Ep.4: Friend or Foe? - Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom?

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Speaker 38 This episode contains explicit language and descriptions of violence. Please be advised.

Speaker 38 Is there anyone alive in Mobile who might have known your mom?

Speaker 40 It's hard because I don't really know her life in Mobile. I don't really know who she hung out with there.

Speaker 40 There's Leanne, but she's dead.

Speaker 38 This is Amanda Campos, Renee's daughter. We're speaking on the phone.

Speaker 40 There's David.

Speaker 40 Yeah, he was a friend of my mom's.

Speaker 40 He would bring gifts and things of my mom for me.

Speaker 40 Actually, he took me where she was killed, like where her body was found.

Speaker 41 It was me, my grandma, grandpa, and David.

Speaker 40 We all drove the mobile. He showed me her house, where she hung out, and then he took us to the spot.

Speaker 41 like onside the highway.

Speaker 40 But yeah, I don't know if David is still alive. Maybe you could reach out to him.

Speaker 38 For ID and ARC Media, I'm Sarah Kalen, and this is Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom.

Speaker 38 Previously, on Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom.

Speaker 42 The injuries to the neck, which involved decapitation, meaning that her head had been physically removed from her body.

Speaker 16 These wounds...

Speaker 42 They're just indicative of someone who is in a state of rage, trying to do as much damage as they possibly could.

Speaker 41 I feel like she was left out because of the circumstances of what happened, you know, because

Speaker 38 it was a murder.

Speaker 41 It was a brutal murder.

Speaker 44 She was a drug addict and when she had it bad.

Speaker 44 I never will forget her, but I call her Maria. But we found out later her name was Renee Bergeron.

Speaker 44 But she always been Maria Martinez to me.

Speaker 45 I mean, this was going to be, I knew at the time, this was going to be a real challenge to try to recreate what could have happened to this young woman.

Speaker 45 You cannot assume that the victim is a stranger to the offender. It builds the fantasy.
It builds into what he wants to do and how he's going to do it.

Speaker 38 I need to sit down with Amanda, hear more about this David guy. So I decide to visit her at her home.
Her house is decorated with bright colors and holiday knickknacks, and lots of framed photographs.

Speaker 38 It reminds me so much of Joyce's home. Clearly, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
There's a pair of parakeets, a few small aquariums filled with fish, and a little dog scuttling around.

Speaker 38 At this point, I'm hoping we can talk more about a guy named David Young, a guy she mentioned the very first time we spoke on the phone.

Speaker 38 Do you have a a memory of david and your mom coming over together ever no

Speaker 41 never

Speaker 41 she didn't you never met him before your mom not that i remember i remember my mom talking about him as a friend and i remember my mom explaining to me the difference of

Speaker 41 love and being in love through david as an example me and my mom were talking and i said

Speaker 41 Well, what's the difference? And she said, well, like David, he's my friend. I love him, but I'm not in love with him.

Speaker 41 And I said,

Speaker 41 well, how can you say that?

Speaker 41 You know, you get thinking, I'm seven, eight years old trying to figure out what love and in-love is.

Speaker 41 And I said, so you're not in love with David? And she said, no, I just love him as a friend.

Speaker 41 And it was because she said that he was a good friend and he was my dad's best friend.

Speaker 41 So that's the only way she referred to him as was my dad's best friend. So that's how I knew him.

Speaker 38 But despite how seemingly close Renee and David were, Amanda does not meet David until after her mom dies.

Speaker 38 Not long after the funeral, Amanda travels with her grandparents to Alabama.

Speaker 38 They need to collect Renee's belongings, including her beloved little sports car, which is still at the mechanics in Mobile.

Speaker 38 Once they arrive in Mobile, they meet up with David. He offers to take them around, since none of them really know Renee's life there.

Speaker 38 First, David takes the Bergeron family to the cemetery where Amanda's dad Clay is buried. She's never been there before.

Speaker 38 After that, he takes her to meet Clay's brother so that Amanda can be introduced to the other side of the family.

Speaker 38 After that, he takes Amanda and her grandparents to Renee's house, the one she shared with Maurice.

Speaker 41 And I remember walking in and my grandma was saying, how do we know this is the right house? I walked in and

Speaker 41 There's a big old picture of me on the refrigerator. Like I had given her as my Easter picture.

Speaker 41 My grandma had made me a dress, you know, you sit with the Easter pony, but she had blew it up to like the size of the whole refrigerator. And I said, Well, unless I'm famous, this is the house.

Speaker 38 It is clearly Renee's house, but apart from the picture of Amanda on the fridge, it looks abandoned.

Speaker 41 There was nothing in the house, it was a few pictures, um,

Speaker 41 an empty purse,

Speaker 41 not even furniture, like not even a sofa,

Speaker 46 nothing on the wall.

Speaker 41 It was like

Speaker 41 ransacked, I guess you would say. It was just, and I remember that feeling like this isn't, this isn't right.
Like, this is empty.

Speaker 41 There wasn't even a sofa. There wasn't a bed.
There was nothing in there.

Speaker 38 According to Amanda, David then tells her grandparents that he thinks she, Amanda, should see where her mother's body was found.

Speaker 38 It's not far from Renee's house. The family drives over with David.

Speaker 38 I remember waiting in the car.

Speaker 38 You didn't get out of the car?

Speaker 46 No, no, no.

Speaker 41 My grandma and grandpa got out. My grandpa told me to wait in the car.

Speaker 46 So I don't know what they said or

Speaker 41 how precise he was, whatever, you know.

Speaker 38 Amanda doesn't know what David or her grandparents see or talk about while she stays in the car.

Speaker 38 After that, the Bergeron family returns home to New Orleans.

Speaker 38 In the first years after Renee's death, David visits the family every so often. In fact, just a few months after their mobile visit, David offers to buy Renee's car.

Speaker 41 My mom had a 280ZX, and it was teal,

Speaker 41 and had spoiled rotten written across the front of it in gold letters.

Speaker 38 The car had been hard to sell, but Amanda loved having it around in her grandparents' driveway. She said she would just go sit in it so she could smell her mom.

Speaker 41 So it was a very noticeable car.

Speaker 1 Everybody knew it was her car.

Speaker 41 So he told my grandmother that he wanted to drive it around town. So if anybody seen him in the car,

Speaker 41 he would know that he's looking for him.

Speaker 41 That's what he said.

Speaker 38 After that, David keeps returning to the Bergeron home.

Speaker 38 But each time he visits, Amanda's grandpa Raymond makes her go somewhere else. He doesn't want her to interact with David.

Speaker 41 My grandpa was one of those people that could read people. And he just, from jump, he didn't like him.

Speaker 41 And the first couple of times he came over, he didn't even let him come inside. Like he had to stay outside and talk to him, you know.

Speaker 38 Eventually, at some point, David is allowed to come inside. Amanda's grandma, Joyce, invites him in to chat.

Speaker 38 David brings Joyce newspaper clippings with updates on the case. New rewards offered, new possible connections.

Speaker 38 But Amanda recalls Raymond still refuses to speak with David or let Amanda interact with him much.

Speaker 38 Despite this, David sends Amanda holiday cards.

Speaker 41 So it's a teddy bear holding a heart and it says, happy Valentine's Day. And then the inside says, a Valentine's greeting for you from me, as warm as a great big hug would be.
Have a happy day.

Speaker 41 And then David wrote, and please don't ever forget that I think about and love you forever. Love always, David, and very happy Valentine.

Speaker 41 I knew I had another,

Speaker 41 like a note from him before, and he had sent me a picture of himself when he started driving 18 wheelers. He sent me a picture of that.

Speaker 46 That's all I remember, though.

Speaker 38 Amanda remembers another time when David slipped an envelope under the door. On it, he had written.

Speaker 41 For Amanda.

Speaker 38 Inside the envelope was a gold necklace.

Speaker 41 My mom's necklace.

Speaker 41 that he supposedly just found in the car, is what he said. But my mom always had the necklace on.

Speaker 38 It's not just Amanda's memory. I have found at least six pictures of Renee wearing this necklace.
It looks to be a favorite of hers.

Speaker 41 And then another time,

Speaker 41 he came in for Christmas because he bought me a bicycle.

Speaker 41 A 10-speed pink and gray bicycle, you know, with the swirly handles.

Speaker 38 David's visits are regular enough that Joyce buys him a Christmas present every year.

Speaker 41 It was a carton of Winston cigarettes. And then one year, he never came.

Speaker 41 And then he never came again.

Speaker 41 He just stopped coming.

Speaker 41 No letter, no phone call, just stopped out of nowhere.

Speaker 41 So my grandma, I didn't know if something happened to him or just got busy.

Speaker 41 And I remember that box of wrapped cigarettes.

Speaker 41 Long after Christmas was over. My grandma just kept it out, you know, in case ever he showed up, then she had it for him.

Speaker 41 And eventually she just threw it away.

Speaker 38 After that, Amanda never sees David again.

Speaker 38 He vanishes into thin air.

Speaker 40 Yeah, I don't know if David is still alive. Maybe you could reach out to him.

Speaker 38 How old do you think he was?

Speaker 40 Older than my mom, but I actually do know his birthday. Christmas.

Speaker 38 Hard to forget.

Speaker 38 David Young. His name actually appears in the original case files, but only briefly.

Speaker 38 He makes his first appearance on February 19th, 1994, three months after Renee was killed.

Speaker 38 A doctor calls in saying David came into his office seeking anxiety medicine because he was upset about what happened to Renee.

Speaker 38 Around the same time, a DMV employee also calls in a tip on David. Apparently, he came into the DMV to renew his commercial driver's license.

Speaker 38 He showed the employee laminated photos of Renee and discussed the case in detail. He seemed upset.

Speaker 38 The employee was shaken and told a state trooper stationed at the DMV who then gave the information to detectives at the sheriff's office.

Speaker 38 Both of these tips are written down in the detective's notebook. From there, it looks like the detectives spoke with David about 11 days later, presumably following up on these tips.

Speaker 38 But there is no recording of their conversation, just a few notes jotted down, saying that it happened, and that David said he hadn't seen Renee since July, a full four months before she died.

Speaker 38 Someone being upset about a murder when they know the person who was murdered is not alarming.

Speaker 38 Yes, he shares a few too many details, but I don't believe there is a right way or a wrong way to process grief or traumatic loss.

Speaker 38 And so someone being a little ghoulish about it isn't a red flag in and of itself.

Speaker 38 But that being said,

Speaker 38 I can't stop thinking about the story Amanda shared, about David taking her to the place where her mom's body was found.

Speaker 38 Whatever it might mean, it's clear that I need to speak with David Young. It's been clear since Amanda first mentioned his name.

Speaker 38 Even if he has a rock-solid alibi and no connections to Renee's murder, at the very least, he's probably someone who knew her fairly well.

Speaker 38 I have a name and a birthday. No year, but it being on Christmas makes it at least a little easier to find him.
So that's all I need. I find his criminal record.

Speaker 38 There are charges for assault, robbery, burglary, and weed, a felony marijuana charge, actually, meaning he had a distribution-level amount when arrested, not some dime bag recreational amount.

Speaker 38 I also find an address in Mobile.

Speaker 38 As far as I can tell, there's no death certificate or obituary connected to his name. So it looks like he's still alive, 65 years old, and lives not too far away.

Speaker 38 My partner Matt and I decide that we're going to pull up to David's house and try to interview him without warning. We want to knock him off balance a little, see how he reacts.

Speaker 38 David lives at the very back of a trailer park. We have to drive through a series of twists and turns on a dirt road to find him.

Speaker 38 When we finally arrive at his address, it's hard to see his trailer because it's obscured by very high, cropped hedges. But once we walk past them, we can see it clearly.

Speaker 38 The single wide looks old, at least 30 or 40 years. Faded, worn, some rust showing.
But it is also clearly as well kept as anyone could be expected to manage at its age, or at his.

Speaker 38 The property property slopes down behind the trailer into a huge section of woods with a small shed at the edge of the property line.

Speaker 38 I record the interview on my phone, so it's not high quality. I'll try to clarify as we go because this conversation, though it only lasts half an hour, contains a lot of very important information.

Speaker 38 He's wearing a plain white t-shirt and jeans, both of which appear quite crisp and clean, but also seem at least a size too big.

Speaker 38 With just socks on his feet, he joins us outside at Matt's request, sitting down on the narrow metal steps in front of the trailer's front door.

Speaker 38 David Young has a sort of lanky Santa Claus quality to his appearance. Long white hair, long white beard, though both are yellowed from years of nicotine exposure.

Speaker 38 He is so tall and thin that gangly is the first word to pop into my mind.

Speaker 38 David seems stunned, almost mute. He clearly knows immediately why we are there.

Speaker 38 You might have missed it just now, but the moment when we mention a murder in 1993, he replies, mumbling, I quote, you mean Renee?

Speaker 38 Then, I didn't really know her, end quote. At the outset, before we even begin asking him questions, David starts by saying that Renee got on crack.
She threw her life away.

Speaker 47 Do you hear him?

Speaker 38 He says, that's what got her killed. Matt asks David if he and Renee were ever in a relationship or whether they were just friends.

Speaker 38 David quickly answers, saying, no, I knew some people she knew, met her through them, but she got on that stuff.

Speaker 38 After that, he trails off.

Speaker 17 That stuff changes people sometimes, doesn't it?

Speaker 38 My best guess is that David is struggling to grasp what is happening and may be trying to end the conversation with us. He's throwing out answers, whatever comes to him in that second.

Speaker 38 Anything to just make this stop. That may be why he downplays his relationship with Renee, claiming not to know her really and emphasizing her drug use, distancing himself from her.

Speaker 38 But Matt pushes on.

Speaker 17 So tell me a little bit about her, because some of the case notes that I've read just don't tell me a whole lot about her. And

Speaker 17 you know, I see a picture of her, and that's all I know about her. I want to know some details about her life, who she hung around, and what she liked to do.

Speaker 17 Where's she got? What she got on that track, she got with him black, man.

Speaker 17 I heard she was dating a black guy. Yeah,

Speaker 17 his name was

Speaker 17 Maurice Maurice, yeah.

Speaker 17 And they said they questioned him, and he clear as him, yeah.

Speaker 38 So David says that Renee got on drugs and started hanging out with black people, including her boyfriend, Maurice.

Speaker 17 How was her relationship with Maurice?

Speaker 38 Did you ever see any indication of violence on this? street? No,

Speaker 48 I don't think he.

Speaker 17 I don't think that was him that did that.

Speaker 38 David is quick to say that he does not suspect Maurice.

Speaker 38 Matt asks David if the detectives ever spoke with him.

Speaker 17 Did the police or deputies ever come speak with you?

Speaker 38 Yes, David says. He went down to the sheriff's station and talked with Cookie Estes about the case.
He makes it sound voluntary on his part.

Speaker 48 I didn't like the way they dealt it because they

Speaker 17 did things a lot different a long time ago. Okay.

Speaker 17 So I'm trying to put some fresh. I did all I could to find out about it.

Speaker 17 Tell me about that. That would help me tremendously.

Speaker 17 So who did you suspect after you kind of dug into things?

Speaker 38 When Matt asks David who he suspects, David keeps quiet. He doesn't offer an answer.
Instead, he says, the detectives say she left the house that morning and was going to the store.

Speaker 38 It's like he's thinking out loud. But eventually, he does offer his own theory of the case.
She acted like somebody was after her ass.

Speaker 38 How do you know that she had ratted on somebody? Did she personally take it?

Speaker 38 Well, I remember, I, okay. So I do remember seeing something in an old newspaper where

Speaker 38 that was a potential thought process of the sheriff's office at the time was

Speaker 38 that she could have snitched on someone, per se, or been in the drug world.

Speaker 38 David believes Renee is responsible for somebody going to prison, and that is why she was killed. He cites the fact that she acted like somebody was after her.

Speaker 38 When Matt presses him on this, he then claims he read it in a newspaper.

Speaker 38 It is worth noting that for many years, Renee's mom, Joyce, has kept a file folder of all the documents related to Renee's murder. In it, there are multiple newspaper clippings about the case.

Speaker 38 David gave some of these clippings to Joyce. On one, he writes in the margin, still lacks clues.

Speaker 38 So it does appear that he followed the case closely after Renee's death.

Speaker 38 I ask him about what he knows of Renee's personal life. I want to see what he'll offer us.
Where are you going to say she was married? Well, Ree, she was married to that that Clay Beers boy.

Speaker 38 You know, he died. Clay died of a damn brain of an annual business.

Speaker 38 We all lived out there in the neighborhood.

Speaker 38 Yeah, he got

Speaker 38 him and her got married.

Speaker 38 She got pregnant by him.

Speaker 38 Just a reminder. Renee left home as a teenager and went to Mobile, Alabama, where she married a guy named Clay, that's Amanda's dad, who later died of a brain aneurysm.

Speaker 38 David and Clay were childhood friends, so he knew her for a long time.

Speaker 38 And David tells us a history of Renee that more or less matches what we know. She put baby Amanda in her parents' care.
She traveled. She engaged in sex work.

Speaker 38 It appears that David did know Renee well.

Speaker 38 But I am also curious about David's relationship to Renee's family after her death. Like, why did he visit so much? Why did he buy her car?

Speaker 38 And why did he take the family out to the place where Renee's body was found? According to David, Renee's family asked him to take them out to that spot.

Speaker 38 Yeah,

Speaker 38 I took her Roma in Russia.

Speaker 38 You took them out to the spot where she was killed? Yeah.

Speaker 38 They wanted to go out to Minister.

Speaker 38 Oh, they wanted to. They wanted, yeah, they wanted it.

Speaker 38 They asked me, I said, yeah, someone. When's the last time you rode out there? Oh, I've been.
It's been probably not a week ago.

Speaker 38 About a week.

Speaker 38 I can't find out.

Speaker 38 I don't know.

Speaker 38 David's body language changes. He seems uncomfortable, cagey, even, unable to address the question directly.
As Matt tries to get a more exact answer, David starts offering a roundabout story.

Speaker 38 He says he drove there with his friend Calvin, who he lives with and takes takes care of, but that's all he'll say.

Speaker 38 What are you doing when you drive by there?

Speaker 38 He's an old man. You know, he's on parole.

Speaker 38 Matt asks David, when did he last go to that spot? Last week, David answers.

Speaker 38 Matt follows up, clarifying that David is saying that he drove by there last week. At this point, David starts murmuring, saying, I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 38 I'm not exactly sure what David is trying to say as we push on this point,

Speaker 38 but this is what I gather. It's clear that David says the last time he drove by the spot where Renee's body was found was last week, like the week before we're talking to him.

Speaker 38 Why would he be driving down this particular remote road so often? I'm not sure.

Speaker 38 Psychologically, this stands out to me: the fact that he's been to that spot so recently.

Speaker 38 And the more we ask about Renee, the more that David keeps bringing the conversation back to the grisly details of what happened to her. He seems obsessed with them.
He also seems familiar with them.

Speaker 38 He says this is because he's seen pictures of what happened to Renee.

Speaker 38 I sure hate to see her go like that.

Speaker 38 Y'all never even see the Lord Johnson before, do you? I've got it. You got it? It's mad, yeah.
Yep.

Speaker 38 All kinds of things.

Speaker 38 It's not nice.

Speaker 38 Sound like something a black person was doing, something crazy like this.

Speaker 38 Why do you say that? I don't

Speaker 38 know. Just

Speaker 38 So David claims he has pictures of Renee's tattoos that he got from her dad. I know that these photos were shown to the family to help identify Renee's body and may have been in their possession.

Speaker 38 But I don't know whether anyone in the Bergeron family showed these to David.

Speaker 38 David also claims that at one point, he had the autopsy report. That is odd.
These are not publicly available in homicides.

Speaker 38 One thing I notice is that David is pretty unclear. And I don't mean just in terms of the audio quality.
Like, we ask him a question, and he doesn't really answer that specific question.

Speaker 38 He says something unrelated that may or may not have to do with the actual question. He doesn't finish his sentences.
It's hard to follow his train of thought.

Speaker 38 But it also seems clear to me that he's pretty nervous and not sure what he is supposed to say to detectives about this case.

Speaker 38 There's a lot to note in this first conversation. David seems to know a lot about the murder of Renee, like a lot of specific details, and he seems eager to talk about them.

Speaker 38 He also gives roundabout, unclear answers, and he's pretty judgmental, racist even about Renee's life. He clearly dislikes black people and blames them for what happened.

Speaker 38 For me, the first conversation with David raises more questions than answers. It's not clarifying, it's confusing.

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Speaker 38 The next month, Matt and I ask David to come to the sheriff's office for a sit-down interview at the station.

Speaker 38 We need to speak with him again and ask about, one, his relationship with Renee, two, his knowledge of the murder, and three, his drives past the crime scene.

Speaker 38 In the time since we first talked to David, we've pulled license plate data from across the county.

Speaker 38 This data marks when a plate passes through red light cameras, allowing us to look for patterns of movement.

Speaker 38 When we look at the past 60 days of data for David, we count approximately 25 times that his vehicle appears to pass by the crime scene.

Speaker 38 The data shows that his car passes through the nearest light to the scene, going in one direction, and then, usually 10 to 20 minutes later, passes through again, going back the other way.

Speaker 38 I am curious to see if David will confirm or deny whether or not he is in fact visiting the crime scene.

Speaker 38 It's part of our broader strategy. Get David to tell us as much as possible and gently push back for clarification when he goes astray.

Speaker 38 I am not sure how much of what he says will be true or not, but I want to gauge how he responds when we ask him to clarify details.

Speaker 38 When David arrives, we guide him to the interview room. This is a room with white walls, a small round table, and a recording system.

Speaker 38 Matt begins the interview.

Speaker 51 my partner Sarah?

Speaker 51 So, man, we've been looking through thousands of pages of documents

Speaker 51 in this investigation. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 38 David seems to trust Matt more. He opens up to him.

Speaker 51 When I talked to you yesterday, you said you got a dream. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 51 So you've been thinking about it a lot. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 51 I think I've hit two since I've seen you. Holy cow.

Speaker 51 What were those about? about? You said they were really vivid. It was.

Speaker 51 It was her, her dad, mom.

Speaker 51 They had come somewhere when we were there and was going to take her back.

Speaker 51 That was a dream. Yeah.

Speaker 38 David says he's been having dreams about Renee.

Speaker 38 Now, having a dream about someone may seem like a pretty innocuous admission. We all have dreams about people and situations we know.

Speaker 38 But in the world of criminal psychology, when any suspect begins to talk about dreams, we pay attention. This is because dream admissions are very common in the world of sexual homicide.

Speaker 38 People may not admit to the crime directly, but they admit to having had a dream about committing the crime. This is a psychological telltale.

Speaker 38 David's dream strikes me as an interesting one. It is, in no way, an admission dream, but it does suggest to me there is some level of David's subconscious focusing on Renee.

Speaker 38 I make a note to remember this to see if he mentions any other dreams throughout our interviews.

Speaker 38 Before we go any further, Matt and I want to learn more about the fact that David keeps driving past the crime scene.

Speaker 38 We know that he has done this multiple times since we last spoke to him, but will he admit that?

Speaker 42 But did you go there to the murder site

Speaker 51 where her body was discovered? Well, I guess guess my question is, since me, you, and Sarah talked three or four weeks ago, did you, have you been back over there?

Speaker 51 Yeah, I went back down to Dirt Road where he

Speaker 51 found her.

Speaker 51 Since we spoke? Yeah.

Speaker 38 So David does cop to going to the site. Interesting.

Speaker 38 Now, on to our second area of focus.

Speaker 38 How does he know so much about the murder of Renee?

Speaker 38 In our first interview, David seemed to know a lot of details about the specifics of what happened to Renee. David claims it is because he had the autopsy report.

Speaker 38 This claim about the autopsy report sticks out to me. These reports are not made publicly available, and they are rarely given to families, especially in criminal cases like this.

Speaker 38 One, because they could reveal sensitive information about the case. And two,

Speaker 38 because they are disturbing. When I asked Dr.
Hughes, the sheriff's surgeon and a medical examiner about this, he said bluntly that these autopsy reports are not public.

Speaker 38 So we have to ask David about this.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 51 just me being honest and speaking to you now, you know, it kind of struck me as odd the other day when we were at your house and we spoke with you.

Speaker 51 And you told me you just recently burned all those things that you did have.

Speaker 51 Help me understand why you did that.

Speaker 51 Well,

Speaker 51 this one old girl asked me, she said, Dave, you need to quit thinking about it.

Speaker 51 You need to try to get over it.

Speaker 38 David is hard to hear, but he says that a girl he was seeing told him it was time for him to get over Renee and what happened to her.

Speaker 51 So you said

Speaker 51 another woman told you just kind of time for you to get over it. Yeah, Vicki.
Vicky told me. He said, Look, you need to get out.
You need to get away from it. Vicki, who?

Speaker 51 I'm not sure her name, but she might I can't remember her name's name.

Speaker 51 Was she a girlfriend of yours? No, she was just a girl I met.

Speaker 51 What stuff did you specifically burn at your house? The

Speaker 51 bunch of pictures. Yeah, yeah.
Okay. And

Speaker 51 all the autotops. No, that thing was thick.
That autopsy about it. It's already painted.

Speaker 51 Yeah, I've got it. It's pretty thick.
Yes.

Speaker 51 So, you know, don't remember the last time you spoke with Vicki?

Speaker 51 How long is a long time? A long time. About 10, 15 years.
Okay, well, how would she tell you to get rid of Renee's things then? She just told me to try to get over her. No, there's a soul wind.

Speaker 51 Okay, so she didn't physically tell you you need to get rid of all these things. No, she told me you burned them.

Speaker 51 She told me I need to just get over her. Yeah, but that was 10 or 15 years ago.

Speaker 39 And you told us last month that you had just burned the stuff like a couple weeks earlier. No, it's been a long time.

Speaker 51 I'm just trying to understand.

Speaker 38 David says he got the autopsy report from Renee's dad, but he also says that he burned the autopsy report before our interview because a girlfriend told him to.

Speaker 46 Okay.

Speaker 38 So let's say he is telling the truth. How exactly did he get the autopsy report?

Speaker 38 They aren't publicly available, and neither Joyce nor Amanda remember Renee's dad Raymond ever having that report or giving it to David.

Speaker 38 Could David have gotten this autopsy report through some other means?

Speaker 38 And more importantly, why would David then burn it?

Speaker 38 Now, let's say David is not telling the truth. How else would he have found out about the specifics of Rene's injuries? The details of them were not publicized.
and did he actually burn anything?

Speaker 38 Like, is he trying to prevent us from looking for something by saying it's not there?

Speaker 38 Or could he have actually burned something to destroy evidence that might have otherwise been at his house?

Speaker 38 This is where I really want to press David. So I deliberately use an emotional tactic.
I bring out a picture of Renee. It's a formal portrait, the one from her memorial.

Speaker 38 In it, she's wearing the same gold necklace David gave Amanda.

Speaker 38 David is mesmerized by this picture. He looks at it intently.
He says he's never seen it before.

Speaker 39 It's from her memorial.

Speaker 39 Let me ask you, actually, what you're looking at, does that necklace look familiar?

Speaker 39 You used to,

Speaker 39 you know, you said you would give Amanda

Speaker 39 trinkets and stuff like that, because she's she has that necklace and she says that you gave it to her. Oh, really? We just kind of need to understand.

Speaker 39 I understand you guys are close and everything, so for us, as we move forward and we're looking at things, we have to, you know, we have to explore some weird angles. Yeah.

Speaker 39 And it's

Speaker 39 if, frankly, it's a weird angle to me that a necklace

Speaker 39 would i it was real. I guess you left it, you like put it under the door or something, didn't see her.

Speaker 39 And when she went straight to that picture, she said, that's the necklace. I don't remember giving her that.

Speaker 38 So, at first, David says he does not recognize the necklace. When I bring up the fact that he gave trinkets to Amanda, including the necklace, he says, oh yeah.

Speaker 38 But as I try to ask him how he got Renee's necklace, he diverts and simply says that he has no memory of giving it to Amanda.

Speaker 46 okay

Speaker 38 so this brings us to our third area of focus what was david's relationship like with renee

Speaker 51 did you and renee ever have any sexual relationship

Speaker 51 well i mean

Speaker 51 i mean me being

Speaker 51 yeah but i've been smarter than that man I've been around a lot of girls. Yeah.

Speaker 51 Like I said, I had three girlfriends going at one one time.

Speaker 51 A braver man than I am. I can't hardly handle one, let alone three.
So, did you ever try to sleep with Renee?

Speaker 51 All we was is friends.

Speaker 51 I always told her if she ever needed any help or anywhere to stay. And you did do those things.
You helped her. Oh, yeah.
You give her some money and you would give her a place to stay if needed.

Speaker 51 Yeah.

Speaker 51 But she never did stay long.

Speaker 38 David says he and Renee never had a sexual relationship. When Matt asks him if he wanted to, he says yes, but that he's smarter than that.

Speaker 38 But he does add that they were friends and he offered for her to stay with him if she ever needed anything.

Speaker 38 I am still unsure what the relationship between David and Renee really looked like.

Speaker 38 Amanda has said that her mom told her David wanted more than she did, but David seems sincere, saying that their friendship was platonic.

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Speaker 38 To conclude the interview, Matt and I use a tried and true method in detective work.

Speaker 38 We leave the room and watch how he behaves when we aren't around, specifically, how he interacts with that photo of Renee, which we will leave with him.

Speaker 51 I enjoy talking to y'all.

Speaker 51 Yeah, if you'll give us just a second, I want to look at something in the office with Sarah. Yeah.
We'll come back in, talk for maybe another five minutes, and you'll be good to go. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 51 We'll be right back. Yep.
Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 51 I certainly. Anything I hit y'all with.
You want another coat? No, I'm okay. Okay.
I'll be right back.

Speaker 38 Now, keep in mind, there's no two-way mirror, but there is a camera and microphone recording him. We go into another room to watch that feed.

Speaker 38 Here is what we see.

Speaker 38 David props Renee's photo up on the table, looks at it, talks to it.

Speaker 38 Between the AC and his low voice, it is almost impossible to decipher what he's saying. But he looks serious, maybe even longing.
He can't take his eyes off of it.

Speaker 38 As we return to the room, Matt and I enact a plan to try to get a DNA sample from him. Throughout the interview, David has been sipping on a can of Coke.

Speaker 38 We are going to try to convince him to leave that Coke without telling him that is what we're doing.

Speaker 38 We know how mesmerized he is by this picture of Renee.

Speaker 38 So Matt will offer the picture to David, but subtly. hoping that David will take the picture and leave the Coke.

Speaker 38 We return to the room, ready to put our plan into motion.

Speaker 38 Matt actually snatches the photo of Renee off the table from where David had it propped up. David stands up from the table, Coke in hand.

Speaker 38 Matt holds out the picture of Renee.

Speaker 38 David's eyes flip between the picture and the Coke in his hand. Matt holds the picture just slightly out of reach as he walks backwards out of the room, luring David towards the door.

Speaker 51 Yes, I've got it.

Speaker 51 I'll put it in a nice frame.

Speaker 38 David sets the coke down on the table and grabs the picture. Bingo.

Speaker 38 Okay.

Speaker 39 That's good. Yeah, you should have something.

Speaker 38 We have our DNA sample.

Speaker 38 Many sexual homicides involve trophy collection behavior.

Speaker 38 This behavior can look like the offender retaining objects of the victims, but may also involve reenacting certain elements of the crime, revisiting the scene, engaging with the victim's family in order to watch their emotional response, so on.

Speaker 38 Psychologically, these actions can often lead the offender to feel bursts of enjoyment or even sexual gratification.

Speaker 38 There are certain accepted fundamentals of violent and sexual homicides, trophy collection being one of them. And they really are the baselines of our modern understanding of these crimes.

Speaker 38 These fundamentals were developed by the pioneers in the field, like Douglas, Wrestler, Hart, and of course, Dr.

Speaker 38 Ann Burgess, who expressed her own concern regarding David's behavior when I brought it up.

Speaker 45 Well, what intrigued me with David Young is how much time he spent going back to the scene.

Speaker 45 being especially developing the relationship with the daughter was uh and some of the that was really very eerie that he would do this. So he was reliving.

Speaker 45 We could say that if he was, if he did this, that he was reliving what he did, and they would keep it alive in his mind and he would enjoy that part of it.

Speaker 45 So it became, he was just too involved in the

Speaker 45 dynamics, if you will, of the family, I think.

Speaker 47 Hello?

Speaker 47 Hey, David. Yeah.
Hey, Detective Peak. How are you today?

Speaker 48 Hey, what's going on, buddy? Yeah, I called you yesterday.

Speaker 30 Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 54 I stepped out of the office yesterday afternoon. I just saw this morning where I'd missed your phone call.

Speaker 38 A week after our interview, David calls Matt.

Speaker 48 It was just something that was in my mind that was put in there a long time ago by either Renee or

Speaker 48 it almost had to be.

Speaker 48 You know, I kept thinking, why in the hell didn't I ask her that day

Speaker 48 when she told me someone might be looking for her? I never did ask her who was looking for her. I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

Speaker 54 I mean, you're looking out for your friend and trying to help, so don't beat yourself up for that.

Speaker 48 I was always scared for her to live, man. I think that's why I was so concerned about her.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 26 Because, you know, the life she was leaving.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 48 You know, she had a black baby and sold it.

Speaker 47 No, I didn't know that.

Speaker 48 Yeah, she had a black baby and sold it.

Speaker 54 Now, when did that happen?

Speaker 48 That happened,

Speaker 48 I don't know, maybe a year or two before she got took out.

Speaker 47 Okay.

Speaker 48 She had a black baby and sold it.

Speaker 47 And how do you know this?

Speaker 48 She told me.

Speaker 54 Who'd she sell it to?

Speaker 48 I tell you what, man,

Speaker 48 I wish I could swap my life for hers and bring her back so she could tell you, man.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 46 She knew everything and I didn't.

Speaker 47 Well, you're being helpful, so

Speaker 54 you're doing everything you can do, and just keep thinking of things and write them down so you don't forget before you call me.

Speaker 54 I went back out there yesterday.

Speaker 30 Where's that?

Speaker 30 Me and Calvin did on where they found her at.

Speaker 46 Oh, did you?

Speaker 46 Yeah, I went back after. I was trying to think, you know, while I was out, Terry.

Speaker 30 Yes, sir.

Speaker 30 See, I didn't get to go to her funeral either.

Speaker 46 Why not?

Speaker 46 I don't know, man.

Speaker 48 I didn't even go to my mother's funeral.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 38 All right. Thanks, David.

Speaker 48 Okay, I'll talk to you later.

Speaker 46 All right. Bye-bye.

Speaker 54 Today is 6:24 of 20. The time is 0,837 hours.
That phone call was with David Young.

Speaker 38 The call is short and all over the place. David seems to like playing detective.
He provides us with different theories and suspects, all of which feel far-fetched and, frankly, just made up.

Speaker 38 David claims Renee told him she felt in danger shortly before her death. Yet he, her close friend, never thought to ask her who exactly she was afraid of?

Speaker 38 And about that baby. Until this point in the investigation, there have been no other accounts of a second child.

Speaker 38 But less than 24 hours after David tells us this, someone else comes forward claiming the exact same thing.

Speaker 38 But not to Matt or me, to Amanda.

Speaker 41 And she says, do you know you may have a brother?

Speaker 41 And she said, well, he contacted me.

Speaker 38 That's next time on Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom.

Speaker 38 Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom is produced by Arc Media for ID. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 38 We'd love it if you could take a second to subscribe and leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.

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