Ep.8: Less Dead - Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom?

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

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I'm Hannah Berner, and I'm also thinking about underwear, but I prefer full coverage.

I like to call them my granny panties.

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Picture yourself alone in the middle of nowhere, and there's somebody following you.

He went on his way, we so thought, and then we went on ours.

But in reality, he really followed us up there.

On Deadly Nightmares, the true crime podcast from ID, listen to real stories of ordinary people stalked by serial killers and attackers.

Listen to Deadly Nightmares on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This podcast contains explicit language and graphic descriptions of violence.

Please be advised.

I can't understand how somebody can kill something they love.

Happens all the time.

People do things in fits of rage that they don't want to do and had no intentions of doing, but it just happened.

And

that their body needed that release, if you would.

You know, I guess, in some cases.

We've seen it.

I've seen it personally.

It happens a lot.

I had too many opportunities, man, for anything like that to ever happen.

If I had been involved in that, she never would have been found.

For ID and ARC Media, I'm Sarah Kalen, and this is Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom.

In a recent conversation, I asked Renee's daughter Amanda what closure might look like for her when it comes to her mom's murder.

Answers, you know, and I feel like I don't don't want a big trial.

And I know that's selfish because, you know, you can't control what happens, but I feel that it's owed to me that you've gotten away with this for over 20-something years.

Tell me why.

Tell me why.

Admit that you did it.

Admit that you've been able to live free for the past 20-some odd years.

After doing this and tearing our life apart, I deserve to know why.

I deserve for you to admit it.

And that's why I say I don't want a trial.

I don't want it to be a question.

I want somebody to come out and say, I did this.

And this is why.

And until then, I don't know if I would ever get closure.

Real answers.

I have been investigating this case for three years in search of just that.

I've spoken to Renee's friends and family members, at least the ones still living.

I've interviewed convenience store clerks, bartenders, an ex, former detectives, former tipsters.

I've pored over her diaries, personal letters, address book.

I've driven up and down the service road where her body was found so many times that I could probably describe it down to each piece of gravel.

I've made maps and murder boards.

I've hit so many dead ends.

And more than anything, I've interviewed one person over and over again.

David Young.

I tell myself I am doing this because I can't eliminate him as a suspect, suspect, not yet.

And that's true.

But I think I'm also doing this because if David did do this, if David did play any role in Renee's murder, he might give me the one thing I want, the one thing that could provide Amanda closure.

A confession.

But if there's no confession, at least not yet, maybe something else will help us get there.

DNA evidence.

Renee's life ended terribly, and her killer walked free.

He may still be walking free to this day.

But Renee may have taken something from him, too.

Something that he had left behind.

Something that in 1993 wouldn't have been on his mind the way it would be on a killer's mind today.

Information about himself.

His DNA.

I didn't realize that DNA could be a possibility in this case until one day when I found a little envelope in Rene's case file.

In it, there were fingernail clippings.

It was in the evidence storage area, so it was climate controlled, but it was not preserved as well as it should have been.

Still, it was something.

I sent that sample off to Susanna Ryan, a DNA analyst with decades of experience, to see what we could find out.

So we're starting with a really low amount of male DNA, and it was partially degraded.

So the results that we were able to get were only what we call partial profiles.

And the right-hand nails actually were seeing a mixture of males.

So there were actually at least three males present in that partial profile.

But I was able to pick out what we call a major contributor.

So there's one person that did contribute a little bit more DNA than the other two individuals.

So we have a major profile from that sample.

And then the left-hand nails, we do have signs of a potential second contributor, very low level.

But I was also able to pick out a major profile for that particular sample as well.

But Susanna says that only one sample from underneath Renee's fingernails is eligible for comparison to reference samples.

That means only one is complete enough to even begin to build a profile of someone that we can then test against suspects' DNA.

So now that we have this one partial profile, we have to make a decision.

Earlier, Matt and I surreptitiously collected David's DNA off of a Coke can he was drinking during our interview with him.

We also have Ronnie Parker's DNA, which he voluntarily gave to us in a cheek swab.

Okay, simple enough, right?

Well, money is limited, and it might be tough to convince the sheriff's office to bankroll two separate, expensive DNA analyses.

So I have to make a decision.

Which of the samples do I send first?

Do Do I send Ronnie's sample?

Or do I send David's sample?

As far as I see it, the more I look at David, the more reasons I am given to continue my investigation into him.

The more I look into Ronnie, the less reasons I am given to do the same.

I decide to send David's sample to Susanna's lab.

Now I have to wait, weeks.

But one day, the results come over email and they read,

The major YSTR profile is not consistent with the YSTR profile of David Young.

David Young is excluded as a contributor to this profile.

In addition, all paternally related male relatives of David Young are excluded as contributors to this profile.

Oh, God.

Have I been pursuing the wrong suspect the whole time?

Let me read that again.

David Young is excluded as a contributor to this profile.

What does this mean?

So what I did was I swabbed the mouth area of the Coke can and I'm trying to pick up any saliva and then get a DNA profile from that, which I was able to.

I got a complete male DNA profile from the Coke can that was from Mr.

Young.

Then I have this profile.

Now I want to compare it to any results that I've previously obtained.

In this case, it's from the right nails and from the left nails.

And we do have a major profile from both the right nail and from the left nails.

And that's what the comparisons are to, because the minor component is so minor that it's basically considered inconclusive.

I can't make comparisons to that minor.

It's just too little information.

Now, when I compare David Young to the major component of the right nails, he's excluded as a contributor.

It's just not matching up.

right so we just do a one-to-one comparison and i can see that his dna types at these loci or locations where I can compare are just not the same, right?

So I exclude him.

And then the same with the major portion of the swab from the left nails, where he is excluded from the major component.

But I, again, I can't speak to the minor component of these profiles.

Can such a low amount still indicate that that contact happened perimort, like, you know, in the fight, essentially, if there was defensive action taken?

Or is it more likely that it's such a low number because it was just overwhelmed by the, you know, the amount of her own blood or degraded over time?

Right.

So, you know, if this was a fresh sample from under the fingernails and had just recently occurred, it's a really low level.

So if I see that and this is a new case, not a cold case, then I'm more inclined to think, eh, this is probably just casual contact.

Does she have kids?

Like, you know, it's not an overwhelming amount.

Does it absolutely mean that someone couldn't have scratched or, you know, gotten a hold of their attacker?

No.

But I think the other thing that makes me kind of lean more towards casual contact is that we have three males, right, under the right nails.

So

that kind of indicates that this person is maybe in contact with a significant number of people, including males that just has a tendency to pick up.

DNA.

Again, it makes it more difficult because it's a cold case, because a number of years have passed and the samples are degraded.

So we don't really know the starting amount.

We know what we have now, this many years later.

So it makes it more difficult.

This is as far as the science can take us for now.

Susanna says the lab had carefully preserved a little bit of that male DNA.

Maybe someday the testing will allow us to get profiles of the other men who had clearly come into contact with Renee in the hours, maybe even just minutes before her death.

But for now,

DNA is a dead end.

Looks like we will have to continue doing this the old-fashioned way.

Gumshoe, boots on the ground, hitting pavement, knocking on doors.

As I see it now, here is the case against David Young.

David came onto the radar of investigators early on in their 1993 investigation.

Two tips were called in about him.

One from a doctor, the other from a DMV employee.

Both tips said that David seemed distressed about the murder and talked about it in detail.

However, the original detectives chose not to investigate those tips.

After her murder, Renee's family said that David visited them regularly.

David bought Renee's car off of them.

They also say he gave them items of Renee's, like a necklace she wore often.

And he bought gifts for her daughter Amanda, including a bicycle, and wrote her cards.

Then he disappeared.

I remember my grandma used to buy him a Christmas present, and it was a carton of Winston cigarettes.

And then one year, he never came.

And then he never came again.

He just stopped coming.

No letter, no phone call, and he just stopped out of nowhere.

So my grandma, I didn't know if something happened to him or just got busy.

And I remember that box of wrapped cigarettes long after Christmas was over.

My grandma just kept it out, you know, in case everybody showed up, then she had it for him.

And eventually she just threw it away.

Once I began interviewing David for this case, I noticed other things.

David continually lies and changes his story when it comes to his relationship with Renee.

The first time we approached him, he claimed not to know her very well.

But over time, He's indicated that they had a much closer relationship.

I was always scared for her life, man.

I think that's why I was so concerned about her.

I never did ask her who I was looking for.

I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

David also shares details of Renee's murder with us that are not publicly available.

He speaks about the multiple wounds across her body, the fact that she must have been tied up to have the blood drained out of her.

To me, he seems obsessed with her murder.

Even to this day, he drives by the place where her body was found multiple times a week, despite the fact that it is nowhere near where he lives.

He's also told me and Matt that he burned everything related to Renee, which is odd.

Why would he do that?

And David is related to a big drug trafficking family in the area, a family that owns property on the very road where Renee's body was found.

Altogether, it feels like a lot of successive coincidences.

But there are also flip sides to all of these points.

David could have seemed obsessed with Renee's case because he was deeply grief-stricken at losing his friend.

His visits to the Bergeron family could be read as his attempt to support the daughter his friend so dearly loved.

And there are many reasons he could have known details of Renee's murder.

There has been some media coverage of the case over the years.

Also, his brother-in-law was a cop, a cop with a reputation for bending the rules.

Maybe he shared Rene's autopsy report with David, even though that's not allowed.

Yes, David is related to a very large drug trafficking family, but he says he has no close relationship with them.

And importantly, David's DNA does not match one of the DNA profiles found underneath Renee's fingernails, the only one substantial enough to be compared against.

Plus, David has been cooperative.

He's sat down for multiple interviews with us.

That's no small feat.

Even though Matt and I think it's unlikely that he'll continue to cooperate with us, we decide to reach out to David again and see if he will do another interview.

I want him to explain the discrepancies, to answer directly how he'd known the details of Renee's injuries, who he thought Rene was afraid of, and what his role was in the myriad illegal operations of his own family.

And if he did do this heinous crime, if he killed Renee, I want him to confess to it.

David dodges our calls, doesn't return messages.

This continues for a week or two.

So, we decide to drive back to his house, knock on his door.

It's early morning on a weekday.

He opens the door.

He looks the same, no worse for the wear of the ten months since we'd last met with him.

We ask if he'd be willing to come down and talk with us again.

He seems reluctant.

Man, we're just going back through all these

case files and all the times we've talked to you.

You got a few more questions.

I'd love for you to throw some shoes on and come down to the office with us real quick.

Oh, really?

Damn.

You ain't got nothing going on.

He puts on his shoes and makes a phone call.

We can only hear his side of the call.

He says, hey, those detectives are here.

They want me to go back downtown with them

about that girl.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll call you.

He hangs up and follows us outside.

He's nervous about a check engine light on his car, so we offer to drive him to the station.

It's time to see if we can get any answers to all of the questions we have about David and the inconsistencies in his story.

You know, she knew somebody was after her.

Yeah, you said.

And I really, gosh, I want that information.

I wish we could get so much.

You know.

I keep wearing the mind that she didn't tell me.

Tell you who it was.

Give me some

Right.

That could have been the key of most of us.

Yeah, I think, and that's why, you know, we're hoping maybe we can jog your memory, bring up some new like people from back in the day that you moved with, maybe see if it helps kind of shake stuff loose, you know, kind of knock off the cobwebs a little.

That's the

hope.

Because if we can do that, that might just be the you know the missing piece to the whole puzzle

This might be the last time that David speaks to us.

So I want to be sure to cover all of our bases and ask every question on our mind.

See if maybe we can get him to definitively rule himself out as a suspect or

confess to the crime.

So from the times that we've spoken with you,

we've got a lot of conflicting information and we want some clear clarity on that.

I don't think you were intentionally being misleading,

but we've got some facts and evidence that show some of the things that you were saying just weren't true.

And I would just want some clarification on that.

Was it just a slip of memory or

were you misleading?

I ain't going to answer everything you asked me.

Okay.

And that's perfectly fine.

That's fine.

That's part of my rights.

Absolutely.

Yep.

Absolutely.

That's why

we want to talk about those things.

If you want any kind of DNA, we'll go anywhere and do it any way you want it.

Blood, air, slava,

it don't matter.

Because I figured they should have at least got some kind of DNA off of her with all the action that went on with her, you know.

Yeah.

The autopsy showed.

So you're okay with giving a DNA sample?

Oh, yeah.

Hell yeah.

I'll give you a DNA any any way you want it.

Okay.

Yeah, we might do that.

I can't remember how long it was from the time me and her took that ride down there when she

you know mentioned that somebody might be looking for her

and I was telling that Shannon had a trailer out

Sams out there that she could stay at if she felt that threat, you know

I could call him and get him to let her stay out there.

She didn't want to do nothing.

I can't remember how much time it was from then.

I know that was the last time I seen her.

Was when?

When that happened.

The day I went to New Orleans with her.

Okay.

I can't remember how much time it was from that point

to the day that shit happened.

It must have not been that long.

Remember, Shannon is Shannon Poole, David's brother-in-law.

David says Shannon had a trailer that Renee might have been able to stay at if she was in danger.

All right, so that brings up another question then

or statement on my side.

We know

for a fact that the Friday for her body, her body's found on Sunday, that Friday,

she's at your house that night in Crichton.

When she pulled up and you and Laura, Morris, were there at the house?

That was dune today.

That wasn't at night.

That was the evidence dune today.

Okay, so that's the last time you saw her.

I don't know.

I can't put it together.

I'm telling you that when me and her went to meet the all

she told me someone might be looking for her, something like that.

She was scared, right?

Yeah, she was scared.

She had done something.

That was when she came back to Puerto Rico.

But what we're getting at is

you said that was the last time you saw her, when in fact, the last time you saw her was the Friday before her body was found.

Y'all trying to plant shit man there.

I don't know how I would plant it.

I wouldn't know.

What kind of witness have you got that said they said?

Laura Morris.

We've spoken with Laura.

Laura tells us that she was there.

I suppose she's not putting words in your mouth.

But actually,

you said it too, though, when we, the first time we asked you about that, after we had talked to to Laura,

you said, you know, we just said, Laura said that, you know, she showed up at your house on Friday.

Hang on, hang on one second, David.

And she said, you said, you told us the exact same story that Laura had told us without you even knowing, you know, so you verified what she said.

So now you're saying it's bullshit, but you verified it last time we talked.

You ain't going to never place me nowhere near the time when she went missing and got killed.

There's no way.

Laura Morris was not in the picture

to know anything about us.

Okay, but Laura puts that as Friday.

Before she

killed.

That happened way before.

So Laura's statement's not accurate?

Not in her saying,

putting place of me that close to her being killed.

Well, I mean, it's not that close.

I mean,

you saying that Friday.

What I'm trying to get at is some clarification of the statement that you made.

Yeah.

Saying the last time you saw her was when you picked her up from the airport.

But we have Laura saying

that actually

the Friday before she was found...

Y'all talking to Laura a lot, ain't you?

Maybe I need to talk to her.

What would you say to her?

I want her to tell me some things that she's telling y'all.

Well, if you don't trust me, just say that.

Well, I trust you, but maybe I need to talk to her, but

I don't want to have no shit with her old man because it ain't none of his business.

It ain't none of nobody's business about me and her.

Yeah, I agree.

That's between you and her.

I'm just saying that.

Unless there was any information.

Murder.

If it ain't got no involvement with her, or Renee's murder, I don't see where there's anything to it in no way.

Well, it has to do with the murder because she is now a witness that says, yes, she was here with us Friday before her body was discovered.

So, I mean, that's pretty relevant.

Y'all thinking I killed her.

I know that.

Well, I don't know to be honest.

I don't know.

Never going to happen.

I don't know.

You've made some odd, in my opinion, and this is just me being man-to-man with you, David, is you've made some very odd statements.

And we're starting to see repetitive mistruths in a lot of statements

and that has to be accounted for, right?

This is a murder investigation.

We wouldn't, we wouldn't, we'd be doing a disservice to her if we didn't ask these questions.

Yeah, right?

Renee deserves that.

Her family should have the truth.

If we don't have the truth,

then we can't figure out what happened.

That crack got her, didn't it?

I think y'all looking in the wrong places for the murder.

Well,

I want to move on, really do.

But you have to help me understand some of the statements you've made.

Well, maybe I shouldn't have made them without a lawyer.

But the fact that you have...

I don't want to make a bunch of other statements without a lawyer.

You know, he made that clear to me not to make no more statements unless he was here.

Maybe I made a mistake when I didn't have a lawyer.

I thought I was doing good by being honest about it.

Well, you've been helping us.

but that stuff with Laura, that's bullshit.

Last time we interviewed David, he agreed to Laura's account that Renee was seen at his house before the murder.

But now he's getting defensive, angry, even.

He believes he is the lead suspect.

And he is not wrong.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Hey, I'm Paige DeSorbo, and I'm always thinking about underwear.

I'm Hannah Berner, and I'm also thinking about underwear, but I prefer full coverage.

I like to call them my granny panties.

Actually, I never think about underwear.

That's the magic of Tommy John.

Same, they're so light and so comfy, and if it's not comfortable, I'm not wearing it.

And the bras, soft, supportive, and actually breathable.

Yes, Lord knows the girls need to breathe.

Also, I need my PJs to breathe and be buttery soft and stretchy enough for my dramatic tossing and turning at night.

That's why I live in my Tommy John pajamas.

Plus, they're so cute because they fit perfectly.

Put yourself on to Tommy John.

Upgrade your drawer with Tommy John.

Save 25% for a limited time at tommyjohn.com slash comfort.

See site for details.

Picture yourself alone in the middle of nowhere and there's somebody following you.

He went on his way, we so thought, and then we went on ours.

But in reality, he really followed us up there.

On Deadly Nightmares, the true crime podcast from ID, listen to real stories of ordinary people stalked by serial killers and attackers.

Listen to Deadly Nightmares on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Right now, my partner Matt and I are interviewing David Young.

We are anxious that it might be the very last time we do this, so we don't want to leave any question unasked, any stone unturned.

I haven't understood the investigation on this since it started with

cookies.

Cookie.

Why couldn't, I mean, why couldn't they get something then?

There's a multitude of reasons.

I think it was a totality of lack of effort, bad policing, technology,

the crowd of people she ran with and that y'all were were around at the time, there was just a whole kit and caboodle of things that kind of did a trifecta, if you would,

to where there wasn't a whole ton of evidence.

If you random dope dealers, you're going to get killed.

Sometimes that's the case.

You don't know my personal opinion on this thing?

And based off of what I know from reading this case for the last 18 months, almost two years, I think it's somebody she was close with, and I think it was somebody who loved her, honestly.

I don't think it was a random dope deal.

I can't understand how somebody could kill something they love.

Happens all the time.

People do things in fits of rage that they don't want to do and had no intentions of doing, but it just happened.

And

that their body needed that release, if you would.

You know, I guess in some cases.

Yeah.

We've seen it.

I've seen it personally.

I had too many opportunities, man, for anything like that to ever happen.

But if I'd have been involved in that, she never would have been found.

What would you do?

I know how to murder somebody and make them disappear.

How?

You get rid of them.

Why don't somebody leave her laying outside the road for they just sending a message?

You rat on me, this is where you go.

Okay.

How would you have done it, though?

I'd have just gotten rid of them.

How do you get rid of a body?

Because there ain't too many people that know how to do that.

I mean I ain't never did nothing like that but I think if you know from what I've learnt in life that

you know you wouldn't never let nobody find nobody

if they were done to.

That's it.

You take a stoop of

I mean it it comes back to me that it was blacks involving the whole thing because they stupid anyway.

They are.

I mean,

people in general

are idiots when it comes to this stuff.

And that limits things when you're talking about it.

It's a psycho when you think about what they did to it.

Absolutely.

That's what Esther's thoughts was.

He said these psychos riding up and down the interstate all the time looking for crazy-ass girls, you know.

Sometimes that psycho lives right in the community, though.

I just wonder how many people, these people,

this couldn't have been the only killing they ever did.

I don't know.

Why do you think that?

I don't know.

It's just, it don't make no sense for somebody to do that and not have done it before or something, you know.

I find this back and forth interesting for a few reasons.

First, David is critical of the investigation.

He says there are clear persons of interest.

Is he trying to direct our attention away from him?

Second, David is again showing knowledge of the case.

He references Cookie Estes multiple times, the former lead detective.

Did he talk to Cookie firsthand?

And third, He gives us a theory of how he would commit this murder if he did it.

Huh.

As we continue our interview with David, I know I need to ask him about his visits to the Bergeron family.

Why did he visit them so often?

And then why did he stop all of a sudden?

Well, I went down there a lot after that happened.

Right, but she said that you guys were, you were coming down and visiting with her and her grandma and stuff until she was about 14.

So for a few years after that.

I guess you

know because I was working a lot.

I was making good money then.

And I was, you know, I took a couple of new new bicycles and

gave her money and stuff.

I would have always done that.

What made you stop?

I don't know.

Just quit going down there.

Oh, y'all, you were very close with the family.

Oh, yeah.

And very concerned about the case.

Oh, yeah.

And then you just kind of stopped.

Help me understand why.

Hell, I don't know.

I thought a lot of her mother and daddy, you know.

That's just odd to me.

Right.

How long can anything keep going on, man?

Help me understand why you quit going over there, David.

Oh, to seeing them?

Yeah, so you went over there for years, years and years, and were heavily involved in their life.

Oh, I know.

And what?

And then one day to the next.

You just quit going down there, quit calling.

They couldn't get in touch with you?

They thought you died.

They literally thought you died when we reached out to them.

I know, you told me before.

Let's back up.

Why did you quit going to New Orleans?

Oh, I can't visit my family.

I can't explain that.

I did all I could do to try to ease the pain on what, you know, because I knew nobody loved her except her family.

You know, they wasn't no.

You didn't see no falling in them.

They loved each other.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So you're somebody besides her family?

Yeah, I was killed over her.

I killed somebody over there.

I told her that several times.

That you loved her.

Yeah, yeah.

I did.

I was worried about her her whole life.

Over the course of our many conversations with David, he said multiple things about his relationship to Renee.

He didn't know her.

He knew her casually.

Now he says he loved her and would kill for her.

I don't mind what you're doing.

I see where you're coming from and what you're shooting at, but

that ain't getting back to the heart of what happened to her and who she was hanging around with at that time.

There was a couple of girls I know she was messing with at that time.

Sure, if you just don't want to answer the question, just say I don't want to ask you to.

No, I don't want to completely just rul it out, you know.

I didn't have no obligation to

keep going nowhere or doing nothing.

I mean, it was costing me money to do what I did.

You know, every time I went down there.

It didn't cost you money to answer the phone and talk to him.

Well, I know.

I know.

So why just cut communication with the family?

Well, I mainly started going down there after she got killed because I felt sorry for the family.

Does that make sense to you?

Well, yeah, in a way it does.

The reason you were going to be able to do that.

Why would I keep going the rest of my life down there?

I mean, I was concerned about them, and I just found out that her daddy was dead

when I went to Mauslim and

seen this

thing of her.

It kind of pissed me off because they had already, they had a picture of her up

on the face of the door.

And the flowers is gone.

Nobody's,

I thought about calling and having

flowers put back up like it used to be.

I feel the conversation getting more heated.

I worry that our time with David might be running out.

We're pressing him, agitating him.

We know he can lose control.

We want to push him towards a breaking point, one where he might just finally release all that he knows about this case, all that he may be hiding.

And what I think is someone was close and loved her and was sick and tired of doing

things that was going on.

Friends don't do that.

Mad, crazy lovers do that.

Sometimes they can be the same person.

How How old are you now?

66.

66 years old.

I just don't.

I thought about what y'all trying to put together too and

I don't like it.

What don't you like?

About y'all, the way y'all trying to put something together that

it ran me crazy because she was going to be able to

smoking crack and I had to end her life because I couldn't stand that.

It's crazy, man.

That is crazy.

They need to be found.

I admit that.

I'd like to find them myself.

I'd like to do my justice.

I don't want no court on justice.

David, I think I'm talking to God today.

Oh, my God.

Honestly, based on the conversations that we've had.

You are.

Seriously.

You want me to be

since I'm being honest?

No, that lawyer warned me about y'all.

Okay.

Put yourself in my shoes.

Okay.

Some of the statements that you've said, a lot of the statements that you've said,

appear to be not truthful.

And then when I ask you...

I'm going to keep on going and giving you statements.

I don't need no lawyer to point out.

Thank you for that.

But my point is, and the reason I'm thinking this way is because a lot of the statements that you give are not accurate or not truthful.

And then when I ask you questions, very simple questions about how you think.

These answers.

Hang on, let me finish.

Let me finish.

When I ask simple questions, like you were so close with a family that you literally drove two hours to give their daughter gifts and belongings for years, and then you quit going, you won't need to answer that.

What, six months?

Is that years?

No, about almost four years.

So it's the simple things like that that

can be done.

You keep on thinking all you want to, but you're never, you'll never get no word with that.

I'll give you any kind of DNA you want.

It ain't going to happen.

Whoever's DNA they got is never going to come back to me because I wasn't there.

Did you witness it?

That's how you prove somebody's guilty, is through DNA.

You're watching too much TV.

Yeah.

Too much law and order.

You can't ask them questions about it.

You You can't convict an honest man.

You can't do it.

It ain't going to happen.

What if

it's possible that the reason there's inconsistencies, but that you are telling us the truth, that you're innocent, that you didn't do this,

what if it's possible, David,

give me a second, that part of the reason there's a little bit of like

stuff that doesn't add up with the statements is because

you know just a little bit more.

That maybe you didn't do it, but you know a little bit more that you didn't want to give us at the beginning and now you're kind of stuck in a corner that ends up making you look worse than you are does that make sense

you don't know any more about it than anything you've ever told us who she was afraid of

who she was exactly what happened

she did not tell me that day who was looking for her.

Did you

not think to ask?

You were that close to her and you didn't think to ask who wants to kill you?

You're telling me you would kill for her.

You wouldn't ever let anybody hurt her, but you didn't even ask who she was afraid of?

I can't tell you why that

somebody was looking for her to kill her

for something she'd done.

Somebody was looking for her to kill her for something she had done.

That's what David says.

David makes it impossible for us to eliminate him as a suspect, but he also does not confess to the crime.

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That was the last time Matt or I spoke with David.

We included most of that interview here because I think it speaks to the difficulty of David as a suspect.

He contradicts himself.

He lashes out.

He lies.

But none of that means he killed Renee, and he is adamant that he did not do it, even if he will offer up theories as to how he would have killed her if he had.

And without any other evidence, I can't say definitively that David did this.

I can't hand the case over to the district attorney's office and recommend that they charge him.

At least not yet.

Matt and I debate whether we should keep pursuing David as a suspect.

Statistically, she is 80% chance that she's killed by somebody she knows.

Okay, so that's already right there.

And now we know she's moving fairly significant quantities of wheat.

I mean, not like tractor trailers, but she's moving more than than just a normal person who's got sells a couple dime bags.

Right.

She's killed and dumped

essentially on property

owned by the largest traffickers in the area.

The bankses.

The banks who at that time were working with the Youngs.

The odds of it being anybody else.

I agree.

Me thinking outside of the box is why would you run run to your murder?

Because she trusted him up until the end.

Here's one theory of the case as I see it.

Maybe Renee went to David for help the night she showed up at his house.

Both David and Laura confirmed that she stopped by his house, though David later contested this.

We also know that Renee called a detective, offering to be a confidential informant.

Maybe she was in trouble.

Laura says Renee looked beat up when she showed up that night.

For me, the big question is, what did Renee and David talk about when she came over?

Laura didn't know.

David says someone was looking for Renee to kill her.

So what did Renee tell David?

Did she tell him that she was going to be a CI?

Did she ask for help?

What happened next?

Now, by this point, remember, he has said to us, I told her she didn't need to be snitching on nobody.

And he says that, he says that angrily.

So he may have felt justified in telling them when she showed up at his house at 9, 10 o'clock on Friday night, she showed up and said, I tried to call the drug cop and he wouldn't talk to me.

Yep, come see me Monday.

Now, none of this changes the fact that the sexual mutilation is not something even cartels typically do.

The beheading, yes, but the sexual mutilation, no.

And this is why I think

he is still responsible for the posthumous mutilation.

I don't like the big words, Sarah.

After she was dead, Matthew,

he cut her up

and he did that

because he was tasked with disposing of the body.

Or.

Never thought of this.

He went back and did it later.

She's killed somewhere, not the dump location,

but she wasn't there long.

Nope.

So

it would all relatively be close.

But

the last place we know she was alive at was David's house his house yeah

Friday Friday late Friday night and think about how many times he's

David's girlfriend Laura Morris Laura Morris was there so and how many times he's changed his story on that right so first he hadn't seen her in months he hadn't seen her in a week he hadn't seen her in two days if we lived in a world without DNA very good person of interest and suspect in this case No doubt about it.

His stories don't add up.

His stories change.

The lies that he's told.

And the lies that he tells

are very, very small, but they're only significant in terms of the case, right?

So why lie about where you were living?

Oh, well, it turns out you lied about where you were living because she's seen at your house.

Yeah, it's the DNA.

But the DNA is a partial from fingernails that could be from any part during the day, any part during the fight.

We're all of the mind that this probably was not him.

I mean, there's no reason for him to attack her on the head and beat her when she obviously at that point still trusts him.

He could have surprised her, and there would be no other wounds on her body if he's just going to kill her that night.

So there's somebody else involved in this.

And again, when you look at the odds, it happens on a road where almost all the properties are owned by the Bankses and the Youngs.

And she's moving drugs, and he is connected to those people too.

And like I said earlier, it's a very tough case because your witnesses,

one, don't remember a lot of what happened in 93

or don't remember a whole lot

or some of the witnesses are dead.

So it's a very tough case to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

My opinion that

if you go to a jury or a grand jury with this, we can indict a ham sandwich.

Yes.

Right.

It's all in what you tell them happened.

Here's the We don't want to indict someone until we ourselves are fully convinced that he did it.

Matt certainly doesn't, but me neither.

Still,

something does not sit right with me when it comes to David Young.

You know, when you tell people the story about this thing, and you tell people about him taking Amanda there at 10, you tell people about him still going down there, everybody's like, oh, he did it.

Which I agree is not that is not a reason to put somebody in prison, but I agree with you an indictment would be relatively easy absolutely none of us are in the business of putting somebody in jail who didn't do it yeah that's not gonna happen right that's what I mean I don't want that I don't want that either doesn't meet in my opinion right now it doesn't meet that burden of proof to convict Beyoncé so what do you want I think there's to feel better about that I just think there's there should be more

but what is more what do you want sometimes you don't have more sometimes you're only limited obviously to what the case gives you

And you can't just make things up, not saying that that's been done, but

you can't hope and wish that this will be resolved.

It's just the lack of.

I know, but I guess I'm asking:

what would seal it more for you in the absence of DNA?

Because not every case is going to have DNA, that's just a fact in the absence of DNA.

Obviously, a confession would be great,

or an admission

of participation

in the crime.

Yeah.

Or knowledge of the crime.

Matt, Amanda, me, we all want the same thing.

A confession.

It feels like the only kind of certainty available in a cold case like this.

And it's exactly what eludes us.

I would like to be able to say to you that this is all resolved.

That Matt and I aren't still debating in a circle.

That there aren't nights I've literally cried myself to sleep, afraid of either not solving this case or of possibly charging a weird and dishonest but otherwise innocent man.

I cannot say any of that to you.

But I can say that in the weeks and months since that last interview with David Young, since we told him in no uncertain terms, that he is currently the lead suspect in the investigation into the murder of Renee Bergeron, I have done a lot of work, and there have been some significant developments.

I've been back to Mobile three times since then, staying for weeks at a time.

I've obtained phone records for key dates and even for specific phone calls.

I've unearthed criminal records from David's past that for some reason had never come up in our early searches.

Charges, in several cases, of violent felonies.

I've interviewed half a dozen new people, people connected to Renee and this case who I didn't even know existed just a few months ago.

One of those interviews was with someone very close to the case, someone who may in fact be the missing piece we've been searching for this entire time.

Someone who may know the whole truth and be able to give us the information we need to at long last wrap this up and hand it over to the district attorney.

I hope to be able to share that with you one day soon.

But I also, just weeks ago, received received an anonymous tip.

It was filed on the Mobile County Sheriff's Office website.

There's a lot about it that seems credible, and it points to an entirely new suspect.

It might be nothing, but it is very compelling.

So I'm headed back to Mobile,

and I will explore it thoroughly until it can be eliminated or until it takes us someplace valuable,

even if it's someplace completely new.

Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom?

It's produced by Arc Media for ID.

The network executive producer is Meredith Russell.

This series is hosted and written by me, Sarah Kalen.

Our senior audio producer is Katie Jane Fernelius.

Our producer is Eden Turner.

Executive producers are Zachary Herman and me.

Scores by Travis Bacon.

Sound design and mixing are by Dean White.

Audio engineering and editorial feedback provided by Josh Wilcox at Brooklyn Podcast Studio.

Additional forensic research provided by Jennifer Leahy.

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