Up and Vanished - Case Evidence 01.23.17

Episode Date: January 24, 2017

Take a deeper look at the evidence as experts discuss new developments in the case.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This means that there are more clues, persons of interest, red herrings, and just general information than any other case in the whole state. As you follow my investigation, this slowly begins to make more sense. The case is littered with white rabbits and just plain odd circumstances that become increasingly harder to explain. In today's episode, I'll be speaking to several different people who are experts in their field in hopes of gaining some more knowledge and insight. This is Case Evidence. Today I'll be speaking with Dr. Schlesinger again. We spoke briefly in the last episode, and I've since continued this conversation about other elements of the case.

I gave him all the information I could, as well as some of those emails Tara sent. I wanted to know his thoughts on everything, to see if you could point us in a better direction. Let me say in general, this is looking at something like an email or a letter that somebody wrote. It is often called statement analysis or document analysis. And this type of analysis is heavy on speculation, light on science. As a forensic psychologist, I try to be grounded in behavioral science, certainly as much as I can. And so I'm not going to give a great deal of weight into in-depth statement analysis. The first thing you want to do is you have to take it at face value. I mean, Tara was obviously rejected. She's very angry at Marcus for dumping her for an 18-year-old. And as I review all three of these emails, it probably tells us nothing that the police didn't learn from speaking with all the parties. I don't really see anything that stands out here

that they didn't know. A couple of things come to my mind as I try to understand your case. First, was there more than one person involved in her disappearance and murder? That's always possible, but generally speaking, in a cold case like this, it's unlikely because most individuals can't keep their mouth shut. You talk to any detectives, the problem with most criminal defendants is they start talking. And if you have more than one person, the likelihood for someone to talk is increased a great deal. Another thing that comes to mind as I review this case, this is not different than many, many cold cases. And the police, in my view, very likely believe that they know who did this. But the problem is, in order to bring a case, you have to be able to prove it. Law enforcement or the prosecutors really only have one chance at this. So if they bring a case against somebody who they think was involved in

this or did this, and the evidence or the proofs aren't there, that's it. Even if more evidence or proof come later on, they're done. They only have a one-shot deal. I had a murder case very recently that was cold for 25 years. The police always believed that they know who killed this child. And after 25 years, they brought the case because it's not that new evidence emerged, but the old evidence was viewed in a different way and they evaluated it very differently. She was recently convicted last May and just sentenced a couple months ago. It's a very interesting case of a mother who killed her five-year-old son. And right from the beginning,

the police knew that she did this, but you couldn't bring it. So what did they wait for? What was the final piece of evidence? Well, it's a very involved and really a very fascinating case. But what they did is, after the case was called for about 20 years, the case got an enormous amount of publicity in New Jersey. It was a five-year-old child who was killed. After 20 years, the anniversary of the child's death, the newspaper did a whole big article on it. And as a result, there were tips that came into the prosecutor's office. All of the tips that came in got them nowhere. But the new prosecutors, the people originally

worked the case, have all since retired. And the new prosecutors looked at the evidence from a different perspective. And the child was supposedly abducted from a carnival. And when the body was found 11 months later, it was wrapped in a blanket. The original prosecutors and detectives, I should say, not the prosecutors, the original detectives never showed the blanket to the babysitter of the child. The five-year-old was babysat by at least three different people. They never showed that person. They showed it to the mother, who was the ultimate, who was the murderer. But the mother said, never saw it before.

They showed the blanket to the babysitters. And one of them had a visceral reaction because she was very close to the five-year-old and started crying and shaking. This blanket was very distinctive. It had very distinctive marks, like a metal weave that went through it that you would definitely recognize. It wasn't just a blue blanket. And so, yeah, they brought the case, and she was convicted.

And so, yeah, they brought the case and she was convicted. Also, another important thing in my experience, when mistakes are made, they occur very quickly in a case. Sometimes in the first half hour to 15 minutes, how witnesses are interviewed, how they're questioned, how evidence is initially handled. You mean mistakes in the investigation? Yes, yes. It very often happens very, very early. In this case that I just referred to, the homicide detectives didn't investigate the case because initially it went as a missing child, and so the Juvenile Aid Bureau investigated the case, not the homicide detectives. So I don't know about this, your case with Tara, but very often mistakes are made early on. I'm not at all surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if the police really believe they know, have a good idea

of who did this. The matter is just proving it. The police never reveal all of what they know. It seems like they're waiting on a DNA match on that latex glove, but I feel like that's never coming. It can certainly happen. I had another case of a wrongful conviction. The guy served 23 years in jail for killing two children. One involved banging nails into a little boy's head as the method of killing him. He was convicted, and the case was overturned after 23 years on a more sophisticated DNA analysis. In this case, also, they don't have a body, so that certainly is a major factor as well. And even if somebody, if they find where the body is, you're going to have bones left and nothing but contamination. In the case that I just worked on with the conviction after 25 years,

the child was underwater for 11 months and only bones were found and animals were involved. How'd they find the body? They found the body because a high school biology teacher was doing a nature hike by himself. He was like a bird watcher. The body was placed in a meadow, in a swamp, and he saw a sneaker. And he took the sneaker to the police, thinking, you know, this is odd to have a little boy's sneaker, which is fairly new, out in the middle of a swamp. And it was a sneaker of the little boy. And so the FBI then drained the whole swamp, and they found the bones and the blanket and the blanket. Another important thing with respect to investigations in this case, now this case has been called for over 10 years, about 11 years, I guess. What most people don't realize is the clearance rate for murder is just over 60%. Most people don't know that. Most people think all murders are solved. That's not true.

Back in the 1960s, the clearance rate for murder was over 90%. When President Kennedy was president in the early 60s, the clearance rate for homicide was over 90%. Almost all homicides were cleared. Well, what happened? Well, I mean, there's been more advances. Yes. You would think that the clearance rate would increase because we have more advances in technology, DNA, hotspots, plus there's more police per capita than there were in the 1960s. If you look at the clearance rate from the uniform crime reports, it was 90 percent, over 90 percent back in the early 60s. And then by the 70s, it went to 80 percent. By the 70s, it went to 80%. By the 80s, it went to 70%.

And it reduces about 10% every decade. So why is it going down? Well, the reason it's going down is the type of murder is changing in our country. Back in the 1960s, if it was the murder, it was a typical Cain-Abel murder case that I spoke about last session. It's someone close to each other in a family or domestic dispute or two guys in an argument, that type of thing. And those are very easy to clear. If a woman is killed, the likelihood it was her boyfriend is very, very high or husband. If a man is murdered, it's very likely it was an argument with some other guy.

Today, though, and particularly in the past 30 years, there's more third party killings, not just organized crime like the mafia, but you have the gang people and you have the drug people and all these other things. And when there's the third party killing, it's very, very difficult to clear. killing, it's very, very difficult to clear. Also, probably in the past 10 to 15 years, you have in gang type murders, you have intimidation of citizens. And so many, many individuals that know something about the murder are afraid to come forward because they're afraid they're going to get, you know, involved in some sort of retaliation with a gang member and this sort of thing. Do you feel like maybe that the average person these days has more knowledge on how to get away with a murder from watching TV shows and stuff like that? The average person, I would not say, has more knowledge about how to get away with the murder.

What I would say in terms of the TV shows is it affects the juries. In what way would you say? Well, because today you have jurors coming into court who have heard and listened to and watched television shows on not only investigation, but on, you know, lawyers debating what reasonable doubt is and this sort of thing. And so, you know, everyone, the jurors today, you have a lot of jurors that are crime scene experts and junior lawyers, and they bring that to the jury box. You know, judges try to voir dire jurors the best they can, but it's very, very difficult to undo what you have heard for so many years. For example, a judge will ask a potential juror, will you listen to my explanation of

the law as opposed to what you think the law is? Now, every potential juror is going to say, of course, I'll listen to what you say, judge. But when you hear from for past 15, 20 years, panels of lawyers on TV talking about reasonable doubt, you can't unlearn that. You can't undo it. It becomes part of you. I had a case where a jury hung. The evidence was overwhelming. And afterwards, the judge talked to the jury, as judges do very often after a murder trial, and say, well, the judge says, what was the problem here? And they said, well, we all thought he did it, but it wasn't beyond a reasonable doubt. OK, you know, sometimes my impression is some jurors just want to demonstrate how smart they are.

When they're interviewed afterwards by the media, they say, well, in our country, in our constitution, the state has to prove it beyond reason without, which is all true. But it's more an attempt with some people to demonstrate their knowledge of the system and all this sort of thing. I had a case where they didn't use luminol. If you go to a classroom of average people, let's say, and I ask my students this all the time, how many people in the classroom know what Luminol is? Everybody raises their hand. Luminol is a spray that law enforcement can use that brings out whether blood is there or not.

In this particular murder case, the jurors said, several hundred cases, said that the police didn't use Luminol. What do you think the red stuff is coming out of the dead guy? It's blood. You don't have to use luminol to prove that the red stuff coming out of the dead guy is blood. Yeah, but on TV, they do. It wasn't a real investigation if they didn't use luminol. Exactly. It was prosecutorial error. They couldn't have just seen the blood with their own eyes. Exactly. Exactly. So what I just mentioned the blood with their own eyes. Exactly, exactly. So what I just mentioned, we just talked about last couple of minutes, those are conviction rates.

That's not clearance rate. Clearance rate means cleared by arrest, and that has dropped tremendously. Now, the conviction rate in many jurisdictions, the conviction rate, if you went back 30 years, used to be about 90%. Prosecutors wouldn't bring a case unless they were absolutely sure they can get a conviction. In many jurisdictions today, the clearance rate is just over 50%. They can't get a conviction because of all of these different sorts of issues, whether it's being a junior lawyer or junior crime scene investigator or all sorts of other issues that may affect these things.

Do you think people in a way, like society, is more supportive of criminal defense these days, too? Like making a murderer and shows like that? Those sorts of things, and plus wrongful convictions. Now, some people will say, well, you know, we're making the state prove it. That's the way the system was. And if they didn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, he shouldn't be convicted. Well, that's true. But on the other hand, if you're releasing a lot of people that killed, you've got a lot of bad guys out there. You know, you don't want, you have to do it right. You really have to do these things right. These are life and death major decisions. You don't want any wrongful conviction because if you wrongfully convict an innocent person, the bad guys out there committing more crimes.

Say for Tara Grinstead's case, a prosecution can only happen one time, that's correct? Exactly. So even if they were to say, hey, we think this guy did it, and they bring a case against him, and they find him not guilty, they couldn't come back later and say, actually, we think this guy did it? That's correct. It's double jeopardy.

There's a prohibition against double jeopardy. You can't try somebody for a case twice. One chance. You have one shot to do it. So that's why you have to be able to prove it. And no prosecutor is going to bring a case without the adequate proofs. What if they prosecute this person at first and they say, hey, we think this guy did it, and they take it to court and they find him not guilty. Then years later, they're like, okay, maybe we were wrong. We think this guy did it, and they take it to court, and they find him not guilty. Then years later, they're like, okay, maybe we were wrong. We think this guy did it. You can do that. But then the second guy's best defense is, whereas my guy didn't do it, the first guy did it. They thought the first

guy did it. Now these guys don't know what they're doing. Credibility goes out the window immediately. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So these are very, very difficult cases. This is a difficult case that you have. It's been cold for over 10 years. It doesn't mean that it will never be solved. It very well may be solved. My opinion, just looking at this from a distance, is the police probably have a very good idea of who they think did this, but you have to be able to prove it. And so we don't really know what they have, and we're probably not going to know until something happens. And again, this can take 20 years. I've had these cases. The odd part about it is just being a small town and

it'd be one thing if it was a huge city and anybody could have done it. But you know, you look at this case and you say to yourself, this had to be someone she knew. There's only a certain amount of people. We know that list of people, but we don't know which one it is. It's a real whodunit. It's almost always someone that they know, but sometimes it's not. So you have to approach these investigations with an open mind. A mistake that is often made in an investigation is very early on, someone from law enforcement, for example, may have an idea, a theory of who did it, and you have to guard against doing that because sometimes you'll look at evidence in a way to support your theory and ignore evidence that doesn't support it.

That's human nature. Everyone wants to, you know, have the insight into who actually did this. So that can be a mistake in an investigation. And that's one of the biggest confusing parts about this whole case is that, you know, we have this information, but it's hard to piece them all together to create one theory or one timeline with everything. You know, you have a fact over here, you have this over here, and some of them don't really fit together. So either one of them or several of them have nothing to do with the case. Exactly. And not only that, you don't know what your facts are true or not. Exactly. Or partially true or a little bit true. So it's very good. So I hope these thoughts gave you some insight into your case.

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plain and simple. Start your shopping at Rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N.C-A. One important thing Dr. Schlesinger pointed out was that not only is there a lack of incriminating evidence in this case, but they've also never found Tara's body. So with those two things missing, it seems almost impossible to prosecute

and convict somebody in this case. But is it really impossible? Let's assume for a second that maybe we'll never find Tara's body, and there's never a DNA match on that latex glove. Is there anything else we could find that could help put the killer behind bars? I spoke with a man whose nickname is the No Body Guy. I'm not kidding. For 12 years, he was assistant United States attorney in the District of Columbia, and he's prosecuted several murder cases that had no body. If anyone knew the answer to this, it was going to be him. I'm Tad Tobias, and for 12 years, I was a prosecutor in the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, And for most of that 12 years, I prosecuted homicides because D.C. is a unique U.S. Attorney's Office because D.C. doesn't have a district attorney like most

jurisdictions do. So in D.C., we do all of the local crime from shoplifting to homicides, as well as your more traditional U.S. attorney type of charges like public corruption and large-scale narcotics cases. And it's also the largest U.S. attorney's office in the country. When I was there back in probably about 2004, 2005, a colleague of mine was leaving the homicide section and gave me a case he'd been investigating that was a no body murder case. And in DC's history at the time, there had only been one other no body case that had ever gone to trial. And that was back in the early 80s. So I started looking into the case and I was very interested in the topic because to me, murder is the ultimate crime and

a no body murder case is the ultimate murder case. And the fact that there had only been one in the history of the city kind of interested me. So I started looking into it. And at the same time that I was actually investigating my case along with the detectives, I started researching no body cases in general because I wanted to find out sort of what the case law was like and because there weren't really any examples in D.C. other than this one case, sort of what the case law was like across the country. And a colleague of mine who had worked on the no body case and ended up not going to trial gave me a memo that a law clerk had drafted with like maybe 50

or 60 no body cases from across the country. And I remember at the time thinking, oh, that seems like a pretty good number, 50 or 60. And when I started looking into it, I found more and more cases and became kind of fascinated because there didn't seem to be any collection of these types of cases of this very specific and very rare type of murder case. And so I went on and tried my own case and we ended up getting a conviction in the case and I became more interested in these cases. And so I started collecting them on a website that I put up anonymously while I was still with the Department of Justice because I didn't feel like going through all the bureaucratic hoops you probably had to jump through to do it.

So I just didn't use my name. I came up with the name, the nobody guy. So you actually got a conviction with nobody. Yeah. So the case that I tried was involving a defendant named the victim was named Marion Fye and the defendant was named Harold Austin. And we got a conviction on that case back in January of 2006. And so I was, you know, really became interested after getting the conviction, kind of discovering more about these cases and then started thinking, well, maybe I can help other people who try these cases because I was learning everything for the first time.

So I wanted to sort of learn more about it. So without a body, you know, what kind of strong evidence can you present that is just as convincing? The reason a no body murder case is so difficult is because you don't have the main piece of evidence, the body. If you have a body in a murder case, it generally gives you how the murder happened. Was the person shot? Were they strangled? Were they poisoned? Were they stabbed? It also generally gives you the time the murder happened. You can look at a body and say, okay, this murder just happened an hour ago, or it happened six

hours ago, or a day and a half ago or four years ago or 10 years ago because all I've got left are bones. And the third thing a body gives you is where the murder happened. Did it happen in somebody's house because the body's sitting in the house? Did it happen in the middle of the street like a lot of these murders, you know, are drug related or beef related? Did it happen, you know, in this park? Did it happen in a place of employment? When you don't have a body, you have none of that evidence. And I liken it to if I'm a cop and my boss comes to me and says, hey, Tad, we have a bank that was robbed in the city. I live in DC. You have a bank that's robbed in the city and we don't know what bank it was. So

can you go figure that out? But you're running around from bank to bank going, were you guys robbed? Were you guys robbed? Well, yeah, we were robbed when, oh, 2013, we were robbed. You know, you're just, you don't have so much of the helpful information. So in the no body case, you generally rely on what I call one of three legs of a stool. And these are three types of evidence that you get in these types of cases. The number one is forensic evidence, DNA, fingerprints, hair and fiber evidence. The second leg of the stool is what I call confession to friends and family. The defendant confesses to someone, tells them about it. And the number three is confession to the police. Ultimately, the defendant confesses to the police. That's the main type of evidence that you have in these types of cases, because in most of murders, you generally don't have a witness

to the murder because they don't, you know, in a relationship, it's those two people and it happens in the spur of the moment. And there's not really someone else there to witness it. So those three legs of the stool are what you look for in a no body case. The most successful cases have three of them. In my case, I had all three of those legs. Really difficult cases don't have any of those, but most cases have one of those three legs, and that's how you actually make a successful prosecution. So what's the strongest, you would say, a confession from either the killer, obviously, or somebody else who saw something or knew something?

In confession of friends and family, I mean, generally the killer confesses to someone else. There are cases where there are witnesses, but that's a definite minority because you don't usually have someone else there witnessing. You'll occasionally have your organized crime case or a gang case or something like that where there's someone else who saw it. But most of the time you don't actually have another witness to it. So you can't rely on an eyewitness testimony. When you don't have or find it highly unlikely that you're going to get forensic evidence, which of course now we're almost, I guess, what, 11 years out, over 11 years out, then your next best chance is the so-called confession to friends and family. What did the killer say to other people or what did the killer do that was suspicious that other people have picked up on? That's the next best scenario.

And the one after that, of course, is ultimately confession to the police. Because while a confession of friends and family is good and helpful, a confession to the police is better for obvious reasons. It's more believable when the police come forward and say, yes, this person confessed to us. Also, when you're 11 years out, it also makes it that much less likely that you're going to find body parts or pieces of the body that are going to lead to good evidence. You're talking about, you know, Georgia, temperate climate. A body decomposes much more quickly in a temperate, hot climate than it does, say, if the case were in Alaska. And it might, a body or body parts might last longer.

Eleven years out, even though I counsel police, in a no-body case, you still want to look for the body because any case is stronger with the body. When you're 11 years out, realistically, the chances of finding the body in a place that's going to be useful to you is just starting to get very, very unlikely. Two or three years out, you know, not so much. A body can, you know, withstand being outdoors for that type of time. But if you're at 11 years, it's highly unlikely if you haven't found the body that you really should take much time looking for the body unless you're trying to confirm that, you know, the killer said, yeah, I put the body here. And then you're going to try and find clothes and things like that, or maybe teeth or bones, something that lasts, you know, significantly longer. Even though there isn't a body in this case, or at least yet to determine,

I guess, the exact time that she could have been killed or murdered. What we do know is the last time that she was seen and the day that she was reported missing. Right. And that's helpful because in a lot of no body cases, they start off as missing person cases. And then it may not be reported to the police till some significant time later. And then, of course, you know, the police may not investigate right away. And sometimes a detective who's treating it as a missing person case will treat it differently than as a homicide case. It sounds like from the limited facts I know here that you're able to much more put a certain time when she disappeared and probably was either abducted or murdered at that exact, you know, time frame within, say, you know,

12-hour window or something like that. And that's obviously more helpful in terms of placing the time and figuring, you know, maybe later people's alibis and things like that. So that's an advantage that this case had that other cases may not, where you don't know and the person is sort of the window of them missing is a week. That makes it a little more difficult and challenging. Prosecuting and convicting somebody without a body is obviously more difficult than with a body, but statistically, what are the chances?

Well, what I will say is if you go to my website, there's a table of cases that have gone to trial. It's about 470 that have actually gone to trial in the United States since the early 1800s. And interestingly, the conviction rate of those cases that went to trial is about 89%, which is quite a bit higher than just the normal murder cases that go to trial that I've seen a statistic that I need to verify, but it's about 71% of murder cases that go to trial and then conviction. There's a couple of reasons for that. There are many, many more missing person cases, particularly missing presumed dead, than ever go to trial. The cases that go to trial tend to be the stronger cases for obvious reasons. A prosecutor doesn't want to take a weak

no body case to trial because the defense has such an easy time saying, we don't even know she's dead. Most of the victims in these cases are female. The other reason why I mentioned earlier, 50%, 51% of the cases that are no body murder cases that go to trial involve a domestic relationship between the two people, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, children, parent, child. So the suspect in those cases is often very obvious. When you have a missing wife, the number one suspect is the husband. It doesn't mean the husband did it, of course, but the percentages are that that's your main suspect, and most of the time, that's who committed the murder. As far as words of advice go, for me, what should I be looking for here? For me, what should I be looking for here? You know, the avenues that are going to bear fruit are what I mentioned earlier, and that is people who knew her and people who knew your suspect, which you don't necessarily know who your suspect is at this point. That's going to be your most productive avenue is to find out someone who knows something and is willing to talk. What you often find in these

cases is the longer time passes, sometimes people think, well, it's harder to solve the case because more time has passed. But that's not necessarily true because sometimes, say your suspect is someone that someone else is dating at the time and the person has suspicions that, hey, maybe this person was involved in her disappearance or murder, but I'm dating him and I don't want to say anything about it. But now it's 10 or 11 years later, I'm not dating him, or maybe he's locked up, or maybe I've realized this guy is actually a psycho. And so time passing can actually help your case because people become less fearful of the person they suspect is involved, or they become feeling more guilty about it. Maybe they

knew something back then. They hoped the police would find out about it. They know the police now haven't found out about it, and they're more willing to talk about it. In a case where you don't have forensic evidence, your next best evidence is going to go. Do it on weekends. Or at 5 a.m. Or on Christmas Day. At 5 a.m. Crypto is finance for everyone. Everywhere. All the time. Kraken. See what crypto can be.

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that I can't really seem to wrap my head around. Specifically, the events of Monday morning, October 24th, when the police first discovered Tara was missing. I spoke with Colin Miller again. He's a professor of law at the University of South Carolina, and he's also the host of the podcast series Undisclosed. I wanted to get his feedback on some of this. I wanted to get his feedback on some of this. In general, in any murder investigation or missing persons case, who typically are the first people to be interviewed or likely to be considered suspects as far as who are the go-to players? Yes, you're really looking at family members, friends, and then a bit to a lesser extent, co-workers and neighbors.

Of course, it depends a bit on the circumstances of the disappearance or the murder, but yeah, really family members and friends and then expanding the circle a bit to co-workers and neighbors. And then if you look at any specific case, you would say, well, what's the last location where a person was seen? Was it a particular bar or a restaurant or a sporting event, et cetera? Then of course, you would then go to that bar, the restaurant, and you would seek to talk to the people who were the last people to have seen that person alive. If you have a person who found the body, that would definitely be someone who is high on the suspect list. If it's just, say, a parent who is calling and saying that their child,

whether adult or a minor, hasn't been seen for a few days, now, of course, the fact there's the familial link will mean that they'll be investigated, but that would be a bit different in terms of them being a suspect. I've learned that the first person on the scene at Tara's house that morning, she was reported missing, was the neighbor named Joe Portier. And he had a spare key to her house and let himself inside. And he actually called Billy Hancock, the police chief on his cell phone. And he was also the first person to spot the latex glove does this stick out to you at all yeah and so in listening to your podcast and researching a bit

about the case online my understanding is that joe and his wife were sort of an older couple who were neighbors and very protective of tara and i think i actually read or maybe heard in your podcast something where tara would actually turn her bedroom light on as a message that she had to ride home safely so you know my guess is if you're looking at it for the innocuous explanation, I assume Joe would say, I was concerned about Tara. I entered before the police got there because, you know, maybe there'd be a gap in time and I could help her out if there was something that happened to her. Of course, on the other hand, you might say there's something nefarious

and that him entering means he might have had something to do with it. But, you know, without additional evidence, it's tough to reach anything firm in the way of a conclusion. That morning, you know, Joe, the neighbor, let himself in and other neighbors came in as well. And they were all kind of running through Tara's stuff, looking for her. It was even told to me that people that didn't even know Tara that well were inside her house that morning, you know, or throughout the morning. Should this have been prevented? Yeah, I mean, it definitely creates the possibility of cross-contamination or taint, especially if eventually someone who is in the house that morning or connected to someone in the house is eventually arrested and prosecuted for the crime. And yeah, I mean, that's one of

the key things is to secure a crime scene. What should have been done was when they arrived at this scene, put around the crime scene tape and made sure that no one other than the investigators were there on the scene. And so the fact that throughout this morning, there were people, some of whom couldn't even really be accounted for coming in and out of the house. That is definitely something if this case went to trial, you think the defense would attack if anything at the crime scene were tied in any way to the suspect in the crime. What should law enforcement have done once they realized something was wrong that morning? When they realized something was wrong, they should have secured the crime scene, made sure they collected the evidence in a timely fashion, and fairly quickly tried to figure out what exactly Tara had done on that last day,

where she had been, who she had seen, and talked to those witnesses as quickly as possible. Back on Joe Portier real quick, the neighbor, like I said, they had that little system going where Tara would come home at night and she would turn her light on. And they said that that weekend on Saturday and Sunday night, Tara's light didn't come on, yet her car was in the driveway. That system that they had completely failed. So I thought it was kind of odd that they would bring that up and it's so often mentioned. But if it really was a serious system, you would think that with her car being there and her light not on two nights in a row, maybe something is wrong.

And that's why you have that system. I don't know why you don't call the police sooner if that's the case. Yeah, I guess that's the question. And that it's difficult because it gets in sort of the psychology of how people act. And you always wonder, well, maybe I would have acted differently. I don't know. It's tough to say whether if I had this system worked out, I would have in the case of Joe called earlier, or maybe you think, well, her car's there, the light's not on, maybe she forgot, and maybe I'll wait a little bit and see if something happens. So yeah, it's tough to say, again, whether you sort of draw any inference from that that would negatively reflect on him in the case. So it's a fascinating case. I've been following the podcast all season. I look forward to seeing where you take it. But yeah, it's one of those things where I think

you've presented a lot of possibilities out there. And it's really tough to say exactly what happened. I guess that's why it's been unsolved for all these years. But I think you've opened some avenues there for investigation. And hopefully through your investigation, the police are eventually able to apprehend the person responsible for this horrible crime.