The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas

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We'll be right back. to Barely Famous.
All right, you guys, my next guest is Beth Karras. You may recognize Beth Karras from legally analyzing cases like JonBenet Ramsey, Natalia Grace, Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias.
She's covered all of these cases on shows, on documentaries, docu-series, deep dives. Throughout her career Beth has provided legal analysis on different cases and she's very knowledgeable.
She does the deep dives And I absolutely love her. I think I first saw Beth on ID channel.
So that's where I know her from. She got a bachelor's degree in political science and Spanish from Mount Holyoke.
And she graduated with a jurist doctor from Fordham Law School. Those are her credentials to start.
In 1987, she was admitted to the New York State Bar. And from 1987 to 1994, she actually worked as an ADA, an assistant district attorney in New York City under the legendary district attorney, Robert Morgenthau.
They were prosecuting cases ranging from robbery and rape to racketeering and political corruption. And in 1994, she actually joins Court TV, later True TV, as an on-air legal analyst and correspondent she begins covering high profile criminal cases across the united states and so that's where she transitions to you know covering all of these cases and in 2003 into 2004 she covers the scott peterson trial which we talk about in this episode and as you guys know that's one of the most sensational murder cases in the US.
And then in 2011, and I followed this case so closely, she provides analysis of the Casey Anthony trial, a case that obviously captivated the nation. The interest is still ongoing today.
From 2012 to 2013, Beth covers the Jodi Arias murder trial, which became one of Court TV's most widely followed cases. And she also covers Conrad Murray, Drew Peterson, and Phil Spector.
So if you're familiar with any of those cases, you might recognize Beth from her legal analysis on these cases. All right, today we have Beth Karras on Barely Famous Podcast.
Thank you so much for joining us. Well, my pleasure.
I'm so excited because I have seen you on so many docuseries and things like that, especially on ID Channel. So I'm so happy to have you.
Well, I'm excited to talk about my career, the shows I've been in, the latest series, whatever you want to talk about. So the latest series is The Curious Case.
Curious Case of. And then there's six episodes.
And the rest of that phrase, The Curious Case of, depends on that episode. The curious case of the girl who died twice.
That was the second episode. I don't know all.
I don't have all the names memorized, but each one, the curious case of Bam Margera. The curious case of Natalia Grace.
Curious case of Natalia Grace. but that was one ongoing story that lasted for three

seasons, right? Six episodes for the first two seasons and then four episodes. And the new series that I'm in, it's just one standalone story each episode.
It's not the deep dive. I mean, I felt like I was living with Natalia Grace for like two years.
Yeah, I can imagine. And so I knew a lot about that story.
And with the ones

now that are airing, I know a little about each one. Yeah, a lot, because there's just no time

to learn each story the same way that we took that deep dive in Natalia Grace. Well, if anyone wants

to watch the Curious Case of that streaming on Max, and you guys can watch it over there. And

we'll talk more about some of the cases that are on there as well throughout this episode.

But before we get into that what is your investigative process when you are looking into cases so i'm just part of a team of people so when we come up with cases we'll present them to the network and they'll you know choose the ones they want but we look everywhere we look at podcasts we articles, we look at books. We sometimes just get emails from people with their own stories so we can get a story through various sources.
And that's what everybody does. And then it's a matter of determining exactly what the issues are and do we have access? Because you can't really tell a story visually, at least.
I mean, you can sit and talk about it in a podcast, for example, and a lot of people do talk about a case. They read about it.
They learn about it. And they're good storytellers as an individual.
Right. But not for television.
You've got to have the visuals. So we get people who will tell the story for us, right? The players.
So we have to have access. That's key.
So the next, once you decide on the story, you're also looking for who the storytellers are. Can you get people from both sides of the story? For example, if somebody's been under arrest, you want both sides, family members, victims, families of the accused, lawyers, whatever.
So it's getting the access. That's critical.
Right. And then, of course, you file public records requests to get any documents.
If it's a case that's been filed, you want to get police records, court records, whatever you can. So you gather as much material as possible, and then you start putting it together, telling the story.
Is that similar in law, you know, not on TV? Were you kind of doing the same thing before you transitioned? So it's a good question. I found that the skills that I developed as an assistant DA in Manhattan, which is where we are today, translated well into my next job, which was starting out as a journalist at Court TV.
And I was there for 19 years at the original Court TV. Right.
talking to a jury, talking into the camera, making sure that I don't talk down to the jury, but explain things in terms that they understand, not talking legally. It's something I would do to the audience as well, right? And so I found that skill translated well.
But also, once I got into what I'm doing, because when I was at Court TV, it was like, the case was there in court. There wasn't going to be any more investigation.
It was investigated. Sometimes I do some digging around, but I was on the air, you know, morning to night.
There wasn't a lot of time to do my own investigation beyond what was being presented in court. When I left Court TV, because I actually went off to air, it came back under new management.
It's a little different today, but it's still a court TV channel. Then I started doing my own digging.
People would come to me with issues, and I would start doing what I maybe would do as a prosecutor. But the problem is, when you're a civilian investigator, you don't have the tools that a police officer or prosecutor have.
You can't subpoena somebody. You can't get the records you want.
You can't get phone records unless maybe a lawyer in a case will give it to you or it's been introduced as evidence in a trial. So now you can have it maybe in a civil case and now you can look at it.
Maybe there's a criminal matter it's relevant to to so your hands are a little bit tied compared to what you can do as a public servant with police powers right to put somebody in a grand jury or get a subpoena but still I mean there are great investigative journalists yeah who do some great work so it's not impossible do you always recommend for investigative journalists to have a law background? Or do you mean like, you know, the people on the internet that are looking into cases? So here's what I used to always say when I was at Court TV, that if you're going to be on a network that holds itself out as the place to go to watch trials and get analysis, you really should have people telling you about the process who have been there in the trenches. I firmly believe that.
It's not really a rule that's followed, but back in the day in the early, or the first court TV, it was followed. You know, you want somebody telling you because they've been there.
Oh, well, I remember I tried a case once. You know, I remember a judge did this to me.
You know, you can draw on your memory. But there are plenty of great journalists, great reporters who have covered trials who don't have that background.
It's just that if you were the legal network, you should have lawyers. Now, to answer your question more directly, it is not necessary that you have a legal background.
But there are some schools that, like Yale Law School, for example, has a one-year course for law for journalists. You can find these courses.
It doesn't hurt, especially if you're digging into criminal cases to, even if you can audit a class in criminal procedure or evidence or something, or pick up a book and just talk to as many people as you can. Because I do find that when I listen to true crime podcasts, and I get that there are people who just absolutely are, like, love the challenge of an investigation, loved that deep dive, have a good brain for minutiae and putting things together.
But sometimes they make mistakes, because they're misinterpreting the law, they may say something defamatory. They can get themselves sued.
If you don't have a journalism editor to say to you, you better not say that. With somebody to do a legal review, you can get in trouble.
I don't know how often podcasters are sued, but back in the day, bloggers were getting sued and they were losing because they were putting out defamatory things. And now and then they'd come to me for advice.
I'd say, take that down right now. You've got to see some disease letter.
Take it down. You know? So it's just a matter of learning, learning, maybe, you know, through practice.
But I recommend just continuing. I mean, life's a journey, right? I mean, we're constantly learning you don't stop learning with when your formal education ends right so uh if you're really into true crime then learn as much as you can about evidence and the rules and stuff well I think if people put in half as much energy as they do to spreading false information they could put that same energy into getting a degree in something so they have the credentials.
You know what I mean? Oh, yes, I do know what you mean. I'll just leave it at that.
So you have, you were admitted to the New York State Bar and then you worked as an ADA in New York and then you transitioned to Court TV. Yes.
And then your, is it true that your first major, you know, big coverage was the Scott Peterson trial? Actually, Scott Peterson was tried in 2004. I had been at Court TV for 10 years at that point.
I had covered OJ's road rage case, which was a few years after he was acquitted of murder. OK.
And it was in Miami. Actually, it was a felony.
He got mad at a man who was tailing him on not a very busy street south of Miami, and he got out in a rage. It was a road rage.
And he put his hand through the window of the man's car and grabbed at his hat or his glasses or something. That was considered a burglary of an occupied vehicle.
So that, because a part of his body went through the open window and scratched the man's face. So that was a felony.
He was acquitted of that. Not a bad verdict.
If he just was angry and his kids were in the backseat of the car and they were little at the time, his two youngest that he had with Nicole. So, um, I.
But at the time, 911 had just happened. And the anthrax scare was going on.
Right. I remember that.
All the media were in Washington, you know, at the Pentagon or in lower Manhattan or in Boca Raton where a man at American Media had just died from inhaling anthrax. So no one's covering this case.
But it was OJ on the stand in a criminal case. And, you know, like People Magazine was there, a few places like that.
But it was court TV. So I had lunch with OJ early on.
His lawyer, he had two lawyers. They invited me to lunch.
I've told this story before, but maybe some of your listeners haven't heard it. So we're sitting at a round table at a Chinese restaurant that was, you know, fast.
So, because we had to get back to court. It was lunch.
Right, right. And my food came first.
And everybody, yeah, OJ's sitting right to my left. And my food came first.
And OJ's sitting there. He reached over and he started to eat off my plate.
And I'm very rude. And I tell everybody, when OJ Simpson is sitting next to you with a fork and a knife in his hand, you let him eat as much as he wants.
Might as well just scoot the plate over and let him have it. There, go ahead.
I mean, his food came soon enough, but it's like, oh, but I would talk to him periodically through the trial. Now it wasn't high profile like Scott Peterson, but Scott Peterson's was probably one of the biggest ones in terms of like national or international press but David Westerfield was kind of big I mean that was two years earlier it was big in that in San Diego he kidnapped a little girl out of her bed at home seven-year-old girl sleeping in the middle of the night he broke into the home he kidnapped her his neighbor killed her she was found later, probably raped her, but she was too decomposed to tell if she was raped.
Oh, my gosh. And I just remember in that case thinking, God, if your child isn't safe in her own bed, where is your child safe? This is a beautiful neighborhood called Sabre Springs in, you know, outside of the city of San Diego, but in San Diego County.
that I remember we, we had monitors out on the street when the verdict was coming in, and there were crowds of people who came down to the courthouse because we were waiting for the verdict, girl. And when he was convicted, because there was a camera, it was televised, there were cheers, just like there were cheers at Jody Arias, and there were cheers at Scott Peterson.
The people to – and there were not cheers at Casey Anthony.

People were outraged at Casey Anthony because she was acquitted.

But people want to be a part of the process.

People would take their summer vacation because a lot of these trials are in the summer.

Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias, Scott Peterson, all in the summer.

Just by coincidence or is there a rhyme or reason for that? No, coincidence.

But they're long.

They're a couple months or more.

So people would actually do like a destination vacation, we're going to Phoenix for vacation, we'll do you know, go to Sedona, Scottsdale, whatever, but we're gonna go to the trial for a day. Right.
And they and so we always had big crowds at these big televised cases. And a lot of them were female defendants or the wife is murdered, right? Lacey, Casey.
Nicole. Nicole, yeah.
Do you think any of those cases would ever be on the Curious Case of? We are looking at cases that haven't been told or haven't been told so much. I can't say they never would be, but there'd have to be a new angle.
Because we're looking at stories that either aren't widely told, aren't necessarily murders. I've actually spoken to a few men, two last Friday, who said that they don't really like to watch all the murder stories.
Right. But they like Curious Case of because they're twisted crime stories that kind of make your head spin some of them and but there's no dead body and there are no there's no autopsy report they do have some dead bodies why do you why do you think that women are more interested in like the murder over men because my partner also feels the same way he thinks i'm nuts for watching the id channel as I do.
Oh, you're not alone and he's not alone. Okay.
Like that's very common. And back in the day at core TV, we were told like 70% of our viewership's like the Eastern half of the U S but that is probably different today.
But, but also it skews female. You know, I know in Scott Peterson, I remember the New York times reporter or somebody telling me that the New York Times didn't routinely cover a case like Scott Peterson.
It's on the other coast. Right.
But they were doing it a couple of times a week or so because the readers wanted it. Women wanted it.
There was a demand for it because I think a lot of women were saying, is my husband the next Scott Peterson? I mean,

there was no sign. He had no criminal.
He wasn't abusive to her. I mean, he was cheating on her,

but she, and she did know it early on in their marriage, but it wasn't, you know, she was willing to make it work and believe that it was going to work. So a lot of women just wonder, because a lot

of cases we've covered, and I read about and even dabble

in a little bit now, are spousal murders, generally the husband killing the wife, and divorce or pregnancy. Those are the triggers, for the most part, in spousal murders.
And men will either make it look like an accident, make it look like suicide, disappear the body, or sometimes they're in a rage, but a lot plotted out like Scott Peterson plotted out and plan it so that it'll look like she was abducted, you know, just disappeared. There are mixed reviews now I feel about the Scott Peterson.
Do you do you think he was guilty? Do you think that he is where he belongs? He's where he belongs. I never strongly about scott getting the death penalty okay in fact i kind of thought you know it's buddha been fine if he didn't if he always you know faced a life sentence um and he got life for killing his son he got death for killing uh lacy you know there were two murders but right the jury looked at it like you know death was collateral, which is the little, that's why he killed her.
I don't believe he's innocent. And when it comes to circumstantial evidence, you and I were just talking before we started rolling about what that actually is, but pretty much all evidence seems to be circumstantial.
Well, direct evidence would be like an eyewitness. I saw it.
And another example of direct evidence is a confession. Not a false confession.
You want to make sure the confession is voluntarily made and it's done properly. Right.
But if somebody admits to it, you know, in lieu of, you know, take death off the table and I will plead guilty or I'll give you the confession you want in advance of a trial. But a lot of evidence is circumstance, fingerprint evidence and DNA and just, oh my God, the footprints, the tire marks, the bite marks, bite marks is controversial evidence, but that's all circumstantial evidence.
Cases are tried across the country every day. And convictions are obtained by prosecutors.
Jurors return convictions based on circumstantial evidence. Sometimes it can be stronger than direct evidence because eyewitnesses can be wrong and confessions can be false.
Right. But the evidence, the circumstantial evidence could be...
Well, you have to look, when you look at circumstantial evidence, the jurors get an instruction about, like, if there's an interpretation of the evidence that is consistent with innocence, and another one, you've got to give the benefit to the defendant. You've got to go with the innocent explanation.
But when you start piling the evidence together, then you kind of like, okay, this is, there's no way that tire tracks, you know, matching the car and, you know, fingerprints. Fingerprints is pretty good.
He's in a place where he hasn't ever been in his life that we know of. It's not unusual to say Scott Peterson's house is full of fingerprints.
That's useless evidence, right? Hair evidence in his own house is useless evidence. But if Scott Peterson's fingerprints were found, I mean, I don't want to say he did take the boat out on the boat ramp i don't even know how to speculate you know what i'm talking about it's like in a place where like a burglar is coming in on a window and his fingerprints are on a window at a home he's never been in before hello right so i think even i can say that i have been misinformed about circumstantial evidence then, right? Because, I mean, I could – I argued on another podcast saying that I could see how Scott Peterson maybe could have been acquitted because it was all circumstantial.
But you're right. Once you add – like you pile it on top of one another, it's no longer circumstantial or it shouldn't be looked at as circumstantial.
When you look at the sum total and all those little pieces fit together and it's like, well, wait a second.

It excludes every other explanation for innocence, you know, kind of says, it's got to be him, right? So I mean, I was at that trial. I mean, I heard that evidence in Scott's case.
And I know there's a whole new young generation of people, you're a part of that, who are doing a second look at it. And it's revisionist history, in my opinion.
And his family, God bless them, they have been relentless in fighting for Scott's freedom. They got him off death row.
He had an excellent Cliff Gardner, an appellate attorney out in the Berkeley, California area, excellent appellate attorney, and prevailed in that appeal to get him off death row. Yeah, I don't think I have strong feelings about him on death row, but I definitely have gone back and forth.
But now that I know about the circumstantial evidence basically being puzzle pieces, it makes sense that he is where he is and that's where he needs to stay. But when you were talking about covering cases on The Curious Case Of, I thought of a woman that I interviewed a couple weeks ago.
Her name is Sarah Turney, and her father allegedly unalived Sarah's sister. Her own dad unalived her sister, killed her sister, never found a body.
And they're still sort of fighting for justice. And I feel like that case doesn't get as much coverage as it should.
So that would be cool for you to look into. So was he charged? He was, he was charged, not for the murder.
I don't think he was charged for her murder. So, you know, I get a lot of stories that come to me where people are looking for assistance because they believe a murder has happened and the authorities aren't looking at it.
As a journalist, I mean, I cannot give legal advice. Right.
I mean, sometimes they come to me as a lawyer. It's like, I'm licensed in New York, but I cannot give legal advice.
I can operate as a journalist. I can recommend a lawyer to you.
But it breaks my heart because I'm just me, you know, and I cannot do the deep dive that a lot of these people deserve and need. And, you know, what you're telling me now sounds like something I might have been contacted about.
I just, I'm not sure, but there was, I had a couple of people contact me,

different stories just this week, desperate for help.

And you know, the Natalia Gray series

has led a lot of people with special needs children

who are not getting proper care or are being abused

or they know of somebody who's special needs

or somebody who was adopted and is not getting,

those stories have been coming to me as well,

but I can't always do something about it. Do you get to pick any of the stories that come on the curious case of um actually the network makes the ultimate decision so i can be like participate and if i i don't know that i did this first season um but i keep i give the producers the production company that makes it stories, but it's not my decision.
Okay, I mean, that's fair. What has been the case that has most consumed you? In the curious case of story or in my career in your career? Oh, I don't know that there's any one case, but there have been defendants that have fascinated me.
Really? And people who've changed their identities fascinate me. One of them is in the Curious Case of series, and it's a man named Nick Rossi, currently in Utah, facing rape charges in two separate counties in Utah.
But he had faked his death in Rhode Island and fled to the UK, settling in Scotland with a new name, a new identity, marrying a woman. And then his obituary was published in Providence, Rhode Island.
He had been a page in the statehouse, and they were singing his praises, thinking he's dead, of how he was a young man on the rise who was going to be someone. In fact, he was actually alive.
And now he's in Utah facing these rape charges. So that's, that's fascinating story.
But also, it's so fascinating. Yeah, you know, that was the third episode.
I just saw that on the list. But there was another man whose case I covered in 2009 in Boston, he had kidnapped his daughter when he was having his first supervised visit with her after divorcing the mother.
They had one child and she was like four. This is a man who called himself a Rockefeller for 10 years or so.
Married a Harvard business graduate woman who believed her husband was a Rockefeller. She dated him, then they married.
And he was actually somebody who had come from Germany years earlier as an exchange student when he was 18. And he lived in Berlin, Connecticut, German, loved the Gilligan's Island show, and learned how to speak with the accent of Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island.
You're too young, but some of your listeners, your viewers will know what I'm talking about. And he took on this affect.
Anyway, he goes eventually to California and takes on an identity, claiming he's a relative of Lord Mountbatten. He actually has a public access show for a little while, claiming to go to school at USC Film School or something.
He had a public access show. Anyway, he murders somebody in Pasadena area in California and flees and goes underground and surfaces in Connecticut under a different name.
And then goes underground and surfaces as Clark Rockefeller. So this guy, he's murdered.
At least one he's convicted of now today. But I covered a case, his kidnapping, before he was indicted for murder.
It's like a crazy story. There's been a book about him, maybe a couple of documentaries.
I don't know if there's been a movie about him, but Clark Rockefeller, his real name is Christian Carl Gerhardt's writer. He's one of my favorite defendants because I was like, he became like an art expert, but he was dealing in fraudulent art, like fake art.
He had this Harvard Business School educated woman fooled for a decade because when he kidnapped their child and the FBI was questioning her, they're like, where does your husband keep his money? Where's his bank? He says his money's tied up in family issues. I don't know.
I don't know. Well, what's his social security number? I don't know.
What about his driver's license? Do you have his driver's license number? No, he doesn't have one. She knew nothing about her husband.
She was the breadwinner. And they would eat at like private clubs in New York.
He never wanted to go out in public because he was a well-w It's a crazy story. I'm just so fast.
To be fair, though, I don't know my partner's social security number or his license number. Fair enough.
But she was married. I don't know if you're married.
No, I'm not. She was married.
And they had been together for 10 years. But she should have been able to make fine paper somewhere or something.
Right, right. Wow, that's absolutely fast so nothing no murders that have like absolutely consumed you well you know like jody arias i just like why why that was that you know like why why did she have to kill travis you know like yeah she was living in california he was on his way to mexico with another woman he just, you know, he was a good guy.
And like,

she dyed her hair and like turned her phone off when she entered Arizona and had all those gas cans full of gas. So she didn't have to stop at a gas station.
I mean, that was really thought out. So that one, I mean, it stays with me every June, June 4th is when he died every June 4th.
I think of him. There are other murders or disappearances on that date that on June 4th, I mean, Kyron Horman, who's never been found, disappeared in Portland, Oregon as a little boy.
His stepmother was the last one to see him. No one's, you know, she's never been charged.
She's always been under a cloud of suspicion, but she says that she left him at school, and then he disappeared from school. It was the last day of school that year.
It was a science fair. Kyron Norman.
That's a June 4th also date. Anyway, there have been stories over the years.
I could probably pick one every year of the 19 years I was at Court TV that resonated with me. That stayed with me.
David Westerfield in San Diego was one too. And I'm absolutely consumed by the Idaho Four.
And I can't stop watching any of that stuff. I wish that there was going to be a trial way sooner than there is.
When is the trial date? I believe it's August of 2025. Yeah.
I mean, I followed that certainly when it first happened. I, like everybody, I was just fascinated.
And, you know, they were telling him, authorities were telling him across the country, remember, he got he got stopped a few times speeding, you know, before he ended up getting arrested, I think in Pennsylvania, right? He had driven across the country with his father. But I mean, the standard to arrest somebody is probable cause, probable cause that they committed the crime.
But to prove at trial, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, every element of every crime, is a much higher standard. So I really want to believe that the authorities have felt they had a provable case before even arresting him, even though you continue investigating, of course, but you want to make sure you have good, solid evidence even before arresting him.
So they probably feel that they've got a provable case. When you say probable cause, is that the same thing as motive? No.
Probable cause is a standard of proof, right? There are a few standards of proof. Probable cause is very low.
It's just, you know, it's probable, right? We have a reasonable suspicion of a probability that you committed this. But then the next one up is preponderance of the evidence.
That's a civil standard, more likely than not. 51% versus 49%.
That's civil when you go to civil. That's why O.J.
and Robert Blake were found liable in civil court for killing their wives, but they were found not guilty in criminal court because it was a higher standard, proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And then there's clear and convincing evidence.
That's not something jurors deal with. That's something like the lawyers and judges will deal with.
And then there's proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But a motive, motive is not an element of the crime, unless it's a biased crime, unless it's a hate crime.
Then you have to prove somebody was motivated because of someone's sexual orientation or religion or race or whatever. But motive is not something prosecutors have to prove.
Okay. Okay.
If you can give jurors something to sink their teeth into, like why this would happen, you can argue it, but it's not an element of the crimes. Okay.
Okay. The elements would be like, I don't know, intent, you know, that you have to prove that it is the person, right? Like that they were in the county, you have to prove jurisdiction and that they had the state of mind, you know, negligent, reckless, intentional, whatever, knowingly with malice aforethought, whatever that each state has little variations on the elements, depending on the degree of the crime.
And then, you know, did cause, you know, the injury, death or whatever, using a, whatever the weapon is, you know, so that's kind of what of what elements are right but you have to prove that it's that person with that state of mind and sometimes you get hung up on that state of mind because a person's not in their right state of mind okay and that's the insanity defense if at the time of the crime they didn't know right from wrong that's general generally. You don't know right from wrong or you can't conform your conduct to the law.
Or at the time of trial, they're incompetent to stand trial. They don't understand the nature of the proceedings.
They can't assist in their own defense. It has nothing to do with the state of mind at the time of the crime.
It's at the time of trial. So insanity and competency are two very different ones.
Insanity is at the time of the crime. And competency is whether they can even go forward.
I wrote my high school graduation paper on the insanity plea. And at the time, I graduated in 2010 from high school.
So that one, at the time, I think in my paper, it was most of the time the insanity plea did not work, I think the conclusion correct and you would be right to reach that conclusion because when John Hinkley attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in March of 1981 I was living in DC I remember hearing the um the ambulances the sirens because I was working as a paralegal at a law firm. I'm dating myself now.
Don't do the math. Anyway, he got off on insanity defense, right? Not guilty by reason of insanity.
And that really upset legislators, federal, state, around the country. And my understanding is that state legislators started really shoring up their insanity defense, saying, okay, we're going to make it really hard.
We don't want it to be so easy to get off and go to a civilly committed facility. But there are, I think, four states that don't even have an insanity defense.
And Idaho was one of them. My recollection is Idaho doesn't even have an insanity defense.
I think the only case that I'm familiar with off the top of my head is Andrea Yates. I think she – Yeah.
I was at her second trial. That was in Houston.
She killed – she drowned her five kids. Well, let me just say – because in Idaho – because Lori and Chad Dabo tried in Idaho and the doomsday for the killing of her kids and his wife and whatever.
And I just remember researching it. Like they didn't have an insanity defense.
They could still, you could still introduce evidence to someone's mental state, but it's not a defense. Okay.
So Andrea Yates, that woman was first convicted and sentenced to life without parole. And it was reversed on appeal because of something that the psychiatric psychiatric witness the psychiatrist for the state the expert said that there had been a law and order episode where a woman had done just that drowned her kids and used an insane defense and got off where that episode hadn't aired before she did this he was mistaken he he was wrong he said it aired she it had nothing to do with her drowning her kids.
And she got a new trial because of that. And I was at her second trial.
She's a very, very sick woman. Okay.
When she was married to a man who was like a NASA scientist, and they were living in a trailways bus, like made over into a home. They didn't have five kids yet.
They were two or three and she had to homeschool the children. And then they upgraded to a little house, which was nice.
And then by the time she had her fifth child, she was like very bad, like postpartum, but she was also psychotic. She thought the television was talking to her and sending her signals.
And when she drowned the kids, her husband, Rusty had gone gone, his ex-husband, had gone to work. And she drowned the kids in the bathtub in the same water, right? So she's chasing the kids around the house because, you know, they realize what's happening.
They're old enough, some of them, even though there was an infant. I don't remember all the ages, like eight, six, five, you know.
And she was so tired after drowning four of the five that by the fifth child, she couldn't even lift him out of the tub. And I just remember seeing a photo of him floating face down in the tub in the tall feces and urine because the children are, you know, going to the bathroom as they're being killed.
And she lined up the other four in her bed with the infant in the arms of the oldest, dead. And then she called Rusty and said, I hurt the kids.
I'm paraphrasing, something like that. She called them and said, I did it, I hurt the kids, or something like that.
So she was very, very sick. And between her two trials, there had been another woman in Texas who had killed, I don't remember her name, but she had killed her kids, but she believed like God had told her to and she hit him with a rock, their heads with a rock, outside of the rock.
And it's almost like jurors in Texas, they learned that she was really sick too, that they were not going to put Andrea Yates in prison. They're going to put her in a facility and she's going to be there for the rest of her life.
This was a woman who needed help. What should not have had to homeschool all of these little kids didn't have enough help.
Right. Right.
Not just the psychiatric help, but just the physical help around the house. 100%.
Yeah, that's Andrea Yates. Oh, that's heartbreaking.
That is heartbreaking. But I know also, I think what I in my paper, this is how old am I now? Like 15 years ago.
Something about it being so hard to prove insanity too because you have like a psychiatrist or a psychologist on the defendant side but also have maybe an opposite opinion on the prosecution side, which is so hard because they're both supposed to be professionals with the same sort of education, right? And so how are these two opinions differing for the same person?

They're looking at the same facts and they're coming up with different opinions and it's a battle of the experts. You're absolutely right.
That is an issue with experts. And jurors are also instructed, well, in New York and I think probably in most places that, you know, you've just heard, you've heard expert testimony from, you know, three witnesses.
You are, well, they told this with all witnesses,

you're free to accept all the testimony, some of it, or reject it all. I mean, it's up to you.
Jurors can, if they find that experts neutralize each other, it's like, oh, please, you know, we're just going to look at other things. You know, I'm sure they do that sometimes.
And, you know, there's a lot of criticism of experts who will testify mainly on one side, you know, or the other because they could be bought. I mean, those are allegations.
I don't know that that's actually true. But I've seen prosecutors really go at some experts in the courtroom and challenge the science.
I mean, it's happening in the Karen Reed case right now with cell phone evidence and whether or not, do you know what I'm talking about? Cell phone and a laptop? Karen Reed? Okay. Well, she's getting a new trial.
It's a mistrial. She's accused of killing her Boston police officer boyfriend by leaving him in a snowbank, hitting him in a snowbank in Massachusetts in January, 2021.
like she hit him with her car she says she didn't but they say yeah she did and that she did it intentionally that they were having a fight and then he froze to death in the car and the defense is saying no no no he made it into the house it was a party that she wasn't going to he was going to on a saturday night and uh he was killed in there by people who didn't like him. And then they put him in the snow, they, you know, planted him in the snow and framing her.
I mean, that's, that, those are the arguments. Karen Reed, R E A D.
So anyway, there's testimony. I mean, there's argument right now with experts on how to interpret some of the, uh, searches on, uh, Google searches on a phone.
So, and those experts, like one says one thing, one says another, and like it's pretty damning evidence. How much weight does a Google search hold in a courtroom? Well, I have to have somebody who can – it carries weight.
Yeah. Sure.
But, I mean, this is a Google search that was either made at 227 in the morning or 627 in the morning. His body isn't found until like 5 or 5.30, and yet somebody on the defense side, I mean on the prosecution side, is Googling how long for a body to freeze in the cold or something like that, and it was either made at 2.27 or 6.27.
So the prosecution is saying, oh, no, that was a window that was open, and it was a search within a window that was open at 227, but it was made much later. It was open at it was made at 627, but it was opened much earlier.
And the defense expert is saying, no, no, no, no, that window was open for that search at 227, three hours before his body was found. I don't know.
Whose computer or whose phone? Oh, it was a witness whose brother-in-law.

It was at his house.

It was another sergeant. But they can't prove who did it?

Well, they know it was her phone.

She did it, but she says, I did it after we found his body.

And they're like, no, no, no, you did it before.

You were helping to cover up.

Oh.

It's a very involved story.

I'm sorry to even bring it up. Oh, no.
I'm fascinated now because I hadn't even heard of this case. Oh, yeah.
Karen Reed. Oh, I'll be looking into it.
R-E-A-D. It's being tried in Dedham, Massachusetts, and it happened in Canton.
It happened in Canton, Massachusetts, but south of Boston. People colluded on, like, there was multiple people involved, or they think it was just Karen? Is it Karen? No, just Karen Reed is charged, but the defense thinks multiple people covered it up.

But they did.

It's so fascinating to me when I hear of cases where there are multiple people involved in a murder or a disappearance or anything like that. Because just to picture knowing one person that is capable of that seems so unfathomable.

To think of two or more people that would be in on something is so fascinating to me. Yeah.
But the more people involved, the less likely it really happened. Right.
Because I mean, you have to have a really good little conspiracy for a lot of people to be involved and no one to break and talk about it. Right.
Have their conscience get to better of them and tell the truth or Or, you know, I'm not saying it's, it's impossible, but the more people you can stand up there as a prosecutor and say, come on, what is the likelihood that these, I mean, they can list seven people would have to be up here lying under oath to you jurors. Right.
In order for this to be true. Well, I wish that the, the officials that were on Amandaox's case felt that way yeah amanda yeah she uh she got a real bad rap her real story her true story should should shine and i i feel bad that she went through everything that she went through i feel bad for the family of her roommate her british absolutely meredith's family yeah um because they they deserve justice but there just wasn't the uh forensic evidence it wasn't like rudy good day or there was somebody who was found washing blood off himself in a fountain that morning and there was an open window yes so rudy well and he was he went to prison for a long time but for some reason they still, I mean, they were slut-shaming Amanda and making her out to be, you know, something that she wasn't.
And so I just think that's so fascinating because to your point, I mean, if it was her and Raphael colluding to murder Meredith and Rudy was involved in that as well, you know, somebody would have broke. Somebody would have said, you know, it was them.
It wasn't me or or you know what I mean? I seem to recall that somebody did say, but maybe it has been widely reported. Somebody did say she had nothing to do with it.
Not really someone else, but I, I haven't looked at that story in a long time. However, it was a real, the book Monster of Florence written, it's a coauthored by Doug Preston.
And I think his name is Mario Spezzi, but I want to say Mario Spezzi, a journalist in Italy, may have passed away. Anyway, they talk about the criminal justice system in Italy, and the end of the book is about Amanda's case.
When it first came out, I mean, a later edition talks about Amanda's case, but she hadn't been exonerated yet. Probably editions today have her as, you know, exonerated but it is uh the investigation into a serial killer monster of florence who hadn't been caught okay and had been killing just viciously uh women couples you know like on lovers lane if i recall it's been a long time since i read it but it's awful and at one point like Mario Spezzi was arrested because he he did such a good investigation as a journalist that they thought you must be part of it you might you know something you must somehow be part of it he wasn't you know held forever but yeah it was a real eye-opener to the Italian criminal justice system and it helped me understand more of what Amanda went through.
Was that before or after Amanda? It was before. I mean, I think the first murders were in the 60s or 70s or something.
But the last chapter of the book deals with Amanda, since it was a high-profile Italian prosecution, high-profile American. But the edition I read, she hadn't been exonerated yet.
So I think probably later printings have an update. And then she was reconvicted a second time.
Yeah. But wasn't that on appeal? Couldn't they? Yes.
And then it was eventually I think overturned. And so I would never go to Italy if I were she.
No, I absolutely not. So when you, when, when you are investigating a certain case, what, what helps you decide what cases you're going to invest in? For a TV show, for commentary, for anything? It's not my decision.
But I believe that some of the issues they look at is, like where was it? When was it? Like what happened? Like, what's the story here? Is it a clear cut case? Is it a little bit open ended? Like, maybe we don't know. I know, for Curious Kesa, we like to find these stories where we're not really quite sure, like, what's going on here? Do you have a good storyteller? Who do we believe? I mean, Natalia Grace, we were flip flopping all the time, time like what's going on here right i was flip-flopping so um and sometimes the public will tell you what a good story is because there's just a story that's out there that the public is like responding to right they want more of like the idaho four right yeah or gabby petito even we know what happened but we still want more for some reason so you know that's interesting that reminds me of another point i like to make which is that the stories that fascinate me um often the most are not the ones where it's a whodunit okay it's like we know who did it right we know what happened we know brian laundry killed her it's like a Right.
What was the motive here? What happened? Yeah, why? Motive. Why do you do this? Yeah.
What went wrong? Could it have been prevented? Of course, it could have been prevented, but, you know. And that's kind of how I feel about the Idaho 4 with Brian Koberger.
It's just like, what was the purpose? What were you getting at? What was your end game? Was it a thrill kill? Yeah, what is this? I think there were theories that I've seen online, and obviously this is alleged for safety purposes, but I saw theories online that it was, you know, he wanted to prove that he was smarter than everybody else. Could he get away with this? Yeah.
And so I just want to know why and if they'll ever admit it. Yeah.
Just feeding his own ego that he could. He was studying criminal justice or something.
Yeah, I saw that. Or psychology, criminal criminology.
Something like that. Something like that.
Yeah. yeah he had he didn't have like a questionnaire that he was sending to criminals or serial killers maybe about or criminals about like how they went about it was it to criminals or was it to just people about if they could commit crimes i think it might have been maybe if it was just if they could i thought it was the criminals you might be right i just i think it's so fascinating I'll be curious to see what happens with that I'm fascinated by Natalia Grace too and I think watching some of the some of the things that I've seen and reading online I think maybe parts of both sides could be true see this is what jurors have to deal with and a lot of times like at Court TV we used to say that the viewer was the 13th juror and we'd often put up like a a 13th juror question for the day.
Like, which witness today did you believe most? Whatever. It would be a 13th juror because this is what jurors have to deal with.
Like jurors are the triers of the fact, right? The judge is just there to deal with the legal issues. Triers of the fact.
You have to determine like what the truth is. The truth, people believe the truth will come out at trial.
You've got people under oath. Yeah.
Like they never lie. And, uh, you know, many people say a trial is a search for the truth.
Yeah. Okay.
It's a search for the truth under the rules of evidence because judges will keep out evidence a lot. They'll say, Oh, it's too remote.
It's too prejudicial. I'm not allicial.
That's why it's being introduced because it hurts the defendant. But some judges will leave it out if it's just too inflammatory, too long ago, whatever.
Harvey Weinstein is getting a new trial in New York because the judge did let in some evidence that was remote. And jurors convicted and the appellate court said, yeah, they probably shouldn't have heard that.
So he's getting a new trial in New York, but he's not going anywhere. He's here in New York.

I actually didn't know that he was getting a new trial. That's.
Yeah. But I think he's got something pending in L.A.
too and some new charges. I mean, he's never he's never getting out.
But what do you do as a juror when you think, okay, both sides can be true? And does the truth

ever actually come out? Because they feel like defense and prosecution can both paint a really

good picture, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that is exactly how it happened. Well, I mean, jurors are told to vote with their conscience.
And if you can't decide, then I would say it's a not guilty, because if you can't decide, if you really don't know what happened, and you justflop, I mean, you have to give the benefit of doubt to the defendant, right?

But most of the time, jurors come up with a verdict one way or the other.

I mean, they feel like they've been able to resolve a case.

A not guilty finding, by the way, is not innocence.

Right.

It does not mean innocence.

That just means the prosecution did not prove every element of the crimes charged beyond a reasonable doubt. I remember covering a case in Springfield, Missouri years ago where a father, a school teacher, a man was accused of killing his wife and his two children.
One was a toddler and the other one maybe four or something. I mean, bashed in his son's head, strangled the baby with the cord from the drapes or blinds or something, strangled, and then bludgeoned mom and turned up the heat on the waterbed, positioned her body face down.
So she decomposed really fast, accelerated the decomposition because he turned up the heat. And then he drove in the night.
These were the allegations. He drove in the night back to a conference where he had been.
He had been at a teacher's conference. And he was acquitted and continued to live in this Springfield, Missouri community.
I don't know where he is today, John Feeney, but that's what he was accused of doing. And the jurors told me later, we think he probably did it, but we just couldn't place him in Springfield.
The prosecution had a witness to

say, oh, yeah, he stopped, you know, to get gas. And it turns out that that worker who saw him in

the car wasn't working that night. He was working a different night.
So he was wrong about the night.

And that was the evidence that had placed him in Springfield. That was the linchpin of the case

that had placed him in Springfield. They couldn't place him there.
So the juror's like, there's just reasonable doubt. We just don't know if he actually drove back.
But so when you say that a juror's job is to give, give the verdict with their conscience, but so their conscience is telling them that they did it, that he did it. Yeah.
But, but, but, but the, but the evidence wasn't, it just wasn't there. That's true.
That's good. But it has to be both.
Yeah. Yeah.
You, That's a very good question because it sounds like I'm talking on both sides of my mouth, but I'm not. It has to be the evidence.
So evidence plus using your conscience. Yeah.
You've got to vote with your conscience on what you believe the evidence shows you. But these jurors, enough of them believe, but we can't place him.
Once they learned later, late in the trial that that worker actually wasn't working on the night of the murders, they're like, oh my gosh, we think he probably did it, but we can't place him here. There's not enough evidence.
Do you think the same happened for the Casey Anthony trial? They couldn't place Casey? No. What happened in Casey Anthony was Kaylee wasn't found for like six months.
By the time she was found, only a quarter mile from her house. I remember.
She had been in a swamp. She was in a garbage bag and then in a laundry bag.
And she had been, she was completely decomposed through animal activity and the swamp and all that. Like her bones were scattered everywhere.
So they couldn't determine how she died or when she died. And that was the problem.
Now, there are cases, there are convictions with nobody. But it was just that, that there was no, there was no, I think that's what it was primarily.
I mean, I didn't understand the verdict. I thought she should have been, I was, I knocked the wind out of me.
I was sitting in the courtroom when they were in the courtroom. I was in the courtroom.
And I just remember sitting, there was a balcony for the media. And I was looking down the jury here.
Casey's over there. They were facing each other and the judge was over there.
And the defense had put her in a lower seat. So she looked very diminutive.
You know, they lowered her seat. So she, you know, the table came up to here or something They put her in these high collar things and hair was not like the Casey who, you know, the way she acted a year earlier.
When with the first not guilty, I thought, OK, but it's going to be something less something because there were other crimes, not just the four misdemeanors of lying to police officers. But there were other other other crimes like child neglect and maybe manslaughter or something and it went not guilty not guilty I'd lean back in my seat and I was just like exhaled and I was like what and then she's found guilty of the misdemeanors only misdemeanors so she's done her time on she already been in for three years and I thought not even child neglect she didn't report her two-year-old, two years, 10-month-old child missing for a month? And you don't even convict her of child neglect? So I just didn't understand it.
Right. But the defense really hammered the prosecution for seeking death.
I mean, they were seeking death. And maybe they shouldn't have done that.
I don't know. But I just remember Chaney Mason, the defense attorney up there saying, we don't know how she died.
We don't know when she died. And then they had that argument that it was an accidental drowning and the grandfather, George, you know, found her.
And, you know, they just had, they had a, they had a story that enough jurors bought that they couldn't have resolution. They just said, we're going to let her go.
Do you think personally and professionally that George had anything to do or either of the grandparents had anything to do with it? No, I don't believe that. I don't either.
I, um, that case will haunt me, I think for the rest of my life. Cause I, I had just had my first child when that case was happening, uh, or when she was being tried for it.
And, um, I remember seeing a lot of it on TV and I just could not believe it, especially with the mom making, you know, when she made the call talking about. It smells like a dead body died in the car, a dead body.
And then there was some evidence or whatever in the trunk of. A hair.
Something. With some decomposition.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so I just, and I, as a mom I you have seven children and they're all my four seven children yes you've only been out of high school for 15 years so you started right away I did you've had one every other year my oldest is 15 so I had them right my senior year yeah and then um it took me seven years to get my undergrad but we're here we made it we congratulations that's fascinating now I want to interview you oh anytime anytime I'll be the coffee runner on um anything you're working on I'll be the PA whatever you need we should talk about a curious case of yes now there's six episodes all streaming on max. Yes.
And we talked about some of them. And Bam Margera, Nick Rossi, the guy who faked his death.
The girl who died twice is the second episode. Then there's the funeral parlor guy who told people he would cremate their loved ones and never did.
Kept the money. Let the bodies decompose.
And then give the family someone else's ashes or cement dust. How does he get caught? Oh, you could have watched the episode.
I'm not telling. That's so crazy.
On another podcast I was talking about, we were talking about animal cremation. And sometimes, or we've heard rumors that they sometimes put multiple animals in there for cremation and you have to pay extra or ask for your animal to be cremated separately.
But, and we know that animals are a part of the family, right? But a human being, you're giving them some, like just ashes. You'll see in the trailer, one of the women, the victims, you know, her son died, says, I believe those are human ashes, just not my human.
Because there were some hardware in there, like somebody who maybe had a knee replacement or something,

and her son didn't have any of that.

She got someone else's ashes.

But another person said she took a little bit of the ashes, put it in water, and it hardened.

So cement dust.

And there's a lot of cement dust found at the place.

You've got to watch that one.

That's episode four.

No, I will absolutely be watching that. And Jodi Hildebrandt that's um the curious case of this the mormon um with frankie ruby frankie but you know ruby frankie's story's been told but we go in telling jody hildebrandt the therapist uh who that met ruby along the way but she was like a marriage counseling therapist and was actually driving couples apart.
On purpose? It sure seems like it. I mean, she's in prison today.
It sure seems like it because she was telling the women, of course, the religion does see adultery as like as bad as murder. And I guess like masturbating and looking at porn is really right up there also.
Very simple. And so some of these men were doing what's quite natural and their wives were icing them out because they had masturbated or looked at porn and admitted it.
So that's an interesting story too. But that's the way in.
But we also tell the Ruby Frankie and the child abuse story toward the second half I started following the Ruby Frankie story sort of early on I didn't really know who she was outside of like one really viral TikTok and so that's sort of where I did the deep dive once the allegations came out about what she was actually doing to her children I couldn't watch it anymore I couldn't do I couldn't watchs. I didn't want to hear about like, it literally broke me.
So I was like, I cannot get behind this. But I would be curious to know how Jodi Hildebrandt, where how she got where she is.
Yeah, so that this is sort of Jodi's story. But Ruby is in it.
Because once the two of them get together, and they start their own YouTube page, and then Ruby's younger children, two of her younger children end up living with Jodi and they're abused. Right.
And very, very severely abused. So like malnourished and tied up and sores and this and that.
I mean, and Ruby is aware of what was happening with her children. They're both in prison today.
Well, that's why I knew that. And I know that Sherry, Ruby's daughter just wrote a book, a memoir, The House of My Mother, The House of My Mom, something like that.
This kind of goes back to what I said about two people willing to or being capable of murdering someone. It's the same sort of thing with Ruby and Jodi.
How do you have two people willing to abuse a child? Like, I just cannot fathom. And not see it as abuse.
Oh, they just didn't see it.

They don't, they don't, they don't see what we saw. I can't wrap my head around.
Not that I expect it from men, but a mom, like a mother, like you birthed this child, you know what I mean? That's heartbreaking. Yes.
That is absolutely heartbreaking. So that, That is the fifth episode.

And the last one is basically a cat cult.

A woman who is a self-proclaimed prophet and has a following. Small, but she has a following.
She started in the Pacific Northwest. She's in the Tennessee area now, Tennessee, maybe Kentucky now.
They've been moving around. And she has people believing that cats are the vessel to the afterlife and that you have to take care of these cats and her followers will they'll adopt like 30 cats from a shelter and you have to care for the cat before you care for yourself or your children or whatever I mean the cat comes first and you know that's a lot of food at their own expense you know so and it's smelly and it's just like, so that's one part of it.
It's a cat cult, but there were also some pretty dark things that were happening. Because she, Cheryl Ruthven is her name, had been a very conventional mother, wife, married to a man in the Pacific North, I think Oregon, Washington, Washington.
And they had a couple of kids and then she went to church and she kind of got taken in by this female pastor and then decided she wanted to start her own church and things just went downhill from there. And, you know, she got divorced from the husband and tried to keep him from his kids and wanted him dead.
And so there's that whole thing. It's a two hours show.
The last one, episode six is is actually two hours would that be something like a psychotic break or what is that no i mean i don't know it's not a psychotic break i don't think i'm not a psychiatrist but not psychologist but uh this is just somebody who is like maybe a narcissist who's getting gets off on the power of controlling people and having them do her, I mean, this is what cult leaders do.

But they're so bizarre. It's not like it's something that is normal.
True. It's such a bizarre, it's sort of, what was the, did you see the docu-series on, I think her name was Mother of God or something where she had people believing that aliens were going to come down and get them and then she had her cult follower.

I don't know what the politically correct term is. They essentially assisted her death.
Like she was drinking. She was drinking silver.
Oh, no. I don't know that one.
But there's so many. I mean, I just can't.
I don't understand. Vulnerable people who just want to feel like they belong somewhere.
Feel like they belong and are being saved. And this is the right way.
And this is what they need to do to get to a better life, even in the, you know, on this earth. And, um, yeah, I, there are a lot of, a lot of people who get off on the power of controlling others.
I don't understand. I'm like, I just want, I would like my kids to listen to me, but that's where it goes.
That's where it ends. You know what I mean? Like I just, I'm good with that, you know, do good, be a good person and work hard.
I don't know. So, um, the curious case of that season one, those, those episodes, and then are you allowed to say if there's a season two? Um, I don't know if there is.
Okay. So I hope so.
I would imagine, but I don't know. Yeah.
I haven't heard. We have lot of cases to pick from.
Right. Hoping for it.
So I hope there'll be an announcement, but I don't know yet. So The Curious Case Of is an ID series that you can stream on, Max.
Yes. And where can people find you? You said you were working on a website.
Yeah. I mean, I have my website, BethKaris.com, where I just, you know, that's sort of a static resume, but there's a contact on there.
So a lot of people reach me through my website, BethKaris.com. And I, you know, I have some stuff about myself on there a little bit.
I do podcasts as well. I'm in production for season two of a podcast called Unrestorable with iHeartRadio and this company in L.A.
called Anonymous Content that I work with. And Unrestorable Season 1 did well.
That was a story of a woman in Maryland who killed, allegedly killed her two toddler children, ages two and three. Their bodies were never found.
She was arrested. She was the last one with them.
And she had never married the father, but they were together. They had a third child also.
And, but they were, they were separating because things were not going well. And, um, maybe that's what she did in retaliation.
I don't know. But, uh, she was found incompetent to stand trial and never the, after five years, they had to dismiss the charges.
She was charged with murder, double murder, but never found competent to stand trial. And you can only hold someone in Maryland for so long before you have to dismiss the charges.
And she was found unrestorable. She could never be restored to competency.
Hence the name of the series, unrestorable. Season two is about the only woman on Tennessee's death row who killed when she was 18 and she's 48.
She'll be 49, I think, in March. And she, you know, basically they're saying she's not, she's not restorable.
I mean, she's not worthy of living. And Tennessee just, they just approved a new lethal injection protocol because they had a hiatus on executions because of the lethal injection issues and the drugs and stuff.
And so they're going to start executing again.

So she is on death row and she is getting executed.

Well, she doesn't have a date, but she's the only woman on Tennessee's death row.

I believe there are 44 men.

And so we're just telling her story and examining what is justice.

Right.

She's not the same person she was when she was 18.

Right.

And killed a person she supposedly perceived to be a love rival

and then like bashed her head in and kept a piece of the skull.

I actually think I heard about that case.

Yeah.

So, let probably know it. It's the story has been told, but we're like looking at it from a justice point.
Like, what is justice? Right. I mean, sort of similar to Menendez brothers, right? Like, what is justice? Do you think that they've served their time and they are accountable for their actions? Or do you think that they, you know, should be free? Are you asking me? I mean, I can.
How do you think? I mean, based on what I know today, I mean, at the time, at the time, I was a prosecutor when they were first tried. I was like, abuse excuse.
I wasn't buying it. I buy it today.
Yeah. I don't know that it justifies like the circumstances under which they killed their parents, but they have served 35 years.
That's a lot. That's a lot of time.
Like they can't have children now. Yeah.
I mean, I think that they probably have served their time. I would agree with you.
I mean, I'm not in the law, but you know. I don't know that they'll ever get out, but.
I thought they were going to get exonerated. But then the new DA in and he said that he didn't have time adequate time to prepare for the case it was the last thing that i read yeah but i think it's been and it's been postponed the hearing right

yeah because it as far as i know they were maybe going to be released in december of 2024

and then the new da came in around the same time and said he wasn't didn't have um you know enough

knowledge or research on the case so right and a judge wanted to hold off and wait for the new DA came in around the same time and said he didn't have enough knowledge or research on the case.

Correct.

Right.

And the judge wanted to hold off and wait for the new DA.

Yeah.

That's right.

See, never a loss for words in conversation when you're talking about crime, right?

Never.

I mean, I feel like every single thing that we've talked about led into something else.

Yep.

And we probably could do this for two more hours.

Well, if you ever need me for anything, let me know.

I'm happy to be here.

I'm happy to help you out.

I mean... single thing that we've talked about led into something else.
Yep. And we probably could do this for two more hours.

Well, if you ever need me for anything, let me know.

I'm happy to be here.

I'm happy to help you out.

I mean, I don't know what I could offer you, but you know.

You never know.

I loved having you on Barely Famous Podcast.

I appreciate you. Well, I loved being here.

Thank you.

Really, we're good conversationalists.

I agree.

Yes, I agree.

We can do it again.

Anytime.

Okay. Thank you.
We'll be right back. including Selma, Django Unchained, Ali, and Coach Carter.
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