Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam. It’s Yeardley. How are you guys? I hope you’re all well, and I hope you’re all doing something that you truly enjoy. So, I’m sure I’ve told you this before, but I and the last pair of editing ears for each episode we do here on Small Town Dicks that means that for better or for worse, I switch my brain from this squishy, emotional right side to the analytical just the facts ma’am left side in an effort to make sure the story tracks, it’s easy to follow, and most importantly, it’s worthy of the time that you all graciously give us. So, I was expecting business as usual when I sat down to edit this episode today.

I mean, we’ve covered many worse crimes than what you’re going to hear, but by the time I reached the end, I was a squishy hot mess. There is something about the outcome of this case and the way our guest today, Lt. Ryan, who is new to the podcast, the way he has simultaneously detailed and professional, but also generous and candid in his description of what being in law enforcement means to him and what it feels like when things don’t turn out the way you planned. All of it snuck up on me and made me emotional. And I was reminded, as we’ve said a hundred times on this podcast, that having a job where your Monday to Friday is meeting people on their worst day is not a normal job. Here is “A race against time.”

Yeardley: Hi there, I’m Yeardley.

Dan: I’m Dan.

Dave: I’m Dave.

Paul: And I’m Paul.

Yeardley: And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan: Dave and I are identical twins-

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

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

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

[Small Town Dicks theme]

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

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

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

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

Unison: Thank you.

Yeardley: Today, on Small Town Dicks, my friends, we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: Hello there.

Yeardley: Hello, you. We have Detective Dave.

Dave: Hello.

Yeardley: Hello. Hello. Hello. And we have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul: Hi.

Yeardley: Hi. I was waiting for the hey, hey. I’ll take the hi. I’ll take it all.

[laughter]

Sadly, we are actually all in different locations, as you know, friends. Small Town Fam, I like it so much when we’re all together, but it’s hard to do these days because people are busy. So, we’re here on Zoom and we are so pleased to welcome a new guest to the podcast. He’s very fancy, Lieutenant Ryan.

Ryan: Hey, guys.

Yeardley: Hi. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today and for giving up one of your very precious days off.

Ryan: Absolutely. It’s an honor to be here. Thank you.

Yeardley: Thank you. So, Ryan, we like to get a little thumbnail biography of our guests of your career in law enforcement to set the scene before we get into the case. Tell us a little bit about you. I sound like I’m on the dating game. Carry on, though. [laughs]

Ryan: [laughs] Sure. Yeah. So, I started my law enforcement career in 2011. I started out in patrol services, so I was on law enforcement on the road. That was the first five years of my career. The last couple of those years was as a field trainer. I ended up getting promoted to detective after those years on patrol, and I moved to our special victim section, which is where I got to work in tandem with Detective Bree. I think she’s also a fan favorite here.

Yeardley: Here she is. We love Bree. We love Bree and her sister Aaliyah. They’re squared away, as Dan and Dave would say.

Ryan: They are. They are. I’ve actually got to know Bree and Aaliyah even before I worked at the sheriff’s office, so I consider both of them family.

Yeardley: Lovely.

Ryan: So, I was in our criminal investigations division for two years where I worked sex crimes and crimes against children. I got promoted out of that unit, went back to the street for a little bit. Eventually, I got transferred to our warrants section, So, I had the opportunity to do extraditions all over the country. Got to see a lot of cool different areas for the two years that I was working in our warrant section. I worked in warrants for a couple of years until I was fortunate enough to get promoted again to Sergeant, where I transferred to our training division. I was in training for three years. While I was in training, I also got another promotion, was very fortunate, to lieutenant. I left the training division earlier this year. So, currently I’m back to patrol operations, which is my true love.

I think we all get into law enforcement to wear that green and white and hit the streets. So, I’m a shift commander on the streets and I’m in a great spot.

Yeardley: Awesome.

Ryan: So, in addition to all those assignments that I talked about, we have the ability at our agency to have secondary assignments. And one of the things I’ve done at my agency for a total of six years was join our crisis negotiations team. So, being a hostage negotiator, I was on the team for five years until my last year on the team. I was blessed to be our team leader. So, I promoted off the team. They don’t allow lieutenants to be on the team anymore. So, once I made a lieutenant, I had to say goodbye to the team. But it was one of the best experiences of my career so far, was being a negotiator.

Yeardley: Why aren’t you allowed to be on the negotiating team if you’re a lieutenant?

Ryan: I think maybe they just feel at that point in the game of your career, you have other responsibilities, and they leave that to other folks.

Yeardley: Interesting. So, Ryan, with all of those tools in your toolbox, please tell us how this case came to you.

Ryan: Yeah, so this case came to me in early 2019, shortly after the holidays. And let me set the stage, if I can, to tell you a little bit of background. So, the first individual involved in this case is a gentleman named Marcel. Marcel is not from the United States. He’s a Canadian gentleman, but he has lived in the United States for probably about the past decade. Marcel has a girlfriend named Chloe, but he met Chloe and maybe, some may say an unsavory location. He met her at the strip club.

Yeardley: Chloe, I’m assuming, is not a customer at the strip club. She works there, yes.

Ryan: She is a performer, yes.

Yeardley: What did Marcel do for a living? What was his job?

Ryan: Marcel’s a handyman. He does odd and end jobs. So, Marcel and Chloe hit it off, and they are kind of on and off again. And ultimately, after they were living together for about two years, they decide to call the quits. And Chloe’s ultimately going to move out of the house. So, Marcel invites a friend of his to move down and be his roommate. So, Marcel’s roommate is Sawyer. And Marcel and Sawyer had only been living together for about three days. So, Sawyer’s new to the area, so they decide, let’s go out for a night on the town.

So, Marcel and Sawyer, they go to the bowling alley, local bowling alley here in town, and they meet two ladies, Kenya and Melody, and the four of them have a great night. They all actually end up going back to Marcel and Sawyer’s house. So, while they’re together, they actually end up having a clothing optional time in their hot tub. So, the four of them, Marcel, Sawyer, Kenya, and Melody are all together in the hot tub. Well, Chloe, she’s just now getting off work. It’s about 3 in the morning, and she asks her friend Renee, a coworker of Chloe’s. They decide that, “You know what? I have a couple things at Marcel’s place I need to get it.”

And at this point, they had been off for a little bit. They probably grabbed a bite to eat. They decide at 5 in the morning, “You know what? This is a good time to show up at Marcel’s house and pick up our belongings.”

Yeardley: Really? I mean, I just want to say, as a reasonable human being, maybe showing up at 05:00 AM unannounced anywhere is questionable– is an error in judgment.

Ryan: I would agree with you.

Dan: I mean, even in law enforcement, you have to get special permission from the judge to execute a search warrant before 07:00 AM [laughs].

Yeardley: Really?

Dan: Yeah. Well, at least where I worked. I don’t know what it’s like for Ryan and Paul there.

Ryan: Not for us. That’s interesting. I’ve never heard that.

Dave: Yeah, we had brackets where if you want to justify a search warrant outside of like 07:00 AM to 07:00 PM then you have to hit all the boxes to justify why you’re kicking in a door after hours.

Ryan: Interesting. I’ve never heard that.

Yeardley: That’s so civilized. So, Chloe and Renee have decided 05:00 AM is the perfect time to go and get some of Chloe’s remaining stuff at Marcel’s house.

Ryan: That’s correct. So, Chloe arrives and actually Renee decides, “I don’t want to go inside. I’m going to let you do your thing.” So, Renee stays in the car, she stays outside, Chloe goes in the house. So, 05:00 AM walks in. Well, she stumbles upon her recently ex-boyfriend, Marcel, his new roommate Sawyer, and then two unknown girls to Chloe, which is going to be Kenya and Melody, all in the hot tub, some of which clothing may have been on, may have not been on. I wasn’t there, so I can’t testify to what was happening. But it was enough to throw Chloe into a bit of a spiral. So, she confronts Marcel about what’s going on. And Marcel loves Chloe. He’s not really happy about the breakup, but he also understands that this is somewhat of a tumultuous relationship.

So, Marcel doesn’t have good control of his emotions. What happens next is things escalate to a violent interaction where Marcel actually takes several punches towards Chloe in the face. And later we find she’s got several contusions and bruising and several cuts on her face. Both girls witnessed this incident. They are somewhat freaking out. What’s going on? There’s this guy here that we just met and now he’s punching a woman.

Yeardley: So, Melody and Kenya are like, “What the– This isn’t what we signed up for.”

Ryan: Yes. So, Marcel decides, “Let’s go into the bathroom. Let me clean you up.” So they try to break away from the group that’s in the hot tub. And now it’s Marcel and Chloe in the bathroom, just the two of them. So, as he’s getting Chloe undressed to take a shower, still emotional, Chloe’s crying. A condom falls out of Chloe’s bra. Well, now the incident that was somewhat calming down is now rising again. And now, this throws Marcel somewhat into a spiral himself. So much so that he grabs his pistol and starts placing the gun to Chloe’s head on several occasions. Now, Kenya and Melody have now exited and they’re concerned. And now there’s blood trailed through the hallway from the fight that occurred outside. And they see and they witness a gun being held to Chloe’s head.

So, Kenya and Melody, they don’t know where to go. They don’t know what to do. They end up barricading themselves into another interior bathroom inside the home. So, now they’re somewhat stuck there, fear of their own life. They’re going to have to pass Marcel to get out of the home. So, instead of passing him, obviously someone they don’t know, someone who’s going a little bit crazy, they decide that they’re safer inside a bathroom than to go past him to try to leave.

Yeardley: So, Marcel punches Chloe and draws blood and then says, “Let me take you into the bathroom and help clean you up.” That, to me, based on what I’ve heard on this podcast for the last seven plus years, sounds classic domestic violence of, “I’m going to lash out at you, now I’m going to apologize.” And then when the condom falls out of Chloe’s bra, it escalates again. Does this sound familiar to you all?

Dave: I’m not surprised at all. We hear this all the time.

Yeardley: Right?

Ryan: Yeah, this is something we see. And unfortunately, it can be somewhat of a cycle that happens on repeat. You know, you have a violent interaction and then you have a honeymoon phase where things tend to get better, and then it cycles back again where it blows up and it ends up being this vicious cycle. And some people feel stuck that like, they can’t get out.

Yeardley: Sure. And had police ever been called to Chloe and Marcel’s house for other domestic violence incidences?

Ryan: So, to my surprise, no. We had never been called to this home before. And when we end up doing a criminal history of Marcel, he had never been arrested here in the United States. Now, he was a Canadian citizen from Canada, but he had been in the States for quite some time and had never been arrested here in the United States.

Yeardley: Okay, so Kenya and Melody are witnessing Marcel put a gun to Chloe’s head because he’s so furious that this, I’m assuming, unused condom has fallen out of Chloe’s bra, right?

Ryan: Yes. And so, the argument was, “What were your plans with that condom?” And that’s really what the basis of the second argument started. So, now we’ve got Melody and Kenya barricaded, hiding, I should say, inside an interior bathroom. Chloe is obviously panicked in fear of her life at this point, and she capitalizes on an opportunity. Marcel turns his back for a moment, and Chloe runs out of the home.

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[Break 1]

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So, now Chloe is running out of the home, and she gets into her vehicle, which is parked just down the street, maybe one house over from where Marcel lived. So, now you’ve got Chloe running into the car. Renee, who’s been waiting this whole time for Chloe to come out with some of her belongings. She’s now in the passenger seat of the car.

So, we have Marcel, who, still gun in hand, runs after Chloe, and he stands right in front of the driver’s seat. And we know this because later we see video surveillance. He stands right in front of the driver’s side window, and he fires inside the car multiple times. Out of all the shots he took, which was about 7 to 10 shots, one of those rounds ends up in Chloe’s shoulder and actually exits out of her neck, was just millimeters away from her jugular. So, she is shot in the shoulder with an exit wound to her neck. And Renee is also shot in her right thigh through and through, bullet hole wound.

So, after the shooting occurs, Marcel runs back to his home, and Renee is now stumbling outside the car, panicked, doesn’t know what just occurred. And all she knows is she’s got a gunshot wound in her leg. So, she runs over, I shouldn’t say run. She hobbles over to neighbor’s home, and she is banging on every single door that she can get to, begging for help. So, the first 911 call we get in, this was actually from Melody inside the home. So, the first 911 call is at 05:31. Melody calls, says, “I’m at a residence. I don’t know the address. I met a guy at a bowling alley, and there was a violent interaction, and he was pointing a gun at a female that I don’t know who she is.” Within about three minutes of that first 911 call, we get a call from the neighbor who says, “I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s a woman inside my home, and she’s got a bullet wound to her leg.”

At this point, Chloe is still inside the vehicle, so she hasn’t been able to actually leave and exit the vehicle.

Yeardley: Chloe has survived her gunshot wound that goes in her shoulder and out her neck.

Ryan: She has. So, at this point, deputies are responding. And now there’s a lot of misinformation in the very beginning of this. A lot of people are trying to surmise what’s occurred. And we really don’t know exactly which house this has originated from. Nobody’s telling us really where it originated from. So, deputies are responding. They’re focusing on conducting a rescue of two women who have been shot while still trying to keep that scene safety. We don’t know. We may have a shooter inside a home that’s waiting for us to get there. He may be out on the streets. He may have fled. We just don’t know at this point. So, deputies respond, and they use some ballistic shields, and they end up conducting two rescues of both women, and they’re transported to the hospital.

Yeardley: So, they rescue Chloe and Renee and take them to the hospital? Yes.

Ryan: That’s correct. So, Chloe and Renee are both rescued, and they’re sent to the hospital. The shift commander who’s on scene realizes they’re able to surmise that this did come from somebody that’s in the neighborhood. And the statement that Renee provided said that Marcel did this shooting and he lives at this house. So, before Renee left the scene, she was able to pinpoint an address for responding deputies.

Dave: I’m thinking about the tactical considerations of responding to this call as a patrol officer or a patrol deputy. Does this street run north, south, east, west?

Ryan: No, this is in a neighborhood, and it’s got a windy, curvy neighborhood. So, the streets are all different directions.

Dave: Right. So, yeah, I think about that and how far out you need to park and get out on foot. And you’re carrying a heavy ballistic shield. You are going through people’s front yards to stay out of the sidewalk and not silhouette yourself. There are just a lot of things to think about when you’re responding to this call to be able to do it safely.

Ryan: Yeah, I didn’t respond in a patrol capacity on this call. But my hat’s off to the heroes that went in and walked through the streets not knowing really where the shooter was to rescue these two girls.

Dave: You never know. It might be you’re crossing the side yard of two houses and the shooter’s waiting for you in the shadows. I’ve been on calls like this. It makes the hair on your neck stand up. And that’s something that I always listen to, was that feeling. And it was just pounded into my head by my FTOS. When that happens, you should listen to it.

Ryan: Absolutely. So, at this point in the story, the shift commander realizes that we potentially have our shooter inside a home, and he’s barricaded inside. And so, they surround the house, and he activates our SWAT team and our negotiators. So, I had been on the team for a couple years at this point, and I responded in the role as a crisis negotiator. So, shortly after responding on SIEM, negotiator Aaron, who happened to also join the team at the same time as me, we are some of the first to arrive on scene, and our team leader at the time designated Aaron as the primary negotiator and designated me as a secondary. So, just a little background on that. When it comes to crisis negotiations, we don’t ever negotiate alone. We always negotiate in pairs.

So, you have your primary negotiator and then your secondary, which we a lot of times call the coach. So, our philosophy is two minds are better than one. So, we work together to negotiate through an incident like this.

Yeardley: And just to be clear, Kenya and Melody are still in Marcel’s house. Are they still in the bathroom?

Ryan: So, by the time we arrive on scene, they weren’t initially. So, the rescue occurs first of Chloe and Renee, and eventually those two girls end up exiting the home. I believe that they came through a window in the bathroom, so I believe that they exited the home. So, when we get on scene, we’re of the mindset that both girls are out and the only people that are inside are Marcel and potentially Sawyer. That’s all we know at the time.

Yeardley: Right. Okay.

Ryan: So, when I get on scene, me and Aaron start to prepare for our first call. We get the green light from our team leader, go ahead and make the first call. So, we ring in, and I’ll be honest, it kind of caught us off guard. A lot of times we end up calling multiple times, and after the first ring, Marcel answers.

Yeardley: Oh, because usually they don’t answer.

Ryan: Typically they don’t. In my experience, we call and call and call then they get so annoyed, they answer the phone.

[laughter]

In this instance, Marcel answers right away, and his affect was very calm. So, by the time when we made our first call, the incident comes out at 05:31. It is 07:45 by the time all of our team is there set up, and we’re actually making our first call. So, Marcel has had time to calm down. And Marcel tells us he’s on the beach.

Yeardley: Like, literally the beach with the ocean and the sand.

Ryan: Yeah. Marcel says, “Hey, I don’t know what you’re calling about. I’m not at my house. I am on the beach.” And he actually tells us, “Hey, come and find me. I’ll give you directions right where I’m at. I’ve fled your county, I’m no longer in your area. I’ve traveled about an hour away and I am sitting on the beach.”

Paul: Is this misdirection? [laughs]

Ryan: Well, it caught us off guard for sure.

Dave: That was my first question, was when negotiators arrive, my question was, suspects barricaded. Does he know that the police are out there? Like, have there been announcements? And he sees the emergency lights and just never makes himself seen or known? Or I’m guessing that he hasn’t ever peeked out the window or opened the door and said, “Fuck you, I’m not coming out.” He’s playing the game. Like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know nothing about nothing, and I wasn’t even at home type thing.”

Ryan: Yeah. There is absolutely no way he did not know we’re outside. When a call out gets initiated, there is about 75 to 100 law enforcement that descends upon this location. He’s surrounded by armored vehicles, our SWAT team, big lights, red and blues, spotlights. We’re making announcements for people to come outside. So, I would say about the 20 surrounding homes knew that we were out there. So, there’s no way he didn’t know.

Yeardley: [laughs] There’s no way.

Dave: Yeah. It’s interesting when they say, “You know, I was asleep and I couldn’t hear you guys knocking.” And you’re like, “Well, your neighbors from 100 yards down the street are out in the middle of the street looking down like, what’s going on down there?” Nice try, but that’s not going to work.

Ryan: Yes. So, Marcel, he actually gives us his vehicle description. He says, “I’m in a Mercedes down at the beach. I’ll tell you exactly where to find me.” So, of course, our command staff that’s present is listening to this conversation. So, first thing they’re doing is looking around and saying, “Hey, are we sure this guy is even inside?” Because we haven’t seen him. He hasn’t come out. He hasn’t opened up the window, given us the bird, nothing. So, part of our intelligence aspect of negotiation is going to be to do a ping of that phone. So, we get in touch with the phone company, and we determine that the phone is pinging right inside the home.

Yeardley: So, Ryan, how long does that take, though? That doesn’t happen instantly, does it? A ping on a phone?

Ryan: No, that was something that was really started in the works before we even got landline. That can take about 30 minutes to an hour, sometimes even more. There’s always exigency. You can list when you get with the phone company, there’s emergency contacts for law enforcement only, and those are the contacts that we use when we have an incident like this.

Yeardley: Right. So, you anticipated that you might have to locate Marcel by his phone and therefore set those wheels in motion before you actually had to use the ping. Is that so?

Ryan: Yes. So, when you’re on the negotiations team, we have a team of 14 negotiators, and there’s only one person on the phone and one coach. All of the rest are doing all sorts of different ancillary tasks, such as running intelligence, pulling pings of phones, doing location histories, getting all of that data and information. They’re almost like the brains feeding this operation and giving the information to our command staff.

Yeardley: That’s really interesting.

Ryan: So, I would say within the first 20 minutes, we determine that Marcel is not being honest, but we’re communicating with him. He’s talking to us. And before we called him out of his location, we ask him, “Well, since you’ve left your home, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what happened tonight?” And he’s pretty quick to say, “I don’t want to talk about it.” So, after about that first 20 to 30 minutes or so, once we gain information that he is inside the home, that’s really when we start addressing, “Hey, Marcel, listen, the gigs up. We know you’re inside, what’s really going on, and how can we resolve this issue.” Simultaneously, as that’s happening, we’re also getting phone calls in from other family members that are concerned about Marcel.

So, while he’s on the phone with us, he’s also posting things on Facebook saying, “I love you all, Take care of one another.” He’s being very ominous and depressive-type statements. And so, people are calling Marcel and he’s not answering, or he’s telling them that he’s on the phone with police. And so, they’re contacting our agency to say, “Hey, I have a loved one that I believe is suicidal.” They know nothing about the shooting. They know nothing about what led up to this. They’re just reaching out to us to do a welfare check on Marcel, knowing that he’s suicidal.

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[Break 2]

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So, as we go through the negotiation, Marcel, he does come off the story. We don’t really confront him as to why he lied. We know why he lied. We understand. We’re not going to badger him on that. So, we’re trying to resolve this issue. We pretty quickly address, you know, “Hey, Marcel, we need you to come out.” Of course, you know, most people aren’t going to “Oh, okay, sure, yeah. Let me come right out.”

Yeardley: I hadn’t thought of that.

Ryan: So, Marcel has no plans at this point of coming out, and we have a negotiator at the hospital who’s with Chloe. So, Chloe is awake and alert, and she’s able to provide somewhat of a minimal statement to us. So, one of our negotiators gets a recorded message from Chloe. In the realm of negotiations, we refer to that as a TPI, a third-party intermediary. So, we get this TPI, which is a voice message of Chloe, and basically, she says, “Hey, Marcel, listen, I’m okay. I’m hurt, but I’m okay. I’m going to survive. I love you. I just want you to come out. Come out to the police. Be cooperative.” So, we play that message for Marcel in hopes that it will disarm him, lower his emotions a little bit, and get him to come out to us.

This is where his first demand comes in place. So, after hears the message, Marcel quickly says, “I want to talk to Chloe on the phone.” Of course, we’re not going to allow that to happen. We already know the risk of suicide is high.

Yeardley: The reason that you don’t want Marcel to talk to Chloe is you don’t want it to be, for instance, a final goodbye, and then he ends up taking his own life. Is that the thought process behind that?

Ryan: You hit the nail on the head. And the fact that he is so insistent on talking to Chloe, number one, we’re the ones in control, right? So, we’re not going to put somebody who we can’t control on the phone with Marcel, but at the same time, we know that his intentions are most likely to get Chloe on the phone, say his final goodbye, and end his life, most likely with Chloe listening on the other line.

Yeardley: Oh, God. Okay.

Ryan: We tell Marcel, you know, we try to play the whole, “She can’t talk. She’s going into surgery.” And he says, “Listen, I know she can talk. She just recorded a message for me. Put her on the phone or else I’m not coming out.” So, Marcel is hanging up on us. We’re calling him on repeat. We go back and forth, and this is not a consistent conversation. Marcel is talking to other family members. He’s talking to other friends. Luckily, Chloe doesn’t have her phone on her. We had possession of Chloe’s phone, and he tried to call her numerous times. We realized we’re in a stalemate at this point. We’ve been on the phone for an extended period of time, and Marcel is very insistent. I need to speak to Chloe.

So, one of the calls that we got from family members was from a girl named Tiffany. So, Tiffany is Marcel’s stepdaughter or I should say ex-stepdaughter. So, Marcel had a prior relationship. Tiffany’s an adult at this point. And Tiffany calls us and she says, “Hey, I’m seeing a lot of ominous things on Facebook. I’m concerned that he’s suicidal.” So, we actually get Tiffany to send us a recorded message as well. So, we use a TPI from Tiffany to say, “Hey, Marcel, this is Tiffany, your stepdaughter. I love you. Please don’t do something drastic. We want you to come outside. Everything’s going to be okay.” And so, me and my partner Aaron, who is on the phone with him, we thought that this was going to be the TPI that might get him to come out, but this didn’t work.

So, we continue the conversation, and Marcel is pretty adamant, again, I want to talk to Chloe. We said, “Hey, listen, we’re not going to put Chloe on the phone because we think that you’re going to commit suicide with her on the phone.” He doesn’t admit, but he doesn’t deny. And he says “Whatever decision has been made is made, and it’s not going to make a difference.” So, in the middle of this negotiation, our command staff is doing a press conference right in the middle of this incident.

Yeardley: Why do you think, Ryan, that your agency would put out a statement before the incident was over?

Ryan: You know, I don’t know, because I’ve been a part of these incidents. I was on the team for six years, and 99% of them involved a press conference after the fact. I do not know why they did a press conference in the middle. Typically, press conferences occur after an incident is over. And as a negotiator knowing that your command staff is getting ready to go live and give some information, it can give a little bit of anxiety to the negotiators. We don’t control our command staff. We don’t know what information is about to be pushed out. So, we know, of course. What do you think Marcel’s doing? Marcel’s watching what the media’s doing. We don’t know if they’re going to put anything about, “Hey, this guy’s going to go to jail for a long time.”

So, the concern with knowing that our agency was getting ready to do a press conference was that Marcel is going to watch. And there was a little bit of angst in the negotiations room knowing that our agency was getting ready to go live.

Dave: Where’s Sawyer throughout all of this? Are you guys aware if he’s still in the house or if he’s started hopping fences out the backyard? And is he asking for his first and last month’s rent back? [Yeardley laughs]

Ryan: That’s a great question. Sawyer did come out shortly after we were on scene. One of our negotiators that’s assigned to gathering intelligence finds Sawyer. Sawyer provides a statement. Basically, I don’t know what happened. We were out with friends. This girl came over. He gives us a similar statement that Melody and Kenya gave. However, the one wrench in the whole story that Sawyer provided was, ‘Hey, by the way, I know I just moved in this house three days ago, but my father was with me, helping me move, and he’s been visiting.” So, my father, Rico, he’s inside.

Yeardley: Oh, shit.

Ryan: Yeah. Sawyer tells us, “Well, my father, Rico is not very stable. He’s not the most mobile. He uses a cane to walk. He can’t really get out of the home without assistance.” So, at this point, we don’t know if Marcel even knows that Rico’s inside. We don’t know if Rico has taken a position of cover, if he’s hiding, if he’s hurt, if he’s injured. And there is some discussion in the negotiations of, do we bring up Rico to Marcel? If we ask him about Rico, maybe he doesn’t know Rico’s inside. Is he going to now say, “Oh, somebody’s in here. Let me take Rico hostage to get more what I want. I want to talk to Chloe.” So that was a big concern and a big discussion we had.

When these incidents go tactical and the negotiations are somewhat failing, the incident commander can make certain decisions to introduce a chemical agent inside the home. Certain things to try to encourage this individual to come out but we don’t want to do that if we have an innocent victim inside the home. So, really, that played a factor on if this incident was going to go tactical or not.

Yeardley: So, just to be clear, Sawyer is out of the house, but Sawyer’s dad, Rico, is still in the house?

Ryan: That’s correct.

Yeardley: Oh, God. Okay.

Ryan: And so simultaneously during this process, we have been giving anybody who’s inside the home announcements to come out. So, we’re pretty confident Rico, if he’s inside the home, he’s heard us. He knows we’re outside. There’s no question. And maybe he is injured or doesn’t have the ability to get out. So, after a period of time, we decide we’re going to bring up Rico. So, we don’t really know where he’s at. He clearly hasn’t come out. We’re going to bring him up. There was no bad blood between Sawyer and Marcel. Surely there should be no bad blood with Rico, the roommate’s father. So, we say, you know what? Let’s bring him up and ask Marcel. Marcel pretty much dismisses and says, “Listen, you’re wasting your time talking about Rico. Rico’s fine.”

The way he talked about Rico. We didn’t know if he murdered Rico. He didn’t say he’s alive and well. I see him. He just said, “Listen, you’re wasting your time asking questions about Rico. He’s fine. I want to talk to Chloe.” We asked, “Are you with Rico? Do you see Rico? Can you put him on the phone? Can we talk to him? Can we have proof of life?” You know, something of that sort? And Marcel is very adamant. You’re wasting your time. I don’t want to talk about Rico. Rico’s fine. Well, to our surprise, after a couple hours of this incident, Rico just walks out. Out of nowhere, he just stumbles out, it kind of surprised our SWAT team. They didn’t know if our bad guy was coming out with a gun. But this older gentleman comes walking out of the house.

Dave: This is a cluster.

Ryan: This is a mess. I would agree. I would say, though, at this point, with Rico coming out, we were very confident at this point, everybody’s out of the home, and now all is left is Marcel. So, our command staff is getting a little antsy, saying, “Hey, we want this thing to come to a resolve. We’ve been out here for several hours.” So, we tell Marcel “We are not putting Chloe on the phone. You can stop asking. There’s nothing left to talk about in regards to that demand that you have.” Now, we did have some semblance of Marcel indicating that he would come out. What Marcel did was he was barricading himself inside his bedroom. So, he was indicating, you know, “Okay, well, if I did come out, what would that look like?” And we talked about an exit strategy.

We were walking him through which doorway we wanted him to come through. Marcel responded, “Well, there’s only one door to go through.” At the time, I didn’t really understand it, but that was a really telling statement.

[]

[Break 3]

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So, when we do risk assessments, really, this whole time, Marcel’s risk assessment for suicide has been very high. And we ask him, “Marcel, how do you see this ending?” Well, now his assessment started to go down probably to a medium level, because he starts talking about, “Well, you know what? I’ve been in communication with an attorney.” He claims that in between those calls that we’ve had, he’s been speaking to an attorney. Well, that’s positive news for us, because now he’s thinking of the future. How am I going to get through this? How am I going to survive a shooting investigation and criminal trial? What am I going to do?

So, we saw this as a good thing, and so we ask him, what’s your attorney’s name? We’ll try to get in touch with your attorney right now. Well, Marcel does not give us that information. But to our surprise, there is an attorney who shows up on scene and says, “I am representing the gentleman who’s inside.” [laughs]

Yeardley: Okay.

Dan: It’s turning into a movie.

Yeardley: That seems really unusual.

Ryan: This was very unusual. I’ve never had an attorney show up to an active scene, especially something to this degree. But Marcel, he wasn’t lying. He was talking to an attorney. So, the attorney is meeting with one of our negotiators outside. And we have never done this in the history of our team. We don’t put other people on the phone. Especially we already know we’re not putting Chloe on the phone. But you know what? Marcel wants to talk to the attorney. Let’s put him on, let’s see if he can get this guy out.

Yeardley: Let’s see if this attorney can get Marcel out of the house.

Ryan: Yeah.

Dave: I love it, actually. I mean, you can’t say you denied this guy his right to speak to an attorney. If something goes sideways, you can say, “Hey, the defense attorney is actually talking to him when his client went sideways, or whatever.” It’s a low-risk thing for the police to do this. It’s a high-risk thing to do, Chloe or a family member on the phone.

Dan: Other consideration is are these statements that Marcel makes while he’s on the phone with his attorney, because you guys are recording everything. Are those admissible in court?

Ryan: I would say you couldn’t use those against him. Even though we have them and we know what they’re talking about, there’s no way we would be able to use those. Although, he has given us enough. He apologizes for what he did to Chloe, although he doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t come out and say, “I shot her” and this and that, but he is sorry that he hurt her. So, he makes several incriminating statements throughout the course of the negotiation. And Dave, we saw it the same way as you did. Putting the attorney on the phone is a low risk. What do we have to lose? And in fact, if this guy can talk some sense into him and get him to come out, we have a win-win situation.

Because really our goal in any incident that we go to is the preservation of life. You know, whether it’s a good guy, bad guy, hostage taker, hostage, preservation of life is our number one goal.

Paul: You know, as I’m sitting here listening to Ryan, what Marcel is doing is he’s demonstrating in the moment. He recognizes right from wrong. He’s showing a recognition for self-preservation. So, a defense of, oh, meth-induced psychosis or some psychotic break, sort of like the insanity type of scenario. He’s negating that by taking this action of calling his attorney and having the attorney show up on scene. I mean, it’s beautiful from a prosecution standpoint.

Yeardley: That’s fascinating.

Dave: That’s a great point.

Yeardley: Wow. Oh, Marcel, you think you’re being so Machiavellian [Paul laughs] and yet just shot yourself right in a big toe. [Paul laughs]

Ryan: So, we decide, “Let’s go ahead and do it.” So, we have the attorney there. We put the attorney on the phone, and before we put the attorney on, he mutes the phone so Marcel can’t hear. And he said, “Listen, I’m going to make some bad statements about cops. I don’t believe this. Just bear with me. I’m going to try to get this guy out.”

Yeardley: [laughs] I like that he’s trying to protect your feelings in the middle of this life and death situation.

Ryan: Yeah. So, he unmutes the phone and he says, “Listen, Marcel, I’ve represented people who have been in very similar situations. In fact, I defended a very prominent case where one of our deputies was shot about a decade ago. The attorney represented the defendant who shot one of our officers. And I didn’t know that at the time when he shows up.” So, he says, “Listen, I don’t know if you know the case, but I represented an individual who shot a deputy and I got him off. And this is nothing compared to what happened back 10 years ago. So don’t you worry. I got your back. I want you to come out and talk to me. Will game plan how we’re going to get you through this.”

Dave: He’s letting the police know I’m about to talk shit about you to Marcel. And at the same time, he’s telling Marcel, “Hey, we can get through this no problem.” So, he’s playing both sides because the defense attorney knows that we got to get this guy out.

Yeardley: Right?

Ryan: That’s accurate. Yeah, he was playing both sides letting us know, trying to stay face with us. “Hey, I’m sorry about what I’m about to say, but I think this is the only thing that I can say to get him out.” So, we get back on the phone with Marcel and we tell Marcel we’re coming to the point where we can no longer protect you. Right now, is the time to come out. You need to come out now. And if you listen to what I’m telling you, everything will be fine. But we’re running out of time. Marcel tells us on the phone, “Okay, I’m coming out.” So, he says, “You’re going to have to give me a few minutes. I’m barricaded in here. I’m coming out.”

So, me and Aaron are looking at each other. We’re already fist bumping a little bit, you know, oh, this is awesome. And then communication goes somewhat stagnant. All of a sudden, we’re going through like 5, 10 minutes of no communication. We get him back on “Hey, I’m sorry, I’m coming out, I’m coming out. Give me a minute.” We go through this song and dance for close to probably 45 minutes. And at this point, our command is not happy. We feel like we’re being played. It doesn’t take 45 minutes to get yourself out of this house. He is just wasting time. So, our command staff makes the decision. We’re going to give Marcel a little incentive to get out of the house a little bit faster.

So, they start raking windows and putting some chemical agent inside the home and some distractionary devices that are not quiet makes the whole house shake so much so that all the windows in the home blow out. Sliding glass doors are now shattered. All of the windows in the home are now broken, and several chemical agents have been placed inside the home. So, after we start going a little bit more tactical now the communication is over. We have had no communication with Marcel. We’ve called on repeat and in fact, at one point it seems that the phone is on, but we hear nothing in the background. So, now we’re to the point where we’re going to send a tactical robot inside the home to give our SWAT operators some eyes before they make an entry into the home.

So, as the robot is moving through the home, they do find Marcel. Marcel is located inside his bedroom. He’s laying on top of his bed. He’s barely clothed, he’s wearing just his underwear, and he’s got several picture frames on top of him that are all pictures of his family and friends. And he has a self-inflicted gunshot wound. And Marcel was deceased at that point.

Yeardley: Oh, my God.

Dave: Oh, man.

Dan: So, nobody on the perimeter reports hearing a gunshot, but there’s a lot of other loud noise that’s occurring at the same time?

Ryan: That’s correct. Marcel knew that there was a possibility that we were getting ready to come in. We had told him things are going to get uncomfortable inside if you don’t come out. And then once those things started to occur, we believe the first moment he heard of those flashbangs and tree, he probably ended his life right then and there.

Yeardley: How long from the time that you start negotiating to the moment you discover Marcel’s taking his own life, how many hours had you been at this?

Ryan: We had been at this for over five hours. It was between the five- and six-hour mark, and Aaron and I both, when we heard over the radio that Marcel was deceased, we just were dumbfounded because he really thought the suicide risk was going down. But I will say, through the course of this negotiation and after listening to the audio, because all our negotiations are recorded, he did say several things. And he’s a very intelligent guy. Marcel is very manipulative. And over the course of several hours, we pinpoint several things that he said. I go back to when he told us, “It doesn’t matter whether you put Chloe on the phone or not, this is going to end the same way.”

When we talked about the exit strategy of we want you to come out this door, he said, there’s only one way out of this for me. And really, he was indicating suicide the whole time.

Yeardley: This is the worst conclusion. After five hours of giving it your all, how do you pack up and go home?

Ryan: Yeah, I learned a lot through this. This is the first negotiation I had and actually only negotiation I had where somebody ended their life during the course of the negotiation. We’ve had many people on our team that have the same result where they’ve tried for hours and the outcome is not what we want. But I think it goes back to we can’t forget why we do this. Words save lives. And when we were reminded of our mission and why we joined this team to begin with, we lean on each other. We lean on our brothers and sisters in law enforcement and on a negotiations team. I lean on my family, my wife. This one stung. This one stung. I thought were leading into a positive outcome on this one.

And it just goes to show you that there’s a cost to compassion. We say that on our team, there is a cost associated with trying to negotiate with people in crisis. And sometimes it doesn’t always end the way you want. So, it took a little while, but we worked through it. I had to understand that that decision that Marcel made, that was his decision. It had nothing to do with what we said or what we didn’t say. That was his decision the whole time.

Dave: I’m just glad that Marcel didn’t force the hand of the police to shoot him, that there’s not a deputy out there who’s living with this. What if? What could I have done differently?

Ryan: Yeah, that would have been worse if he did force our hand, which we see that. We see that through our agency, through the nation. Suicide by cop is a real thing. So, I agree with you, Dave.

Dan: I think Marcel’s last manipulative act was to– I think what he’s trying to do when he’s taken his own life is he’s putting that burden, that emotional burden on Chloe, like, this is all your fault.

Ryan: Yeah. And we believe he wanted to tell her that. Marcel told us throughout the course of the conversation that he loved Chloe deeply. He was upset that the relationship wasn’t able to be worked through. He blamed her saying, “She doesn’t understand the love I have for her and how I would do anything for her.” But obviously he’s shooting at her, he’s beating her. So, it was a volatile relationship through in and throughout.

Dave: And recovery wise for. Well, Chloe, Renee, Kenya, Melody, Rico and Sawyer. I mean, they’re all impacted by this. How’s everyone faring?

Ryan: Yeah. So, there was– the ripple effect of an incident like this is great. I mean, it affects so many people. You know, both Chloe and Renee recovered. Actually, Aaron, the guy who was the primary on the phone, he has put a presentation together on this case and has gone around the country sharing the lessons learned throughout this incident. And he followed up on an interview with Renee, and so he includes that in part of his presentation. And actually, Renee comments that she believes that Chloe wanted to go there, that she didn’t really have belongings to pick up, that she just wanted to see what was Marcel doing at 5 in the morning. So, she was under the assumption that Chloe really didn’t have anything to pick up to begin with.

Dave: Like checking on the house, seeing if there’s another car in the driveway type thing.

Ryan: Yeah.

Yeardley: Wow.

Ryan: Can I tell you something funny?

Yeardley: Yeah.

Dave: Yes.

Dan: Please do. [laughs]

Ryan: So, Aaron is on the side. He does some real estate photography. And so, he looked up this listing afterwards. This home is completely destroyed. All the windows are broken. The door was damaged. The door was blown off when they had to introduce a robot inside the home. So, he looked back at the listing. I don’t know. Several months after this incident occurred, and some of the things that were on Zillow was this beautiful new door welcomes you to this home-

[laughter]

-complete with new insulated windows and new doors, even a master suite, new slider to the lanai. They forgot to put in there, that it was blasted out by the police.

Yeardley: So, it’s been five years. I would hazard guess why this case sticks with you, but I would never want to speak for you. What about this one? Why this one today?

Ryan: This was really the first negotiation that I was a part of where somebody ended their life and we weren’t successful. So, to be a part of this one, I’ve been on scene of others, but this one where I was a little bit more invested, where I was literally trying to communicate through Aaron the things that Aaron said. Half of what Aaron said were things that he thought of. Half of the things he said were things that I wrote to him to recommend he say. So, I think you just become vested when you get on the phone with somebody, you just so badly want to have them come out. And when we didn’t have that successful outcome, I’ll never forget this incident.

Yeardley: Sure. And what kind of advice do you give to other negotiators who are going through this for the first time as well?

Ryan: I think the takeaway that I want everybody to know from this story is that compassion has a cost, but it’s always a cost worth paying. We have been successful in other areas, and no matter what, we’re always going to try. There’s always going to be another call. Our phone is always on and so we’re never going to give up hope. We’re never going to stop trying. So, you have to remind yourself of the mission of why you got into this to begin with.

Yeardley: That’s the best answer.

Dan: I think there’s this perception of the police that the win is that Marcel ended his life, and that is not the win for us ever.

Ryan: Never.

Dan: Everybody wanted Marcel to walk out that door, and yeah, he’s got to face some consequences. But that’s the win.

Ryan: Yeah.

Yeardley: Ryan, thank you so much for bringing that to us today. It’s just the most extraordinary, unusually stressful job that really requires the people who do it the right way to consider it a calling. Thank you so much.

[music]

Dave: Nice work, Ryan.

Dan: Good work.

Ryan: Oh, well, thank you.

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 and Erin Phelps. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor. Gary Scott is our executive producer, and Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell. And our social media maven is Monika Scott. It would make our day if you became a member of our Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @smalltowndicks, we love hearing from you.

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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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