Before Daylight

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Speaker 17 I said, is it Jesse?

Speaker 18 I mean, he was my

Speaker 18 whole life.

Speaker 18 I never dreamed that

Speaker 18 he was going to die that way.

Speaker 20 We believe he was headed to a friend's house to get help.

Speaker 21 And his assailant chased him, caught up to him, attacked him.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 24 Everyone was just so shaken. We had several suspects.

Speaker 25 I mean, the guy was coming by on duty.

Speaker 26 He would stop off, they would have sex, and then he'd go back to work.

Speaker 25 Yeah, he wouldn't say his name. He only referred to him as Columbia's finest.

Speaker 20 She looked at me and she goes, you're not going to believe this.

Speaker 28 Had you ever investigated a fellow cop before?

Speaker 20 Not for homicide, no.

Speaker 30 I think I was just in shock. I want to shout it from the rooftops that this is not right.

Speaker 33 He lied, lied and lied and lied about sex, sex, and sex.

Speaker 30 There are a lot of people that cheat. It doesn't make them a murderer.

Speaker 20 And we will follow the truth. My first thought was, we need to get this right.

Speaker 27 That's the second thought.

Speaker 20 The first thought is, oh my God.

Speaker 36 He could have been sunbathing here in the grass, naked but for a pair of blue shorts.

Speaker 40 His face, turned up toward the June sky, was beautiful.

Speaker 43 It was afternoon by the time someone noticed him, though he'd been lying here, still, silent, since before daylight.

Speaker 48 Here among the old rooming houses in Columbia, where University of Missouri students were winding down their school year.

Speaker 38 It was June 5th, 2004.

Speaker 20 Back then we were on pagers.

Speaker 49 Sure.

Speaker 20 Of course I knew my boss's phone number and it had a 911 behind it and I was ordered to come to help investigate.

Speaker 37 By the time the news got to Detective John Short, uniformed cops had strung up their yellow tape, were taking their their pictures.

Speaker 51 What did they see?

Speaker 20 It was obvious to them at that point that this was a homicide.

Speaker 52 The medical examiner arrived.

Speaker 35 That's her there, sitting on the left.

Speaker 53 Dr.

Speaker 37 Valerie Rao waiting for her turn.

Speaker 54 When I got to the scene, there were a lot of people watching what was going on.

Speaker 17 Even then, as she took it all in, the crowd, the yellow tape, the young male body lying there on the grass.

Speaker 34 It was quite obvious to Dr.

Speaker 6 Rao this was a deliberate, determined killing.

Speaker 54 He had a gaping wound on his neck, and the blood was oozing out from there

Speaker 54 onto his neck.

Speaker 9 She looked closer.

Speaker 59 The cut across his throat was deep and not quite smooth, as if it had been made perhaps by a serrated knife.

Speaker 54 When we turned the body, I could see that the grass adjacent where he lay was blood-soaked.

Speaker 4 So much blood.

Speaker 2 But not exactly where the medical examiner expected it to be.

Speaker 54 There was no blood on the front of his body at all.

Speaker 61 Meaning, what?

Speaker 9 Had to be a reason.

Speaker 22 She'd work on that.

Speaker 41 But who was he?

Speaker 55 No ID at all.

Speaker 60 Just this slender young man with unseeing eyes.

Speaker 20 There wasn't a lot known at all.

Speaker 20 We just know that we had a deceased individual. We were trying to garner information.

Speaker 10 They sent officers around the neighborhood with a picture of the body.

Speaker 1 Did anyone know who he was?

Speaker 63 As a shocked afternoon deepened into evening, someone did know exactly who he was.

Speaker 18 The whole time, all day long, I kept having a funny feeling.

Speaker 58 Far away in Kentucky, Over the rural hills and downcountry roads, was a mother named Linda Valencia.

Speaker 38 She was eating dinner with her sister and fretting about her son, Jesse.

Speaker 18 I told my sister, I said, it's so weird that he's not calling me.

Speaker 18 And she said, well, he's probably okay. Said, you know, she just said, you know, Jesse.

Speaker 65 After dinner, Linda's sister dropped her off at her house.

Speaker 38 And then, it seemed, just a few minutes later.

Speaker 18 I saw her. Headlights coming back up the hill to my house, so I went to the door and

Speaker 18 opened it and I remember laughing

Speaker 17 and I asked

Speaker 18 I asked her if she had missed me so much

Speaker 17 that she had to come back

Speaker 18 but her sister wasn't smiling I said is it Jesse

Speaker 18 And she just she never answered me and I

Speaker 18 remember just backing away and I just wanted wanted to run.

Speaker 8 But of course, there was no running, not from this.

Speaker 58 The police wanted to talk to her.

Speaker 18 They said that they were sorry to inform me that my son had been killed.

Speaker 18 And I basically called him a liar, and I said, It's not true.

Speaker 69 What's a person to say?

Speaker 70 To do,

Speaker 60 deny, deny.

Speaker 36 Her world collapsing around around her, Jesse's mother fainted.

Speaker 71 In Columbia that June night, crime scene techs busied themselves behind the yellow tape.

Speaker 65 While more cops scoured the neighborhood, they'd noticed a nearby apartment door propped open.

Speaker 7 And so they walked through it.

Speaker 63 into a mystery that would turn their world upside down.

Speaker 18 From the time Jesse was six or seven years old, he told me, Mom, I'm not going to live to be very old.

Speaker 69 Did he tell you where that thought came from?

Speaker 32 He never did.

Speaker 72 A surprising relationship would stun the city.

Speaker 73 Did it lead to murder?

Speaker 18 He said, Mom, guess who showed up on my doorstep?

Speaker 71 When he was about seven years old, Jesse Valencia asked his mom to sit down.

Speaker 18 And he said,

Speaker 18 Mom, I'm not going to live to be very old. He said, I'm going to die at a very young age.

Speaker 26 Did he tell you where that thought came from or why he thought that?

Speaker 18 He never did. He just said he knew that he was going to die young.

Speaker 57 And now at the age of 23, Jesse's awful prediction had come true.

Speaker 47 His half-naked body found lying in a lonely patch of grass so far from home.

Speaker 18 I never dreamed that

Speaker 18 he was going to die that way.

Speaker 14 Whatever happened to him, the investigators figured, must have started here behind this open door down the block from the crime scene.

Speaker 3 It was the door to Jesse's apartment.

Speaker 6 Looked like Jesse may have flung it open, fleeing his killer.

Speaker 20 We believe he was headed to a friend's house to get help.

Speaker 21 And his assailant chased him, caught up to him.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 23 Attacked him.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 40 And showed no mercy.

Speaker 22 Details Linda could not bear thinking about.

Speaker 27 She was just 21 when she had Jesse.

Speaker 74 The two of you kind of grew up together, right?

Speaker 17 Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 18 From the time he was born, I took him everywhere with me.

Speaker 70 Just the two of them.

Speaker 47 And then a stepdad and two sisters and a family farm in Perraville, Kentucky, a one-stoplight town.

Speaker 18 Every store we went into, everybody knew him.

Speaker 18 Everybody was hollering, hey, Jesse, how are you? Even three and four years old, he would just talk your head off about everything.

Speaker 58 Read about everything.

Speaker 56 Knew about everything.

Speaker 42 Linda's nickname for Jesse was College Prep.

Speaker 78 Kristen Aravello met Jesse on the school bus in high school.

Speaker 81 I think bright is a really great word to describe Jesse because

Speaker 81 of his intellectual brilliance, but also he just was

Speaker 81 a real bright light.

Speaker 41 Irrepressible.

Speaker 62 Sort of kid who, if it was raining, would dance in it.

Speaker 26 Or, with Kristen, scroll graffiti under the town bridge.

Speaker 81 Jesse just had this

Speaker 81 real and pure love of life.

Speaker 82 I can just remember thinking, like, this guy is going to do something big, like, he's going to do big things.

Speaker 3 Aaron Bailey met Jesse at a school dance.

Speaker 77 They talked about movies and music.

Speaker 8 Jesse told her he wanted to get out of Perraville one day.

Speaker 15 He tried modeling after high school, proud he could do that.

Speaker 65 But, said Erin, he was always down to earth, always attentive.

Speaker 82 He'd get me to sing for him.

Speaker 82 Ave Maria was his favorite.

Speaker 54 And

Speaker 67 how would he do that?

Speaker 82 There were times he would call me like at night in the middle of the night and be like, will you sing to me? And I'm like, it's 1.30 in the morning.

Speaker 48 But she didn't mind.

Speaker 7 Not really.

Speaker 9 Back then, she was a little bit in love with Jesse, even though she knew she wasn't his type.

Speaker 62 Jesse was gay and proud of it.

Speaker 81 He loved who he wanted to love, and that's a brave way

Speaker 81 to be in life.

Speaker 18 He was the type of boy that would tell you exactly what he thought.

Speaker 58 Didn't hold back. No, he didn't.

Speaker 8 And Linda certainly thought he was brave when Jesse packed up the modeling and decided to go to college, first in his family to go.

Speaker 62 He ended up at the University of Missouri, which seemed as far away from Perraville as could be.

Speaker 18 I was happy and excited that he wanted to do that, but I did not want him to go out of state. And I just kept

Speaker 18 emphasizing to him that it was not going to be a good thing

Speaker 18 for us to be so far apart.

Speaker 52 No.

Speaker 86 And now the worst of her premonitions had come true.

Speaker 52 That lovely son of hers, that promise, horribly snuffed out.

Speaker 18 I mean, he was my

Speaker 18 whole life, and I just couldn't believe that he was gone.

Speaker 75 Can you remember what it...

Speaker 74 What was it like for you?

Speaker 82 It was just dread. Like, I just wanted

Speaker 82 whoever did this, I wanted, like, them to immediately be apprehended. Like, it just was like this feeling of...
Urgency. Yeah,

Speaker 82 of panic.

Speaker 63 But this one wasn't going to be quick or easy.

Speaker 2 Although, cause of death was perfectly obvious, said the medical examiner, the gaping knife wound in his neck.

Speaker 38 But other things were harder to explain.

Speaker 54 Usually with knife injuries, one tends to get defense wounds on the hands. So you'd get knife injuries on the hands.

Speaker 88 But Jesse's hands were unmarked, which made the ME wonder, maybe Jesse hadn't been conscious when his throat was cut.

Speaker 89 They found him flat on his back.

Speaker 59 If he was that way when the killer cut him, it would explain the lack of blood on his body.

Speaker 54 If he was standing, then the blood would run down the front of him or the back of him. And if he walked...

Speaker 54 walked after he sustained the injury, then there would be blood on the bottom of his feet. There was none of this.

Speaker 35 There was still one puzzling thing.

Speaker 87 A pattern of angry bruises across Jesse's chest and back and under his jaw.

Speaker 54 We had to think of all the possibilities of how this came about.

Speaker 90 So she sent his fingernail clippings and blue shorts off to the lab for testing and waited.

Speaker 91 And the detectives?

Speaker 20 Jesse was kind of a free spirit from what I understand.

Speaker 87 Know your victim, investigators like to say.

Speaker 71 So they started digging, especially into Jesse's life in Colombia.

Speaker 1 And what they discovered was not so much a long list of enemies, but rather a long list of lovers.

Speaker 20 Ed Redley admitted that him and Jesse had had sex on the day before the body was found.

Speaker 20 Eric said something to the effect of, I wouldn't care if he was dead or I don't care if he's dead, talking about Jesse.

Speaker 74 There was this other kid named Zev.

Speaker 20 One of the questions was, well, can you get out of the house without your parents seeing it? And he said, yeah, I can.

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Speaker 16 The murder of Jesse Valencia sent a nasty jolt of anxiety around Columbia, Missouri.

Speaker 24 Everyone was just so shaken.

Speaker 2 Barry Bumgarner, a local college professor and crime novelist, was like a lot of people here, full of questions.

Speaker 24 There were several articles about did this happen in broad daylight? Why didn't anyone see anything? And people wanted answers.

Speaker 10 So the Columbia Police Department worked with all deliberate speed on the few leads they could find.

Speaker 3 According to Jesse's phone records, the last call he'd made was around 3.15 in the morning.

Speaker 60 His neighbor, seen here on NBC affiliate KOMU, said not long after that, he heard arguing coming from Jesse's apartment.

Speaker 98 Just bumping, just like somebody stumbling and kind of bumping into the wall, like, oh, stop it, you know.

Speaker 2 Police found another witness who told them he'd seen something odd during the night.

Speaker 47 A young man walking barefoot near the crime scene.

Speaker 4 Was he the killer they were looking for?

Speaker 20 It was about a block or so away, maybe two, from the victim's house. Some guy called in and said this kid was crying inconsolably.

Speaker 5 But who was he?

Speaker 32 Wasn't a lot to go on.

Speaker 92 So investigators started tracking down Jesse's friends, trying to piece together a portrait of his life in Columbia.

Speaker 35 He was a junior at Mizzou.

Speaker 35 Books on history piled up around his apartment.

Speaker 20 He had a lot of friends.

Speaker 34 You talked to a lot of them?

Speaker 20 Talked to a lot of them. You know,

Speaker 20 he liked to party, like almost every other college student.

Speaker 8 Jesse loved to dance.

Speaker 16 and one of his favorite places was a local nightclub, where, just a few days before he died, he met someone new on the dance floor, an aspiring chef named Ed.

Speaker 10 Police asked Ed to come down to the station.

Speaker 20 He readily admitted that him and Jesse had had

Speaker 20 sex the day before the body was found.

Speaker 37 And Jesse's friends said they saw Jesse and Ed leave a party together just a few hours before Jesse was killed.

Speaker 65 So Detective Short watched Ed very closely in the police interrogation room when he swore he'd left Jesse alive and well on the street outside the party before heading on home.

Speaker 46 Ed said his roommate had seen him coming in.

Speaker 74 What did you think about him?

Speaker 20 He was an emotional mess, is how I would describe him. Constantly crying, very upset, very scared.
The fear of why am I here.

Speaker 71 Did he have something to hide?

Speaker 11 It was a knife that killed Jesse.

Speaker 62 Ed was a chef.

Speaker 43 He owned a whole bag of very sharp knives.

Speaker 2 But it was Ed's roommate, a man called Eric Thurston, who really got investigators' attention.

Speaker 99 Eric had his own shady past, a rap sheet for drug possession, a stealing, and fighting words about the murder.

Speaker 20 Eric Thurston, in his interview, actually said at one point, I could kill somebody, but I have too much faith in humanity or something to that effect.

Speaker 8 When he talked to police, Eric didn't even try to hide his dislike for Jesse.

Speaker 20 He said something to the effect of, I wouldn't care if he was dead or I don't care if he's dead, talking about Jesse.

Speaker 40 Why would he say that to the police?

Speaker 35 Even more suspicious, Eric told them he'd left Ed at home that night to go out on a date.

Speaker 47 That would have been around the time Jesse was killed.

Speaker 40 So, investigators searched the men's home, took DNA samples, and waited.

Speaker 27 There was this other kid named Zev, I think.

Speaker 20 Is that fine too?

Speaker 60 Another lead, Zev,

Speaker 8 a rabbi's son, just 19.

Speaker 57 Jesse's friend said he called Zev his boy toy.

Speaker 3 Police asked him to come down to the station.

Speaker 20 You know, Zev was very quiet, very low-key, and he did not appear to be a violent person at all.

Speaker 75 Uh-huh.

Speaker 20 You know,

Speaker 20 not that that can't be hid.

Speaker 57 Zev told them he wasn't even gay.

Speaker 14 He and Jesse were just friends, not lovers or anything.

Speaker 3 So he had no reason to be jealous or angry.

Speaker 15 And anyway, said Zev, he was at home all night.

Speaker 20 He said that he got up the next morning, had breakfast with his parents.

Speaker 22 He lived in his parents' house.

Speaker 20 He lived in his parents' house. Yeah, the only, you know, the only, one of the questions posed to him was, well, can you get out of the house without your parents seeing it? And he said, yeah, I can.

Speaker 57 Phone records showed that Zev had tried to call Jesse several times that night.

Speaker 23 And Zev failed a voice stress test, indicating he might be lying about something.

Speaker 1 Not admissible in court, mind you, but certainly curious.

Speaker 51 At this point, just a few days into the investigation, detectives had three persons of interest, but it didn't feel like they were any closer to solving the murder.

Speaker 20 So every day we would have what's called a, we nicknamed it the roundtable.

Speaker 20 All the detectives would sit down and discuss the leads they had followed the day before, where we're going, what we need to do. Sometimes those roundtables get a little

Speaker 20 heated.

Speaker 20 You know, when you end up working 20 hours a day and taking three-hour naps for days in a row, people get a little edgy.

Speaker 91 But 100 miles away from the hurly burley of the police investigation, way off in St.

Speaker 50 Louis, it suddenly dawned on a friend of Jesse's.

Speaker 43 He had a clue for the police.

Speaker 55 Something that might actually help crack the case.

Speaker 25 Jesse and I chatted two, three times a week at least.

Speaker 97 Patrick Rogers had met Jesse before he went to college.

Speaker 56 They'd bonded over indie bands and politics, but mostly chatted online.

Speaker 23 Which allowed you to keep a record of these chats, right?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 25 I realized that I have these chat logs and that the chat logs

Speaker 100 say everything.

Speaker 25 It's time stamped.

Speaker 58 I knew it was all right there.

Speaker 83 What was all right there?

Speaker 77 Well, Jesse had revealed a secret.

Speaker 50 A secret lover.

Speaker 47 He had not revealed a name, but this was something bigger than a name.

Speaker 57 How would the Columbia Police Department react once they heard that Jesse's secret lover was one of their own?

Speaker 60 Jesse's late night visitor.

Speaker 15 He was excited about it.

Speaker 69 Excited?

Speaker 25 I mean, the guy was coming by on duty.

Speaker 8 Linda Valencia was quite familiar with all of her son Jesse's relationships.

Speaker 53 She was rare among mothers.

Speaker 55 She knew things, intimate things, that mothers don't often get to hear.

Speaker 99 Jesse

Speaker 15 told her everything.

Speaker 18 We talked about anything and everything. Jesse,

Speaker 18 sometimes Jesse would talk to me about things I didn't want to talk about.

Speaker 18 He had no filter on his mouth when he was talking to me.

Speaker 62 So Linda had her own ideas about who police should be talking to.

Speaker 69 And it wasn't the aspiring chef or his roommate or the rabbi's son.

Speaker 18 The detective called me on the phone. She was asking me if I knew of anybody that

Speaker 17 had any

Speaker 18 thing against Jesse. And I told her, yes, I do.

Speaker 18 And I said, he's a cop.

Speaker 11 Linda said she didn't know the officer's name.

Speaker 8 But she told the detective that two months before the murder, she got a call at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 11 Jesse was on the other end.

Speaker 40 Excited.

Speaker 18 He said, Mom, I've been arrested. And I said, oh, my God.
And he said, well, I was at a party, and it got too noisy and the cops came.

Speaker 87 Jesse, outspoken as always, protested.

Speaker 75 Didn't go over well.

Speaker 18 And he told me if I opened my mouth again, he was going to arrest me.

Speaker 48 And I said, do what you got to do.

Speaker 18 And he arrested me.

Speaker 15 At the police station, said Jesse, the officer wrote him a ticket, told him he'd have to appear in court later, and then released him.

Speaker 8 All of which would have made for a memorable story.

Speaker 58 But then, a few hours later, Jesse called Linda again.

Speaker 18 And he said, Mom, guess who showed up on my doorstep? And I just said, who?

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 he said, that cop that arrested me last night. And I said, so what's going on?

Speaker 37 It was the beginning of

Speaker 14 Jesse didn't know what exactly.

Speaker 89 It was personal, intimate.

Speaker 69 and secret.

Speaker 3 The sort of relationship you instant message one of your best friends about.

Speaker 25 And all of the time he spoke with me, he wouldn't say his name. He only referred to him as Columbia's finest.

Speaker 15 He was

Speaker 105 excited about it.

Speaker 69 Excited?

Speaker 24 He was.

Speaker 25 I mean, the guy was coming by on duty.

Speaker 26 He would stop off, they would have sex, and then he'd go back to work.

Speaker 61 Yeah, and

Speaker 25 Jesse found all that exciting, and I'm seeing this as a bunch of red flags.

Speaker 41 Oh, yes.

Speaker 48 Linda said she saw those too.

Speaker 18 Jesse kept talking about

Speaker 18 how when I ask him where he lives, he kind of dances around it.

Speaker 18 Or if I ask him anything about family or anything, he said he constantly wants to talk about my personal life, but he never wants to talk about his.

Speaker 65 And then, Linda said, Jesse discovered why.

Speaker 56 Why his secret policeman lover wouldn't reveal anything about his own life.

Speaker 40 He was married.

Speaker 18 He said he's married. He has a child and

Speaker 18 it's wrong. And he said,

Speaker 18 I'm not going to see him anymore. I just want him to stay away.

Speaker 99 So he tried to cut it off.

Speaker 18 Yeah, he tried to cut it off then.

Speaker 25 He wouldn't be party to someone cheating. And I remember his exact words to me were,

Speaker 25 I'm not going to be someone's other woman.

Speaker 1 And he was mad, and he had every right to be mad.

Speaker 9 And Patrick had proof Jesse felt that way.

Speaker 22 It was all there in their online chats.

Speaker 37 Patrick printed them out, brought them to the Columbia Police Headquarters.

Speaker 26 What was their first reaction when you said, I think this is a cop?

Speaker 15 They didn't seem surprised.

Speaker 91 I would have expected a bigger reaction.

Speaker 38 That's because just a couple of hours after they identified Jesse's body, before they talked to Patrick or Linda, police had gotten an anonymous tip tip about the affair.

Speaker 28 Had you ever investigated a fellow cop before?

Speaker 20 Not for homicide, no.

Speaker 68 No.

Speaker 6 Do you remember the first thought that came into your head when you realized, I'm going to have to do that?

Speaker 20 I think my first thought was,

Speaker 20 we need to get this right.

Speaker 27 That's the second thought.

Speaker 34 The first thought

Speaker 20 was, oh my God,

Speaker 20 it's going to look bad.

Speaker 42 A new witness at the police station.

Speaker 20 He was nervous about me being in the interview room.

Speaker 27 And a surprise encounter with a suspect.

Speaker 20 He goes, I passed him in the hallway when you walked me over here.

Speaker 106 On the brow of a hill on the family farm, Linda Valencia visits her son, visits the memory, still so very raw, of the bright spark he was in her life, of the day they told her he was dead, of the day of his funeral, the day they put him in the ground here.

Speaker 18 I just sat there and just held on to the

Speaker 18 casket handle, and I wouldn't turn it loose.

Speaker 18 And there were so many people that came. I mean, look how many people love Jesse.

Speaker 58 And I had a letter that I wrote him with a picture.

Speaker 82 And I asked Linda if I could just put that in the ground with him. And she said, of course.

Speaker 82 And so my heels were sinking into the mud, and I couldn't stand up. And

Speaker 82 I was watching one of the most important people in my life be covered up with dirt.

Speaker 42 And she sang his favorite song for him,

Speaker 60 one last time.

Speaker 72 And how do you measure a loss like this?

Speaker 42 The gap it tears in the lives of people.

Speaker 65 And in the history of things that might have been had he been around.

Speaker 8 In Columbia, Missouri, Detective Short was measuring not loss, but an explosive new lead, a phantom cop.

Speaker 64 Who was he?

Speaker 41 And then he got word that one of Jesse's college lovers, a guy named Andy, had seen Jesse with the mystery cop up close.

Speaker 20 They were at Jesse's apartment. He says they're in bed together, and he hears a knock at the door.
Guy walks in, puts a flashlight on him.

Speaker 20 He said when he saw the flashlight come on, he could see that it was a police officer. And then he attempted to join to have sex

Speaker 20 to participate with Andy and Andy was like no I don't want a part of this

Speaker 20 according to Andy Jesse and the officer had sex anyway and when it was over the cop had a warning he looked at both of them and says you don't talk about this don't tell anyone and he left Surely Detective Short figured this Andy would be able to identify the officer.

Speaker 8 So the detective and his partner brought Andy into the precinct and showed him a book of photos, the entire Columbia Police Department.

Speaker 9 But this was weird.

Speaker 20 Pretty obvious he's not really looking at the pictures. He's just kind of thumbing through them.
And it was pretty apparent to me that he was nervous about me being in the interview room.

Speaker 20 So I just got up and walked out.

Speaker 89 Leaving Andy alone with the detective's female partner.

Speaker 20 Kind of looks through the pictures again. She says, you're really not looking at him.
He goes, I don't need to look at those pictures. I passed him in the hallway when you walked me over here.

Speaker 27 When she came out of that room, what'd she say?

Speaker 20 She looked at me and she goes, you're not going to believe this. It's Steve Rios.

Speaker 47 Stephen Rios, a police officer, two and a half years on the force, an up-and-comer, active in several police charities with what looked like an exemplary record.

Speaker 58 And of course, Rios was married.

Speaker 8 His wife had given birth to a baby boy just four months before.

Speaker 37 Detective Short checked Jesse's arrest record.

Speaker 41 And And

Speaker 46 yes, it was Stephen Rios who took him in and issued the ticket.

Speaker 58 That wasn't all.

Speaker 69 Stephen helped guard Jesse's murder scene.

Speaker 20 When he got to the police department the afternoon when the body had been found, he saw one of the sergeants writing Jesse's name down.

Speaker 20 He says, hey, I know that guy arrested him about a month or so ago. Well, the sergeant told him to go down there and identify the body.

Speaker 20 So after identifying the body, he actually volunteered, according to the supervisor, to guard the crime scene.

Speaker 8 And he would have known he shouldn't be there.

Speaker 7 Oh, sure.

Speaker 20 Just having the relationship alone with him, he should have never been involved in the case.

Speaker 14 Didn't mean they killed him.

Speaker 75 That's correct.

Speaker 42 So Steve and Rios joined the list of people police wanted to take a hard look at.

Speaker 20 Nobody was ruled out.

Speaker 34 And you were preparing the background before you actually brought him in the case.

Speaker 51 Oh, sure.

Speaker 20 Tried to get as much information as we can to confront him with what we knew.

Speaker 14 Detective Short figured he'd get a couple of days to gather information before Rios got wind he was a person of interest in a murder investigation.

Speaker 58 But for the first of many times, things didn't quite work out as expected.

Speaker 72 Stephen Rios denies an affair.

Speaker 20 When I confronted him that there was a relationship, he said, what, sex?

Speaker 40 You already knew that was a lie.

Speaker 20 Yes, I did.

Speaker 62 And his wife gets a visit from the police.

Speaker 107 An officer of the law is having his house searched by other officers of the law.

Speaker 85 It was alarming, for sure.

Speaker 85 This episode is brought to you by Alloy Health.

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Speaker 94 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 94 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and we're back for another season.

Speaker 94 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 94 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrison sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 3 it was three days after the murder of jesse valencia Detective John Short had just found out that the murdered man's secret lover was an ambitious, married, up-and-coming cop named Stephen Rios.

Speaker 5 So, next thought?

Speaker 50 The hope that this was just an affair, that the cop was not the killer.

Speaker 20 I mean, I wasn't personal friends with him. I was a co-worker, knew who he was.

Speaker 27 Nobody wants a bad cop.

Speaker 20 Nobody wants a bad cop.

Speaker 20 That's a perfect statement.

Speaker 27 But just as Detective Short was trying to figure that out, who walked in the door?

Speaker 3 Stephen Rios himself.

Speaker 20 He just shows up, says, I need to talk to you guys.

Speaker 65 Stephen said he'd heard rumors a police officer was involved, so he'd come to clear things up.

Speaker 3 Said he'd once arrested Jesse, but that's all there was to it.

Speaker 20 When I confronted him that there was a relationship, he said, what, sex? And I said, yeah.

Speaker 20 And he denied it.

Speaker 68 Hmm.

Speaker 40 You already knew that was a lie.

Speaker 20 Yes, I did. I confronted him with that lie.
He breaks down, kind of cries, says, yeah,

Speaker 20 but only once.

Speaker 50 And you knew that was a lie.

Speaker 20 And the problems that I was having at that point personally was, okay, is he upset and crying because we've just outed him as having a homosexual relationship and he's married and got a child?

Speaker 20 Or is he lying because he did this?

Speaker 3 Stephen told the detective he had plenty of witnesses who could prove he wasn't anywhere near Jesse the night he was murdered.

Speaker 5 Where was he?

Speaker 88 He clocked in at 6 p.m. that evening.

Speaker 3 It was a busy shift.

Speaker 8 He made a traffic stop. That's him on the dash cam video.

Speaker 3 Then helped out on a shooting investigation across town.

Speaker 65 Said he finished a little after 3 a.m.

Speaker 59 and joined some other officers for a beer up on the roof of the station.

Speaker 47 Then went back inside to go to the bathroom.

Speaker 20 His entry into the building prior to his departure was at 4.37 a.m. So that's the only thing that we can confirm without a doubt.
That's solid evidence, obviously.

Speaker 8 But Stephen told Detective Short he didn't leave just then, but instead went back up to the roof for a few minutes and drove out finally around 5 a.m.

Speaker 36 and then went straight home.

Speaker 1 Talk to my wife, Libby, he said.

Speaker 58 So they did.

Speaker 56 They don't announce these things, of course.

Speaker 17 They just knock on the door.

Speaker 39 And there was Libby.

Speaker 37 Surprised?

Speaker 39 Imagine.

Speaker 30 Most people, an officer shows up at your house, you're immediately on pretty high alert, as one would be.

Speaker 21 Stephen had already told Libby someone he'd arrested had been murdered.

Speaker 3 But as for the rest of it, the affair, the fact he was being questioned as a person of interest in a murder, She didn't know a thing.

Speaker 35 And the cop at the door said nothing about any of that.

Speaker 40 Instead,

Speaker 30 she reassured and said, anyone that had contact with the victim were talking to all of their spouses.

Speaker 30 No big deal.

Speaker 47 So Libby thought for a minute, then told the officer that Grayson, her four-month-old baby, started crying early that morning, woke her up.

Speaker 30 I remember 5.15.

Speaker 114 I remember looking at the clock.

Speaker 30 I remember 5.15. It's in my head.

Speaker 63 Libby didn't know, of course, had no idea how her groggy memory would be poked and prodded and parsed, how crucially important those precise minutes would turn out to be.

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 3 She just told the officer that anywhere between five and ten minutes after waking up, she was in the kitchen warming up a bottle for the baby when her husband walked in.

Speaker 30 We made eye contact. I think I said something like, long night, and, you know, he said, yeah.

Speaker 30 And he immediately walked to Grayson's room and picked him up. And then he handed off Grayson, and I started feeding him.

Speaker 10 So she told the story, and the cop left.

Speaker 8 She expected Stephen would come home then, but he didn't.

Speaker 51 Instead, more cops showed up to search the house.

Speaker 107 An officer of the law is having his house searched by other officers of the law.

Speaker 85 It was alarming, for sure.

Speaker 76 She wondered, was her husband a murder suspect?

Speaker 87 They certainly searched the house as if he was.

Speaker 78 They even examined the shower drain, looking for what, blood?

Speaker 91 Other evidence of murder?

Speaker 27 But the drain didn't come up with anything

Speaker 75 from a crime scene. No.
No blood?

Speaker 68 No.

Speaker 20 No, no nothing.

Speaker 58 No blood in his car.

Speaker 86 No evidence on his clothes?

Speaker 5 Nothing.

Speaker 27 No sign of a struggle on Rios's body.

Speaker 69 Because you looked at him, right? Yeah,

Speaker 20 they took pictures of him and everything. There was

Speaker 20 no injuries.

Speaker 89 Nor could they find any possible murder weapon in his possession or in his house.

Speaker 27 They administered a voice stress test, same one they'd given the rabbi's son.

Speaker 4 Stephen passed.

Speaker 30 And he said, you know, they looked at everything. They've cleared me as a suspect.
I'm good. So I think even though I was alarmed,

Speaker 30 I thought,

Speaker 30 gosh, this was a bad day, but it's, but it's done.

Speaker 75 It's over.

Speaker 30 Yeah, I mean, I had no idea what was coming.

Speaker 8 No, she did not.

Speaker 46 A frightening call from Stephen Rios.

Speaker 30 My sister-in-law ran out of the house and she said, Steve's on the phone and he's got a gun.

Speaker 115 She drops to the floor, and you know, she's hysterical.

Speaker 92 And a possible motive for murder.

Speaker 25 He said distinctly, I'm going to out him to the police chief.

Speaker 36 It didn't take long for Stephen Rios's scandalous affair to hit the headlines.

Speaker 37 There it was in the morning newspaper, the day after he told his wife Libby he'd been cleared as a murder suspect.

Speaker 65 His own police chief telling reporters about his personal relationship with victim Jesse Valencia.

Speaker 22 Back home with Libby, Stephen finally came clean.

Speaker 30 I I think his exact words were something like,

Speaker 30 what was in the paper.

Speaker 115 He said, it's true.

Speaker 27 Do you remember what you said in reaction to it?

Speaker 30 I don't think I said much.

Speaker 30 I think I was just pretty quiet and in shock about it.

Speaker 11 She was just 21 years old.

Speaker 16 She just had their baby.

Speaker 42 And then in an instant, it dawned on her.

Speaker 30 Everybody knows. You know, we didn't get to handle that the way a normal married couple would get to handle infidelity.

Speaker 71 Stephen took a temporary leave of absence.

Speaker 8 Four days after the murder, he told police he was going to visit his father in Virginia.

Speaker 2 They gave him permission to go, but to his surprise, made it clear he wasn't out of the woods yet.

Speaker 30 He was certainly a little agitated. And I think it was then that he really

Speaker 30 knew they were still looking at him. Something was still going on.

Speaker 30 So he left, and I went to the grocery store and when I came home, my sister-in-law ran out of the house and she said,

Speaker 30 Steve's on the phone and he's got a gun.

Speaker 8 He didn't go to Virginia.

Speaker 47 He went to a Walmart near the airport in Kansas City, bought himself a shotgun.

Speaker 3 He was threatening to kill himself.

Speaker 30 And I just ran in the house and grabbed the phone and said, you know, fight this. This is, you know, your son needs you.
Fight this. This is, this is crazy.

Speaker 75 You thought he'd do it.

Speaker 28 What comes with that? Panic?

Speaker 30 I don't know if panic's the right word. Just,

Speaker 30 I don't know, sadness.

Speaker 38 Libby felt helpless.

Speaker 41 Less than 24 hours earlier, her life was full of promise.

Speaker 1 And now, was it just gone?

Speaker 115 She drops to the floor, which I've never seen any of my children do.

Speaker 115 And, you know, she's hysterical.

Speaker 21 Libby's parents, Suzanne and John, were were there when Stephen called

Speaker 115 and we had called the police department on the other line and so they knew what was going on so then they arrived and they took over talking to him.

Speaker 35 Police managed to talk some sense into Stephen persuaded him to drive back to Suzanne and John's house though he still had that gun which is why as cops waited in the driveway they were armed and ready just in case.

Speaker 115 To have police officers in your front yard with guns dropped is not

Speaker 30 any part of our life. So it was all pretty traumatic and pretty

Speaker 17 overwhelmed for us. Yeah.

Speaker 116 We're in the back of the house waiting to hear a gun fire.

Speaker 1 But instead, the police led Stephen into the living room and into John and Suzanne's arms.

Speaker 18 And we gave him a hug.

Speaker 115 He's part of our family. And that's, you know, until that changes, that's what you do.

Speaker 83 The respite was short-lived.

Speaker 8 Investigators had talked to the cops Stephen had joined for a beer on the roof night of the murder. And they said Stephen left the building earlier than the 5 a.m.

Speaker 63 time he claimed.

Speaker 8 Police hauled him back to the station.

Speaker 2 Minutes mattered a lot.

Speaker 20 Now, as far as what time he got home, initially he said he got home around 5.20, 5.30.

Speaker 43 That's what Libby had told the police, too.

Speaker 38 So detectives wondered, did Stephen have time to stop off at Jesse's apartment before he he got home?

Speaker 78 We wondered that same thing.

Speaker 30 Your destination is on the left.

Speaker 23 Then from Jesse's house to Stephen and Libby's home.

Speaker 88 We kept it under the speed limit, stopped at some lights along the way too.

Speaker 8 And there is the Rio's house.

Speaker 28 Our total drive time just under 15 minutes, which

Speaker 75 leaves

Speaker 7 20, 25 minutes for whatever may or may not have happened.

Speaker 3 20, 25 minutes for Stephen to confront Jesse, then chase him maybe as far as 200 yards, choke and subdue him, cut his throat, rush back to his car, and drive home.

Speaker 27 You are content that he had enough time to go and commit this offense.

Speaker 20 If he got home at 5:30, yeah, I do.

Speaker 38 5:25?

Speaker 75 Sure.

Speaker 75 20?

Speaker 20 Tighter the time gets, the harder it would be to pull it off, that's for sure.

Speaker 20 I don't deny that.

Speaker 39 But even if he could do it, why would he do it?

Speaker 103 Well,

Speaker 92 maybe the answer was in those online messages between Jesse and Patrick Rogers.

Speaker 25 He said distinctly, I'm going to out him to the police chief.

Speaker 38 And if Stephen knew that,

Speaker 50 what would he do to stop it?

Speaker 53 Given his suicide threat, he was taken to a mental health center for observation.

Speaker 71 But when doctors went to check on him, he was gone.

Speaker 34 A quick manhunt and there he was at the top of a nearby parking garage.

Speaker 5 As they closed in, Stephen Rios moved to the ledge.

Speaker 3 And as television cameras were trained on him, a police negotiator talked him down.

Speaker 20 I just thought his behavior just reeked of guilt, to be honest with you. And it was just, an innocent man doesn't act like that.
Not in my opinion.

Speaker 27 One of the common allegations people will throw at

Speaker 50 homicide detectives is that they got tunnel vision.

Speaker 27 You know, as soon as that man got up on that roof and threatened to kill himself, after that, they just didn't think about any other possibility that was done.

Speaker 20 That's not true. You know, we could have ignored the rest of the leads from there on out and said, now we got our guy.
But you didn't. No, never.

Speaker 46 In fact, Detective Short said his boss made sure to remind the investigative team that Stephen was just one suspect among many.

Speaker 20 He used to tell us every day, don't put on your blinders. Even if this guy looks like this is the person, we got to still clear everybody else or not.

Speaker 42 Like Ed, the aspiring chef, police interrogated him several times.

Speaker 55 Found no motive.

Speaker 90 And besides,

Speaker 20 kind of felt for the guy, to be honest with you, a little bit, because he just wasn't an emotionally strong person at all.

Speaker 22 Was that enough to clear Ed?

Speaker 17 What about his alibi?

Speaker 8 His tough guy roommate, Eric.

Speaker 58 He'd gone out that night, remember, around the time of the murder.

Speaker 20 So we found the individuals that he had gone to, and they confirmed that during that entire timeframe, we could account for

Speaker 20 his whereabouts.

Speaker 4 what about zev the son of columbia's highly respected rabbi zev who denied he was jesse's lover but failed the voice stress test

Speaker 10 police wondered was he the person the eyewitness had seen crying near jesse's house so you took this kid's picture out and showed it to the apparent eyewitness though

Speaker 20 what did that person say i think he said that he wasn't sure was there a chance it was zev i find it hard to believe to me it came down to motive.

Speaker 20 I couldn't see where there would be motive on his behalf to do anything.

Speaker 6 A full week into the investigation, police did not have enough evidence to arrest anyone for the murder of Jesse Valencia.

Speaker 3 But that changed when Detective Short got the DNA results from Jesse's body.

Speaker 30 I packed up his things, sold our house, did all the things that you would do

Speaker 30 if somebody dies.

Speaker 7 A wife moves on, still convinced of her husband's innocence.

Speaker 30 He wasn't covered in blood. There wasn't anything in our house.
There wasn't anything in his vehicle. It does not make sense to me.

Speaker 96 This episode is brought to you by Alloy Health.

Speaker 109 Use code AlloyPod20 for $20 off your first order at myalloy.com.

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Speaker 108 And don't forget to use code AlloyPod20 for $20 off your first order.

Speaker 94 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 94 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and We're Back for Another Season.

Speaker 94 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 94 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrison sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 57 One month after Jesse Valencia's murder, Stephen Rios was again being held at a secure mental health facility.

Speaker 39 Libby went to see him now and again, but it was over for them, and she knew it.

Speaker 30 I

Speaker 30 packed up his things, sold our house, sold his vehicle,

Speaker 30 did all the things that you would do

Speaker 30 if somebody dies. Because it was as if

Speaker 30 that person that I knew

Speaker 30 was gone

Speaker 37 and then Detective Short got the DNA results.

Speaker 71 Remember, the medical examiner sent Jesse's fingernail clippings to the lab.

Speaker 15 And under one of them, there it was.

Speaker 51 Just a minuscule speck of it, but unmistakable.

Speaker 88 Stephen's DNA.

Speaker 8 Problem was, it wasn't the only DNA the lab found.

Speaker 101 Ed's DNA was under that same fingernail, too.

Speaker 20 We were not surprised to find Ed in McDevitt's DNA. Ed readily admitted that there was sexual contact between him and Jesse.

Speaker 20 Steve said he had not had any contact nor had he seen this individual since like the 28th or the 29th of the prior month.

Speaker 27 So we're talking a full week.

Speaker 94 At least, yeah.

Speaker 72 For police, the DNA results settled it.

Speaker 14 They charged Stephen Rios with the first-degree murder of Jesse Valencia.

Speaker 45 And 10 months later, he stood in the Columbia courtroom, not in uniform, but in handcuffs.

Speaker 67 A trial lawyer should read the classics, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, because a good trial lawyer is a master storyteller.

Speaker 8 So, it didn't hurt that the prosecutor brought in from a neighboring county to avoid any whiff of partiality.

Speaker 86 Just happened to be a novelist on the side.

Speaker 60 His name?

Speaker 43 Morley Swingle.

Speaker 67 You need to make sure that every one of those jurors is confident in their soul that this guy is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 14 Of course, Swingle told the jury about that dot of DNA under Jesse's fingernail.

Speaker 58 But there was more.

Speaker 42 Several of Stephen's hairs were found on Jesse's chest.

Speaker 67 The experts said that every hair on Jesse's chest that had a root, they had tested. They all came back being Stephen Rio's DNA.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 58 And the kind of hair it was wasn't the sort that tends to just fall out.

Speaker 67 They were limb hairs, L-A-M-B, hairs from your arm.

Speaker 45 And here, the prosecutor went out on a limb.

Speaker 37 He argued Stephen must have rubbed off those hairs when he used a common police chokehold called the unilateral neck restraint.

Speaker 3 That is how Stephen rendered Jesse unconscious, said Morty Swingle.

Speaker 15 before killing him.

Speaker 119 I've been a police defensive tactics instructor for about 30 years, and I I was the academy instructor that Stephen Rios went through. I'm going to move in and get underneath his armpit.

Speaker 70 This is Todd Burke.

Speaker 42 The prosecutor called him to the stand to demonstrate the chokehold to the jury.

Speaker 38 We asked him and Detective Short to do the same for us.

Speaker 119 Okay, so I'm underneath his arm on this side. I've got him locked up on this side.

Speaker 119 And then I'm going to push my head into the back of his head and basically shut down most of the blood supply in and out of his head.

Speaker 46 And remember the bruises the medical examiner found on Jesse's chest and back?

Speaker 119 If this was not done properly or he didn't get a grip or Jesse was able to fight his way out of it, the first thing that people do is try to shove the person back into the hold or even striking this way.

Speaker 119 And that's where the bruising was.

Speaker 119 Hmm.

Speaker 104 So then he goes down on his back.

Speaker 63 Throat's cut at that point.

Speaker 20 That is the theory, yes.

Speaker 16 But cut his throat?

Speaker 4 With what?

Speaker 90 A knife, just like this, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 57 A clip-on knife with a partly serrated edge, which just happened to be quite popular with cops.

Speaker 5 The prosecutor said Stephen lied when he claimed he never owned one.

Speaker 67 Multiple officers had seen him with a clip knife, and I put several of them on the stand.

Speaker 71 Why use such a knife on his young lover?

Speaker 3 The prosecution called to the stand one of Jesse's close friends, and she told the same story Jesse's online buddy Patrick Rogers did.

Speaker 67 I believe that this police officer I've been having an affair with must be a married man. And the next time he comes over, I'm going to confront him about it.

Speaker 71 And the friend testified out him to the police chief. There it was, said Prosecutor Swingle.

Speaker 55 A motive to kill.

Speaker 67 Jesse had confronted him and Rios chased him and caught him. choked him in his consciousness and cut his throat and then hurried home and got rid of the knife somewhere along the way.

Speaker 2 But Prosecutor Swingle did not persuade Libby because she said she saw Stephen with her own eyes when he came home, walked calmly through their front door.

Speaker 89 And so when she was asked to take the stand in Stephen's defense, she did.

Speaker 30 I've seen him upset before,

Speaker 30 where he was clearly anxious,

Speaker 30 you know, or agitated.

Speaker 30 He was none of those things. He wasn't covered in blood.
I know that there wasn't anything in our house. There wasn't anything in his vehicle.

Speaker 30 And I just do not understand how somebody could, in that timeframe, not only commit the crime, but clean up after themselves, not leave a trace behind, come home to their wife like everything was normal.

Speaker 30 It does not make sense to me.

Speaker 3 After Libby testified, Stephen did too.

Speaker 2 He was emotional, impassioned.

Speaker 8 Swore he didn't own the kind of knife that killed Jesse, never choked anyone. And time discrepancy or not, he simply drove straight home that night.

Speaker 27 Jesse's mother, Linda, didn't buy it.

Speaker 18 He's staring at the prosecutor and trying to look him in the eye and answer his questions, but then he averts his eyes.

Speaker 18 And my daddy always told me that if somebody can't look you in the eye and tell you something, then they're lying to you.

Speaker 10 It was up to the jury now.

Speaker 70 Who would they believe?

Speaker 106 A verdict.

Speaker 18 There was never a doubt in my mind.

Speaker 30 There are a lot of people that cheat. It doesn't make them a murderer.

Speaker 53 On the third floor of the Boone County Courthouse, jurors were holed up, deliberating the fate of disgraced cop Stephen Rios.

Speaker 66 Hours passed.

Speaker 7 Linda and Libby waited on opposite sides of the courtroom.

Speaker 30 There are a lot of people that cheat every day, unfortunately. But it doesn't make him a murderer.

Speaker 18 I knew he was the one that killed him, and there was never a doubt in my mind.

Speaker 106 And nine hours later, the jury agreed with

Speaker 41 Linda.

Speaker 14 Stephen was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.

Speaker 39 Libby was devastated.

Speaker 42 The jury came back and said, guilty.

Speaker 79 What was that like for you?

Speaker 30 I mean, I don't know if there's another word for it, but shock.

Speaker 55 And that was when local crime novelist Barry Bumgarner got a call from a friend on the police force.

Speaker 24 She kept saying, you know, you really ought to look into this. You can't make this stuff up.
You just can't make this up.

Speaker 91 So, more on a whim than anything, Barry, who read about the trial in the local paper, decided to send Stephen Rios a letter.

Speaker 6 See if he'd give her an interview.

Speaker 9 And he said, yes.

Speaker 24 So I was having these visions of, I want justice for Jesse. I'm going to interview Rios and get Rios to confess to me.

Speaker 39 But he didn't.

Speaker 100 Anything but.

Speaker 41 In fact, what Stephen said persuaded Barry to start all over, to investigate the facts of the case herself.

Speaker 50 So what is all of this here?

Speaker 74 What do we got here?

Speaker 24 This is a binder of interviews, which I also have on recorders, police reports, police reports, police reports, police reports.

Speaker 76 Something like

Speaker 38 400 interviews.

Speaker 8 A wealth of information about Jesse and about Stephen

Speaker 72 that the jury mostly never got to see.

Speaker 57 And somewhere in all that, said Barry, she saw a pattern in the lovers' liaisons.

Speaker 3 She said Stephen would usually show up at Jesse's during his shift sometime after midnight, never as late as the time prosecutors said he did on the night of the murder.

Speaker 24 Why would he go up on the parking garage and have a couple of beers and wait until 4.45 a.m. when he had never gone over there and he had known Jesse was asleep and his wife's at home waiting for him?

Speaker 3 And remember how Jesse talked about confronting Stephen, said he'd expose him?

Speaker 8 Some of Jesse's friends told Barry he enjoyed shocking people a bit.

Speaker 65 And those stories he told them about confronting Stephen, about outing him to the police chief, could have been just that.

Speaker 106 Stories.

Speaker 8 What's more, said Barry.

Speaker 57 Despite what Jesse had told his friends, she could find nothing.

Speaker 2 No voicemail, no text, no phone call even, to prove the men talked that week.

Speaker 61 At all.

Speaker 24 So it wasn't like there was a phone call that said, hey, you better get over here and make right with this, or I'm going to out you. There wasn't any of that.

Speaker 24 So for me, the motive and opportunity, it's just, it's just missing.

Speaker 21 And when she talked to the jurors,

Speaker 70 it did not reassure her about their verdict.

Speaker 24 Several of the jurors, five different jurors said, well, I just couldn't wrap my head around if not Rios, then who?

Speaker 26 Weren't the police right, though, when they said, you know, nobody else had a motive?

Speaker 24 I would venture to say the young man with a rabbi father who didn't know his son was gay, gay. I think you maybe had a similar motive for him.

Speaker 42 Zev, the rabbi's son, had always denied being gay, let alone sleeping with Jesse.

Speaker 71 But Barry said Jesse's friends told her he'd joked about outing Zev to his dad.

Speaker 41 So was that just a joke?

Speaker 73 Barry wondered if Zeb might have been that unidentified young man spotted crying in the street middle of the night.

Speaker 74 The eyewitness was shown a photograph of Zev

Speaker 29 and and said, no, I don't think that's the guy.

Speaker 24 He is shown a high school yearbook picture is what they showed him. He did not look like the same young man.

Speaker 24 I saw his picture from when he was 19, from when he was in high school, and he looked nothing like that picture.

Speaker 22 I asked her how many times has she interviewed Stephen?

Speaker 47 More than 100, she said.

Speaker 90 Is it possible?

Speaker 74 Possible that you've spoken to him too much, that you see the world through his eyes, maybe more than is comfortable?

Speaker 24 I don't think so.

Speaker 103 Do you think he's innocent?

Speaker 24 I don't think he should have been convicted.

Speaker 63 He won't go to innocence.

Speaker 24 I don't think he did it.

Speaker 24 I don't. I don't think he had time.

Speaker 5 That was just her opinion, after all.

Speaker 58 And then an amazing thing happened.

Speaker 71 Two years after Stephen's conviction, an appellate court ruled that the jury should not have been allowed to hear testimony from Jesse's friend about what he had told her.

Speaker 46 The business about outing Stephen.

Speaker 2 That, said the appeals court, was hearsay.

Speaker 43 Didn't count.

Speaker 8 Stephen Rios would get a brand new trial.

Speaker 42 Did you think they were just going to release him, let him go?

Speaker 18 I didn't know what they were going to do. I had so many people tell me that, oh, he'll get out of it because he's a cop.
He's going to get out of it. And I said, not as long as I live.
He will not.

Speaker 102 You're going to hear that this defendant committed this murder out of lust and blind ambition.

Speaker 88 Was Stephen Rios on trial for murder or morality?

Speaker 26 The prosecution in this case was based around several things.

Speaker 33 One of them was the fact that Rios lied, lied and lied and lied about sex, sex, and sex.

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Speaker 38 There was a chill in the air and a hint of some sacred thing unspoken the day we climbed up from the hollow to Jesse's hill, the place where he is buried on the family farm.

Speaker 73 What did this area mean to Jesse?

Speaker 18 This hill, this spawn.

Speaker 103 This

Speaker 18 was the...

Speaker 18 He would walk out the path from our house and

Speaker 18 come out here and climb over the fence and then go over to my mom and dad's.

Speaker 69 Which is over that way.

Speaker 18 Yeah, over that one.

Speaker 3 It was the place Linda came to find her courage for the second trial of stephen rios she was gonna need it

Speaker 75 yes

Speaker 68 my client had gay sex with mr von zeal

Speaker 88 stephen rios had a brand new defense attorney a man not interested in winning any prizes for sensitivity His name, Gillis Leonard.

Speaker 118 I like to think I'm sort of like Jimmy Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder, just a good old down-home lawyer that just likes a drink now and then and just likes to do well for people.

Speaker 103 The defense attorney faced no big surprises.

Speaker 2 The prosecutor's case was mostly a replay of the trial three years before.

Speaker 57 Ambitious cop, desperate to keep his secret, kills gay lover.

Speaker 102 You're going to hear that this defendant committed this murder out of lust and blind ambition.

Speaker 57 Science.

Speaker 65 The prosecutor promised the jury would prove it.

Speaker 3 Who else but the murderer would leave DNA under Jesse's fingernail or hairs on Jesse's chest?

Speaker 35 And the crime lab had unmasked who that murderer was.

Speaker 105 The profiles from the three hairs are consistent with each other, as well as with the profile from Stephen Rios.

Speaker 57 But this time around, the prosecutor's case was hobbled by that appellate court ruling.

Speaker 41 This time, the jury would not get to hear what Jesse told his friends about his plans to expose Stephen.

Speaker 67 And that was the motive, I believe. And so the jury didn't get to hear that the second time around.

Speaker 47 Still, the prosecutor drove home the essentials, a timeline that fit the murder and the behavior of a guilty man.

Speaker 23 That threat of suicide and all those lies.

Speaker 26 The prosecution in this case was based around several things. One of them was the fact that Rios lied.

Speaker 32 Lied and lied and lied.

Speaker 33 About sex, sex, and sex. sex.

Speaker 89 Instead of hiding from the lies?

Speaker 103 Yes.

Speaker 68 Life by life.

Speaker 2 Leonard said, so what?

Speaker 118 He was a married man with a small baby at home having an illicit affair with a young boy. Well, young man.
And so, yes, your first inclination is to lie. That doesn't make you a murderer.

Speaker 118 It makes you a liar.

Speaker 47 One of the investigating officers said, when he got up on that rooftop,

Speaker 73 he was going to kill himself. Yes.

Speaker 40 I knew then for sure he was the killer.

Speaker 118 So apparently God, the Holy Ghost, or Jesus Christ, was in a police uniform and was able to look into Stephen's heart and know that that's why he was jumping off.

Speaker 38 The defense attorney hoped that if the jury could look past Stephen's lies and adultery, they'd begin to see holes in the prosecution's evidence, like the timeline police worked out.

Speaker 97 Sheer fantasy, said the defense.

Speaker 118 Look at all that he would have had to accomplish. He would have had to chase this boy down.
I don't know whether you've been out to the scene yet. I have.

Speaker 26 But it's not a short little cross across the street.

Speaker 118 You got to go up and over. He had this quote sudo him with what I used to refer to as the secret ninja chokehold.
Execute him, get rid of the clothes, clean up.

Speaker 51 What the defense asked the jury to do was think of the prosecution's theories as something like a work of speculative fiction.

Speaker 29 Consider the neighbor, said Leonard.

Speaker 98 I'm kind of bumping into the wall.

Speaker 42 The neighbor who said he heard a commotion in Jesse's apartment. Do you recall

Speaker 42 telling police officers that you believe that it was any time between 3.30 and 4.30?

Speaker 98 I gave them a guesstimate, and

Speaker 98 that was what I had told them at the time.

Speaker 15 Between 3.30 and 4.30 a.m., the defense pointed out, at least four people saw Stephen drinking beer on the police station roof.

Speaker 37 A gathering that broke up around dawn, according to this detective.

Speaker 117 I remember making a comment about daybreaking in the far, I guess, northeast sky, I believe the sky started to lighten up.

Speaker 60 But hang on a moment.

Speaker 8 When the defense got to question the medical examiner, she told him the crime happened before daybreak.

Speaker 97 Do you believe now that the sun had not come up when Mr. Valencia had met his end?

Speaker 54 It was dark. That's correct.

Speaker 47 If that was true and Stephen was on the roof until dawn, would that mean he didn't kill Jesse?

Speaker 3 Just as fantastical, said Leonard, was the prosecution's theory of how Stephen would have killed Jesse.

Speaker 88 He showed the jury that dash camp video from the traffic stop Stephen made the night of the murder.

Speaker 8 Might be hard to see, but the defense attorney said it showed there was no knife on Stephen's belt.

Speaker 1 In fact, Stephen said he never owned a serrated clip knife.

Speaker 3 As for what he called the secret ninja chokehold.

Speaker 102 When it's done correctly, how quickly can you render a person attached?

Speaker 119 In about three to seven seconds.

Speaker 102 Step in, underneath his arm.

Speaker 42 Todd Burke had demonstrated the chokehold for the jury in the courtroom on the prosecutor.

Speaker 8 Why use yourself?

Speaker 67 Well, what could be more dramatic than the prosecutor's choked into unconsciousness right in front of the jury?

Speaker 21 But Defense Attorney Leonard had his own dramatic demonstration.

Speaker 102 Okay.

Speaker 102 Alan, take your left arm and grab Mr. Burke's elbow and his arm.

Speaker 99 He wanted the jury to see Jesse would have been able to fight back, to scratch whoever was attacking him.

Speaker 118 How do you do that and not leave a scratch, not leave some more skin under the fingernails, not leave some kind of mark? Again, there were no marks on Stephen.

Speaker 27 And of course there'd be a bit of Stephen's DNA under Jesse's fingernails, argued Leonard.

Speaker 55 They'd had sex.

Speaker 53 A week earlier, sure, but maybe DNA was left over from that encounter.

Speaker 89 Sex could explain the hairs on Jesse's chest, too, he said.

Speaker 56 The crime lab had found several hairs belonging to Stephen on Jesse's comforter.

Speaker 118 His bed

Speaker 118 linens were days old, so he could have easily gotten those hairs rolling around in the bed that him and Stephen had rolled around in a few days before.

Speaker 27 And there was one final piece of scientific evidence the defense wanted the jury to consider.

Speaker 3 Remember, Stephen was not the only person whose DNA was under Jesse's fingernails.

Speaker 8 That aspiring chef, Ed McDevitt, one of the last people who had seen Jesse alive, his DNA was there too.

Speaker 51 And here was a central theme of the defense.

Speaker 5 Police may have gotten the wrong man.

Speaker 30 I know that that clock was set fast. I know that.

Speaker 37 Libby takes the stand with a twist to her testimony.

Speaker 84 Do you feel like you were being called a liar when you were on the stand?

Speaker 30 Oh, I certainly think I was.

Speaker 88 It had been harder than Linda expected to sit through another trial.

Speaker 65 She hated listening to the lawyers score points over her son's most intimate secrets, his lovers,

Speaker 40 even his bedsheets.

Speaker 18 I'd laugh at some of it and then I would get mad because

Speaker 18 I did feel like Jesse was on trial.

Speaker 63 You can't say anything about it.

Speaker 18 And you can't do anything. Can't say anything.

Speaker 8 Defense Attorney Gillis Leonard aggressively poked holes in the prosecution's case.

Speaker 3 He argued Stephen was the victim of a witch hunt.

Speaker 118 I firmly believe that the Columbia Police Department, once they focused on Stephen, they didn't even bother to go anywhere else.

Speaker 99 Of course, the detectives took issue with that.

Speaker 8 Remember their vow to guard against tunnel vision?

Speaker 2 Well, that was just spin, said Leonard.

Speaker 76 It was obvious from the way investigators had handled their search of Ed McDivitt's apartment, Jesse's new lover, the wannabe chef.

Speaker 67 Did you find a bag of knives in that apartment?

Speaker 74 No, sir.

Speaker 75 Did you dissecure anything?

Speaker 67 So you didn't find a bag of knives in the apartment?

Speaker 58 I didn't.

Speaker 92 And yet, Ed himself said he kept the knives in his bedroom in plain sight.

Speaker 4 Leonard called that half-hearted, sloppy detective work.

Speaker 38 Equally sloppy, according to the defense, was investigators' failure to follow up on what Ed's roommate Eric Thurston had told them.

Speaker 102 Did you tell Detective John Schwartz that

Speaker 102 when Ed McDevin uses alcohol along with prescription pills, he does become out of control and very violent?

Speaker 79 Yes.

Speaker 47 Remember, Eric was the one who'd given Ed his alibi.

Speaker 46 Said he'd seen him come home.

Speaker 42 Nonsense, said the defense attorney.

Speaker 2 How could he?

Speaker 76 Eric had been out on a date at the time. So the truth is,

Speaker 76 you weren't home.

Speaker 76 Mr. McDeta did not come home while you were home.

Speaker 120 I don't know at this point. I'm not sure at this point.
I'm not.

Speaker 105 I'm not going to give you one way or the other. I'm sorry.

Speaker 57 The jury got to hear from Ed himself when the prosecutor called him to the stand.

Speaker 67 If I didn't put him on, then he'd be the big phantom that the defense was trying to make sound so terrible.

Speaker 14 There is no video of Ed's testimony, but he told the jury he had never been violent toward Jesse or anyone else.

Speaker 87 So here comes this phantom, and this phantom turns out to be a kind of a shy,

Speaker 67 soft-spoken, very, very, very clean-cut, shy young man who was devastated.

Speaker 32 Ed did not agree to an on-camera interview, but he told us he did not kill Jesse.

Speaker 51 He had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 37 And he grieves for him to this day.

Speaker 86 But of course, there was someone else investigators had considered a person of interest, wasn't there?

Speaker 9 Zev, the rabbi's son.

Speaker 118 His vehicle may or may not have been seen in the area. Jesse's friends told me that he was breaking up with them, and this was this kid's first

Speaker 118 gay love affair. And he was deeply hurt.

Speaker 10 The defense attorney grilled Zev about his relationship with Jesse.

Speaker 102 Just to find so, isn't it true that Jesse was your first

Speaker 102 alternative lifestyle experience?

Speaker 3 You mean my first gay friend?

Speaker 102 No, the first time that you had a gay relationship.

Speaker 3 No, that's not true. I never had a gay relationship.

Speaker 47 Zev did not deny trying to call Jesse the night of his death.

Speaker 102 You called him at 1201.

Speaker 79 Uh, yes.

Speaker 102 Then you tried again at 107.

Speaker 79 Yes.

Speaker 102 Then in your testimony, you went to bed.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 102 Didn't you really just drive over to Jesse's apartment about 3 a.m. in the 1996 Green Buick?

Speaker 75 No.

Speaker 102 Did you not get out of the driver's side and walk around to his apartment?

Speaker 3 No, I didn't do that.

Speaker 52 Seb denied it all.

Speaker 73 He lived in his parents' basement, and if he had taken that car out in the middle of the night, the garage door would have gone up, they would have heard it.

Speaker 118 And, you know, how would we know if they heard it?

Speaker 19 Because the girls were in the middle of the house.

Speaker 118 What, the parents were going to come in and go, oh, hey, on the morning of the murder, our son, who was having an affair with him, we heard the garage door go up and the car leave

Speaker 36 on the witness stand.

Speaker 52 Zev's mother was adamant.

Speaker 6 She swore Zev never left the house at all that night.

Speaker 115 Did you see Zebby go to bed?

Speaker 19 Yes.

Speaker 67 What time was it he went to bed?

Speaker 82 About 1:30.

Speaker 20 There's always that mystery man defense.

Speaker 3 Detective John Short listened to the defense attorney call his investigation sloppy, incompetent, blinkered.

Speaker 5 The real story, he said, was far from that.

Speaker 20 This case file turned out to be almost 1,300 pages.

Speaker 20 We interviewed a lot of people. Every lead was followed up on and completed.
Nothing and no information or evidence led us us to anybody else.

Speaker 69 But what would the jury believe?

Speaker 10 The defense attorney had one more ace up his sleeve.

Speaker 103 Libby.

Speaker 97 By this time, Libby was Stephen's ex-wife.

Speaker 14 She was in a new relationship.

Speaker 8 And she wasn't happy to be back in court.

Speaker 30 I was angry about it.

Speaker 31 I remember fighting with my parents.

Speaker 30 about it and just being, I was, I wanted to move on.

Speaker 83 She told her familiar story, waking up at 5.15 a.m.

Speaker 4 to baby Grayson's cry, seeing her husband walk through the door without a scratch, 5.20 or so.

Speaker 10 Then she volunteered a detail she had told others for years, but did not bring up at the first trial.

Speaker 30 I know that that clock was set fast. I know that.

Speaker 15 Libby testified that Stephen must have arrived home even sooner.

Speaker 57 than she first told police.

Speaker 2 So you set your own clock fast.

Speaker 77 Right. So you wouldn't be late for work.

Speaker 75 Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
How fast?

Speaker 30 It was, I would say, it was probably seven minutes fast, usually.

Speaker 8 Which said the defense meant Stephen got home even earlier than police thought and had even less time to commit the murder.

Speaker 26 He's last year.

Speaker 8 Prosecutor Morley Swingle was skeptical.

Speaker 32 Didn't exactly accuse Libby of lying, but

Speaker 50 close.

Speaker 67 I just wanted to point out what her previous statement had been so the jury would see that, well, she's tried to shorten that time frame a little bit.

Speaker 84 Did you feel like you were being called a liar when you were on the stand?

Speaker 30 Oh, I certainly think I was. For me, it was important to set that record straight.

Speaker 69 Because you believe it to be true.

Speaker 30 I 100% believe it to be true.

Speaker 36 You don't think it's your memory is adjusting and editing?

Speaker 30 No.

Speaker 27 Libby's revised timeline, Attorney Leonard's attack on the police investigation.

Speaker 2 Linda Valencia, grieving mother, hated it.

Speaker 8 Stephen Rios, once convicted cop, saw possibilities.

Speaker 56 And the jury went out and closed the door.

Speaker 14 Two families await the verdict, and Stephen Rios speaks.

Speaker 80 Some people think I'm a killer, some people think I am not.

Speaker 83 What will the jury think?

Speaker 102 Jury will now retire, deliberate, and reach their verdicts.

Speaker 3 Stephen Rios watched the 12 strangers who would be deciding his fate file out of the courtroom.

Speaker 10 Jurors who had not heard his story.

Speaker 76 Not from him, anyway.

Speaker 21 He had chosen not to testify.

Speaker 80 Some people think I'm like the killer, some people think I am not.

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 80 You know, I know I'm not.

Speaker 62 He did speak to us by video link from prison.

Speaker 43 And he had a lot to say about Libby, about Grayson,

Speaker 22 about his once perfect life.

Speaker 79 What happened that made all this go south?

Speaker 78 What was the first thing?

Speaker 78 First mistake?

Speaker 80 Probably crossing paths with Jesse. I mean, meeting him.

Speaker 72 The night he arrested Jesse.

Speaker 80 With a lot of people

Speaker 80 in that circumstance, they're not

Speaker 80 very friendly, but he was...

Speaker 80 It was like 20 questions, and he didn't have

Speaker 80 any ill will.

Speaker 38 But you're a cop.

Speaker 104 You arrest people before, some of them are very nice.

Speaker 78 But you made a decision.

Speaker 79 You said, Okay, I'm going to go back there.

Speaker 78 Something might happen, something sexual might happen because I'm attracted, and so obviously is he.

Speaker 80 Yeah, well, I didn't set out kind of

Speaker 80 for that end result.

Speaker 3 No, he said he only wanted to make sure Jesse was okay.

Speaker 99 The sex was a surprise, he said.

Speaker 78 It is

Speaker 104 widely understood that he

Speaker 78 was enjoying this relationship with you, maybe as much as you were with him, but he found out you were married

Speaker 78 and intended to confront you about that.

Speaker 79 So

Speaker 79 that happened?

Speaker 79 No, that never.

Speaker 78 Well, why would he tell his mother he was going to? Why would he tell his friends he was going to?

Speaker 78 Why would he say those things to people if they never happened?

Speaker 68 I have no idea.

Speaker 80 He never, you know, me being married never

Speaker 80 came up.

Speaker 8 The point was, said Stephen, he didn't know that Jesse might have been planning to expose him, so he simply had no motive to kill him.

Speaker 58 Though he agreed it might be hard to just take his word for it, given how he lied to Libby, the police, to everybody.

Speaker 104 Had you come forward and said, look, I did have a personal relationship with this guy and laid all your cards on the table.

Speaker 78 If you're innocent, why wouldn't you do that?

Speaker 80 Well, having a

Speaker 80 same-sex relationship when you're a married police officer.

Speaker 78 Well, you know, you're a human being as well. They do that.

Speaker 77 Well,

Speaker 80 it's easy to say now, but it wasn't anything that I was proud of. It wasn't anything that

Speaker 80 I wanted to reveal to the guy that I worked with.

Speaker 57 So he said he did want to hide that from the investigators, but he didn't.

Speaker 62 He swore he didn't want to hide anything else.

Speaker 51 Quite the opposite, he said.

Speaker 88 He'd done everything he could to help investigators.

Speaker 80 If you want to search my car, search my car. If you want to search my house, search my house.

Speaker 78 If you want to clear your name, the way to do that is not jumping off a building.

Speaker 79 It's staying and telling the truth.

Speaker 8 Wouldn't you agree?

Speaker 78 So

Speaker 78 why threaten suicide?

Speaker 80 Everything was crazy. I was pissed off.
And I know people say stay in fight, but the life you had

Speaker 75 is

Speaker 80 over.

Speaker 65 Now the question was, would he get it back?

Speaker 22 Libby's parents thought he might.

Speaker 38 While the jury deliberated, they began making plans for Stephen for a life outside of prison.

Speaker 115 All decided he couldn't stay in Columbia. Where was he going to go?

Speaker 115 You know, didn't have a job.

Speaker 6 Crime novelist Barry Bumgarner felt confident, too.

Speaker 14 She had shared some of her research with the defense, was sure he'd made his case.

Speaker 24 There was enough reasonable doubt to drive a truck through.

Speaker 22 She was across the street having lunch when the word came.

Speaker 22 A verdict.

Speaker 116 We, the jury, having found the defendant Stephen Arthur Rios guilty of murder in the second degree.

Speaker 24 There was a gasp in the courtroom. Jesse's friends cheered.
But there was a gasp from a lot of people who were watching it.

Speaker 47 Stephen Rios was found guilty of second-degree murder this time.

Speaker 89 He'll be up for parole in 2049.

Speaker 65 Way too soon for Linda.

Speaker 18 It still wasn't enough.

Speaker 18 I wanted the death penalty.

Speaker 21 But the prosecutor sees some justice in it.

Speaker 67 24 jurors with no dog in the fight came in and heard this evidence and it's 24 to zero that the prosecutor has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Stephen Rios committed this murder.

Speaker 106 Libby still had her doubts.

Speaker 3 In fact, she told us she'll believe Stephen is innocent until she dies.

Speaker 39 It's why she talked to us all these years later.

Speaker 60 It's why she encouraged her son's trips hundreds of miles three times a year to visit his dad in prison.

Speaker 60 We went with him and Libby on one of those long rides.

Speaker 58 He's a young man now.

Speaker 58 It's crazy.

Speaker 74 You're so vague.

Speaker 42 Well, you've chosen a pretty interesting path.

Speaker 30 And I think it's interesting that you say that I've chosen that path because I don't

Speaker 30 feel like it was a choice.

Speaker 30 I think if it was a choice, I

Speaker 30 100% it would be easier for me if I could have believed that he was guilty

Speaker 30 and moved on with my life and not looked back.

Speaker 101 And Linda has her grandchildren now.

Speaker 8 Said little Brayden is a spitting image of Jesse.

Speaker 18 They keep me busy. I got a full schedule.

Speaker 77 But most days she climbs the steep little hill to the place her Jesse will forever be, watched over by the statue.

Speaker 56 of that very Maria of the song.

Speaker 92 Here at the start of his favorite path, the one that goes over the fence and through the woods to the barn over there.

Speaker 22 After Jesse's death, going through his things, Linda found a poem he'd written about this very place.

Speaker 18 I remember it.

Speaker 18 The summer heat,

Speaker 18 the long walk down the road,

Speaker 18 and it's all too familiar as I stroll down the beaten gravel path

Speaker 18 and the Indian winds blow through the high cornfields.

Speaker 18 It's youth,

Speaker 18 escaped from all harm and the unpleasant memories that touched me here.

Speaker 18 They certainly can't touch me now.

Speaker 90 The song of a young man trading his past for a better future.

Speaker 5 It has a different meaning now.

Speaker 49 And miss him still.

Speaker 18 I mean, I think about him every day.

Speaker 74 Every day.

Speaker 18 Every heartbeat.

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