[music]

Zibby:  Presumed Guilty is a case we cover over two episodes. This marks Part 1 of 2.

David:  These guys have told now probably three different stories to the police about the circumstances, about being around the store. The polygraph comes back inconclusive on both of them. The officers at that time were thinking they were hiding some and naturally so.

Yeardley:  I’m Yeardley.

Zibby:  And I’m Zibby. And we’re fascinated by true crime.

Yeardley:  So, we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave-

Zibby:  -to sit down with us and share their most interesting cases.

Dan:  I’m Dan.

Dave:  And I’m Dave. We’re identical twins and we’re detectives in small town USA.

Dan:  Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave:  Dan investigates violent crimes. And together we’ve worked on hundreds of cases, including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse and child abuse.

Dan:  Names, locations and certain details of these cases have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

Dave:  While we realize that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we hope you’ll join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they’ve been through. Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley:  Today on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. Detective Dave.

Dave:  Good morning.

Yeardley:  Detective Dan.

Dan:  Pleasure to be here.

Yeardley:  And we’re so happy to have back our special guest, Sergeant David.

David:  Hello.

Yeardley:  So, Sergeant David, why don’t you tell us how this case came to you.

David:  This case came to me really early in my career. About six months before I was hired at the police department, there was a murder at a 7-Eleven convenience store of the clerk. The murder happened in the early hours of the morning, like around 02:00 or 02:30, they said, AM. And I knew about the murder just from the paper at that time. Before I got hired at the police department. I was involved in police work with another agency at the time. But I didn’t really pay much attention to the details of the homicide itself other than the fact that the victim was a 19-year-old clerk and trying to work his way through school. And he was found murdered in the cooler of the store.

 At the time, when the police go in and find the body and do the original investigation of the scene, they find the clerk in the cooler. His hands are bound with tape as well as his feet. He’s lying face down and there’s a bottle of Orange Crush pop broke over his head and there’s quite a bit of blood around his head. From the scene, they can always think that he got beat over the head and killed with a blunt object. Maybe the pop, it was a 32-oz bottle and it was all mixed in with the blood. So, originally, they think that he’s just been beat over the head. So, subsequently I get hired and I get hired with this agency who’s doing the investigation into that homicide and I start learning more about the homicide and who they’re focusing on.

 At the time, they had focused on two suspects, Sam and Rick, who were friends who lived out in the east part of town at that time. And I did learn some of the details about what had gone on leading up to their ultimate arrest. Sam and Rick are together the night of this murder and they stop at the store, the 7-Eleven store after 02:00 AM sometime. Both of them are intoxicated, both of them are underage and both of them have suspended driver’s license. But Sam tells us ultimately in the past that he’s able to buy beer there because he looks old enough, but he was 19 years old at the time. And so, the reason they stopped back in there that night was to get more beer. When Sam goes in, his story is that Rick stays in the car.

 He goes in, can’t find a clerk anywhere. He looks around the store and his initial report to the police was he comes back out and tells Rick that there’s no clerk in there. And so, Sam tells Rick I should call the police, there’s something weird going on here. And Rick says, “No way, we’re both drunk, we’re both suspended, they’ll come out and we’ll be in trouble. So, let’s get out of here. Let’s just leave.” So, he talks him out of it and wants him to take him home. So, what he says originally is to back home. And then he picks up his friend, “Hey, let’s go back to the store.”

Yeardley:  He picks up a different friend.

David:  Yes. And they go back to the store. And that’s when Sam looks around more and ends up finding the clerk in there and comes out and tells his friends, you need to call the cops right now. So, they call the cops, and originally the police go out there and talk to Sam and his friend and find out their stories don’t match. Sam’s lying. And so, Sam’s lying about who he was with the first time he was in the store.

Zibby:  Lying about Rick being with him the first time around because he’s protecting Rick from having to deal with the police at all.

David:  Yeah. So, the police are naturally going to be focusing on these guys, this guy at least like, “Why are you lying to us about this?” So, they finally get him to tell him who he was with the first time, and that was Rick. And so, they go run Rick down. His story is, “I went down there with Sam and he went into the store, he was going to get more beer and some cigarettes, and he came out and said there was no clerk there and wanted to call the police.” I said, “We’re not calling the police. Let’s just go home because we’re going to get in trouble if we do.” I never went in the store. I didn’t do anything in that store.

 So, then they go back and talk to Sam some more, and Sam maintains his story a little bit about, “I went in there and I didn’t take anything and I didn’t find the clerk the first time, but I did find him the second time when I came back down there with my friend.” And that was his story at the time. So, they take Sam and Rick down to the station, separate them, and administer polygraphs to both of them. The polygraph was done by a sheriff’s deputy the next day, and the polygraph comes back inconclusive on both of them.

Zibby:  Does that instantly mean they’re being dishonest?

David:  Well, in polygraphers terms, it means that there’s not enough to say that they’re actually lying, but they’re not necessarily being truthful anywhere. It’s one of those things where they look at you and it’s kind of a toss-up. So, there’s something wrong in this whole thing. What polygraphs are used in our businesses for is to try to instigate further interrogation or questioning. Because if they come up lying on it, there’s lots of reasons they might come up deceitful on something like that. And so that’s what we would interview them further at. And when you confront someone with the fact that they didn’t pass a polygraph, then you might get more information on them.

Yeardley:  Because you can’t use a polygraph in a court case. So, it really is just a tool for you guys for interrogation.

David:  Yeah. The only way you can use a polygraph is if all parties agree to it.

Yeardley:  I see.

Zibby:  Why didn’t they bring the other friend that Sam said he was with in? And then also, what about security cameras?

David:  This is in the early 80s.

Zibby:  Oh.

David:  The homicide actually happened in 1983. And so, there wasn’t really any security cameras at the end. And they did interview him later. When they give these guys a polygraph and they both come up inconclusive, they do another pretty extensive interrogation. It was right around seven hours, actually.

Zibby:  Okay, so they do speak to the friend too.

David:  Yes. And in that further interview, they find out that Sam’s new story is all that happened. I went into the store to get beer. Rick was in the car. I looked for a clerk, couldn’t find one. I didn’t go back in the cooler the first time. I did not do that. I came back out and I told Rick that there was no clerk in there. And I had stolen a six pack of beer and put it in the car. And Rick’s comment to him as well, go get another one then. So, he goes back in the store and steals another six pack of beer. And these guys are criminals too. They’re small-time criminals.

Zibby:  They’re young though, huh? They’re under 21.

David:  Yeah, they’ve been in trouble most of their teen life, actually. So, they take the two six packs of beer and they leave. And he takes Rick to his girlfriend’s house, and his girlfriend’s not home. And his girlfriend was in the stage of trying to break up with him at the time, and he was wondering where she was at, so he breaks into her house and goes and waits for her. [laughs]

Yeardley:  God.

Dave:  Jealous boyfriend.

David:  Yeah. And so, Sam then leaves Rick at his girlfriend’s house and then goes and finds his friend because he thinks, jackpot, there’s an empty 7-Eleven down here. Let’s go back and get more stuff.

Zibby:  So, this is story number two.

David:  Yeah, this is story number two. So, he picks his friend up, he goes down there, and their full plan is to load up all the beer and cigarettes they can. But then they get to wondering. And that’s when he goes in the back and finds the clerk who was dead. And he comes and tells his friend and says, “You got to call the cops.” He goes out the payphone, he does that, he calls the police, the police come out there, and the rest is what we all talked about. They go back and talk to Rick again, and Rick tells the police, at that time, I was in the car. Yeah, he did steal beer, but I was drunk from running around all day and I was almost passed out.

 I don’t really remember what he said to me, but I know that he came out with beer. He gave me two of the beers when he dropped me off at my girlfriend’s house. I drank one of them and I put one of them in the refrigerator. And the officers asked if it’s still there. And he said, “I think so.” And they asked Sam if he has any of the beer. And he said, “I’d have the empties or something to that effect.” And they drive him back out to his car and find those in the back of his car. So, they can prove that one guy had gone to the store and actually stole from the store either after they killed the clerk or the clerk being already dead and they’re just stealing from an empty store.

 Also, Rick said that Sam had talked to him in the past in this seven-hour interrogation about doing robberies and the fact that he could get a gun. So, you can understand why the police were very focused on these two individuals. In the meantime, other parts of the investigation are going on as they should. And other officers are talking to people, trying to establish some kind of timeline who was in the store last and who’d seen what. And some really interesting things came out about this. A county deputy, a sheriff’s deputy had gone by the store. And it’s really typical for people who work in graveyard patrol to stop by and make sure that the clerk’s okay and just do a wave inside, especially these things that stay open 24 hours.

 And she did that, she said around 02:10 AM and she said she didn’t see the clerk there, but she saw somebody standing at the front counter waiting to buy something. And for some reason she said she didn’t go in. And so, she drives away. So, they start establishing this timeline between 02:00 and when Sam calls in, which is around 03:00 AM that morning when this homicide had to have happened. And you can’t sell beer after 02:00 AM. So, the other detectives are doing this follow up with all these other peripheral people to try to find out what they had seen. They talked to the clerk in the previous shift who left there at 01:00 AM and helped this clerk restock things.

 And he tells the officers that typically at 02:00 AM this clerk would always go lock the beer coolers and then put a sign up saying that there’s no more beer available. But he did say at the time there was three people in the store trying to buy beer and they were 47 cents short on a case of beer. And he knew who those guys were and he spotted them the 47 cents and they went about their way. He didn’t know them personally, but he described them. They’re regulars in the store. And there was also a third customer who came in and he talks about what he called a weirdo in the store. And he calls him a tall skinny Mexican with long hair. He said that guy was hanging around just kind of like he was waiting for everybody to leave.

 He was just kind of there. And then there were some other people out in front of the store at the time, but you describe them as kids. There was one other person who stopped in at the store but never got out of his car. He was with some girl and he stopped and then they decided to leave. And he said that was between 02:30 and 03:00.

Zibby:  Okay.

David:  There was some conversation about they couldn’t get beer, they couldn’t get some at that time, so they left. And he said he didn’t see anybody in the store.

Zibby:  Interesting. So, we know that the shift changeover happened at 01:00 AM.

David:  The deceased clerk comes in at midnight, but there’s always an hour overlap while the other guy makes sure everything’s balanced and helps him restock, whatever. And he would do that while the other guy would just take over his clerk. He said he left around 01:30.

Zibby:  Okay, so we know that from midnight to 01:30 AM the deceased clerk was still alive.

David:  Yes.

Zibby:  And do you know what time the customer who described the weirdo with the long hair happened to be in the store? Because the clerk would have been alive then as well.

David:  He talks about also about someone buying beer at that time. So, it had to before 02:00 AM.

Zibby:  Okay, so from 12:00 to 01:30 AM the clerk was with his co-worker.

David:  Yeah.

Zibby:  01:30 to sometime before 02:00 AM, the clerk was seen by at least one witness. Which means that there is at least a one-hour window between 02:00 AM and 03:00 AM where this homicide would have occurred. Right?

David:  Yeah. In the meantime, these guys have told now probably three different stories to the police about the circumstances about being around the store. And the interesting thing about it is Rick, who is a slight built guy, small guy, and really a passive person. And he was with Sam and he knows Sam was in the store at least twice because Sam came out of the store with beer and went back in and got more beer. Well, actually he knows he’s been in there three times because he came back and took his friend down there. So, in his mind, he’s never been into the store, but his buddy has three times. And that will come into play later on in what happens down the road in this investigation. So, the police officers that are involved investigation very focused on these two people.

 And an interesting thing happens about two weeks into this investigation. This guy comes in to the police station to tell them there was a street north of 7-Eleven by about two blocks. He sees this tall, stringy haired guy he described as a weirdo Mexican-looking dude standing next to a van with this license plate. And one of the officers in the original case took that report. And the van was registered to a person named Sanchez. And for some reason they didn’t go follow up on that.

Zibby:  Who was that that came into the police station?

David:  It was the person who had been in the store who had seen this guy standing around. And the clerk was still alive at that time.

Zibby:  Right.

Yeardley:  So was it that the police just regarded this good Samaritan’s tip about seeing that long haired guy again a few weeks later as being benign information and that’s why they didn’t follow up with it?

David:  Well, the police have focused really hard obviously on Sam and Rick because they’ve told so many lies. They’ve done all this basically crap around instead of just coming and telling the truth. And their excuse for not telling the truth was their license was suspended and they were underage drinking. I think any police officer or anybody with common sense would know if there’s been a homicide. Then the last thing we’re worried about is your driving status or whether or not you’ve had a beer.

Yeardley:  Note to self.

[laughter]

[Break 1]

David:  So, we’re just not buying the fact that hat’s their only excuse. The officers at that time were thinking they were hiding something. And naturally so, I think it was probably six months after this homicide, the officers were doing all kinds of work, talking to their friends, talking to anybody they could to find out if they were talking about this. And some of them were talking about it, especially Sam’s friends. Sam liked the idea that he was getting all this attention around a murder and he would tell a lot of people that he was the focus of this thing and that he was somehow involved. People were inferring that he was involved, but he wasn’t really ever saying I did it.

Zibby:  And what are Sam and Rick’s community like?

David:  Everybody involved in this is in the criminal lifestyle. And criminals typically when you go interview them, when you interview them is really important as far as what’s going on in their lives at the time. If they think they can benefit somehow by telling you information about something you’re looking for because they’re in trouble or they have trouble on the horizon, they’re going to tell you what they think, you want to hear? The difficulty in my line of work or our line of work is that you have to wade through some of that and so you can get them to tell you not what they think happened, but what they know happened or not what they think they said, but what they know what they said. And so, in looking back at this case, there was a disconnect there.

 These guys were saying that Sam had basically talked about actually doing the robbery and killing the clerk. They’re not quoting him, but they’re definitely pushing the investigation more and more and more toward these guys. If I got accused of a homicide or the police were looking at me, I would say to you, “Hey, the police brought me down questioned me for seven hours, but I didn’t do anything.

Yeardley:  Right.

David:  Not trying to get some celebrity out of it down at the bar.

Dave:  Sam likes the street credibility. He’s getting some mileage out of this.

Zibby:  Right. It’s street cred. It’s attention, as you say.

David:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  Is it more than attention, though? Like what kind of cred?

Dave:  Well, criminals enjoy attention, especially inside their element. We brought a guy home two nights ago who was doing armed robberies, and he was talking about if somebody thinks that you’re a badass, then they’re less likely to mess with you. That you have this increased reputation as nobody should mess with this guy.

Yeardley:  You move up the ladder.

Dave:  You move up the ladder and people in this criminal element will look at you in a different light. So that could be what’s going on. But there’s definitely this, not to say honor, but these guys get a little bit more status among their people.

Yeardley:  Okay. So, Sam is enjoying his newfound status.

David:  Yeah. So, we’re fast forwarded probably six to seven months, and they interview these folks and get all these statements, along with the fact that early in the investigation, they take Sam’s clothes and they take Rick’s clothes that they had on that night and they send them to the crime lab. They take their fingerprints, everything. And they also do quite a thorough crime scene investigation into the crime scene itself. And one of the things that they found during that was that the masking tape used to bound the victim’s hands and feet, had a really distinct fingerprint on the sticky side of the tape. It was colored like grease almost. And that fingerprint was very pronounced. And that fingerprint was compared to Sam and Rick and the victim at the time and didn’t match any of them.

Yeardley:  Oh.

David:  And so there was this mystery print.

Yeardley:  Okay. Meanwhile, did they do an autopsy of the victim to determine the exact cause of death?

David:  So that day, the same day later in the day where the homicide happened, they did an autopsy late in the afternoon and found out he’d been shot three times in the head with a small caliber weapon.

Zibby:  Aha. So, you have Rick in that original seven-hour interrogation admitting that his friend Sam talked to him about doing robberies and the fact that he could get a gun.

David:  Right. And they asked him, has he ever asked you to go do one with him? He said, “No.” And they worked Rick pretty hard, and he goes, “I don’t remember. I don’t remember. I don’t remember.” So, at one point, they just basically said to him, “You went in the store and you robbed that kid and you guys killed him, didn’t you?” Which is not unheard of investigative tool, but when you’re drunk, you’re kind of a weak soul anyway. And he makes a statement to them at the time, says, “Well, if you say so, I must have.”

Zibby:  It’s funny, you hear about this a lot in interrogations.

David:  Yeah. And it’s one of the most important things to know who you’re dealing with when you’re talking to someone. And you can’t take that. Obviously, you take it like, maybe he did it. That’s why you’re in there talking to him. But a statement to me, if you say so, I must have, is almost worthless.

Yeardley:  Sure. It’s not declarative at all.

David:  Yeah. It’s getting you there because this claim that you don’t remember, a lot of times they get over that hurdle. They don’t want to remember, but they do remember. So, you got a lot more work to do with that. But that was a statement that pushed Sam and Rick in the same direction. And, ultimately, they take all this information and they do take Rick into custody and arrest him.

Zibby:  So this is, “I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder.”

David:  Yeah. They arrest him for aggravated murder and robbery.

Yeardley:  Is there any physical evidence though, to support this?

David:  There’s physical evidence that comes in with the clothing for Rick.

Yeardley:  For Rick?

Zibby:  Huh? Because Rick claims he wasn’t even in there.

David:  Yeah. Rick’s clothing is scraped and tested for blood. They called it a droplet of blood on the shoulder area of his shirt and they also found what they said is occult blood on the front of his pants.

Yeardley:  Did you say occult?

David:  Occult blood is invisible blood, but it tests positive with luminol. You can’t see it, but if you spray luminol on it shows up.

Yeardley:  Oh.

David:  And they also found what they called flaky substance that was consistent with gunpowder, that tested positive for nitrates that are consistent with gunpowder. They never said that’s gunpowder residue. They never said that was gunshot residue, but they said it’s consistent with it. So, you can know where this is going. This is before DNA. They typed the blood of Rick, and it was the same type as the victim’s. So, obviously the argument would be it’s his blood, not the victim’s blood. But if you want to believe that he’s responsible, it’s the victim’s blood and not yours. And they tell him this and he still didn’t– I was never there. I haven’t shot a gun. I haven’t done anything. I haven’t been hunting. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sam’s clothes are also gone over it.

 They find the same powdery stuff that they say is consistent with gunpowder, but they don’t say it’s gunpowder. They say it has the same nitrates in it. And one of the things that I didn’t know at the time is to ask somebody what other things have that in it?

Zibby:  Right. That was my question.

David:  That would seem the obvious question.

David:  I checked that out last night, actually.

Yeardley:  You did?

Dave:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  So what.

Dave:  Matches.

Zibby:  What?

Dave:  Yeah, there’s all kinds of chemicals that have the same nitrates that are in gunpowder. There’s additional elements in gunpowder that aren’t present in these other items. So, it’s a pretty common substance, but– [crosstalk]

Yeardley:  It’s the combination of.

Dave:  Exactly. Coupled with the totality of the circumstances, it’s driving them towards Sam and Rick.

Zibby:  Sure.

David:  And both these guys were smokers, so, I mean, they could easily have matches all the time.

Yeardley:  Right. So, even after all this physical evidence, as small as it may be, Does Rick still insist he wasn’t in the 7-Eleven?

David:  Yes, that all comes out and Rick is just perplexed with this. He goes, I wasn’t in there. I don’t know and is convinced that somehow, he got this stuff on him from somebody or somewhere. And he gets back to the point that Sam was in there two other times other than the times he knows and must have done this because there’s no other explanation for what he’s hearing from the police interrogation. So, they’re arrested, they’re in jail. The district attorney at the time looks over the evidence they have and decides to release them because there’s not enough there at that time.

Yeardley:  Now, are they released on their own recognizance or they’re not.

David:  They’re not charged.

Yeardley:  Their charges are dropped.

David:  Their charges are dropped at that time, Right after they’re released from jail the next day, Rick moves out of state, several states away. And, of course, the detectives are still monitoring them at the time. And they also continue the investigation where they apply for and are granted a wiretap order for the phones of Sam and Rick to find out who they’re talking to and what they’re talking about.

Zibby:  And these are landlines, right?

David:  Yeah.

Zibby:  And can you wiretap a landline in another state?

David:  Mm-hmm.

Zibby:  Oh, cool.

Yeardley:  Do you have to go into the place where the landline is and put a little bug in the ceiling behind a picture?

David:  No, the phone company does those.

Yeardley:  Oh.

David:  You present the court order to the judge who signs it, and then the phone company will actually– all their calls. We can monitor them. We have the equipment.

Yeardley:  They go up a telephone pole and put a little thing in there.

David:  Yep.

Yeardley:  Damn.

David:  So, those things are usually good for 30 days. You can ask for an extension for them. But they monitored this thing for 30 days, and Sam was still in town, and they followed him for almost the entire time.

Yeardley:  Do you think he knew he was being followed?

David:  I don’t think he cared. He was still enjoying all the celebrity of all this stuff. But we got information that Rick in this other state had befriended this person who had called up here to tell us that he was talking about this robbery and this murder to him.

Zibby:  What?

David:  We sent a detective down there. And keep in mind, this is seven, eight months after this homicide happened. It got a lot of notoriety up here. They got a lot of notoriety for being arrested and released. And you know how rumors are. By the time it gets to a certain point, the story is the story.

Yeardley:  Which is what? That they were wrongfully accused and this is still an unsolved murder?

David:  Well, it’s not according to the police here. They know these guys did it.

Zibby:  Who in the other state is giving you information that Rick is talking about the robbery murder?

David:  This person in the other state, another criminal who’s been in trouble, who basically calls up here and says, “I have information about that.”

Zibby:  So, he’s in trouble.

David:  Yeah.

Zibby:  And he calls and goes, I got information. That sounds like bargaining.

David:  Everybody involved in this case is in the prison realm of things. It goes back to trying to get at the truth, because everyone’s got angle. Everybody’s got angle in this case. But the one thing I will say, from an investigative point of view, is if a guy is in another state, several states away and he has information about this. This is before the Internet. This is before you can get on the Internet look up anything in the world, he has to know this from Rick, we think.

Yeardley:  Right.

David:  So it’s a lot more interesting.

Yeardley:  Is the community putting a lot of pressure on you guys to make an arrest to wrap this up?

David:  We put more pressure on ourselves to solve stuff like this than the citizens do. Obviously, the kid who was killed lived with his mother a short distance away from the store. He was just one of those nice kids. So, of course, people are wanting this murder solved. And when these guys got arrested and released, the ire goes toward the district attorney’s office, not so much us. And even though they don’t really understand the dynamics of what everyone’s working with here like that, but I’ve never really, in all the time I’ve worked here in this city, never felt pressure from the citizenry more than the pressure we put on ourselves here to solve things. So, I know these police officers and I know they wanted it solved, and they were focused on these two guys, and they wanted them.

 I look at it now, knowing what I know now, but at the time, I totally understand why they’re looking at Sam and Rick. These guys did not help themselves out when they first talked to the police by all these lies. And then, like I said, this guy in the other state calls up here with information about this guy talking down there now, and it’s very interesting. So, we send a detective down there to talk to him. And I never knew this guy, but when I read the reports, I’ve met lots of guys like him. He is a criminal, career criminal, and he’s working in angle and looking for his own 15 minutes of fame, perhaps, but also, perhaps he might really know something. But he flat out bluntly says that Rick told him that he and Sam did this robbery and that Sam killed him.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Zibby:  Did you believe that Rick told him that?

David:  What I think really happened is Rick told this guy. We were looked at for all this stuff. I moved out of state because they arrested us and let us go, and I just want to get away from there. And this guy added the rest of it in because I’ve actually talked to Rick, and he’s not the kind of person that is ever going to say, “I did something when he didn’t do it.” Especially something like this, because he has no interest in going to prison. He’s a little tiny guy.

Yeardley:  He’s not the alpha in this equation.

David:  He doesn’t want this criminal street cred notoriety. He wants nothing to do with it. I can’t say the same about Sam. Sam was a little more, I want to be an alpha criminal kind of guy.

[Break 2]

Yeardley:  Were Sam and Rick talking to each other at all? Did the wiretap lead to anything?

David:  They got nothing from the wiretap. They got no information from the wiretap. Sam didn’t call anybody and talk about doing the murder. He didn’t call Rick and say keep your mouth shut. They didn’t have any contact. They weren’t really that type. They went their own separate ways. But with this new information that this person from out of state claiming that Rick had actually said that based on everything else, the whole case got taken back to grand jury and they came back with an indictment and they rearrested both of them.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Zibby:  Oh man.

David:  They both got tried separately.

Zibby:  Did Sam and Rick both plead not guilty?

David:  Yes, they both pled not guilty. Rick’s trial was first, and Rick was convicted of aggravated murder and robbery.

Zibby:  Wow.

Yeardley:  How old was he at the time?

David:  He was 20 when he got convicted.

Yeardley:  Oh.

David:  So, he gets convicted, and then Sam’s trial is getting ready to start, and he gets sent to prison, Rick does. And while he’s in prison and Sam’s trial is getting ready to start, the attorney for Rick makes an inquiry to the DA that if we vacated his aggravated murder conviction and robbery conviction, he would testify against Sam in the trial and he would agree to take a felony robbery charge and do five years or something like that.

Yeardley:  And what had the original sentence been?

David:  25 to life.

Yeardley:  Oof.

Zibby:  That’s such a significant difference.

David:  Well, and I look at it like this. If you’re a police officer and this guy just got convicted of aggravated murder and his attorney makes an inquiry about. He’ll plead guilty to the robbery, but he didn’t do the shooting. And theory in our state at that time is if you aid someone else in the commission of a robbery and someone gets killed, you’re both guilty of it. That was what the law was at. It’s changed since then, but that’s what it was then.

Yeardley:  Why wouldn’t he offer to testify before he goes to trial? Because doesn’t it seem obvious? Like now I just want a lighter sentence and I’ll say anything.

David:  That’s true, and that doesn’t make sense to me, but I think that there was talk of that, but I don’t think anyone was hearing about it. I think they did talk about it before he had made an inquiry about. “I’ll testify. I’ll do anything. I’ll take a smaller charge, but I didn’t kill that kid.”

Dave:  He’s probably hedging his bets that I didn’t commit this murder. I’m going to get found not guilty, and I can walk away free.

David:  And I don’t have– I mean, “I never went to the store.” But he’s also is the same guy who said, if you say so, I must have.

Yeardley:  Right.

David:  And so he’s a weak individual that way. And I don’t know what his attorney was telling him. In his mind, he knows he didn’t do anything, but he’s getting told they’re finding all this evidence on his clothes. And he knows his buddy did go in there two times, he must have done it.

Zibby:  Right.

Yeardley:  Right.

David:  But he just didn’t tell me. And so, I’m going to tell you everything I can about this guy. I’ll even go talk to him or do whatever you want, but I didn’t do it.

Zibby:  So did they allow him to testify at Sam’s trial?

David:  No, they just sloughed that off he’s convicted.

Yeardley:  But what about the finger on the duct tape? Didn’t the fact that it didn’t match Sam or Rick factor in at all?

David:  Well, the prosecution artfully explained that away as “No, because if you were going to tape somebody up, he took a strip off, he put the strip on the table while he was doing something, and the print was lifted from the table that the strip of tape was on,” which would happen.

Yeardley:  Right, I see it. Transfer.

David:  Yeah, that’s the way we lift prints. And so, they just passed it off as totally irrelevant. It wasn’t even a factor.

Yeardley:  Oh, wow.

Zibby:  Jeez, okay.

David:  Sam, also, in the meantime, while he was in jail awaiting trial, there was at least two guys he was locked up with who called us, who claim that he made statements about doing it. And the statements weren’t like, I did it. It was always about, “They’re looking at me for that and they’ll never catch me.” Well, it’s kind of, this typical jailhouse bragging.

Zibby:  Man. He just cannot resist talking himself up. Did he not realize that word might travel?

David:  Right. And they brought in to his trial, I think, three people that were like that in jail, where he had talked to why he had been locked up the second time for the murder and had talked about doing it. And anytime you bring someone like that from jail, they’re really subject to during cross examination. I mean, they always have angle. We can’t promise anybody anything. We’re not going to say, “Hey, if you tell me this guy did it, I’m going to get your sentence reduced.” We don’t do that. We don’t have the power to do that. And that’s why talking to those guys is precarious sometimes because they’re criminals, and if they’d sell their own mother down the river, it would better them.

Yeardley:  Sure.

Zibby:  And not to mention, if I were in prison. Okay, just try and picture it.

Yeardley:  Oh, no.

Zibby:  If I were in prison and there’s a ranking system, I’d probably front and make myself seem scarier than I was. I might even brag about killing somebody, even if I never have, as a survival technique. Now, I don’t know if that’s played into it, but do you guys factor that in when you hear about jail chat as well?

David:  Yeah, oh, absolutely. Anytime, I will tell you when I get information from other criminals who are already in trouble about some other buddy’s crime, it’s about 50% value to me.

Yeardley:  I see. So, Sam’s trial happens. You’ve got people from jail testifying, and you have all these jailhouse statements that claim that Sam basically did it. He’s saying he did it.

David:  So, right along with the forensic evidence, and they talk about what happened with Rick having the same type of blood and the same type of “gunshot residue” on him, and then Sam having the gunshot residue on him also. And the prosecution, it doesn’t matter who shot him in our law at that time, because if you’re both doing a robbery and someone ends up getting killed, you’re both guilty of murder. That’s how the law was at that time. So, Sam ultimately gets convicted and sentenced to 25 to life also.

Zibby:  Wow. So, Sam and Rick are convicted, and now they face 25 years to life. But, you guys, I’m looking at all of your faces across the table, and it very much appears as though this is not the end of the case.

Yeardley:  How is that possible?

David:  Well, at some point, the case comes up for appeal. This is 1994 and they’ve been in for nine years. Sam appeals to the Supreme Court saying that the state had no right to tell the jury that they’d already been convicted once of murder and robbery because that prejudiced the jury. And I of understand that. So, the case is getting notoriety again. It’s in the paper again because it’s going to Supreme Court. And there’s a lot of allegations of police misconduct about intimidating witnesses and that kind of thing. And there was actually a lawsuit filed at some point also by Sam’s attorney against the police at that time.

Yeardley:  What did he sue about?

David:  Police misconduct, that we intimidated witnesses, that we fabricated evidence. And it’s a pretty broad allegation. Ultimately, the case was sent up to the higher courts, and they dismissed it based on “There was no merit to it,” they said. So, it’s 1994. It’s going to the Supreme Court. It’s back in the paper. It’s news. I have now been a detective for two years and working for one of the lead investigators now in that case. And this person named Gary Quinn comes down to the police station to talk to my supervisor about this case. And he tells my supervisor that Sam and Rick didn’t do it and that he knows who did and that it’s his cousin who was involved in this.

Zibby:  So Gary Quinn says, “Actually, Sam and Rick didn’t do it. I know who did it. It’s my cousin.”

David:  Yes, this case has a lot of interesting twists. I want to go back, because one of the things Gary Quinn did originally was he went to the attorney for Sam and said, “You should check the fingerprint on that tape.”

Zibby:  Oh, man. And what’s up with this guy Gary?

David:  So, Gary is also a frequent flyer with the police department. At the time of this original homicide, he was 14 years old. In the interim, he gets in all kinds of trouble. And he’d had a pretty serious vehicle accident about six months prior to this. And in that vehicle accident, he received some pretty significant head injuries. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. But since he was inquiring now about all this stuff, my boss calls me in and tells me to go out and interview Gary Quinn about what he knows. And I went out and met him. We sit down, have a conversation, and he tells me that when he was 14 years old, he was at a party at his cousin’s house the night before this all happened.

 President at that party was his brother, Bob Quinn, Timmy Sanchez, and Cooper, who was Timmy Sanchez’s uncle. They’re all related. The Quinn brothers are cousins to Cooper and Sanchez, and they were all up at this party drinking.

Zibby:  And for our listeners, Sanchez is the name that came up as being registered to that white van-

David:  Yes.

Zibby:  -that that citizen called in about saying, “Hey.”

David:  Hey, two weeks after the homicide.

Zibby:  Right.

Yeardley:  This scrawny, creepy Mexican guy.

David:  Yes. And they’d all been drinking. They were all minors at the time, except for Cooper, who was the oldest one there who everybody looked up to and was kind of half afraid of. He’d been to prison before. And so, they’re at this party, and Gary said, “I woke up outside the next morning, and I rode my bike down to the 7-Eleven, and the place was crime scene taped off. And I know that my cousins and my brother all went down there that night because they were talking about getting more beer, and we didn’t have enough money. And Cooper said, “Oh, I can get the beer.” And they all went down there, and they came back with beer. They came back with several of these coin slot things that they put into the safe after.”

 When they put money in the safe, they put them in these plastic tubes so you can’t get out. They came back with several of those.

Zibby:  Like, rolls of coins.

David:  Yeah, well, the slots, they were empty, but they bring in the slots back and that they told me to get rid of them. And when I went down to the 7-Eleven and saw it taped off, I asked somebody what happened and they said there had been a homicide. And I just go, “Oh my God.” Because it was the same time and everything. So, Gary goes back up. He talks to his brother Bob about it. “Hey, you know, I know you guys went down.” He says, “You better just keep your mouth shut and not worry about it” because basically Cooper will kill us all if we talk. And I ask him, “What makes you come forward now?” And he said, “Since he’d been in this car accident, this head injury has made him emotional. He has really hard time controlling his emotions and things bother him a lot,” he said.

 And he wanted to get this off his chest because he’s so emotional about it. He would talk about it and then he would. I’d start to cry and I would get really out of sorts about this thing.

Yeardley:  No kidding.

Zibby:  That’s amazing.

Dan:  This car crash knocked a conscience into him.

David:  Yep.

Yeardley:  Wow. Wow, wow.

Zibby:  Good God. Presumed Guilty will continue next week with Part Two.

Yeardley:  Small Town Dicks is produced by Zibby Allen and Yeardley Smith, and co-produced by Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  This episode was edited by Logan Heftel, Yeardley Smith and Zibby Allen.

Yeardley:  Music for the show was composed by John Forrest. Our associate producer is Erin Gaynor, and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Zibby:  Ifyou like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, head on over to smalltowndicks.com. And become our pal on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from our Small Town Fam. So, hit us up.

Yeardley:  Yeah. And also, we have a YouTube channel where you can see trailers for past and forthcoming episodes and we’re part of Stitcher Premium now.

Zibby:  That’s right. If you choose to subscribe, you’ll be supporting our podcast. That way, we can keep going to small towns across the country and bringing you the finest in rare true crime cases, told, as always, by the detectives who investigated them. Thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.

Yeardley:  Nobody’s better than you.

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]