Dangerous Secret

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Speaker 3 Oh my god, why must we practice scratched? There's one everywhere.

Speaker 4 I'm trying, but the freak out. I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 He said, Brad was my best friend in the whole world. Please find out who did this to him.

Speaker 7 My mom's like, Uncle Brad is dead.

Speaker 9 I fell to the floor.

Speaker 10 He finally found his home, and then he was murdered in it.

Speaker 11 Who would want to kill Brad?

Speaker 12 Exactly.

Speaker 9 Who would want to kill Brad?

Speaker 13 You start to see things like ramsack drawers. Maybe somebody was there to rob him.

Speaker 1 He was working as a miner.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 1 How common is it to have gay guys in the mines?

Speaker 6 I think Brad broke that barrier.

Speaker 14 He was having a hard trouble at work.

Speaker 15 Anybody in particular?

Speaker 3 All of them.

Speaker 5 Was he murdered just because of who he was?

Speaker 10 He never pretended to be anyone that he wasn't.

Speaker 13 And Brad receives a text. The person that wanted to meet up on the day that he is murdered.

Speaker 16 Two can keep a secret if one's dead.

Speaker 5 That's the point of the story where the wheels fall off the crazy train. Nine times out of ten, the person that killed you loved you.

Speaker 10 It was the ultimate betrayal.

Speaker 1 The Ohio River Valley. For decades here, generations of men have gone underground.

Speaker 1 And in places like Bel Air, Ohio, population 4,000, it's still a way of life. Is it as tough as most people think? It is.
A coal miner.

Speaker 8 It's not for everybody.

Speaker 6 Super physical, demanding.

Speaker 1 Former mine foreman Franco Pinaccio.

Speaker 6 You're almost 2,000 feet underground.

Speaker 11 One way out.

Speaker 6 The gases will kill you. Moving equipment will kill you.
The coal falling will kill you. It's an unforgiving environment.

Speaker 1 But with risk comes reward. In this case, a big payday for some up to six figures.
luring men like Brad McGarry to don a hard hat and take their chances underground.

Speaker 1 The 43-year-old had risen through the ranks to to become a foreman. A bit remarkable because Brad McGarry was not your father's coal miner.
Friend, Melanie Roscovich.

Speaker 1 He was openly gay, never tried to conceal it, right? Correct. He was comfortable in his skin.
Yes. He was being Brad.

Speaker 10 Yes. He was real.
He never pretended to be anyone that he wasn't.

Speaker 1 But Brad was also a person with a secret. And a secret, as we all know, can be dangerous.

Speaker 3 911, where is your emergency? Oh my gosh, my husband's friend is dead.

Speaker 1 A late Sunday afternoon in May 2017, on with 911, a distraught Sherry Kinney, who along with her husband David and 13-year-old daughter Elizabeth, have just walked into an awful scene.

Speaker 3 We came to visit my husband's friend, and his back door was cracked open.

Speaker 3 And he wasn't answering his phone, so we came in the house, and he's in his basement. Okay.
Oh, my God. Okay, calm down.

Speaker 12 Did you say he's dead?

Speaker 12 I think so.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God. I think so.
He's on the floor. There's one everywhere.
What is his name?

Speaker 3 Brad McGarry.

Speaker 15 Brad McGarry?

Speaker 16 I was on just general patrol. driving through the town when I got the call.

Speaker 1 Veteran Bel Air patrolman Hank Martin was the first to respond and encountered the couple and the young teenager outside Brad McGarry's house.

Speaker 16 Highly upset, crying, shaken up, what you would normally expect of somebody finding a dead body.

Speaker 1 Officer Martin entered the basement to secure the scene. On the floor, sandwiched between a covered hot tub and piles of storage, was Brad.
with an apparent gunshot wound to the head.

Speaker 16 I seen blood by his head area, and he was laying down and

Speaker 16 touched, didn't get any kind of pulse.

Speaker 4 I'm trying not to freak out. I'm sorry.
I can't not

Speaker 4 see that man. I'm not supposed to see that man.

Speaker 8 It's all right. It's understandable.

Speaker 1 Understandable, because the Kinney family and Brad were as close as could be. David and Brad met several years earlier in coal mining training classes.

Speaker 4 We just took him and his family. You know, we celebrate holidays.
We have a vacation and all the Christmas to go on together with him. I'm like, it's gone, go, go.

Speaker 1 Ryan Aller, chief detective with the Belbon County Sheriff's Office, arrived on the scene to assist the Bel Air PD.

Speaker 5 They were very close.

Speaker 5 Best friends. Best friends.

Speaker 1 Now, meanwhile, what's happened to the daughter? She saw the body.

Speaker 11 There was no question.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 8 So you get her out of there, I guess, huh? Yes.

Speaker 5 We didn't want to re-traumatize her more than she already had been.

Speaker 1 the girl was taken to a neighbor's as police got the story from the couple how you come about coming out here

Speaker 4 that right there the weed eater is the whole plan okay

Speaker 4 you're bringing the weed eater yes sir david told police they'd stop by to lend brad a weed eater i noticed that the kitchen was scattered there was stuff all over i told my wife i said cherry something's wrong there's something's everywhere she said just open the door and yell for brad david yelled but got no response he went down the basement

Speaker 4 and then he yelled call 911 and i

Speaker 4 ran down i can't not believe that

Speaker 1 that basement was now a possible crime scene tell me what you're seeing what we have is a garage slash basement

Speaker 5 and it's what i would call organized clutter There's a lot of stuff, but it's stack packed in containers and whatnot.

Speaker 1 Cluttered, but no signs of a struggle.

Speaker 5 If you're just looking at a dead body in a basement with a head wound, you definitely got to look and say, could this have been a suicide?

Speaker 4 In the past, he has, but

Speaker 4 he has no badges or anything. I think at one point in time he was, but nothing like that.
I don't think it was anything male

Speaker 4 that we know of.

Speaker 1 But if Brad shot himself, something was missing.

Speaker 16 If it was a suicide, a gun would have to be in the immediate area and we didn't see it.

Speaker 4 I didn't see a gun. Now, it's not saying he couldn't have fell on it when he could have.

Speaker 5 A lot of times, if it's a suicide, you know, gun will fall underneath him or whatnot.

Speaker 1 There could well have been a weapon tucked under his belt.

Speaker 1 Investigators rolled Brad's body over.

Speaker 4 I didn't see a firearm. No, I didn't either.

Speaker 4 I don't see nothing there, guys.

Speaker 16 We didn't find anything. There was no gun there.
So we had to go to step two, which was that it was a homicide.

Speaker 1 You need to canvas the neighborhood? Correct. See if anybody's doorbell cam caught an image or something.

Speaker 5 Those are so helpful right now.

Speaker 5 Everybody seems to got one,

Speaker 5 but at this time period, it was kind of a novelty.

Speaker 1 Only one house on Brad's block had security cameras. And stroke of luck, that house happened to belong to the Bel Air chief of police.

Speaker 1 What are the odds that he would live on the street to have a camera that was operational?

Speaker 5 Sometimes things work out.

Speaker 1 The chief's security video would be scrutinized for clues.

Speaker 1 Back at the house, officers were done talking to Brad's shell-shocked friends. Go ahead over your truck.
I know it's tough.

Speaker 5 You guys go home, rest. We will be in touch in a day or two.
I shook his hand and he kind of pulled me in to the truck window there and looked me right in the eye. He said,

Speaker 5 Brad is my best friend in the whole world. Please find out who did this to him.

Speaker 1 Please figure this out. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's exactly what the detective intended to do. But he had no idea the secret he'd uncover along the way.

Speaker 10 Those who knew Brad personally lost a dear friend.

Speaker 1 What was behind this mysterious killing?

Speaker 5 All the cabinets and drawers are open, there's stuff spilled out on the floor.

Speaker 1 A robbery, or maybe something more sinister.

Speaker 5 We definitely had to look at this as a potential hate crime. Was this the reason that he was murdered just because of who he was?

Speaker 1 Coal miner Brad McGarry had been shot to death inside his Bel Air, Ohio home. The news blindsided friends like Melanie Ruscovich.
So sudden, so shocking, huh?

Speaker 10 Yes, and so senseless.

Speaker 11 What did the town lose when Brad got killed?

Speaker 10 The town lost security.

Speaker 10 They didn't feel safe any longer. And those who knew Brad personally,

Speaker 10 they lost a dear friend.

Speaker 6 You're never going to see him again.

Speaker 1 Just like that, so quick.

Speaker 9 Yep, in a heartbeat.

Speaker 12 We were devastated.

Speaker 1 Mary Kay Millikan and her daughter Abby thought of Brad as family. How do you find out, Abby?

Speaker 8 I was at school.

Speaker 7 It was my senior year, and my mom came to school. I got called down to the office.
So I went down there. I was like, hey, what's up? And my mom's like, Uncle Brad is dead.

Speaker 9 And I fell to the floor.

Speaker 7 I was a mess, just sobbing uncontrollably. And my mom had to take me home for the rest of the day.

Speaker 1 After a late night processing the scene, Police were back on the case early the next morning.

Speaker 5 You got to get Brad's backstory in here pretty quickly, huh? Yes. We did a lot of interviews in a short period of time.

Speaker 5 He has many people that knew Brad because it's very important for us to get to know Brad.

Speaker 10 I have known Brad for almost 20 years.

Speaker 1 Mary Kay was one of the friends who spoke to police.

Speaker 11 If he were to walk in the door here, who would we meet?

Speaker 12 He's larger than life. He absolutely had the best personality and he was friendly and just wanted to have a good time.

Speaker 11 Make you laugh?

Speaker 7 I'll definitely make you laugh.

Speaker 12 One of the craziest things we ever did, we were at Walmart and we were just goofing off and he was looking at fish and he wanted to ask some questions about the fish.

Speaker 12 We couldn't find anybody to help, so he just got on the intercom and he was yelling for help himself.

Speaker 11 Over here on 3.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 18 Yeah, somebody help me at the fishies, please.

Speaker 1 Mary Kay and Abby met Brad before he became a coal miner. Back then, he was a professional hairdresser.
The switch had been a head-snapping career change.

Speaker 12 I couldn't wrap my head around it, but I still can't.

Speaker 1 Why do you think he made the change?

Speaker 12 The money. He was looking to make more money and he just wasn't making the kind of money he wanted in doing hair.

Speaker 1 To Abby, Brad was more than just an uncle figure. He was a role model.

Speaker 7 I was about 15, 16 years old, and one day I just had an urge to tell him.

Speaker 8 I said, Uncle Brad, I need to tell you something.

Speaker 11 He said, what's up, little girl?

Speaker 7 And I said,

Speaker 7 I'm gay.

Speaker 1 No way. Yeah.
And he said. How did he, how did he swing with that?

Speaker 17 Girl.

Speaker 1 And it was Brad Abby turned to when she was bullied in high school.

Speaker 11 Would you get a hold of Uncle Brad and say, I'm having a really bad day here?

Speaker 7 Absolutely. I'd text him and be like, Uncle Brad, this and this happened today.
I feel so low.

Speaker 12 Please, like, what do I do?

Speaker 7 And he would just tell me, water off a duck's back, baby girl. You know,

Speaker 7 you shine like a light in the darkness. and don't let that crown fall because

Speaker 11 sorry.

Speaker 1 It's such a sweet thought. Yeah.

Speaker 8 It's something that ought to be written out in a card by your bedside.

Speaker 7 I think about that message all the time because that's really what pulled me out of the darkness. That's really what

Speaker 7 I was like, okay, I do matter. I need to be myself.

Speaker 1 Who would murder a friend like that? Police wondered if Brad's killing was a random attack. There were no signs of a struggle in the basement, but upstairs was a different story.

Speaker 5 All the cabinets and drawers are open, there's stuff spilled out on the floor.

Speaker 16 Things scattered everywhere, especially in the kitchen.

Speaker 1 Had Brad interrupted a burglary in progress and paid with his life? His best friend David had shared this bit of information.

Speaker 4 I know he had guys here just last day and the last week putting in the pins.

Speaker 16 I said, well, do you know if he paid them by cash or check?

Speaker 16 Well, I think maybe cash and Brad had cash around the house and that drew up a bit of a red flag.

Speaker 1 Investigators were also pursuing another line of inquiry.

Speaker 5 We definitely had to look at this as a potential hate crime. Was this the reason that he was murdered just because of who he was?

Speaker 1 Friend and former mine foreman Franco Panaccio says that at work, Brad did not hide his orientation. In fact, he embraced it.

Speaker 6 He just didn't dress like the typical coal miner. You know, all of us did.
You know, he took pride in how he looked, how he smelled, you know, how he presented himself.

Speaker 6 Brad always wore a safety gear, but Brad always made a point to make sure his shirt was always unbuttoned three or four buttons down, show his chest, show his gold chains, sprayed his cologne.

Speaker 6 He would joke around, let you know if you thought you're good looking,

Speaker 6 compliment you maybe how you looked in a certain pair of jeans that day or whatever.

Speaker 1 Now Brad was dead, a bullet to the brain. Maybe not everybody found his joke so funny.
Time to find out what was going on underground.

Speaker 14 He was having a hard trouble at work.

Speaker 17 Anybody in particular?

Speaker 3 All of them.

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Speaker 1 Speaking to investigators, Brad McGarry's friends were at a loss.

Speaker 4 What would be so bad that you'd have to shoot him over, you know?

Speaker 1 Did that make any sense to you?

Speaker 6 It did not make any sense.

Speaker 11 Who would want to kill Brad?

Speaker 12 Exactly.

Speaker 9 Who would want to kill Brad?

Speaker 1 Brad and I met in police continued to press those close to Brad for clues. Wendy Neubauer was a friend who'd met Brad years earlier at a wedding.

Speaker 15 What's your relationship to Brad?

Speaker 10 Oh, we were just

Speaker 17 best friends.

Speaker 1 Brad, it seemed, had a lot of best friends. This best friend talked to police about one theory they were already considering.
His murder is a hate crime.

Speaker 14 He was having a hard trouble at work.

Speaker 15 Anybody in particular?

Speaker 17 All of them.

Speaker 1 Wendy, with her two children in tow, said initially Brad had no problems underground.

Speaker 17 It took a lot for him to get associated up there being gay up at

Speaker 20 that one. And he got settled and situated and they all loved him.

Speaker 1 Co-worker Franco Panaccio agreed.

Speaker 6 Never did I ever see anybody give him a weird look or want to beat him up, so to speak.

Speaker 1 But after a recent transfer, Wendy said Brad was stressed.

Speaker 20 And they moved him down here and he just was miserable with his work.

Speaker 17 He was struggling

Speaker 10 with all of all the people

Speaker 20 making him work over when he didn't want to, making him do this and the people weren't nice to to him and that.

Speaker 1 To run down the information from Wendy, Detective Awler, along with fellow investigator Doug Cruz, utilized their own inside man.

Speaker 5 We lucked out a former detective of ours had left to work at the mine. So we had a pretty good information pipeline into there and able to kind of cut through the BS.

Speaker 1 So what was the real story? Had Brad been harassed or discriminated against? Anyone at the mines they should look at who may have had a hateful motive?

Speaker 13 Quite to to the contrary, from everybody we talked to, Brad was very well liked by his co-workers.

Speaker 1 So there's nobody down in the pits that has it in for this guy, as far as you can tell.

Speaker 13 People in the coal mine, in the small towns, were much more accepting to different lifestyles than somebody in the bigger city would think.

Speaker 1 Since a hate crime didn't seem likely, police dug into their other theories, like a burglary gone wrong.

Speaker 13 You start to see things like ramsack drawers and noticing that there's a lot of stuff in the house, that maybe somebody was there to rob him, was spooked, maybe there was a confrontation and a shooting.

Speaker 1 And there was a lot to rob. Brad was a collector.

Speaker 12 Oh, he had lots of toys. He liked his antiques.

Speaker 1 Oh, antiques, that was his thing.

Speaker 8 That was his thing. That was his catnip.

Speaker 12 That was his catnip for sure.

Speaker 12 His house was filled with all kinds of antiques and country things.

Speaker 10 He had a Cracker Barrel house.

Speaker 1 His house was like a Cracker Barrel?

Speaker 10 The decor.

Speaker 1 Kind of woody and rough.

Speaker 19 Yeah, it was really nice.

Speaker 10 So that's kind of the joke that we have about Cracker Barrel, has to do with his home decor and the way that he decorated.

Speaker 4 I know he had guys here.

Speaker 1 Investigators remembered what Brad's best friend David had told them. Two workers had recently installed a fence.
Had they come back to rob the place?

Speaker 1 It was a lead detectives followed, but they were having little luck in tracking down those workers.

Speaker 16 You know, we would have to try to find some kind of contract

Speaker 16 or something when you have major work around your house.

Speaker 1 No such contract was found.

Speaker 16 We were looking for a ghost, in other words.

Speaker 1 And a closer examination of the upstairs gave police pause.

Speaker 16 The ransacking.

Speaker 1 It was too neat.

Speaker 16 Articles were taken out and dumped. It was like in one particular area instead of being strewn.

Speaker 1 Valuables within easy reach?

Speaker 5 There was nice televisions. There was

Speaker 5 iPads, iPhones, high-dollar items, things that a thief could sell pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 The burglary scenario was scrapped. Police now wonder if Brad's murder wasn't about plunder or hate, was it about love?

Speaker 5 Nine times out of ten, the person that killed you loved you at some point. So you always look towards lovers, family.

Speaker 1 Of particular interest to investigators, Brad's most recent romance. The Kinneys had provided a possible lead on that too.

Speaker 4 He's the last relationship he was in. It was cooled off and he hasn't been with anybody ever since.
He's my best friend.

Speaker 1 How long ago was that?

Speaker 4 I couldn't even tell you.

Speaker 4 Who was the girl? No,

Speaker 4 it was a guy.

Speaker 4 Oh, he was in with a guy? Yes, sir. Okay, who was the guy?

Speaker 4 Scott something.

Speaker 5 Brad had a relationship that had soured in the past couple weeks with a man named Scotty.

Speaker 1 So this is a recent relationship that's come to an end, huh? Yes, apparently. That's interesting.

Speaker 5 Absolutely. And at that point, we didn't have a whole lot to go on, so we were pretty interested in that.

Speaker 1 They needed to track down the recent love interest. Where was he the night Brad was killed? And investigators were about to learn that Scotty was not the only man in Brad's life.

Speaker 14 He was insinuating that they were having sex. It was romantic.

Speaker 5 Brad got a text message that they were going to meet up.

Speaker 1 A romantic rendezvous arranged by text. And the sender had a secret.

Speaker 13 This becomes a person that we want to reach out to immediately. One of the things we learned was that he's almost living a double life.

Speaker 19 An investigation still underway into the death of the man who lived at this home on Wagner Avenue.

Speaker 1 As word of Brad McGarry's murder was echoing through the Ohio River Valley, investigators were busy digging into Brad's love life, trying to locate a recent ex.

Speaker 4 Scott something.

Speaker 8 Scotty.

Speaker 1 First name, Scotty.

Speaker 13 Nobody seemed to know what his name was off the initial

Speaker 13 conversations with people.

Speaker 1 Pretty quickly, though, police were able to utilize social media to identify Scotty as 22-year-old Scott Ray Butler. His dad was a friend of Brad's from the coal mines.

Speaker 1 Brad met Scotty at a Butler family party. They were on and off?

Speaker 11 Is that the picture you had?

Speaker 12 They were a hookup, yeah.

Speaker 6 Wasn't going anywhere serious.

Speaker 7 No, no, it wasn't going anywhere serious.

Speaker 1 When investigators located Scotty, he was willing to talk. So what is Scotty's story?

Speaker 5 Scotty basically says that he and Brad were kind of on again, off again, and it had kind of cooled off.

Speaker 1 Did your people say Scotty we got news for you?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 1 How do you take it?

Speaker 5 He was upset.

Speaker 5 I'd say devastated.

Speaker 13 When the investigators informed Scotty

Speaker 13 of Brad's passing, you know, all the appropriate indicators were present. There were no indicators of resentment or anything where Scotty wished bad things upon Brad.

Speaker 1 Scotty was cleared in Brad's murder, and not just because he showed genuine affection for Brad. You see, Scotty had an ironclad alibi, as in Iron Bars.

Speaker 13 He was incarcerated at the time of this homicide.

Speaker 1 Scotty was in jail for a probation violation on a prior burglary conviction. So he was in-house and accounted for in the county jail when you believed that Brad had been murdered.

Speaker 5 Correct. It's a pretty good alibi.
A very good alibi.

Speaker 1 But Scotty wasn't the only love interest detectives were hearing about.

Speaker 14 We're cousins. Brad's my first cousin.
Grew up together. All right.

Speaker 1 Brad's cousin Skylar Strausser came forward with a story, and for investigators, a tantalizing new lead.

Speaker 1 She tells you about a Sunday brunch. Families getting together.
What's her story?

Speaker 5 So the night before the murder, Brad went to a family wedding and had spent the night there. The next day, there was like a family brunch.

Speaker 14 We were at Grammy's on Sunday. At Grammy's, we meet the cousins, most of the cousins.

Speaker 5 During this brunch,

Speaker 14 Brad tells his cousin skylar he got a text message from what uh she took as a lover that they were going to meet up in a little bit to take a nap he made a joke about he said tisha which is one of the other cousins calls it taking a nap and it wasn't taking a nap he was insinuating that they were having sex it was romantic so he's getting this text message let's hook up a little later huh correct and then he leaves the family gathering is that what happens yes we kind of ate and he just left.

Speaker 14 Just kind of left. I don't even think he stayed for dessert.

Speaker 1 A tryst with a lover on the very day Brad was killed.

Speaker 13 This becomes a person that we want to reach out to immediately. This is somebody that we need to know because they obviously are going to have a piece of the puzzle that we're missing.

Speaker 1 But once again, detectives didn't get a full name. Though Schuyler told police the relationship had been going on for years, the cousins just knew him as DJ.

Speaker 11 That mean anything to you?

Speaker 5 No, at that time now, we don't know who DJ is.

Speaker 1 Brad's friend Melanie had heard a lot about DJ. You knew him as DJ?

Speaker 1 What did DJ mean to Brad?

Speaker 10 Oh, he was absolutely in love with him. There wasn't anything that he wouldn't do.
If DJ needed anything, Brad was right there. He would literally rearrange anything in his life.
to be there for him.

Speaker 1 Brad thought he'd meant the love of his life the way you're describing it. Was it being reciprocated?

Speaker 10 From what Brad had shared with me, he believed that DJ was in love with him as well.

Speaker 1 The love of Brad's life. Just one problem.
A big one.

Speaker 13 One of the things we learned was not only is he married, but he's almost living a double life because he, while he's dating Brad, he's portraying himself to everybody that he knows as a happily married man.

Speaker 1 A married man with a secret was it a dangerous secret? Detectives needed to find DJ right away. Turns out, he was someone they'd already met.

Speaker 14 I didn't even know his name until I went on Facebook to find it out.

Speaker 18 Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 21 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 18 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 21 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 18 Two new episodes drop every week and there's even a bonus once a month.

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Speaker 1 Investigators were running down their most promising lead, a married man who was having a long-time affair with Brad McCary, one who had had an intimate rendezvous planned with Brad on the day he was killed.

Speaker 1 A guy named DJ.

Speaker 14 I didn't even know his name until I went on Facebook to find it out. I knew who he was.

Speaker 1 Brad's cousin had already done some detective work for the investigators.

Speaker 14 I guess they call him DJ or David David Kenney.

Speaker 1 David, the guy who was at the house.

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 1 With his wife and had found the body.

Speaker 11 Correct.

Speaker 1 DJ is David Kenney.

Speaker 5 David Kinney.

Speaker 1 David Kinney, Brad's best friend from the mines, who with his wife and stepdaughter had found Brad's body.

Speaker 4 I'm trying not to freak out. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 David, the guy on the scene who had sounded so devastated, so willing to help.

Speaker 4 I know he had guys here just last day and the last week putting in the pins.

Speaker 1 Known to friends and family as DJ, short for David Jr. Had he lied about the true nature of his relationship with Brad.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 David agreed to speak with Chief Detective Ryan Awler voluntarily and to bring along a cell phone.

Speaker 5 We had already told David we're going to need copies of all the text messages you have with Brad because he was one of the last people to talk to Brad.

Speaker 13 All right. Give me a couple minutes and I'll buzz right through this.
And I'll get back to you.

Speaker 1 He's turned it over to you without an issue, huh?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 1 Here it is. Knock yourself out.

Speaker 11 Take a look. Correct.

Speaker 17 Okay. All right.

Speaker 13 We have the ability to, while Detective Oller is speaking with Mr.

Speaker 13 Kinney in one room, that I can literally take his phone, walk down the hallway in our forensics lab, and process it in real time while he's talking to him.

Speaker 1 And talking to David, it seemed his grief was still raw.

Speaker 17 It's

Speaker 1 Down the hall, Detective Cruz was using a forensic software program to retrieve texts and photos, some deleted from David's iPhone.

Speaker 13 What I'm finding on the phone is pretty clear. These guys are way more than friends.
You know, they're intimately involved.

Speaker 17 david here's some

Speaker 17 here's some stuff on your phone it's a little

Speaker 1 a little questionable yes sir confronted with the evidence on his phone david changed his story and admitted to being more than friends with his best friend brad did you guys have sex together

Speaker 17 there's a few times in the past where

Speaker 17 you know he's attempted a lot and we've

Speaker 17 kind of

Speaker 17 fooled around a little bit in the past. Okay.

Speaker 5 When was the last time you guys did do anything together?

Speaker 17 Um

Speaker 17 it's been a little while. Weeks, maybe months, a month, Max.

Speaker 1 But what about that take-a-nap date Brad told his cousin about? Investigators estimated Brad's time of death to be between 3 and 3.30, close to that planned meeting.

Speaker 1 So Detective Ulr wanted David to account for his whereabouts around that time.

Speaker 1 Then David said he drove alone to window shop some trailers for his truck before heading back to his house in Brilliant, 30 miles north of Brad's place in Bel Air.

Speaker 17 I was back home, I think it was like three. I was back home about three o'clock.

Speaker 1 Three o'clock, near the approximate time time Brad was killed. But once again, David's phone told a different story.

Speaker 13 The GPS clearly shows that at the time we believe that Brad was murdered, your phone was there.

Speaker 1 David's story suddenly morphed again. He was at Brad's after all.

Speaker 17 I went to his house.

Speaker 4 He was not there.

Speaker 17 I stayed and I hung around for a little while and that was it.

Speaker 1 David insisted he left before Brad got back from from his family brunch. But remember, the Bel Air police chief had a home security camera just down the street from Brad's.

Speaker 1 It showed David in his wife Sherry's car heading toward Brad's house just before 2 p.m.

Speaker 5 We see David drive by Chief Kowalik's house. Then, 56 minutes after that, you see Brad drive down the road.
And then about 15 minutes later, there goes David leaving.

Speaker 17 David?

Speaker 17 Look at me.

Speaker 16 It's still starting to look.

Speaker 17 Yes, sir, I know.

Speaker 17 The look pretty messed up. Listen.

Speaker 1 As the evidence mounted, David's story took another left turn.

Speaker 17 I'm going to tell you. Then who did? Tell me what happened.

Speaker 5 That's the point of the story where the wheels fall off the crazy train.

Speaker 1 David said, yes, he was still there when Brad got home. But said when Brad arrived, he wasn't alone.

Speaker 17 He had

Speaker 17 another guy with him.

Speaker 17 i don't know who he was i don't know his name he starts telling me about

Speaker 5 okay i i was at the house brad pulls up with this dirty looking guy i've never seen before he went in the garage okay

Speaker 17 it's okay

Speaker 17 david okay look at me look at look at me in the eye but you can tell me what happened next that was so scary

Speaker 17 what happened

Speaker 17 You heard a gunshot?

Speaker 17 You heard a gunshot? Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 So there's a mystery man who arrives with Brad who then ends up killing him.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 1 But detectives knew there was a problem with the third man scenario.

Speaker 4 We say Brad and this guy pulled in with the beamer? Yes, sir.

Speaker 17 Brad's front seat in the beamer was full of stuff that he brought from the wedding. Yes, sir.
He didn't have a passenger.

Speaker 5 Look, here's a picture of the car with all the stuff there. So where did the mystery man sit?

Speaker 1 So mystery man man is now gone.

Speaker 5 Mystery man is out.

Speaker 1 So now he's got to explain what he's doing in the basement with the body of his best friend.

Speaker 1 In a quiet voice, a now subdued David began yet another version of his story.

Speaker 17 Brad has been wanting to leave my wife for a while.

Speaker 17 Oh, quite a while.

Speaker 5 From what we gleaned at this point is Brad felt like David was taking advantage of him. He wanted to be with David.
He wanted David to leave leave his wife and be with them. Then be a real couple.

Speaker 1 According to David, he arranged to meet with Brad that Sunday afternoon, not for sex, but to end their years-long affair. News, David said, that Brad didn't take very well.
He flipped out. Yes, sir.

Speaker 17 He hit me, smacked me around a couple times.

Speaker 17 He said, this has been going on for too long. You need to leave your wife.
Okay. I told him, I said, I'm done.
I'm not doing this with you no more. I'm done.

Speaker 1 That's when, according to David, Brad pulled out a Derringer pistol.

Speaker 17 He kept believing it at me and grabbed it. Okay.

Speaker 17 What happened after you grabbed it?

Speaker 17 I pushed him. Okay.

Speaker 17 Then what happened? I saw him.

Speaker 1 Detective Awler asked David to demonstrate.

Speaker 17 Should we work?

Speaker 17 In

Speaker 1 Investigators had a confession and a claim of self-defense. David Kinney was arrested for the murder.
How would his self-defense story play for a jury? And how would the whole story play for his wife?

Speaker 1 David Kinney admitted shooting his best friend and secret lover, Brad McGarry.

Speaker 11 I was like, no way.

Speaker 7 There's no way.

Speaker 11 Couldn't be him.

Speaker 1 No, could not be. Why not? Why rule him out in your mind?

Speaker 7 Just because of how close him and Brad were. You know, they were doing everything together.
Their families went on vacation and holidays. I could not picture him doing that.

Speaker 1 David's admission meant the horrible shock of finding his friend's body had been an act.

Speaker 1 Question now was: Had his wife Sherry been acting too? My kid's gone, Michael.

Speaker 1 Did you have a sense of whether the wife knew about this at that point?

Speaker 5 We were awful interested in that.

Speaker 1 You could come up with a narrative where she's the wrong person in the trash store and the gun's in her hand.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's not hard to get there as a story.

Speaker 5 It's really not.

Speaker 1 David told investigators Sherry knew nothing about any of of it. But when David asked if he could be the one to break the news to Sherry,

Speaker 1 investigators kept the camera rolling, keen to see her reaction.

Speaker 17 He flipped out on me. He grabbed that 22-dairy tree.

Speaker 17 Before he even did that, he slapped me around a little bit after I told him this was it.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 17 You are fing it. Listen.

Speaker 13 The shock just goes over her

Speaker 13 because he doesn't come out and say it, but he's clearly walking up to it.

Speaker 17 No, no,

Speaker 13 it comes across very honest, very raw at the moment that it's going on.

Speaker 5 We believe she definitely reacted appropriately, but what is that reaction?

Speaker 1 So much to absorb at once. Her husband was Brad's killer and Brad's lover.
So you had an affair with him

Speaker 1 before.

Speaker 1 I wanna know what happened between you two.

Speaker 1 Before.

Speaker 1 I wanna know

Speaker 1 I wanna know the last time

Speaker 1 it's been a while

Speaker 5 our heart broke for any one of those things was enough to break anybody but to get all that news at once

Speaker 5 it was a lot yeah

Speaker 1 and there was more perhaps the most painful realization of all.

Speaker 17 Oh my god, you kept me and our daughter there. I know, I know.

Speaker 17 I didn't know what else to do.

Speaker 13 Mr. Kinney took not only his wife, but his stepdaughter, a child, to a crime scene where he knew, he knew

Speaker 13 that there was a dead man inside.

Speaker 13 I mean, there's just no other way to describe it as other than disgusting.

Speaker 1 This guy brings his stepdaughter to a murder scene, and she sees everything.

Speaker 11 Who would do that?

Speaker 10 I think he felt really backed into a corner, and his mind was going crazy at that point because there's not a sane person that would involve a child in that way.

Speaker 4 We would ask, however, that given his record.

Speaker 1 David pleaded not guilty to aggravated or premeditated murder. With bail set at $1 million, he remained behind bars to await trial.

Speaker 1 When Brad's friends got wind of David's self-defense claim, they thought, no way, what do you think happened here?

Speaker 12 I think that Brad gave him an ultimatum. And I think he said, if you don't tell Sherry, I'm going to.

Speaker 1 You see this as premeditated.

Speaker 15 He came there with murder on his mind.

Speaker 10 Absolutely. So that the truth would not come out about their affair and his fear of losing his family.

Speaker 1 Law enforcement agreed.

Speaker 16 Either we're going to be amicable and reasonable with this, or one of us is going to walk away because two can keep a secret if one's dead.

Speaker 1 In January 2018, David went on trial at the Belmont County Court of Common Pleas. Prosecutors were ready to rebut David's claim of self-defense with their own smoking gun.

Speaker 1 Forensics, they revealed, showed that Brad was shot from behind, in the back of the head, not in the front, as David had initially said.

Speaker 1 What's more, the jury heard that Brad had been shot not just once in the back of the head, but twice, which didn't exactly sound like self-defense.

Speaker 15 Your Honor, we have made the decision that Mr.

Speaker 1 Kinney will not testify. David never took the stand to explain that second shot, but jurors were shown the police interview with Detective Alder.

Speaker 5 You shot him once, he's dead on the ground. Why'd you shoot him again?

Speaker 20 It was just, it just happened

Speaker 1 after just four hours of deliberations.

Speaker 4 We, the jury, duly impaneled and sworn, find the defendant David Carl Kinney guilty.

Speaker 1 His sentence, life in prison without parole.

Speaker 4 Man, I meant for any of this to happen and I wish I could take it all back. I know all the apologies in the world will never bring him back, but I want you to not treat him sorry for it all.

Speaker 5 It doesn't bring Brad back. No.

Speaker 12 Nothing's going to bring back the laughter that we had and the tears when something would happen and that we were always there for the other.

Speaker 1 Sherry Kinney divorced David and has done her best to move on. She told us she's found a new love, has remarried, and is now focused on her new life and being there for her three children.

Speaker 1 Brad's friends are left with the notion that the hairdresser-turned coal miner faced a much darker and more sinister peril above ground than he ever did below.

Speaker 10 It was the ultimate betrayal.

Speaker 1 It could have played out another way, don't you think?

Speaker 10 It could have. He could have come clean to his family, talked to his wife, let her know what was going on.

Speaker 13 He was willing to kill somebody

Speaker 13 that loved him

Speaker 13 to keep a secret that I really honestly feel at the end of the day, nobody would have cared about.

Speaker 1 When do you miss him the most, Abby?

Speaker 7 I miss him the most when I'm feeling sad or anxious. or unsure of myself.
Sometimes I go on messenger and I just message his account.

Speaker 7 I know nothing will come back, but I think that he got the message up there in heaven some way.

Speaker 1 Uncle Brad to Abby, close friend to so many others, a man comfortable in his own skin, be it cutting hair or bringing up coal.

Speaker 1 Most of all, they will remember this companion they met along the way as someone who liked to tease, love,

Speaker 8 and of course laugh.

Speaker 12 I have gotten some feeling that he's just enjoying the attention.

Speaker 13 Oh, he would like this.

Speaker 12 He absolutely would. He loved attention, so he's absolutely smiling up in heaven somewhere and looking down on us.

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