Forensic Transmissions

By Mikita BrottmanSociety & Culture True Crime Personal Journals

Forensic Transmissions episodes

November 25, 2018 Episode 79: Sandra Melgar Police Interview
On December 23, 2012, family members arrived at the home of Sandra and Jaime Melgar’s home, in Houston, Texas, to celebrate the couple’s 32nd wedding anniversary. They expected to find the couple preparing for dinner; instead, they found Jaime, 52, in a bedroom closet, dead from 31 stab wounds, and Sandra, 57, tied up in the bathroom. The police were summoned, and Sandra was interviewed at the Harris County Sheriff’s department at 9.45pm the same evening.
Earlier that evening, Sandra, a Jehovah’s Witness who owned a medical billing and coding business, tells police officers that she and Jaime, a computer programmer, had taken a long soak together in the Jacuzzi, drinking wine and eating strawberries. Jaime had got out of the tub, left the room, and hadn’t come back. When she went to look for him, Sandra ways, she believes she was hit over the head, as she had a seizure and passed out. She believes that she and Jaime were victims of a home invasion.
But as the police point out, nothing was taken from the house, and the couple’s dogs did not deter the attacker. During Sandra Melgar’s trial, the prosecutor argued that her motive was financial: Jamie had a $250,000 life insurance policy, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are not allowed to divorce unless the spouse has committed adultery. The prosecutor made the case that Sandra stabbed her husband to death with a kitchen knife and then tied herself up.
Yet it would be very difficult to murder someone then tie yourself up so tightly that two separate people are unable to release you. In the interview, Sandra Melgar seems exhausted, but doesn’t seem to be prevaricating. She maintains eye contact with the detectives, and although she appears shaken, but not melodramatic. There are long pauses; sometimes she even sits in silence for a while.
Sandra Melgar was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to 27 years in prison.
Listen to the episode here.
2 hr 18 min
November 21, 2018 Episode 78: Todd Courser Audiotape
In this audio recording, secretly taped by his aide Ben Graham on May 19 2015, Republican senator Todd Courser is a desperate man, rapidly drowning but still fighting for air. Courser admits he’s been having an extramarital affair with Republican senator Cindy Gamrat (at the time, both politicians were married with children). The affair has been discovered by an anonymous blackmailer (later revealed to be Gamrat’s husband), and Courser outlines to his dumbfounded aide a harebrained scheme to detract attention from the scandal. He plans to send out a “false flag e-mail” from a fake address alleging that he is a drug user, child molester, “bi-sexual porn addicted sex deviant”, and “gun-toting, Bible-thumping, cock-sucking freak” who has been caught having “male on male paid sex behind a Lansing nightclub”. Courser agrees that the e-mail is “over-the-top”, but tells his doubtful aide that it will “inoculate the herd” because the “real” scandal will be hidden in the ramblings of the anonymous message.
Courser is clearly at the end of his tether, but his refusal to resign makes it difficult to sympathize with him: the man’s egotism is obviously about to take him down. And it did. Both Michigan lawmakers resigned after it was revealed they had been cheating on their spouses and then using taxpayer-funded offices and staff to cover it up.
Listen to the episode here.
Police Report on Extortion Texts
House of Michigan Representatives Report on the Courser Gamrat Affair
1 hr 23 min
November 21, 2018 Episode 78: Todd Courser Audiotape
In this audio recording, secretly taped by his aide Ben Graham on May 19 2015, Republican senator Todd Courser is a desperate man, rapidly drowning but still fighting for air. Courser admits he’s been having an extramarital affair with Republican senator Cindy Gamrat (at the time, both politicians were married with children). The affair has been discovered by an anonymous blackmailer (later revealed to be Gamrat’s husband), and Courser outlines to his dumbfounded aide a harebrained scheme to detract attention from the scandal. He plans to send out a “false flag e-mail” from a fake address alleging that he is a drug user, child molester, “bi-sexual porn addicted sex deviant”, and “gun-toting, Bible-thumping, cock-sucking freak” who has been caught having “male on male paid sex behind a Lansing nightclub”. Courser agrees that the e-mail is “over-the-top”, but tells his doubtful aide that it will “inoculate the herd” because the “real” scandal will be hidden in the ramblings of the anonymous message.
Courser is clearly at the end of his tether, but his refusal to resign makes it difficult to sympathize with him: the man’s egotism is obviously about to take him down. And it did. Both Michigan lawmakers resigned after it was revealed they had been cheating on their spouses and then using taxpayer-funded offices and staff to cover it up.
Listen to the episode here.
Police Report on Extortion Texts
House of Michigan Representatives Report on the Courser Gamrat Affair
1 hr 23 min
November 14, 2018 Episode 77: Richard Kirk Police Interview
On the evening of April 14, 2014, Richard Kirk, 48, purchased and consumed an unknown amount of “Karma Kandy Orange Ginger” (marijuana-infused candy), began to hallucinate, became delusional, then turned violent. His wife Kristine called 911 and pleaded for help, telling the operator that her husband was ranting about the end of the world and […]
0 min
November 14, 2018 Episode 77: Richard Kirk Police Interview
On the evening of April 14, 2014, Richard Kirk, 48, purchased and consumed an unknown amount of “Karma Kandy Orange Ginger” (marijuana-infused candy), began to hallucinate, became delusional, then turned violent. His wife Kristine called 911 and pleaded for help, telling the operator that her husband was ranting about the end of the world and […]
0 min
November 14, 2018 Episode 76: Gypsy Blanchard Testifies
This episode presents the testimony of Gypsy Blanchard in the trial of her former boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, for the murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. In June 2016, Gypsy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for her own part in the crime, and was given a 10-year sentence. As Gypsy explains, she met Godejohn […]
0 min
November 14, 2018 Episode 76: Gypsy Blanchard Testifies
This episode presents the testimony of Gypsy Blanchard in the trial of her former boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, for the murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. In June 2016, Gypsy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for her own part in the crime, and was given a 10-year sentence. As Gypsy explains, she met Godejohn […]
0 min
November 13, 2018 Episode 76: Gypsy Blanchard Testifies
This episode presents the testimony of Gypsy Blanchard in the trial of her former boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, for the murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. In June 2016, Gypsy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for her own part in the crime, and was given a 10-year sentence.
As Gypsy explains, she met Godejohn on a Christian dating site in 2014, and they corresponded online, often using different names that referred to different aspects of their personalities. Gypsy and Godejohn decided that killing Dee Dee was the only way Gypsy could escape from her mother’s abuse. The couple planned to run away together and get married.
Dee Dee had always claimed that Gypsy, then 24, was disabled, needed a wheelchair, and had the mind of a 7-year-old. She said Gypsy’s many ailments included leukemia, muscular dystrophy, a seizure condition, and asthma. In fact, Gypsy was perfectly healthy. She could walk, and never had cancer. Dee Dee shaved her daughter’s head and dressed her in childish clothes to help perpetuate the illusion. Dee Dee created her daughter’s imaginary condition for sympathy, attention, and charity money.
When police arrived at the Blanchard home in Big Bend, Wisconsin on June 14, 2015, they found Dee Dee, 48, lying on her bed, dead from 17 stab wounds in her back.
Gypsy Blanchard was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder, and resides in the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri. This week, 29-year-old Godejohn’s own first-degree murder trial took place. Godejohn’s attorney has argued that since his client is autistic with a low IQ, he was unable to hatch the murder plot on his own, and was manipulated by Gypsy, to whom he was devoted. Prosecutors claimed that Godejohn willingly participated in the killing because he wanted Gypsy was his “sex slave.”
Now 27, Gypsy still appears much younger, and speaks in a high-pitched, childish voice. On Friday, Godejohn was found guilty of first degree murder, and awaits sentencing.
Listen to the episode here.
1 hr 16 min
November 01, 2018 Episode 75: William Kennedy Smith Rape Trial
On Dec 11 1991, William Kennedy Smith was acquitted of rape after a trial in Palm Beach, Florida. Smith was represented by defense attorney Roy Black, who pulled no punches in his questioning of the accuser, Patricia Bowman, and her friend Ann Mercer.
The incident began on the evening of March 29, 1991, when Smith, 30 years old, went to the Au Bar in Palm Beach, Florida, with his uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy, and his cousin Patrick J. Kennedy. Smith met Patricia Bowman, a 29, and her friend Anne Mercer at the bar. The five then went to a nearby house owned by the Kennedy family. When Smith and Bowman went outside for a walk along the beach, Bowman alleged that Smith raped her; Smith testified that they had consensual sex.
In the first excerpt, prosecutor Moira Lasch asks Patricia Bowman to describe the alleged rape. Bowman is then cross-examined by Roy Black. The second excerpt is from Black’s cross-examination of Anne Mercer. In the third clip, Black questions Senator Ted Kennedy. The final clip is Moira Lasch cross-examining William Kennedy Smith.
Listen to the episode here.
40 min
November 01, 2018 Episode 75: William Kennedy Smith Rape Trial
On Dec 11 1991, William Kennedy Smith was acquitted of rape after a trial in Palm Beach, Florida. Smith was represented by defense attorney Roy Black, who pulled no punches in his questioning of the accuser, Patricia Bowman, and her friend Ann Mercer.
The incident began on the evening of March 29, 1991, when Smith, 30 years old, went to the Au Bar in Palm Beach, Florida, with his uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy, and his cousin Patrick J. Kennedy. Smith met Patricia Bowman, a 29, and her friend Anne Mercer at the bar. The five then went to a nearby house owned by the Kennedy family. When Smith and Bowman went outside for a walk along the beach, Bowman alleged that Smith raped her; Smith testified that they had consensual sex.
In the first excerpt, prosecutor Moira Lasch asks Patricia Bowman to describe the alleged rape. Bowman is then cross-examined by Roy Black. The second excerpt is from Black’s cross-examination of Anne Mercer. In the third clip, Black questions Senator Ted Kennedy. The final clip is Moira Lasch cross-examining William Kennedy Smith.
Listen to the episode here.
40 min

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