Miles From Nowhere

Speaker 1 Digline is sponsored by Capital One.

Speaker 2 Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One bank guy.

Speaker 3 It's pretty much all he talks about.

Speaker 5 In a good way.

Speaker 2 What's in your wallet?

Speaker 1 Terms apply.

Speaker 2 See Capital One.com/slash bank, Capital One N.A.

Speaker 6 Member FDIC.

Speaker 7 At 1-800Flowers.com, we know that connections are at the heart of being human. Whether celebrating life's joys or comforting during tough times, 1-800 Flowers helps you express what words can't.

Speaker 7 For nearly 50 years, millions have trusted 1-800 Flowers to deliver thoughtful gifts that help create lasting bonds. Because it's more than just a gift, it's your way of showing you care.

Speaker 7 Visit 1-800Flowers.com/slash SXM and connect today. That's 1-800-Flowers.com/slash SXM.

Speaker 9 Deep in the woods, a family lives in fear.

Speaker 10 What are you going to do if they come back?

Speaker 9 Of a threat from strangers.

Speaker 12 Daddy will protect us. Daddy won't let anything bad happen to you.

Speaker 9 So when the strangers arrive, A father takes matters into his own hands.

Speaker 15 You You hear crack, crack, crack, gunfire.

Speaker 16 The terror, the bullets. This was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Speaker 17 Glasses exploding, just complete chaos.

Speaker 11 Someone is killed.

Speaker 18 Anybody in the vehicle?

Speaker 19 We'll get in your hand.

Speaker 20 It was bad.

Speaker 21 Worse than anything you would see in a movie.

Speaker 10 Sometimes I've cried for my dad.

Speaker 9 Was this a murder?

Speaker 20 Every day I think of that.

Speaker 22 Most I could think of was my kids.

Speaker 23 What about my kids?

Speaker 24 It was in the dark that the fear began.

Speaker 25 In the dark with the sounds of the Black Night around them.

Speaker 27 That it grew.

Speaker 5 and grew.

Speaker 13 It terrorized our family, our friends.

Speaker 5 Who was out there in the dark?

Speaker 3 Here, miles and miles into primeval woods, so far from safety, from civilized protection.

Speaker 13 They could just come onto our property and invade our lives.

Speaker 30 But on the summer night, deep in the California Sierra, the terror came out of the dark, came after them to take everything.

Speaker 24 The terrible, desperate chase.

Speaker 35 Its awful end.

Speaker 36 And now the question.

Speaker 35 What really happened out there in the dark?

Speaker 18 They're done.

Speaker 16 I still feel like I need to go help him.

Speaker 35 It seems so innocent now.

Speaker 39 Closed up.

Speaker 38 Dead quiet.

Speaker 40 Empty.

Speaker 26 In that place at the end of a hundred-yard dirt track that snakes off a lonely country road deep in the Sierra Nevada.

Speaker 41 But that was not how it was, or was ever meant to be. No.

Speaker 6 Before it happened, before that summer night in July of 2011, it was...

Speaker 5 well,

Speaker 44 let them tell it.

Speaker 20 It's a magical place.

Speaker 10 It's awesome. It's fun.

Speaker 45 Mostly at winter, we would do a snowball ball fight.

Speaker 45 And then we would come inside and eat and have some hot cocoa.

Speaker 36 These are the Wallen Reed children.

Speaker 26 Darlin is the eldest, then Georgia,

Speaker 5 and little Gregory.

Speaker 36 Mostly they lived in Reno, Nevada, but this,

Speaker 6 this at the end of a two-hour drive into the woods, this was the place they lived.

Speaker 12 You would go on hikes and there was like a lake that was very close.

Speaker 20 And we'd fish.

Speaker 10 And we'd fish and we'd go up there and we'd fish and swim. It was pretty much awesome.

Speaker 48 Here they discovered a world far more magical than any city could ever be.

Speaker 31 It was their father's cabin, really.

Speaker 36 Chad Wallen Reed.

Speaker 25 Chad's grandparents built the cabin in the 70s when he was just a baby.

Speaker 22 My children were definitely...

Speaker 49 Daddy, we loved the place. They've all grown up.

Speaker 22 Diapers all the way through going up there, you know, fishing, boating.

Speaker 51 You know, swimming.

Speaker 24 Mind you, this was truly remote.

Speaker 52 Their only electricity came from a generator.

Speaker 29 There was no cell phone service, no phone at all, which was just fine with Chad's wife, Carrie.

Speaker 13 It was very enjoyable to be away from the phones and traffic and, you know,

Speaker 20 work.

Speaker 43 This is where Chad taught his children how to exist in the natural world.

Speaker 33 How to catch a fish.

Speaker 56 swim in a mountain lake, feel safe in the dark.

Speaker 13 He's an amazing father. He loves his children so much.

Speaker 10 He's my best buddy.

Speaker 12 He's really funny and he's really loving and he likes people to laugh a lot.

Speaker 57 The children saw the world and certainly their retreat here in the country as a safe place for them, just as it should be. And keeping it that way was Chad's particular preoccupation.

Speaker 57 Chad worried a lot about safety, about security. which may have come in part at least from his time in the military.

Speaker 54 He was, he said, an army ranger, one of the elite few.

Speaker 57 Though, like a lot of vets, he seemed to carry some baggage.

Speaker 60 There's just some things I'd rather not talk about and

Speaker 60 things that I've tried to get over,

Speaker 20 I guess.

Speaker 59 Carrie didn't pry, let him deal with it his own way.

Speaker 13 Between himself and the Lord, he loves this country.

Speaker 13 He fought for our freedom. And it means a lot to him.

Speaker 41 And now, between the children and whatever was out there in the woods, were only their parents, the nearest sheriff's office, almost an hour's drive away.

Speaker 62 Had to be your own policeman.

Speaker 38 That was how you felt?

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 13 We had to protect ourselves. There was nobody else there to protect us.

Speaker 6 And out here, that was no idle worry. Break-ins are not uncommon in the isolated cabins up here in the wilderness.

Speaker 5 And theirs?

Speaker 63 Oh, the cabins have been broken in

Speaker 64 a number of times.

Speaker 13 One of of the most recent ones, somebody just pretty much ransacked the whole place.

Speaker 40 There's something very invasive about that, too, when somebody goes into property that's yours and takes something of yours.

Speaker 14 It is.

Speaker 63 It's not just invasive, it robs you of security.

Speaker 61 Security was why Chad gave Carrie a revolver, taught her how to use it, and stocked the cabin with guns, including a favorite, his AR-15.

Speaker 41 A lot like his military weapon.

Speaker 69 Security and pleasure.

Speaker 48 What's the attraction of those?

Speaker 51 I think it's just the fun of shooting them.

Speaker 38 It's just,

Speaker 22 you know, being able to

Speaker 22 put the 30-round magazine and then set up a target and just go at it.

Speaker 24 Chad planted signs at the edge of his property, out by the road, stern warnings to would-be vandals and thieves.

Speaker 32 And he watched, vigilant.

Speaker 6 Didn't rest easy, especially because one of those break-ins had been just that very year.

Speaker 13 And if you did fall asleep, it was very lightly and

Speaker 13 every noise would wake you up

Speaker 13 very easily.

Speaker 13 Then,

Speaker 65 the 4th of July weekend, 2011, the Wallen Reeds were joined by some friends who set up a little campsite on the property near the road.

Speaker 13 Just enjoying each other's company and hanging out.

Speaker 5 But early on the Saturday morning, about 2 a.m., Chad was jolted awake.

Speaker 23 All of a sudden, I heard all this yelling and commotion and sound like somebody was fighting.

Speaker 22 And I looked out and I saw this spotlight being shined all over the place.

Speaker 76 I was like, what the heck is going on?

Speaker 49 And then I walk out and as I'm looking down,

Speaker 77 this car goes speeding away.

Speaker 26 Chad hopped in his truck, drove to the end of the driveway.

Speaker 51 That's when I noticed one of the solar lights had been taken.

Speaker 65 A solar light.

Speaker 3 One of several attached to metal poles marking the edge of the property.

Speaker 70 A cheap item, but still.

Speaker 15 Why would somebody want one of those?

Speaker 15 I don't know.

Speaker 61 When morning came, Chad inspected his friend's campsite near the bottom of the property.

Speaker 35 Were those footprints of strangers around their trailer?

Speaker 13 It put us on edge, you know, basically high alert.

Speaker 72 The commotion, the stolen light, the footprints of people who had no business being there.

Speaker 78 The children picked up the anxiety.

Speaker 10 I I remember asking my dad and mom, what are you going to do if they come back and what would happen if somebody got hurt.

Speaker 69 To witness your children scared like that

Speaker 22 and insecure and you as a parent have failed.

Speaker 79 You know and that's how I felt as

Speaker 64 a father, as a as a person that, you know, is supposed to protect your family.

Speaker 22 And all I could do was offer words.

Speaker 64 Honey, if they come back,

Speaker 22 Daddy will protect you. Daddy will take care of it.

Speaker 41 A promise he intended to keep.

Speaker 80 What happened the next night would change all their lives.

Speaker 22 I picked up the pistol that was in my cup holder and pointed it out the window.

Speaker 34 Saturday morning, July 4th weekend, 2011.

Speaker 53 Chad Wallenreed and his family were on edge.

Speaker 43 Strangers had come very close, middle of the night, strangers who stole a solar light and may have been tramping around in their property.

Speaker 82 And suddenly, the cabin felt more remote, the woods, less like home.

Speaker 43 And the children?

Speaker 13 They asked, what if they come back and come all the way up to the cabin? What if

Speaker 12 daddy will protect us? Daddy, you know, daddy won't let anything bad happen to you.

Speaker 12 It was...

Speaker 12 It was scary.

Speaker 13 It was scary to me.

Speaker 6 Then that afternoon, while Chad was away on an errand, Carrie looked out the window, and there was a Jeep heading up the long driveway, driven by a young man she did not know.

Speaker 13 He sat there for a while. And like he was looking around for something, I had the kids stay down

Speaker 13 out of sight so they wouldn't be seen.

Speaker 46 Was he lost, looking for help?

Speaker 25 She took no chances.

Speaker 24 She reached for the gun Chad had taught her how to use.

Speaker 13 I had my revolver and I was headed towards the door.

Speaker 5 And then, whoever it was, backed up and drove away.

Speaker 42 So what did that do to your level of anxiety that weekend?

Speaker 20 Oh, it was high. Ranted up some more.
Oh, yes.

Speaker 29 That evening, still on edge, Carrie and the kids watched a movie and fell asleep on the couch. Chad sat outside with his visiting friends, who had set up camp on his property.

Speaker 66 We were just sitting there on the porch, kicking back, relaxing, BSing.

Speaker 20 The story of what happened next is both complex and disputed.

Speaker 86 It was 9 or 10 p.m., said Chad, when his friends noticed a car.

Speaker 87 And then they said it just shut off its headlights and pulled up onto the driveway.

Speaker 5 What was going on?

Speaker 65 That car the night before, the Jeep that came up the drive that very afternoon?

Speaker 31 And now strangers were out there again.

Speaker 22 I picked up the AR that was sitting, it was sitting right there next to me.

Speaker 6 His AR-15 Bushmaster.

Speaker 42 He fired a warning shot.

Speaker 64 And then I just remember seeing some guy running away.

Speaker 5 But what a warning. Be enough.

Speaker 52 These had to be the same men who came the night before.

Speaker 80 Now here they were a second time.

Speaker 4 These guys were bad news.

Speaker 63 I said, I'm going to try to catch up to these guys, you know, go get them, you know, catch them, get their license plate or get their information or something, you know, because it was apparent that this was more than just we're here to play and joke around with you.

Speaker 65 Chad jumped in his truck and gave chase, barreling up the Twisty Mountain Road at up to 50 miles an hour.

Speaker 51 As I was coming up behind him, somebody leaned out the passenger side of the vehicle and it was shining a million power spotlight.

Speaker 81 I mean it was just blinding.

Speaker 87 And then next thing you know as I'm looking up I see these three flashes and then I hear crack crack crack crack.

Speaker 76 It was a sound of you know gunfire.

Speaker 24 It sound Chad knew very well.

Speaker 65 Even in the army remember.

Speaker 15 So what'd you do?

Speaker 77 I

Speaker 77 picked up the pistol that was in my cup holder, chambered around and pointed it out the window and

Speaker 81 I you know let off a few rounds.

Speaker 48 Did you hit anything?

Speaker 87 Not that I could tell, no.

Speaker 29 Someone in the car ahead threw solar lights out the window, then waved something.

Speaker 22 Like a piece of plastic.

Speaker 81 Something shiny flying out, you know, or hanging out a window.

Speaker 22 And we kept on proceeding.

Speaker 74 Back in the cabin, Terry lay tense on the couch, her three kids sleeping beside her.

Speaker 20 I was just like

Speaker 13 in my mind thinking, where are you?

Speaker 13 Come home. You know, is everything okay? I hope everything's okay.

Speaker 30 Chad was still in hot pursuit.

Speaker 86 7.6 miles they went, careening up the winding country road until the car took a quick turn onto a remote dirt road.

Speaker 35 Chad right behind.

Speaker 51 They did some fishtails, you know, like they'd slid the car and at one point the passenger door just started to open up and I thought, you know, these guys are going to get out.

Speaker 81 They're going to, you know.

Speaker 81 They're going to come at me.

Speaker 89 The dirt road emptied into a meadow and the car suddenly made a 180.

Speaker 91 And it looked like they were coming straight at you.

Speaker 92 Yeah, it did.

Speaker 42 Like look like an assault.

Speaker 48 Right.

Speaker 86 Were they going to shoot him?

Speaker 5 Ran him?

Speaker 39 What?

Speaker 22 In the military and in police, that's what we call an escalation of tactics until somebody either backs down or the threats neutralize.

Speaker 53 The other car kept coming.

Speaker 91 Chad grabbed the AR-15.

Speaker 49 And it just showed it out the window and fired off.

Speaker 93 Where Where were they compared to you? So they were coming this way?

Speaker 49 They were right.

Speaker 33 Right beside you.

Speaker 76 Right. Right.

Speaker 40 How many shots have you?

Speaker 37 I don't recall.

Speaker 48 Just let it go. Right.

Speaker 33 Chad watched his enemy's driver's side window blow out.

Speaker 26 Glass rained down on the meadow.

Speaker 50 The stranger's car veered across the grass and came to rest on the dirt road.

Speaker 75 I drove over to him and I was yelling at them.

Speaker 75 And I just remember this young voice saying,

Speaker 77 I give up, I give up, I give up.

Speaker 23 We're sorry.

Speaker 23 Please don't kill me.

Speaker 66 It

Speaker 23 doesn't make you feel very

Speaker 23 good to have somebody pleading and begging for their life.

Speaker 41 Chad's protective fury lessened for a moment.

Speaker 5 And then...

Speaker 81 I remember him yelling,

Speaker 49 I have a three-month-old daughter.

Speaker 22 And all I could think of was my kids.

Speaker 37 Thinking, you're yelling at me about your daughter, and look what you just did.

Speaker 23 You know, what about my kids?

Speaker 22 Did you ever consider my kids?

Speaker 24 Who were these men in the car?

Speaker 5 What did they want?

Speaker 94 Here in the dark, miles from nowhere.

Speaker 69 What had just happened?

Speaker 43 And what was about to?

Speaker 5 report a shooting?

Speaker 31 Back home, Chad faces the reality of what's happened.

Speaker 79 I just remember

Speaker 69 this

Speaker 37 lost look on her face, and I was just saying, I'm sorry.

Speaker 50 Late evening, a remote mountain meadow in California's high Sierra, his AR-15 at the ready, Chad Wallen Reed approached the car full of men he believed had been terrorizing him.

Speaker 65 Him and his wife and his children and his peace.

Speaker 59 He carried his rifle, just like the Army trained him.

Speaker 15 I was at the ready.

Speaker 77 Hey, if they came out of that vehicle, made any

Speaker 75 movements, you know, I could see their hands and, you know, approach the vehicle.

Speaker 54 As he checked out the inside, clearing it, as they say in the military, he saw the driver had been hit.

Speaker 75 He was hunched over the steering wheel. And then when I got into the driver's side of the vehicle, he was laid back and his head was down.

Speaker 75 I mean, I didn't check for a pulse or anything like that, but there was a bullet wound in his neck.

Speaker 40 Were they... Some of the others were wounded also, right?

Speaker 75 At that point in time, I didn't know.

Speaker 5 Nor did Chad know any of the men in the car, who they were, why they'd approached his home.

Speaker 70 But once he saw saw they no longer posed a threat, he said, he told the men he'd do what he could to find help for them.

Speaker 75 I said, I'm going to go call the sheriff.

Speaker 43 And he drove the seven and a half miles back to his cabin.

Speaker 62 As you're driving back, as you're now trying to figure out what the hell you've done, what was going on in your heart, your mind, your soul.

Speaker 75 An assessment.

Speaker 20 Huh?

Speaker 60 Somebody is either dead or dying.

Speaker 65 Something very...

Speaker 63 serious has happened here.

Speaker 64 What steps do we go through?

Speaker 15 None of that drive was occupied with the, oh my god what the hell have i done no no

Speaker 51 when he pulled into the driveway chad was greeted by his friends they had seen him race off into the night now he told them what happened and i said i caught up to him you know they shot at me i shot back and i think i killed one of them and at first everybody was like ah you know just laughing and stuff like that and i said no i i i think i killed one of them

Speaker 32 chad's wife carrie up in the cabin with the kids, couldn't tell what Chad was saying outside.

Speaker 13 It felt like much longer than it actually was for him to get out of the truck and to come inside the cabin. And then he came inside.

Speaker 51 And she's like, well, what happened?

Speaker 64 I said, you know, I took off after.

Speaker 37 And

Speaker 22 I think I killed one of them.

Speaker 13 He was so upset.

Speaker 13 He looked as if he continued to talk that he would just not be able to maintain any composure whatsoever.

Speaker 22 And I just remember,

Speaker 79 I just remember her looking at me.

Speaker 37 And

Speaker 79 I couldn't tell what the look was about.

Speaker 79 Whether, you know, it was

Speaker 14 a relief

Speaker 15 from her, or

Speaker 69 it was a

Speaker 15 who are you?

Speaker 66 Maybe it was some kind of look of accusation, I guess.

Speaker 79 And, you know, I just remember just this

Speaker 37 lost look on her face.

Speaker 66 I've never, ever seen in my entire life.

Speaker 79 And I was just saying, I'm sorry.

Speaker 20 I'm sorry.

Speaker 24 But what should he do?

Speaker 34 Jad wasn't exactly sure.

Speaker 84 He turned to his friend, Jason.

Speaker 23 I was thinking, well, maybe I could go back and one of us could go and make a phone call and one of us could go back and help.

Speaker 87 But Jason's like, no, going back would be a terrible idea.

Speaker 37 And he said, we need to go and call 911.

Speaker 34 Remember, their cabin didn't have a telephone.

Speaker 41 So Carrie got dressed and then she and Chad and their friend drove the winding road down the mountain toward the main highway, perhaps nine miles down, hunting for a spot with cell phone reception.

Speaker 22 We had to drive clear almost three-quarters of the way down to where I normally get reception.

Speaker 49 and I called out and I gotten through and right as you know I was talking to a lady the call dropped and then I had to drive down a little bit farther we were able to make a call out there hello how can I help you yes I need to report a shooting a shooting

Speaker 22 yes of course you know dispatch like what's your address

Speaker 76 no addresses

Speaker 66 well where are you at Well, I'm in Plumas County up by Antelope Lake.

Speaker 67 He was concerned, he said, about getting help for the wounded.

Speaker 60 My mind was how are they going to find these individuals?

Speaker 22 How are they going to get there to help them?

Speaker 15 I mean, they're out in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road.

Speaker 73 This northern stretch of the Sierra Nevada is an up-and-down world of river gorges and mountain peaks, difficult to forge and far from any towns or resorts.

Speaker 59 The few deputies on patrol are scattered over a vast wilderness.

Speaker 25 And so it's not altogether surprising that one of the first lawmen to respond to Chad's 911 call turned out to be a game warden.

Speaker 43 What is surprising is who was riding with him?

Speaker 65 A photographer of all people, one of the first to reach the scene of the shooting.

Speaker 43 And the images he captured?

Speaker 17 It was bad.

Speaker 21 Worse than anything you would see in a movie, I'll tell you that.

Speaker 61 Caught on camera, the horrifying real-life scene that first responders found.

Speaker 21 I just remember seeing this hand come up out of the grass, and everyone was like, whoa, we got a hand.

Speaker 65 In the High Sierra, the life of a game warden is a solitary one.

Speaker 70 Hours of driving along backcountry roads, alone.

Speaker 67 Wardens hunt everything from bear poachers to pot farmers and it's spray that sometimes shoots back.

Speaker 65 That lone justice justice angle attracted a reality show, which sent a photographer named Ben Staley to the little town of Quincy.

Speaker 21 I'd been in the Quincy area for a couple months, getting into all kinds of trouble with the California game wardens.

Speaker 52 It was the 4th of July weekend, late on a Saturday night.

Speaker 54 Staley had been taping with the game warden since daybreak.

Speaker 32 He was ready to pack it in.

Speaker 84 Then an urgent call went out over the radio.

Speaker 5 Shots fired.

Speaker 21 All we really knew is some bad stuff had happened. Some people had been shooting at each other.
We're speeding to get there

Speaker 21 to perhaps break it up, perhaps stop it, perhaps save lives. You don't really know.

Speaker 25 They didn't know, in other words, that they were responding to the 911 call from Chad Wallen Reed after his armed confrontation with six men on a dark road running through a meadow.

Speaker 65 While racing to the scene, Staley and the warden met up with the sheriff's deputy.

Speaker 36 Then over the radio came a new twist.

Speaker 44 Two men, possibly wounded, had been found wandering through a campground.

Speaker 21 So we go to this campground and sure enough, you know, we all hop out and then there's there's like two guys in the middle of this campground with blood on them.

Speaker 21 One of the sheriffs takes them, they cuff him up and take him right there. And then these guys are like, look, our friends are hurt.
And they give us directions to where the incident occurred.

Speaker 78 The meadow, that is.

Speaker 26 The dirt road where the shooting took place.

Speaker 36 A place so remote that without those directions, they might never have found it.

Speaker 59 As they drove through the night, they they listened to the chatter on the two-way.

Speaker 21 It was very chaotic. Nobody knew exactly what was happening.
Nobody knew if there was, you know, multiple people shooting at each other, if it was two people shooting at each other.

Speaker 21 It was all these conflicting reports coming in over the radio. It's really scary.

Speaker 90 Staley and the warden were now joined by a total of three deputies.

Speaker 62 The makeshift team convoyed to the meadow, geared up for a possible shootout.

Speaker 62 They found a lone vehicle, its windows blown out.

Speaker 61 Stand up.

Speaker 26 Staley shot footage of the encounter, which later became part of the official public record.

Speaker 21 Right away, there's two guys coming towards with their hands up. One guy's limping really bad.
He was shot through the leg. They're both bloody and cut up.
They both look really freaked out.

Speaker 61 Then Staley saw something strange poking out of the metal floor.

Speaker 21 I just remember seeing this hand come up out of the grass.

Speaker 18 I got one up to the right here. One hand up.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 37 And everyone was like, whoa, we got a hand.

Speaker 5 Stady recorded everything.

Speaker 36 The warden, the deputies, arresting the wounded men, the hand poking out of the grass.

Speaker 41 And then the young man who was connected to that hand. His right calf shredded by a bullet.

Speaker 21 And Turning could at his leg, but the sheriffs and the wardens right away saw that he had it on too tight and he'd had it on too long.

Speaker 21 It was very painful and they took it off and he was bleeding a lot.

Speaker 5 This badly wounded man, plus the others, made five, But there was one more.

Speaker 21 And then there was another guy in the back seat who was, I guess, the driver.

Speaker 21 He was a lot worse off. But he was talking.
He was moving his mouth. I could hear sounds.

Speaker 21 I couldn't make any words out, you know.

Speaker 48 But it didn't look good.

Speaker 1 The driver had been shot in the head.

Speaker 21 It was worse than anything you would see in a movie. This was so violent and so gory.

Speaker 5 What happened here?

Speaker 26 Sorting it out fell to Detectives Steve Pay and Chris Hendrickson.

Speaker 98 It was very confusing for all the officers responding. They were all under the impression that the suspects were in the meadow, in the car, and maybe armed, and officers treated them as such.

Speaker 36 Adding to the confusion, the remote location, multiple locations.

Speaker 98 We have two gentlemen at the campground. We have four gentlemen down at this potential crime scene.
And then I have Mr. Wallen Reed with another detective at another spot.

Speaker 98 Officers, ambulances, helicopters coming in. It's very chaotic.
Very chaotic that night.

Speaker 32 Deputies led by Sergeant Pay met Chad a few miles from the meadow, listened to his account of the chase.

Speaker 99 And they started shining the spotlight back at me.

Speaker 99 And then the next thing you know, there's all these muzzle flashes. Do you think they were firing on you? Yeah, they're firing back at me.

Speaker 57 But while Sergeant Pay was talking to Chad, some of the other detectives were out in the meadow looking for the weapon or weapons.

Speaker 61 Those young men must have fired at Chad.

Speaker 57 They searched the car.

Speaker 89 They searched around the car.

Speaker 47 They looked all around the meadow.

Speaker 62 They found nothing.

Speaker 50 But then it's a big meadow, and those are very deep and very dark woods.

Speaker 100 Some of those young men did run.

Speaker 100 They could have dumped a gun out there somewhere.

Speaker 5 But they didn't all run.

Speaker 52 Remember the one shot in the leg?

Speaker 36 The one whose hand they saw sticking up, who was found bleeding out in the meadow?

Speaker 46 He didn't bleed out.

Speaker 80 He survived.

Speaker 86 His name is Justin Lewis Smythe, Lewis.

Speaker 68 and he is about to give us his account of a July 4th weekend on a dark and lonely road in the high Sierra.

Speaker 39 Confusion and terror.

Speaker 47 A very different story of those shots in the dark.

Speaker 17 The next thing I know, glass is exploding. It's just complete chaos.

Speaker 26 It ended in an ink-black meadow in the high Sierra, barely illuminated by a pair of headlights.

Speaker 1 Sheriff's deputies, guns drawn, approached the car, preparing for a possible shootout with gunmen.

Speaker 5 Instead, they found shooting victims, three of them severely wounded.

Speaker 17 Somebody makes their way over towards the car and says,

Speaker 5 Lewis Smythe, shot in the right leg, bleeding profusely.

Speaker 24 The belt he used as a tourniquet, placed just above his knee, possibly saved his life.

Speaker 17 At that point, it's pretty obvious to me I'm going to lose my leg. I mean, I'm not sure how long it gone by, maybe an hour and a half.

Speaker 44 And there were other victims.

Speaker 46 A bloody and baffling scene for the deputies.

Speaker 47 Who were these men?

Speaker 42 How did they provoke a violent confrontation with Army vet Chad Wallen-Reed?

Speaker 47 Chad and his family said they'd been terrorized.

Speaker 65 But that was not the story Lewis Smythe had to tell.

Speaker 52 Lewis's version began an hour's drive away in Susanville, California, population almost 18,000, home to two state prisons, two movie theaters, and on July 4th weekend, 2011, some restless young men in search of fun.

Speaker 65 There was Lewis, of course, and his very best friend, a 20-year-old junior college student named Rory Maguire.

Speaker 16 He was the center of attention wherever he went.

Speaker 82 All eyes were on Rory, in fact, right from the start.

Speaker 78 That amazing shock of red hair at birth, surprising even his own mother, Carol.

Speaker 16 His name was going to be Colin, and then he came out with the red hair, and I had to look through a baby name book, and I found the name Rory, which means red king in Irish.

Speaker 16 And so, hence, Rory Colin Maguire.

Speaker 34 And that red hair came with a personality to match.

Speaker 16 There was only one Rory, and everyone knew who it was. He was vivacious, he was creative, he was exciting, he was funny.
He was the life of the party.

Speaker 96 Entrepreneurial, too, trying to start a mobile car washing business with a friend.

Speaker 16 Rory had all the equipment. He had printed up business cards.
He was passing out flyers.

Speaker 17 We would talk every day. I'd tell it almost every detail, laugh about little things.
I told my mom I wanted a brother, and I felt like I kind of got that with Rory.

Speaker 65 Anyway, that Friday night, July 1st, Rory and Lewis were joined by four other young men in search of a party they'd heard about.

Speaker 17 We were looking for a friend of ours' brother who was having a gathering up by Antelope Lake.

Speaker 5 Girls up there, somebody said.

Speaker 33 So here's what they did.

Speaker 35 They all squeezed into Rory's Seabree, drove to the lake, but couldn't find the party.

Speaker 65 So they got up to a little mischief out there by the lake.

Speaker 24 With a spotlight, one of them brought, the kind that plugs into a cigarette lighter.

Speaker 17 We stopped at the top of a canyon and were shining the light down on a campsite. And a bunch of people came out yelling.

Speaker 17 They were mad. And anyways,

Speaker 17 everybody kind of got a kick out of that.

Speaker 29 Then one of them remembered some crazy warning signs he'd seen by the roadside, wanted to show his buddies.

Speaker 61 They found them, trained the spotlight on them.

Speaker 17 And one of them says, warning you are entering.

Speaker 69 ROC,

Speaker 17 the ROC. Something to do with this.
Red-blooded Christians only.

Speaker 17 Others will be... Deadly force will be used.

Speaker 5 Deadly force?

Speaker 1 Red-blooded Christians only?

Speaker 35 Were they kidding?

Speaker 58 Seemed almost like a dare.

Speaker 78 One of them hopped out of the car.

Speaker 17 He grabs a solar light and ripped down one of the smaller of the two signs and comes running back in and then we took off from there.

Speaker 56 Cheap light, maybe four or five bucks.

Speaker 20 Still.

Speaker 93 Why did he take the solar light, did he say?

Speaker 17 No. I think it was assumed it was just some sort of random act of vandalism

Speaker 17 that I guess young kids would do.

Speaker 50 And then the noisy car full of young men rolled back home and they all went to bed.

Speaker 61 The following evening was Saturday, July 2nd and sure enough there was a second chance.

Speaker 41 Same lake, new party.

Speaker 54 So again a bunch of young men piled into Rory Maguire's Chrysler Sebring.

Speaker 17 And went and met up with two others at the Chevron gas station where we bought, I think, a bottle of blueberry vodka and a couple 40 ounces of beer to take with us.

Speaker 17 And we get about halfway up the grade and we approach the property again.

Speaker 27 The Wall and Reed property.

Speaker 43 Suddenly Rory stopped the car and again one of the group jumped out and stole two more solar lights.

Speaker 17 Ten seconds pass or so and right as Caesar was getting into the car I heard what sounded like a gunshot.

Speaker 4 Rory get the gas.

Speaker 52 Was somebody shooting at us?

Speaker 43 They asked each other.

Speaker 42 Lewis, a little freaked out, looked out the back window.

Speaker 17 I turned around just to see a truck behind us.

Speaker 5 Gating on you.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I could pretty much tell that that meant business. And right after that, I remember seeing a green laser traveling around in the car with us.

Speaker 26 A green laser?

Speaker 42 A laser from a gun?

Speaker 17 We assumed, yes. So it's like you can't believe it.
No, they're not going to shoot us.

Speaker 50 People don't shoot other people, yeah.

Speaker 17 No, not for this.

Speaker 17 And right after that I hear pow pow pow and then every once in a while you hear a ding on the trunk or something like that.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 43 They tried blinding the shooter with their spotlight.

Speaker 74 Didn't seem to help.

Speaker 17 Meanwhile, this whole time we've been trying to call 911 and there's no service and some may suggest we wave my white t-shirt out the window.

Speaker 42 Let's wave this. Maybe he'll stop.

Speaker 17 Exactly. Yeah.
We were trying every technique we could to have him stop.

Speaker 21 So he was. This guy just kept firing.

Speaker 17 Oh, throughout the whole rest of this trip, there's flurries of shots being taken at us.

Speaker 65 Desperate now. Rushing along the road he did not know, Rory suddenly took the wrong turn.

Speaker 17 So we were on this dirt road, still taking fire at different points in time. And he's still chasing us.
And

Speaker 17 eventually what I hear Rory say is, this road just came to an abrupt stop. And so he's trying to flip around.

Speaker 91 Trying to get away, said Lewis.

Speaker 58 Get around the truck.

Speaker 67 Get out of the meadow they were trapped in.

Speaker 17 The next thing I know, glass is exploding everywhere, hitting us in the head.

Speaker 42 Was the car still moving at that point?

Speaker 17 Yes. And it's just complete chaos.
At that point,

Speaker 17 that was when

Speaker 17 I got shot.

Speaker 17 It felt like heat kind of came over my leg.

Speaker 67 When the car finally came to a stop, those who could ran.

Speaker 17 I said, come on, Rory, let's go. And I looked up and Rory had his face in his chest.

Speaker 17 And I'm pretty sure he said, I can't. And right at that moment, I saw the laser light again.

Speaker 17 And at that point, the gunman approached.

Speaker 5 Wounded, trapped.

Speaker 53 They can only wait.

Speaker 33 Was the shooter coming to finish the job?

Speaker 17 He starts to circle around the car. The whole while he's pointing the gun at us.

Speaker 50 In a remote forest meadow, in the dark, a tiny green dot probed the interior of Rory Maguire's immobilized Chrysler Sebring.

Speaker 54 The laser sight was back, its green dot a roving bullseye.

Speaker 39 Lewis Smythe, crouched, wounded and immobile, in the back seat, watched the green dot move across his body, waited for the gunman to finish him off.

Speaker 17 He kind of starts to circle around the car. The whole while he's pointing the gun at us, looking like a SWAT team or something like that, had come in.

Speaker 17 When he comes up, he says, You must shoot at my house. I got kids, or something like that.
And we said, We didn't shoot your house, we wouldn't do that.

Speaker 17 So the gunman points the gun right at me, and I said,

Speaker 17 Look, we didn't shoot at your house, please just call an ambulance.

Speaker 17 And he took off.

Speaker 5 Suddenly, relief.

Speaker 86 Some of the friends had run for cover during the shooting.

Speaker 58 Now they returned to the car.

Speaker 41 But to what? They were alone in the dark.

Speaker 58 And their friend, the driver, Rory,

Speaker 5 was clearly in bad shape.

Speaker 17 My friend has just been shot in his head. I'm shot.
We just assume we're going to get back in the car. We're going to get out of here and go get help.

Speaker 101 Somehow they managed to move Rory to the back seat of the car.

Speaker 26 But when one of them turned the key...

Speaker 17 The car wouldn't start. It just kept getting worse and worse.

Speaker 100 No car, no cell service, no idea exactly where they were, no idea where help might be, no idea if they'd survive the night or if the gunman was going to come back.

Speaker 100 Two of them volunteered to run out into the blackness for help, see if they could find a cabin or a ranch house where they might find a working landline.

Speaker 100 The question was, would their friends still be alive when and if they got back.

Speaker 17 So I decided it's time probably to check on my leg. When I pulled my pant leg down, it sounded like somebody poured a ton of water on the ground, just splat.

Speaker 17 My calf was basically exploded in a few like numerous pieces.

Speaker 44 Stuck in place.

Speaker 36 Easy targets if the gunman returned.

Speaker 17 We had feared that he was going to come back and finish the job.

Speaker 50 Some of the young men decided the car was more target than refuge and hid in the tall grass of the meadow.

Speaker 17 They didn't feel comfortable staying at the car and I don't blame them.

Speaker 50 And now the two best friends, Lewis and Rory, were trapped in the dark.

Speaker 47 Lewis laid down on the ground, propped his wounded leg against the car, tried to keep talking to Rory, who was lying in the back seat.

Speaker 17 Rory was shot in his head. He could barely talk, but when he did, it was jumbled.
It was horrible. He would call out my name a lot.

Speaker 17 I told him,

Speaker 17 I guess

Speaker 17 just naively, that I feel your pain. He was able to reply,

Speaker 17 something you have no idea. My whole leg had become numb from my knee down.

Speaker 17 And then shortly after that, my left leg started going numb. And then the rest of my extremities, until eventually it reached my lips.

Speaker 17 And then it got to a point where I was like, well, maybe, maybe I'll die.

Speaker 32 And just about then, Lewis saw headlights appear in the distance.

Speaker 17 And eventually somebody makes their way over towards the car and says,

Speaker 29 it was the sheriff's deputies.

Speaker 41 And that's when Lewis weakly stuck his left hand up out of the meadow grass.

Speaker 17 I laid there on the ground for a while and

Speaker 17 somebody was holding onto my leg trying to stop the bleeding and so they were sticking their hand in my wound and I'm surprised I could still feel pain because my leg had gone numb so long ago all that remained was the pain.

Speaker 18 I can't feel my leg at all because of the pain.

Speaker 17 So what I remember was I got loaded into a paramedic and at this point it's just major relief.

Speaker 34 Rory was airlifted out to a hospital in Reno.

Speaker 74 He was barely alive, no longer conscious.

Speaker 31 Telling the story was not easy for Lewis.

Speaker 17 Wait a minute. Sorry folks.

Speaker 4 His anxiety was not hard to understand.

Speaker 83 But what didn't make sense?

Speaker 86 How his account differed on some very key points from that of Chad Wallen Reed, the man who confronted them.

Speaker 50 For example, Chad accused the young men of firing first during the car chase.

Speaker 87 Next thing you know, as I'm looking up, I see these three flashes.

Speaker 49 And then I hear crack, crack, crack, crack.

Speaker 104 But, according to Lewis, that never happened.

Speaker 50 What's more, he said, Chad didn't seem worried they had a gun when he approached their car.

Speaker 48 Did he, at any point, say, are you armed or do you have a gun or throw your weapon away or anything like that?

Speaker 37 Nothing like that.

Speaker 17 Which is kind of confusing seeing as he accused us of shooting at his house, but he was pointing the gun at us like we were armed.

Speaker 42 So he came up to the car and said, were you the one shooting at my house?

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 57 He didn't say, shoot at me in the car.

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 5 Odd.

Speaker 26 Remember, Chad told the police the young men shot at him during the chase.

Speaker 6 Did he ever that night say,

Speaker 42 why were you shooting at at me in the car, or you shot at me in the car, or anything like that?

Speaker 17 Nothing like that, no.

Speaker 105 Did you have a gun?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 105 Did anybody in the car have a gun?

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 62 Did you own a gun?

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 5 The police were looking for a gun, of course, couldn't just take somebody's word for it, but neither could they, nor could we, ignore one more big discrepancy between Lewis's story and Chad's.

Speaker 26 Remember, in his interview, Chad said he told Lewis and his friends when he left him in the meadow that he was going to get help.

Speaker 75 I said, now I'm going to go call the sheriff.

Speaker 2 But that's not what Lewis heard.

Speaker 29 No, he said he remembered quite clearly what their assailant said just before he got into his truck to leave.

Speaker 17 He said, if I ever see any of you mother up here again, I'm going to kill all you guys.

Speaker 28 Police try to figure out who's telling the truth about the confrontation.

Speaker 106 I'm to come back.

Speaker 106 I was a f ⁇ ing ranger.

Speaker 58 And they soon find Chad's account is changing.

Speaker 98 I think it finally sunk in that he was going to get caught in the story.

Speaker 107 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 107 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and we're back for another season.

Speaker 107 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 107 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrison sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 8 Just got a new puppy or kitten? Congrats!

Speaker 8 But also, yikes, between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune, which is where Lemonade Pet Insurance comes in.

Speaker 8 It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, signup is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds.
Pro tip.

Speaker 8 Lemonade offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a quote at lemonade.com/slash pet.
Your future self will thank you. Your pet won't.
They don't know what insurance is.

Speaker 108 Fun fact, you can't get pregnant every day. You're only fertile for six days, ovulation day, and the five days leading up to it.

Speaker 108 Natural Cycles is the only birth control app that can pinpoint your fertile window by analyzing your hormone-driven temperature trends. It's more than just a basic cycle tracking app.

Speaker 108 Natural Cycles is the only FDA-cleared and CE-marked birth control app and has helped millions prevent and plan for pregnancy naturally. Save 15% when you sign up today with code RADIO15.

Speaker 108 Learn more at naturalcycles.com.

Speaker 24 There is safe to say no way on this earth a mother can be adequately prepared for the news Carol Starser was about to receive.

Speaker 83 It was Sunday morning, July 3rd.

Speaker 52 She had just gotten a message.

Speaker 41 Call back.

Speaker 56 Now.

Speaker 16 I knew something was wrong.

Speaker 109 Something was wrong.

Speaker 16 And I called back immediately, and I just couldn't believe it.

Speaker 5 Come quickly, they said, to the hospital.

Speaker 16 All we knew was he was in critical condition, and we needed to get there as soon as possible, and that's all they would tell us.

Speaker 59 So Carol, heart in her mouth, raced along the highway to Reno and her son, Rory.

Speaker 61 That same Sunday morning, Chad and Carrie's children woke up to the sound of strangers rummaging through the cabin.

Speaker 10 And like searched through our stuff and like they took all the guns.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 10 I was crying when I woke up because I didn't know who they were.

Speaker 42 Must have been terrifying.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 54 And then the strangers told them their parents were explaining things to the police.

Speaker 20 And.

Speaker 10 I knew my dad had it under control.

Speaker 45 He was very smart and thoughtful.

Speaker 67 In fact, all night, Chad had been in deep conversation with detectives from the Plumas County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 22 I told him, explained to him, you know, what had happened, and then he's very upset.

Speaker 27 Going over again and again what happened at the cabin, on the road, in the meadow.

Speaker 5 Here, Chad explained what was in his mind when those men seemed to be terrorizing his family, how he decided he had to do something to protect his kids.

Speaker 106 Yeah, you know, get these sons of bitches,

Speaker 106 get their license plate or something.

Speaker 106 And I took off after.

Speaker 106 That's what

Speaker 106 our military trained me to do is, you know,

Speaker 106 react.

Speaker 23 They trained me to do that.

Speaker 106 React on foot, racked on cars.

Speaker 106 Say the f ⁇ Jads.

Speaker 106 I was a f ⁇ ing ranger.

Speaker 104 Chad told Detective Steve Pay how the man in the car had fired at him, how in self-defense, he fired back.

Speaker 98 He talked about that was his training that he had received from the military to continue to follow the threat, to neutralize the threat. Got into a zone and needed to neutralize the threat, he felt.

Speaker 42 Got into a zone.

Speaker 37 A zone.

Speaker 62 Like a military term.

Speaker 77 Yes.

Speaker 99 And I served five years before the military. I killed people on the other side of this world.
I don't even kill kids in my state.

Speaker 54 Then Detective Pay decided to take Chad on a tour to recreate the almost eight-mile chase and the shooting on location and on videotape.

Speaker 98 You come out of your driveway.

Speaker 98 And we drove with Mr. Wallen Reed from his cabin in my vehicle videotaping and he took us right back here to the meadow here.

Speaker 96 About here

Speaker 9 in that stretch is when I saw

Speaker 79 him shooting at me.

Speaker 44 Right.

Speaker 28 Back in here is when I fired when he was cutting back this way.

Speaker 9 In this corner right here?

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 58 Chad made it quite clear he used a small pistol,.380 caliber, to return fire during the chase.

Speaker 98 He told us he knew exactly where he shot from.

Speaker 98 So I'd get out and I'd mark that area so we could go back and search that area for casings.

Speaker 34 Then the cops took Chad down that dirt road, which led into the meadow.

Speaker 59 And there they could plainly see that other officers had already marked several shell casings in the meadow.

Speaker 27 And abruptly, Chad's story changed.

Speaker 98 I had spent many hours with him that night, questioning him, asking him if any other firearms had been used, and he continually said no.

Speaker 98 And then at the very end of the interview and the drive, then he finally did tell us that there was another gun used.

Speaker 52 That's what he saw on the ground, as they all did.

Speaker 5 Two, two, three caliber casings, the kind that would come from an AR-15 assault rifle, which Chad finally admitted he used here in the meadow.

Speaker 92 And prior to that, had you shot the 223 at them at any other time?

Speaker 19 Um

Speaker 19 no, not that I recall, probably.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 24 Then his story changed again.

Speaker 110 He admitted he fired the AR-15 just before he got to the meadow.

Speaker 92 How about behind us when you when you shot at them coming off the dirt road?

Speaker 92 Um

Speaker 63 yeah, I take that back. That is when I shot the hit AR the first time.
Okay.

Speaker 92 Were you moving when you did that? Yes, sir.

Speaker 98 I think it finally sunk in that it was all going to come back to him and he was going to get caught in his story.

Speaker 43 Why the initial reluctance?

Speaker 46 Well, perhaps because the AR-15, which Chad bought legally in Nevada, was illegal in California. Though Chad said he didn't know that.

Speaker 27 At any rate, now Chad detailed how he used the rifle again when he saw Rory's car make a sudden U-turn.

Speaker 98 And I thought that they were going to get out.

Speaker 63 You have to engage me.

Speaker 39 So, perhaps still in self-defense mode.

Speaker 5 I grabbed the AR and I swung it out the door.

Speaker 63 And that's when I popped off the rounds at them with the AR.

Speaker 92 Oh, okay. So when they drove past you, coming back this way, you were shooting with the AR then, this one.

Speaker 5 And so there it was.

Speaker 4 Chad's story.

Speaker 20 But as Detective Pei listened, something seemed off.

Speaker 98 Just somewhat odd, the story, and as it unfolded each time we talked to him, it somewhat changed.

Speaker 26 Then that morning, Detective Pei heard from his colleague Chris Hendrickson, who'd spent his night talking to those young men.

Speaker 89 Rory McGuire, now in surgery, wasn't able to talk.

Speaker 104 But the other five, said Detective Hendrickson, he talked to them separately, told exactly the same story, how they stole the solar lights, were chased, tried to surrender.

Speaker 26 and then made a wrong turn.

Speaker 21 Rory McGuire didn't know this area that well, and the kids realized after they passed it that they'd missed this turn right here that goes down to Antelope Lake.

Speaker 5 Why Antelope Lake?

Speaker 43 Because the men told Detective Hendrickson there were cabins there, people, safety.

Speaker 21 That's what they believe. They believe that they would be just a few minutes from safety.

Speaker 39 But the main thing those young men told Detective Hendrickson was they did not shoot at Chad Walland Reed.

Speaker 59 In fact, they assured him they didn't have a gun.

Speaker 48 Did you ask them?

Speaker 62 Did you push them on that?

Speaker 105 Oh, I pushed them.

Speaker 21 But I said, listen, if there was a gun, you need to tell us.

Speaker 112 I mean, if you had a gun and were shooting back, you would be in your right as defending yourself because you're being shot at. They would always say, no, no, there was no gun, I guarantee you.

Speaker 26 Later that morning, detectives went out to the meadow and discovered some fascinating evidence.

Speaker 4 For one thing, shards of broken glass, which clearly marked precisely where the car was when Chad blew out the windows.

Speaker 20 Curious.

Speaker 41 It wasn't exactly where Chad said it was.

Speaker 104 And something else.

Speaker 89 Rory's car must have hit a rock during its rush through the meadow, just after it made the U-turn farther out in the meadow.

Speaker 98 And it started draining the oil out of the car.

Speaker 86 And left, clear as a giant magic marker, a brownish-black trail through the long grass of the meadow.

Speaker 20 Interesting.

Speaker 24 By now it was something like 12 hours since Chad ran off to chase those men.

Speaker 50 He was exhausted, had been, he said, entirely cooperative with the cops, told them everything he knew, was ready now to go home to his wife Carrie and her three kids.

Speaker 50 So what happened next was something he did not expect.

Speaker 112 He was arrested for attempted murder and also

Speaker 112 assault with a deadly weapon.

Speaker 42 As the 4th of July approached, Chad Wallen Reed was booked in the local jail.

Speaker 62 Could any outcome be worse?

Speaker 20 Well,

Speaker 48 yes, it could, and was about to be for everyone.

Speaker 58 Grief and shock as a mother finally finds out what happened to her son.

Speaker 109 It's horrible.

Speaker 16 The nurse immediately

Speaker 16 her face, she looked at me.

Speaker 16 I knew.

Speaker 3 Here's why people move to the high Sierra, to get away from the city, its constant pressures, its regular explosions of violent crime.

Speaker 102 Or at least, that's how it was for Plumas County District Attorney David David Hollister, who moved to his new job in the county seat of Little Quincy, California, after years of prosecuting the worst that Oakland had to offer.

Speaker 25 He came for the quiet, the family values.

Speaker 72 And now, here he was fielding calls in the local sheriff's office about an extremely violent act, which the shooter himself freely admitted to.

Speaker 88 We're small enough where any type of homicide that occurs, I get called right away.

Speaker 42 So, how much did you have to do with the decision to charge him?

Speaker 105 Everything.

Speaker 82 And from what the detectives told him, what happened seemed pretty clear to D.A.

Speaker 43 Hollister.

Speaker 88 He chased those boys 7.6 miles and he shot to kill.

Speaker 31 And so, before Sunday, July 3rd, was half gone.

Speaker 52 Chad Wallen-Reed was booked and strip searched and locked up in the Plumas County Jail.

Speaker 31 The charge?

Speaker 67 Attempted murder.

Speaker 62 What was that like when they took him?

Speaker 5 It's very, very hard

Speaker 20 for them to take my husband away.

Speaker 62 Didn't expect it?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 5 I,

Speaker 13 as far as, you know, I've never, I never expected for us to be apart in such a manner. I never envisioned being

Speaker 13 away from my husband.

Speaker 78 Back in the woods at Chad's cabin, the detectives who arrested him prowled the property, still decorated in 4th of July bunting, looking for evidence.

Speaker 98 The AR-15 was inside on the gun rack. There was also a closet inside the cabinet that contained

Speaker 98 large amounts of ammunition for various guns, shotguns.

Speaker 89 Down on the edge of Chad's property, out near the road, the detectives found that unusual no trespassing sign.

Speaker 5 You are entering the ROC, the sign said, which meant the Republic of Chad.

Speaker 61 This is a restricted area.

Speaker 50 Only red-blooded, patriotic Christian Americans are authorized for access.

Speaker 4 The use of Dead Be Force is authorized for use on those found in non-compliance.

Speaker 78 The young men in the car thought it was some kind of joke.

Speaker 5 Don't seem that way now.

Speaker 20 At the very same time, still July 3rd, the driver of the shot-up car, Rory Maguire, was in a Reno hospital, his mother, Carol Starzer, by his bedside in the ICU, as he lay with a bullet in his brain.

Speaker 105 It was horrible.

Speaker 16 I didn't know what critical condition meant, so I really didn't know critical meant.

Speaker 16 Probably not going to make it. And the nurse immediately,

Speaker 16 her face, she looked at me.

Speaker 37 I knew.

Speaker 72 But it was weird, said Carol, when she saw Rory lying there, unconscious.

Speaker 7 And he actually looked perfect.

Speaker 16 I was very shocked. Except for the plate that they placed over his head where the bullet went in,

Speaker 16 I just remember him as looking like he was asleep.

Speaker 24 To say that you can't probably get out of your head.

Speaker 56 Every day I think of that.

Speaker 16 I think of that every single day.

Speaker 91 Rory's father, Carol's ex-husband Dave Maguire, came too, tried, not successfully, to hold back his soaring rage.

Speaker 41 A soldier did this.

Speaker 95 I put myself in that same scenario and if I needed to, I would defend myself. But once it's over, it's my responsibility to

Speaker 95 render aid.

Speaker 95 This is not a battle zone. This is some Hig town in California.

Speaker 25 Around the same time at the jail in Quincy, an hour and a half away, Chad placed a telephone call to his father.

Speaker 41 The call, of course, was recorded.

Speaker 63 They just got freaked out on my kids.

Speaker 19 People screwed around.

Speaker 19 And then

Speaker 19 they just

Speaker 19 lost it. Just

Speaker 19 went into a little bit of his own.

Speaker 19 And they got out of control.

Speaker 43 But as the hours stretched through the night into July 4th, Chad began to see more and more clearly that he was not to blame.

Speaker 24 Those men shot at him. And he never set out to hurt anyone.

Speaker 51 I can honestly sit there and say, I didn't get in my vehicle.

Speaker 63 I didn't sit there at the moment I had the AR-15 saying, I'm going to pick this weapon and I'm going to go down there and I'm going to kill these guys.

Speaker 37 Heck no. No way.

Speaker 20 There ain't

Speaker 69 no way.

Speaker 72 In fact, thought Chad, it was really he and his family who were the victims here.

Speaker 63 If they had never shot at me,

Speaker 49 There'd be no reason for a gun.

Speaker 64 There would have been no reason for me to fire, to shoot, to use the firearm.

Speaker 81 You know, my mind frame, these people are trying to kill me.

Speaker 43 Carrie visited her husband in jail to tell him that she was in his corner and would always be, no matter what.

Speaker 62 Do you wish that he just kind of stopped along the way somewhere and said, oh, the hell would it just let them go and come back?

Speaker 75 No.

Speaker 62 Because you wouldn't have this problem now.

Speaker 20 Yeah, I guess to a point.

Speaker 13 As far as a problem being that my husband's not at home, but we would still be in fear that these people would come back to our, to

Speaker 13 terrorize us more.

Speaker 13 He was protecting us. He was making sure that we were safe.

Speaker 3 And then, as the long holiday weekend wound down, it got even worse for all of them.

Speaker 5 Rory Maguire died.

Speaker 16 He hemorrhaged a couple hours after we got there, and that was the end. He was gone.
He was brain dead at that point.

Speaker 40 How How do you get used to a thing like that happening to you?

Speaker 16 I still feel like he's in the meadow.

Speaker 16 In the car in the meadow, I still feel like I need to go help him.

Speaker 40 It changed his life forever.

Speaker 20 Forever. We'll never be the same.

Speaker 3 And a few hours later, the loving husband, doting father, Army Ranger, Chad Wallen Reed, was now an accused.

Speaker 76 Murder.

Speaker 37 They took me back down.

Speaker 75 To the booking area

Speaker 75 you're being charged with first-degree murder what did that feel like

Speaker 75 i can't describe it

Speaker 63 when you look at the word murder and it describes it

Speaker 63 heinous premeditated malicious

Speaker 41 aforethought

Speaker 64 That's pretty, uh, that's pretty grotesque.

Speaker 28 Bail was set at a million dollars, money Chad and his family did not have.

Speaker 65 But out there, out in the wider world, a new issue was emerging called stand your ground.

Speaker 104 And also, a certain attorney discovered, there were some tiny specks of evidence at the crime scene that just might set Chad free.

Speaker 3 And was there something else that might prove Chad fired in self-defense?

Speaker 11 They found found the three 380 casings that were not from Chad's gun.

Speaker 50 For most of two years, often twice a week, Carrie Wallen-Reed drove back and forth through the high Sierra to visit her husband.

Speaker 47 in the Plumas County lockup.

Speaker 69 Not easy.

Speaker 5 Any of it.

Speaker 20 Horrible.

Speaker 16 It's just the worst.

Speaker 13 Being without my husband and

Speaker 13 the children being without their father is just...

Speaker 13 It's unimaginable.

Speaker 31 And the children?

Speaker 25 Stayed home and worried, mostly.

Speaker 10 Sometimes I've been frightened and cried for my dad.

Speaker 12 And when he's sick,

Speaker 10 I cry hard because I don't know if he might die from if he's sick or

Speaker 20 if he'll be okay.

Speaker 28 At the very same time, Rory McGuire's mother, Carol, cried for a son, a future, an expectation, gone forever.

Speaker 40 What do you think is the appropriate thing that should happen to this man?

Speaker 16 Never step foot out of side of prison ever again.

Speaker 16 Not be able to see,

Speaker 16 not have conjugal visits with his wife, not not be able to see his children go through birthdays and marriages,

Speaker 16 because I now am cut short of all of that with my son.

Speaker 52 And in Little Quincy, stuck in his cell, Jad had all the time in the world to think about what he did.

Speaker 49 Starts this triple effect of, well, if you never had a gun, listen there would have never happened.

Speaker 75 But then something just grabs me inside and say,

Speaker 15 They were wrong.

Speaker 77 They scared your family.

Speaker 65 Jad found himself fuming about the first-degree murder charge against him.

Speaker 5 Felt his alleged victims were the ones in the wrong.

Speaker 49 Did they deserve to be stopped?

Speaker 15 Absolutely.

Speaker 37 They don't deserve the right to do that to people.

Speaker 40 Fuming is possibly all Chad might have done, except a prominent defense attorney named John Olson heard about Chad's predicament and saw a way, he believed, to set him free.

Speaker 42 A sort of stand-your-ground idea?

Speaker 62 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 57 California doesn't have a stand-your-ground law per se like some states do, but there is a state jury instruction that says a person under threat has a right to stand his or her ground and even pursue an assailant.

Speaker 57 Chad Wallen-Reed said Attorney Olson is just the sort of person for whom that defense was intended.

Speaker 20 He's

Speaker 11 not a gangbanger.

Speaker 11 He

Speaker 11 doesn't have a criminal record. He has a good, clean military record.

Speaker 28 Chad began looking forward to a trial.

Speaker 101 Turned down a deal from the DA.

Speaker 49 There's a story to be told.

Speaker 23 There's things that need to come out.

Speaker 17 I think that a trial will

Speaker 49 be a rather awakening.

Speaker 5 But first,

Speaker 70 they had to choose a jury, which would be a fight in Pretty Little Quincy, a place composed of gun-only country folk and...

Speaker 78 liberal big city transplants.

Speaker 11 There were a lot of letters to the editor of the local paper, and I think they were pretty evenly divided between people saying the state ought to reimburse Chad the cost of his ammunition

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 people saying, you know, I moved up here from the Bay Area to get away from all this, and people shouldn't have guns and they shouldn't shoot guns.

Speaker 82 When the trial began this past summer, Olson seemed satisfied with the jury he got.

Speaker 56 It could go either way, but...

Speaker 11 My desire is to walk him out of that courtroom,

Speaker 11 take him by the elbow, and lead him out of the courtroom, turn him over to his family.

Speaker 67 Here's how Olson presented his standard ground defense in his opening to the jury.

Speaker 17 Shot him because he was fired upon and he was inferior to him.

Speaker 54 Olson told the jury his client was a protective family man, doing what he felt he had to do as a father after those menacing visits to his house.

Speaker 11 After this Friday night incident, they were afraid. And I think it sets the tone for his state of mind.

Speaker 42 He wanted to protect those two sweet little girls. And you want to show the jury the sweet little girls he wanted to protect.

Speaker 38 Sure.

Speaker 11 Fair enough, huh?

Speaker 41 And some in the jury wept as 12-year-old Darlene repeated the story she told us

Speaker 6 about the night the men came to their property.

Speaker 10 I remember asking my dad and mom, what are you going to do if they come back, and what would happen if somebody got hurt?

Speaker 103 What'd they say?

Speaker 10 They said that everything was going to be okay

Speaker 10 and that

Speaker 10 my dad

Speaker 10 is here to protect us.

Speaker 12 He can protect us.

Speaker 25 Then, Carrie, Chad's devoted wife, took the stand, determined to protect her husband, just as she believed he protected her that night.

Speaker 17 What was the effect of this incident on you and your husband?

Speaker 75 It scared us tremendously.

Speaker 73 And that's the reason Chad chased those men, said Carrie.

Speaker 24 He was no monster.

Speaker 15 What was his mental or emotional state when he returned home?

Speaker 17 Distraught.

Speaker 17 Have you ever seen him happen before?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 15 Was he crying?

Speaker 19 He was.

Speaker 52 The whole case, of course, would boil down to whether Chad was fired upon and shot back in self-defense.

Speaker 34 Olson said the evidence backed Chad up.

Speaker 11 I think we'll pretty well prove that there was a gun in the

Speaker 11 victim's car. and that they fired at Chad.

Speaker 28 The young men in that car?

Speaker 82 Not exactly Boy Scouts, said Olson.

Speaker 11 Well, the police asked these people if they had guns.

Speaker 11 And they said no, we wouldn't carry guns. We would never carry guns.
And one of them, we have a Facebook page displaying both a gun and a knife.

Speaker 68 And they must have had a gun that night, said Olson, because on the route of the chase, investigators found three shell casings.

Speaker 67 Casings that did not match any of Chad's guns.

Speaker 11 The interesting thing, though, is you said they shot at me three times, and they found the three 380 casings that were

Speaker 11 together that were not from Chad's gun, corresponding with the three shots.

Speaker 101 And there was another truly stunning clue collected on the night of the shooting, said Olson.

Speaker 65 According to his forensic expert, there was gun residue inside the young men's car and even on some of their hands.

Speaker 11 Somebody shot out of that car.

Speaker 42 Because?

Speaker 11 Because of the gunshot residue in the car, the lack of bullet strikes on that side of the car, and the gunshot residue on the hand of the person who was riding shotgun, if you will.

Speaker 66 And why did Chad keep shooting at the car after it made a U-turn?

Speaker 24 Very good reason, said his attorney.

Speaker 11 If they turn around and were coming back out of there, those two cars would be on the same track with the car coming right at him.

Speaker 11 And he's been fired on already. Coming back towards him, he thinks they're firing on him again.

Speaker 46 Chad declined to take the stand stand in his own defense.

Speaker 24 So the jury didn't get to hear him say he did the right thing, did what he had to do when he squeezed the trigger.

Speaker 40 Is it possible you were wrong, though?

Speaker 81 No.

Speaker 24 So, a case for self-defense any jury would have to take seriously.

Speaker 26 And thus, Prosecutor David Hollister's big challenge: time to bring out a little ammunition, a literal trail of evidence through the grass.

Speaker 41 A sticky, brownish-black mess that told a fascinating story.

Speaker 55 Rory's best friend comes face to face with the man who shot him.

Speaker 17 When I looked at it, my heart kind of jumped.

Speaker 113 Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

Speaker 113 Each week, I invite friends, comedians, actors, and musicians to discuss these three questions. Where do you come from? Where are you going? And what have you learned?

Speaker 113 New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bow and Ted Danson, Tig Nataro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more.

Speaker 113 You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter Call-In Show episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters, bad teachers, and lots more.

Speaker 113 Listen to the three questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 8 Just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats.

Speaker 8 But also, yikes, between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune, which is where Lemonade Pet Insurance comes in.

Speaker 8 It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, signup is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds.

Speaker 8 Pro tip: LemonAid offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a quote at lemonade.com/slash pet.
Your future self will thank you. Your pet won't.
They don't know what insurance is.

Speaker 108 Why are more women than ever choosing natural Cycles? The hormone-free, side-effect-free way to take control of your fertility.

Speaker 108 Natural Cycles is a birth control app that uses your temperature to find your fertile window. It is more than a basic cycle tracking app.

Speaker 108 Natural Cycles is the only FDA-cleared and CE-marked birth control app and has helped millions prevent and plan for pregnancy naturally. Save 15% when you sign up today with code RADIO15.

Speaker 108 Learn more at naturalcycles.com.

Speaker 24 The old Plumas County Courthouse, solid and lovely in the autumn sun, has pride of place here on Main Street in Quincy, California.

Speaker 80 Inside, up on the top floor, is an overworked DA's office, all too accustomed to the limited funding abilities of a small county.

Speaker 39 A fact of life David Hollister had to consider very carefully as he prepared to prosecute Chad Wallen-Reed for first-degree murder.

Speaker 97 We'd better do this case right and we'd better do it once because that's about our only shot at it.

Speaker 97 We've pretty much burned our budget

Speaker 74 for trials for the year.

Speaker 97 Trouble was, this was a difficult case from the start.

Speaker 5 The defendant, after all, was not just a family man, the father of three adorable children.

Speaker 84 He was, as he told the detectives, ex-military, once an army ranger.

Speaker 26 You don't get to be one of those without good judgment and real character.

Speaker 38 And on top of that, there was that wild-card jury, people who needed to be persuaded that Chad showed bad judgment and very poor character.

Speaker 17 Ladies and gentlemen, the jury, the evidence is going to show the defendant was not in imminent danger when he fired those shots.

Speaker 17 He was angry and he was mad that they were trying to get away.

Speaker 54 To set the scene, so to speak, Prosecutor Hollister showed the jury the video shot by that reality show cameraman, now part of the public record.

Speaker 18 I'll cover that area here.

Speaker 39 This was graphic stuff.

Speaker 26 Right there in living color, the bloodied bodies of injured and apparently terrified young men, the officers trying to attend to their medical needs.

Speaker 47 How important was that video?

Speaker 69 It gave the jury a true understanding.

Speaker 105 of the horror that happened that night.

Speaker 97 I mean, you've got Lewis Smythe with his leg propped up and the tourniquet there, and you've got Roy McGuire in the back seat with a horrible head injury.

Speaker 97 I mean, that's something I can't capture in words.

Speaker 68 Lewis Smythe, the young man you met earlier, was a key witness for the state. Remember, that bullet from Chad's AR-15 shredded Lewis's leg.

Speaker 28 He was frankly lucky to keep the leg and survive the night.

Speaker 67 Did you see?

Speaker 105 The defendant sitting over there in the courtroom.

Speaker 17 I only looked at him once or twice. My heart kind of jumped, and I knew it was him.

Speaker 82 Lewis has been a nervous wreck since all this happened, he told us.

Speaker 53 And in court, he was no less nervous as he told the jury about seeing the green laser gunsight, about the flurries of shots fired by the defendant, about the young men's efforts to end the car chase.

Speaker 17 First of all, they fled. They drove as fast as they could.
They threw out the solar lights. They held a white t-shirt out the window.

Speaker 17 If you want to look at a textbook definition for doing everything you can in your power to withdraw, to say no more, we're

Speaker 17 They did it.

Speaker 96 And yet, said the prosecutor, Chad kept right on shooting.

Speaker 88 He told the detectives, you know, I think that might have been a white flag. I don't think there's any question those kids did everything they could to give up.

Speaker 5 But here's the thing.

Speaker 67 If the young men fired at Chad first, as the defense went to a lot of trouble to prove, then maybe Chad's reaction was reasonable.

Speaker 27 But did they fire a gun? Did they even have one?

Speaker 71 Remember those three non-Chad shell casings found on the road that the defense made such such a big fuss about?

Speaker 101 Couldn't have been from the young men, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 93 And how did he know?

Speaker 61 Simple law of speed versus gravity.

Speaker 17 You're telling me these kids are fleeing at 50 miles an hour. You're telling me that they fired three shots.
The casings are a foot and a half apart. At 50 miles an hour? That's outrageous.

Speaker 17 That's crazy.

Speaker 50 But remember, the defense forensic expert was clear there was gunshot residue in the young men's car and on some of their hands, proving they must have fired a gun, must have.

Speaker 43 To which David Hollister replied, nonsense.

Speaker 26 That defense expert must not have been privy to all the evidence.

Speaker 88 The gunshot residue really wasn't gunshot residue.

Speaker 88 It was elements that could make up gunshot residue. Anytime a car is hit with that many high velocity rounds from an AR-15, you're going to expect to see lead.

Speaker 31 Ah, yes, but expert versus expert, matter of opinion.

Speaker 24 How would a jury know?

Speaker 29 What the state needed was something that would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Chad was lying about what happened out there in the night.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 35 seemed like maybe they had just exactly that.

Speaker 58 Remember Chad's insistence that the car came straight at him through the meadow as if for a final showdown?

Speaker 91 And it looked like they were coming straight at you.

Speaker 42 Yeah, I mean, like looking like an assault.

Speaker 93 Right. Looked like they were attacking you.

Speaker 37 Right.

Speaker 75 It was just

Speaker 75 My frame of mind was, is that these people are coming back to shoot at me.

Speaker 77 I had swerved my vehicle out of the way of their vehicle.

Speaker 81 I mean, they were coming straight back at me.

Speaker 63 We were nose to nose.

Speaker 28 But, as the prosecutor told the jury, evidence found in the meadow told a very different story.

Speaker 68 The detectives took us there to show us.

Speaker 43 Remember how the young men's car hit a rock, cracked open the oil pan?

Speaker 34 The dripping oil left a distinctive trail.

Speaker 98 And then we could see the oil that had been laid down by Rory Maguire's car.

Speaker 43 Using that trail of oil, the prosecutor had an animation created, which showed the car was not heading toward Chad's truck, but instead was heading around it, away from Chad.

Speaker 98 And where Detective Hendrickson is standing is about where they traveled past, and then he started shooting. at their car.

Speaker 53 How do they know where the car was when it was hit?

Speaker 33 By the shattered glass of its windows, some of it's still here, marking the spot.

Speaker 43 And the glass told a story, too, they said, about the true intentions of Chad Wallen-Reed.

Speaker 98 His shot placement was very, very well placed. It was head height, shooting at the windows of the vehicle.

Speaker 98 One went low into the rear passenger door, which then went into Justin Smythe's leg, but most of the shot placement was all high, head height.

Speaker 96 In other words, Chad wasn't shooting to disable the car, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 34 The evidence suggested he was shooting to kill the occupants, even as they were trying to get away.

Speaker 17 Was the defendant

Speaker 17 in imminent fear of death or great bodily injury so that he immediately had to use deadly force?

Speaker 17 Unequivocally, the answer is no.

Speaker 62 So what attitude in your mind did he have when he took out after those kids?

Speaker 88 The last words he said before he got in the truck was, I'm going to go get those sons of bitches.

Speaker 88 And I think he meant it.

Speaker 5 The prosecutor felt confident.

Speaker 65 But in a town divided over guns and self-protection, who could be sure what the jury would decide?

Speaker 42 This is exactly the kind of case that leads to hung juries.

Speaker 105 Absolutely. Absolutely.
And that's a fear.

Speaker 39 In that case, Chad could walk since little Quincy couldn't afford to try him again.

Speaker 110 And then, just as the trial came to its end, a long-sought bit of information finally landed in D.A.

Speaker 56 Hollister's mailbox.

Speaker 47 Oh, my.

Speaker 88 I was shocked. I don't think there's any other way to put it.

Speaker 70 The twist.

Speaker 5 No one saw coming.

Speaker 88 It was very clear the defendant had lied about something you just don't lie about.

Speaker 65 It's not often that a gift drops in a person's lap, manna from heaven, exactly when it's most needed.

Speaker 24 Which, in this case, just as the trial was wrapping up, was a carefully sealed, official-looking package addressed to Plumas County DA David Hollister.

Speaker 88 Candidly, I give credit to the detectives.

Speaker 70 He'd asked them to track down Chad Wallen-Reed's military records just to confirm his background.

Speaker 88 It was something that we simply felt like we had to follow through on.

Speaker 43 Remember, throughout Chad's interview with police, he talked again and again about his Army career.

Speaker 106 That's what

Speaker 63 the military training to do is to, you know,

Speaker 19 react.

Speaker 30 Implying that what he did in that meadow, he had first done under enemy fire overseas.

Speaker 99 Man, I served five years in the fucking military. I killed people people on the other side of this world.

Speaker 106 I don't even kill kids at my state.

Speaker 42 Maybe even that he'd been having some sort of flashback.

Speaker 106 I know I've been out for 10 years, but you know,

Speaker 19 I was a ranger.

Speaker 41 It took nine months.

Speaker 68 Many of them had snarled in military red tape.

Speaker 41 But now here were the records.

Speaker 27 And what they revealed was nothing short of shocking.

Speaker 20 In here was confirmation that Chad was in the Army, all right.

Speaker 35 But that's about all that was true.

Speaker 105 He was not a Ranger.

Speaker 88 He had not fulfilled his commitment. He had not served overseas.
He had not been in combat overseas. He had not killed people on the other side of the world.
He had not done any of those things.

Speaker 1 In fact, the Army asked Chad to leave, discharged him for forging sick leave papers and bringing a personal firearm into the barracks.

Speaker 56 And this was perhaps the worst, for wearing a combat infantry badge and a ranger tab and other such badges, when all of those things, which the jury had been made to believe about Chad's military service based on his own statements to police, were all lies.

Speaker 88 It was very clear the defendant had lied about something you just don't lie about.

Speaker 105 Sure.

Speaker 15 And if he's going to lie about that.

Speaker 105 Absolutely.

Speaker 97 His talk about, I only fired three shots, I used the pistol, all these other lies added up.

Speaker 100 A liar, said Hollister, who shot those young young men out of anger.

Speaker 41 Pure and simple.

Speaker 17 You don't get to chase a person down and kill them.

Speaker 17 That's not self-defense.

Speaker 59 But defense attorneys stuck to the heart of their case.

Speaker 100 It was, said John Olson's partner in his closing argument, a clear case of self-defense.

Speaker 17 He was placed in reasonable fear of imminent danger or death by the actions of the occupants of the Maguire vehicle on the road when they were shooting at him.

Speaker 17 and then when they turned in the meadow and came back at him.

Speaker 30 Self-defense or murder?

Speaker 24 To wait for a jury's decision is a kind of agony for both sides.

Speaker 41 Rory McGuire's dad, still struggling with an inexpressible anger.

Speaker 95 The justice system can't give him what I feel he has coming.

Speaker 95 No amount of jail time will

Speaker 95 fix it.

Speaker 1 Those sweet, sad, innocent little kids.

Speaker 20 Like that, he is always funny and

Speaker 12 he's always loving.

Speaker 20 He protects us a lot.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 62 And you miss him.

Speaker 42 Yeah, that part is pretty obvious.

Speaker 34 Before the jury even got the case, Chad's wife Carrie told us she already knew what the outcome would be.

Speaker 62 I mean, in your heart of hearts, do you think the jury will say not not guilty?

Speaker 13 I know that the Lord has told me that Chad will be home.

Speaker 78 But then, any other thought?

Speaker 13 Can I imagine him being away from us for that? No.

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 20 It hurts.

Speaker 13 That thought, those words hurt my heart.

Speaker 43 Surprising, then, when Carrie heard what Chad told us when we interviewed him before the trial.

Speaker 20 What do you think?

Speaker 62 Are you going to be acquitted?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 20 No?

Speaker 37 I'll end up spending the rest of my life in prison.

Speaker 15 You believe that? Absolutely.

Speaker 35 Why

Speaker 66 I think that

Speaker 79 I don't.

Speaker 64 My faith in the legal system

Speaker 51 is seriously been shaken.

Speaker 66 I think the majority of people have a negative opinion about me.

Speaker 67 Of course, no one could know the way the jury would would go, especially in a town divided by Quincy.

Speaker 88 You're holding your breath the whole time, whether it's your first trial or your 50th.

Speaker 41 They didn't have to hold their breath very long.

Speaker 5 Less than a day.

Speaker 17 We, the jury, in the above entitled cause, find the defendant, Gregory Chad and Wallen Reed, guilty of a felony, to wit, murder, first degree, of Rory McGuire.

Speaker 28 Guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 52 In the gallery, Rory's mom began sobbing.

Speaker 65 Two years of pent-up heartbreak.

Speaker 88 I knew we couldn't fix what had happened, but maybe we'd give her just a little sense of justice.

Speaker 17 I'll never have a friend like that again, or somebody I considered a brother.

Speaker 12 That's a sweet picture.

Speaker 41 Lewis told us it's his duty now to keep Rory's memory alive for himself and for Carol, who's in his life now for good.

Speaker 17 I love Carol, and I think she loves me back.

Speaker 17 There's always always a place for me in her home, and we can't stop talking about them. She's happy that I was a front-row seat to Rory's life, and I'm able to tell her about it.

Speaker 48 At his sentencing hearing, Chad addressed Rory's family.

Speaker 76 I know there are no orders

Speaker 15 that I can offer that will give you relief from the pain you experience every moment of every day.

Speaker 56 And now his sentence: 84 years to life.

Speaker 5 Their little cabin, that piece of paradise, is empty now, sold to pay legal bills.

Speaker 13 We have fond memories.

Speaker 20 We do.

Speaker 13 And now there's no good memories to be had.

Speaker 13 But we can hold on to the ones that we have.

Speaker 83 And 7.6 miles away, out in the mountains, snow has begun to blanket the meadow, hiding the only remnants of what happened.

Speaker 83 A few shards of glass, and the little rock to mark the spot where a young man with so much potential was wasted.

Speaker 16 Part of me feels that

Speaker 16 Rory is fine.

Speaker 62 Why do you say Rory's fine?

Speaker 16 He's not in the meadow, and he's not in that hospital bed, and he's not on that road trying to get away from the shooter.

Speaker 17 He's not afraid anymore.

Speaker 69 So

Speaker 37 he's fine.

Speaker 111 Hey, this is Jeff Lewis from Radio Andy. Live and uncensored.
Catch me talking with my friends about my latest obsessions, relationship issues, and bodily ailments.

Speaker 111 With that kind of drama that seems to follow me, you never know what's going to happen.

Speaker 114 You can listen to Jeff Lewis Live at home or anywhere you are. Download the Sirius Sexstem app for over 425 channels of ad-free music, sports, entertainment, and more.

Speaker 114 Subscribe now and get three months free.

Speaker 108 Offer details apply.