list we never found. So, would they have continued on that night? Would it have been the next weekend? Who knows?

Yeardley: Yeah. It’s harrowing.

Dan: D.C. Dan, I’m just thinking about your jurisdiction, and I’m familiar with that part of the world. There are so many remote places where you wouldn’t even find the bodies.

D.C. Dan: Yeah. Where John took us to recover the knife, where they had planned to dump Mary’s body, it would have been found fairly soon. But it’s heavily wooded just outside of the city limits. You don’t have to go far. So, yeah, it could have been a lot worse, for sure.

Yeardley: Yeah. And D.C. Dan, I’m curious because you guys who’ve been on the job for really more than a minute, you see so much. I’m always curious, what about this case stands out to you?

D.C. Dan: This case is what really pointed me toward working in detectives. Like I said, this was the first really serious case that I had worked and gotten to remain as case agent throughout. I had four other detectives who were very experienced and right there next to me the whole time helping me out. One in particular came back the next day and helped me go through all the evidence, and then called me and really helped me out. It was huge for me.

I really enjoyed that investigative aspect, because up to that point, I had worked in a couple of smaller departments. So, you get a DOI and you put the guy in jail, you’re pretty much done. So, having this case where, okay, they’re in jail, but we’re nowhere near done with this and just that understanding and taking all those other steps to secure the conviction and all that with the DA.

And so, this case, I actually, when I lateraled over to my current department, this is the case I used when I applied for detective spot and got it back in 2017. I still refer back to things I did or processes that we went through in this case. It was the one that opened my eyes to the detective world. I’m so glad it did, because that was one of the best points in my career was the five years I did in detectives.

Yeardley: That’s so cool. You are command staff now, so I understand when Dave was a sergeant, it’s just a very different job. You don’t get to be on the street as much and stuff. But I’m wondering, you seem to have really enjoyed and appreciated the mentorship you got on this case. Are you able to pass some of that along, sort of pay it forward?

D.C. Dan: Yeah, I have. I’ve really focused on trying to do that and be that for other newer officers or newer detectives. Training is one of my passions. I really enjoy helping others to figure it out and be successful. So, I’ve really worked to try and do that.

I’m lucky that I have people from all over that’ll call me and ask me stuff. It keeps me up to date too when they’re like, “Hey, this is what I’m dealing with.” If I don’t have the answer, then I’ll reach out to somebody who’s still that for me. It’s really fun, actually. It’s still fun. I love this job still, which is good. [laughs]

Yeardley: That’s amazing. Dan and Dave and Paul say it all the time that that kind of passionate and purpose led mentorship is what keeps an agency healthy, and sharp, and energized and doing the job the right way. So, hats off to you for being where you should be clearly doing the thing you should be doing.

Dan: Oh, well, thank you.

Yeardley: Yeah, very cool. Thank you for this. An extraordinary case, even though my hair was on fire at one point. Good God.

Dave: Great work. I think you guys saved multiple lives.

Paul: Great job, D.C. Dan.

Dan: Good job.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley: Small Town Dicks was created by Detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith.Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editors are Christina Bracamontes. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor.Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.And our social media maven is Monika Scott.

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The transcripts of this podcast are thanks to SpeechDocs. And they can be found on our website, smalltowndicks.com. Thank you, SpeechDocs, for this wonderful service.

Small Town Dicks is an Audio 99 Production. Small Town Fam, thanks for listening. Nobody is better than you.

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