Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam, it’s Yeardley. How are you guys? I hope all is well in your world. You know, we cover a lot of horrible crimes on this podcast, but a few are what I call worst nightmare crimes. Though honestly, I guess a lot of what we cover on this podcast could certainly fall under that category. The ones I’m referring to though, the ones I find especially terrifying are the cases where the offender has already been caught at least once and has been ordered by the courts to stay away from the victim, and yet instead of abiding by that agreement, they stalk their prey and attack her in the one place we all hope and need to feel safe, in our own home.

The case you’re going to hear today is one of those worst nightmare cases. It comes to us from Prosecutor Kristin, who gave us a case last season we called “Snakebit” about a kid murdering another kid. Kristin doesn’t shy away from the hard ones, and this case is no exception. It’s about a sexual assault and domestic violence, and I want to warn you that some of the details are difficult to hear. Still, it’s a fascinating case from the point of view of a prosecutor who is dedicated to pulling out all the stops to get justice for the victim. That means the stakes couldn’t have been higher. And as in any case where a jury is impaneled, all of the dominoes have to line up perfectly in order for justice to be served. Because when 12 people from all walks of life, commonly known as a jury of your peers, when these people are asked to deliver a verdict, anything can happen. Here is “Unintended Consequences.”

[music]

Yeardley: Hi, there. I’m Yeardley.

Dan: I’m Dan.

Dave: I’m Dave.

Paul: And I’m Paul.

YeardleyAnd this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan:Dave and I are identical twins-

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

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

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

[Small Town Dicks theme]

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

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

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

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

[unison]: Thank you.

Yeardley: Today, on Small Town Dicks, my friends, we have the usual suspects. You’re probably not surprised by that. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: Hello, everyone.

Yeardley: Hello. We have Detective Dave.

Dave: Hello, team.

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

Paul: Hey, hey.

Yeardley: Oh, I’m so happy I got a hey, hey.

Paul: [laughs]

Yeardley: My life is complete. [laughs] And Small Town Fam, we are so pleased to welcome back to the podcast, Prosecutor Kristin.

Kristin: Hello.

Yeardley: Hello, Kristin. Thank you for sitting down with us again. We’re so happy to see you.

Kristin: I’m happy to be here.

Yeardley: Small Town Fam, you will remember that Kristin gave us a case about a brutal murder of a juvenile committed by a juvenile. And as you know, if you’re a longtime listener, but even if you’re brand new and you read the podcast description, we usually have detectives on to give us the case and how it came to them. So, it’s really interesting and different and fantastic that we now get to hear a case from the prosecutor’s point of view. Kristin, tell us how this case came to you.

Kristin: Okay. Well, this is a domestic violence case that came to me when I was in the Domestic Violence Unit in my former office in King County. There were several different units, and prosecutors rotated between them, pretty much spending nine months to a year on each unit. And the idea was to get a full, well-rounded prosecutor, somebody who could do trials, file cases, and write appeals, and do all kinds of different kinds of cases. At the end of those rotations, you can then ask to be placed in a particular unit.

Domestic Violence was my specialty, really. I had been an advocate previously when I was in law school, a domestic violence victims advocate. And so, I wanted to go to the Domestic Violence Unit. I was the only female in the unit, and I was supervising four or five male prosecutors who were in domestic violence cases. And I got to say, that was so fantastic for the victims because most domestic violence victims are women. And for them to see a man standing up for them and also just listening to them, telling them it’s not their fault, hearing their story, and then going to bat for them in court, it was huge. It went way beyond what I could do, even though I had those same skills. And I could also go to bat for them. But for them to see a strong male figure doing that, I think really helped in their healing and their survival of what they’d been through.

Yeardley: That’s fascinating.

Kristin: Yeah. And so, this was a case that I felt like it was, complicated is not the right word, but there was going to be a lot of work to it, and so it needed two prosecutors on it. And so, I chose to do this case with a younger prosecutor named Martin. And so, it was the end of November when this happened in 1998. And this involved a woman named Amy who lived and had a relationship with a man named Julian. Amy and Julian, I think, are in their 30s. They had a relationship for just under a year. And during that time, at some point, Julian assaulted Amy and she let the police know. And I don’t know the end result of that. It was a misdemeanor, I know that, but there was a no-contact order issued.

It ordered Julian to not have any contact with Amy either in person, by phone, over email, at all. It may have even said, stay away, like a certain number of feet. Sometimes it’s like a 500-foot-no-contact order. They broke up. Amy started to date other people. And then at some point, she heard from Julian. He called her and asked if he could get some of his things back because he had spent enough time with her that he had left some things behind. And Amy was pretty savvy and didn’t trust him. She wanted to check it out first. Before she let him into her apartment, Amy wanted to see Julian and gauge for herself what his demeanor was like because he had been pretty violent in the past.

And Julian and Amy both liked to party a little bit. So, they made a plan to meet at a neutral spot, which was a bowling alley in Seattle, not very far from Amy’s apartment. And they had a couple drinks there. Amy decided that Julian was okay. She wasn’t afraid of him. She didn’t feel the need to be afraid of him. They had a nice conversation, and she agreed to let him come back to her apartment and pick up his things. And they drove back there. And actually, he drove her car because she felt like she had too much to drink.

Once they got to the apartment, Julian started bringing up the current man that Amy was dating. And he knew this man’s name, he knew where he worked. He knew a lot of things about him, so that it made Amy very nervous. It creeped her out. She realized Julian must have been following or spying on me or on my new boyfriend. And when Amy brought this up with Julian and told him she wanted him to get out, he became violent.

First thing he did was he broke her glass coffee table. She had a very large glass coffee table. He smashed that. Amy had a mantel on the wall, and he wiped all the glass objects, porcelain objects, whatever was on that mantel. Julian just swiped them off and onto the floor they went, and they smashed. And then Julian grabbed Amy and took her into her bedroom. She had kind of a loft bed, and he threw Amy up on the bed and he raped her.

Yeardley: Ugh.

Kristin: Julian then cut the phone cord. Back then, we did not have cell phones. Amy had a landline. He cut that and he left. Julian left the apartment, took Amy’s purse with him. And when he left, he stole her car. So, he left in her car with her purse, having just raped her and smashed some of her things in her apartment.

Yeardley: And cut the phone line.

Kristin: Yeah. Amy was exhausted. She actually slept a little bit. And then in the morning, she went to a neighbor’s apartment. She lived in an apartment building with three or four other apartments. She lived, I think, on the second or third floor, and she went to a neighbor’s and used their phone and called 911. And police responded. They took lots of photos of Amy’s apartment and the damage. They took photos of her. She had some bruising on her arm. And they asked her if she would agree to go to the hospital for what’s called a rape-kit exam. And Amy agreed to do that.

And I’ll just tell you a little bit about a rape kit. It’s no fun. You go into a room with a sexual assault nurse examiner or a SANE nurse. Most large hospitals have SANE nurses on staff, and you have to take all your clothes off. You stand on that crinkly paper that you know you’ve seen in doctor’s offices. Your pubic hair is combed onto the paper to see if any DNA or anything is going to turn up on the paper. A woods lamp is shown over somebody’s body or at least was back then, that’s a fluorescent blue or purple light that will show any kinds of fluids that might be on your body. It also can be inserted in your vagina, and a full vaginal exam is done. So, this is like with a speculum, it’s not comfortable, it hurts. And swabs are taken from the inside of a woman’s vagina and a SANE exam.

And the issue here is not– I mean, in a domestic violence case, it’s not like we don’t know who did it. We know who did it. So, you’re not looking necessarily for DNA, but that vaginal exam might show some type of injury, some bruising. It’s not very common with adults to have any injuries, but you never know. And it corroborates that this person, who’s reported this, is going through with the criminal investigation. This is part of the investigation.

And so, as a prosecutor, it’s very helpful to me, even if there’s nothing that really comes out of the exam as far as evidence goes, what I’m looking for, especially in a domestic violence sexual assault case, collaboration. Because the tendency, unfortunately, of our society is to not believe people when they report bad things that happened to them by people who supposedly cared about them. Nobody wants to believe that somebody who loves you is going to hurt you this way. And you got to convince jurors that this stuff happens. So, for a victim to go through that, it just demonstrates, I think, to others that something bad happened here, and they’re willing to put themselves through this horrific experience of having a complete stranger comb their pubic hair and have this lamp shone on you and undergo a vaginal exam because you don’t think this should have happened to you.

Yeardley: Right.

Kristin: Once that’s all done, at that point, the victim is allowed to take a shower. But up until this point, generally, hopefully, I mean, from a prosecutor’s standpoint, I hope that they haven’t taken a shower just in case there is some evidence on their body.

Dave: I can say from a detective’s point of view, when you’re working sexual assault cases, I understand why a victim wants to get into a shower right now and trying to convince them or explain why, I need you to delay that, that’s a really difficult conversation to have with somebody who’s just been brutalized by someone to convince them just to lay there and have a stranger prodding, poking, touching you right after the worst experience of your life. I’m always struck by that kind of strength to sit through that while you’re dealing with all these emotions of what just happened to you.

Kristin: Right. And I’ve realized now, I mean, I don’t think I realized then, but that a lot of men who might be jurors might be sitting on my jury, they don’t know what a vaginal exam is all about and what a speculum is and how it is uncomfortable. Even when you’re doing it as a regular, annual thing, it’s no fun. And so, I try to impress upon them, meaning the jury, when I’m selecting a jury in any kind of case where there’s had to be a sexual assault exam, the discomfort that somebody has to go through in order to have that happen.

So, Amy went through that. Semen was found on her leg, and that was collected. She reported to the police that her former boyfriend had done this. And what she reported was that her former boyfriend David had done this. And when the police ran David’s name, it was not his real name. And it kind of came out at that point to Amy, who had now known this man for almost a year, that the person she knew as David, his real name was actually Julian.

Yeardley: This David, actually Julian, this fucking guy. He’s a piece of shit. Were the police able to tell Amy at the time why he was using a fake name?

Kristin: The police told her they thought the reason he was using what turned out to be his brother’s name, David, was because Julian had a warrant out for his arrest for a rape that he had committed in New Mexico. He had also previously been convicted of sexual penetration or something like that from another jurisdiction. He wasn’t a nice guy to women.

So, Amy was dealing with this, not only the trauma of what had happened to her, but also realizing that she thought she was a pretty savvy and smart woman and here she’d been duped by this guy for all this time, and she’d fallen for it, and so that compounded her own feelings about being a victim. And also, just her judgment, she had done what was the right thing to do, met Julian at a neutral place. Amy had said she wanted to check him out first. And Amy had decided, based on her gut feeling, that Julian was okay that night and she would take him back to her apartment. And so, Amy was doing a lot of blaming herself for what happened, which I have found not to be that uncommon in rape victims. But I was really impressed with Amy’s strength. She was a very strong person.

Yeardley: I was just going to add that we did an episode in Season 2, I think, called “Stalked,” and it’s about an incident I had where I was stalked by a contractor who worked in my house when I divorced the first time and moved houses. And this feeling as though I was a good judge of character that had my head screwed on right, I was successful in my career, I had lived alone many years, etc., etc., to have been duped, as you said, as Amy felt she had been by Julian, there’s this tidal wave of shame that you carry for not either heeding whatever signs you were shown or not knowing that they were signs. And the whole thing, you start to blame yourself, and it can really fold in on yourself, and it breaks my heart. And to your point, I’m sure it’s not that uncommon for women who are victims of– Anytime somebody that you know and trust betrays you in a big way, I think you feel like, “How am I so stupid?” You blame yourself instantly.

Kristin: That’s so hard to get past that. And I’m just sorry that happened to you as well.

Yeardley: Thank you.

Kristin: People need a lot of support around them at this point. They need people who will tell them over and over again, “This is not your fault.” It’s so easy for domestic violence victims to blame themselves and to feel that shame that you speak of. So, a detective was assigned to this case. A detective came back out and took photographs of Amy a couple days later. Meanwhile, the police were looking for Julian because he had fled in Amy’s car and he hadn’t been found yet. Different bruising had shown up. So, I had good photos from a few days later after Amy had recovered a little bit more. And this is not a case of who done it. We knew who did it. So, I was able to charge Julian with several counts from that incident.

And so, I charged him with a, first of all, a felony violation of that no-contact order. That no-contact order was in place anytime there’s an assault associated with that back in 1998, anyway, it was considered a felony. I charged him with domestic violence, rape in the second degree, which means, basically, you used forcible compulsion. Rape in the first degree would involve a weapon. There was no weapon here, but he definitely forced himself. And it wasn’t a situation where Amy just said, “No,” that would be rape in the third degree. And so, I charged him with domestic violence, rape in the second degree, robbery in the second degree for stealing her purse and her car.

And I could have broken that down probably into two different counts, but my office had a bit of a conservative filing policy that we filed low, usually not more than three charges, depending on the case, with the hopes that a defendant would plead guilty as charged. And if they didn’t, and we had to go to trial, we could add whatever charges fit the crime.

Amy was connected to victim services, and the police were looking for Julian. They didn’t find him right away. And about 10 days later, Amy was home alone in her apartment. She heard a scratching noise on the wall. This was in the middle of the night. She was asleep. Actually, the noise woke her up, and she couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. And the next thing she knew, Julian was busting through the drywall in her closet, in her bedroom and came into her bedroom and pulled her down off that loft bed and started dragging her down the stairs. She had some internal stairs in her apartment that went right down to the door. And she is screaming, holy hell. And he opened the door and got out into the hallway. This was about 5:00 in the morning. And dragged her all the way down another set of stairs and outside. Julian got Amy on her feet and forced her over to her car.

Julian had driven her car to her apartment, and he started stuffing her in the backseat. Julian had opened the back door and was stuffing Amy in there. Luckily, that commotion in the internal stairwell had woken one of the neighbors, who was a university student, who came out, saw what was happening, followed Julian and Amy out into the parking lot. Her name was Lisa. She was our star witness, I would say. And she approached them and basically tugged on Julian’s belt loop. He was focused on stuffing Amy in the car, and she, like, touched his belt loop. And he was a big guy. He was a contractor, he worked in building, and he was built. And Lisa pulling on Julian’s belt buckle distracted him enough. He turned around to deal with her, and Amy was able to keep going right through the other door of the car. She got out the backseat of the car and she just took off running. And Julian wanted nothing to do with Lisa. That wasn’t his object at all. He jumped in the driver’s seat and took off.

Yeardley: But this is terrifying that Julian would be in the walls of Amy’s apartment is a nightmare.

Kristin: It is a nightmare. And later we found out that he had somehow gotten in the building. It was a secure building, but somebody had either let him in or we never found out how he actually got in, but he go up in the crawl space in the ceiling. They had one of those attic little things you push aside and he pulled himself up in there, figured out which apartment was Amy’s. He sat back there, smoked two cigarettes, cut the phone wire again, cut the electrical wire. And he knew where those things were from his work and figured out the weakest point behind the 2x4s there and busted through, I mean, literally busted through that drywall.

So, there were a couple different detectives involved in this case, and they really believed that Julian was going to kill Amy. And that’s why I call Lisa our star witness, because, she diverted Julian’s attention enough to allow Amy that time to escape. And thank goodness. So, now I have additional charges on Julian. There’s no question about who did this. Amy knows Julian well. And so, I now charge Julian with another felony violation of the no-contact order. Burglary in the first degree. attempted kidnapping in the first degree and I think that was it at that point. So, at this point now, Julian has six felonies charged against him, and the police are still looking for him.

Paul: Now, Kristin, with those charges, I’m kind of curious with Washington’s laws with the kidnapping. I think, like in California, if you forcibly move a person from one location to another, you’ve got kidnapping. In Washington, is that the same definition or do you have to have more than that?

Kristin: At the time, you have to have what we call asportation, or a movement of a person. You don’t have to have any demand for ransom or something. It’s really just that movement of the person. And first degree would generally imply there was a weapon involved or it was committed in the course of another felony. That was the prong I charged Julian under because of that burglary. So, for both the burglary in the first degree and the attempted kidnapping in the first degree because he had committed another felony in the course of that’s how I got to first degree, which was just a higher penalty than if it was in the second degree.

Paul: There’s definitely some behavioral aspects to what Julian is doing to Amy. We’ve talked about never allow yourself to go to a secondary location.

Yeardley []: Right.

Paul: Why is Julian at this moment trying to take Amy out of her residence to go to another location? He’s planning on doing a lot of bad things to Amy in this instance. And I’m curious because you mentioned that Julian, he’s using the pseudonym David to prevent Amy or others to know that he’s actually wanted for a prior sexual assault. Do you know the circumstances of that prior sexual assault? Is it with another woman he’s in a relationship with or is he like a stranger rapist?

Kristin: I didn’t know it at the time, but while Martin and I were preparing for trial, I got a phone call from a woman from New Mexico who told me she was Julian’s ex-wife. And she was calling me because she wanted to know if I would please let her know if he ever was released from jail or if he escaped from jail or if he was ever out of custody because she was terrified because she told me Julian had raped her on the hood of her car in the desert in New Mexico, and she was his ex-wife. And I don’t believe that that was the conviction that we knew about. The sex conviction that we knew about was for somebody else. It wasn’t his ex-wife’s conviction. And so, he was just a really scary, dangerous dude.

Dave: I mean, he’s terrorizing people. You try to put yourself in Amy’s shoes while she’s asleep and hear some mysterious noise in her house, and all of a sudden you hear drywall breaking and all of a sudden there’s a hulking man over you. I mean, to be a fly on the wall as he drags her downstairs like he’s a big problem, like does not care.

Kristin: And again, preparing for trial and doing trials, it’s a lot of work. But I’ll tell you, it’s the easiest thing in the world to stand up and say, nobody should do this to another human being, especially when they’ve been in a relationship and supposedly really cared for each other. It makes my job feel really easy. I loved doing jury trials, especially domestic violence ones, where even if people weren’t convicted, at least those defendants had to hear what they did to somebody else. They had to sit there, and we at least tried to hold them accountable. It’s not easy to sit there and hear what people say that you’ve done to them. And while it’s not easy to hear what people have said that you’ve done to them, you know what you’ve did to them as a defendant.

And so I never had any problem. Even when I was doing back-to-back trials, which was often the case near the end of my career, I’d literally go from closing argument in one courtroom and have to walk across the hall into another courtroom and start with a motion to exclude witnesses and start another trial. It was never difficult or felt like a big burden because we were doing good work. We were really doing good work and working hand in hand with the police to do that and figuring out ways to hold people accountable for things they shouldn’t be doing to other people. I couldn’t believe they paid me to do it, frankly.

Dave: So as Julian tears from the scene in a stolen vehicle, I imagine at some point the assigned detective gets a heads up that Julian has committed more crimes. I’m speaking from my perspective. I know Dan and I know Paul. That really ratchets things up from a law enforcement perspective is all right. Now, this guy’s a big project. Let’s go handle this right now.

Kristin: Right. I got to say, I mean, everybody involved in this case really liked Amy a lot. She was cooperative. She was willing to come in for multiple interviews. She was appropriately terrified of Julian. And it definitely ratcheted up and the police were determined to find this guy and keep Amy safe. And the way they did that is they created a ruse working with Julian’s construction company boss. They got the boss to tell him that his paycheck was in and he had to come pick it up. And so, Julian showed up, and the police put the habeas corpus on him and off he went into the jail. And there was a big sigh of relief, I got to say big sigh of relief on Amy’s part for sure, but also on our parts.

Paul: I actually have a question for Dan and Dave. For women who find themselves in this situation where they’ve got the restraining order, protective order, whatever jurisdiction it’s called, we know that’s a piece of paper. What should be conveyed to local law enforcement in order to indicate the seriousness of the crime? so there may be enhanced patrol or something like that to try to prevent somebody like Julian from coming back a second time.

Dave: I’ve had cases in the past where I had a victim where we had this kind of scenario where you’re worrying that suspect is going to go break into victim’s house because suspect is in the wind. We’ve put them up in hotels, we’ve put them in like, safe houses where it’s three or four degrees of separation, so it’d be more difficult to track people down. But no contact order is just a piece of paper. And I understand when victims are like, since this guy’s so good at adhering to the laws, this piece of paper will probably keep him in check. It offers very, very little to a victim and their family. When you say, “Well, there is a no-contact order, because we all know what that is. It’s just a piece of paper.”

Paul: Yeah. It almost is like the victims need to disappear themselves, right?

Dave: You got to get proactive about your safety and your security. And before I was a cop, I had a certain level of what I thought was security. Now that I’m out of the job now I know what security really looks like. And I’ve got holes in my security too, but at least be aware of it. And, you got to keep your head on a swivel. Like all these things that Julian is now going to make Amy do for the rest of her life, she’s going to be looking over her shoulder and not feeling safe in places that should be a sanctuary for her.

Dan: Yeah. Just to kind of piggyback on what Dave was saying in your question, Paul, is we had resources in our town, women’s space, and there are other women’s shelters where they would not even share the location of their safe house with law enforcement. It was completely off the record, which, if you’ve got a woman who’s still in the workforce and you’ve got a guy like Julian who is stalking her and following her around, it’s easy for him to kind of remain at a distance and follow Amy back to a safe house where he can plan his attack. I put myself in the victim’s shoes. They want to stay at their house because that’s their home. That’s their sanctuary. You don’t want to go move into a stranger’s house and be in the safe house where you don’t have all your comforts and the things that you’re familiar with at your house. But at the same time, that’s a safer place to be, is the safe house.

So, our neighboring jurisdiction actually had an alert. It was a panic button. And if you hit a panic button, it automatically notified 911. And these panic buttons were assigned to the address of, say, Amy, in this case. If Amy had one of these panic buttons and it was all hands-on deck, mandatory, Code 3 response. You had a game plan of where you were going to set up, and it was surround the property, and then go make contact, we would call inside. But even if you called inside, say Amy answers the phone and Julian’s got a gun to her head and said, “Hey, tell them everything’s fine.” No, we’re going to go inside and we’re going to search the entire premises. The cops are going to search everything. We have to. If we leave and something bad happens because we just took things for granted, that’s on us. So, there are things in place. I wish there were more resources for women in cases like this that you could have an armed patrol presence like we see in the movies sometimes. But, yeah, it’s terrible for these victims until the offender actually is in custody.

Dave: That’s well put. And I would say I was very good about, as a detective, letting our patrol guys know, “Hey, can you increase some patrol checks? Drive by this woman’s house a few times a night.” Just that police car can be deterrence.

Kristin: Definitely. And even that happened in Amy’s case. In that gap, after the first incident, the rape had happened, Seattle police parked in front of her house. They did patrols around her neighborhood and on her street because we assumed that Julian would return there at some point because he was clearly obsessed with Amy and was unhappy. Again, domestic violence about power and control. And Amy had taken control by breaking up with him and saying, “I’m done.” And Julian was trying to say, “No, you’re not. And here I come.”

Now Julian is arrested and in jail, and everybody’s breathing a big sigh of relief, and I can start focusing on preparing for trial and deciding what Martin is going to do. Now that I’m sort of in the driver’s chair, I can push this guy around a little bit, as he put it. [Yeardley laughs] Give him all the shit work. And we definitely spent some time with Amy, and Amy has to submit to defense attorney interviews. In my office, back then, we did not do depositions. We just did interviews.

Yeardley: What’s the difference?

Kristin: Well, a deposition is generally recorded. And back in the day, there’d be a court reporter, but now would be on a disc. But you get sworn in, you’re giving a statement under oath. Whereas a defense attorney interview, it was not under oath. And there might be an investigator there as a witness, and also a prosecutor and an advocate could be there as well, but there was no court reporter. And it wasn’t recorded on audio. It was just people taking notes.

Yeardley: And did the fact that you’re not sworn in for a defense interview, did you get more lies from your subject than if you’re sworn in?

Kristin: Well, it’s hard to tell, who knows? But the thing about preparing for a defense interview is, for me anyway, as a prosecutor, I tell all the witnesses, “You got to tell the truth. Because if you lie now, it’s just going to come back and hurt us in the trial.” Because the point of the defense interview is for them, first of all, to gauge how a witness or a victim is going to be on the stand. But also in their questioning, which they’re allowed to do, it might give me a clue about what their defense might be or how they’re going to attack this case. So, it’s helpful to me, but I really spend a lot of time preparing victims and witnesses about, “Make sure you know the question that’s being asked before you answer it. And if you don’t know the answer, don’t make something up. It’s okay. Nobody expects you to remember every single detail at this point. And if you don’t know, just say that, that’s okay. Please don’t make stuff up. It’s not your job to win this case.” I’d have to spend a lot of time talking to people about that. “This is my job. This is why I’m here. All you need to do as a witness or a victim is show up and tell the truth. Please don’t think that it’s your job to win this case, because it’s not. It’s really my job.”

Yeardley: That’s amazing. That’s very cool.

Kristin: So Julian was in custody. This went to trial pretty quickly, and he was assigned a public defender for all six counts. And these counts were separated by 10 or 11 days from the dates of the crime, because the initial rape and destruction of property and stealing her car was late November. And then coming back and trying to kidnap Amy, I think it was 10 or 11 days later. I had charged Julian in that first information that I charged him, and I then amended it and added these other three counts in this second date of crime, fully expecting that a defense attorney would move to sever those counts, which means that I would not be allowed to try them all together.

Yeardley: What’s the thought process behind severing those counts?

Kristin: Well, for the defense attorney, it’s to their advantage in this case, because if the counts all stay together, Jury’s going to hear all of it. They’re going to hear first about the rape and the stealing the car and the purse, and then they’re going to hear about crashing through the drywall. And that’s just like, oh, my God. As we said before, like a made for TV movie, and so, to me, there’s a way higher chance of conviction, not just because of the facts here, but six counts, like holy cow, this guy must have done something. If the state has charged him with six counts, then he’s got to be guilty. There’s that attitude.

So as a defense attorney, the advantage would be not only do you separate that evidence from the same jury, but you only have three charges in each trial, and you’d have a whole separate jury for each trial or each set of criminal counts.

Yeardley: So it is curious that the defense did not separate these two charges or these six charges into three and three.

Kristin: They didn’t even make a motion to do that. We never even had to respond to it.

Dave: When you explained that 10, 11 days later, Julian’s back at Amy’s apartment, I immediately was like, “Oh, okay. We got separation of time.” It’s not like a crime spree where you just lump everything together. We have a separation of a week and a half that I was expecting a defense attorney to be like, “No, these don’t go together.”

Kristin: Yeah, right. So, we went off to trial. Martin and myself picked a jury. Amy had rightfully so. She’s like, “I do not want to be anywhere near Seattle anymore. I don’t feel safe.” She had moved to another state on the East Coast, and so we had to fly her back for trial, which we did. And whenever that happens, the prosecutor’s office pays for that, and we put her up in a hotel. And we certainly don’t want a victim or a witness to bear any expense because it’s the State of Washington who’s bringing the charge, not the victim.

So, Amy testified, that star witness Lisa testified, and a couple police officers, a detective, somebody from the SANE exam testified. And when Amy testified, she was a little bit unclear about whether or not Julian had penetrated her. And in a rape case, rape in the second degree, one of the elements that I have to prove, that we had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt was that there was penetration. And that means in legal terms, its penetration, however slight, of any orifice by an object, a digit, or a sexual organ. And Amy was not really clear about that.

Yeardley: This is the first case– The first attack when Julian rapes her and steals her car, Amy wasn’t sure that there was penetration.

Kristin: Correct. And Amy’s biggest concern, as it turns out, during the direct examination, she testified that she didn’t really care that much about the rape, that what really bothered her was Julian breaking all her stuff, breaking her coffee table, and breaking all her knick-knacks and her mementos. And to Amy, the way she talked about it, the rape was like the least of her problems.

And knowing that we had to prove penetration, Martin came back to the prosecution table at some point, and he suggested to me, as a supervisor, like, “Hey, we’re not doing so well on the penetration part. I think we should amend this charge to an attempted rape. And you don’t have to prove penetration in an attempted rape.” And at the time, we thought that Julian had this prior conviction from another state for some kind of sexual offense. And so, our sex offense, if he was convicted of rape in the second degree, this would count as strike two in two strikes you are out state, which meant that if you’re convicted of two sex offenses, you go to prison for life without any chance of parole. It’s similar to the three strikes you’re out law, which a lot of people might be familiar with, but this is– For sex offenses, it’s two strikes, you’re out.

When Martin brought this up that, okay, we should go for attempted rape, because that would still count as a sex offense, and it would count as that second strike, I was like, “No, I’m not worried about it. I think we’re okay. Let’s keep going.”

Yeardley: Are you allowed to amend a charge in the middle of a trial?

Kistin: Yes. You can do that. If what the evidence shows is not adding up to what you charged, you can definitely amend it.

Paul: Kristin, can a judge amend the charges?

Kristin: No.

Paul: So that’s strictly the purview of the district attorney.

Kristin: Correct.

Yeardley: So this defense attorney for Julian has not severed the charges, Amy is waffling on whether or not there was penetration in the rape. And you have decided not to add an attempted rape as a potential verdict?

Kristin: I’ve decided not to amend the charge to an attempted rape.

Yeardley: That’s what I meant. And so, what happens?

Kristin: So Julian testified.

Yeardley: Oh, he did.

Kristin: He testified. He was so proud of himself. He talked about sitting back there behind the closet, smoking his cigarettes, cutting the phone cord. He admitted to every single thing except the rape. He was so full of himself. And Martin and I were shocked that he testified. And so, the end off I went to the jury. And the jury convicted Julian of all the charges except for the rape. They hung on the rape charge 10:2 to convict. But we got to speak to jurors afterwards in this case. Those two jurors told us they were concerned about the penetration part and they could not be swayed by the other 10. And then we had the decision to make about whether to retry Julian just on the rape charge. And we checked in with Amy and Amy was willing to come back and testify again. We checked in with the detectives. We talked with each other, and we decided to go ahead and try Julian again on just a single charge.

Yeardley: Would that because if you were able to get Julian on this lesser charge of attempted rape, it was still two strikes in the sexual assault category, and he could go away for life without parole?

Kristin: Well, now we’re stuck with just rape. We can’t now amend to attempted rape because of double jeopardy. He’s already been tried. And so, we had to retry him because we had never amended the charge, and so now we had to go back just on a rape in the second-degree charge.

Yeardley: Oh, boy.

Kristin: So, this second jury did not hear any of the evidence about what he’d done after the fact and all that stuff.

Yeardley: Did the jury get to hear about Julian’s ex-wife or anything? Or solely this attack on Amy?

Kristin: Solely this attack on Amy. And it was really just Amy testifying. And I think one of the nurses testified because, our hero witness that had to do with the kidnapping and the burglary. So, it was really just Amy coming back and testifying. And Julian also testified again. And we had the transcript of what he had previously testified to, and he really stuck to it. He didn’t stray very far from what he had previously said. So, there wasn’t a lot that I could impeach him on or try to catch him in a lie about anything or conflating or denying stuff and the jury found him not guilty. [Yeardley gasps] And I felt terrible for Amy.

And so, after that jury came back, Martin and I and a bunch of our colleagues. This is sort of common, when a big trial is over, you go out for drinks with your colleagues. And we went to the bowling alley, and we went to that bowling alley where Amy and Julian had met before. Amy had decided to take him back. And the bowling alley owner, we ended up meeting that person, and he gave us both bowling pins that were due to be thrown out. And both Martin and I still have our bowling pins. I kept that bowling pin on my desk for a long time to remind me about, “Don’t get too big for your britches. And listen to your junior colleagues. They may actually know what they’re talking about.” And if I’d listened to Martin and if we had amended that charge, it might have been a totally different thing.

But the good news is, Julian ended up getting an exceptional sentence, meaning it was outside of the standard range that the judge would have normally been allowed to give him. And we had argued for an exceptional sentence. We have to have certain factors in order to get a higher sentence, and one of them is sophistication of the crime if he had committed multiple crimes or there were multiple victims, there’s lots of different reasons to go up on a sentence or to argue it anyway. And so, we definitely had sophistication of the crime, which is what the judge made findings on. And so Julian ended up getting 17 years for the burglary and the kidnap.

Yeardley: Oh, wow. That’s pretty good.

Kristin: Yeah. It was about twice what he was due to get if it had been a standard sentence. That also means you can appeal that. He appealed both his conviction and his sentence and he lost. He went multiple rounds on the appeals and it was his sentence that he appealed all the way to the Washington Supreme Court, and it was denied because the judge had made really good findings. And findings, meaning the judge had given really good reasons for finding that Julian had committed this burglary with a high degree of sophistication, having figured out how to get into the apartment, crawl up into that crawl space, sit in the back, punch through the drywall. So that was very satisfying. It meant, though, that he did not do life without parole because we did not convict him of a sex offense.

Paul: Kristin, if I remember right, you did find Julian semen on Amy’s thigh?

Kristin: Correct.

Paul: Right. So that there indicates there had been a sexual act that had occurred. So, this is really where Amy, the victim herself is having to say, “He penetrated me.” And I don’t know, Kristin, does the victim statement in and of itself satisfy proof of penetration?

Kristin: It can if the victim is clear about it, absolutely, yes. The most common defense here is consent in a rape case. And so, evidence of semen doesn’t really help me at all. If there had been any kind of evidence internally, that would have really helped us.

Yeardley: Kristin, I’m so curious about this ability to include a lesser charge if you feel like you can’t prove the original charge, do you feel as though if you do that during a trial, do you think it shows the jury weakness?

Kristin: Absolutely, I do. I had already told them, you know, this is what we’re going to show to you. And it just felt like not just weakness, but also a little bit of mistrust. I want them to trust me. And I think that was part of my thought process when Martin suggested that we amend the charge, I think that was probably going through my mind.

Yeardley: I totally get it. I mean, you’re really between a rock and a hard place. And I think it speaks to your character to be able to say “Maybe that wasn’t the right decision and I’m going to learn from that experience.”

Kristin: Yeah. And just hopefully it’s not going to be at somebody else’s expense because Julian’s out there sooner than he should be.

Yeardley: Thank you so much for bringing that to us. All y’all have just the most impossible jobs, so I’m glad I do what I do because I play an 8-year-old who every time she has a birthday, she turns eight and we just don’t talk about that. I feel lucky.

[laughter] [music]

Dave: Appreciate your work, Kristin.

Kristin: Well, thank you for having me.

Yeardley: Small Town Dicks was created by Detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith.Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editors are Christina Bracamontes and Erin Phelps.Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor.Gary Scott is our executive producer and Logan Heftel is our production manager.Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.And our social media maven is Monika Scott. It would make our day if you became a member of our Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @smalltowndicks, we love hearing from you.

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