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Come and join us for LA-Not So. Confidential. Trust us, we're doctors. Hi, and welcome to this week's Sidebar. We're here to discuss episode 4 of Season 2 of Proof: murder at the Warehouse. Episode 4, we heard about Ty Lopes' trial. I'm here with Jacinda and Kevin. Welcome to the show, guys.

Hey, Susan.

Hey, Susan.

So two weeks ago, in episode 3, we told you about Josh Burr was a story and presented it to you, I think in the most generous form possible.

Meaning that when you heard it, it made sense.

Yes. And we did it that way in part because once you hear the reality of Josh's statements, it becomes very hard to wrap your mind around how we ended up here. For me, it made a lot more sense once I got to the trial transcripts in this case and put it together that what happened at trial, what was said at trial, the story that was woven together at trial, does make a lot more sense than the actual raw materials that Josh Burrows gave them as statements. The version you heard in episode three is more or less the version that the jury might have taken away when they heard it trial. Of course, in reality, it was all just That's it crazy.

Yeah, I think we went back and forth a lot on episode four about when we played that long chunk of Burrows' interrogation or interview that it's hard to sit through. It's hard to hear because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But we decided, ultimately, it's the only way for listeners to truly understand what his interview sounded like.

I think the takeaway for the audience is that his story changed over time It changed many times. And yet he was the eyewitness that placed Ty and Jake there raping and killing Renee. But his story was inconsistent, and not just inconsistent once. It was inconsistent a number of times.

So everyone agrees he's lying. There's no one out there saying that Josh Burrow is telling the truth, even most of the time. Almost always he is lying. Everyone agrees on that. But his story is so vivid and perplexing that people walk away from it thinking like, well, something, and it must be real, right?

Where do you think he's pulling stuff from? Where is he pulling the information from? Is it from TV shows he's watched? Is it from actual experiences? Is it from being led by the detectives?

From what he's saying, there's the assumption that he is basing something off of an event that actually happened, and that perhaps he's getting some of the details wrong, but that doesn't change the premise that it actually took place. But that may, in fact, not be the case.

Let's hop to a question. Mandy reached out, and Mandy is Thai's daughter, and she obviously is very familiar with the case. But for her, a lot of this information is new, just It's like it is for Renee's family and friends. But Mandy reached out and she wanted to know, why didn't they go and check for the buried trash?

The answer is they did. Didn't find it surprise, surprise. But yeah, they did go and check. Well, actually, no. The defense teams went and checked. As far as I'm aware, the police officers never went and checked. But the defense teams did. Josh Burrows even says, Go look where you'll find it, and tells them where to go. Then they come back and like, Okay, dude, no, it was not there. Also, again, you We didn't even dig a hole with a Mustang, so let's not even... This could have happened in the first place.

The concept that the reason there was no evidence of a party was because this kid cleaned up every cigarette butt and bottle and everything and buried it in the ground. I've been to a lot of parties as a teenager, and I can't name one where we cleaned up that thoroughly. Lord knows my parents got me having parties many times because I didn't clean it up. I just found that to be It's beyond the pale, that concept.

When they challenged him in a later interview, later on, about, Could you really dig a hole deep enough for 10 bags of trash? The story changes, shocker, to, Well, actually, they got 10 bags of trash, but they sorted it to recycling a knot. There's only three bags of trash to bury. Another seven could go to the recycling center.

That's so nice that they recycled.

Having met some of these folks out in Antica, I didn't get the sense that this was the group that was going to be sweeping up every cigarette butt off the floor of a warehouse.

Yeah. Actually, here's what Renee's friends told us when we asked them about this.

I guess unless you guys, like orchard parties, did you spend time cleaning up afterwards?

No, we left our trash. No, we left our trash. We were asshole kids.

No, we weren't cleaning. Right. You would think, even if someone did try to clean it up.

There's no way that Josh Borris fucking took a garbage can and picked up all that shit after that. No. At 14, no.

Okay, so we also got a question from Katie. Katie says, Susan, I need you to nerd out and explain how the detective's testimony about Josh's statement was not hearsay. Even as a criminal defense attorney, I am puzzled.

Well, it is, of course, hearsay, but in California, it's admissible hearsay. Typically, a police officer can't go to court, get in the stand, and testify what a witness told them in a police statement. That witness must be the one telling it to the jury. But in California, in a situation where a witness testifies differently in court from what they previously told police officer, the police officer can testify about their prior statement to the police. This can also be used as substantive evidence. It's not just a thing that can come in to say, Hey, this person's credibility is shot. The jury can actually take this as real solid evidence. The theory behind this is that, It will provide a desirable protection against a turncoat witness who changes his story on the stand and deprives the party, calling him evidence essential to his case. Because there's a belief that prior statements are usually the more accurate ones. So theoretically in California, you could have 10 witnesses in a case and have all 10 get up on the stand and say that what they witnessed shows that a defendant is innocent. Then you could have the police officer get up on the stand and claim that those 10 witnesses all told him that actually what they saw makes the defendant guilty, and the jury would be allowed to convict on that.

Which is why Burrows' story doesn't come in through Burrows, really, because Burrows just gets up meanders forever. Burrows' story comes in through Susan Wells when they get up there and testify about the nice, tidy, organized story that Burrows supposedly told them.

Do they essentially have to impede him, show that he's lying based on this record.

They don't have to prove who's lying. The jury gets to decide which one's the true version, which is not.

You're basically, at that point, asking the jury to decide which time was Burrows telling the truth.

Yeah, and they're allowed to consider the cop's version and Burrows' denials and then decide the cop's version is the true one.

Essentially, it doesn't matter what they say on the stand because the detectives can testify and say, Well, wait a minute. This is what they told us, and this statement is more accurate.

We also heard this episode about Ty and what he was like and about how he died. After he was convicted, so you heard his daughter, Mandy, read part of his statement at sentencing. They stood out to me. They're, you know, heartfelt and compelling. At one point, he actually addresses Renee's mother Donna Ramis directly and tells her the following.

To Mrs. Ramis, as long as the police department keeps focusing on me and Jake Silva, you're going to continue to be deceived and lied to. It's a horrible, tragic thing that has happened to you, and I couldn't imagine in my wildest nightmare that happening to me. We are all praying daily for the truth to prevail. My friends and my family and I will never stop in our quest to bring your daughter's killer or killers to justice. Join us, Ms. Ramis. Help us bring the monster and monster is responsible for your daughter's murder to justice.

There's that side of tie, but then you've got tie in that same sentencing statement saying just tone deaf things like this.

Mrs. Ramis, if you sincerely believe the lies from Josh Burrows and those two low-life paid-for jailhouse snitches, then I'm here to tell you right now the moon is really made out cream cheese, and I'm an astronaut.

We also heard this episode about the DNA evidence and how when it finally came back, they only found DNA in one spot, and that was Renee's underwear, and how that belonged to Jake Silva. Now, this could be used to suggest that Jake was involved in the murder somehow, but I think, not to get too graphic here and get too into the weeds, but one thing that's notable is that Renee's underwear, when they did forensic analysis, they found semen stains on both sides of her underwear, the inside and the outside. Actually, the stains were more notable on the outside as opposed to the in, which fits perfectly with what Jake has told us about what he thinks happened with the DNA. He said that because they couldn't carry many changes of clothing with them, they weren't doing laundry that often. He said that Renee would often switch her underwear around, go inside out to have it last a few more days, which is another one of the reasons why, to me, this DNA on the underwear just means nothing in terms of evidence of guilt or innocence.

Yeah, I think you said earlier on the episode, really all it does is link him to being her boyfriend.

Yeah.

Well, he was someone who had an intimate relationship with her, so someone can choose to read into it how they want, but there are a lot of explanations there. Yeah.

But it does mean that there was no DNA evidence that could solve this case, so they could give us answers here.

Right. Meaning there was no one else's DNA. Yeah.

The only answers all come from Josh Burrows. You heard in the show that Josh Burrows had 18-plus interviews with detectives and fence investigators, which is probably a new record for the amount I've seen in a case. But one thing we didn't What we're going to talk about is that there's also several references in the police files to further interviews on recorded ones with prosecutors. The one that shocks me the most is that in September, the DA of San Joaquin County, the district attorney himself, made a personal trip to Josh Burrows' mom's house to talk to Josh Burrows, which maybe in San Joaquin, that's a thing that DAs do to make personal friendly drop visits to key witnesses, but that's not a practice I've ever encountered. Another jurisdictions?

Yeah, I haven't heard of that happening before. I don't think it's uncommon to have witnesses come and meet with the attorneys or the district attorney or prosecutor, whoever in their offices.

But to have the DA himself, not just the deputy who's handling the case, the DA himself, go to the house. It makes you wonder what was said in that meeting anyway. We also know there was a later meeting between Josh and prosecutor Charles Schultz in Schultz's office just before Schultz dismissed all charges with Ray. We only know this because either Sousa or Wells, I forget who, slip up in their interview with him and mention this meeting. We know it exists. What they say is that at the meeting, Schultz had photos up on his wall of Jake Silva, Ty Lopes, and another person. And apparently, Josh Burrows points at the third picture on Schultz's wall and asks, Who's that guy there in that photo? We don't know who that third guy was, but from context, to me, I'd bet a lot of money that it was Ray Owens.

That could have been what made them decide to drop the charges against Ray is that he pointed to a picture and couldn't identify him. But that's just a guess. We have no idea who that- It's a guess, but it's a very solid one, given one, the phrasing in the interview, and two, the the fact that the prosecutor is then scrambling to drop Ray from his case as fast as possible.

I mean, if your star witness is in your office and looks at a photo of your defendant and says, Who's that guy?

The timing of it makes it seem like it would be a pretty good bet.

Also, another thing we did mention in the show, but it's worth pointing out, is that the sequence of events here. Josh's first interview where he talks about the actual Home Depot party. He's had a few before that, but the first time the Home Depot party comes up is September seventh. In that statement, he says that he was there at the party when he saw Ray, Ty, Jake, and the two EOK guys start to beat and strangle her. Then Josh books it and never sees anything more. He doesn't see any rape happen, doesn't see them then kill her. He just sees them start beating her and he flees. But following that interview, Ray, Jake, and Ty are arrested in charge with murder and rape. It's not until after they're charged with rape that they interview Josh again. Then Josh says for the very first time he saw a rape happen.

In your mind, then, how are they charged for rape? I guess I didn't realize that in the timeline of events that he hadn't said he saw the rape beforehand.

I don't know what happened, but they do go and fix it. They do go talk to Josh again. The next time I talk to him, he does give them a statement where he says he saw them all have sex with her.

I think that one of the things that stands out to me with the number of different stories that he's telling is that it's literally hard for anyone to keep track of of what the so-called facts are.

That's why I have crazy multi-page color-coded spreadsheets to try and keep it all straight.

Josh doesn't seem to have a lot of credibility, yet this is the eyewitness that they're hanging the guilt of tie Lopes on. Yet he's changed his story so many times. Is it reasonable to be able to determine when he's telling the truth? If you just try and look at it objectively, you ask people, Would you want anyone basing life in prison off the testimony of a person who's changed their story 18 times?

And then said the trial, they made it all up and lied. Yeah, no.

Yeah. I mean, it doesn't seem to be reasonable to send someone away for life for that.

And it's Final note, there was something that happened after the trial that I've been very curious about but I've had no way to follow up on. And that's a record from Tylopes' attorney where he notes that after the verdict, a juror approached him and, according to The attorney appeared, quote, quite ill at ease. The juror explained that they'd been wanting to vote not guilty and that they were the last to hold out in the jury room, but eventually had capitulated and voted guilty anyway. Then the juror told the attorney that they needed to discuss the verdict with them because there were, quote, some facts of which the attorney should be made aware. They made plans to meet up and talk about out of the courthouse, and the juror never showed up and was never talked to again. If that juror is somehow out there and listening to the show, please reach out to us. We'll leave your name out of whatever it was you wanted to tell the attorney back then. We're back on Monday with episode 5, where we cover what happened at Jake Silva's trial. Now, at Thia's trial, the evidence may have been relatively thin, But at Jake's, there were a lot of witnesses called, and the prosecutor was able to make the case that Jake Silva had murdered Renee Ramis because she was pregnant and because she refused to get a second abortion.

Next time on Proof.

You've been listening to Proof Sidebar, a podcast by Red Marble Media in Association with Glassbox Media. Send us your questions and comments at proofcrimepod@gmail. Com. Follow us everywhere with the handle @proofcrimepod and on our website, proofcrimepod. Com. Regular episodes drop on Mondays, and you can find Sidebars on Thursdays. Thanks so much for listening.