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Hi, and welcome to this week's Sidebar. We're here to discuss episode 5, Cat and Mouse Game, of season 2 of Proof. And we're here this week with Jacinda and also a special guest, Bob Matta from the Defense Diaries. Hey, Bob.

Hey. What's up, ladies? Thanks for having me.

Great to have you today. Now, Bob is a defense attorney as well, so we really wanted to have him on to talk about Jake's trial, everything What happened there, which we'll get into shortly.

Bob, for people who don't know your podcast, you want to give us a pitch reel on the Defense Diaries?

Sure. I'd say two and a half years ago, I decided to, unlike Susan, I abandoned the law game and left my wife with all of our clients and all the enormous amount of work. She's the hero of the story because she allowed me to come and really follow my dream. I wanted to do a podcast because I had these Gacy tapes. My father was John Wayne Gacy's attorney back in 1979, '79. He was his trial attorney. Many years ago, he gave me all of his taped interviews with Gacy, which I held on to. It was him prepping his client for trial, and Gacy had waived privilege all the way back then because that's how he was anticipating that Sam and my father were going to get paid on the case. I didn't know what to do with them. As I grew older and podcast became a thing, I started thinking with the concept of doing a podcast. Ultimately, that's what I did. I had first season, which was a serialized season on John Wayne Gacy, but it wasn't really about Gacy. I really wanted to focus on the victims. I wanted to focus on the investigation, the arrest, and the trial.

What I uncovered in terms of how the police actually got Gacy under arrest is mind-blowing, frankly. I'm not going to give a spoiler, but when I say it's mind-blowing, it's insane. It's epic. It's 36 episodes. If you're into deep dives, it is a very, very deep dive. I play the tapes, but I can weave them into a narrative. It's not like just me playing tapes. I just try to fit pieces of the interviews between my father and Gacy, where he's preparing them for an insanity defense case throughout the series. We think it's pretty good. Then our second season is a case that my wife and I handled, and my father actually, in Omaha, Nebraska, Dr. Anthony Garcia. He was accused and ultimately convicted of murdering four individuals over a five-year period and two double homicides on a revenge theme by the state in that they felt that he was seeking revenge for being fired seven years earlier from his residency in the pathology department at Creighton Medical School. It was a crazy case. Procedurally, it's unbelievable. They're a lot of similarities to what's going on in Delphi right now in terms of the procedural side of it, not even getting to the trial portion of it.

It was a hard-fought case, let me put it that way. It was a death penalty case, and we believed in our case, so we took it to the mat. Then the other thing that we do is the docket. There, I was smart enough to bring my brilliant wife on, and she co-hosted with me. That's where we cover all the current and breaking news. We've covered a lot of cases there. It's more of a banter show, whereas my serialize is just me scripted, going through the story. That's basically the long and the short. I think it's a pretty good pod, and we'd love if you checked it out.

Yeah, please do. If anyone hasn't listened, check it out. Available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

As you've mentioned a little, your background before this was as a defense attorney. Yes. I'm curious to hear your thoughts from an attorney's perspective on what happened at Jake's trial.

I'm sure, Susan, that when you started digging into it, you were frustrated. The evidence or lack thereof in the conviction of both Ty and Jake, it's stunning to me. Frankly, terrifying. When you have a case like this, as I listen to the first five episodes, it's so frustrating and it's so scary because they have no evidence whatsoever linking either of them.

Well, I feel like Jake's conviction I've seen before. This case reminds me of a lot of other cases I've worked on. I'm not shocked by the fact there was a guilty verdict. It makes sense to me. It tracks with similar cases where things went haywire, but I'm familiar with that progression. But the Thai's trial still shocks me. That was still a gut punch, even after working this case for years now, because Ty's trial had nothing.

Nothing.

It's a reminder that a case literally can't have nothing and a jury can still convict. Took them four days, so they were hemming and hawing over it, but it is still, yeah, it's almost an indictment of the jury system. It is. In no universe should reasonable doubt have been exceeded at Thai's trial.

Yeah. With Ty, especially, they didn't have that motive, which We all know that you don't have to prove a trial, but people love it. The state loves it. They love being able to tell the jury why this is why it happened. The jury sitting there wondering why, which is what they should have been wondering with respect to Ty. Where's the motive here? Sounds like he was a thief, a schmuck, but not a violent dude.

His daughter said it best, I think, when she pointed out, So you're telling me my dad is at a party raping murdering everyone's friend, and they're just standing around watching? That doesn't make sense.

It's implausible. It's like the accused with Jody Foster. It's like, except it's high school kids instead of a bunch of drunk dudes in a bar. That's what you're subbing out that just happened or they're alleging happened in this Home Depot construction site. There's no way. If we're talking 25 to 30 people, I'm fairly certain just What about anybody could have been stopped. I just can't see a world in which a bunch of girls would be standing there just watching this happen. There's just no way. Susan said it. I don't know if it was in three or four where you're talking about. There is no world in which 25 kids have been able to keep this secret for all these years. There's no way. That is an impossibility to me. That, to me, is the biggest driving factor in not only Ty but Jason. In a sense. I cannot see a world in which that exists where somebody's not sitting there for all these years knowing that either this happened or it didn't happen, but especially if it didn't happen, just not feeling guilty. Like, oh, my God, these two guys have been in prison for 25 years or going on 25 years, and I have the ability to get them out?

It just seems impossible to me. It really does.

Well, in this episode, we do cover a lot of the evidence they had against Jake, mostly other teenagers who knew him or knew Renee and what they had to say about their relationship. But we actually did not cover some of the more significant evidence in the state's case. There were two witnesses called at trial who were second, probably only to Josh Burrows. Now, we didn't include them in the episode for reasons we'll get into in a bit, but here is what those two witnesses, Ryan Kerr and Troy Tulan, testified to at trial. After Renee's murder, Josh had gotten in some legal trouble with a couple of auto theft charges. During the months that investigators were interrogating him, he was in and out of juvenile hall. Two of the teens that Josh was in juvie with were Troy Tulan and Ryan Kerr. They were all part of the same skate crew, a group called Grim Crew, that Jake Silva had been in, too. That had made them all, as Troy had once described it, Grim brothers. And Jake had confessed to two of his Grim brothers that he had killed Renee.

In February 2001, 16-year-old Troy Tulan was in juvenile hall when Detective Susan Wells came to speak to him. Troy told them he'd been hosting a party at his house one night when the phone rang. It was Jake Silva. And Jake sounded upset. He sounded like he needed to talk to someone. Jake tells Troy over the phone he'd been mad at Renee for cheating on him. So another friend of his has suggested, Hey, let's teach this brahda lesson. Let's get her high and rape her. So Jake and Fuji and five others did just that. They took Renee to Lathrepe Road, raped her, and then stabbed her to death. Jake ends the call by telling Troy that he now needs to flee town, and that he'll probably to Nevada or something. 17-year-old Ryan Kerr told Souza and Wells a similar story. He said he'd been at Troy's house partying when Jake called. Ryan had grabbed the phone from Troy, and Jake told him about how on Memorial Day, he and Ty and Fuji and Ray had all been riding around in their white truck when they'd picked up Renee and took her out to the orchard. There, they, quote, Beat the Hell out of her.

And then they took her to Home Depot, where Jake killed her, and they all raped her in that order.

I mean, did either of those stories line up with the pathology? Or I thought the cause of death was strangulation.

They're absolutely not. That's part of why it's so frustrating because these two stories don't match at all. Moreover, Other. In fact, the stories don't match each other because one of the boys, Troy Tulan, says that Ryan, the other, was not at this party. Ryan inserts himself into the party after the fact, but according to Troy's version of it, Ryan's not even there. But in closing arguments, the prosecutor, Charles Schultz, mentions them by name over 50 times and talks about how they're so amazing at corroborating each other in the state's case and ask the jury, How could they have made this up if it wasn't true? Why would they make it up? But like Josh Burhoe's, both of them recanted a trial. They got in the stand and said they made the whole thing up. Never happened. One of them testified, I just told the detectives what they wanted to hear. I didn't think they'd believe me, but then it turned out a lot worse than I thought.

Wow. So they recanted trial and What happens? Did they have to try to impeach their own witness at trial?

Yeah. So the detectives get up and say, Here's what they told me, and that's the true version. They're lying on the stand because they're all part of Grim Crew, and Grim Crew will kill them if they testify publicly. So that's why they're lying now.

Oh, my God. Are marauding bands of skateboarder murdering skateboarding crews a real thing that you guys are aware of? My son was a skater, a hard core skater, and these guys were the furthest thing from murders. These aren't bikers. These are skate punks. They skate everywhere. All they care about is skating and learning how to owie and do tricks. That's what their life revolves around. Certainly not murdering, and we're slinging drugs on the side. The whole thing just seems insane to me.

Look, skaters were a huge problem in Attica. They were grinding on curves all over the place and causing damage. It was a big issue. For real.

Yeah, I could see that. Grinding on rails, people be trying to walk down a flight of stairs and some kids grinding down the rails. They had to clear the streets of those kids. I can tell that that was probably a real big motive for them behind the law enforcement side of it. In this case particular, I hope you all get some calls. I hope that somebody really comes forward. I know you guys are asking at the end of every episode if you know anything about the case, and I hope you get one of those calls. I really do. Because this is a frustrating case in so many ways because it shines a light on the warts of our system. Like you said, it's the best that there is, I guess, but it's still got a lot of flaws.

Bob, you might find this interesting. I've never encountered it before. But in this case, when they had the respective jurors come in and you give them a questionnaire where they say, Do you know any of these possible witnesses? One of those possible jurors picked off that she knew one of the two boys, and she wrote, I'm his aunt. He told me that he did tell the police that Jake had confessed to him, but that he'd made the whole story up to try and get out of Juvy. And of course, the judge is scrambling to excuse from the jury. Wow. And that was it. Yeah.

Holy shit. No, I have never run across that. And we get those jury questionnaires as well, ask if you know any of the cops or the witnesses or the judges or the lawyers. I've never run into that. Never. Wow. That's crazy. That's the frustrating thing. And I forget who it was. I don't know. It was somebody that you guys were able to interview, and he was talking about how it is to be a 16-year-old when the cops are coming at you like that, and you're just trying to get out of the room, and they have you in there for hours, and they're saying they know this, and they say they know that, and then ultimately, you're just saying whatever the hell you think that they want to hear so that you can get out of the room because kids aren't thinking about it in terms of the long-term ramifications of what they're saying in the moment. You know what I mean? They're not doing that because their minds aren't completely formed. Where the hell were their parents when they're interviewing all these kids? Were their parents in the room? No. Oh, my God. That's insane.

I mean, that's It's insane. The whole case is insane, really.

They mostly would just go to the skate park, pick up the kids there, and talk to them. The parents aren't even aware it's happening.

And drop them back off.

It's crazy.

You're right. The kids, they don't think ahead. They don't know what they're saying could have long-term effects. Also because it's so ridiculous to them. They know they're lying, and they assume the cops will realize they're lying, too.

In the case of Troy Tulan and Ryan Kerr, and the reason we don't talk about in the show is because we know they're lying. We know they made the whole thing up. We know none of that Jake calling on the phone to confess them at a party that happened because guess what? There was never a time before Jake's arrest where they were both out of Juvie at the same time. Juvie records show that they're always one or both of them were in Juvie, and there was never a time to come in a party together. So the prosecutor tried to suggest. He's like, Oh, Jake must have called them from jail. Because there was a brief moment in October, a month after Jake's arrest, when they were both out of Juvie at the same time, when both Troy and Ryan were out of juby at the same time. It implies that Jake called them from the jail to confess to the murder then.

Wow. That's super incentivized by Jake to really go through the bubble of trying to track down where they're at. Yeah.

Call and confess.

Yeah. Getting cleared on the list to make calls, and then, wow, that's something else. Yeah. And what phone was Jake using?

Exactly. Wouldn't it be pretty easy to pull phone records and listen to the conversation?

Yeah, that seems like it isn't... I'm assuming everything's recorded on those lines as well, right?

Well, they asked Detective Wells in court. They're like, Could you check those records? And he says, Yes. And they ask him, Did she check them? He says, No. And that's it.

Wow. Oh, my God. It just gets even worse. They He literally had three of the worst witnesses, including, who was it, Jessie, the guy who talks about how Ty and Jake somehow go and kidnap some 13-year-old girl from the neighborhood, bring her back, proceed to either attempt to or actually sexually abuse her, and then bring her back to her place. I mean, that story is so insane to me. It was bad. When they're putting witnesses like that, like Josh and Troy on this stand as their star witnesses, and I'm using air quotes since we're on a podcast, if that just doesn't highlight for a jury the weakness in the state's case, it's like, that's what's so scary. How does that not resonate? That everything that they're saying is completely inconsistent with one another, that the cops are basically testifying on their behalf and saying, Oh, well, this is what they told us.

That's why I think them recanting makes it harder, actually, in the end. Because if, say, Burrows and Ryan and Troy had gotten up there and all maintained these stories, they'd be so easy to disprove. You'd quickly show they're lying. You could quickly show everything is a thing is nonsense, and they would not stand up. If Josh had gone in the stand and said, Oh, I did see rape and murder, you could quickly prove he's lying. But when he's already starting out the gate, first words on the stand or I made that up, I think it actually makes it harder for a case like this to defend against when they do recant.

Well, yeah. And plus, and that's true because then it allows the cops to testify as to what they were told in order to impeach them, where otherwise they wouldn't be able to get that in in terms of what was told to the cops in another conversation outside of court that they're offering for the matter of the truth that it asserts. It's like, yeah, that's crazy. But you're right. Have the defense attorney simply done what you guys did and found out that it was an impossibility for these two to ever- No, she did.

She did. She got the records. Oh, she did? Oh, yeah. She pulled those records. She actually did a great job there. It didn't matter.

Wow.

She was actually on it for that.

That is so disappointing. That makes me sad about the jury system.

They had it in black and white before them. The story could not have happened, and they still decided it did.

Wow. On February fourth, The Minds of Madness is set to release an investigative four-part series centered on a cold case from nearly four decades ago. At first, it was just my mom's gone. And then it became your mom was taken by a Batman. They found a video of him killing women. If you'd ever watched any episodes of Breaking Bad, that's exactly what you would see.

He buried these 11 women and kept going out there. He a road going out there.

You got this dude saying, Hey, I'm going to show your family these pictures. And he's secretly taping her. The cops don't care. We're nothing to them.

Dumped her like a piece of garbage. I don't see anything When it screams, There's two people doing this.

I never thought anything was going to come out of this case, ever. Listen to the Minds of Madness series, Who Killed Jennifer? Starting February fourth, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast with Benjamin Foster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcast. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Foster. So beyond the two guys, beyond Jake and Ty, do they ever look at anybody else?

They look at possible accomplices for them, yeah, but not anyone separate from them.

The whole thing with labor ready, that seems like that would have been the place to start. Because I'm assuming that's a day labor place, right? You go there, you get pick up.

We actually get more into this next episode, and you'll find out why labor ready was never really looked at because the detectives started off thinking it didn't matter. So it took them a to even get back that way and look at it.

That would have been the first place I looked.

If you thought that's where she was last seen alive. If you have reason to believe that she was alive four or five days later, why would you even look at that?

To me, If you're going to a spot that's hiring day laborers all the time, which is that, that's what it is, right? You go there, you try to pick up work for a day. I mean, that seems like that would be like a...

You get paid on the same day. You get a job placement, you go to your job, and then you come back to Labor Ready at the end of the day and pick up your check.

Wow. I mean, to me, that seems like that would have been a very interesting line of investigation that they really should have looked into. I imagine a lot of them probably have records towards. I imagine some of them may have had some violent-type crimes in their backgrounds, probably some felonies.

I would say your speculation is not too far off.

Yeah. I mean, that's a shame. It's one of those things now. The case is so damn cold unless you guys can crack it.

Another reason, too, this case got so hard to defend is because of the messed-up investigations, to the point where the prosecution couldn't even say what day the party happened on. As a defense attorney, how do you just prove a negative like that? You could prove it didn't happen Tuesday. They're just going to say it happened Wednesday. You could prove it didn't happen Wednesday. They're just going to say it happened Thursday. They never do give a date, so there's effectively no way to really push back against it.

Plus, even to time of death, because when they're coming doing the autopsy and concluding that she died three days from the date that she was- So they thought she was missing on Monday, May 29.

She's found on Monday, June fifth. The initial time of death is listed as probably Friday, maybe even Saturday.

Right. That leaves her out and about in the world for five days. Theoretically, yes. Theoretically, yes. And they can't find one person that can really verify that they saw her. They were always hanging out at the same spots. It was Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's like, man, they can't prove when the party happened, but they really can't prove that it actually happened. Other than Josh saying that some guy gave him a bag of weed to pick up all the garbage. Oh, and you scraped up all the candle wax off the ground, too, dude. Really, with all the candles that were melting and all the candle wax, it was all over the place. You scraped that as well, not just the beer. Kids aren't cleaning up parties like that. There's no way that he wouldn't have left a couple of bottles. It's implausible, the whole thing. Do you guys even think the party happened?

No, absolutely not. There's no party.

There's no way. My favorite part of the whole candle story, though, is that when the defense team interviews Josh and he starts talking about this, they don't really know what he's trying to say. So he literally draws pictures of kids with candles in their hands, spinning them around to show how they were raving.

Oh, my God. They do end up suggesting at trial that the most likely time would have been Wednesday, May 31st.

And not that it matters now, but going through all the records, all the witness statements. I realized it turns out that Jake actually does have an alibi for that night, and it's because of the hair salon. We know that on Wednesday, Jake went there and got his hair cut to a mohawk. On Thursday, he went back and got the mohawk bleached, so it had the fire effect going on or whatever. There's one kid they talked to who says, It was one night, it was late at night. Jake and I went over with my friend Jamie Nichols, and we went over to Tanya's house after midnight and slept there for a bit and then left. This kid, Vince Olson, says, Oh, yeah, and Jake had a pure black mohawk at the time, which means it had to have been Wednesday night. It's the only night that Jake had a mohawk that was still black. If you piece all these names together, the night they even choose for the party, Jake had an alibi all along. It was just really hard to figure out.

In a world where the party happened and no one's saying anything is completely implausible. There is no world that exists that kids aren't talking about it. What did they make? Some weird blood oath. They all witnessed this horrific crime, this poor girl being raped and murdered. Then they decide to cut all their palms and give blood oaths to each other. Okay, we're We're going to keep this horrific crime. I mean, are you kidding me? Where would that ever happen? How could that happen?

They don't go that far. They don't go full panic panic. But they do use Grimcrew as this cult influence. They don't cross the line like it was a sacrifice, but they definitely lean into the Grimcru's.

Oh, my God. Why? Because they have the word grim in their name. What proof do they have that this crew does anything illegal, aside from shoplifting?

Well, okay. So there actually was a witness. There's a lot of who talks about how she heard that they did blood sacrifices.

Oh, my God.

You can imagine when we're laying this all out about what do we include, what we don't include.

It's so ridiculous. You don't even want to talk about it because it doesn't add up.

It seems like, editorially speaking, keeping it out is tough because it makes it sound so incredulous.

They use also the kids recanting as evidence evidence saying everyone's recanting now because they're scared of grim crew. They're scared of retaliation for testifying.

They're just allowed to say that with no foundation as to why they're saying it other than the fact that they have the word grim in the name of the skating crew. You know what I mean? Where's the receipts that these guys are actually somebody that you need to worry about?

Well, keep in mind, too. Remember Josh Burrows' original story in episode 3? He doesn't say Grimcrew did this. He says that the E. O. K. Skater Gang is the one who did it. Then suddenly by trial, they just totally forget the E. O. K. One, a gang is the one who did it, and start calling it Grimcrew murder. But Josh's story is actually that it was E. O. K. Who had the unidentified members that were helping with the murder and that was mostly involved. I guess Grimcru sounds scarier. But going back to something you said earlier about how leaving certain things out of the show has the effect of almost giving unwarranted credibility to the state's case, that's something just then I've talked about a lot. It definitely is the reality because there's so much stuff that we just cannot include. But by leaving it out, we make the state seem more reasonable than it was.

Yeah. Because as I listen to it… But I love the way that you guys do that. I love the way that you did it in season one, too, where you lay out the state's case and you say, This is what it is. You're not Not necessarily pooh-poohing it as you're going along when you're laying it out. You know what I mean? It's like you methodically do that in the subsequent episodes. You know what I mean? I like the way that you guys set that up.

Well, and one thing that we did not talk about on the show, the prosecutor in this case, his closing argument, had what I think is probably the most factually inaccurate closing I've ever seen in a case. It was very notable. But how do you get into the fact that there's 100 things that he says wrong? One of the things that drives me crazy about it is how when they had Jake Silva testify I.

Well, let me ask you, how did he do? Did he do okay? I know that you had when Renee's friends that were there for the trial, they didn't really remember anything about it, which speaks volumes, that it didn't really have an impact one way or another in terms of like, Oh, my God. I remember when Jake testified, and he really screwed himself. You know what I mean? It didn't have that impact. But what was your take on his testimony? Was it helpful or not really?

He actually did fine. But there's definitely facts in the case that... I mean, look, he hit her. Having the prosecutor get a chance to grill your client and how he hit his girlfriend and discuss in detail the time that he smacked her, that's not going to be great. Jake probably did as great as you could do in that situation, but that's not a situation you put a client in. Here's why it really... Again, I'm sure the prosecutor thought he was going to score huge points, run circles around this kid. In the end, here's his big got you moment. On direct examination, the attorney for Jake asked him what Renee was wearing at LaborReady, and he said she had on jeans her red shirt and had a sweatshirt in her bag. The next day in cross-examination, the prosecutor gets up there and insists that Jake testified she was wearing a sweater and just goes in circles with him saying, Why did you lie about that before? Why did you do this? And then tells the jury that Jake was lying about how Renee had a sweater on. It's all in his head. Jake never once said she had a sweater on.

The prosecutor literally imagined an answer from him and then used that as proof that Jake was lying.

Oh, my God. Was there an objection? Is the fact not an evidence during closings? I know you're not supposed to object during closings, but if the state's up there flat out lying and making shit up, you object.

Couldn't they have read back testimony?

They should have. They didn't. They should have. Again, it's a huge kerfuffle. It's a huge what the hell. But also at the end of the day, we're arguing over whether she had a sweatshirt on or not. They got there at 6:00 AM. It was cold. She could have had a sweatshirt on. Who cares? There's all this energy over this, did Jake lie in the stand about her sweatshirt? And you're like, Why are we even doing this? Why is this even... This is your big got you moment? You have your teenage murder defendant, and you cross-examine him for a whole day, and this is your got you moment?

Yeah, not much of a got you moment. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's... I mean, it sounds like from an outsider's perspective, it sure looks like a couple of wrongful convictions to me. I mean, I tried to be pretty pragmatic about it because it's like cases are tough. It's like you have a lot of people saying that they didn't do it. It's hard for us as attorneys to discern what's what. But when you look at this case and you just look at the absolute absence of any forensic evidence attaching either one of these guys to the scene, and Does anybody find that the DNA of Jake's in the underwear to be damning?

No.

I don't think anyone does, actually, surprisingly. I think everyone realizes that doesn't mean anything. We're in a sexual relationship. There's nothing.

But here goes back to Schultz again. Schultz has in closing arguments. He claims, and again, this is not an evidence, Josh never says this, but this is what Schultz tells the jury. You know Josh is telling the truth because Jake's DNA is found in the underwear. And Josh I've described to you how Jake raped her. Then she pulled her underwear up, and then Ray and Ty pulled it down again and raped her, and no one pulled it up again. That's why Jake's DNA was found in the underwear and no one else's was. That's perfectly consistent with what Josh said. One, Josh didn't say that. Two, her underwear was still on when she was found.

Right. How did they even overcome the fact that they didn't find any semen in the rape kit?

The prosecutor says that the maggots ate it.

Oh, my God. It's too much. I can't handle it. I can't handle anymore.

Wait, you didn't know that's a thing? You didn't know?

The old maggot eating the semen trick? Yeah, it's the oldest trick in the book. Holy smokes. Wow. That's unbelievable. I mean, was there any actual evidence of her being sexually assaulted?

She was partially disrobed, but other than that, no.

Wow.

It does look like her jeans were pulled down her thighs a little bit. I mean, her shirt's pulled up. It's not an unreasonable hypothesis, but there's- No, it's not. It's definitely not. Nothing to confirm there was sexual assault.

They said that the underwear in the back were pulled down, right? Just in the back.

The front's still in place.

Yeah. But the thing that you guys were talking about, the roofies, and that they found the levels of GHB were not enough to necessarily mean that she was drugged and not enough to mean... Because I did not I learned something when I was listening to the pod, I did not know that we naturally produce that in our bodies. What is it? An enzyme? Or what is it? I didn't know that we naturally produce that in our bodies when we die. Yeah.

Normally In most cases, I hear a theory of someone being roofied, and I'm probably going to tend to, not discount it, but that's not where my biases are towards expecting that in crimes. But in this case, I do at least consider it because there are some other odd facts.

There are. If it's a group scenario, then yeah. You know what I mean? If it turns out that it's an individual, it's unlikely. It makes more sense in a group scenario than it does to me in an individual scenario. So what did What did he say? Because I know that he had talked about that he had given her the two necklaces. I mean, is that what was used to choke her, or did they ever determine was it the bra strap?

Definitely, the bra strap has no signs of being used. The testimony from the medical examiner was I can't say it wasn't used. There's no evidence it was, but I…

But also her arms were still in the bra straps.

Oh, yeah. Her arms are still in the bra straps.

I don't know how that would have- Yeah, that makes no sense on…

We don't know for sure, but she had three legature marks and she had three hemp necklaces, and it certainly looks like a very possible, if not probable, murder weapon in this case. Yeah. Was a necklaces.

Yeah. And the hem's a pretty- Sturdy. Yeah, pretty sturdy type rope they make. Oh, man. This is a befuddling case. You guys are knee deep in one that's a real, to me, a whodunit. You guys are, as always, doing great work, and I hope that you're able to dig up some dirt.

We're certainly going to try.

I know that.

If you want to hear about more fascinating cases, follow Bob over at Defense Diaries and hear some of his reports on Delphi.

Yeah, that thing, if If you all aren't paying attention to that one, it's a case. Susan, I have never seen a case like this procedurally.

I have resisted so hard trying to not go down. It's literally going to be like procedural law hypos for law exams for years to come.

It really is. It's that case, and it's crazy. There's so many voices out there with it that it's like, I'm the lone defense guy out here, screaming at the top of my lungs. It's just like everything that the judge has been doing in that case has been next level.

Here's what bothered me is seeing online all these people out there who were suddenly okay with the idea of a judge unilaterally deciding without a record to kick off someone's defense attorney. And they're like, That's normal. That's okay. That should happen. I'm like, Oh, wow, we are screwed. This is how people think the law should work.

Yeah. If they just don't believe in the Sixth Amendment. If only they believed in the Sixth Amendment like they do the Second Amendment, we'd be in good stead. It's It's like, Man, yeah.

Sadly, they do not.

No, they don't. But I'm out there. I'm yelling. I'm trying to make noise. I've made headway. I spend a lot of time trying to explain to people what we really do as defense attorneys. We're the ones who are actually protecting the Constitution from the government. That's why the document exists. And people just don't get that about defense attorneys. We police the police. It's that simple. There's no other way to put it. We protect the principles of the Constitution. Sure the hell isn't the government. It's not the state and the cops. I'll tell you that. We're the only ones out there doing it. I'll die on that hill.

That's it for this week's Sidebar.

Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday with episode 6 of murder at the warehouse, where we'll look at what happened after Jake's and Ty's convictions. 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.