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0:49

Small Town

0:52

fam. It's

0:54

Yardley.

0:57

I'm so

1:00

happy you're here with us for another episode

1:02

of Small Town Dicks. I

1:05

need to give you a stern

1:07

and fair warning about today's

1:09

episode.

1:11

First and foremost, it

1:13

involves the death of an infant. Not

1:16

from child abuse, like the case we covered

1:18

in Season 1 called Unspeakable,

1:21

but it's still a death and the circumstances

1:24

are still horrific and unfathomable,

1:27

no matter what lens you view the circumstances

1:29

through.

1:31

So perhaps you're wondering

1:34

why we've decided to air this episode

1:36

at all. Well,

1:38

this podcast is all about the firsthand

1:41

experiences of our detective guests

1:43

who, day in and day out, encounter

1:46

people in their communities on their

1:48

worst day.

1:50

I've said it a hundred times. It

1:53

is not a normal job. Sometimes

1:56

law enforcement is able to put the train

1:59

back on the tracks for the best. for everyone involved,

2:02

but sometimes they aren't. Both

2:04

outcomes shape these officers, as

2:07

well as their families, their friends,

2:09

support staff, and it makes

2:11

these officers who they are. So

2:14

when we ask our guests to tell us

2:16

the case they're most proud of, or

2:19

one they can't forget,

2:20

we respect the courage and vulnerability

2:23

it takes for them to revisit a case

2:25

like we're sharing with you today. We

2:28

hope you feel the same. Here

2:30

is Crawl

2:31

Space.

2:34

Hi there, I'm Yardley. I'm Dan.

2:36

I'm Dave. And I'm Paul. And this

2:39

is Small Town Dix. Dave and I are

2:41

identical twins and retired detectives

2:43

from Small Town USA. And I'm a veteran

2:45

cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden

2:47

State Killer using a revolutionary DNA

2:50

tool. Between the three of us, we've investigated

2:52

thousands of crimes, from petty theft to

2:54

sexual assault, child abuse to

2:57

murder. Each case we cover is told

2:59

by the detective who investigated it, offering

3:01

a rare, personal account of how they solved

3:03

the crime. Names, places,

3:05

and certain details have been changed to protect

3:07

the privacy of victims and their families. And

3:09

although we're aware that some of our listeners may

3:11

be familiar with these cases, we ask you

3:13

to please join us in continuing to protect the true

3:16

identities of those involved out of respect

3:18

for what they've been through.

3:19

Thank you.

3:30

Today on Small Town Dix, we have the

3:32

usual suspects. Hooray! We have Detective

3:34

Dan. Good

3:37

morning. Good morning. If

3:38

it's morning, where you are. Wherever you are, wherever

3:40

you may be. We have Detective Dave. Hello,

3:43

Yardley. Hello, David. I'm

3:45

so happy that you're here. Likewise. Sitting

3:47

across from me. And we have the one and only

3:49

Paul Holes. Hey,

3:51

hey. Hey, hey. Such a good

3:54

day.

3:54

I have all the people. And, Small

3:56

Town Fair, we are so happy to be here. super

4:00

excited. We've been dogging him

4:02

to come back onto the podcast

4:04

because we love him so much as we know you

4:06

do as well. We have, are

4:09

you a detective or a sergeant now, Robert? I'm

4:11

a sergeant now. Yeah, dude. We

4:13

have Sergeant Robert

4:16

who has come to us before as

4:18

Detective Robert, but he's been promoted. So

4:20

let's get fancy and call you by your

4:23

real title. Well,

4:24

thank you. It's good to be here again. It's

4:26

so great to have you. You get the stripes

4:28

and all the liability. That's

4:30

right. Here you go. That's right. And back to graveyard

4:33

shift. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's exciting.

4:35

So Robert, by the time our listeners

4:37

hear this episode, we'll

4:39

have provided a warning about the subject

4:41

matter in a preamble that comes

4:44

even before the opening credits because episodes

4:46

about

4:47

babies and children

4:49

are always the hardest to hear. And

4:52

with that, please tell us how

4:54

this case came to you. So at

4:57

the time of this call, I was still on patrol.

4:59

So this was actually just about a year before

5:01

I became a detective. But this is one of those

5:03

cases that really stuck

5:05

with me. I think you'll see why. And it really

5:08

instilled in me that desire to become

5:11

a detective.

5:12

I was on swing shift on this day,

5:15

just after 5 p.m. on a Friday.

5:17

My sergeant calls me up and asks

5:19

me to respond to the local hospital.

5:22

Basically what he tells me is that deputies

5:24

are there dealing with a woman. Her

5:27

name is Cassie,

5:28

who claimed to have given birth. And

5:30

she's up at the hospital now. Cassie

5:33

basically claimed that she was pregnant with twins. One

5:36

had been delivered, but one was still on the way. My

5:39

sergeant says that the baby went in one ambulance

5:42

and basically was pronounced dead at the hospital.

5:46

So I responded to the hospital. It's a short drive

5:48

away from where I was. And there are already

5:50

other deputies there talking to

5:53

medical staff. A colleague of mine

5:55

is interviewing the paramedics at the hospital. And

5:58

we were interested in what their observations were.

5:59

were. And here's what they said.

6:02

They said that they walked into the house and

6:04

immediately noticed

6:06

what they felt was an unusual amount

6:08

of blood, way more than they would have

6:10

expected for a home birth. They

6:13

saw the baby on a table lying on its

6:15

back and just wrapped in a towel. They

6:17

noted that the umbilical cord looked to be

6:19

cut or torn. They did not

6:21

notice any bleeding from the baby and

6:24

they remembered that Cassie was in the

6:26

bathroom.

6:28

Now paramedics on the way to the hospital noted

6:30

that she was very resistant to be examined

6:33

based on, hey, you called for emergency medical

6:35

care. We're here to provide that care.

6:37

And now you don't want to be examined. It's, it's unusual.

6:40

It stood out to them.

6:42

They also said that Cassie told them, hey,

6:44

there's a twin coming.

6:46

They noted that mom was not engaged in

6:48

labor breathing. There were no contractions.

6:50

Cassie reported being nine

6:53

and a half months pregnant at this point. They

6:55

found this very odd and not very believable

6:58

as the baby was very, very small.

7:00

And the paramedics own observations

7:02

of this baby was that the

7:04

baby had not been delivered at full term.

7:07

Paramedics, even in the ambulance on the way the

7:09

hospital determined in their

7:11

professional opinion that there was no way

7:14

that Cassie had just given birth.

7:16

What about indicating that

7:18

she's still pregnant? Negative.

7:21

They didn't see any medical signs whatsoever

7:23

that she had even been pregnant. And

7:26

I would think early on, you know, Cassie is so

7:29

off in terms of what she's saying is happening.

7:31

You got to be thinking, maybe I'm dealing with

7:34

a psychiatric situation here.

7:36

Again, at this point, Cassie had been at

7:38

the hospital about two hours and kind

7:40

of what the hospital was doing during that time is trying

7:42

to figure all this out.

7:44

So they have their staff psychiatrist

7:46

come in and evaluate Cassie. And

7:49

the psychiatrist talks to her enough

7:53

and forms an opinion that he did not

7:55

find any evidence of mental illness.

7:57

So a doctor went into detail.

7:59

about the resuscitation efforts they made on the

8:02

baby. They did CPR for quite

8:04

a while.

8:05

They administered epinephrine,

8:07

adrenaline, trying to resuscitate

8:10

the baby. But after a while, they

8:12

finally called to death.

8:14

The doctor told me, he noted there was no umbilical

8:16

clamp, and it was his opinion at this time

8:19

that the baby had bled to death.

8:22

One thing the doctor told me was that the baby

8:25

was not full term. The

8:27

baby was about 29 to 30 weeks in his opinion.

8:32

So almost two months premature. Correct.

8:36

So

8:36

the doctor told me that he

8:39

broke the news to the parents, Cassie and her

8:41

boyfriend, Ian, and expressed his condolences

8:43

to them. He felt that they were grieving appropriately

8:46

at this point,

8:47

and they were adamant they did not want an autopsy.

8:51

The doctor's just telling Robert, hey,

8:54

the story isn't adding up from the family. It

8:56

might be time to start asking some more probative

8:59

questions. That's something that

9:01

I as a detective or patrol officer,

9:04

I wanna know, what's the family like? Does

9:06

their story make sense? What's your medical opinion

9:08

of what they're saying? Right.

9:10

So one of the next things that I do at the hospital

9:13

is to go in and examine

9:15

the remains and

9:17

take some photographs.

9:19

I ask hospital staff, where's

9:21

the baby now? And they direct

9:23

me, and of course it's a hospital. I get notoriously

9:26

lost in hospitals. There's no windows. You never

9:28

know where you're going. It's very confusing.

9:30

And so they leave me down every which hallway,

9:33

and I go to the room that I've been directed to,

9:36

and the door's closed, and

9:38

I open the door,

9:40

and inside there's a nurse who's

9:42

rocking a baby wrapped in a blanket. And

9:45

I apologize thinking I'd gone to the wrong

9:47

room. And she said,

9:49

no, you have the right room. I'm just

9:51

trying to do something kind for a baby that had

9:53

nothing but bad luck up to this point.

9:56

Oh, man. So

9:59

the nurse.

9:59

who's obviously a very kind and

10:02

loving person, puts the baby on the table

10:04

and opens the blanket and allows me

10:06

to examine the baby. And

10:09

what I see is, you know, obviously a premature

10:11

birth size baby, but I don't see any

10:14

obvious external trauma. In

10:17

fact, the baby's coloring is lifelike

10:19

and not purple, not red. The

10:22

head is pretty transparent. You can see blood vessels

10:25

visible in the head, but no obvious

10:27

trauma, just a perfectly formed

10:29

little baby.

10:32

This type of observation, these types of features,

10:35

when you're now dealing with a deceased

10:38

baby, those features change

10:41

so rapidly as the tissues degrade.

10:44

So now it's, Robert's basically

10:46

putting a temporal stamp on, you

10:48

know, at this point in time, this is what I

10:50

can see because tomorrow, you're

10:52

probably not going to be able to see that kind of

10:55

detail.

10:56

Absolutely right. So I'm in the

10:58

hospital. I am done

11:00

with my photos of the baby and

11:03

I

11:04

go to rally up with my coworkers and kind of catch

11:06

up on what these deputies had learned

11:08

from their interviews. And I walk up and

11:11

a colleague of mine is still interviewing

11:13

Ian, Cassie's boyfriend.

11:15

And he's crying. He's very emotional.

11:18

He told me that he and Cassie had been together for about

11:20

five years and that they lived together

11:22

for the past three years.

11:24

He told me that

11:25

Cassie had two other children

11:28

from two other fathers. And

11:30

Ian considered himself the dad

11:33

of these kids and was raising them.

11:35

He seemed to be in genuine shock.

11:37

Basically to him, he had no

11:39

reason to doubt that she'd been pregnant. He noted

11:41

that she had been faithfully taking prenatal

11:44

vitamins. She recently purchased

11:46

a stroller. She was starting

11:48

to collect all the things that

11:51

people would need for newborns

11:53

and then double in this case, because she was having twins.

11:57

He said that Cassie was overdue about

11:59

two. weeks, passed her delivery date. And

12:02

so he was expecting these twins

12:04

to be born, you

12:06

know, that day or very soon. He knew

12:08

it could happen anytime. And it was

12:10

about two 30

12:11

that Cassie called Ian and said, you

12:14

know, come home immediately. I need your help. So

12:17

Ian rushed home

12:18

thinking, Hey, this is it. Even though she didn't specifically

12:21

say it, he said, this is it. It's gotta be time

12:23

for the twins to be born. While

12:25

he's arriving home, he sees the other

12:27

two children getting off the school bus

12:30

and fortunately he diverted them

12:32

immediately to a neighbor's house. He figured

12:35

that he and Cassie were going to the hospital. So

12:37

he diverted them to a neighbor's house and I'm so

12:40

glad he did.

12:42

So what Ian finds

12:45

when he gets home

12:47

is he says

12:53

there's blood

12:56

everywhere.

13:04

He finds Cassie in the bathtub and

13:06

she's holding this baby and she's

13:08

washing herself and the baby off. He

13:10

noted that she was naked except for

13:13

a bra and she was just covered in blood

13:15

from her torso all the way down

13:17

to her toes. She's asking him for

13:19

help and he immediately calls 911.

13:23

Ian takes the baby from Cassie and

13:26

begins doing CPR.

13:28

A few minutes later, paramedics come

13:30

and he rides in the ambulance with Cassie while

13:33

the baby goes at a separate ambulance.

13:36

Ian said that when he arrived at the hospital, he

13:38

was notified that the baby had died.

13:41

He also said he had no clue whatsoever

13:43

why there were so many police at the hospital.

13:45

Ian

13:47

also said that

13:49

Cassie had started to tell him something in

13:51

the hospital when no one was around, but

13:54

they kept getting interrupted. But when Cassie

13:56

was able to continue that

13:58

conversation with Ian, Ian, she told

14:01

him that she had lost the twins about a week

14:03

earlier, but that she still really

14:05

wanted him to have a baby.

14:07

And as I'm hearing him telling this,

14:10

I did the thing that cops really should

14:12

not do. And that is I interrupted,

14:14

I really shouldn't have. And that's

14:16

really hard not to do, to interrupt people when

14:18

they're in the middle of something they could

14:21

shut down about that we don't want them to.

14:23

But I had to interrupt because this is when it very

14:25

solidly in my mind hit me that

14:28

someone could be dead.

14:30

So I did interrupt and I said, Ian,

14:32

could someone be hurt at your residence? And

14:34

he said, he didn't know. But he did remember

14:37

as they were leaving the house that Cassie

14:40

told him she didn't want police to go in the house. And

14:42

again, at the moment that didn't mean anything to him at

14:44

all. He didn't know why she would say that

14:46

he didn't put any significance on that.

14:49

I'm thinking, Cassie's here at the hospital, Ian's

14:51

here at the hospital. We have this deceased baby

14:54

here at the hospital,

14:55

but what is waiting for us at the house? Is

14:57

there someone hurt there? Is someone dead?

14:59

Is there a second baby at the house?

15:02

It was really alarming to have these

15:04

thoughts, but we needed to do our investigation.

15:07

Was there any indication that

15:09

another adult was living in the

15:11

house with Cassie and Ian and those other

15:13

two children?

15:15

No, it's a two bedroom, one

15:17

bath house with a crawl space. It's

15:19

pretty small. And they were the only two

15:21

adults living there with their other

15:24

two children.

15:25

So obviously we wanna do things

15:28

right. So Ian is willing to sign

15:30

a written consent form for us to go into

15:32

his house. So we get

15:35

that signed by him. He has no problem

15:37

with it.

15:38

I relay that to deputies out at the

15:40

scene.

15:41

As I'm walking around doing all this stuff and

15:43

trying to connect all the dots at the hospital,

15:46

I walk in on a coworker of mine who's

15:48

still interviewing Cassie. And

15:50

at first I didn't see her

15:52

because Cassie is lying down on the

15:54

floor of her hospital room.

15:56

She is a larger, statured woman,

15:59

very confused.

15:59

to be pregnant with twins. And

16:02

she is visibly upset and crying.

16:05

She doesn't like my co-workers' questions. She

16:08

immediately tells them she wants a lawyer.

16:10

These are all very unusual things when

16:12

we're just trying to figure out what's going on.

16:15

Why is Cassie on the floor? I've

16:18

had people who you put them in

16:20

an interview room, not even for a crime

16:22

that I think we're about to speak about. Uh,

16:26

I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but

16:28

even for simple, like

16:30

a theft or a stolen car or drug

16:34

sales, people will

16:36

go into the room and they

16:38

will just lay down and fall asleep. It's

16:41

really odd. I don't think I'd ever want to go into

16:43

a police station and lay down

16:45

on the ground anywhere, but it

16:48

happens. People do weird stuff

16:50

when I think their conscience is

16:52

bothering them and they know

16:54

that, uh, they're in some trouble.

16:57

There are certain things that we look in law

16:59

enforcement. I go, is this genuine

17:02

or is this acting? And a lot

17:04

of times it's acting. You'll see these tantrums,

17:06

but there's no tears.

17:08

You see a tantrum and an

17:10

ability when it's off topic

17:13

to speak very measured.

17:15

And so you go, well, this isn't authentic. This

17:17

isn't genuine. This is back off.

17:19

You're asking questions I don't want to give you the

17:21

answers to. And that's how I took that.

17:24

Cassie's throwing a little baby tantrum on the floor,

17:26

saying, leave me alone. I

17:28

got to think about my fucking answers.

17:30

Right. Interesting. Wow.

17:33

Yeah. And Dave beat me to it. That is exactly

17:36

what this was, is this was an adult tantrum.

17:38

And then of course, when she can't answer the questions

17:40

that we so naturally are asking,

17:43

you're harassing me. I don't want to go down

17:45

this path. So now I want a lawyer.

17:48

So meanwhile, deputies are

17:50

out of the house and through the front window,

17:53

they can see a large amount of blood

17:55

in the bathroom. And they

17:57

noticed a very significant trail

17:59

of fire.

17:59

blood from the bathroom to the front

18:02

door. And they relayed this information

18:04

to me by phone. They

18:07

also noted that the front door was

18:09

unlocked. So they go

18:11

in through that unlocked front door. But

18:13

can I ask you a question? If Cassie

18:16

has lawyered up, but Ian

18:18

has signed a consent form saying you all

18:20

can go into the house, where does that

18:22

leave you? Does one of

18:24

those mandates override the other?

18:27

That's what I call conflicting consent. Because if we

18:29

asked Cassie, her answer would be, oh, heck

18:31

no, you're not going in the house. However,

18:34

also in the back of our minds as investigators

18:37

is we always have to

18:39

think about that moment of, do

18:42

we have some exigent circumstances here? Do we

18:44

have some emergency? We also

18:46

have a duty under community caretaking

18:48

to render aid.

18:50

The exigencies, they're

18:52

obvious. But you

18:54

have to be able to articulate them. And

18:57

in this case, you have a woman who's claiming

18:59

to have given birth. She hasn't.

19:01

So there's another woman that

19:03

has given birth and

19:06

there's possibly another baby.

19:09

They could still be alive, but injured,

19:12

you know, and you absolutely have to go

19:14

in. You have exigency at that

19:16

point. Absolutely.

19:18

As I had been talking to Ian at the hospital

19:21

and just kind of asking about the house in general,

19:24

he said that there was a crawl space.

19:27

So I asked him how to access that and he

19:29

indicated that there was a rug

19:31

in the hallway that was kind of over this

19:34

crawl space. And the deputies

19:36

on scene were telling me that the

19:38

blood trail kind of leads to this rug and then it

19:40

stops. And so I

19:42

shared the information that I just learned from Ian that,

19:44

hey, there's this crawl space under the

19:47

rug. So they do that and

19:49

they noted it was a small opening. It's basically

19:51

a two foot by three foot opening. It's not

19:53

huge,

19:54

but they noted that there was blood on this access

19:57

door as well as the

19:59

bottom of the rug.

20:01

And when my colleagues lifted up

20:03

that access door, they

20:05

saw another piece of carpet underneath them, but

20:08

also lots of blood down below. And

20:12

this rug had been covering up

20:14

a female adult body.

20:16

Oh, my God. And they said

20:18

that this female was obviously deceased. She

20:21

was wearing a bra, but no shirt. And

20:23

they could tell just by, you know,

20:25

a quick look with a flashlight that her internal

20:27

organs were hanging out of a large opening

20:30

in her abdomen.

20:31

And as soon as they tell us that,

20:34

we arrest Cassie at the hospital.

20:37

Oh, that's a lot.

20:39

That's a lot.

20:50

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20:51

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24:38

All right Robert, so what happens

24:40

now? So where we are now is

24:43

we have this woman in the crawl

24:45

space and we don't know who she is. In fact,

24:47

the first police reports that get written were

24:49

listing her as Jane Doe. When

24:52

we talk to Ian and ask who

24:54

this lady is,

24:56

he says that his best guess is that someone that

24:58

Cassie has met online.

25:00

He says that they don't know anyone else who's

25:02

pregnant and so he assumes that this is

25:04

a stranger. And again, Ian tells

25:07

us that Cassie has been busy online

25:09

answering ads and placing ads, trying

25:12

to get baby stuff. Well, several

25:14

hours later our dispatch gets a

25:16

phone call from a man in a nearby

25:18

city and he's basically telling us that

25:21

his 21 year old pregnant girlfriend is

25:23

missing. He says that she

25:25

left several hours earlier, was

25:27

going to go get some free baby items from someone

25:30

that she met online and was going

25:32

to pick up those items and had not returned. And

25:34

it had been many, many, many hours.

25:37

We were able to

25:39

look up photos of this woman

25:42

and we were able to positively ID

25:44

our decedent as Sandra.

25:47

Is Ian horrified that there's a dead

25:50

woman under his floor? Ian is

25:53

very much, very much horrified

25:56

and he is a very kind

25:58

and trusting, happy ghost.

25:59

lucky kind of person. We never

26:02

had any ounce of deception

26:05

from him or anything other

26:07

than just a guy who was completely deceived

26:10

by Cassie.

26:12

Now you've discovered this deceased female

26:15

under the floor of the house. You

26:17

found her in the crawl space. At that

26:19

point,

26:20

do you guys withdraw from the house and write a

26:22

search warrant? We do.

26:25

Solid legal ground is our community

26:27

caretaking hat now needs to come off,

26:29

right? There is no living victim that we can

26:31

render aid to. So at this point

26:34

we back out of the house and we

26:36

call detectives and we get a search

26:38

warrant.

26:40

Those warrants need to justify

26:43

the physical evidence search to

26:46

support the homicide. You

26:48

cannot just leave it very

26:50

plain language because I, doing

26:53

the CSI work, am going

26:55

to be looking for all this physical

26:57

evidence. Some of it is large and is going to be on surfaces

27:00

that are in plain view. Some of it may

27:02

be hidden and could be in any type

27:04

of compartment somewhere inside that house.

27:07

And I'm sorry to kind of sidetrack

27:10

Robert, but we have Paul Holes here. He's

27:12

done a couple of crime scenes in his life. I

27:15

think it might be interesting. Just you hear

27:17

these circumstances at some point while

27:20

Robert and the rest

27:21

are out at the residence. Robert's at the

27:23

hospital. There's lots of moving parts,

27:26

but at some point at Paul's

27:28

agency, he would have been called out to this

27:30

residence to process the scene. I think

27:32

it's important. How would you approach

27:34

that?

27:36

Part of, you know, processing

27:38

the crime scene is just not documenting and

27:40

collecting evidence. It's also

27:43

trying to find and corroborate

27:45

and refute statements. Also

27:48

justify the various elements of

27:50

a crime. And so as I'm hearing

27:53

Cassie's ruse, how she's fooling

27:55

Ian, taking prenatal things and saying,

27:57

I'm going, you know, to the doctor. pregnant.

28:01

Well, I'm going to want to document. It may seem

28:03

simple, but I'm going to want to document, oh,

28:05

here's the bottle of prenatal vitamins.

28:08

This corroborates Ian's statement

28:10

of Cassie laying the groundwork

28:13

and how does this play into the element of the crime?

28:15

This is showing pre-planning, right?

28:18

And this can separate first to

28:20

second degree murder, at least in the way that it works

28:22

in California. You have to do

28:24

that when you do crime scene investigation. But

28:27

now when you start talking about the violence,

28:29

you

28:29

know, the obvious stuff, you've got the blood

28:32

patterns.

28:33

I need to know, okay, is there somebody

28:35

that is not supposed to be inside

28:37

this residence? Is there somebody who has denied?

28:39

I've never been in there. Like, let's say a stranger

28:41

had come into the residence and commit the crime. Obviously

28:44

putting that person through their

28:47

physical presence, whether it be DNA, Latents,

28:50

trace evidence is critical. But

28:52

here we have a closed environment.

28:55

The stranger in this case is the Jane Doe.

28:58

The actual complexity of processing this

29:00

scene would be, you know, three episodes long

29:02

for me to kind of go step by step on how I'd approach

29:04

it. This is just sort of a thumbnail. It's not

29:06

just as simple as walking in and taking pictures

29:09

and swabbing bloodstains and scooping the body

29:11

up. It is a very labor intensive,

29:14

complicated process to be

29:16

done right.

29:18

That's what I wanted to get across. They're not clearing

29:20

the scene in four hours. No, in fact,

29:22

we kept this scene into the next day.

29:25

Sometimes it's beneficial to hold scenes

29:27

until after the autopsy because

29:29

the autopsy is, you know, a very

29:32

important part of the investigation.

29:34

And so sometimes you only learn things

29:37

at the time of autopsy. And if we've already vacated

29:39

the house, then that means another search

29:41

warrant, right?

29:43

So our search warrant gets us into the house,

29:45

finds baby formula, infant

29:47

diapers, breast lump, male

29:49

and female baby clothing, two strollers,

29:52

pregnancy and parenting magazines, prenatal

29:55

vitamins. It finds everything

29:58

that you would expect from someone.

29:59

who's expecting. Cassie

30:02

had told Ian that she had lost the babies

30:04

a couple of weeks prior, correct? Yes.

30:07

But there's no indication she was ever pregnant

30:10

during this timeframe, is that correct? Correct.

30:13

While she's accumulating all these

30:15

things,

30:16

she's premeditating what she's

30:18

going to be doing. She's been thinking about

30:21

this for months. Absolutely.

30:24

Part of our job is to determine how

30:26

Cassie did this. How did she kill Sandra?

30:29

So we find that in the home.

30:31

We find a collapsible asp

30:33

baton. So something very similar to

30:35

what patrol officers carry. Did

30:37

you say asp like the snake?

30:40

Yes, like the snake, but this is

30:42

the brand that the baton is, asp,

30:46

A-S-P. Oh, okay, all

30:48

right, asp. So

30:51

we noticed this collapsible asp baton, it has

30:53

blood on it, it has hairs on it. It's

30:56

quickly apparent to us that this is what Cassie

30:58

uses to assault Sandra very violently.

31:02

It's not until a second search that

31:04

they locate a razor blade, kind

31:06

of like a box cutter. And that's because it's

31:08

caked in blood on the floor. Our

31:11

search warrant also allowed us to

31:14

collect some evidence from Cassie because

31:17

when they're booking her into jail, our jail

31:19

staff notified us, hey, she's got all kinds of marks

31:21

and cuts and scars,

31:23

but required to read a search warrant to

31:26

a person. So we read it to Cassie

31:28

and she told us she was not gonna

31:30

comply with the search warrant. And so we actually

31:32

had to restrain her in a restraint chair

31:34

in the jail. And imagine just

31:37

a hard plastic chair with lots of seat belts

31:39

and things that plug in and across. She

31:42

needed to be restrained in a restraint chair so

31:44

that detectives could swab a large scar

31:46

on her neck. She had

31:48

this three inch scar on the left side of her neck.

31:51

She had a small scratch on the right side of her

31:53

neck that was about a half inch long.

31:55

She had scratches on both hands as

31:57

well as her right palm. She had another scratch

31:59

on her right.

31:59

right ankle, she had a small scrape

32:02

on her right upper shoulder, and she had light

32:04

bruising on her upper right arm. All

32:07

of these things tell us that there was an extremely

32:10

violent struggle. This was Sandra

32:13

putting up the fight of her life. And

32:15

even with Cassie being a larger woman,

32:18

Sandra fought till the very last moment,

32:21

and she left lots of evidence behind

32:23

to help us.

32:25

When I evaluate physical evidence in

32:27

a crime scene such as this, and

32:29

we don't know who the offender is, I can

32:32

often discern a physical

32:34

difference or similar physical capabilities

32:37

between these two combatants. And

32:39

when you have two evenly matched

32:41

combatants, you often

32:43

see the

32:44

fight drug out much more.

32:47

Now you have more blood stains,

32:49

more blood spatter in the house.

32:51

And I would imagine like with Sandra

32:53

at autopsy, she's being struck

32:55

with this collapsible baton. She's

32:58

going to have blunt force injuries, but you're

33:00

also now having stomping,

33:02

hair pulling, the scratching. All of

33:05

that is documented at autopsy.

33:07

And that needs to be correlated with

33:10

the evidence at the scene, with where the blood

33:12

spatter is being deposited, because

33:14

now you can start to reconstruct the actions.

33:18

Sandra fought for her life, but

33:20

Cassie couldn't dominate her physically. And

33:22

so that caused this fight to drag

33:24

on longer and longer.

33:26

And it speaks to Sandra, was like,

33:29

uh-uh, this is a fight. Screw

33:31

you, I'm not going down.

33:33

You know, we noted how the ability

33:36

of Sandra to fight back under the circumstances

33:39

left wonderful DNA evidence. Like this was

33:41

not a whodunit at all. This was super

33:44

clear once we identified Sandra. The

33:47

medical examiner determined that

33:49

Sandra died of blood loss due to

33:51

the cutting injury caused by Cassie.

33:54

The cutting injury being taking the baby

33:56

out. Correct. Cassie's

33:59

victim. selection process is

34:01

intriguing to me because you think about what

34:04

she is doing. You know, she's developing

34:06

this ruse around the people who

34:08

know her,

34:09

but she's also going online and

34:12

basically casting, hoping for

34:14

a fish, a victim to bite, and

34:16

that she could isolate that victim inside

34:18

her house in order to recover the

34:21

baby out of that victim. Are there other

34:23

women that she communicated with that

34:25

could have been victims?

34:27

She cast a wide net. Cassie

34:29

placed a lot of ads on Craigslist.

34:32

And so once her arrest was publicized,

34:35

once we issued our media release, we

34:37

got lots and lots of phone calls from people

34:40

who had contact with her or who were attempting

34:43

to have contact with her. So we

34:45

had many pregnant ladies call

34:47

in telling us that they had contact with Cassie

34:50

based on these online ads, offering

34:52

low cost baby clothes. All

34:54

of them told us that Cassie seemed very

34:57

odd and was asking an unusual amount

34:59

of questions about their due date, the sex

35:01

of the baby, and whether or not these women

35:03

were having twins. So it is just

35:06

so clear what Cassie was doing.

35:08

Some of them told us that they

35:10

smartly and very wisely would not

35:12

meet with Cassie at her home or

35:15

their home. They wanted to meet in a public place, which

35:17

is awesome. Thank you for doing that. It might've saved

35:19

your life. And so these women said

35:21

they would go to the grocery store parking lot

35:23

where they had set an appointment to meet up with Cassie.

35:26

They saw a woman showed up who they

35:28

expected to be Cassie based on the date and time

35:31

and the car they were expecting. They would

35:33

see Cassie circle them, drive around him

35:35

twice, and then drive away.

35:37

As I'm listening to this process, you

35:40

know, it's dawning on me that Cassie

35:42

is utilizing the same

35:45

approach to victim selection that

35:47

many, many predators do.

35:49

Social media allows you

35:51

to lure and isolate victims

35:54

from afar, but you don't know who

35:56

these victims are. And I bet Cassie and some of

35:59

these drive-bys. is evaluating

36:02

is this a woman that I think I

36:04

can either physically take on or

36:07

is there something else about this woman that is not

36:10

meeting the requirements that

36:12

this predator wants in a victim?

36:15

So Sandra had posted an

36:17

ad saying, hey, I'm moving to the area

36:19

and I basically need everything for a new baby.

36:22

My husband and I don't have a lot of money. I'm

36:25

eight months along, literally looking

36:27

for anything a baby needs. Please contact

36:29

me.

36:30

Oh. That was the ad that

36:32

brought. Sandra and Cassie together.

36:35

Exactly. So Sandra was not

36:37

answering an ad that Cassie had placed. She

36:40

had posted one and Cassie wrote to her. And

36:43

Cassie answered that one. Yeah.

36:46

Wow. I don't think Sandra

36:48

could have written that ad any better for

36:50

Cassie. That's the spider web

36:53

right there. Right. Exactly.

36:55

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38:14

So Cassie pled guilty to aggravated

38:17

murder

38:21

and

38:24

she agreed to a true life sentence in

38:27

order to avoid the death penalty.

38:29

What's true life, Robert? It means

38:31

that she will never get out. So

38:34

this was not a long drawn out trial.

38:36

They tried to make some motions about

38:39

mental illness and so forth, and they

38:41

just didn't gain traction. We had done

38:43

a good job on the front end of

38:46

being prepared for that kind of defense.

38:48

Did Cassie ever offer a motive

38:51

for why she did what she did?

38:54

She already had two children, so why now?

38:59

No, not officially. We just

39:01

know that she wanted Ian to be a dad.

39:03

She wanted to connect herself to him further,

39:06

and then she told him that she fibbed

39:08

to him, and then she had to come up with the goods.

39:12

Cassie saying twins kind

39:14

of puts her into a bit of a bind,

39:16

though. Yes. Again, getting

39:18

back to victim selection. Is she

39:21

trying to find victims that are saying they're

39:23

pregnant with twins, or was

39:25

her plan

39:26

to kill two women and have

39:28

two babies, and then pass them off as

39:31

being twins? Absolutely.

39:34

One of these ladies that called in said

39:36

that Cassie had been very persistent,

39:38

that she wanted to give the clothing that

39:40

she was giving away to someone whose due date

39:42

was very close, and that there were a lot

39:45

of questions asked by Cassie about

39:47

whether this woman was having twin boys.

39:50

Cassie also called from different

39:52

phone numbers and would not provide

39:54

her name,

39:56

but they were certain it was her when they

39:58

saw her picture.

39:59

Another mom whose kids

40:02

attended the same school as Cassie's other children

40:05

said that she was surprised to see

40:07

this on the news because she knew that

40:09

Cassie had delivered twins about five

40:11

months before the murder. She

40:13

told us that she had seen the twins at

40:16

Cassie's house once when she was out the front door. And

40:18

then when asked for more details, she said,

40:21

well, there are two baby swings

40:23

and the swings were operating. And Cassie

40:25

said, we had to keep our voices low. She

40:27

said she never heard babies crying or anything,

40:30

but said that Cassie talked 100% about

40:33

baby related topics. Cassie

40:35

was always watching baby births on YouTube.

40:38

And now this woman that called in said she

40:41

was wondering if these were dolls that she had seen

40:43

in the baby swing or just kind

40:45

of bunched up blankets appearing to be babies.

40:48

Another neighbor, so basically someone

40:50

who lives right next to Cassie

40:52

said that Cassie had told her she was pregnant

40:55

with twins and the twins were due four months

40:58

to this murder. So there's just so many storylines

41:00

going and so much deception that

41:02

I think it was overwhelming for

41:05

Cassie.

41:06

And again, Cassie went to

41:08

great lengths to appear

41:10

to have just had kids.

41:12

It's unbelievable. And I don't think it's

41:15

a big leap to think that if Cassie had

41:17

not been caught, that she

41:19

might've gone on to kill more people just to

41:21

keep the lie going.

41:23

Exactly. So

41:26

one kind thing that we were able to do

41:29

was

41:30

one thing we seized from the hospital when

41:32

we were there was when the baby died,

41:35

the hospital staff, again, these

41:37

are kind, caring people that work in the hospital, right?

41:39

Especially in maternity. And so when a baby

41:41

dies, they have a process. They have a protocol

41:45

that they go through. And one of the things they did was

41:47

they prepared a baby memento box.

41:50

And this included some hair from the baby and

41:53

basically a nice

41:55

little certificate where they put ink on the

41:57

hands and the feet.

41:59

just do the little impression. And

42:02

of course that was booked into evidence and this was a case

42:05

that went on and on, even with her plea.

42:08

But at the end of this, we were able

42:10

to get that released from evidence and

42:12

get that to Sandra's husband.

42:15

And so that was a very small

42:17

token from the hospital and from us,

42:20

but it meant a lot that we were able to hand that over

42:22

at the end of something so horrific to them.

42:25

I can't imagine Sandra's

42:28

husband, I mean, at the sentencing,

42:30

I'm guessing he was able to provide

42:33

a victim's impact statement, but how

42:36

do you make sense of that? How do you move on from

42:38

that? I mean,

42:39

it's, it

42:41

gets you. Yeah, significant

42:44

loss.

42:45

And like I said, this case was really one

42:47

that's like, wow, I want to go do this

42:50

detective stuff full time. So this really was

42:52

right before I made that decision in my career.

42:55

Thank you, Robert, so much for

42:57

bringing that to us today. Thank

43:00

you. Can't even put into words what that must have felt

43:02

like. No. Thanks again, Robert.

43:05

Thanks for having me. Nice to meet you. I

43:07

haven't heard your previous episodes, but.

43:10

That's only because Paul doesn't listen to any

43:12

podcasts. It's not you,

43:14

just have to preface that.

43:21

Small Town Dicks is produced by Gary

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Scott and me, Yardley Smith and

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co-produced by detectives Dan and

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Dave. Our production manager

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is Logan Heftel. Our senior

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editor is Sorin Vasion. And

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our editor is Christina Bracamantes.

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Our associate producers are Aaron Gaynor

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and The Real Nick Smitty.