Body of Evidence

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Speaker 5 It was a camper who stumbled on the place.

Speaker 9 Deep in the Arizona desert, on the parched earth a few miles north of the Mexican border, a pile of rocks under a Palo Verde tree, a cairn of some sort, a monument.

Speaker 4 What was it?

Speaker 9 Did it signify something or some person so far from the prying eyes of urban America?

Speaker 11 Under those stones was a terrible puzzle, a mystery, perhaps without solution.

Speaker 12 Who would have believed what was in there?

Speaker 17 Perhaps the place to start is far from that secret in the desert.

Speaker 18 Where the ocean meets San Diego is a hamlet called Kensington, a slice of small-town life in the shadow of the big city.

Speaker 20 Modest Spanish-style homes, trimmed front lawns, palmed-lined streets, Middle America by the sea.

Speaker 17 The place where Joy Risker lived with her husband and two little boys. Sheila Goff lived there too, also with her husband and little boy.

Speaker 12 And they were as different as chalk and cheese.

Speaker 26 Quiet, generous Sheila, outgoing effervescent Joy. It was a fine arrangement.

Speaker 27 They shared the child care, the housework, the cooking.

Speaker 12 And they also shared a husband.

Speaker 12 Sean Goff, handsome, engaging, persuasive, and deeply religious.

Speaker 4 Sean is a former evangelical minister, and that's how he met Joy Risker, then just 16.

Speaker 8 He was her youth pastor.

Speaker 30 Married, yes, to Sheila.

Speaker 8 But by then, he'd become interested in Christian polygamy, which claimed to be based on the patriarchs of the Old Testament.

Speaker 12 And in the summer of 1997, three years after they met, he married Joy.

Speaker 8 Not legally, of course, but it was biblically sound.

Speaker 5 How did she explain it to you?

Speaker 34 Just like that.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 36 That, you know, she had met someone and she was all in love with them.

Speaker 36 And she told me that he was her youth pastor and that her mom gave her blessing and everyone loved him.

Speaker 37 He was the greatest guy

Speaker 36 that just happened to be married to someone else.

Speaker 14 Joy and Sheila, happy and obedient co-wives.

Speaker 19 Joy was wife number two.

Speaker 19 There was already wife number one, Sheila.

Speaker 40 Was there jealousy there?

Speaker 41 Sheila didn't seem jealous. I'm sure underneath there has to be some part of her that

Speaker 41 didn't appreciate what was going on, but she seemed to love Joy.

Speaker 43 How did Joy feel about Sheila?

Speaker 36 Oh, Joy never would have been jealous of Sheila because Joy was Sean's favorite.

Speaker 19 Sheila stayed at home, rarely going out with her husband. Well, Joy, with her outgoing, bubbly personality, became Sean's public wife.

Speaker 33 They took romantic trips.

Speaker 19 They went out dining and dancing, often.

Speaker 38 Always happy?

Speaker 41 Always happy. At least appearing to be, you know, unless she's having a problem and she's talking about it, you know.

Speaker 24 But people grow.

Speaker 14 Things change.

Speaker 5 Joy began to resist the structure Sean Goff established in the house in Kensington.

Speaker 19 What did she say about her unhappiness?

Speaker 36 She just said that Sean was really controlling and

Speaker 36 she wasn't in love like she used to be.

Speaker 42 She told friends she wanted to travel, maybe go to Europe, and she wanted to go back to school and make a career for herself.

Speaker 13 Did she tell you how Sean felt about that, about her going to school?

Speaker 41 He seemed to be okay with it.

Speaker 36 He was okay with community college because it was local, but he didn't want her to move out to L.A. to go to makeup school.
That was her dream. She wanted to be a makeup artist.

Speaker 40 So she was ambitious to do something with her life.

Speaker 35 She was.

Speaker 48 And then in late September 2003, Joy, quite suddenly, stopped calling her friends.

Speaker 31 And when they tried to contact her, Sean, crying on the phone, had shocking news.

Speaker 14 Joy had left him, left him and the children, and had run off to Europe with an old boyfriend.

Speaker 35 I don't know.

Speaker 36 We just thought everything was so weird.

Speaker 2 We didn't know how to really do it.

Speaker 50 We were still just, yeah, trying to take it all in. It was strange, though.

Speaker 36 Definitely.

Speaker 39 Strange, indeed.

Speaker 26 She wouldn't leave her sons, would she?

Speaker 48 And wouldn't she call her friends?

Speaker 12 It wasn't like her.

Speaker 39 And far away in the desert, that strange monument guarded its mystery.

Speaker 21 Sean Goff, the San Diego youth minister and polygamist, was an emotional wreck.

Speaker 22 His junior wife had run off to Europe with a boyfriend, had abandoned him and their two sons, and that other wife.

Speaker 46 Her friends were confused.

Speaker 5 They knew she'd had some problems with Sean, was even thinking about leaving him, but this way?

Speaker 26 It didn't sound like Joy at all, especially as she hadn't said a word to them.

Speaker 35 No, she wouldn't take her off without her kids.

Speaker 36 That's the whole reason she even was sticking around towards the end, because she was really unhappy with Sean.

Speaker 19 Then, out of the blue, an email to a friend that seemed to explain everything.

Speaker 32 Joy on why she left.

Speaker 50 I just needed some time away.

Speaker 26 On a mystery man and Jason.

Speaker 50 I've never been able to get Jason out of my head.

Speaker 13 On her secrecy, the reason she hadn't warned her friends like Jill.

Speaker 50 I really can't talk to Jill right now because she'll be against my decisions.

Speaker 13 Did you try to contact her?

Speaker 41 We did.

Speaker 36 I called her every day and after a while we started emailing her.

Speaker 32 In emails, they begged her to call so they could hear her voice.

Speaker 4 But Joy's reply was uncharacteristically angry.

Speaker 50 I'll talk to you when I'm ready.

Speaker 36 She was saying, you know, stay out of my business and I'm an adult. I'm grown.
I don't have to call and tell you guys anything. That's just how she was.
If she knew we were worried, she'd call.

Speaker 55 She would.

Speaker 41 The email was so angry at us. She just wouldn't have been mad at us for wanting to know where she is.

Speaker 44 To ease their growing worry, their friends went to visit Sean at home.

Speaker 40 How did he receive you? Was he friendly?

Speaker 50 He tried to be.

Speaker 13 He told them he'd spoken to Joy and she was fine.

Speaker 5 But the whole house seemed somehow different, as if Joy had never lived there. What did it seem to you?

Speaker 40 What was the atmosphere like?

Speaker 36 Everything was closed up and it was really, really dark.

Speaker 13 It had changed somehow.

Speaker 35 It had changed.

Speaker 22 The visit was strange.

Speaker 8 The girls had been close to Joy's children.

Speaker 44 They asked to see the boys and Sean refused.

Speaker 41 After that, we were out of there because we just knew something was

Speaker 24 not okay.

Speaker 6 Weird.

Speaker 35 Very.

Speaker 33 Jill couldn't shake a feeling of dread.

Speaker 58 She finally brought herself to call the police, missing persons.

Speaker 18 Linda Cushin, then a San Diego Police Investigative Aide, got the case. She began by calling Sean.

Speaker 59 In talking to Sean,

Speaker 59 you know, he was very credible what he said.

Speaker 59 Joy, you know, didn't want to be here anymore. She took off.
I'm very upset. She left her kids.
I just don't know what to do.

Speaker 59 She took money out of the bank account. She had always talked about backpacking in Europe.
She left me.

Speaker 8 Linda telephoned many of Joy's friends.

Speaker 59 Everyone said she had plans. She wanted to go to Europe, but she wasn't happy at home.

Speaker 33 Sean gave police this email.

Speaker 8 He said Joy sent him.

Speaker 50 Sean, I know this is hard, but I'm leaving for Europe tomorrow.

Speaker 59 Again, it seemed incredible. She said she was leaving.
He received an email that she left.

Speaker 8 But then Linda checked Joyce's cell phone records and discovered something very suspicious.

Speaker 29 Activity on Joy's phone, usually almost constant, came to an abrupt halt on September 19, 2003 at 9.36 p.m.

Speaker 26 And the last call she made was to Sean.

Speaker 59 He never mentioned that call.

Speaker 59 It's so important.

Speaker 48 Linda confronted Sean Sean with that omission.

Speaker 35 And cornered now, he revealed a little more.

Speaker 19 Sheila had been out of town with the kids.

Speaker 8 He and Joy decided to have a candlelight dinner and rekindle their relationship.

Speaker 19 But later that evening, they argued.

Speaker 45 And said, Sean, he woke up in the early hours of the morning to see Joy with two suitcases getting into a car.

Speaker 24 with a man.

Speaker 50 Why leave that out?

Speaker 59 I mean, that should have been our first conversation. Yeah, she left.
She packed her suitcases and she left. We had an argument.
Why not mention that?

Speaker 22 Linda was also discovering that other pieces of information were missing or just didn't fit.

Speaker 17 For one thing, Joy didn't have a passport.

Speaker 12 How could she travel to Europe without a passport?

Speaker 61 And the old flame with whom she'd supposedly run off to Europe?

Speaker 20 Linda found him.

Speaker 2 In Boston.

Speaker 59 He didn't have plans to meet up with Joy.

Speaker 4 By now, the investigator was convinced something had happened to Joy.

Speaker 44 She hadn't simply run off with a man to Europe. Linda suspected some kind of foul play.

Speaker 20 She began preparing her findings.

Speaker 11 She recommended that homicide detectives get involved.

Speaker 44 And then a dramatic and utterly unexpected appearance.

Speaker 4 Was it Joy back home?

Speaker 30 No,

Speaker 7 it was Sean Goff at the San Diego Police Department.

Speaker 12 And what he was about to say was stunning.

Speaker 63 I came down here to turn myself in, okay?

Speaker 64 Because I killed Julie Risker.

Speaker 24 He killed her?

Speaker 39 Surely not.

Speaker 32 Here he was confessing.

Speaker 57 But was it murder or had there been an accident?

Speaker 31 How did this happen?

Speaker 6 How did you end up hurting her?

Speaker 11 How did you end up? The sudden, bizarre confession was over.

Speaker 12 He wanted a lawyer.

Speaker 63 Also, probably things I'd rather talk about with an attorney.

Speaker 29 What exactly had happened?

Speaker 12 Did they actually have a crime here?

Speaker 57 And if Joy was dead, what happened to her body?

Speaker 31 I mean if that's the way you want to leave it.

Speaker 21 Sean Goff was booked for homicide and the cops began looking for some evidence that could tell them what happened.

Speaker 65 So the first thing I was looking for was blood somewhere in the house.

Speaker 9 Detectives descended on the house in Kensington Hamlet, turned the place inside out.

Speaker 65 Once you find a little bit of blood, rule of thumb is you're going to find a little bit more.

Speaker 8 They found tiny blood spatters in Joy's bedroom and in the bathroom.

Speaker 19 A few drops of Joy's blood confirmed by DNA.

Speaker 14 But if Sean had actually killed her, as he said, where was the body?

Speaker 33 Sean Goff sat in jail, revealing nothing.

Speaker 8 Sheila packed up the children and went to stay with Sean's parents out of state.

Speaker 31 The investigation stalled.

Speaker 5 Months Months ticked by.

Speaker 8 No one in San Diego remotely aware that deep in the Arizona desert, quite another mystery begged for a solution.

Speaker 5 The mystery of the astonishing contents of the stone cairn out under the Palo Verde tree.

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Speaker 5 The desert wind blows cold in the winter along the strip of scrub just north of the Mexican border.

Speaker 12 Sean Goff sat in jail in San Diego and said not a word as police scoured what leads they could find in their search for the wife he'd told them he'd killed.

Speaker 62 And in the desert, that pile of rocks under the Palo Verde tree was attracting attention.

Speaker 13 An old desert hat named Ruben Conde got a bad feeling when he saw the place.

Speaker 68 It was too big to have an animal or a dog or anything buried there, which we first thought. And then I got to smelling and you could smell

Speaker 68 different smell in animals, you know.

Speaker 60 Condé was a hunting guide.

Speaker 7 He'd smelled death before.

Speaker 21 He called his son, a federal ranger with the Bureau of Land Management.

Speaker 32 The next day, January 10th, 2004, the ranger gingerly moved aside a few rocks.

Speaker 5 And that's when he found it.

Speaker 69 I found a partial portion of a head and a torso. And

Speaker 69 it just became apparent when I found those parts that it wasn't an animal of any kind.

Speaker 14 Was it a man or a woman? Young or old?

Speaker 58 What was the cause of death?

Speaker 57 And who, who, out in the middle of nowhere, had gathered together hundreds of pounds of rocks and carefully crafted a tomb?

Speaker 31 A Maricoba County Sheriff's Detective brought the badly decomposed remains back to the medical examiner's office in Phoenix for an autopsy.

Speaker 72 The first thing that we do when we get a skeletal remain is lay it out in anatomical position so that we can inventory the remains, figure out what's there, and what's missing.

Speaker 48 Dr. Laura Fulginetti, Fulgi to her colleagues, is a forensic anthropologist, an expert at identifying bones.

Speaker 60 Some answers came quickly.

Speaker 32 Fulgie determined, among other things, the victim was young and female and African-American.

Speaker 42 She'd given birth at least once.

Speaker 8 She was somebody's mother.

Speaker 21 From here on, the discoveries were increasingly alarming.

Speaker 13 The victim's skull and ribs bore witness to a violent death.

Speaker 21 She'd been stabbed at least 12 times in the chest, the bones of her face wrecked by blunt force.

Speaker 8 And as Fulgi examined the bones more carefully, she began to find things she'd never seen before.

Speaker 72 There were elements missing from her, key elements like her teeth. Her jaws were

Speaker 72 literally the teeth, the level of the bone of her teeth, had been excised.

Speaker 19 On a hunch, the detective, observing the autopsy, asked Fulgie to check the victim's hands.

Speaker 72 And I looked, and sure enough, the tips, the bones of her fingers, not her fingertips, not her fingernails. Remember, she's a skeleton.
The actual bones had been sliced off.

Speaker 56 Something awful, sinister, deliberate had been done to this woman.

Speaker 48 Dr.

Speaker 25 Fulgi was outraged.

Speaker 72 The MCSI, because that's what that was clearly what had happened. Somebody had watched too much TV and they knew exactly what to get rid of to try to thwart us.

Speaker 31 No fingerprints, no dental records, quite possibly not even DNA, since getting DNA from such badly decomposed remains was very difficult and quite expensive.

Speaker 28 They'd have to start out low-tech.

Speaker 60 They'd go back to the drawing board, literally.

Speaker 72 Initially, we had thought that a forensic artist's reconstruction would not be possible because we had pieces of her face and they were disfigured and distorted and we weren't sure what we could do with it.

Speaker 17 Still, forensic artist Bob Powers, then a detective with the Maricoba County Sheriff's Office, was keen to try.

Speaker 73 This is a last-ditch attempt at an identification, and if it fails, then the odds are that this person will never be identified.

Speaker 47 He and Fulgy had had success in the past, but this was a long shot.

Speaker 73 Still, it was like an oval jigsaw puzzle.

Speaker 8 They pieced the skull bones together, used clay to fill in the missing pieces and recreate teeth.

Speaker 73 And I'll start sketching in, starting very light at first. And the first thing I want to do is get the placement of the features, the eyes, the nose, and the mouth.

Speaker 29 Finally, a sketch.

Speaker 44 But months went by.

Speaker 21 Apparently, it looked like nobody.

Speaker 45 And then, by sheer luck, Bob Power spotted a picture on a missing person's flyer, and it reminded him of his sketch.

Speaker 70 There's a resemblance.

Speaker 47 It could be her.

Speaker 32 The possibility was enough.

Speaker 60 To go to the expense of getting a DNA sample, sheriffs contacted the woman's family, obtained her DNA, and, disappointment, it wasn't her.

Speaker 8 But by now, that sample had made its way to an FBI database, and

Speaker 27 there she was.

Speaker 72 We were right. Putting her face back on her is what gave us her story.

Speaker 8 Eight months after she emerged from that pile of rocks in the Arizona desert, the woman had a name.

Speaker 12 A name you know by now.

Speaker 57 Did the ex-youth pastor, the loving polygamist husband and father, also know the horrifying story her bones were about to tell?

Speaker 8 In the summer of 2006, two years after Joy Risker's bones were identified, three years after her killing, Sean Goff went on trial in San Diego for murder.

Speaker 28 It was Deputy DA Matthew Greco's very first murder trial.

Speaker 73 Well, there's only two types of murders. There's whodone it's and what is it's.
And this was a what is it.

Speaker 2 That is to say, was it murder at all?

Speaker 14 Or was it an accident?

Speaker 33 Or self-defense?

Speaker 21 An experienced and wily defense attorney Greco knew was standing by to argue those very things.

Speaker 24 So the prosecutor went all out.

Speaker 35 He planned

Speaker 35 and he killed her.

Speaker 8 All because he wanted control over Joy's life.

Speaker 47 This, the prosecutor said, was the worst kind of murder.

Speaker 49 Sean Goff demanded control, and when Joy defied him, he carefully assembled his plot to kill her and make her disappear forever.

Speaker 73 I thought he was the scariest defendant that I've ever seen

Speaker 73 in my career.

Speaker 73 What he

Speaker 73 was capable of and the way he presented himself

Speaker 73 was absolutely chilling.

Speaker 21 Proof of that, claimed Prosecutor Greco, was in the horrifying story told by those bones recovered from beneath the pile of rocks under the Palo Verde tree.

Speaker 73 So this was a stab wound directly to the heart, yes.

Speaker 26 The anthropologist testified that Joy had been savagely, systematically mutilated.

Speaker 72 My opinion was that someone was trying to obliterate her face.

Speaker 62 It was a litany of brutality.

Speaker 72 This mark right across the middle of the hyoid is not a natural feature of the bone, as if the implement was doing this.

Speaker 73 What would be the result if that hyoid bone was entirely sawed through?

Speaker 72 In essence, you would end up decapitating the person or cutting their head off.

Speaker 21 Prosecutor Greco was about to present some chilling evidence that Sean had been methodically planning the murder for many many months.

Speaker 8 Sean's college friend, a writer, told about a brainstorming session the year before Joy's death.

Speaker 32 They were working out the story plot for a book or a movie.

Speaker 73 What was the subject matter that you were discussing?

Speaker 75 It was how to have the antagonist in the movie or book

Speaker 43 watch

Speaker 75 forensic type shows on TV and learn how to commit the perfect murder.

Speaker 38 And the best ways to hide the body.

Speaker 73 Was there any discussion of putting the body in a place where it would never be found? Yes.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 8 The ideas from television shows.

Speaker 45 Like the FBI files and the

Speaker 75 forensic files, things like that.

Speaker 46 And remarkably, weeks before Joy's death, the friend testified, Sean foreshadowed his own motive for murder.

Speaker 75 Essentially, he said that it was not working out with Joy, that she was sloppy and lazy, and that he was going to have to get rid of her.

Speaker 58 Sean's colleague testified that that he was dissatisfied with Joy.

Speaker 12 He had plans for her.

Speaker 19 Joy had very little time.

Speaker 73 Two or three weeks to

Speaker 73 shape up or ship out.

Speaker 21 Joy's friends testified Sean had always let it be known that if he and Joy ever split, he would keep the kids.

Speaker 73 Would you ever discuss

Speaker 73 hypothetically what would happen

Speaker 73 if

Speaker 73 Joy left him?

Speaker 74 Essentially, that he wouldn't allow her to have the kids.

Speaker 18 And another friend testified that Sean seemed to be building an excuse in advance to explain why Joy might disappear.

Speaker 74 He told me that he thought that she was the kind of person that could just take off and leave all of a sudden and never look back again.

Speaker 8 And as for those emails that seemed to come from Joy in the weeks after her disappearance, a forensic computer expert testified they were all a digital deception.

Speaker 25 They'd all been sent by Sean.

Speaker 44 And then, a surprise, the one witness who knew Sean Goff better than anybody, the one who might be able to explain the man, the woman who was a teenager, had become wife number one, Sheila, now a witness for the prosecution.

Speaker 8 So many questions, such as why did she agree to his polygamous demands.

Speaker 74 I felt I didn't have a choice, that it was

Speaker 50 this was what God wanted us to do,

Speaker 74 and that it was either that or

Speaker 74 lose my son and the relationship I had with him.

Speaker 8 By now divorced from Sean, Sheila had put certain of his activities, that September of 2003, into a new context, like a curious shopping spree six days before Joy disappeared.

Speaker 42 He had brought home with him a chisel, a hand saw, a pickaxe, a sledgehammer, duct tape, plastic sheeting, a shovel, a cooler, butcher block, a butcher knife, among other things.

Speaker 73 Was he the kind of person that

Speaker 73 had other hobbies like woodwork? No.

Speaker 73 Plumbing? No.

Speaker 69 Landscaping?

Speaker 74 No.

Speaker 73 What was his level of being a handyman?

Speaker 74 None.

Speaker 57 All those items, argued the prosecutor, were part of a deliberately assembled murder and dismemberment kit.

Speaker 8 And the weekend of September 19th, with Sheila and the kids on a trip to Santa Barbara, he put his plan in motion.

Speaker 21 He took Joy to an expensive restaurant for a $229 last supper, Kobe beef.

Speaker 27 At 8:36 that Friday evening, Joy called Sheila to say goodnight to her boys.

Speaker 73 Could you describe her tone?

Speaker 74 Unhappy?

Speaker 46 Did she

Speaker 73 on Friday the 19th, did she sound like she was angry?

Speaker 11 No.

Speaker 73 Upset? No. Distressed?

Speaker 74 No.

Speaker 35 And later that night, back at home, said the prosecutor, Sean stabbed Joy to death.

Speaker 49 He sawed out her teeth and chopped off fingers that might identify who she was.

Speaker 21 He stuffed her body in a container in the back of a rented SUV.

Speaker 58 He drove five hours to the Arizona desert.

Speaker 12 and buried her there under a Palo Verde tree.

Speaker 21 Sean called Sheila on Sunday as she was driving back from Santa Barbara.

Speaker 32 He told her, she said, that he and Joy had broken up.

Speaker 73 Did the defendant tell you that Joy had cut herself?

Speaker 74 Yes.

Speaker 73 Did he ask you to do something?

Speaker 66 Yes. What?

Speaker 74 Clean up.

Speaker 40 And so she did.

Speaker 61 Cleaned up the blood in Joy's bedroom and in the bathroom.

Speaker 33 And when Sean finally arrived back home in that Reddit SUV, It was Monday, and Sheila helped him clean out the dirt and debris, and chose to believe his lie, that he'd simply gone for a long drive to deal with his grief at the breakup.

Speaker 74 Because I really didn't believe he would do something like that to her family.

Speaker 33 A damning story, with a villain right out of Silence of the Lambs.

Speaker 52 But was it true?

Speaker 20 Was Sean really such a monster? Now, finally, after years of silence,

Speaker 52 the polygamous preacher would tell the story himself.

Speaker 14 He'd killed her, all right.

Speaker 67 But now he was about to say he had a very good reason.

Speaker 76 I saw her in the door. She had a knife.

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Speaker 43 Mr. Arena, you're opening answer.

Speaker 14 Thank you.

Speaker 7 Albert Arena is an engaging man.

Speaker 18 He's a defense lawyer. He's paid his dues in San Diego, represented the good to the bad and the ugly as best he could for decades.

Speaker 13 But the case of the polygamist wife killer was about to test his skills as never before.

Speaker 35 He planned it?

Speaker 26 The prosecution's case had been thoroughly damning.

Speaker 14 What could Arena say?

Speaker 79 Because indeed the evidence will unfold and show you that those things did happen.

Speaker 12 Agreeing with the prosecution?

Speaker 35 Well, not exactly.

Speaker 79 To pay particularly close attention to that word, post-mortem.

Speaker 32 Albert Arena told the jury the prosecutor had it backwards.

Speaker 8 It wasn't a cold-blooded planned killing.

Speaker 4 It was Joy who launched a brutal attack, he claimed.

Speaker 13 Sean killed her in self-defense.

Speaker 49 And his desecration of her body?

Speaker 21 Only a misguided attempt to ensure their children did not lose a father as well as a mother.

Speaker 14 It would be, Irina knew, a hard sell.

Speaker 55 It's almost too disgusting to tell.

Speaker 16 What you do is you take it, you separate it, put it aside.

Speaker 45 You know it's there. It's like you have an elephant in the living room, but for now we're going to ignore the elephant.

Speaker 26 But eventually he and his client had to face that elephant.

Speaker 55 I have to humanize him.

Speaker 45 Humanize him and let him tell his story.

Speaker 7 And so Sean Goff took the stand.

Speaker 80 I

Speaker 69 gave my life to Jesus when I was six.

Speaker 42 He played up faith.

Speaker 14 Downplayed believers.

Speaker 76 We were not hiding the fact that we were engaging in plural marriage from anyone.

Speaker 22 And mostly he tried to sell the jury on his own story of what happened that dreadful weekend.

Speaker 47 He already was a handyman, he told the jury, and that so-called murder kit the prosecution displayed was actually claimed goff for a weekend home improvement project.

Speaker 24 The hacksaw.

Speaker 76 There was in the front yard a pipe that stuck out of the ground.

Speaker 12 The plastic sheeting.

Speaker 76 He didn't want to get paint on the floors.

Speaker 22 And the butcher knife wasn't even for him.

Speaker 70 Who selected the knife?

Speaker 45 Joy did.

Speaker 33 And now Sean Goff played his biggest card.

Speaker 27 He accused Joy of child abuse.

Speaker 25 On that last romantic evening, he said, Joy became threatening.

Speaker 76 She said, well, you're not going to take the kids away from me.

Speaker 24 Why?

Speaker 48 Because he claimed he had confronted Joy that night with a photograph proving that she'd beaten their youngest child.

Speaker 76 I said, you know, you're not even going to have to worry about the kids because

Speaker 76 I had taken a...

Speaker 76 I had taken a Polaroid of some bruises. I told her about that.

Speaker 69 And I said, that's all there is to it.

Speaker 29 Where was that picture?

Speaker 12 Well, the defense never produced any such photograph.

Speaker 29 But that is what set her off, claimed Sean.

Speaker 7 He told her he'd keep the children and kick her out.

Speaker 31 The gravy train would be over.

Speaker 53 And that, he said, is when she attacked him.

Speaker 76 And she had a knife.

Speaker 24 What happened?

Speaker 10 She.

Speaker 10 She

Speaker 76 yelled at me and then she swung the knife at me.

Speaker 70 Was she saying anything when she swung the knife?

Speaker 35 Yes.

Speaker 70 What was she saying?

Speaker 76 She said.

Speaker 14 She said, you son of a bitch, I will kill you.

Speaker 8 He punched her twice, he said, but she kept coming.

Speaker 76 At this point, I was frightened.

Speaker 35 I thought, well, she's serious.

Speaker 46 And then, struggling for his life, claimed Sean, he grabbed the hand holding the knife.

Speaker 76 I got it, turned around toward her, you know, and we're still fighting over the knife. And I pushed the knife into her.
At some point, I took the knife away, and then I stabbed her again.

Speaker 31 When did he stab her? Do you remember?

Speaker 76 At that point, it was up here.

Speaker 43 Stabbed her here?

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 45 Up near my.

Speaker 78 left shoulder.

Speaker 10 Somewhere in that area.

Speaker 43 What happened then?

Speaker 76 At that point, she kind of just went limp.

Speaker 19 Then, claimed Sean, though panicked and in shock, he bent down and tried to save her life, to give her CPR.

Speaker 76 I pulled a knife out, and

Speaker 76 a lot of blood came out with it.

Speaker 76 And I checked her breathing interpulse again, and she didn't have either at that time.

Speaker 29 Then he said he wondered,

Speaker 29 should he call the police?

Speaker 76 She's dead, and I'm there, and she's she's a woman.

Speaker 42 Who would believe that she attacked him?

Speaker 49 He feared for himself and his children.

Speaker 76 I thought about,

Speaker 10 you know, this

Speaker 76 stone and Onyx's mother.

Speaker 53 And they were going to have to live without her.

Speaker 53 And,

Speaker 53 you know,

Speaker 53 I felt like, well,

Speaker 76 they're probably going to live without me, too.

Speaker 29 And so it was a moral dilemma, said Sean.

Speaker 8 A deeply religious man, remember.

Speaker 28 What was the right thing to do?

Speaker 69 I decided that

Speaker 76 I needed to cover it up.

Speaker 51 And inside the tiny bathroom, Sean Goff began the grim task of erasing Joy Risker's identity.

Speaker 76 I knew that I had to remove her fingertips.

Speaker 78 What were you feeling at at that point in time?

Speaker 53 I felt

Speaker 53 horrified.

Speaker 53 Yeah, I felt frightened.

Speaker 76 I felt sickened.

Speaker 19 But there was more to do.

Speaker 76 And I decided in order to cover up her identity, I would have to remove her teeth as well.

Speaker 19 He used an old saw from the garage, he said.

Speaker 26 Not the brand new hacksaw he just bought.

Speaker 35 I couldn't look at her.

Speaker 35 I

Speaker 76 ran to the towels where I wouldn't see anything except what I was cutting.

Speaker 8 He struggled to get his junior wife's remains into a large plastic container and into the rented SUV.

Speaker 12 He cleaned the house, disposed of the saw, the knife, the bloody towels, and took a shower.

Speaker 76 I sat down in the living room,

Speaker 76 horrified by what had happened. I was trying to

Speaker 63 wake up,

Speaker 76 hoping it was a dream.

Speaker 8 At daybreak, he said, he drove aimlessly, ending up 250 miles away beneath that Palo Verde tree in the Arizona desert.

Speaker 26 And one rock at a time entombed Joy Risker in that elaborate cairn.

Speaker 76 After everything I had done, it was...

Speaker 76 It was like the only way I could show some respect for her body.

Speaker 33 And that was Sean Goff's story. Self-defense.

Speaker 27 An accident, really.

Speaker 8 The rest of it just a misguided effort to protect his children from a life without their father.

Speaker 19 The prosecutor did not try to hide his disgust.

Speaker 73 Mr. Goff,

Speaker 53 you lie

Speaker 73 to avoid accountability for your actions.

Speaker 14 True? That's correct.

Speaker 49 As harsh a cross-examination as the prosecutor could muster.

Speaker 73 The truth that Joy Risker had been dismembered and lying dead in the back of the Durango,

Speaker 70 that truth would hurt you, correct?

Speaker 6 She lost it.

Speaker 12 Defense Attorney Arena turned to the jury and took his best shot.

Speaker 70 And you have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that it was not possible for Joy Risker to have introduced that knife into the bedroom. But I wasn't there.
Mr. Greco wasn't there either.

Speaker 70 Everything that Mr. Greco has talked to you about is his theory of the case.

Speaker 12 But Prosecutor Greco had the last word, the last question.

Speaker 52 What would Joy say?

Speaker 73 She would say, I've already told you.

Speaker 70 I've told you with my blood.

Speaker 73 in the house.

Speaker 70 And I have told you that this crime is so unspeakable

Speaker 73 with my hands and my fingers missing.

Speaker 14 Hear her.

Speaker 10 Hear her.

Speaker 29 The details had been horrific, stomach-churning.

Speaker 47 But as jurors left the courtroom, they still had to decide whom did they believe.

Speaker 47 I killed Joy Risker.

Speaker 8 Okay. By his own admission, Sean Goff was guilty of killing and dismembering Joy Risker.

Speaker 26 That much the jurors knew.

Speaker 8 But was it a cold calculation or self-preservation?

Speaker 67 First-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter?

Speaker 35 Or should he walk?

Speaker 34 It was a surreal experience. It was totally surreal.
It still feels surreal, like it didn't happen to me, like it was a dream or something.

Speaker 81 I had this awful feeling we'd be there for a couple of days.

Speaker 26 Had Defense Attorney Arena succeeded in planting some doubt?

Speaker 81 My impression has changed.

Speaker 81 And I just understand the concept of a defense attorney now.

Speaker 69 Mr. Arena was a good guy.

Speaker 80 Arena had a very big mountain to climb. And on some days, he managed to climb pretty far up.

Speaker 81 I think he planted some great seeds, though, as far as trying to create that reasonable doubt.

Speaker 14 But was it enough?

Speaker 48 State Line's conversation with eight of the jurors sometimes seemed like group therapy.

Speaker 34 Everything was so unusual. The cruelty of it.

Speaker 71 Some of the stuff that occurred, some of the stories you heard, some of the

Speaker 40 evidence you saw

Speaker 39 must have been.

Speaker 37 It was hideous.

Speaker 37 It was just horrible.

Speaker 72 I lost sleep over it.

Speaker 80 It was your last thought and your first thought.

Speaker 19 Yeah. So your last thought when you went to bed, and it was your first thought when you woke up.

Speaker 81 It just consumed you. It overtook your whole life.

Speaker 14 But they listened carefully.

Speaker 13 Especially when Sean Goff took the stand and claimed he was defending himself.

Speaker 69 It was insulting, his lies to us.

Speaker 43 He thought he had it all wrapped up, though.

Speaker 80 He was so full of himself. I definitely got the impression that it was his world and we're all very arrogant.

Speaker 25 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 67 And then there was the question of Sean's tears, or actually, the lack of them.

Speaker 82 even as he portrayed all that emotion like come on just give us one and then one tear and then finally he got it so he quickly picked up a tissue and just tried to blot yeah

Speaker 82 nothing it was all just for show

Speaker 27 they just didn't buy it

Speaker 61 and so within two hours they had a meeting of minds and handed the judge their verdict

Speaker 43 we the jury in the above entitled cause find the defendant Sean Bartlett Goff guilty of the crime of murder in September 2006 Sean Goff was sentenced The sentence imposed is 25 years to life.

Speaker 8 And a few days later, we went to visit Mr.

Speaker 31 Goff in the local jail where he awaited transfer to the state prison.

Speaker 4 It just happened to be the 19th of September, a day with a certain significance.

Speaker 63 Three years ago today is when Joy died.

Speaker 5 Do you feel you have to put it that way?

Speaker 38 It's hard to say three years ago today is the day I killed Joy.

Speaker 63 Well, when it has been necessary to say so, I have.

Speaker 46 It's an unsettling business, talking to a person like Sean Goff.

Speaker 27 Bright, glib.

Speaker 45 A man capable of chopping up his own spouse's body and still finding ways to excuse himself.

Speaker 12 Were you in love with Joy?

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 63 Yes, I was.

Speaker 5 Smitten.

Speaker 56 Yes. She blew you away.
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 15 So this was a love match.

Speaker 63 Yes.

Speaker 27 But it was he who suffered, said Sean.

Speaker 17 His pain, his grief, his ordeal, for which he blamed Joy.

Speaker 8 Joy, who could not be allowed to oppose his will.

Speaker 53 You can't let her have her way if she really cares for you? No.

Speaker 63 In the situation,

Speaker 63 it would have destroyed the rest of the family, giving her what she wanted.

Speaker 52 So I'll kill her instead.

Speaker 63 No.

Speaker 15 How many times did you stab her?

Speaker 63 I'm not aware of that.

Speaker 15 Like a dozen times or something?

Speaker 15 Her sternum sliced off as part of the attack.

Speaker 71 So when we look at that evidence, any sane or rational person would say, this wasn't just self-defense.

Speaker 55 He lost it.

Speaker 38 I mean, he lost it like he probably has never lost it before, nor ever will again.

Speaker 55 And it was like the Super Bowl of losing it.

Speaker 63 I'm not averse to

Speaker 63 confessing something bad that I've done. It's not that I don't believe I'll be forgiven.
The fact is that

Speaker 63 what typifies this event as self-defense is how it began, not how it ended.

Speaker 13 He had found peace, said Sean Goff.

Speaker 5 Remember, he was a pastor once.

Speaker 55 Do you think your God forgives you for what you did?

Speaker 63 For the things that I did wrong, he sent a son to die for.

Speaker 63 And he's not going to waste his son's life.

Speaker 31 Time and again, as we spoke, he took pieces of the story of what happened and related them to his central theme.

Speaker 32 a religious certainty.

Speaker 63 It has to do with me fulfilling the purpose that I was created for.

Speaker 71 It's a pretty shocking idea that maybe, and I don't mean to sound mean here, but you were created for the purpose of killing joy?

Speaker 63 No, that's not what I'm saying. Well, you did.
I realized that.

Speaker 18 What he meant, he said, was that he'd re-embraced his Christian ministry. When we spoke to him, he said he had a new purpose to help his fellow prisoners seek and accept God's forgiveness.

Speaker 30 Do you believe in heaven?

Speaker 35 Yes.

Speaker 38 And do you believe joy is there now?

Speaker 63 Yes, I do.

Speaker 15 So what will you say to her when you arrive?

Speaker 44 They're in heaven.

Speaker 63 I'll tell her I'm sorry.

Speaker 14 And I'll tell her that I love her.

Speaker 6 What would she say to you?

Speaker 63 Being there, I think she'll forgive me.

Speaker 17 Among her friends and family, the pain of her death, the horrific story, was raw.

Speaker 27 Joy was life, they said.

Speaker 46 How could such evil be caused by a man who claimed to live by God's laws?

Speaker 41 She was wonderful, and she didn't deserve that.

Speaker 41 And especially not from him.

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