Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam. It’s Yeardley. How are you guys doing? Oh, I hope you’re great. I really hope you’re great. Today’s case comes to us from fan favorite Deputy Aaliyah. If you’re new to the podcast, you’re going to love Aaliyah. If you’re a longtime listener, then you know that for the next hour, you are in excellent hands.

After eight years of doing this podcast, I often wonder what it’s like to be a first responder whose job description is basically to help people get to the other side of a bad situation, big or small. The caveat, the thing they don’t teach you in any academy, is that even when you do everything right, the best laid plans can go awry. Of course, that journey is not unique to first responders. Lots of situations in life are like that. But when lives are literally at stake, the going awry part feels so much more consequential.

The case Aaliyah brings us today really shines a light on this aspect of being a cop when a young woman named Julia calls to report that she’s been a victim of domestic violence. In gathering all of Julia’s information, Aaliyah spends quite a bit of time with her and ends up giving Julia, her personal cell phone number. This is not something Aaliyah was in the habit of doing. But there was just something about the terrified young woman in front of her who seemed especially vulnerable that made Aaliyah want to do everything she could to keep her safe. Here is Bad Omen.

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.

In Unison: Thank you.

Yeardley: Today on Small Town Dicks, I’m going to do it straight. We have the usual suspects. How straight was that? It was so straight. Oh, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. [laughs] I couldn’t– I’m Sorry. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: Hey there.

Yeardley: Hey there. We have Detective Dave.

Dave: Hello there.

Yeardley: Hello there. You’re over there, I’m over here, sadly, we’re not in the same zip code today. And we have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul: Hi there.

Yeardley: Hi there. I’m so happy to see you, P.

Paul: I’m happy to be here.

Yeardley: I’m happy to have you. And Small Town Fam, we are so excited to welcome back to the podcast your fan favorite and our favorite Deputy Aaliyah.

Alia: Hello.

Yeardley: Hi, Aaliyah. It’s so great to see you again. We love having you.

Alia: It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Yeardley: You’re wonderful. You’ve done this several times now with us, and it’s always superb, so I’m just going to turn it over to you and ask you how this case came to you.

Alia: Thank you. So, this case came to me– I was working patrol. I was on night shift, and I got a call, and it was a domestic violence delayed call for service.

Yeardley: What is that?

Alia: A domestic violence delayed call is someone who calls in and describes that they have been in some domestic situation, but it is not currently ongoing. It happened earlier in the day or maybe the day before or a couple days before, but it’s not something that’s active right then and there.

Yeardley: And is there a time limit in terms– Like a statute of limitations? It can’t have happened longer than a week ago or something like that?

Alia: We will investigate any domestic violence incident, so there’s not really a time limit to it. Some of the time limit would differentiate whether it’s in progress, delayed, or active right then and there. So, that would differentiate somewhat. But in this case, it had happened several hours earlier.

Yeardley: Right.

Alia: So, I went to an apartment complex and I met with my victim. And her name is Julia. I met with her outside of her apartment. She is a younger female. I think she was 24 or 25 at the time. And Julia already had three children, so she started early. I think her oldest was seven at the time that I made contact with her.

I actually had dealt with Julia several times in the past, because she worked at that apartment complex, and it was one of my frequent flyer apartment complexes. So, she worked for the front office. I had seen her, talked to her, been around her a couple times, dealing with other issues.

When I made contact with Julia that evening, it was– Like I said, very early in my shift. I think it was probably one of my first calls. She was outside of her apartment complex, and I met with her. She had her three kids outside, so I was like, “Hey, is there anybody that can take your kids inside while we talk about this?” because I already knew that it was domestic violence related and I didn’t want to go through those conversations with her in front of the kids. The oldest, being a little bit older, just took the kids inside while I stood outside and had the conversation with her.

Julia started to tell me that she was in an argument with her boyfriend, Brandon, and they had started arguing about the use of her vehicle. So, she took the vehicle out that day with her mom and her sister to run some errands and “stranded” Brandon at the house without a vehicle. Because he doesn’t have a vehicle, no mode of transportation.

But Brandon works close by at a fast-food joint, like right across the street from the apartment complex that they’re staying in. So, I start talking to her, and Julia starts telling me that when she got back from running errands with her mom and her sister, her and Brandon started arguing. And during that argument, Brandon took her keys and her wallet as kind of collateral for taking the vehicle earlier in the day.

They go back and forth, and Brandon eventually strangles her within the closet of their master bedroom. As Brandon is in the closet choking Julia, Brandon starts to say things to her like, “F you, bitch,” and Julia is starting to lose consciousness.

As soon as Brandon realizes that Julia’s starting to lose consciousness, he lets go of her. Kind of lets her come back to. Brandon leaves the master bedroom, and then comes back into the master bedroom, and starts engaging with Julia again.

Brandon then uses his forearm to push Julia up against the wall and choke her some more. And eventually, he let go of her and left the apartment. Julia follows Brandon out of the apartment– They live across the street from Walmart, of course. They go over to that parking lot, continuing to argue, and she follows him over there.

Dave: Does Brandon still have her belongings at this point?

Alia: He does. He has her keys and he has her wallet, and he takes that over to the Walmart parking lot.

Dave: And Yeardley, these kind of domestic violence DV calls are a dime a dozen, where you’ve got cell phones being taken and hidden. It happens all the time.

Yeardley: Oh. Obviously, as a measure of control, right?

Dave: Right.

Yeardley: The aggressor trying to control the victim.

Dave: Yup.

Alia: Eventually, Julia goes back across the street to her apartment. Most of Julia’s family, and I think because she worked at the apartment complex, like front office, lived in that apartment complex as well. So, when Julia came back over to the apartment, she saw her brother and her cousin. Julia basically told them what was going on, and her brother and her cousin went across the street back with her to confront Brandon.

When they confronted Brandon, Brandon gave Julia back her keys in her wallet. Brandon came back to the apartment, got his work stuff for the fast-food joint that he works at across the street, goes to work. Brandon goes to work. Julia then calls the sheriff’s office, and that’s when I arrive.

So, I’m outside talking to Julia and I can see some redness still on her neck. I get the story from Julia, and I’m having this conversation with her, trying to wrap my head around what’s going on. I get an another unit to go over to Walmart to try to see if they can pull the video from where they are in the parking lot. Because most of the time, it’s he said, she said, and you really don’t have a full picture of what’s going on unless there’s some video available, it helps you put the whole picture together. So, I figured if there was some video at Walmart, then it might be helpful for me to see what happened in the parking lot over there.

I run Julia’s name, I run Brandon’s name in our system to try to get an idea of exactly what their history is with each other, what their history is with our agency and our surrounding agencies. I see that a couple months earlier, Julia and Brandon got into an altercation while dropping off two of Julia’s children at daycare. So, there was an argument that happened in their residence prior to Julie and Brandon leaving to take her kids– They’re not Brandon’s kids, her kids to daycare. The argument continued. When they pulled into the parking lot at the daycare, Julia and Brandon got out, and Brandon hit her in the face, and then proceeded to start choking her.

Yeardley: In front of daycare, Brandon is choking Julia?

Alia: Broad daylight.

Yeardley: Okay. In front of the kids, in front of other people’s kids, parents of other kids at school.

Dave: People do this all the time, where they don’t have the argument in their apartment, it continues all the way to daycare in front of witnesses who are also dropping their kids off. Like, this is the impulse control and the ability to be reasoned with, where folks who generate a lot of police activity, this is their normal.

Paul: I want to address something here about the acts that Brandon is doing on Julia. When a man puts his hands around a woman’s neck, that is the biggest predictor for future homicide. And in essence, any woman that is in a relationship with a man who does that to her, she needs to get out of that relationship ASAP.

So, now you’re seeing Brandon, not only just choking Julia to the point where she’s feeling like she’s losing consciousness, he’s choking her out in public. This is a relationship in which now law enforcement has to intercede in, or Julia’s going to likely end up dead at some point in the future.

Yeardley: Oh my God.

Dave: Yeah. When Aaliyah mentioned the strangulation stuff, I immediately thought back to my own experience and what Paul just described as hearing that statistic that that’s one of the greatest predictors of future homicidal violence is strangulation in a domestic relationship.

Yeardley: I’ve never heard that before. That’s fascinating.

Dave: Yeah. When you go out on DV calls, we spend a lot of time about obstructed airways, and strangulation, and past acts, and has it escalated over time because then you get a real idea of where did it start and how bad has it gotten to now, where you have multiple police officers coming to your house.

Paul: I don’t know how a DA would actually charge the strangulation aspect. But in essence, it’s attempt homicide. Brandon just stopped, right? So, it’s a very serious crime.

Dave: Yup.

Alia: In that report, Julia said that Brandon choked her for approximately 30 seconds. And this was called in by two witnesses that did not know Julia and Brandon. Julia never called this into law enforcement, which led me to believe that Julia is very used to this behavior. This is not something new or shocking to her. This is kind of run of the mill behavior from Brandon.

So, when the deputies in that investigation got on scene, a couple other deputies circulated the area after Julia had dropped off her kids in daycare, Julia followed Brandon down to a park, down the street.

Yeardley: On foot, or in the car?

Alia: On foot.

Yeardley: On foot. Okay.

Alia: So the deputies in that investigation made contact with both of them, and Brandon was ultimately arrested for domestic violence strangulation in that first incident that we had responded to, dealing with Julie and Brandon.

Dave: At the daycare center?

Alia: At the daycare center. So, in that situation, Julia and Brandon went to court, and Brandon was found guilty, and he was given probation. Although Brandon had a slew of other charges, starting from when he was a very young adult, he got probation for that incident.

Yeardley: How do you square that probation? Everybody’s just shrugging and smirking at me, knowingly.

Dan: Just the way it is.

Dave: You’ve come into the feeling of helplessness that infects so many law enforcement officers, where you’re just like, “That’s all they get? Really?” And you get 50 of those in your career, and you’re like, “Yeah, that’s all it gets.” [laughs]

Yeardley: You’re ruining my faith in humanity. Oh, [Dave laughs] that’s too late. It’s done.

Dave: You just got to let the medicine work, Yeardley. [Yeardley laughs]

Alia: Mm-hmm. It’s very frustrating. It is.

Paul: Aaliyah, how old is Brandon and Julia?

Alia: Brandon was a couple years older. So, Brandon, I think, was around 28, because I actually went to high school with Brandon.

Paul: Oh.

Alia: Yeah. So, I knew Brandon from high school. We were not friends. We didn’t really run in the same circles, but I definitely did know him and recognize him from high school. So, we were just about the same age. And that’s what comes with working where you grew up. The amount of people that I have arrested that I went to high school with is disturbing.

Dave: You should just keep your yearbook in your trunk, and every time you get one, [Aaliyah laughs] “Hey, hey, open up to page 73 and sign your name.”

[laughter]

Alia: Yeah, I maybe shouldn’t have chosen the jurisdiction in which I [Dave laughs] lived and grew up my entire life, but here we are.

Paul: Got the high school senior photo, and [Aaliyah laughs] you got the mug shot side by side.

[laughter]

Alia: Several of them. Yes, several of them. I’m like, “Hey, nice to see you. Sorry, I got to take you to jail today.”

Dave: So, Aaliyah, in speaking with Julia, the current call that is a delayed domestic violence call, and Brandon’s at work, are you getting from Julia that she’s over this? She’s tired of this shit, and this is why she’s calling the police because it has to end? And are you getting a straight story from her? Because those can wander sometimes.

Alia: Yes. So, it’s funny you asked that, because this is, I think, an important part of the entire investigation. Julia, I think, was very over Brandon’s nonsense at this point. I would venture to say there was a lot of situations in between the one a few months prior and the one that I was responding to right then and there, and Julia seemed as if she was just over it. However, Julia was six weeks pregnant with Brandon’s child.

Yeardley: Oh, man.

Alia: So, now we have a situation where Julia and Brandon are connected forever. Brandon knew that Julia was pregnant. He had found out that Sunday prior that she was pregnant.

Dave: And still strangles her multiple times.

Alia: Still strangles her multiple times, which enhances my charges. Julia can tell me when and where and how she told Brandon that she was pregnant, and he knew she had already gotten a confirmation that she was pregnant. And like I said, this was her now fourth child.

Yeardley: Was Brandon happy about this news that Julia’s pregnant?

Alia: I don’t know. I do recall, like, asking her what Brandon’s affect was when Julia told him. And it seemed as if that they were happy that they were having a child together. The other three children were all Julia’s. They were not Brandon’s. But Brandon did have children with another woman who he was currently married to.

Yeardley: Oh.

Alia: Yes.

Yeardley: Oh. Well, there’s that. Okay.

Alia: She comes up later in the investigation a little bit.

So, as I’m talking to Julia, I was a fairly new mom at the time, so I have that new mom feels, you know? I’m starting to look through life in a little bit of a different lens when it comes to dealing with people and understanding how difficult it is to get out of situations when you’re tied to people with children and all of those different facets that come along with entering children into a relationship, and it’s no longer just you and that person trying to figure out whatever difficulties between the two of you.

So, I sat there with Julia for a very long time, talking to her about exactly what Paul was saying, like, strangulation is one of the top indicators of homicide. I had probably like an hour and a half long conversation with Julia, just standing outside of her apartment, just trying to plead with Julia to make it stick, to hold to what she knew to be doing the right thing, whether it was hard or not.

I actually gave Julia my personal cell phone at the time, which I would have never done. I’m honestly not really sure why I even did it that day. We didn’t have work cell phones at the time. We do now. But I was like, “I will be here to support you.” I think it had a lot to do with that new mom. She was so young, and I just stood outside with her.

I knew that Brandon was at work, so I knew I had a little bit of time. I really wanted to make an impact on Julia, because so often we go to these calls and you have these heart to hearts, and you take the moment to talk to people, but it doesn’t stick.

So, Julia was all in. She’s like, “I’m sick of him. He knows I’m pregnant. He’s strangled me before. We have a really bad relationship. He’s very controlling in what I do. He’s very controlling in what I wear,” Brandon is. I felt like I got through to Julia, and I think that’s probably why I ended up giving her my phone number to be like, “Hey, just call me directly. If there’s issues and I’m working, I can be there. And if I’m not working, I can call somebody else that can be there. So, just call me.”

So, the deputy that went over to Walmart, there was nobody there that could access the cameras at that time, which is unheard of, because typically Walmart [chuckles] has loss prevention on lock 24/7. Walmart has probably the best loss prevention and camera systems available. So, I was like, “Well, Julia signed a sworn statement. I believe what she’s saying to me. She has marks on her neck. It all kind of checks out.”

I attempted to interview the children, but they were not very forthcoming with any sort of information. So, I was like, “Well, I’m going to Brandon’s work. Right across the street, I’m going to go pick up Brandon.” Because at this point, I have a strangulation of a pregnant female, domestic battery. So, I’m like, “I’ll easily go pick Brandon up at work.”

So, I left Julia. I got all my pictures, I got my sworn statements, I got everything from Julia, and I grabbed my zone partner. I was like, “Hey, let’s go pop over to this fast-food joint and let’s go try to pick up Brandon.” So, I go over there and I asked to speak to Brandon. He’s a cook in the back. And he comes out, I read him his Miranda rights, and he says, “Yeah, I’ll talk to you.” I was like, “Okay.”

He tells me that he did nothing to Julia. He didn’t touch her, of course. He does tell me that he didn’t know that she was pregnant. Basically, denied everything. He’s been through this before. He’s already on probation for this exact same thing. He knows the game.

So, I said, well, “Today you’re going to jail.” He was cooperative. He didn’t give me any trouble. So, I arrest him, take him to jail. I’m like, “I got through to Julia. I went and picked up my suspect. This is great.” Like, “I’m number one cop tonight.” I’m feeling good about myself.

[Break 1]

So, I do like to follow up on my cases. I hadn’t heard anything from either Brandon or Julia for a little while. So, I ended up looking up the case. And it was no filed. They got no cooperation from the victim.

Yeardley: So, Julia refused to testify?

Alia: Yes, they could not get in contact with her.

Yeardley: Oh.

Alia: In our state, in a typical domestic violence situation, if the victim does not want to be the victim, the state will come in and be the victim until it goes to any actual legal proceedings and then they need cooperation from the actual victim. So, I would have the ability to make an arrest and to charge on the behalf of the state, but then moving forward, you would need the victim to actually cooperate with the investigation.

Dave: Because they got to get up on the stand and tell the jury what happened in this room and this closet. And without that, you can’t have the arresting officer just read their PC affidavit, because it’s all as relayed to them by the victim. So, you have to have the victim get on the stand and say X, Y, and Z happened. And if they don’t, your case is dead.

Alia: Exactly.

Yeardley: And Aaliyah, Brandon, when he is arrested for the domestic violence incident outside daycare, he gets a suspended sentence. There’s no probation attached to that that if he gets arrested for the same crime or worse that that means then he’s going to go to jail.

Dave: A probation violation can involve a sanction of 5 days, 10 days, 60 days, where you go get sent back into jail and you’re in a timeout for a period of time. Or, if you’re on a downward departure or a suspended sentence and you commit a crime, then you could get sent to prison for whatever your sentence was going to be. So, your suspended sentence is now active and you go away for whatever. So, probation violations typically don’t involve more than a few days in jail is like a slap, like, “Hey, knock it off.”

Dan: And sometimes the probation is unsupervised, so you don’t actually have a probation officer. It’s basically court supervision.

Yeardley: And what, you’re on an honor system?

Dan: Yeah. Well, basically, if you get convicted of another crime, that conviction would prompt a violation of the probation. There’s just a lot of gears in play here.

Alia: So, I did violate his probation, but without the victim cooperating on that new charge, that violation goes away.

Yeardley: Have you come in contact with Julia and Brandon since?

Alia: So, I had not. It had been about, I think, six or eight months-ish, when I looked up the case and realized that Julia [unintelligible ] She didn’t cooperate with the state.

So, flash forward about four months. We were working and a contact message popped up in the system for Julia’s address. And it’s a transfer from a local police department that is close to us. So, they called that police department, and that police department realized that the call was actually in our jurisdiction. The contact message said that the complainant just got a call from their ex-boyfriend, Brandon, that he just murdered his girlfriend.

Yeardley: Oh God.

Alia: So, Brandon and his wife had not been together for a long time.

Yeardley: Oh, Brandon’s estranged wife called in this tip about the murder?

Alia: Yes. Yes. So, we’re all on high alert, because I knew their history, I knew Julia and Brandon’s history, and I was like, “Well, this is definitely possible. We need to get over there immediately.” So, my zone partner and I and my recruit at the time and a couple other deputies, we all got together. We went to the front leasing office, because we knew that Julia worked at the front office.

One of the deputies goes and meets a maintenance worker at that front leasing office, says, “Hey, is Julia working right now?” And they said, “No, actually, she’s off today. Today’s her off day.” So, we’re like, “Okay.” I said, “Well, is Julia still living in this apartment,” the one that we already believed that she lived at? Because we didn’t have an address for her. We didn’t know exactly where she was. We were just guessing off of the contact message and then what we had for Julia in the system.

So, the maintenance worker said, “Yeah, Julia still works there. It’s her day off. She should be there.” So, myself and a couple other deputies’ gathered together and went to Julia’s apartment. Julia’s apartment is on the second story of a two-story apartment complex. They’re very, very small apartment complexes, like almost like efficiency apartments. It was Brandon, Julia, and the three children all living in this very, very small space.

So, we get up there. We start knocking on the door. We don’t get any answer. So, my zone partner checks the door handle, and it’s unlocked. So, we’re like, “Okay. Well, guess we’re going in.”

Yeardley: And you’re allowed to go in?

Alia: We have exigent circumstances at this point. The comments and the call, and nobody’s in contact with her, the apartment is wide open, we have the ability to go in there and check and make sure that she’s okay. It’s not like we’re busting down the door or anything like that. The apartment is already unlocked.

Dave: It’s a community caretaking search without a warrant.

Alia: Yes. My sergeant was there at the time as well, and he was like, “Go in. We’ve got plenty enough. Let’s go.” While we’re doing this, we’re also trying to get in contact with that other agency to get back in contact with the complainant, and ask more questions and get a little bit more answers.

So, we weren’t sure if Brandon was in the apartment still. We didn’t know where he was at the time. We just know that Brandon called his wife saying that he murdered his girlfriend. So, we’re trying to get in contact with the wife to say, “Hey, where is Brandon at?” Because if Brandon is in this apartment, that’s a big problem for us, because Brandon’s saying that he’s murdered Julia and he could be in here with her, which is not a surprise that we want.

Yeardley: And Aaliyah, what’s the wife’s name?

Alia: The wife’s name is Sarah. So, we open the door, we make a few more announcements. The apartment basically opens up to one living room/dining room. So, it’s all kind of combined into one. There’s a small kitchen off to the left. There is a long hallway with one bedroom on the right and a master bedroom at the end of the hallway that’s connected to a bathroom. That bathroom is also connected to a door in the hallway. So, it connects both the hallway and the master bedroom.

So, I know from my prior contacts with Julia that she at least has three children, probably four at this point, because it had been long enough that Julia had probably given birth.

Yeardley: And in this case, to Brandon’s child.

Alia: To Brandon’s child. So, I’m thinking there’s potentially four other children in this apartment. So, the apartment was really, really cluttered. There was a lot of kids’ toys everywhere. It was in disarray. It was very dirty. But it looked like they just lived that way. It didn’t look like any sort of struggle had occurred. It was just the way of their life versus it was dirty, because they were struggling all through the apartment or it was bloody all through the apartment or anything like that. It looked fairly normal for their lifestyle.

So, we get in and we start clearing. There’s not a whole lot to clear. So, we’re pieing off the corner of the hallway, because the way that the living room opens, it gave us a spot to pie the hallway to see what we could see down the hallway.

Yeardley: And that means you’re sectioning off segments of a circle, basically, or segments of whatever your area is covering, so that everybody gets a section kind of thing?

Dan: Yeah, it’s a technique we use to maintain cover or concealment and still get gradually increasing view of a room.

Dave: It’s like peeking out behind the door jamb, where you’re freaked out and you heard a bump in the night, and you look out your bedroom door, and you’re trying to see more of the hallway. [Yeardley laughs] That’s what you’re doing.

Yeardley: I’m pieing.

Dave: Yeah, you’re pieing the hallway.

Alia: You didn’t even know you were doing it.

Yeardley: Didn’t even know.

Alia: You’re so tactical, Yeardley. [laughs]

Yeardley: I’m going to be okay.

[laughter]

Alia: Yeah. You utilize it to keep most of your body behind whatever cover concealment that you have, and you can utilize angles to try to see as far as you can without exposing a lot of your body.

Yeardley: Right.

Alia: So, as we’re pieing off the hallway. We can see what appears to be feet at the end of the hallway. They’re hanging off the bed. But we can only see feet. We can’t really see past that. So, we’re like, “Well, we got to go.”

So, we start moving. We quickly clear the room to the right, which appears to be a child’s bedroom. It’s got just a couple mattresses on the floor. It’s pretty messy. We can clear that pretty quickly, and then continue down the hallway, and we find Julia on her bed with her throat slit.

Yeardley: [gasps]Oh no.

[Break 2]

Alia: So, Julia was laying on the bed face down. I quickly threw on a pair of gloves, and grabbed her wrist, and she was just completely cold to the touch. There was no movement from her. The way that Julia was laying, I couldn’t see that part of her neck. I just could see that Julia was laying face down on the bed and she just wasn’t moving.

Yeardley: So, you couldn’t see the incision?

Alia: I couldn’t at first. But she wasn’t moving, so I threw on a pair of gloves really quickly because I was like, “If we need to start some life saving measures or whatever, I want to have gloves on.” [chuckles] I grabbed her wrist, and she was very cool to the touch. I was like, “Mm.” So, I went around the other side of the bed. You could see, because her head was a little bit tilted, that she had a very large laceration to her neck.

And I was just like– I can’t even describe the feeling, because although you don’t know these people on a personal level, you do form some type of relationship with them. I can’t really describe that very well, but I’m sure you guys can understand where I’m coming from.

Dave: You’re invested in the outcome-

Alia: Yeah.

Dave: -with folks that really, like, when it gets beyond the just taking the facts and the report and you’re like, “You know what? Screw Brandon. He’s being an asshole. This woman’s got kids and she’s tired of your shit.” It’s just natural to get invested in those cases. I’ve got lots that I was invested in. None of them had this kind of outcome, but when you have a big heart and you’re compassionate and you like helping people, that’s the byproduct.

Yeardley: I think it’s called empathy.

Dave: Oh.

[laughter]

Alia: Oh.

Yeardley: There’s a word for it. I don’t know.

Dave: Thank you, Yardley.

Yeardley: Call me crazy.

[laughter]

Alia: Yeah, you get attached. And then, like I said, I’m a new mom. And now, I’m thinking, now four babies don’t have a mom, Julia is gone. And I tried. I really tried to get through to her. I mean, I’m well aware that I can’t save the world. I can’t get through to everybody. You can probably get through to a handful of people in your entire career, but it hurts. So, we cleared the rest of the apartment, and Brandon was nowhere to be found.

Dave: And no sign of the kids?

Alia: No sign of the kids. Kids were not there as well, which was a blessing.

Dave: Yeah. Was there a knife anywhere in the room?

Alia: There was not.

Dan: Was there a lot of blood in Julia’s bedroom?

Alia: There was not. There was a lot of blood on her bed, right underneath her, but there was no other blood at all in the apartment.

Dave: Paul?

Yeardley: Yeah, I would have thought cutting a major artery like that would spray blood all over the ceiling or something.

Dave: Well, if she’s face down is what I’m picturing. Somebody grabs her by her hair, pulls her neck up and from behind.

Paul: This is where the details from the autopsy are important. But based off of Aaliyah’s visually not seeing blood, imagine if you have Brandon and Julia face to face. Brandon’s armed with a knife, Julia’s trying to fight off the knife. Now, you have defensive injuries to the forearms, to the hands. Now, she’s casting off a lot of blood on the walls, on the furniture, whatever else, before her throat is cut. I can eliminate that type of activity based on the lack of blood patterns that Aaliyah is seeing inside the bedroom.

Now, it’s a matter of, do I see any blood flows? This is where it’s so critical to evaluate what is present in terms of the blood patterns that might be hidden as Julia is laying face down on the bed. So, once I get to a point to where I’m working with the death investigator, and we’re turning Julia over to document the underside, which is her front, do I see evidence of blood flows indicating she was upright when her throat was cut.

It’s very possible, she was just forced face down on the bed, and he cut her throat during that motion. And now, all that’s happening is Julia is just bleeding out, forming a blood pool on the bed. And that sounds consistent with what Aaliyah’s observations are.

Alia: Yeah, Paul is right on the money.

Dan: The consideration here now is, now you found Julia, you’ve confirmed that she is deceased, and now you got to back out-

Alia: Yes.

Dan: -because Brandon has a right to privacy inside that apartment.

Alia: Absolutely.

Yeardley: Even though he killed his girlfriend, that doesn’t supersede his right to privacy?

Dan: Your job in the community caretaking and going inside to check on Julia is just that, you’re checking on Julia. It’s complete now. And any evidence that you find now, it has to be found under the execution of a search warrant.

Yeardley: Okay.

Alia: That’s 100% right. And so, then the work starts. But like I said, Julia had a lot of family members that lived in that apartment complex. So did Brandon, actually. So, it became difficult managing our crime scene with the families that were right across the street. So, we had to have several different deputies in different places managing the crime scene, as well as now we’re on the hunt for Brandon. We need to find Brandon.

Dave: And the kids.

Alia: And the kids. We need to locate the kids as well. Yes. So, luckily, our deputies were able to locate all of the children. They were all at their different daycares and they were all safe and sound at their daycares. They had dropped them off that morning, because I guess Brandon and Julia both had the day off.

Dave: It gives you a timeline of we know she was alive at this point. So, it happened in this window of time, and this gives us how long has Brandon been on the run.

Alia: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, the other law enforcement agency that originated this call, this contact message, was Sarah. Was in contact with Sarah, and they were trying to get any information that Sarah had on Brandon’s whereabouts. Ultimately, I believe our police department within our jurisdiction, located Brandon outside of a gas station within their jurisdiction, and they placed him under arrest.

Yeardley: Just going about his day, Brandon was?

Alia: Brandon was just hanging outside the gas station. They found him out there.

Paul: You mentioned Brandon had fairly substantial criminal history. Do you remember the types of crimes that he had previously done?

Alia: In 2000, which in 2000, I was 10, so that means he was around 10, he had throwing a deadly missile into a building.

Yeardley: I’m sorry. Brandon threw a deadly missile into a building? Is that like a Molotov cocktail? What are you talking about?

Alia: I’m not sure.

Dave: I have actually seen that charge. I’ve heard of it on maybe Dateline or The First 48. And in that case, a Molotov cocktail is one of the examples. And the other one was somebody threw an M80 into an apartment, and it started a fire, and that guy got charged with throwing a deadly missile or something, something that has gunpowder and flame and explosion. I’m probably butchering it, but that’s the idea.

Alia: It’s something along those lines. I can’t look at really anything of it, because he was a child at the time. That was actually no filed. Imagine that. Petty theft, possession of cannabis. The petty theft was no filed battery.

Dan: So, Aaliyah, you went to high school with Brandon. What was his reputation in high school? Do you have interactions with him in high school?

Alia: I didn’t have interactions with him, because like I said, we didn’t really run in the same circles. But in high school, Brandon and his brother were just jovial, just played around, didn’t really take things too serious. I definitely didn’t think that I would be working a homicide that he was involved in.

Dave: What was the time delay between you guys clearing the apartment confirming Julia’s death and Brandon being found across town?

Alia: Brandon was picked up a couple hours later. It was fairly quick.

Dave: Did he have Julia’s vehicle or–

Alia: No, he was on foot. I believe that Sarah ended up picking him up from a location and then dropping him at that gas station. And that was where she told law enforcement was the last place she had contact with him.

Dave: We like Sarah.

Alia: Yeah, she did a good job. So, Brandon was eventually picked up and went back to our station to be interviewed. At first, he denied everything. Brandon said he didn’t know where Julia was. They dropped the kids off, and Brandon and Julia went their separate ways. And then, eventually, after some time in the interview room, he admitted to having an argument with her the night prior because of a tattoo of Sarah’s name on his arm, I believe. That argument between him and Julia spilled into the next morning. Julia and Brandon took the kids to daycare and then came back to the apartment where the argument continued.

Brandon says that Julia got the knife to say that she was going to cut the tattoo off of his arm. And in that argument, Brandon started choking Julia again and eventually, Julia lost consciousness while he was choking her. Julia started making some sounds and acting a little bit differently than the other times that Brandon had choked her. He believed that he had taken it too far. So, Brandon flipped Julia on her stomach and then slit her throat.

Yeardley: Because that’s the obvious solution, too. “I think I took the choking too far this time.”

Alia: He said that he did not want her to call the police. He did not want Julia to call the police on him again.

Dave: Now, again, this is Brandon. And Brandon comes up with a very self-serving statement to cover for what he’s done to Julia. Always take those statements with a grain of salt, because chances are it’s about 30% true. I mean, Julia, that piece of this is really frustrating, but also its complex that getting out stuff. I’m most happy that the kids weren’t pulled into this with violence. That’s where I was worried that it was going.

Alia: Yeah. My zone partner is like one of my best friends in the whole world, and we’ve been through a lot on patrol together, and you should have seen the relief on our faces when– And that sounds bad.

Yeardley: No, it makes complete sense.

Alia: We were very concerned about the exact same thing.

Dave: Take the winds where you can get them, right?

Alia: Yeah.

[Break 3]

Dave: So, what happened to Brandon?

Alia: So, Brandon went to trial and Brandon was sentenced to life.

Yeardley: I’m always curious about this. Brandon admits to slitting Julia’s throat and therefore killing her. But Brandon then pleads not guilty in court and goes to trial?

Alia: He did. He went to trial, and he was found guilty, and he got life in prison.

Yeardley: Does Brandon hope that despite that admission, “I’m going to take my chances with a jury”?

Alia: I think Brandon is a narcissist and thinks that he will win or get off. Because the thing is, he had gotten off many times before. Cases had been no filed, he had gotten a slap on the wrist, and I’m fairly certain he thought that was probably something that was going to happen. He told them in the interview that they were never going to find the knife, and they didn’t. But he also got charged with tampering with physical evidence, so yeah.

Paul: During the entire time leading up to trial, Brandon’s attorney is trying to get any admissions to the facts of the crime thrown out for whatever reason. It could be Miranda violations, it could be coercion. In essence, Brandon’s attorney is going to try to weaken the case as much as possible, so the jury doesn’t hear those important facts being uttered by Brandon himself.

Dan: There’s some interesting legal questions in this one, like the spousal privilege with Sarah. He’s still married to her, but he’s not with her, and she’s basically the snitch.

Dave: She’s the star witness. Yeah.

Dan: And I wonder what that’s like in your state, Aaliyah.

Alia: There is spousal privilege.

Dan: You get the option to exercise it, I’m guessing.

Alia: Yes. Brandon and Sarah had not been together for a long time. Brandon and Julia had been together for quite a while. So, I do believe that she testified in trial.

Dave: I’m thinking about just the penalty of life in prison, and I think about some of the plea deals that we had pushed forward to some of my sex offenders and the plea deal started at 45 years. Plead guilty and you’ll only spend 45 years. It’s not surprising that people are like, “That’s my deal? Fuck you, I’m not signing that. I’ll take my chances with a jury.” So, with the big punishments, I’m always like, “Oh, they’ll take it to trial, because the alternative is unsurvivable anyway,” which is life without, you know?

Dan: I think another interesting aspect of this case is previously Julia had become uncooperative with the prosecution on Brandon. But this case, you wonder if Julia said, “Last time I wasn’t cooperative, but now I’m going to be.” And that’s what pushed him over the edge, and Brandon slits her throat.

Dave: Right. Because she wasn’t prone to calling the police.

Dan: Right.

Dave: It’s only happened once. So, it is interesting. Brandon makes the comment about I didn’t want her to call the police. So, Dan, that is fascinating. What were the last few sentences before that turned deadly physical?

Alia: Yeah, I know that they were just arguing about the tattoo. You would think like, “How long has Brandon had this tattoo? If that was really an argument? Are we really arguing about this tattoo that he’s probably had for much longer than he’s been with Julia?” So, I don’t even really believe that’s what the argument was over in the first place.

Dave: Right.

Dan: All of a sudden, it’s an issue.

Alia: Exactly.

Dave: He’s trying to paint Julia as this controlling, jealous girlfriend, who is unreasonable about a tattoo that’s affixed to his body. Again, self-serving statements.

Paul: It probably was an argument in the past. And now, he’s bringing that up as a reason why Julia is pulling a knife on him. [chuckles] Brandon is minimizing. This type of tragedy just occurs over and over again.

As I mentioned earlier, Brandon’s behaviors with Julia are predictive of homicide. This is where there is a disconnect with what law enforcement can do and what the criminal justice system does with these types offenders.

I’ve talked to several women over the years who are in abusive relationships in which the violence is rising to this level. And I tell these women, “Get out. You better have a go bag. Don’t rely on a piece of paper, the restraining order. You do not let him know where you are going to be if you want to be able to try to maximize your ability to survive.” And the complexity sometimes is one of the women had kids. And it’s like, “You have go bags for the kids. You get out, let him cool down. If you ever expect him to be coming back or he’s starting to heat up, you get out now.”

Alia: Yeah. I even used to keep diapers and little onesies and stuff like that in my car to just be like, “Here’s this for now. We’ll get whatever we need to later. We don’t need to worry about diapers. We don’t need to worry about any of this stuff, like, we can just go now.” But it is hard. It’s hard for women to leave what they’ve known. A lot of the times, they’ve been pigeonholed into not having income, and this is the only stability that they have, so they’re scared to leave. It’s uncomfortable to go live in a shelter. It doesn’t feel like home. It feels very uncomfortable. And you can see why women choose to stay.

Dave: There’s some aspects of this that are eerily similar to a case that I think we’ve had on this podcast, but it was a mom that got stabbed to death by her son. The son had been arrested a couple of weeks prior for grabbing a steak knife out of the butcher block and threatening his mom with it. And in that case, it was determined that the suspect needed some mental health counseling and some anger management and was released.

And within two weeks, we went out there and overnight, suspect had gone into his mom’s bedroom and stabbed her while she slept, and then rolled her up in the comforter and grabbed her car and took off down to a neighboring state and tried to kill his brother. It’s just like, again, where you feel like you’re in a movie. You’re like, “No fucking way.”

Yeardley: That one’s called Matricide, that episode that we did with Detective George.

Dave: Yes. And it’s just one of those where it’s like, fuck. I mean, what is a mom supposed to do? It’s her son. You know, in this case, you’ve got Julia who’s has a child with Brandon, and it’s like, you have to move out, quit this life with Brandon. It is a lot to ask, but it has to happen to keep yourself safe so. I’m sensitive and compassionate on that side of things.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Alia: You hear a lot of times people are like, “Well, why didn’t they just leave?” You’re like, “Well, it’s just not that easy.”

Yeardley: I’m sure these women feel like, “I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t. I’m afraid he’s going to kill me if I stay. I’m afraid he’s going to find me and kill me if I go.” But also, “What does it say about me that I’ve put myself and potentially any children I have in this much danger and I can’t get us out of it?”

Dave: I think it’s important, exactly what you’re describing, Yeardley, is cops on domestic violence calls are exactly the cops that you want if you’re a victim and you’re the complainant on a call like this. Cops are the perfect people to talk to, because we know all those aspects and those dynamics to it, and we understand the shame part and the victim doom loop and all that. We all understand, because we’ve seen it dozens or hundreds of times.

Yeardley: Yeah, that’s really well said. To your point, Aaliyah, that you said at the beginning of this case how you’d had that hour and a half conversation with Julia outside the apartment and you gave her your number, your personal cell phone number, and really tried to impress upon her, I’m in your corner. And even having the feeling that perhaps Julia actually got it and how quickly it must have been for her to get sucked back into this vortex of danger and shame and abuse that Brandon had created. We were talking about empathy, and it’s just got to be heartbreaking for you guys. I’m sorry.

Alia: It’s the unfortunate part of the job.

Yeardley: It’s the part they don’t teach you about in academy school, I bet.

Dave: [laughs] You are correct.

Alia: I’m trying to fix that now. Since I’m in training, I’m trying to impress upon these little minds. It’s not all running and gunning. I feel like it’s just now recently been a topic of conversation of actually taking some time to decompress and work through your feelings from these very not normal things that are happening to you on patrol, but even when I started a little bit over a decade ago, it was like, “Just go to the next call.”

Dave: Well, I’m glad Brandon no longer has to pay taxes or [Yeardley laughs] rent, and that his meals are taken care of for the rest of his life.

Alia: Mm-hmm. Me, too.

Dave: He shouldn’t breathe the same air as Julia’s kids.

Yeardley: I guess Julia’s kids went to live with family.

Alia: I believe so. Yes.

Yeardley: I don’t know how you’re all right after that, but I do hope that they’re doing the best they can.

Dave: Right. Get home from daycare and everyone goes, “By the way, your mom got killed today.”

Yeardley: Right. “Oh, and your stepdad did it.”

Alia: It’s so, so tragic.

Yeardley: It’s so sad. Well, it seems weird to say thank you for bringing us that case today, Aaliyah. But I think there’s enormous value in the very human way you all are gracious enough to tell these stories. So, thank you for that.

Alia: Absolutely. Thank you.

Dan: Thank you, Aaliyah.

Dave: Nice work.

Paul: Thanks, Aaliyah.

[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.

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