Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam. It’s Yeardley. How are you guys? I’m so happy that you’re here. We have a fascinating case for you today from one of our favorite returning guests, retired Detective Aaron. Aaron gave us a case last season that we called Dead Weight, which you should definitely check out if you haven’t heard it already. So, I think we can all agree that first responders, no matter what uniform they wear or which agency they clock into, have jobs that are not like the rest of ours.

Today’s case is a perfect example of that. It involves a murder, a cartel, months of round the clock surveillance, and Detective Aaron even being followed home by the bad guys once they know he’s onto them. I call this episode FAFO, which is an acronym for Fuck Around and Find Out, because that is what every one of the suspects in this case does. They’re arrogant, they’re reckless, and they’re incapable of making a single smart decision among them. For Detective Aaron, it means the number of leads proliferates exponentially. Also, the responsibilities for the crimes committed are spread out among a number of players. So, there are a lot of cats to herd. Then at the end of this episode, Aaron candidly gives us a glimpse of the personal toll this case took on his wellbeing. We touch on mental health a lot on this podcast, and we’re going to keep doing it because the work our first responders do is so important. And if they’re willing to tell us what this job is really like for them, I for one, am here to listen. Here is FAFO.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Hi there. I’m Yeardley.

Dan: I’m Dan.

Dave: I’m Dave.

Paul: And I’m Paul.

Yeardley: And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan: Dave and I are identical twins-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[unison]: Thank you.

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

Dan: Hey.

Yeardley: Hey. We have Detective Dave.

Dave: I am here. And happy to be here.

Yeardley: I’m happy that you’re here too. And favorites, we have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul: Hey, hey, hey. How’s it going?

Yeardley: Hey, hey. It’s great, it’s great. Because I’m with all of you and Small Town Fam we are thrilled to welcome back to the podcast retired detective Aaron.

Aaron: Hey, thanks for having me again.

Yeardley: Aaron. It’s great to see you. Your first case was so fascinating and I think I said at the time, also so cinematic and beautifully told. We’re thrilled to have you back on the pod. Thanks for sitting down with us.

Aaron: Yeah, I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you guys for having me again.

Yeardley: Thank you. So, I know you have another really fascinating case for us today. Tell us how this case came to you.

Aaron: Yeah, sure. So, this case came back in September 24th. This call came in at about 10:30, 11 o’clock at night. And September 24th of 2021 was a Friday night. I worked in Gresham, Oregon, and the outskirts of Gresham is some industrial areas. If you’re not a semitruck in the middle of the night, you’re probably not roaming around back there. A lot of large concrete buildings with bays that trucks back into, etc. Well, a call came in that a body had been found laying in the gutter. And when officers arrived, what they found was a white male face down in the gutter. His hands had been zip tied behind his back and there was a belt loop that had been ripped off of his jeans. There was one missing belt loop back on that right side.

His head was down towards the gutter and he was bleeding out of a single gunshot wound from his head. And it was pooling there on the ground. And that’s the information they have. And as a result, our major crimes team was activated. The major crime team for our department consists of detectives not only from my agency, but from surrounding agencies. And the way that model works for us, is if we have a murder or a major crime, they activate the major crimes team, the lead detective and the co-lead is based on whichever agency holds that jurisdiction and then we’ll bring in a team of detectives and support people to help us investigate that. And depending on the kind of case, it could be five people or it could be 150 people, depending on what we need for that investigation and what resources we need based on how widely we’re split and how many crime scenes we have, etc.

So, that’s the way this case came to me. Now, on that Friday night, I was not actually an on-call detective. I didn’t respond to the initial call out. But on Monday morning, when I was sitting in our war room, our meeting room, the other detectives were discussing this case, and they were talking about how this victim was found. He had no wallet, no ID, no cell phone, single gunshot wound, no witnesses. And they were going to not suspend the case, but really not put a whole lot of effort into investigating it because they felt they had no viable leads and nowhere to go with it. For me, that was problematic. It was clear that our victim in this case was probably a drug user, probably living on the streets. And I really got the impression that we were picking our victims.

We don’t get to pick our victims. Our victims are somebody’s father, somebody’s son, somebody’s mother, whatever it may be. And they deserve answers just like anybody else. So, as I was sitting in the war room talking to the other detectives about this, I got the impression it was going nowhere, and that infuriated me. So, the detectives that had been assigned, one of them was new, and I wouldn’t say he was a strong detective by any stretch of the imagination. And the other one has been on the job a long, long time, has a lot of history, but not a lot of motivation to get out and actually turn over rocks.

Yeardley: That seems like a kind way of saying what you’re saying.

Paul: He was checked out.

Dan: Retired, on duty.

Aaron: Yeah. When you give him things to do, he does them really well. But don’t expect him to come up with that on his own. That’s the way he is. So, as I hear these two talking about this, I get infuriated that they’re sweeping this under the rug and not going to do anything. So, I went to the sergeant, said, hey, I’m taking this case. The sergeant said that he was good with that. So that’s where the investigation started. And we didn’t have a lot to go on other than this victim. He had a tattoo that was unique. So that told me that maybe he has some criminal ties or maybe he spent some time in jail.

And there was a significant boot impression right on his face where he’d been kicked in the face with a Vibram lug sole, which is a specific type of sole like all of our police boots have. So that’s what we’ve got to go on. So, we take the body and we go into the autopsy. And the autopsy shows a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, just behind the right ear, traveled across from right to left and out the front left of his face. All he’s got is this tattoo for identifying features. They ran his fingerprints, couldn’t come up with anything on fingerprints, but it was very, very clear this guy’s got a history somewhere. So, it takes us a few days.

Murder happened on the Friday, I pick it up on Monday, and we’re Wednesday or Thursday before we get a positive ID on the victim. And the victim in this case was a gentleman named Andrew Sherrill. Andrew Sherrill is about a 26-year-old male and he’s out of Bend, Oregon, is where he lived. And so, now we have to divide and conquer our resources. We have a team of people on the ground at home, and we need to send a team of people over to Bend to try to figure out what this guy’s history is. Why is he across the mountain range, why is he dying in my city? So, I go over to Bend with that team and we start the boots on the ground, knocking on doors. And what we learn is that Andrew Sherrill is a smalltime drug dealer.

He doesn’t have a whole lot of life. He’s got a child, he was raised by his grandma out of Hermiston area, doesn’t have a ton going for him, but brags about having a plug or a drug source in the Portland area. And he brags that he is a drug dealer for the cartel. That’s what he’s telling everybody in the Bend area. So, as we go around, we really can’t find any reason why people would want to kill him. When we talk to the folks in Bend, he’s not on anybody’s really hit list. Nobody’s got beef with him. He’s just a drifter that sells drugs, smokes some weed, and moves on with life.

Yeardley: How far is it from Bend to where Andrew is found dead?

Aaron: It’s about two and a half, three-hour car ride. I’m not sure what the miles are, but we have to go over a mountain range to get there. So, it’s a significant way away. He didn’t just stumble into Gresham to die. He got there for a reason.

Yeardley: Okay.

Paul: Aaron, at the crime scene, can you tell, was Andrew shot at that location or had he just been dumped there?

Aaron: So he had been shot at that location. There was a single shell casing that had been ejected from the handgun. So, we knew we’re looking at a semiautomatic, not a revolver and the shell casing was laying on the ground beside his body.

Paul: One of the things that strikes me, I’ve responded out to so many drug and gang-related shootings out in the bay area, particularly during the crack wars in the 1990s. And oftentimes when you have these gang bangers being responsible, they’re putting 15, 20 shots into the back of the victim’s head. Andrew has a single shot. This was an execution, and it was an execution done by somebody who was confident that that single shot was going to do the job.

Aaron: That is exactly right. Paul, I don’t know what it was like in your department, but it’s oftentimes we want to fill in those blanks. We want to concoct a narrative in our head that makes sense as to what we’re looking at. And as detectives, I would always call it Theory Thursday. We don’t have time for Theory Thursday. We’re following the evidence, we’re following the facts. It will either paint a picture or it won’t. And if it does, we’re going to solve our case. And if not, it just means we have to work longer because ultimately, we’re going to solve this case.

Yeardley: I love Theory Thursday.

Aaron: Theory Thursday. So, when people come up with these off the wall ideas, everybody wants a cartel murder. We had a guy that was missing a face once, and it was because the cartel skinned his face and cut out his tongue because he knew too much. Well, he got eaten by animals. I mean, that’s what really happened.

Yeardley: Oh, wow.

Aaron: So, we come up with these theories, but in this case, from day one, it truly looked like an execution, like a hit. It’s what you see on TV. So that was one of the things that really interest me and piqued my curiosity because it wasn’t the 15 rounds into the person like we are used to seeing. This one was unique and different.

[Break 1]

So, we know that we’re looking for potentially a cartel leader in the Portland area who has somebody named Andrew Sherrill running drugs for him across the mountain over into the Bend area. Through a couple of weeks of investigation, we get a knock on the door, and we were contacted by a local drug enforcement agency, A task force of theirs that says, “Hey, we might know who your suspect in this case, we’re looking at a cartel member that lives in town. We think he might be involved in your murder. Suspect’s name? Caesar. And it’s a guy we’ve been watching moving large amounts of drugs into the area. And we have pole cameras up on his house.”

And a pole camera is a covert camera that’s mounted to electric pole, and it taps its power off of the high voltage wires, and we can watch it remotely to surveil a house or an area or something like that. So, they said, “We have these pole cameras, they’re up. And they were up the day of your murder. So, we might have video for you know, pre and post murder, for you to watch. So, we want to give you this footage to take a look at, see if you recognize anybody or if this helps your investigation. Your murder investigation trumps our drug investigation.”

Paul: You know, and I suspect, Aaron, that the task force detective that made the phone call, somebody within that unit probably has a very sensitive informant that they didn’t want to burn. And so, they got some info that Caesar was involved in Andrew’s homicide, and they’re like, “Hey, [laughs] let’s call up the agency and just give them a tip. But we can’t tell you where that information came from.” [laughs]

Dave: Right. Very protective.

Aaron: It wouldn’t shock me. So, we took a look at their pole cameras, and what we saw on the day of the murder was there was a large group of people that showed up early afternoon. They went into the house, they were in the house for about an hour, hour and a half. They all left. Some of them left in this dark-colored SUV. And at about 10:30, 11 o’clock, they ended up back at Caesar’s house. So, we went back and we looked at the CCTV video or closed-circuit television video from the night of the murder at the crime scene. And we saw something that we didn’t see the first time. And that is a dark-colored SUV driving into the area. It goes out of camera sight for about 30 seconds. You can hear on the audio of the video a single gunshot. And then that black SUV drives away.

So, now we know we have a dark-colored SUV at the crime scene, and we know we have a dark-colored SUV at Caesar’s house on the pole cam video. So, then we start backtracking with CCTV from the crime scene to see where this vehicle goes. And we do that by literally knocking on doors and businesses of video cameras all along the way. Surveillance cameras, speed cameras, red light cameras, etc., and we piece all these pieces of video together and we track that car. We were able to track that car right back to Caesar’s house. So, we know that Caesar was involved in the murder.

When we get back to the house, we see Caesar get out of that SUV and there’s a gentleman with him, a gentleman that goes by the name of Black in the community. So, Caesar and Black, they both got out of that SUV, and the SUV drove away. So, Black and Caesar go up to the garage door area of this driveway of this house, and they’re talking. We can see them on video from a long ways away. They’re talking. Before you know it, the whole group starts to show back up at the house. And they’re partying, they’re having a good time, and the night goes on. So, with that, we had to try to identify some of these people who were in this video.

And I actually recognized one of the girls in the video as a woman who I had done a bad check case on 10 years earlier. And her name is Cassandra. So, we identified Cassandra as being one of the players in this video. So, we go find Cassandra and we talk to her, and she says, “Yeah, I know Andrew, the victim. He was a boyfriend of mine, if you want to call it that. We did drugs together. And I just saw him last week. I sold him some drugs one night.” “Well, what night did you sell him drugs?” Friday night. Well, that’s the night of his murder. “Okay, let’s talk some more.” So, now we know you’re involved with him. You’re at Caesar’s house. You are one of the last people to see him alive, what’s your role in this?

So, as we talk to her, she says, “Andrew called me up said he was coming town from Bend. He likes me, so I flirt with him, and I get what I can from him. We met at the Denny’s. I gave him some drugs. He went his way and I went mine.” So, with that information, we go back and we take a look at the video from the Denny’s. And sure enough, we see Cassandra in a dark SUV. We see Andrew. Andrew gets into the dark SUV and then they drive away together. Well, this is where Cassandra’s story starts to fall apart. So, we interview Cassandra’s boyfriend.

Yeardley: And what’s the boyfriend’s name?

Aaron: Rick. Let’s call the boyfriend Rick. So, Rick the boyfriend says, “I was with Cassandra. We were at a hotel together. We get into an argument. Cassandra is going to meet Andrew. I decide I want nothing to do with whatever she’s going to do. And I get out of the car, and she goes alone.” So, Rick, the boyfriend, gets out of the car, and Cassandra goes on to this meeting alone to meet Andrew to sell him drugs. So, when we continue to take a look at CCTV footage from that area, we see that Cassandra drives over to the McDonald’s, which is right around the corner. At McDonald’s, Cassandra pulls up in the parking lot. Cassandra and Andrew get out, and they meet in front of the car. At that time, here comes the rest of the party who was at Caesar’s house. They all show up, and a kidnapping ensues. Caesar and Black have guns. They force Andrew back into the car, and Cassandra gets in, and they all drive away together.

Yeardley: And is Cassandra the one who’s driving the black SUV?

Aaron: She is, yep.

Yeardley: Okay.

Aaron: So she’s driving that black SUV. In the car now is Cassandra, Caesar Black, and our victim, Andrew Sherrill. They drive around the corner. Several cars pull up. Something occurs on the other side of the car that we can’t see. So, we’re not quite sure what happened there or who’s in what car. People get back into their respective vehicles, and all the cars leave the area. But then we start following more CCTV cameras to see where that black SUV goes. And we follow that SUV on interstate CCTV cameras all the way over to the city of Gresham into the suburb area, that rural area where the body was found. We’re able to track that black SUV into the crime scene. We hear the gunshot. That black SUV leaves and goes back to Caesar’s house.

Yeardley: How do you end up hearing the gunshot? Is there a camera nearby wherever Andrew was dumped?

Aaron: Yeah, there is. There was a camera one of those loading docks and it happened to have audio on it. So, because it had the audio, it recorded the gunshot. So, we knew the SUV shows up, gunshot occurs, and then everybody leaves.

Dave: And it’s not that often that you come across surveillance cameras that have audio.

Aaron: It’s not.

Dave: That’s a bonus.

Aaron: Yeah. So, now we know that Caesar and Black were in the car at the time of the murder, and they were the last ones to see it. But we don’t know who was driving that car. So, we have to do some more investigation. And there was hundreds of leads generated in this investigation. We did a lot of interviews, and we started to slowly put the pieces of the puzzle together as to who those other players were, the other people involved. We have Caesar, we have Black, we have Cassandra, we have Peter, and we have Mike. And now we’re able to take all of those people and we’re able to compare them to the pole camera video and slowly start to piece every one of them together. So, we know these are our players that were involved in this murder.

Now, during the surveillance portion of this, we were able to go by the house, Caesar’s house. And we saw that he had a Ring camera with spotlights mounted right over his garage door. That is the same garage door they went and collected around after the murder. And they’re all high fiving and having a good time, which we can see from the pole camera from a distance. So, as luck would have it, I learned how to write a search warrant for Ring cameras. We wrote that search warrant and we got a complete treasure trove of information. They essentially wiretapped themselves. [Yeardley laughs] They’ve got a camera, they’ve got audio, they’ve got a video. And we can sit there and watch and listen to everything that occurred before and after the murder.

So, if we had any questions, what the hundred yard pole camera was seeing, we now literally have it face to face like we are right now. And we can hold an identification card next to the picture in the video and be like, “Oh yeah, that’s totally Peter, that’s totally Mike.”

Yeardley: That’s bananas.

Aaron: It’s crazy.

Dave: I cannot imagine you get this response from Ring and you’re like, “Oh, we’ve got like terabytes of information to look through.” This is going to be amazing because the chats that pop up on these Ring cameras, the audio is really good quality audio and video. If you’re pretty close. This is just like the driveway area where they all seem to meet and hang out.

Aaron: Yeah, it was cool, Dave. Not only do we have a camera, attached to that camera is two spotlights. It is flooding them. We have 4K video imagery and audio of all their stupidity.

Dan: Well, and it’s all cloud storage too, so you don’t have to go in and get like the DVR from inside the house. Caesar and Black, none of these guys know that Detective Aaron actually accessed all this stuff and has all this information in front of him before he even talks to them.

Aaron: They have no clue.

Dave: It’s like Christmas Day when you get those.

Aaron: It really is.

Paul: Now, Aaron, along those fronts though, what about the return? I mean, you’ve got a clock that has started before whoever the owner is, is going to get the return on the search warrant. Is that correct?

Aaron: It is, yeah. And so, in those cases, we extend our return. We can extend them out to 180 days, but a lot of times we’ll do a 90-day return on those so we can hold that information and finish our investigation.

Yeardley: What’s a return.

Dave: So, Yeardley when you write a search warrant, it’s an order judging you to search and seize X, Y and Z. So, the search warrant return is you within a certain number of days are required to give a receipt of everything you seized and everything that you’re searching. And you can put delays on that because some of these tech companies will do auto disclosures to their clients. Like, “Hey, by the way, the FBI just subpoenaed all your Facebook records” and that’s just like automatic. So, some of these companies will alert a client, “Hey, by the way, law enforcement just served legal process on your account”. And in those situations, you don’t want Black and Caesar to know. So, Aaron programs in a delayed return of the search. So, there’s not going to be this disclosure prior to Aaron disclosing it.

Yeardley: I see. So, you can ask the judge to not tell Caesar and Black that Aaron has accessed their Ring camera info for say, in this case, 90 days?

Aaron: That is correct. Yep.

[Break 2]

So, what do we know? We know we have a dead body executed. We have Caesar, who has ties to the cartel based on the information we have from a local drug enforcement agency. We have a pole camera on the house showing the group of people coming and going. We have a spotlight camera in the front of the house that shows audio and video of people before and after. We have Caesar, when he returns home from the murder, pull a gun out of his waistband and start waving it around and showing everybody his gun as they’re high fiving. That’s going to be incriminating down the road. And we confirm that Caesar has those ties to the cartel. He’s married. He has multiple kids. He’s been a dealer for the cartel for about a decade.

He’s responsible for up to about 10 different murders that have occurred in the Portland metropolitan area and around the state where people cross him and they disappear. He has enforcers. His enforcer is this guy named Black who will just as soon shoot you as he would shake your hand. He’s an absolute cold-blooded person. We know that Andrew Sherrill, our victim, was a low-level drug dealer for Caesar. We know that Andrew Sherrill got in really good with Caesar. Caesar trusted him. And Andrew Sherrill apparently never saw the show Ozark because he decided he was going to steal from the cartel. So, Andrew stole drugs, he stole money, and he took them back to Bend because he thought he could do better things on his own.

Well, this upsets Caesar. And Caesar put a hit out on Andrew and said, hey, I need help finding this guy. He’s on the run. Well, this is where Cassandra comes in. Cassandra is in debt about $5,000 to Caesar. So, she says, “Let me lure him in like, a bait. And I will collect Andrew for you, deliver him to you. You forgo my $5,000 and everybody is happy.” So, that’s what occurred when Cassandra decided that it was worth her while to lure Andrew in. That’s when Caesar started putting all the pieces together and formulating his team of people who were going to commit this kidnap and murder. So, now we continue this investigation. And after about four months or so, we started getting some information and some help from our federal partners talking about this cartel. And we learned that Caesar was in debt to the cartel about $200,000.

Yeardley: Oh, shit.

Aaron: Yeah, that’s a lot of money. And the cartel wasn’t happy about it and might have had plans for Caesar.

Yeardley: Is he in danger?

Aaron: Yeah, he is in danger. So, the cartel was planning on come up and taking care of Caesar however that was. So, we needed to intercept and interject and I get Caesar out of the picture before the cartel came over and took care of him for us. So, one of the things that occurred during this investigation, and this was one of the things that pushed Cassandra over the edge to help, is an 8-year-old child was murdered in Mexico. It was videotaped. And that child was murdered by the cartel because of the debt that Caesar owed.

Yeardley: And is the child related to Caesar in any way?

Aaron: Completely unrelated.

Yeardley: God.

Aaron: So, they send Caesar that video. Caesar says, “I got to do something to right myself. You know, even I have some morals. I can’t be having kids killed.” So, when Cassandra was on the fence whether she was going to help lure Andrew in or not, Caesar showed her that video and said, “This is what they’re doing because we can’t get our debts paid. I need your help.” And I’m sure that imagery is scarred into Cassandra’s mind when she watches this child get murdered. And that is what pushed her over the edge into helping Caesar bring Andrew into the picture. So, this brings us all the way up to December of 2022. December 13th. We’ve put our entire case together. We have connected all the dots. We’ve interviewed everybody. We’ve interviewed Peter, Mike, Cassandra. Black, we haven’t interviewed because he won’t talk to us.

So, we put the piece of this puzzle together. And on December 13th, I gather at the Gresham Police Department with about 175 police officers, federal agencies, state, local marshals, air support, SWAT, two detective teams for every location, and we’re going to serve four simultaneous search warrants throughout the metropolitan area at the same time.

Dan: That’s cheating, Aaron.

Aaron: I know, right? [Yeardley laughs]

Dan: We don’t have resources like that where I worked.

[laughter]

Aaron: So, we put all these together. We’re going to serve these four warrants simultaneously. So, we’re going to serve one on Caesar’s house, we’re going to serve one on Black’s house, we’re going to serve one on another house that came up in this investigation. And then we’re going to serve one at Cassandra’s house. We expect to find all of our people there, and we expect to find drugs and money. So, we have interview teams standing by at the police department to do two person interviews with each one of these suspects as they come in. And all plans go to shit instantly. So, at 4:30 in the morning, when we’re supposed to hit these warrants, Caesar decides to go out and do a drug run. So, Caesar leaves with drugs and our surveillance team has to go mobile with them and follow him.

So, they follow him around. He gets back to the house at like 05:00 AM and about 05:30 in the morning, we hit all four houses at once. And sitting in that room, we had pole cameras up on all four houses so we could watch everything in real time. And within about 30 seconds, we blew the front door off of four different locations. And we had suspects coming out and taking people into custody. So, it was super cool.

Yeardley: Wow.

Aaron: So, we’re able to recover drugs, guns, we found our murder weapon, we found money, we found the ledgers where Caesar was talking about. Everybody owed him money. And, Andrew Sherrill’s name was scratched off, Cassandra’s name was scratched off.

Yeardley: Does that line through Cassandra’s name mean there’s a hit out on Cassandra as well?

Aaron: No. That means that she has paid off her debt by bringing Andrew Sherrill to the table. So, both of those debts are released at that point.

Yeardley: I see.

Dave: The documentation that you come across in these search warrants is pretty amazing. These [unintelligible ] sheets that you see where it has their client list and it shows you the exact dollar amount that they owe. These drug dealers, they all have them. That’s how they keep their books. And then to see the line cross through Andrew and Cassandra, because Andrew’s now dead and Cassandra worked her debt off.

Aaron: Exactly. All this stuff is going to come to play down the road through the prosecutorial section of this investigation. So that’s December 13th. We’ve now went from September 24th to December 13th. We got four of the five in custody. Cassandra we couldn’t find, but we have everybody else in custody. Then that just starts the process of the interview and interrogations. So, I interviewed Caesar and I interviewed Black. Between Caesar and Black, they both initially say they know nothing, and then they point the fingers at each other once we show them the evidence, and they’re getting out of the truck together, and in the truck, they’re pointing the fingers at each other and they’re saying, now, we didn’t know this was going to be a murder, so on and so forth. Peter and Mike, they’re just hired hands.

They are two low-level drug users that Caesar connects with and literally pays them to be muscle for this event. The only thing that Peter really did is Peter is the one that drove that SUV to the murder scene. So, Peter drives the SUV to the murder scene. During the drive, Peter says that in the backseat, Caesar and Black have zip tied Andrew and they’re beating the crap out of him in the back of this SUV. When they got to the murder location, Peter wanted to get his hit in, so he kicked Andrew in the face. And Andrew had a significant boot impression right on his face. We didn’t know how he got that kick, but during the interview with Peter, we figured it out. Now let’s go back to Cassandra.

Cassandra is a cute blonde who has always got her way by smiling, batting her eyelashes. Whether she’s in interview room with a cop or she’s on the street with a cartel member, that’s the way she gets her way. And Cassandra was the last one to come to the table and take a plea agreement. She felt that she was not responsible for this murder. She says she didn’t know a murder was going to occur.

Dave: You get these schemes where there’s going to be a kidnapping that kind of kicks everything off, and it’s easy for law enforcement or most reasonable people to go, could anything go sideways at a kidnapping attempt? And am I going to be responsible for any injury or harm that comes thereafter? And that’s truly what gets you on the hook. Like you took that step to coordinate the kidnapping. Now the kidnapping happens. Anything that happens after that, you’re going to be a part of it. And I think a lot of folks are like, “Well, I didn’t pull the trigger.” Doesn’t matter.

Aaron: You’re absolutely right, Dave. In this case, we’ve got Peter that’s driving the car. He’s culpable. Felony murder says he’s on the hook for it. You’ve got Cassandra being the lure. Felony murder says she’s on the hook for it. All of these people are just as responsible for that death. And Cassandra took some convincing through the court staff. Through the judges, through the lawyers, for her to realize that she was the key person. She’s almost as culpable as the person that pulled the trigger. Ultimately, all of them entered into a conspiracy to commit murder. So, through the negotiation process and the plea agreement process, at the end of the day, all five of those people were found guilty for the murder of Andrew Sherrill. Caesar got 20 years in prison, Black got 20 years in prison, Cassandra got 115 months, Peter got 100 months, and Mike got 90 months in prison for this murder.

Yeardley: What about Andrew’s family? Did you ever have any contact with them?

Aaron: I did. Yep. So, interviewed Andrew’s grandma and she tried really hard to raise a really good kid. He went on his own, went his own way, and she was sorry to hear that this occurred, but it wasn’t a big shock or surprise.

[Break 3]

So, dealing with the cartel– this was the first experience for me dealing with the cartel. And frankly, it was the last one, because this was my last case in law enforcement. This case literally worked me out of a job. The stress level was so high, and the stuff that Caesar was capable of. I was personally followed during this investigation back to my house.

Yeardley: Really?

Aaron: Yeah. And I pulled over at a convenience store and confronted the guy.

Yeardley: What did he say? When you say “Fucker, you’re following me. What’s up?”

Aaron: Yeah, he says, “I wasn’t following you. What you’re talking about?” I’m like, “Bullshit. You followed me every turn for turn for the last 11 miles,” and the fact that I’m screaming at him. I got a gun, and the BOLO ready in front of my chest, he’s not going to fuck with me, so he’s just going to move on with life. And that’s the way that it went, but during this four-month investigation, I had four days off, and I worked 150 hours every week. There’s only 168 hours in a week.

So, I had about 18 hours off a week was my average. And then you’re getting followed, and I’m changing the locks on my house, and I’m hiding guns all over the house and having the meetings with the family. You know, that type of stress. I was done. It was too much.

Yeardley: Sure.

Dave: Yeah.

Yeardley: I know, Aaron that you are a big mental health advocate, and you advocate especially for getting mental health services into police agencies. Would you be willing to talk about that a little bit?

Aaron: Yeah, sure. So, when I started this career 25 years ago now, we didn’t talk about mental health. We didn’t talk about PTSD. We didn’t talk about the tragedy that you saw on the job. My partner was killed in the line of duty in 2002, and I was directly involved in it. And we never debriefed it. We never had a conversation about it. We just literally go back to work, and that’s the way that it was. And there was a stigma around mental health and PTSD that was so strong that it would keep people from seeking help and it would keep people from saying, “Hey, I’ve got a problem. I need to see somebody.” So much so that in 2012, I was suicidal.

2012, June 13th I was in the woods with a gun in my mouth because I couldn’t take the stress anymore. And the stigma of being diagnosed with PTSD or depression was too much. So, I come out of the woods. Like many other cases, there was a phone call, there was a moment of clarity, and I come out of the woods and don’t do it. And then now comes 2022, this case and the stress level of this case pushed me over the edge. I got into a fight at work. I broke three ribs. And when I went to the doctor with broken ribs, my blood pressure was 185 over 145. I hadn’t slept. I had been having night terrors. I’m getting chased through my dreams by things in the dark that I can’t see. And apparently all this is PTSD and I didn’t realize it.

So, I got sent home that day with PTSD and told I need to take a couple weeks off. I fought the diagnosis, and then ultimately, I was finding whole right-side paralysis, like a TIA or a stroke. I was hospitalized with that, and then I recognized that I was messed up for a reason. I had PTSD and it was because of the things that I had seen and experienced in the field that changed everything about me. The way that I talk, the way that I was a father, a husband, a friend. It changed every aspect of my life. That’s where healing began. I started therapy. Over the last three years, I’ve done hundreds of therapy sessions, a bunch of different modalities and types. And as a result, I want to help.

I’ve found healing, but I want to help the people that are still in law enforcement and anybody out there suffering with it, to realize that it’s not a stigma, it’s not a bad word. Life happens to us. A trauma is our relationship with a set of circumstances that occurred to us or around us. It’s the relationship we have with being shot at or whatever it may be. And there’s healing on the other side. I started a podcast called Murders to Music that talks about the transition from my life. And my everyday was somebody else’s worst day. And I talk about the transition from there to the brighter side, where now I’m playing music a lot, I’m doing stuff, I’m helping people on their best days. And I talk about therapy that goes through that process. I want people to realize they’re not alone. So, that’s my message. I think my pain was for a purpose and I want to share that with people.

Yeardley: It’s extraordinary. I’m so grateful and humbled by your candor, and I completely agree with you. I think that one of the most effective ways to heal is to actually share your experience. And then, as you say, other people know that they’re not alone. I just really appreciate you sharing your journey.

Aaron: Well, I appreciate the opportunity. I think that there are still people out there today. Even with the podcast, I get emails and text messages all the time from folks because I’m very open and transparent and vulnerable. I think that’s the way you grow and heal is by exposing the soft underbelly. Other people can latch onto that and it maybe opens up that door for communication. So, in those communications, I get text messages and emails all the time of people. They’re like, man, I had no idea somebody else actually felt this way. I had no idea, I thought I was alone in this. And that is just part of that healing process. I really appreciate you giving the opportunity to share a little bit about that.

Yeardley: Of course. There’s no shame in it you know. I think that when you feel like you have to keep the secret, it really perpetuates this shame spiral. And that’s just the most toxic thing.

Aaron: I agree.

Yeardley: What’s it like, Aaron, to have an actual day off? You mentioned in describing this case with the cartel that you get a call on a Sunday. And I remember when Dan was still working and we had just started dating, basically, even though he had in name only three days off, he was on call 24/7. Now that you’re out of the job, you’re like, “Oh, wait, what? Nobody’s actually going to call me at 2:30 in the morning and tell me to go to work.” [laughs]

Aaron: I know, it’s great. It takes that separation you know, having days off now is nice. There’s a whole world on the other side, right? [Yeardley laughs] Once we decompress and unwind from this world that we think is real, we think the shield of armor is real. We think the way that we talk and we treat and we got our back against a wall and we always carry a gun, we think all that shit is real. All that is just that suit of armor we put on to protect ourselves. Now that has shed its weight, I’m like a new husband, a new father, a new friend. It’s really a cool place to be.

Yeardley: I love that.

Dave: Good. That’s good to hear.

Paul: Yeah. Aaron, I think, you know, as I kind of reflect on this case by focusing in on getting everybody in custody, making a case, getting them prosecuted, not only giving Andrew’s family some answers, but in essence, this is for public safety, because you take a look at the level of criminality, the callousness, the disregard for human life. You did an amazing job on this investigation and look forward to hearing future cases from you.

Aaron: I appreciate you, sir. Thank you very much for that.

[music]

Dan: Thank you, Aaron. Really good work and we look forward to having you back.

Aaron: I appreciate you, man. Thank you, guys so much.

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 editor is Christina Bracamontes. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor. Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell. And our social media maven is Monika Scott. 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.

Oh, our groovy theme song was composed by John Forrest. Also, if you’d like to support the making of this podcast, go to smalltowndicks.com/superfam and hit that little join button. There, for a small subscription fee, you’ll find exclusive content you can’t get anywhere else.

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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