The Sleuth

Story number one is about Jeff McDonald. He married Collete Stevenson on September 14, 1963, and had two kids. Jeff was intelligent. He studied thorastic surgery. He became a Green Beret physician.  

One night Jeff called 911 to report that there had been a stabbing. His wife had been stabbed 21 times in the chest and 16 times in the neck. His children had also been brutally murdered. Jeff sustained a few injuries but reported that after finishing washing the dishes, his daughter had wet the bed, so he went and slept on the couch. He said men broke into the house with a woman who was holding a candle and chanting "Acid is groovy, kill the pigs."

Police thought the story was a bit fishy, but they didn't have more to go on. 

He was formerly charged in 1970 of the deaths at an army hearing. He was dishonorably discharged and move to California for a successful career. His civilian trial began in 1979. 

He was convicted of the murders, it was found out that he found his daughter in bed after wetting the bed and killed her. After that, he killed his other daughter and wife to cover it up.

Story number two is another family of four. In a small town which people call "Little Washington". The husband and wife were attacked in their bedroom by intruders, while the daughters slept through the attacks.  Police couldn't find any evidence of the involvement of the kids so turned their attention to the husband. 

He was very much into Dungeons and Dragons. Our own social media coordinator is very into role-playing games and explained it to the Sleuths. The husband had made friends at his college around the game D&D. They decided to murder his family in exchange for a part of the inheritance. 

The connection between these two stories will surprise you.

After thinking 2021 was going to be an incredible year and the trainwreck that was 2020 would be ending, the Sleuths address what has happened so far in the new year. 

The Sleuth highlight three stories about cheaters.  

Story One: California High

A stay at home mom was married for over five years to her high school sweetheart. The subject picked up the bad habit of vaping. She was vaping THC. Those are not legal in North Carolina. Her husband would ask her where she got the vape pens. He noticed an Instagram post on her phone she left open. He took a screenshot and sent it to Blackman Detective Services. After some digging, they were able to identify the man and his address.  

We discuss alienation of affection. 

Women are more likely to cheat on men when the women are younger, and men are more likely to cheat on women when the men are older. 

We discussed "breadcrumbing" for dating on social media sites. 

Story two: Monetary Motives

Marty and Dan had been married for years when, unfortunately, the husband became suspicious that his wife was having an affair. We tracked the wife as she told the husband she was going out of town. The private investigators were caught with video evidence. 

Story three: Mr. Cumbuckets

That's right, we keep it classy at the Sleuth. A husband and wife had been married for 18 years. They looked like a typical happily married couple. After COVID hit the wife started working more than normal. The client enlisted Blackman Detective Services to find out what she was up to when she would visit an unknown male's house at least two or three times a week. The client got a small audio recorder and placed it in the wife's car. After hearing an x-rated conversation with her Paramore the husband brought her pants into Blackman Detective Services for testing. Testing confirmed male and female DNA on the pants. 

The Covina massacre occurred on December 24, 2008, in Covina, a city in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California, United States. Nine people were killed, either by gunshot wounds or in an arson fire inside a house at 1129 East Knollcrest Drive, where a Christmas Eve party was being held. The perpetrator, 45-year-old Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, who had entered the house wearing a Santa suit, died from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head at his brother's residence in the early hours of the morning after the attack. Authorities cited marital problems as a possible motive for the violence; reports indicated that Pardo's divorce had been finalized on December 18, one week before the massacre. Three people, including Pardo's ex-wife and his former in-laws, were initially declared missing pending identification of their bodies.

This guy had a bad dating life and they call him the Santa-Gunman. 

We discuss what are red flags in dating? What should you look for and is it okay to get a background check on someone you've started dating.

• Significant age gaps
• Excessive drinking or drug use
• An imbalance in power 
• If you have to pay for everything
• They do a lot of lying about trivial things
• How they interact with their family
• An excessively dirty house

We talk about how it would be much easier to have a conversation about getting a background check at the beginning of a promising relationship than as a three-year anniversary present...   

In your background checks, you can get civil criminal records, judgments, bankruptcies, social media searching. And then of course you can always throw that surveillance detail in there and collect information the old school way. A lot of, I don't want to say older people, but some like persons, they usually don't do a lot of social media searching.

It's important to listen to your gut.

Jamie binged the entire show "Dexter" since we last recorded and was excited to talk about serial killers.

We start off by talking about who is not a serial killer. Often time mass murderers are mistaken for serial killers. The FBI defines mass murder as murdering four or more people during an even with no "cooling off period" between the murders. They typically happen at a single location where one or more people kill several people. An example would be a school shooter.

There is also a spree murder. Usually defined as killings that take place at two or more locations with almost no break between the murders.

What is a serial killer? A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more people usually in service of abnormal, psychological gratification with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them.

What makes someone a serial killer? Short answer: we don't know, but there are some tools that people use to identify serial killers. Some have been disproved, but others remain useful tools to this day.

We discussed the lead crime hypothesis: the hypothesis is the proposed link between elevated blood lead levels in children and increased rates of crime, delinquency, and recidivism later in life. Check out the article by Kevin Drum "Lead: America's real criminal element." 

We unpack the real-life stories and details of actual serials. Andrei Chikatilo's story is shared by Jamie. He was from Ukraine. His upbringing was rough. 

And Candice unpacks the story of Amelia Dyer the notorious baby farmer and serial killer. 

Candice takes over the show for this special Halloween episode featuring a real true crime story. Follow along and take the quiz along the way to compete with our other Sleuth and podcast producer. 

Candice has prepared 10 questions scattered throughout the tale of a family going trick or treating, a sick child, a sudden death, and more.

Our story takes place in Deer Park Texas, a family was out collecting candy during Halloween. After stopping at a house with the lights off and not getting a response from the door the group went ahead. One dad stayed back and brought back six giant Pixie Sticks from the house with the lights off to the excited kids. Since there were only five in their group the extra stick was gifted to a lucky passerby.

After returning home the parents told the children they could each pick one piece of candy. Timothy chooses the giant Pixie Stick. Within an hour he was gravely ill and died shortly after. 

Upon further investigation, they found that his breath smelt like almonds which was a sign that he was poisoned.  The parents quickly contacted the other children and made sure no one else ate the contaminated sugar sticks.

Timothy's father tried to collect the insurance money the morning after and other evidence came in to narrow down who the culprit was, but when questioned, Ronald did not plead guilty.

At trial, the jury only deliberated for 46 minutes before finding Ronald O'Brien guilty and punishing him to death by execution.

Timothy was the only child on record to have passed away from deliberately tainted Halloween candy. 

Before we jump into the 2020 election voting we talk about voting on Dancing with the Stars. Jamie shares her thoughts on the cast this year.

Switching back to the election we talk about voter suppression in North Carolina. What does it look like and what to do if you witness voter intimidation at the polls?

If you are mailing in your vote there is a website that you can visit to confirm that your vote was received. https://northcarolina.ballottrax.net/voter/

North Carolina is one of the few states that has signature validation so if something goes wrong with your ballot they will let you know by mail.

Candice and Jamie discuss the way a mail-in ballot may affect the election this year as many people who may vote by mail are more likely to vote "blue."

Candice discusses a site that will ask you a series of questions on the issues and help you understand which candidate lines up the best with your values. https://www.isidewith.com

Jamie and Candice talk about their cases and upcoming "murder weapon party" where they are planning to have guests bring what they believe the murder weapon is in a pro bono case they are working and they will press the possible murder weapons into playdough, let it harden, and compare to the wound patterns.

Much of the information shared by Candice on this episode is from Pod Save America. They have a website called VoteSaveAmerica.com 

Blackman Detective Services got to share a big win of really helping out a client in need in a situation where things could have gone bad very quickly.

Many businesses, although they might not understand it fully, is in the peace of mind business. Private investigators and employee benefits share this business.

We talk about the issues surrounding workman compensation fraud that affects both employees and small businesses. The most common types of workman's comp fraud are:

• Injuries that didn't occur at work
• False injury claims
• Exaggerated injury claims
• Old injury claims
• Malingering

Chris shares stories from his experiences selling insurance of employers who could really have benefited from coverage and some funny stories of some absurd situations that they've run into.

The average workman compensation payout is $40,000. So it is imperative to take care of your employees, and many small business owners would not be able to survive the average worker's comp payout.

We shared the "Peanut payday" story from Blackman's newsletter about Mr. Brown slip and fall injury that he claimed prevented him from lifting. The employer called Blackman to investigate. 

Candice reached out to Blackman during the COVID-19. She decided she wanted to be a Private Investigator a year before. The process can take a long time, so she got all her paperwork together and sent it all off, and then the day after it was sent off, the pandemic started. 

The firm she applied to decided to close their practice, and he forwarded her information to Blackman and has recently joined the team!

A week after Candice began at Blackman, we received a request to do some work on a cold case. They are working on the cold case for a UNC student who was killed in 2012 whose murder had gone unsolved. We are excited to share more about the investigation in the future. 

We talk about Candice's murder board. We learn about her previous employment and love of true crime podcasts. We discuss the "Undisclosed" podcast. It has three hosts who are all lawyers. The first season is them going through the "Serial" Podcast with personal insights from the case. The following seasons have been helping with wrongful convictions. 

Today the Sleuth's discuss the case of Ronnie Long. There are four episodes, between the seasons of two and three in the "Undisclosed" podcast. Ronnie long was living the average 20-year-old life in Concord, NC. Concord is a company town. A woman in the town was raped and through a strange happenstance, they come to find Ronnie Long as a suspect. There was a lot of shadiness that came through the investigation in 1973. Ronnie was a black man in a mostly black town. 

You're not going to believe some of the details and the process that Ronnie Long went through in this case despite him not matching the original description at all. The jury selection seemed highly skewed against Ronnie Long as they didn't allow black people in the jury pool.

If you're interested in other wrongful convictions cases check out the podcast "Wrongful Conviction." 
If you're looking for comedy true crime podcasts check out "Let's go to court"

Mallie grew up locally and then spent two years in the military, he came back, went to North Carolina, Westland college, and got a bachelor of science in criminology after which he went to work for the Raleigh Police Department.

He spent over 13 years in the homicide unit. We get into the details of the life of a homicide detective.

He shares a lot of stories of the tricks of the trade learned from his time on the force. Including a story about a crime committed at a convenience store where they tested some empty cans in the back, got a fingerprint hit, and picked up a local suspect who promptly confessed to the crime. 

Lindsey shared about her experience watching crime scene investigators do their job while she was working security at the scene of a shooting where an investigator noticed a bullet hole that was 7 feet in the air and drove to the Lowe's across the street to buy a saw and a ladder and removed the bullet hole to take it in for testing.

Today we are talking about the "State Versus Taylor" case. 

On September 26, 1991, RPD discovered a body of our victim on a cold morning. 
 
The woman had been brutally murdered with both blunt force trauma and cutting trauma injuries into her head and neck.

A vehicle belonging to, our defendant was located approximately 150 yards away and out of view, stuck in the mud on gravel and a dirt service road.

The victim was known to trade sex for drugs.

We talked about the reliability of witnesses when it comes to things like clothing and times.

The police dog placed a crucial role in this case. It was trained to smell blood. The victim's injuries were brutal.

The detectives had not told the victim anything about the crime scene and he seemed to know more than he should have known.

After his conviction. This guy sits in jail for 17 years. He speaks with the innocence commission and they decide to take a look at his case. He feels as if he has had ineffective counsel.

Jamie is joined by two other panelists for this important discussion. Bob and Barry share their thoughts and perspectives throughout the episode.

We share our feelings respectfully. Truth can sometimes be hurtful, change is painful at times, but it makes us better.

Topics covered in this episode

• 1619 Africans were taken and sold to the Europeans  in America
• African’s worked as slaves in the south, controlled by whites
• Civil War- 1861 to 1865
• 1863 Emancipation Proclamation- 
• 1865 Union soldiers traveled to Texas to inform black that they had been set free
• June 19th, 1865- many freed blacks escaped to the north and west as refugees
• Reconstruction and Repression from 1865 until 1900
• Black Codes
• Plessy V. Ferguson
• Jim Crow
• 1940’s and World War II
• Civil Rights Movement
• Daughters of the confederacy
• Black Panther Movement
• Mass Incarceration 
• #BLACKLIVESMATTER
• ·2020 murder of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks
• ·Acts of hatred that we are seeing currently

We also share stories from our personal experiences. Our thoughts on what justice looks like and what it will take to move forward.

We highlight and discuss some of our favorite civil rights leaders.

This is an important conversation and we invite you to share it with people you know in hopes that it, and conversations like it, will lead to social change.