Forensic Transmissions

On March 14, 2015 (the day after the final installment of the six-part documentary series The Jinx aired on HBO), Robert Durst, 73, was arrested by the FBI in connection with the murder of his former girlfriend, the writer Susan Berman. He was staying in a hotel in New Orleans and found to be in possession of a false Texas ID, stacks of $100 bills, bags of marijuana, a .38-caliber revolver, a map folded to show Louisiana and Cuba, a latex mask, and a wig. In his interview with Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, Durst confesses that he took meth during his interviews on The Jinx, and says he has smoked pot almost every day of his life.

Listen to the episode here.

This episode contains the testimony of Jane Doe 1 in the rape trial of Kellen Winslow Jr., a former NFL tight end, in San Diego County Superior Court in early November. Jane Doe, who remained nameless and was not shown on camera, was a 54-year-old homeless woman from Encinitas, California. Walking by the 101 highway one day, she was picked up by a  large black man with tattoos who drove a black Hummer and identified himself as “Dominique.” She testifies that he drove her to a parking lot close to a shopping center and raped her violently, causing extra pain due to his “gigantic penis.”

    However, Jane Doe 1 is not the best witness. She seems disturbed and moody, and her testimony is full of contradictions and misstatements. She often answers the same question in opposite ways while on the stand. She isn’t consistent with her testimony from the pretrial hearing. At one point she claims she hasn’t had a drink in 30 years. The defense soon points to a lengthy list of arrests for public intoxication.

    With incontrovertible evidence accumulating against him, Winslow finally accepted a plea deal that spared him from the possibility of a life prison sentence. He pleaded guilty to raping an unconscious teen in 2003 and to the sexual battery of Jane Doe 1, while the San Diego County Superior Court agreed to dismiss other felony charges including kidnapping, sodomy, forced oral copulation and two charges of forcible rape.

Listen to the episode here.

This episode contains the testimony of Eboni Wiley in the trial of Granville Ritchie, 40, for the rape and murder of Wiley’s neighbor, 9-year-old Felecia Williams, in Tampa, Florida. Ms. Wiley previously testified that Mr. Ritchie, who said his name was “Trevor,” had picked her up in the street a few days earlier. Since then, the two had done drugs and had sex together a few times, and Ms. Wiley had put his number in her phone, referring to him as “my husband.” Ms. Wiley was friends with the Williams family, her neighbors, whose 9-year-old daughter Felecia was known as “Sugar Plum.”

Ritchie concealed the body in a suitcase and dragged out of the residence later that night. Sugar Plum’s body was found and nude, floating face-down in the water. She had been fatally strangled, and had received blunt force trauma to the head before death, authorities said. She had also been sexually assaulted.

Wiley was charged with providing false information to law enforcement during a missing person investigation. Ritchie was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.

Listen to the episode here.

This episode contains three hours of the eight hours with attorney Wendi Adelson spent with Tallahassee police immediately after the death of her husband, FSU law professor Dan Markel (see episode 113). After being informed of her husband’s death, Wendi spoke with law enforcement officers for almost eight hours (without asking for counsel). The police have not charged her with anything, but she admits that she feels as if she’s being treated as a suspect.

As noted in episode 113, Sigfredo Garcia, whose girlfriend dated Wendi’s sister Charlie Adelson, has since been convicted of Dan Markel’s murder, which, according to the prosecution, Markel’s murder resulted from the “desperate desire” of the Adelson family to relocate Wendi Adelson and her two sons from Tallahassee, where Markel lived, to South Florida, where the Adelsons live.

Over the course of questioning, Ms. Adelson appears shocked, distressed, heartbroken, and confused. At times, she is also chatty and relaxed.

Listen to the episode here.

This episode contains the testimony of Todd Mullis, 43, on the stand during his trial for the murder of his wife Amy, 39. Mullis, an Iowa hog farmer, testifies that he was doing chores with his wife in the hog barn when Amy, who’d recently had surgery, seemed dizzy and weak. She left the hog barn on an errand, and an hour later, noticing she hadn’t returned, Todd sent his 13-year-old son Trystan to find out if she was okay. Trystan discovered his mother crouched over on her hands and knees in the doorway of the barn with a corn rake sticking out of her back. It first it seemed like a freak accident–Amy appeared to have got dizzy and fallen on the rake while she was changing a light bulb. But an autopsy showed that Amy’s body had at least six stab wounds from the rake.

Listen to the episode here.

The first piece of audio in this episode is “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution,” posted online by the 22-year-old before his Isla Vista rampage on May 23, 2014. Roger explains that he is angry about being unable to get a girlfriend ever though he is obviously “gorgeous,” “magnificent,” and a “supreme gentleman.”

Listen to the episode here.

This episode contains audio of Curtis Wayne Wright, Jr. testifying at the trial of co-conspirator Jimmy Ray Rogers about his part in the murder of Dr. Teresa Sievers at her home in Bonita Springs, Florida in June 2015. Dr. Sievers, 46, was a popular and charismatic holistic health care doctor, married with two children. She was beaten to death in her kitchen with a hammer.

Listen to the episode here.

  Amber Guyger, 31, was charged with the murder of 26-year-old Botham Jean, a Dallas accountant and native of St. Lucia. On the stand, she breaks down in tears several times as she gives her version of what happened on Sept. 6, 2018.

Listen to the episode here.