Bob: [00:00:03] She said in a text message, “Can you give me $250?” I said, “Sure.”

Robert: [00:00:08] Okay. What was the understanding of what was going to happen yesterday?

Bob: [00:00:13] There was no understanding.

Robert: [00:00:14] Okay.

Bob: [00:00:15] When she got in the car, I said, “You’re in control here. Tell me to turn around and drop you off, I’ll drop you off. This was about no stress.” Yeah, it didn’t work out that way.

Yeardley: [00:00:31] When a serious crime is committed in a small town, a handful of detectives are charged with solving the case. I’m Yeardley, and I’m fascinated by these stories. So, I invited my friends, detectives Dan and Dave, to help me gather the best true crime cases from around the country, and have the men and women who investigated them, tell us how it happened.

Dan: [00:00:57] I’m Dan.

Dave: [00:00:58] And I’m Dave. We’re identical twins from small town USA.

Dan: [00:01:01] Dave investigated sex crimes and crimes against children. He’s now a patrol sergeant at his police department.

Dave: [00:01:07] Dan investigated violent crimes. He’s now retired. Together, we have more than two decades experience and have worked hundreds of cases. We’ve altered names, places, relationships, and certain details in these cases to maintain the privacy of the victims and their families.

Dan: [00:01:23] So, we ask you to join us in protecting their true identities as well as the locations of these crimes out of respect for everyone involved. Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley: [00:01:38] Today on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: [00:01:44] Good afternoon.

Yeardley: [00:01:45] Good afternoon. And we have Detective Dave.

Dave: [00:01:48] Hey, Yeardley.

Yeardley: [00:01:48] Hey. It’s so good to see you.

Dave: [00:01:50] I think that’s the first time I’ve ever done that one of these intros.

Yeardley: [00:01:53] I was wondering, if you actually knew my name.

Dave: [00:01:55] I remember.

Yeardley: [00:01:56] [laughs] And we are so pleased to have with us one of our favorite guests, Detective Robert.

Robert: [00:02:05] Thanks for having me back.

Yeardley: [00:02:06] Thank you for coming back. Some don’t want to come back.

Robert: [00:02:09] [laughs]

Yeardley: [00:02:10] I’m just kidding. So, Detective Robert, you have, as always, a really interesting case for us.

Robert: [00:02:16] I do.

Yeardley: [00:02:17] Let’s get to it. Tell us how this case comes to you.

Robert: [00:02:20] Okay. So, at this point in my career, I’d been a cop for 16 years and I’ve been a detective for about seven years.

Yeardley: [00:02:27] So not so long.

Robert: [00:02:28] Yeah. [laughs] I am on the downward slope to retirement. So, I love what I do, but, boy, am I looking forward to what comes after this.

Dave: [00:02:37] Have you started the countdown yet?

Robert: [00:02:38] Yes, I have, actually.

Dave: [00:02:39] [laughs]

Robert: [00:02:39] There might be an app on my phone.

[laughter]

Robert: [00:02:43] No, but I love what I do. It’s important and I’m very proud of what I do. But one thing that as a detective, we have been struggling with our sheriff over the years was whether detectives needed to work Monday through Friday, 8-hour shifts or four 10-hour shifts. So, we really had this battle back and forth and finally we got four 10-hour shifts. The only reason I bring that up is on Mondays and Fridays, we’re half staffed, okay? So, this case that we’re going to talk about it came in on a Friday afternoon. Again, I bring it up just because we’re at half strength on Fridays for detectives.

Yeardley: [00:03:18] And why is that?

Robert: [00:03:19] It’s just because people work either Monday through Thursday or they work Tuesday through Friday. So, there is coverage on both days, but it’s not full strength like it is during the week.

Dave: [00:03:28] Our agency does the same thing with our detectives.

Robert: [00:03:31] And then we’re always on calls. We all carry at least two phones and we’re always on call. Even if it’s your day off, as you well know, it is not uncommon to get lots of calls, or have courts, or have meetings, or all kinds of stuff going on your days off. Friday afternoon, half strength detective force, and we’re at a crime scene already in our county, and it’s a terrible crime scene. There’s a disabled man who’s been attacked by this woman who’s high on meth, and he’s really, really just on the verge of dying. And so, we’re all there helping, we’re there with our negotiations team trying to get the suspect to come out. We hear on the radio that our patrol team is being dispatched to a shooting in a residential neighborhood. So, my sergeant diverts me to that shooting and he says, “I’ll try to send you someone else, but right now we’re pretty tied up here.”

[00:04:24] He diverts me to the shooting in a residential neighborhood, and so I head off to that. This is a very nice part of our county. These are $600,000 homes. It’s up in the hills. It’s, again, one of those neighborhoods that we don’t normally go to. I’d never been to this area before. It’s the kind of neighborhood, where the neighbors all know one another. They shut down the street to have block parties, they’re just really invested in this community and in their neighborhood. When I arrive, patrol is still actively tracking with the canine and the victim, whose name is Bob, he’s already been transported to the hospital. So, I don’t see him when I arrived this Friday afternoon.

[00:05:05] Basically, the call that patrol had gone out on was a shooting, where Bob calls in and says, “Hey, I was shot by a woman I met online. She came over to my house. She shot me. Please come quick.” He didn’t provide any other details. He was able to give his address, and fortunately, patrol deputies got there quickly. They were able to go into the house. They found him. They got him transferred up to the hospital and he survives the shooting.

Dave: [00:05:29] Where did he get shot?

Robert: [00:05:30] He got shot in the stomach, and the bullet went through and through and exited out one of his buttocks.

Dave: [00:05:36] Ooh.

Robert: [00:05:36] So, that took out lots of intestines and kind of internal stuff, but it didn’t hit anything vital. It’s very painful and it’s not going to be fun to eat, but you’re going to live. You’re going to be able to eat again.

Dave: [00:05:47] He’s lucky.

Robert: [00:05:48] Yes, he’s very lucky. A little bit more about Bob, he’s a smart guy. He works from home. When I go into the house, when I get there, the first thing I know is very prominently displayed on the walls is he has a PhD and two master’s degrees from an Ivy League University. So, I know just by looking at this that Bob is book smart. I don’t think that Bob is very street smart, but Bob is very book smart.

[00:06:12] We notice that the crime scene is limited to this large family room upstairs. It’s a very big house. I think it has two different staircases, lots of rooms, but it’s only Bob and his wife that live there. We come to find out that they have adult children and they’re off living their own lives. Their youngest is in college. Their youngest is supposed to come home for the summer the following day. So, again, this is a Friday, youngest kid is coming home on Saturday from college.

Yeardley: [00:06:40] Okay, back it up a second.

Robert: [00:06:41] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:06:42] He’s married and he got shot by a woman he met online?

Dave: [00:06:45] Yes. Well, it gets worse. Here’s another thing I noticed. This house is spotless. It’s very nice and clean. I walk in, and I know the crime scene is upstairs, but I still want to look around. I want to take it all in slowly. I’m not in a rush to do so. I want to take it all in. We’re there with his consent. At this point, we don’t need a search warrant, because Bob has allowed us to look through the house, look through his phone, look through anything we need to do, and we know that the person who did this does not live there and does not have a privacy interest.

Yeardley: [00:07:14] Do you have a canine on site, because the person who shot him is not there?

Robert: [00:07:19] Yes. The information that we had was that the shooter, a female, left on foot. And so, we don’t know where she went once she left the house. So, our first thing is to set up containment in the neighborhood and try to contain her within that area and then track with the dog. We do allowed containment.

Yeardley: [00:07:34] What’s that?

Dan: [00:07:36] So, the point of loud containment, especially in this case is, we’ve got a suspect inside our perimeter and we’re going to have police cars in varying directions using their sirens intermittently. So, this suspect hears sirens coming from every different direction and goes, “I don’t know where exactly the cops are. It’s probably safest for me, if I just stay where I’m at.”

Yeardley: [00:08:03] I see. Okay.

Dan: [00:08:04] Then we’ve got them locked in and we use the dog.

Yeardley: [00:08:07] Got it.

Robert: [00:08:08] So, let’s say the house is here in the middle of a block. We would actually set out based on how many number of minutes has gone by. We’ll try to set a really wide containment that we can collapse in later, but if someone is already past your containment, then you can’t make it bigger later. So, we have lots of patrol cars there with their lights and siren going, and we’re hoping that the suspect hears that kind of hunkers down, maybe hides under a car, hides in the bush or under a porch or something, and then the dog will follow their scent and track to them.

Dan: [00:08:38] With the perimeter, you try to get the person to go to ground. That’s what we call it. Hopefully, this perimeter is a good perimeter and they go to ground. And now time is on our side and we can methodically check this area that we’ve blocked off with other patrol cars.

Yeardley: [00:08:55] When you say go to ground, you mean literally get on the ground.

Dan: [00:08:58] I mean, anything that they can hide in. They hide in trash cans, they get on roofs, they climb trees, hot tubs, under houses, under decks, anywhere.

Yeardley: [00:09:07] Got it. It’s nobody else home at Bob’s house?

Robert: [00:09:10] Correct.

Yeardley: [00:09:11] You have the run of the place.

Robert: [00:09:11] Correct. As I’m getting a feel for things and looking around, I see a card on the counter. It has today’s date on there, the date that this happened and it says, “Dear Bob, today is the 40th anniversary of our first date. I love you more and more as each year goes by. I love going through life at your side as your companion, your loving wife,” signed by her name.

[00:09:32] So, I’m starting to form an idea of what’s going on here. Obviously, what happened is wife leaves for work and Bob instantly goes online and starts looking to hook up with someone on this 40th anniversary of this first date.

Yeardley: [00:09:47] Classy.

Robert: [00:09:48] Yes. Again, the crime scene is limited to this large family room upstairs. There’s some musical instruments, and there’s TV room, and it’s all this big, big room upstairs. There’s a little bit of blood on the carpet, there’s a shell casing, and there’s an unspent round on the carpet. It’s a small caliber 380 handgun round. We also know there was a deputy that rode in the ambulance with Bob to the hospital. So, we’re getting little bits of information, but not a lot. Bob now realizes he’s not going to die. He’s like, “Everything else can wait. Let’s just make this pain go away.”

[00:10:23] Bob left his cell phone behind. Again, we had consent to look through it. On this phone, there’s only two messages and they’re back and forth between Bob and this girl named Rachel, who’s our suspect. It’s just saying something similar to, “Where are you?” “In the parking lot.” That’s really all there is to it and there’s a phone number. That phone number, obviously, we’re on it. We’re trying to find everything we can about this phone number and it comes back to nothing. It’s basically a burner phone. It’s associated with a number, but that number doesn’t associate with anyone we’ve ever dealt with. It’s basically a dead end.

[00:10:58] Another thing that Bob said that I forgot to mention is he begged us not to call his wife at work. He basically says, “She would not want to be bothered at work. She gets off at this time and she’ll come to the house, but please don’t call her.” He wouldn’t give us her work phone number. Of course, we’re looking everywhere to try to find a way to reach her.

Yeardley: [00:11:16] [laughs]

Dave: [00:11:17] Bob, we’re still going to have to explain this hole in your stomach.

Dan: [00:11:20] [laughs] “And we’re going to be here for a while. So, when she comes home, we’re probably going to be here still.”

Robert: [00:11:25] Yes.

Yeardley: [00:11:26] She’s going to want to know why.

Dave: [00:11:28] Let me break the news to her.

Robert: [00:11:29] Yes. So, I’m there. I’m looking around and processing things. We’re still actively searching for this Rachel who took off. As I mentioned, we’re short on detectives, but there’s a detective from another police agency nearby, who’s also on the major crimes team with me. So, we know each other. It’s not his city where this happens, but he happens to be there and heard it on the radio and he says, “I’m just going to stop by and see if Detective Robert needs help.” So, I am thrilled to see him. He’s very experienced, and his specialty is in the cell phone data tracking, downloading tech stuff, which I’m not good at. I’m thrilled to see him. So, he comes by and asks, “If he can be of any help,” and I said, “Yes, settle in, because we’re going to be here a little while.” So, he agrees to focus very specifically on tracking the suspect phone, which is our biggest lead at this point.

[00:12:22] One of the things that Bob told us is that this gal, Rachel, had taken a ride share to his place. That’s what we understood. It was also Bob’s belief that after Rachel shot him and left the house, that she also got into a ride share vehicle and took off. So, I spent a lot of time on the phone with the law enforcement liaison of this ride share company, and it was probably a couple of hours wasted, because I got nowhere. It was a dead end. Again, this is the kind of neighborhood where people notice stuff. Our neighborhood canvas in this area, people said, “Well, yeah, it was weird.” They hadn’t heard the shot, but they said, “We noticed a car in this neighborhood that doesn’t belong. It’s a beater car and we think that it was missing one of the windows.” So, like, there was no glass in this window. And so, we didn’t have a lot to go on. So, we’re getting little bits and pieces from Bob and this deputy who’s in the ambulance with him on the way of the hospital.

Yeardley: [00:13:19] But this recording you brought us is when you visited him in the hospital and he’s basically repeating what he told the deputy in the ambulance, yes?

Robert: [00:13:28] Yes.

Deputy: [00:13:30] Think back specifically to where you guys met up. Where was that?

Bob: [00:13:35] That was near [beep sound].

Deputy: [00:13:38] Whose idea was it to meet near [beep sound]?

Bob: [00:13:41] That was my idea.

Deputy: [00:13:42] Okay. Tell me about that and help me understand that.

Bob: [00:13:46] Well, I want this to be not attracting attention.

Deputy: [00:13:53] Okay.

Bob: [00:13:55] So, I drove off the meet her there and then drove her back to my place.

Deputy: [00:14:00] Okay.

Robert: [00:14:02] Bob said, “Well, I wouldn’t want my neighbors to see her coming to my house with me.”

Yeardley: [00:14:07] Wait a second though. If he picks her up at the grocery store and brings her back to his house, and the neighbors see her arriving at his house with him.

Dan: [00:14:16] Pull into the garage.

Robert: [00:14:18] And that way he’ll open the garage, pull in, close the garage.

Yeardley: [00:14:20] Oh, I see.

Robert: [00:14:22] Sneaky.

Dan: [00:14:22] You saw where–[crosstalk]

Robert: [00:14:22] I did.

Yeardley: [00:14:24] Oh, duh. That’s why you’re a Detective Dan.

[laughter]

Dave: [00:14:27] He’s a civilian.

Dan: [00:14:29] Former detective.

Yeardley: [00:14:30] Retired.

Robert: [00:14:44] So, then we’re thinking, “Okay, well, the shopping center is probably going to have some surveillance video. We get a grainy surveillance video of a female getting into Bob’s car. This is a huge break in the case. It happens a couple of hours after I’d been on scene. And again, it’s super grainy. Unfortunately, I still don’t understand why people have cameras, if they’re sucky cameras, like, what’s the point? One thing we can’t tell, fortunately, because we do get lucky breaks sometimes is she’s wearing a shirt with a very large letter on it. There’s a letter R that’s really prominent on her shirt.

Yeardley: [00:15:16] Oh, R. Maybe for Rachel?

Robert: [00:15:18] Yeah. That’s mostly what you can see in the video. You can make out Bob’s car type and I think his license plate. So, we knew that we’re dealing with the right thing.

Yeardley: [00:15:26] While he’s talking in the ambulance, is he giving you dribs and drabs of information, because he is in pain and fading in and out of consciousness or because he’s not sure he wants to tell you very much?

Robert: [00:15:40] I think it’s a little bit of both. Again, he’s book smart enough to realize all the repercussions and all the consequences that might come of this, but at the same time, he knows, “Well, there’s 50 police cars in my neighborhood. There’s been a fire truck, there’s been an ambulance, there’s a dog track. I think I’m not going to be able to keep this too much of a secret.”

Yeardley: [00:15:59] [laughs]  

Dave: [00:16:00] “Honey, why aren’t you cooperating with the police? Someone shot you.”

Robert: [00:16:03] Exactly. So, it’s at this point, a few hours into it that wife comes home from work.

Yeardley: [00:16:08] Uh-oh.

Robert: [00:16:09] She’s blocked from coming onto the street and she’s like, “Well, I live up there.” And they said, “Well, what’s your address?” And she provides Bob’s address. So, then we get a phone call, “Hey, detectives, we have Mrs. Bob here.”

Yeardley: [00:16:21] Mrs. Bob.

Robert: [00:16:22] So, Mrs. Bob comes home and of course, as you can imagine, she’s just stunned and flabbergasted that this could happen in her neighborhood and not just in her neighborhood, but her house. When she sits down and agrees to be interviewed and she doesn’t know anything about what Bob is doing when she’s not home, she tells us they do not have an open relationship. She says, “We’ve been married forever.” She says, “In fact, today is the 40th anniversary of our first date.” I told her that I had seen her nice card there. So, that concludes that day. Our forensics people come out, they collect all the evidence, they take a million pictures, they collect the bullet, we do all our crime scene processing, and then we go home. We release that scene to her. She’s able to stay there that night. Of course, her child is coming home from college the next day to stay for the summer. And so, we go home.

[00:17:11] At this point, we have a clue who done it. We have no idea who this Rachel is. We have a little grainy video of her, we have a cell phone number that comes back to no one, and we have the ballistic evidence.

Yeardley: [00:17:22] Is the neighborhood still blocked off?

Robert: [00:17:24] No. They go for quite a long time, because it’s a shooting that’s very serious. They track for probably 90 minutes or two hours, and then they call that off, and they let everyone go back to their normal duties. So, the next day, another detective and I, we go to interview Bob at the trauma hospital. He’s still in a lot of pain. He’s got one of those clickers, where he can administer some pain medication when he needs it. Throughout this whole case, he’s always very polite and very civil and very nice. This is when he provides the most detail that he ever gives about the cases in this hospital interview.

Bob: [00:18:01] So, first, some context. I felt a bit lonely lately and, meaning lately, couple of years. This has nothing to do with my wife. She’s pretty get along perfectly, but I wanted a relationship that would be kind of reinvigorating. And so, I set about to do that. And talking with several young women, because that is invigorating and I’ve been sort of depressed lately. This one, she said her name was, [beep sound] I don’t know if that is or isn’t. She was eager to, in terms of texting and such to meet up and that maybe is a little unusual, but I didn’t have any reason to think that there was anything wrong.

Robert: [00:19:17] He tells us that he’s a member of this website, sugar daddy website that men pay to be a part of and women do not.

Yeardley: [00:19:24] So, women join for free?

Robert: [00:19:26] Yes. He tells us he pays $89 a month to be a member of this website, so that he can meet younger women.

Yeardley: [00:19:33] How old is Bob?

Robert: [00:19:34] He’s 60, maybe 61. So, he’s a part of this sugar daddy website and he explains how it works. You pay the membership fee, you meet the girls, you give them money, and you have whatever you negotiate with him. I said, “Not in a mean way, not in a judgmental way, because I want him to keep talking to us.” I said, “Bob, that sounds like prostitution.” He corrects me. He says, “No, it is a compensated relationship.” I said, “Bob, that sounds like prostitution.”

Yeardley: [00:20:03] [laughs]

Bob: [00:20:04] The idea is a compensated relationship. A relationship, not one life stand or anything. At least, that’s what I want. That’s what I’m looking for. And why? Because I understand that life is hard out there for young people.

Yeardley: [00:20:28] What does that mean? Does he actually think he’s providing some sort of service?

Robert: [00:20:32] Yes. Anyway, we get off to a good start, obviously, and we need to identify who this person is. We need to get into this website, we need to see your profile, I need to see her profile, I need to see the chat history between you guys. He says, “I don’t remember my password.” “Come on now, Bob, you were on this website yesterday.” So, the password comes back into his memory. He provides it and we can see that not only has he communicated with Rachel, but he’s communicated with many, many other potential compensated relationships.

Yeardley: [00:21:06] How long has he been a member?

Robert: [00:21:08] He’s been a member for years. Bob tells us during that interview that he has had one of these relationships in the past.

[00:21:15] And how long have you been a member on that site, would you say?

Bob: [00:21:19] Years. I mean, I did this once before with a [beep sound] student and it worked out really, really well.

Robert: [00:21:27] Okay.

Bob: [00:21:28] And still in contact.

Robert: [00:21:29] Okay, great.

Bob: [00:21:31] She’s a friend.

Robert: [00:21:32] What is that person’s name?

Bob: [00:21:35] I’d rather not tell you that, because I want to protect her.

Robert: [00:21:38] Well, I’m not even saying that we’re going to contact her, but if you guys are still in contact, we’re going to come across it and I would like to know her.

Bob: [00:21:46] Her name is [beep sound].

Robert: [00:21:47] Okay.

Bob: [00:21:48] But please don’t contact her.

Robert: [00:21:50] He insists that I not contact her, that I not bring her into this at all.

Yeardley: [00:21:55] But that’s your job.

Robert: [00:21:57] Correct. That’s what I get paid to do. I would not be doing my job, if I didn’t track her down. So, that happens later in the investigation. She tells me that Bob’s the nicest guy ever. Never had any trouble with him. He was never aggressive, he was never forceful, he didn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do.

Yeardley: [00:22:14] Was it a sexual relationship?

Robert: [00:22:17] She didn’t really want to [laughs] go into great detail about it, but my understanding was that it was.

Yeardley: [00:22:22] So, isn’t that prostitution?

Robert: [00:22:24] Yes. But prostitution in our state is a misdemeanor. It has short statute of limitations. And with what we’re investigating here, not interested at all in pursuing that. So, she, to me, would have value as a witness, potentially, for us. We let her be. We’re grateful to know that that one worked out a little better than this one, but Bob tells us that there’s really no expectation of what’s going to happen when he and Rachel we’re going to meet up.

[00:22:51] So, was there an agreement yesterday that you would pay her that specific amount?

Bob: [00:22:57] Yeah. She said in a text message, “Can you give me $250?” I said, “Sure.”

Robert: [00:23:05] Okay. What was the understanding of what was going to happen yesterday?

Bob: [00:23:09] There was no understanding.

Robert: [00:23:11] Okay.

Bob: [00:23:11] I didn’t [unintelligible [00:23:12]. In fact, when she got in the car, I said, “Look, you’re in control here. Tell me to turn around and drop you off, I’ll drop you off. This was about no stress.” Yeah, it didn’t work out that way.

Robert: [00:23:34] Okay. No, it did not, but it’s– [crosstalk]

Bob: [00:23:37] She acknowledged. She seemed to be part of the conversation.

Robert: [00:23:44] Okay. There wasn’t any understanding, because you are going to have sex yesterday.

Bob: [00:23:48] No.

Robert: [00:23:50] not explicitly that you didn’t– [crosstalk]

Bob: [00:23:51] No, we didn’t talk about it.

Robert: [00:23:53] Okay.

Bob: [00:23:55] The first thing I say is, “Once you got in, you’re in control of this. There’s no expectation or whatever.” So, that’s why it’s just so super bizarre, because I was going to give her $250 anyway.

Robert: [00:24:12] Again, he says, “I didn’t have sex on my mind. It’s just I’m trying to help younger people, because I know this is a very expensive world we live in.”

Yeardley: [00:24:20] That’s so nice.

Robert: [00:24:21] Yeah.

Dave: [00:24:22] He’s a philanthropist. Good for him.

Dan: [00:24:24] That was not the philan word that I was thinking of. Philanderer?

Yeardley: [00:24:28] [laughs]

Robert: [00:24:29] So, Bob goes on the site and he meets Rachel, whose profile says that she’s 19 and says that she’s a certified nursing assistant, even though that’s misspelled. And they [laughs] make arrangements to meet up.

Bob: [00:24:43] Normally, I suppose have met her for coffee somewhere, but because my son is coming home from college on Sunday, it would have been impossible to meet up and show her the music room and such, likely in the near term. So, that’s why I suppose instead of meeting for coffee, I just said, “Hey, why don’t you come over and hang out?” In retrospect, that was a terrible decision.

Dave: [00:25:25] All summer, it’s going to be a drought at Bob’s house and he’s like, “This is my last chance for companionship.

Yeardley: [00:25:32] To get invigorated.

Dave: [00:25:33] Right.

Robert: [00:25:33] [laughs]

Dan: [00:25:33] Right. You think about Bob that morning, he probably reads the card and wife is on her way out the door and he’s like, “Get out of here, get out of here, get out of here,” because he got stuff to do.

Dave: [00:25:43] I feel sorry for this wife.

Robert: [00:25:45] I do too.

Yeardley: [00:25:46] I do too.

Robert: [00:25:58] Bob and Rachel, they agree to me to put a nearby shopping center against who the neighbors don’t see and then he drives her back to his house, they pull into the garage, they close the garage, and then they enter the house. Once they’re inside, he offers her a soda, which she takes the soda, so her fingerprints will be on it. She drinks it, doesn’t like it, then he goes and gets her some water. She takes the water, that’s something that she touched. And then he says that they used a vape pen together. So, these are now three sources where I know that our suspect’s fingerprints are going to be on. I get pretty excited about this new evidence and hoping to identify a suspect. He says that they’re just chatting along, things are going great, and at one point she asks, “Hey, is it okay if I use the restroom?”

Bob: [00:26:45] She said, “Oh, can I go use the bathroom?” I said, “Sure. Go upstairs and take the first left, that’s the bathroom.” She goes to the bathroom and comes back down. She says, “Oh, by the way, can you give me money right now?” I said, “Oh, sure. Yeah, I can definitely do that. That’s understood.” And so I gave her money. I gave her $250. “That’s fine.” I gave it, no obligation, because I understand regarding people have trouble meeting in such.

[00:27:29] I’m sitting down at this point, she’s standing up. And literally, she pulls this gun in a matter of five seconds and fires at me and hit me, which I was not expecting at all. It’s just so bizarre. She says, “Well, where’s your money?” I said, “I just gave you money.” Now, she want to know where other money was. So, it was like a robbery, which is super weird, because I’m happy to give her money for free. There’s no need to rob somebody who’s giving you money.

Robert: [00:28:17] He’s telling me, “Detective Robert, I would give her money anytime she asked for it. I’m really confused why she shot me, why she’s trying to rob me, because I would totally give her more money.” It wasn’t logical in his logical brain, it just didn’t make sense.

Yeardley: [00:28:30] This isn’t the first time Bob and Rachel have met?

Robert: [00:28:33] It is the first time they’ve met.

Yeardley: [00:28:34] It is. So, when he says, I would give her money any time, what does he mean?

Robert: [00:28:39] It’s going back to his generosity. Like Detective Dave was saying, he does think he’s helping the young people. He says, “I know this is an expensive world and I’ve made it in this world. So, I’m happy to dole out some cash.”

Yeardley: [00:28:51] So, if she had just asked me and not shot me and asked me, I would have forked over more dough.

Robert: [00:28:56] Correct. He panics, and so, he falls to the ground, and he thinks that he’s dying, and then he realizes I’m still breathing, I’m not even bleeding that much.

Dave: [00:29:08] It hurts to sit down.

Robert: [00:29:10] [laughs] Yes. So, then he’s like, “Oh, well, I should probably call 911.” He calls 911, and he’s able to give his address, and he’s able to provide just a small amount of information. That’s how the patrol response starts. An interesting thing in this interview is I tell Bob, I said, “Bob, I’m going to need to look through your computer. It has important evidence from you using the sugar daddy website. I’m going to need your consent.” It was a real surprise to me. He says, “No, I’m not going to give you consent for my computer,” Which is what we expect from suspects, not from victims.

Dave: [00:29:42] I’m already thinking there’s child porn on this guy’s computer.

Robert: [00:29:44] That’s exactly what we thought. That’s exactly what we thought, okay?

Dave: [00:29:49] Maybe I’m contaminated.

Robert: [00:29:52] Then I’m with you, because that’s exactly where my brain went.

[00:29:55] Just the computer that’s up in the music room, does that have any password required to sign on to it?

Bob: [00:30:00] Yeah. Okay.

Robert: [00:30:02] What is that?

Bob: [00:30:05] Do I have to provide that?

Robert: [00:30:08] You don’t have to. I do want to tell you we collected it yesterday, because we believe, based on the lack of text messages on your phone that were totally apparent, we figured that you probably connected online and then switched to text messaging. So, we did collect that.

Bob: [00:30:22] Yeah, I can retrieve those for you.

Robert: [00:30:24] Okay.

Bob: [00:30:25] I’d be happy to do it.

Robert: [00:30:27] Okay. Do you not want to give us your login info?

Bob: [00:30:31] My login info?

Robert: [00:30:32] Yeah, to the computer?

Bob: [00:30:34] I would prefer not to. I have business and so.

Robert: [00:30:37] Okay. But we want you to know that we collected it, so we can get that back to you, but we want to be as thorough as we can.

[00:30:48] I can’t think of the last time. I wrote a search warrant to look through my victim’s computer, but okay and we find nothing. No contraband on there. So, again, the shooting is Friday. Saturday afternoon, I remember the detective who was helping me by tracking that phone.

Yeardley: [00:31:02] The burner phone Rachel was using.

Robert: [00:31:04] Correct. So, he calls me up and he says, “Hey, that phone that you asked me to look into, it tracked about 30 miles north of us, and it’s across the state line.” He says, “I called this friend of mine up there and I asked him to just go drive around the area in case he saw that car, in case he saw anything crazy that would stand out. I know it’s a long shot.” But as he’s telling this other city detective about what happened, this other detective says, “Well, you got to be kidding me. We had a home invasion robbery in the city next door to us and it involves a young female suspect that matched the description of our Rachel.” So, we’re thinking, “Well, wow, what are the chances?” So, obviously, it’s not a slam dunk, but it’s something that I really need to look into.

Yeardley: [00:31:49] Was that suspect’s name Rachel?

Robert: [00:31:51] Yes.

Yeardley: [00:31:52] Oh, no.

Robert: [00:31:53] Yes. So, as I learned more about that home invasion robbery, it would have happened just several hours after our shooting and it’s only 30 miles away. So, there’s definitely enough time for the suspects to get from my county up to this city. What happened is the suspects didn’t plan their robbery very well, because they went and robbed someone that knows Rachel and knows her name. So, this person, when he gets robbed, he immediately calls 911, and he says, “Yeah, her name is Rachel,” and he provides her contact information. This is when we learned for the first time that Rachel is 15 years old, not the 19 that was in her profile. So, we, of course, were shocked that someone’s profile information didn’t match their true identity.

Dan: [00:32:37] For a 15-year-old, she’s pretty cold.

Dave: [00:32:40] She’s got some street savvy, for sure.

Dan: [00:32:43] Right.

Dave: [00:32:43] Yeah.

Robert: [00:32:44] So, we, of course, start investigating with several other police agencies and we start connecting the dots. What I do is I’m able to show a picture of Rachel’s high school class photo and a picture from Rachel’s Facebook, which is publicly accessible, and a picture of Rachel from the sugar daddy website. I look at them and it looks to be the same person. Then we go show the school picture to Bob, and Bob says, “Yeah, that’s Rachel.” That’s when I get to tell Bob that Rachel is 15 years old.

Yeardley: [00:33:16] And what’s Bob’s reaction?

Robert: [00:33:17] Oh, Bob is very surprised, and, of course, he believed that she was an adult, of course. So, Monday afternoon, I’m able to get an arrest warrant for Rachel, because everything we know is right after our shooting, they headed north to this other state. That’s beyond my ability. I can’t go up there and arrest her and I have no police power, but we have the US Marshals. They do a great job and they are awesome at tracking people down.

[00:33:44] So, this is Wednesday now when the US. Marshals locate Rachel and her crew in this other state. They find her in a vehicle with several other males and one other female. The car matches what is described by my neighbors on the street where my shooting happens and they say, “It’s a beater car. It has glass missing from one window. It’s pretty identifiable.”

Yeardley: [00:34:06] So, just to be clear, Bob picked up Rachel at a mini mall and he brought her to his house. But after she shot him, somebody was waiting for her ready to make the getaway.

Robert: [00:34:17] Correct. So, that car gets towed and impounded. Me and the detectives who are investigating the home invasion robbery up in their city, we go talk to Rachel and her crew, and most of them lawyer up immediately. These are adults and they’ve been through this many times before, and they lawyer up. We talk to Rachel last, because we want to learn everything we can about her before we talk to her.

[00:34:40] During the interview, Rachel doesn’t say very much. She says that she doesn’t get along with her parents. She runs away a lot. She says, “I have never been on that site before. I’m not on the sugar daddy website, but that is a picture of me. I don’t recognize the phone number.” I asked her, if she’d been to my county before and she says, “I don’t think I’ve ever been there before.” I said, “Like last Friday? It’s only a few days ago.” “I don’t think I’ve been there. But I just sit in the back of the car and I go wherever they take me.”

[00:35:08] Because of her age difference, we asked her, if she is a human trafficking victim. We ask if she’s being pimped out and she says she’s not. We show her a photo of Bob. She says she doesn’t recognize him and we’re at the end of the interview. Finally, she says, “it didn’t happen for no reason.”

Yeardley: [00:35:27] Her shooting him didn’t happen for no reason.

Robert: [00:35:29] Correct. I said, “Well, tell me about that. What do you mean by that?” And she first says she felt pressured and then she says that the man referring to Bob, the man ran at her and made her feel uncomfortable. But she doesn’t elaborate. That’s all she says. I trying to tell her like, “Look, Rachel, if this is self-defense, I need you to give me something. I need you to explain that a little bit more, because right now you’re in kind of lots of trouble.” She wouldn’t do it. She says she didn’t know how she got to our county or how she got to Bob’s house. She said, it just happened.

Yeardley: [00:36:02] So, now she at least says she was in Bob’s house.

Robert: [00:36:04] Yes. At this point, she does place herself in Bob’s house, which, of course, is a successful interview, it gives us that. So, then I said, “Well, tell me more about this car.” She says, “Well, I don’t know much about the car, but it’s the same car we just got pulled over in by the Marshals.” And I said, “Great.” So, now I have my suspect car, I have her being there, I know who she is. She says, “I didn’t take any money from Bob. I just thought we were going to kick it or hang out or something.” I’m like, “Of course. Yeah, 60 something and a 15-year-old, they hang out all the time socially.”

[00:36:35] So, she says she didn’t know anything about guns, but she said that it came from someone in the car. She claimed not to know who. But then she totally denied being involved in that home invasion robbery in that other city.

Yeardley: [00:36:47] And who are the people in the car? Are they related to her, are they just friends of hers? How old are they?

Robert: [00:36:53] The connections are very strange. There’s three adult males in the car. They all have criminal records. There’s another gal who is the driver of that car and I think she’s probably the only one that has a valid driver’s license. But there’s no easily discernible connection between them. So, they know each other socially and she claimed to only know their first names. It was just really weird how they all got together.

Dan: [00:37:16] And these guys have gang ties?

Robert: [00:37:17] Yeah, they do have some gang ties and they’re just not up to any good. We have this long interview, because we’re interviewing all of this group and her. So, I’m probably five, six hours into it at this point. As I leave the interview with Rachel thinking that I’ve heard everything she’s going to say, she spontaneously says, “I shot a guy. That’s not good for me.” [laughs] And that was her parting words.

Yeardley: [00:37:42] Oh.

Robert: [00:37:42] Yeah.

Dave: [00:37:42] [unintelligible] there, now I just need– [crosstalk]

Robert: [00:37:44] Yes.

Dave: We got to corroborate her presence in the house with other evidence.

Robert: [00:38:01] Obviously, with her being under arrest in this other state, we have fingerprints now and we’re able to compare those and of course, it comes back to her. It’s a good match. All those people that were in the car with her that night, they got stopped. They’re booked into jail for serious robbery charges for that home invasion in that city, in this neighboring state, and they all stay in custody. Now, in my state, they probably would not remain in custody very long, but in this state, they’re staying in custody for quite a while.

Yeardley: [00:38:27] Why the difference?

Robert: [00:38:28] It’s just state by state, because they’re stopped in this other state, I can’t write search warrants in that state. The detectives who are investigating the home invasion robbery write a search warrant on the car that they were stopped in. What happens is we find the gun that was used in the shooting in my county, we find the same kind of ammunition in that gun, we find some loose rounds of that same brand of ammunition. Our state police crime lab later confirms, “Yep, it’s the same gun that was used to shoot Bob.” Then what the detectives do is they write search warrants for the residences of each of the people in that car, which is really going the extra mile. But I was very grateful they did it, because in one of the male’s homes, one of the guys who was in the car, they find a sweatshirt with a very large letter R on it. That was what we saw in the video surveillance from my case.

Yeardley: [00:39:20] Oh, wow. That Rachel was wearing.

Robert: [00:39:23] Yes. This went from being a true who done it to now being very buttoned down in a very solid case. So, we’re very grateful for that. I mentioned that Rachel and her comrades, they stay in custody a long time in this other state. Kind of how it works is this other state doesn’t want to give my state Rachel until they’re done with their case. It takes probably 12 or 13 months before Rachel is able to come back to our state.

Yeardley: [00:39:48] Oh.

Robert: [00:39:48] Yeah. And so, another detective and I, we actually go up to extradite her. Once the state’s done with her, we actually drive about three hours each way to go pick her up and bring her back to our county, to our juvenile facility.

Yeardley: [00:40:01] And then you keep her there while you start to do your case.

Robert: [00:40:06] Right. That’s really when our court proceedings can actually start is once she’s in our custody. We have a three-hour drive with her. I drive. So, we drive quick and we get back to our county. The whole time she sleeps. So, we didn’t have to worry about anything, because she sleeps in the back.

Yeardley: [00:40:21] Is that the guilt sleep?

Dan: [00:40:22] I don’t think so with her. She probably feels relaxed just to be out of the environment that she’s been stuck in for 12 or 13 months. It’s probably pretty liberating feeling. Even though, you know you’re not going to be free anytime, but this is different. This day is different.

Robert: [00:40:37] Yeah. So, we have this long drive with her, and she sleeps, and then how this other state does things is it’s almost like a jail for juveniles. Well, when she gets back into our state, it’s pretty intensive on the service. It’s like going to a school that you can’t go home from at the end of the day. So, it’s school, it’s structure, it’s life classes, it’s just a little more services. While she’s there, Rachel really starts to open up. She opens up to her counselor and she opens up to her group. One day, we get a call from her lawyer that Rachel wants to talk about being pimped out by the people that were in the car with her.

Yeardley: [00:41:12] So, when you had previously asked her if she was a victim of sex trafficking and she said, “No.” She was lying.

Robert: [00:41:18] Yes.

Yeardley: [00:41:19] Oh, the poor girl.

Robert: [00:41:21] So, she sits down with the appropriate people and she basically goes into great detail about how these people were exploiting her. She’s not vague about it, because remember, she had been vague every time that we talked to her. She’s very specific, and she’s very good with details, and actually leads to several federal indictments against people who were pimping her out and someone else out.

Yeardley: [00:41:45] Really?

Robert: [00:41:46] Yeah. So, it was a really, really positive thing that she got caught, that she got stopped, and that she was able to provide this level of information. Going back to the legal proceedings. I’m going to try to say this nicely, but Bob is a victim who’s hard to like. None of us liked what he was trying to do and how he and Rachel came into contact. Obviously, we’re sad that he got shot, but it’s hard to like Bob. There was something that happened that made it even harder to like Bob.

[00:42:13] So, again, almost a year later, we’re having our grand jury proceeding. And so, Bob shows up. He gets a subpoena. I’ve served him myself. He comes to the DA’s office and they said, “Bob, who are you here to see?” He says, “Oh, gosh, I don’t know. Let me look on my phone.” So, he sets his phone down on the counter to look for the DA’s last name. When Bob unlocks his phone, this loud porn video is going in the DA’s office lobby. Of course, there’s that awkward thing where he’s trying to press all the buttons to get it to stop.

Yeardley: [00:42:42] I’m guessing that’s why he didn’t want you guys digging through his computer.

Dan: [00:42:45] Bob’s got a lot of layers to him.

[laughter]

Robert: [00:42:48] That story, of course, made it around kind of quick.

Yeardley: [00:42:50] Jesus, Bob. [chuckles]

Robert: [00:42:53] Bob has issues.

Dave: [00:42:53] Clear your history before you enter the courthouse.

Robert: [00:42:56] [laughs] Yes. So, for all the reasons I stated, we’re very concerned about Bob’s jury appeal. We’re very concerned about putting him on the stand, we’re very concerned about what this could look like. Fortunately, Bob also worries about this and he doesn’t want the attention. I’m thinking that he doesn’t want his wife to continue thinking about this incident. So, Bob is not screaming that Rachel go to prison. He’s not screaming that she’d be locked up forever or anything like that. Bob pretty much says, “I want something fair to her, so that this won’t ruin her life and I trust you guys to do what’s right.”

[00:43:36] So, what ends up happening is that Rachel gets a very structured and tailored deal in exchange for that testimony that she provided against those pimps. Last I heard, she’s doing very well, she’s completing her education, she’s doing everything that is required of her, but she will not be spending any more time in custody, and she’s back in the world and hopefully, she makes great choices and hangs out with the right crowd. But that is about as positive of a resolution to this case as I can think of.

Yeardley: [00:44:06] That’s amazing. What about Mrs. Bob?

Robert: [00:44:09] They are together and continuing to live where all this happened.

Yeardley: [00:44:14] Okay.

Dave: [00:44:15] How are those block parties?

Robert: [00:44:16] Awkward.

Dave: [00:44:17] [laughs]

Dan: [00:44:19] Did you guys ever uncover evidence that Rachel had a substance abuse problem?

Robert: [00:44:24] No. No, we know that she used marijuana, but nothing harder than that.

Dan: [00:44:30] Yeah, because we’ve had prior cases on here, The Classifieds, which was Season 2, where we had similar circumstances, where you had these older males and these juvenile females, and the addiction was how they really got them hooked, and they would provide basic necessities for survival. But the hook for these girls was the drugs.

Robert: [00:44:49] No, in this case, Rachel had not been associated with these pimps very long, but, yeah, they were happy to take advantage of her and happy to exploit her. But I don’t think that was the case yet, at least.

Dave: [00:45:00] Yeah.

Dan: [00:45:01] And you think about these guys, like they sit out in the car while she goes and does the dirty work. Actually, she’s the one who’s in danger, because if she pulls a gun and she hesitates and Bob’s got a gun, then you know what happens. It’s cowardly and these guys prey on people. And they’re cowards.

Dave: [00:45:19] And she’s not going to get the money from this robbery. She hands it over.

Robert: [00:45:23] Exactly. Another thing that Detective Dan had said was were these guys gang members, and that is a shift that we’ve seen in the time I’ve been a police officer, where gangs used to traffic drugs and that’s what they used to cars or something and now it’s trafficking humans. The money, the return on investment is just so much better on humans. You can run out of drugs, you run out of baggies or whatever, but you don’t run out of humans. They get these girls on the hook and they can reuse them over and over and over, and there’s a huge profit in this. So, that is now one of the priorities and one of the things that gangs in our area are doing.

Dan: [00:46:02] You think about it. If Rachel would have never shot Bob and just robbed him, do you think Bob would have ever called 911?

Robert: [00:46:09] No. Not a chance.

Yeardley: [00:46:11] No. So, you think that this was set up from Rachel’s end as a robbery all along?

Robert: [00:46:19] There’s still a little bit of question as to that. We know that the group she was with were chatting on her behalf, were posting ads on her behalf, transported her there. So, I believe her when she says she didn’t know anything about all that. But she was told, “Hey, you’re going to go in and meet with this guy,” and someone in that car gave her a gun for her protection. As far as the rest, I don’t think that it was her directive to shoot him, but I also think that she wasn’t really clear on what she was supposed to do when she went in there.

[00:46:48] One thing that we found in the house was there were lots of items of value. In fact, one of my concerns when we started looking into this was whether the gun that was used was Bob’s, because Bob owned guns. With him at the hospital, the wife not knowing anything about guns, I still didn’t know if the gun that was used was Bob’s. We later determined it was not. All of Bob’s guns were still there. They weren’t locked up. They could have been taken. If it was a more organized robbery or burglary, there were lots of valuables in this house that they could have had.

Yeardley: [00:47:17] So, maybe it is true that he made some sort of move on her that made her really uncomfortable and afraid. If she had been given that gun to defend herself, she’s obviously, not a very good shot. She shot him, right?

Robert: [00:47:31] She still hit him.

[laughter]

Yeardley: [00:47:32] She did hit him. True. Her main objective is always get the money, always get the money.

Robert: [00:47:37] Right.

Yeardley: [00:47:38] It just seemed like the whole thing was botched and not as well planned out as one might think.

Dan: [00:47:45] There’s a reason why these guys target these juvenile females, because I talked about if she hadn’t shot Bob, he would have never called 911. It would have never happened. Now what they got to deal with when they go to court– Another reason why the DA probably doesn’t want Bob to testify is because you got an underage girl, Bob is not likeable. And I think the DA is wary of Bob being made into this monster.

Yeardley: [00:48:10] The DA wouldn’t portray Bob as a monster, but Rachel’s defense team might.

Dan: [00:48:15] Yeah, and that of course, she’s the victim. She shot him to get away from him. You can see how they could flip that.

Yeardley: [00:48:23] Why would the DA be wary of that? Bob is still committing a crime by potentially trying to hook up with a minor.

Dave: [00:48:31] But he doesn’t know she’s a minor.

Yeardley: [00:48:32] So, you’re saying it’s plausible deniability?

Dave: [00:48:35] Yeah. There has to be some intent with these crimes when it involves juveniles. So, there are certain crimes, where I don’t need your intent. I find out later that it’s a child that I got a picture of, there’s no intent element that I need to satisfy. And some of these other crimes, I need to know beforehand that this person is likely a child. So, there’s some differences and sounds like he’s not committing these crimes, where he has to have intent that, “I’m hooking up with a child.” Those crimes didn’t apply in this situation.

Dan: [00:49:06] But defense attorneys love to spin things. If they can just plant that seed in a jury’s mind, you never know what’s going to happen.

Yeardley: [00:49:13] The seed that Bob is the one who committed a crime here.

Dave: [00:49:16] Yeah. So, you want to get Rachel on the hook for something here.

Yeardley: [00:49:19] I see. I’m sorry, Detective Robert. Did you say this did go to trial?

Robert: [00:49:23] No, this was resolved again with Bob’s blessing. It was resolved without a trial, without any more attention on him or his family. It was a great resolution, because this was the only way we would be able to get those pimps too. So, it was a win-win.

Yeardley: [00:49:36] Right. The other men in that car, were those the pimps, presumably?

Robert: [00:49:40] Yes.

Yeardley: [00:49:41] Do you think the woman who was driving was also being trafficked?

Robert: [00:49:44] No, she was the girlfriend of one of the men in the car.

Dave: [00:49:48] Bob’s just happy to have it done with, “I don’t have to deal with this, nobody from the DA’s office or the sheriff’s office calling me anymore, and that means my wife isn’t going to hammer me every time I get that phone call.”

Robert: [00:50:00] Correct.

Dave: [00:50:01] “Let it go away. I’m good with that.”

Yeardley: [00:50:03] Yeah, but based on what was on his phone when he went to the DA’s office, I’m thinking he’s still part of sugardaddy.com.

Dave: [00:50:08] I think Bob has a porn addiction.

Yeardley: [00:50:11] He’s still trying to be invigorated.

Dave: [00:50:12] There you go.

Yeardley: [00:50:13] But not for me to judge.

Robert: [00:50:14] [laughs]

Yeardley: [00:50:15] Well, Detective Robert, it’s always a pleasure to see you.

Robert: [00:50:17] Well, thank you.

Yeardley: [00:50:18] Thank you. Thank you for coming.

Dave: [00:50:20] Thank you, sir.

Dan: [00:50:21] We appreciate it. Thank you.

Robert: [00:50:22] My pleasure.

Yeardley: [00:50:26] Small Town Dicks is produced by Gary Scott and Yeardley Smith, and coproduced by Detectives Dan and Dave. This episode was edited by Soren Begin, Gary Scott, and me, Yeardley Smith. Our associate producers are Erin Gaynor and the Real Nick Smitty. Our music is composed by John Forest. Our editors extraordinaire are Logan Heftel and Soren Begin, and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Dan: [00:50:54] If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, visit us on our website at smalltowndicks.com. And join the Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from you.

Dave: [00:51:10] And if you support us on Patreon, your subscription will give you access to exclusive content and merchandise that isn’t available anywhere else. Go to patreon.com/smalltowndickspodcast.

Yeardley: [00:51:22] That’s right. Your subscription also makes it possible for us to keep going to small towns across the country-

Dan: [00:51:28] -in search of the finest-

Dave: [00:51:29] -rare-

Dan: [00:51:30] -true crime cases told as always, by the detectives who investigated them.

Dave: [00:51:35] So, thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.

Yeardley: [00:51:37] Nobody’s better than you.

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