Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam. It’s Yeardley,how are you guys? I hope you’re all well. I’m so very happy you’re here with me. We have such an interesting case for you today. It’s a murder, and the topline motive is as old as time. And yet I still could not close the gap between the regular person the suspect was on most days and how they decided that murder was the best and only way to achieve their preferred outcome.

But it’s not actually law enforcement’s job to prove why someone commits murder. Though that question is always top of mind for people on my side of the table. It’s law enforcement’s job to follow the evidence that will lead to the truth and get justice for the victims. That means teasing apart the lies, making decision after decision on the fly, and doing their level best not to let anything fall through the cracks.

We have a new guest on the microphone today, retired detective, Aaron. He’s great. You’re going to love him. He’s so very thorough, meticulous, honest and thoughtful. As the A team says, Aaron is squared away. But he’s also only one man with a million puzzle pieces to assemble. And, well, shit happens. Luckily for victims and their families, murderers rarely commit the perfect crime. And cops like Aaron have no off switch. Here is “Dead weight.”

[music]

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: Hey there.

Yeardley: Hey there, husband.

Dan: Hi.

Yeardley: Not in the same room or even in the same house. [laughs] We have Detective Dave.

Dave: Hello.

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

Paul: Hey, you. How’s it going?

Yeardley: Hey, you. It’s so good. I’m so happy to have you all on my screen. Always makes my day. And Small Town Fam, we are so pleased to welcome a new guest to the podcast, retired Detective Aaron.

Detective Aaron: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Yeardley: Thank you for joining us today, Aaron. We’re super excited, which is always a weird thing to say because honestly, the things people bring us, the things they tell us are the worst stuff like the worst. But the people who go to the mat like you to solve these crimes and get justice for the victims, that’s what’s exciting and gratifying and humbling to meet, so thank you for being here with us today.

Detective Aaron: You are very welcome. Thanks for having me.

Yeardley: So, Aaron, before we get started, we’d love to know a little bit about your– A little thumbnail sketch of your law enforcement career. Tell us about you.

Detective Aaron: Totally. Yeah. So born and raised in Alaska. Went on my first ride along when I was 8 years old.

Yeardley: Wow.

Detective Aaron: Started with an explorer post at 13. 13 to 17, had about 4000 hours in uniform doing stuff that didn’t make me cool with my peers then–

Yeardley: [laughs] Like, what kind of stuff?

Detective Aaron: Well, explorer stuff, law enforcement stuff. They’re going to parties on the weekends and I’m getting dressed up in a mini police uniform and going out riding a police car.

Yeardley: Is it a little bit like being a hall monitor at school?

Detective Aaron: It kind of is, yeah. You don’t get invited to the parties.

Yeardley: Yeah.

[laughter]

Detective Aaron: You don’t get invited. And if you don’t get to stay long. But I was always a hit whenever the cops would show up and I knew them then that’s when I was the most popular guy at the party. [Yeardley laughs] So, then I went on to Arizona, got a degree in Criminal Justice. Back to Alaska, was a police officer in Alaska for about nine years and then transferred in 2010. Did a lateral down to Gresham, Oregon, where I was a police officer from 2010 to 2023. And the last 10 or 11 11 years I spent as a homicide child abuse detective.

Yeardley: What’s a lateral? You said you did a lateral.

Detective Aaron: Yeah. So, a lateral. Each agency is separate. Each agency is different. But I was a police officer in Alaska, and I took that experience and was able to come in as a police officer, trained police officer for my agency here in the Portland, Oregon metro area. And if you guys don’t know, Gresham is the first layer outside of the city of Portland, so we have a lot of that big city that metropolitan issues or a small town with metropolitan issues.

Dave: Lateral transfers are really attractive to police departments also because you’re not getting a baby cop who has no training and you don’t know if they’re going to make it through the field training process.

Yeardley: That’s so interesting. If you change jurisdictions or locations for an agency, do you often have to start back at the bottom?

Detective Aaron: You do. Yeah, you start back at the bottom. The guy that doesn’t have a day of police work that starts the day before you, he now has seniority on you.

Yeardley: Oh, wow.

Detective Aaron: So all of your experience, your nine years, 10 years, 20 years, whatever it may be, that really on day one means nothing, because they don’t really know who you are. Now over time, while he may be senior to you as far as the timeline of hiring, you’re going to surpass him down the road when you start bringing your skills to the table and being a productive member of that agency, so that’s the way that it works. But it doesn’t make it easy to swallow the fact that the guy, you know, brand new on the job and his boots aren’t even broken in yet, he’s got seniority over you. That’s a tough thing to swallow.

Yeardley: I bet.

Dave: The translation for seniority is you get to pick shifts based on seniority. So, the lower on the totem pole, the more likely you’re going to get the crap shift.

Detective Aaron: Totally.

Yeardley: [laughs] Gee. Okay. Well, Aaron, please tell us how this case came to you.

Detective Aaron: Sure. Well, this case came to me on June 10th, 2016. Our agency has short-term detectives and long-term detectives. A short-term detective is somebody who comes in, assists, and is kind of testing the waters in the detective world. Then you have to apply for that position as a long-term detective. And once you’re there, you can stay there the remainder of your career if you wish.

Well, I had just become a long-term detective, so that meant my job was to start leading homicides and leading these investigations. And I had been involved in a lot of them prior to this. But this case was the first case that I got assigned that I was the lead detective in it. So, there was a lot of pressure, but looking back, it was a great experience for me.

So on June 10, 2016, at about 3 o’clock in the morning, I’m fast asleep and my phone rings and it says, “We’ve had a serious assault at an apartment complex in our city. About a mile from the police department is where the complex is located. We don’t know if the female victim is going to make it or survive the assault or not. She’s on her way to the hospital and patrol is securing the scene.” So that is the information that I had when I left my house. I’ve got about a 30 to 40-minute response time from my house to the city.

So, I got to the city, went to the apartment complex, and I arrived there about 03:45 in the morning. And when I get to this apartment complex, the apartment complex is a large multi building complex that sits right in the heart of our city. Imagine a U-shape of two-story buildings, each housing about 100 apartments. And then there’s a single building that kind of sits off to the side with another 100 apartments in it.

Dave: I’m wondering if this is an apartment complex that gets a lot of police attention or is it one of those that’s kind of quiet.

Detective Aaron: This apartment complex, it’s your everyday apartment complex where she was at, did not get a lot of police attention, did not generate a lot of police calls, and was right in the heart of everything downtown.

So, the crime scene was located on the ground floor of one of the center buildings. And when I arrived, what I learned was that at about 03:00, AM a 911 call had come in from inside the apartment. And it was a female who said she had been stabbed. And as the dispatcher was talking to the woman, they could hear her slowly dying on the phone. And ultimately went into agonal breathing.

Yeardley: Oh geez.

Detective Aaron: So agonal breathing, it’s those last final breaths, it’s gurgling, you can tell that things are going south, that’s agonal breathing. So, when they got inside the apartment, they found that the victim was lying in the middle of the floor bleeding out, and she was lying on top of her cell phone.

The victim in this case is named Sarah. It’s important to note she’s about 360 pounds and she was laying there on the floor. And Sarah’s in bad shape. She’d been stabbed over 60 times, between 60 and 70 times.

Yeardley: Holy shit.

Detective Aaron: And these lacerations, these stab wounds were all areas of her body to her chest, to her back. Whoever the killer was attempted to decapitate her. And she had a 360-degree cut around the neck. Her face was cut deep from ear to corner of the mouth. This was a very brutal attack. The other thing that we noticed is on her chest, she had a Roman numeral carved into her chest over her left breast. So, we didn’t know if that was a calling card or what that was, but there was definitely an intentional number carved into her chest. The paramedics come in, they get her and they rush her off to the hospital. So, then the police officers realize that this is potentially a homicide scene, probably a homicide scene, and they go ahead and secure the scene.

So when I looked at the crime scene, like I said, this is a ground level unit. I go in through the front door. The first thing I see is, you know paramedics will carry these light blue baby blankets or covers that they put on their patients. And there’s one of those down across the linoleum floor. And I’m told that there’s latent footprint evidence or partial footprint impressions in blood that’s on that linoleum. And they did that.When the first officers came into the front door, they noticed the impressions, they covered it up with this wrap to protect the scene and preserve the scene, and they redirected everybody to the back door.

Well, the back door of the apartment is a sliding door enclosed by a fence, a wooden fence, six-foot wooden fence. They ripped the fence down and they used that back door to get in and out of that apartment. And this was all done upon that initial response.

This apartment is a single bedroom apartment. However, the living room area has been converted to a bedroom and there’s a fold out couch that is now the main bed where the victim sleeps. So, the victim Sarah was asleep on the couch. There’s a large blood spot to the right side of that bed, which is between the bed and that back door, that sliding door. There’s a large blood spot on the floor. There’s blood spatter throughout.

Paul: Hey Aaron, just to clarify, when you say there’s multiple large blood spots, are these pooled sources of blood or more like a dripped blood at a certain location?

Detective Aaron: Yeah, Paul, that’s a great question. So, these are– The ones that I’m talking about are pools of blood. These are large areas of blood saturation where the victim has laid there. And blood spatter evidence or the blood evidence is going to show that she spent a considerable amount of time in that position bleeding out.

Paul: Got it.

Detective Aaron: The bedroom in this apartment is obviously a child’s bedroom, a little girl’s bedroom. There’s toys, there’s a little girl’s bedding, etc. And the window from that bedroom goes out onto the backyard of this apartment complex. So, when I walked around the back of this apartment complex or this apartment crime scene, I noticed that the window into that child’s bedroom, there was an air conditioning unit that had been in the window. Well, that air conditioning unit had been removed and was dangling by its cord outside of the building. And then on the ground just below that window was a cinder block stood up on end.

So, my initial analysis, without getting too far into it, is the rear window of the child’s bedroom is likely the point of entry. The cinder block is an item of opportunity, probably located somewhere on the property to use as a ladder– makeshift ladder to elevate somebody, get into that elevated window. And the air conditioning unit was removed in order to gain access. So that’s what we’re looking at.

It’s about 04:00 AM now. At about 04:00 AM, I get a phone call that says the victim has died at the hospital. So, this is now a murder investigation and I’m assigned as the lead detective on it.

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Break 1

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So, we wrote a warrant. And when we go back into that crime scene, here’s what we learn and determine based on the evidence and the blood spatter, it looks like entry was made from the child’s bedroom. The suspect came in through the child’s bedroom into the living room area where the fight occurred and the initial assault occurred. The initial assault occurred between the right side of the bed and that sliding door. It looks like the victim was laying on her back during most of this fighting. Based on where the majority of the wounds on the victim was.

Paul: And did Sarah have defensive injuries? Her hands, her forearms, do they have incisive wounds?

Detective Aaron: They do, yeah. Based on the evidence of what we saw with the victim being that 360 pounds, the victim quickly made her way to the floor and did most of the fighting from her back. Her hands had lacerations, all defensive wounds all over her hands. The victim was wearing a ring. That ring had a glob of hair hanging out of it. There was actually 17 different hairs connected to her ring that showed that there was an active fight going on and she was trying to defend herself.

Where the victim had been laying in the saturated pool of blood, there was a pocket knife. The pocket knife had about a one and a half, two-inch blade. It was a very unique looking pocket knife. Then we’re able to see it looks like drag marks and swipe patterns, blood swipe patterns from that first area of saturation to a second area of saturation closer to the front door. So, it appears that the victim is trying to get herself from the initial attack to that front door.

Well, right where that second area of saturation is, is the threshold between the carpeted area of the living room and the linoleum portion of the kitchen. Now, in that area, there was hand prints of blood on the wall between zero and about 14 inches. So, these are swiping. So, this tells me the victim is at ground level, reaching for the wall, trying to grab and swiping these blood prints, these handprints across the wall.

Also, at that area of saturation, there were some 90-degree blood drops. And when I say that these blood drops are perfectly round, and we get that because the blood in this case, say, dripping off of a knife or a person, if they’re standing there completely still, the blood drops straight down and makes a perfect circle on the ground.

On the floor, at that transition between the carpet and the linoleum were three kitchen butcher knives. Two of them were bloody, one of them was not. So that’s what I’m looking at. I’m looking at the second area of saturation. I’ve got a disturbance that occurred on the floor, blood swipe marks on the wall up to 14 inches. Three knives, two are bloody. And I’ve got some 90-degree blood drops.

In my mind, I can say that the attack occurred. The suspect stood there, dripping blood straight down, looking onto the victim, and then left. And we know that not only based on the evidence there, but those latent blood footprints on the floor, they went from the living room into the kitchen to where the knife block is located, from the knife block back to the second area of saturation, and then out the front door. So, we knew that the butcher knives came from that apartment. They were weapons of opportunity that the suspect did not bring with but found at scene and used.

Paul: So, Aaron, to clarify, you know just sort of the sequence of events, in my mind, it appears that the offender and Sarah get into the initial interactions between the bed and that rear door. That’s where you have that pool of blood. And the offender appears to have brought a small pocket knife with him. And then the offender possibly leaves the victim to go get the bigger knives out of the kitchen. And the victim herself moves to the secondary location, where now the offender is armed with the larger kitchen knives, the victim’s own knives, Sarah’s own knives, and ends up inflicting probably more damaging wounds at that location and then the offender leaves. Is that correct?

Detective Aaron: That is exactly correct, yes. That is the order of events. And that’s what we put together with the crime scene. The victim from that second area of saturation actually had to crawl back about half the distance back towards that sliding door, so deeper into the apartment. That’s where her cell phone was located, where she was able to call 911 from her cell phone. And that is where she was found when the patrol officers came in.

Dan: Do you have blood evidence leading out the front door, outside the apartment?

Detective Aaron: We have blood evidence leading up to the front door, interior, up to the front door. And we’re going to find that we have no blood evidence outside of the apartment.

Dan: Gotcha.

Paul: Many investigators don’t have the experience or the expertise to interpret the blood patterns. And Aaron is doing a great job of being able to describe these blood patterns and he’s drawn the correct conclusion.

Detective Aaron: And Paul, you brought up a great point there that evidence shows that– And there’s cast off evidence, cast off blood spatter evidence above the bed, above that pullout couch, on the wall. So that tells us the initial assault occurred in the bed. Victim gets out of the bed, goes to the floor, makes her way to the threshold near the kitchen, living room area, and then back to her cell phone. That is the path of incidents and assaults that took place through our crime scene analysis.

So, as I’m at this crime scene, there’s a couple things that I’ve got going on. The victim is dead. But the other thing, we have a missing child. We have this bedroom that is a child’s bedroom, and we have no kid. We don’t know anything about the kid. There’s no evidence that another person lives in the house other than the mother and the child. So, we partnered with our DHS partners, were able to identify that the child in this case, she has a father named Matt. And Matt lives in another part of Portland. So, we sent a team of detectives over to Matt’s house to find out if he had custody of the child and had the child that night. When they contacted Matt and his wife Angela, thankfully, we were able to learn that the missing child was actually there. The child was 8 years old at the time of this incident and was staying with dad for the weekend as part of a prearranged custody agreement.

So, we started talking to Matt and Angela at their apartment and they agreed to come to the police department and talk. But while initially on scene, they said, “We collectively have been in a custody court battle with the victim, Sarah. We have recently lost the custody court battle with Sarah, and we don’t like Sarah. We don’t know who would have wanted to hurt her. Surely wasn’t us, but we will come talk to you about it.”

So, Matt and Angela said they needed to arrange some childcare before they could come to the police department. As our detectives were leaving, one of our detectives looked over into the front seat of their little Mazda car and saw what he described as a perfectly round dot of dried either blood or maybe taco sauce. He said he didn’t know what it was. And he asked me, he said, “You know do you want me to stay on the car? Do you want me to seize it?” And we like to think we always make the right decisions, but sometimes we don’t. And in this case, I said, “It’s so small, they’ll probably never notice it. If they come down, we’ll deal with it later and just have them come to the PD, move on.”

Dave: You don’t want them to be hinked up on their way. And now they get to the PD and their lawyer up within two minutes of being read Miranda.

Detective Aaron: Yeah, Dave, that is exactly right. So, thank you for justifying why I made that piss-poor decision. I appreciate you.

[laughter]

Dave: I had a feeling, I was like, I understand the decision.

Detective Aaron: Yeah. Bail this guy out. Yeah, so—[Yeardley laughs]

Dave: Some defense attorney’s going to call you out later on. That would have been–

Detective Aaron: Yeah, you get to bail me out on something else here in a second too.

[laughter]

Detective Aaron: So, just wait for it. You’ll see, it’ll be big red flags. So, I’ve got a contingency of people processing the crime scene. I have Matt and Angela coming down to the police department to do an interview with detectives, initial interview. And I’ve got a team of people watching Matt and Angela’s house because I’m not sure that they’re not involved at this point. So, we just have a team of people to make sure nothing hinky is going on over there. We have the medical examiner who has taken possession of our victim.

And in this case, we had the Oregon State Police crime lab who was processing our crime scene for us. And that’s not normal. Typically, we have our own people process it, but because our own people were unavailable and are on other cases, we had Oregon State Police come in. And this is no disrespect to Oregon State Police, they are great scientists, but they don’t look at a crime scene the same way we as trained investigators do. They want to find probative scientific evidence to prove something, but that sometimes doesn’t align with the way detectives think on how to recreate this crime scene, and what was the process of events that got us from A to B?

Yeardley: They needed a Paul Holes.

[laughter]

Detective Aaron: [laughter] Yeah. So, all of that to say, I had some difficulties at the crime scene, I need to continue to deal with that drew my attention away. So now Matt and Angela come to the police department for an interview. They essentially say the same thing, “We know nothing. We don’t like her. It’s really sad somebody tried to hurt her. And, that’s really all we have to say. We’re not invoking. We just don’t really want to talk to you anymore today.” So, we let them go because we needed to keep them friendly.

Well, a little while later, we needed to bring them back. And Matt and Angela agreed to come back for more questioning. Now we interview Matt separately. So, I go into the interview with Matt, confront Matt a little bit just to see what his temperature is. He says, “Hey, if you had enough to arrest me, you would arrest me. So, you don’t have shit on me, and I’m leaving.”

Yeardley: I just want to say, “if you had enough on me, you would have already arrested me,” is not the same as saying, “I didn’t do this and you guys are barking up the wrong tree.” It’s not a denial. It’s “You haven’t done your job well enough and I’m still out here.” I just think that’s so weird in such a giveaway.

Detective Aaron: Yeah, Yeardley,that is exactly right. And that’s what I took it as that night. Matt was cocky. He was bolstering. He’s saying, “You don’t have enough.”

Dave: It’s also how Hollywood influences life. Like life imitates art. The amount of times you hear like Hollywood type lines in an interview where someone’s like, “If you had evidence, you would have arrested me already. I’m leaving.” The lines that you hear repeatedly in movies, we also hear in the interview room.

Yeardley: You’re welcome.

Dave: Thank you.

Detective Aaron: So, this is the second mistake that I made that you can bail me out on, is instead of keeping the 30,000-foot view and watching all components of the investigation and all the interviews so I could keep track of everything, I wanted to get in and interview Matt because Matt’s our suspect. And, I’m excited and I’m ready to go, and by all means, he’s our guy. But the one thing that I missed is in the neighboring room, Angela was being interviewed as well. And if anybody sat interview room, these are all red flags that somebody should have noticed, Angela is covered in a blanket. She’s got it draped over her head, and she’s got it tucked down around her arms and around her chest. So, she looks like she’s wearing this hooded thing.

She has literally turned 180 degrees away from the interviewer. She’s facing the wall, and her long red hair is folded down across the front of her face. And nobody corrected this in the interview room. They just continued to talk to the back of her head and the side of her head. Had I been at a 30,000-foot view and not wanting to be boots on the ground, I would have seen this and been like, “Holy shit, let’s direct our attention over here.” But it didn’t happen. I was unaware of this until later. And Matt and Angela leave the police department that second time.

So, then Matt ends up going to the movies with a group of friends. Now, when Matt was coming and going from the police department, he’s a 30-year-old male. Matt was walking with a cane, fibromyalgia, can barely move, crying in pain in every step. And we send a surveillance team with him to go see Dungeons & Dragons at the movie theater. And he’s walking around the movie theater just fine. There’s no cane, there’s no pain. I mean, it’s a miraculous healing. It was amazing. So, he’s walking around that movie theater doing his thing.

Now we go back to the crime scene and at that crime scene we find these boot impressions that are all over the floor, are size 9.5. And they say Airwalk. And we know that because in the stamp on them it says 9.5 Airwalk. Well, when we say Airwalk, we immediately think, at least I do, of like a skateboard shoe. So again, drawing conclusions, Paul, we can’t draw conclusions, but that’s what I did. I’m looking for a skateboard shoe. So, Matt and Angela agree to allow us to search their phones and they agree to allow us to search their apartment. And we go back and there’s not a single pair of skateboard shoes anywhere in that apartment. What there is, is blood all over the place.

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Break 2

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Detective Aaron: So, we swab all of the blood from all over Angela and Matt’s house. We send it all off to the lab. When we ask Angela about it, she says, “I cut myself on a glass bottle and I dripped blood all over the place. And this is all going to be my blood that you’re finding, nobody else’s blood.” Okay, so, we store that away in the back of our mind and we store away the fact that we don’t have any size 9.5 Airwalk skateboard shoes.

So, we start looking through their phones. We look through their phones, we find that in the phones about six months earlier, Angela had sent Matt a picture of a pair of boots. And they were on this very unique carpeted square. You could tell they were inside of a shoe store somewhere. And Matt says, “Yep, I like those. Get them.” So, this is back and forth in text messages. So, knowing that Airwalk is sold by Payless Shoes, we went to Payless Shoes and we said, “Hey, can you tell me anything about these boots?” And the lady’s like, “Yeah, they’re Airwalk Myra’s. And in fact, I can tell you that that store is our super center because they’re the only ones that didn’t get the new carpet during the remodel. So that picture was taken at this store.”

Yeardley: That’s amazing.

Detective Aaron: That’s a clue. [Yeardley laughs]. So, we go to that store, and the lady is like, “Yep, that’s the Airwalks.” She takes our detective to the Myra boots, and he finds the exact carpet squares where this picture was taken. So, then the detective said, “Can you tell me on this date and time if these were purchased?” “Yep, it’s purchased with this credit card number.” Well, as luck would have it, that credit card number comes back to Angela. So, we now have Angela purchasing a size 9.5 Myra boot on this date and time. But we haven’t been able to tie the 9.5 Myra to that size 9.5 sole impression on the floor. So, we take that sole impression, we send it off to sole impression scientists who say, “We know all these sole impressions.” And they say, as luck would have it, that was used by Airwalk for a very limited run, specifically on their Airwalk Myra boots. But it didn’t do good in cold weather or under icy conditions, so, they discontinued the use after a three-month trial period or whatever it was.So now we have the boot sold to Angela, size 9.5, with this unique sole tread pattern. So now things are looking good for us.

Yeardley: Are these boots men’s boots or women’s boots?

Detective Aaron: These are women’s boots.

Yeardley: Women’s. Okay.

Detective Aaron: Yep, these are women’s boots. They look UGGs, if you’re familiar with UGGs. They have kind of that sheepskin with the fur collar on the top.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Detective Aaron: That’s what they look like. They’re a cheap UGG knockoff is what they are.

Paul: Yeah. With impression evidence, 99% of the time, when you have impressions at a crime scene, it ends up leading nowhere. Because, let’s say, the sole pattern, it’s so common. It doesn’t narrow down potentially to where you have the ability to work the leads. Here in this particular case, it’s like the equivalent of the O.J. Simpson case.

Dan: I was just going to say, I’ve got an extra pair of 18 Bruno Mollies.

Paul: Exactly. And only 50 pairs that were ever made. This is beautiful. Sometimes people Just kind of pooh-pooh impression evidence and never follow it through. But here now, Aaron is getting an awesome lead on the case because he took the steps to follow the impression evidence.

Yeardley: Yeah. You never know, maybe it is a limited edition. And on a carpet that didn’t get replaced, etc., etc., that’s fantastic.

Detective Aaron: Yeah. Another thing that we should consider when you start talking about shoe prints is there’s class characteristics and individual characteristics. Every shoe print that comes off on that Airwalk Myra boot is going to have the same class characteristics. They all look the same, they have the same tread pattern. It’s just the way that boot is designed. But now you work into individual characteristics. So, say somebody takes that boot and walks across a shard of glass and cuts a line in the bottom of that boot. Now you have that unique line that says there’s only one boot in the world that’s going to make that impression. Much like a fingerprint on a human being. It’s an individual characteristic that identifies that piece of evidence.

So when we were looking at these stamped impressions, we could see individual characteristics and it might be that cut from a piece of glass or it could just be the wear pattern because the person walks on the outside of their foot and they rub down that outside edge. And so now you know that is a individual characteristic. So, we know we’re looking for a pair of Airwalk Myra’s with individual characteristics on the sole. And we’ve searched Matt and Angela’s home, we can’t find them. We’ve searched the trash, we can’t find any bloody clothes, we can’t find any knives other than what was at the crime scene. So, we’re kind of striking out.

So back at the crime scene we interview neighbors and they all say the same thing. “We heard a disturbance. It started about 11 o’clock. It went till about 03:00 AM There was banging and thudding. Yes, some woman was screaming, but I just chalked it up to another apartment situation. It annoyed me so I turned the music up to drown them out. I turned my bathroom fan on so I didn’t have to hear them.”

Yeardley: Oh, my God.

Detective Aaron: Yeah, there’s about six or eight of them that are saying this. Well, that now gives us a time frame at about 11:00 PM to about 03:00 AM, so we go back and we start a CCTV canvas– CCTV closed circuit television canvas. And that means we’re literally going door to door for doorbell cameras, home surveillance cameras, business cameras, and we’re trying to initially see the overall area, but then if we find a suspect vehicle, we start backtracking it and we start figuring out where it comes and goes from.

Well, in this case, we did a CCTV canvas around the initial crime scene, but then we also went to Matt and Angela’s house, and as luck would have it, the neighbor across the street from Matt and Angela’s house had a camera. So, we take a look at that, and it shows that at about 10:30, Matt and Angela’s car, that same silver Mazda with the halo of blood or taco sauce, it leaves the house at about 10.30 PM. We CCTV it all the way to the crime scene. It leaves the crime scene at 03:00 AM and it takes a different route all the way home. And we park it in the driveway.

Well, when we park it in the driveway, it pulls up with no lights on. It pulls up darked out, pulls up into the driveway. And that’s what we know. Well, remember Matt and Angela? They said they didn’t leave the house. They said they stayed in bed the whole time. So, we bring them back in for another interview, and at this time, they’re getting fed up with interviews. And Angela says, “Look, I got up at 03:00 AM and I was sick. The dog need out and I pooped and vomited all over myself.” Matt got out of bed, he helped clean me up, went back to bed. That’s all we know. It was right around 03:00 AM.”

We interview Matt separately. Matt says, “I slept soundly all night long. I never got out of bed for anything.” So, they didn’t talk about these smaller details. And that was really where the chinks in their armor started. So, from there, we search the area. The crime scene is backed up against a spring water trail, so, we start looking into that. By this time, we’ve processed hundreds of pieces of evidence at the crime lab that have broken down into thousands of sub pieces of evidence. Nothing has come to fruition.

Yeardley: So of all the blood evidence that you collected and had tested, neither Matt nor Angela’s blood shows up in those results?

Detective Aaron: That is correct. Yep. And Matt and Angela both refused to give us a blood sample or a DNA sample. And Angela said, “The blood you’re finding all over my house is mine.” So, we tested all of that blood. That blood came back to an unknown female contributor. So, while Angela’s telling us it’s hers, we don’t have a DNA swab to confirm it.

Yeardley: And Sarah’s blood doesn’t show up in Angela’s house?

Detective Aaron: That is correct. Yep.

Yeardley: Okay.

Detective Aaron: We can’t find anything. We’re really kind of hitting up against some brick walls in this investigation. Now, just prior to Sarah’s funeral, Matt called the insurance company and asked if he could claim on Sarah’s insurance money. And he was told he was no longer beneficiary. Then we have the funeral. At the funeral, we know Matt and Angela are going to be there. So, we set up surveillance cameras, covert cameras inside the funeral home. And we send detectives into the funeral home to intermix with the crowd.

One of our detectives sat right next to Angela. She saw that Angela had a cut on the top of her left hand, right in the webbing of the thumb. And it was a fresh cut. So, we noted that and we move on. About 12 months after the murder, Angela and Matt moved to Pocatello, Idaho. They wanted a fresh start and it’s cheaper to live there. So, they moved to Pocatello, Idaho. About 14 months into the investigation, I have a meeting with our crime lab. And they’re like, “Hey, we don’t have any evidence. What you know and what you can prove are two different things. And we have no evidence. However, there’s a new DNA technology that’s coming out that lowers the threshold of what it can use as part of the DNA sample. Do you want us to retry any of this evidence?” And I said, “Let’s reprocess the knife block.” We know the suspect went in and hand selected a knife, and there were little smears of blood on every knife. Like, “Nope, not that one, not that one, okay, I’ll take this one.”

So, we retest those knife blocks, and on August 5^th, 2017, I get a phone call from the crime lab at 05:00 AM. Well, when your phone rings from the crime lab at 05:00 AM, you answer it. So, I answer that call and they said, “Hey, have you seen the report we submitted?” “No.” They’re like “Well, you need to get to the office and read it.” “Can you tell me what it says?” “No. Go read the report.” [Yeardley laughs] So, I have that 30, 45-minute drive, and you guys have probably been there. I’m laughing, I’m crying. I am just an emotional wreck knowing that there’s something good waiting for me.

Well, when I got to the crime lab, they found some female DNA on that knife block. And it was a match to unknown one, the blood from all over Angela and Matt’s house. So, now we have a suspect. So, with this information in hand, we went out to Pocatello, Idaho. And when I say we, I mean about 40 of us. We had US Marshals, State Federal Agencies, DAs, everybody. Because not only do we have to go out and do surveillance, but now we have to, in effect, arrest warrant in another state, and we have to get through their courts and laws and search warrants and all that type of stuff.

So, we go out, we spend about two weeks in Pocatello doing surveillance, identify who they are, who they’re living with, all that kind of stuff. And ultimately the US Marshals execute our arrest warrant for us, and they arrest Matt and Angela in Pocatello, Idaho.

Matt wasn’t going to get arrested until he decided to fight with the guys dressed in green and defend his wife’s honor, and that got him arrested for a local charge of resisting arrest. They’re both in custody of the police department. And I go to interview Angela, and Angela says, “We moved out here because it’s better living closer to family.” I’m like, “Hey, why don’t we talk about this whole murder thing?” She says, “Do you think I murdered her?” I said, “I do.” She says, “I’m not going to talk to you anymore.”

Well, when I mentioned murder, remember there was that cut on her hand during the funeral, as soon as I mentioned the word murder, Angela starts rubbing the scar where the cut on her hand had been subconsciously, and she’s massaging that scar. So, I end that interview and we move on with life. She goes off to jail.

Now it’s time to talk to Matt. And I had some interviewers go into the room to talk to Matt, but Matt was running the interview, leaning back in the chair, had his feet up on the desk, a lack of professionalism from the interviewer’s point of view and lack of control from the investigation point of view. So, I took over that interview, and I went into Matt, and we got the room straightened out so we no longer had the opportunity to put his feet up. And we started talking about this case. And it was very direct. Matt is a bullshitter and will lead the conversation if he can and wants to be the center of attention.

Well, Matt got to listen for a few minutes, and I went through the evidence as it laid out his wife’s culpability in this case. And I said, “Well, let’s take a look at some pictures.” So, I show him some crime scene pictures and remember that knife that was in the pool of blood? He’s like, “Oh, that’s Angela’s knife right there.”

Yeardley: The knife with the interesting handle that you found at the crime scene?

Detective Aaron: Yep, that’s the one. The one that started the attack. Matt says, “That’s Angela’s knife that used to be in our car.” But actually, I haven’t seen it since the murder. I didn’t know where it went. I thought she lost it. Well, she did. She lost it at the crime scene. So, Matt says, “Look, here’s the deal. Yeah, we’re upset with Sarah. We kept talking about what would it be like if she just dropped dead in court, wouldn’t that be awesome for us? Sarah is 360 pounds. Maybe health will take over and she’ll just drop dead.” Well, that didn’t happen. They go over to Angela’s ex-husband, Peter, and they’re like, “Hey, Peter, do you want to kill her for us for $50,000?” And Peter says, “I’ll do it for 50 grand.”

Well, Matt and Angela couldn’t come up with $50,000. So Peter’s like, “Look, you can’t come up with it. I’m not going to do it.”

Dave: Peter’s just not a pro bono hitman. [Yeardley laughs]

Detective Aaron: Correct. So, Matt says, you know as far as the murder goes, the night that all this occurred, Angela showed back up at home at 3 o’clock in the morning. She’s covered in blood from head toe. I didn’t ask her what happened. I took her upstairs, I got in the shower with her, I washed her off and went back to bed. And we’ve never spoke about it since. And I said, “You’ve never spoken?” “Nope, never spoke about it.” And then I said, “Well, why didn’t you tell us this on day one?” “Oh, I didn’t want my wife to get in trouble.” I said, “Well, hindsight being 20/20, what do you think happened?” He’s like, “Well, Angela obviously killed Sarah. Yeah, she killed her. There’s no doubt in my mind based on what you’ve shown me.”

So, then I said, “What else did you do?” Matt says, “I wiped down the car. In fact, I wiped off this spot of blood that was on the center console. I helped her get rid of evidence.” And we’re like, “You get to go to jail for hindering.” So, that was my interview with Matt.

Paul: Hey, Aaron, one of the things that I’m having an issue with Matt on is when you initially interviewed him, he’s using a cane, he has fibromyalgia, screaming out in pain. And then later goes to the movie and he’s seen where he’s perfectly okay. So, from my mind, Matt is doing what’s called staging. He’s trying to make himself look incapable of committing the crime. And now he’s putting all the blame on his wife, Angela. Is there anything at this point as you’re dealing with Matt, where you’re still a little suspicious about him.

Detective Aaron: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think you’re right, Paul. Matt was staging. He was deflecting. He was giving us reasons to why he was incapable of this. Yes, I believe Matt was involved behind the scenes, but there was no evidence that there was two perpetrators inside the victim’s house that night. There was a single set of shoe prints. So, then we’re like, “Well, did he drive her there? Did he drive her home? Was he involved that way?” And at the end of the day, Matt was on a CPAP machine. So, he’s breathing into a CPAP machine. All of that information and data is recorded. And we’re able to take a look at that CPAP machine and show that he was asleep until 03:00 AM. he got up for 30 minutes and he went back on the CPAP machine. So, we know that Matt wasn’t with Angela at the event.

Now, that doesn’t eliminate him from some culpability in the planning of this. It just means he didn’t help in the execution of it.

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Break 3

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So, one thing I didn’t mention earlier intentionally is day one, we applied for a Google warrant, search warrant for Angela’s phone and Matt’s phone. And that warrant initially showed us that Angela’s phone was off during the commission of the murder, and Matt’s phone was at his house. And we were able to find cell phone conversations, text messages between Matt, Angela, and Peter where they were discussing the solicitation to commit murder, and Peter would not let us look at his cell phone. Peter says they brought it up one time and he said it wasn’t interested and didn’t pursue it at all.

Dave: So Peter confirmed that he had been approached about being hired to murder Sarah.

Detective Aaron: Peter confirmed it. And then Peter says, “Yeah, they came up to me, they mentioned it and I said, I’m not interested. And that’s the last we spoke about it.” And we gained evidence that those conversations actually took place off of Matt and Angela’s cell phones. So, we know the conversation went beyond just a happenstance, one off conversation. So, Peter was lying to us about being solicited to commit the murder.

Now, about three years after the murder occurred, one of the things that we got back was Google Tracks. Google Tracks are routes that you take, mapped out routes. So, if you leave your house every day and go to the grocery store, you have a track. And when you leave the grocery store and go home, it’s another breadcrumb trail as to how you got to where you went. So, we looked at those Google Tracks for outliers, things that are out of the ordinary travels, if you will. And we found that three days after the murder, Angela went 35 miles up into the middle of Mount Hood National Forest. She was there for seven minutes and she left and drove back home. So, we load up in the car and we drive to 35 miles in the middle of Mount Hood National Forest.

Yeardley: So when you guys go to Mount Hood–

Detective Aaron: Three years had passed.

Yeardley: Oh, wow.

Detective Aaron: So, Angela went three days after the murder. So, the murder was on June 10th. Angela went up into the woods on June 13th of 2016. We went there– May of 2019 is when we went up into the woods. And when we got there, we’re on a dirt road. There’s a culvert that goes under the road because a creek flows from left to right under the road. The left-hand side is uphill, the right-hand side is downhill. And we know that Angela is lazy, so she’s not going to go to the uphill side to do anything. So, we go to the downhill side. It’s nice open, virgin snow. We’re walking through the snow, following this creek, and we get about 100 yards down the creek, and there’s a dead fallen tree across the creek. Wedged into that tree is a size 9-1/2 Airwalk Myra boot.

Yeardley: Oh, my God.

Detective Aaron: We collected that boot and we take it back. And I mentioned individual and class characteristics. It had all of the individual characteristics from the crime scene. The boot that was stamped in blood in the crime scene, we knew that was our boot. It also had DNA evidence inside that belonged to Angela. And it had DNA evidence on the outside, red staining, probable blood that had DNA, but the DNA was so degraded that we couldn’t tell whose it was. But that is likely going to be our victim’s blood.

So, then we bring a dive team back, and they want to dive the area and see if we can find any more evidence. Well, when we were in Pocatello, Idaho, we searched Matt and Angela’s home, and we seized everything, clothing, computers, everything. One of the things that we seized was a pair of pajama bottoms. They were a basket weave, mesh, long john type pattern. They were black and they had little white skulls all over them. So now here we are searching this creek with a dive team. Everybody’s done except this one diver. This one diver’s analyzing the water patterns, and she says, “Look, if something were thrown into the culvert, this is a slack water area. This is where it would go. “

Yeardley: What’s slack water?

Detective Aaron: Slack water. So, if you have a creek that’s running nice and strong or a river, and say you have a little cutout on the side, it’s where the water is slower and it’s not a lot of force. Or if you were to drop something in, it might go in and circle around into that slack water area and settle out. It’s just an area of lower pressure in the water system.

Yeardley: I see.

Detective Aaron: So this one diver, she’s on her hands and knees in about three feet of water, and she’s digging down into the silty, sandy bottom, and she feels something. So, we excavate it, bring it out, and it’s a plastic bag, a black garbage bag with a rock in it. So, we take it, apply for a search warrant, open it up, and inside of that is the rest of the murder kit. We have a pair of gloves with cuts all over them that match the same cut on the back of Angela’s hand. We have a pair of white slides, shoes that are Adidas. You asked the question earlier, do we have blood evidence outside of the house? No, because Angela changed her shoes at the threshold. And she put on these Adidas slides to leave the crime scene. And we found a sleeve, a black basket weave pajama sleeve with white skulls all over it that matched the pants we found in Pocatello. And there was a tag on those clothes. That tag came from Walmart based on the UPC.

We went back to Walmart, contacted Walmart corporate. They said that these underwear, these long johns with the black and the white skull print, were sold in a very limited market in the Vancouver, Washington area. They were sold to a couple of stores for, again, a limited run. So, we had a lot of limited runs on this case.

[laughter]

Detective Aaron: And so Angela bought her pajamas at Walmart. With that, we were able to definitively say this is the rest of the clothing that our suspect wore. She drove out there and dumped them three days after the murder. So ultimately, with Matt and Angela. We charged Matt back in Oregon with hindering prosecution. We did not charge him with anything related to the murder because we felt we would get more evidence. If we ever got more evidence, we wanted to be able to charge him with it and not run into a double jeopardy situation with Matt. So, we took, I believe it was 54 months on Matt for a hindering prosecution.

Then we concentrated on the trial with Angela. So, we had a bunch of hearings. Angela pulled a really good defense attorney. I was able to go back and tell that defense attorney that we have some new evidence. This is what it is. And we found the boot. It’s the same individual characteristics and it’s got DNA evidence on it. And just watch the blood drain out of their face, and they’re like oh, shit. We could have told this out three days ago before the hearings. It wouldn’t have been as much fun.

[laughter]

So, ultimately, Angela pled guilty to murder, and she confessed all of the gory details to her defense attorneys, which shocked their awe and conscience. And Angela got 25 years to life in prison with a possibility of parole after 25 years. But I think everybody involved, including every attorney involved in the case, never believes that she’s going to get out of jail in 25 years based on a parole hearing. This is a life sentence for Angela.

Yeardley: Wow. Aaron, you said that Sarah had a Roman numeral carved on her chest. Did you ever find out the significance of that?

Detective Aaron: So the Roman numeral carved into Sarah’s chest, we never identified what the significance was. Angela denied intentionally carving anything into her chest. We believe from the investigative side of the fence that this was something to throw us off. It was a red herring. While that was never told to us, and I firmly believe that was the case.  

Paul: It sounds spot on. That’s a form of staging.

Yeardley: Fascinating. Aaron, before we let you go, I just want to go back to your description of Angela’s demeanor and her body language during her first police interview. So, you said she had a blanket over her head. She’s facing away from the detective who’s asking the questions. And I think only because I’ve been doing this podcast for 16 seasons that I know why all the guys on my Zoom screen were nodding and smirking about what this means, but describe a little bit what your takeaway from Angela’s body language and her demeanor is.

Detective Aaron: Yeah, no problem. So, during the interview with Angela, like I said, she faced away, blanket over her, hair pulled down over her face, and facing 180 degrees away from the interviewer. People tend to lie, but what is often hard for people to deceive correctly or deceive those that are in front of them is with their body language. In this case, she’s got closed body language. She’s facing away from us. She’s not wanting to make eye contact. When a suspect makes eye contact with you, things become very, very personal. They believe you can read the somebody’s soul, by looking in their eyes. And if any of you have ever sat across from a serial killer, an absolute psychopath, you can see the hollowness in those eyes. And in this case, she didn’t want the personal connection.

We were within 24 hours of the assault, anything that she did, she’s probably petrified that she was going to get caught. And then what she was saying was not going to match up with her body language. So, there was going to be a discrepancy there which a trained investigator should be able to pick up on. In this case, I don’t know why this wasn’t corrected. I don’t know why this wasn’t seen. But at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter. We figured it out.

Yeardley: Yeah. I just think that kind of insight is fascinating.

Detective Aaron: Yeah. And it’s something we as detectives have seen a bunch. But Angela, man, she seemed to really hit all of the extremes and she would be a perfect profile for an interview class.

Yeardley: Yeah. That really was phenomenal. So well done, thank you, Aaron. I mean, just the way it unfolds is so. I’ve said this many times on this podcast, but it’s so cinematic, like a thriller. It’s extraordinary work, your attention to detail. I did want to ask you, before we let you go, of all the cases you investigated over the course of your career, because you were in law enforcement at over 20 years, right, Aaron?

Detective Aaron: That’s correct, yes.

Yeardley: Tell us why you choose this one today.

Detective Aaron: Obviously, going on that ride along at 8 years old, that’s where I started my law enforcement path. And this case was a very significant case for me. Anything that we could throw at this as far as forensic evidence, Google evidence, electronic, digital, just good old-fashioned boots on the ground, police work, get off your ass, knock on doors type of police work this case had. And we came to a very successful conclusion on it. And, in my career, this was the bookmark. This was the front end of my leading homicide investigations. So that’s why this one stands out to me.

Yeardley: I love it. Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that with us today.

Detective Aaron: Thank you for having me.

Yeardley: Aaron, you have a podcast. Do you want to tell our listeners about that?

Detective Aaron: Yeah. So, I started a podcast when I came out of law enforcement. It’s called Murders to Music, and you can find it on all the streaming platforms. But in that podcast, I came out of law enforcement because doing this stuff for a decade and seeing new dead bodies and new broken babies every day takes its toll on your psyche. Whether you know it or not, all that stuff you’re seeing seeps in through the cracks and crevices. And I was the guy that was never going to break until the day that I broke after my last case. And PTSD pushed me out of my career.

And I’ll say PTS because it’s not a disorder, but PTS pushed me out of my career, and I wanted to take all of the pain that I had suffered and I wanted to use it for a purpose. So, through therapy and all the stuff that I learned, my podcast will take people from any walk of life experiencing identity crisis or whatever it may be, and it kind of helps them through that journey to let them know that they’re not alone. Other people have been out there before. Other people have experienced this, and there’s life on that other side. So, Murders to Music. It’s a big part of my life. I’ve been playing and performing and doing music my whole life. And it’s that transition from the dark side to the light side.

Yeardley: I love it. Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that with us today.

Dave: Absolutely. Nice work. I mean, that’s complicated. And you guys stayed with every piece of evidence. I love it.

Paul: I think that’s what stands out to me, Aaron, is, too many times, whether it be investigators or forensic scientists, they will take a look at a piece of evidence or a certain lead and say, “That’s not going to pay off. I’m not even going to pursue it.” And you ended up pursuing different types of evidentiary leads that paid off huge in this case. And I want to give you kudos. And then the DNA analyst who came back to you and said, “Hey, we have new technology. Maybe we should revisit some of the evidence.” Kudos to that analyst to recognize that they still had a connection to the case and that they could benefit the case with this new technology. So great job. This was an amazing case.

Dan: Thank you.

[music]

Detective Aaron: Thank you so much man. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share it.

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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