Anatomy of Murder - Cross-State Crime Spree (Ed Martin, Lonette Keehner)

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

An 84-year-old woman bound inside her home. Her husband: missing. And, a manhunt stretching over Montana and Idaho leads investigators to a motel murder.For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/.

Before we get started, I just wanted to remind you for the most updated news and information on AOM, you can follow us on social media on Instagram at Weinberger Media and at Anasiga Nicolazzi. This is everybody's worst nightmare. He assaulted her and tied her up and threw her in her basement and shut the door on her. A case like this just overtook all of our law enforcement agencies. We can take all the lessons we learned from this case, and we probably won't see another case like this one ever. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction.

And this is Anatomy of Murder. For today's episode, I spoke with Montana's Custer County Attorney, Wyatt Glade. And for many reasons, he is not your typical prosecutor. But something to highlight from the beginning is that his life began very differently from where it now is. Before I became a lawyer, I was a professional rodeo cowboy. My parents are both really successful rodeo competitors. That's what I did through college. That's how I paid my way through college, by scholarship. So this county attorney actually went from bucking Broncos to now life in the courtroom.

You know, there are some similarities. More than you'd think. As a rodeo cowboy, every time you get on, you're getting on a different horse, right? Rodeo cowboys will call that the luck of the draw. And you get good cases and bad cases, and the ability to just nod your head and open the gate and see what happens, you've got to have that if you're going to try cases, because you're going to be in the arena, so to speak, and there's going to be things that are going to happen you're not prepared for, and you got to learn to roll with it. Now, I know, Anastasia, this does not sound like your typical prosecutor. I mean, clearly,

we're both New Yorkers, but to be able to be involved in a community like that, pretty impressive. And it goes to the place where today's story takes place. Mile City, Montana is big sky country, but it also mixes life in this small town. We were there in January of 2020 for an episode of our show, True Conviction. We also had an opportunity to spend time with Wy Glade himself for that episode. In fact, if you go to our Instagram account, we've posted a few behind the scenes pictures of our time there. We're in rural southeastern Montana, a farming ranching community. Mile City is kind of the hub of southeastern Montana. And if that tells you anything about southeastern Montana, you know, we had a 10,000 person city as our hub.

I remember walking through town with the undersheriff there, and he actually knew everybody's name. So it really was that type of place that, while there are these vast, big swaths of land, and people live sometimes miles apart from one another, it really had that true sense of community. And on December 14, 2013, a homicide would test their manpower, their skill, and their limits. That small-town department was thrown into high gear when a call came in that morning about an abduction of a woman named Helen Martin. Because of the nature of the case, I became involved immediately at the investigative level. The call comes in to 911 detailing the abduction of an elderly woman who had been tied up in her own home.

She was able to break free and make it over to her relative's home. The victim was 84-year-old Helen Martin, a longtime resident of Miles City, and she lived in that home with her 78-year-old husband, Ed. I would describe Helen as the quintessential grandmother.

You know, what you see, Helen, she looks like just a sweet little lady. Honestly, reminded me a lot of my own grandmother. Elderly, curly hair, glasses. Just the picture of someone you would not want to have go through something like this. What happened to Helen on December 14th was terrifying. He tied her up with, I believe, an extension cord or maybe an article of clothing. He told her that if she didn't stay down there and if she tried to contact help, that he was going to kill Ed. Ed was Helen's husband of 16 years. Think about what she must have been going through mentally as she stayed in her

basement. It's the type of thing that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up when you think about the terror. I mean, you are tied up, abducted in your own home. She is locked into her basement. She's bound. She does not know if the person or people that did this, if they're coming back or what they're going to do next. And there was almost like a cellar door that opened up to the outside of the home. She got herself loose, went out that door, and when she felt it was safe, she drove to her son-in-law's home and told him what happened, and they took her to the hospital. She was so shaken by the events, investigators decided not to push her

for more information based on her fragile state. Helen had been beat up and scared. She's abducted, so she must have been thinking, where is Ed? Where is her husband? So those moments or minutes, hours, must have felt like eternity. Knowing the violence she was already facing, I'm sure she felt the threat against Ed's life was very real. It felt like we were in a fog because it took a day or so before we got the story from Helen. A lot of the details were unclear.

From my own experience, whenever attempting to get information from a victim, whether it's at the scene of a crime or even at the hospital, it's so important to gauge their mental state. I am always honest and upfront by telling them, you know, the best way to help the case is to take a statement from you right here and right now, while all the information is fresh in your mind.

Your recollection is going to be best right here, maybe the best it ever may be. You have to ask yourself, will the questioning further upset them? And you really have to strike a balance. And that's when it really pays off for law enforcement to be patient and wait until that person is able to pull themselves together a bit, until they're able to more calmly remember and recall

as much as they can about what had occurred. After some time, Helen was able to go into more detail about the events of the kidnapping. She told officers on December 14th, while her and her husband Ed were home, a man came to the door inquiring about their Ford F-150 that they had for sale. Helen even told them that she knew the man,

but not well, but knew his name was Scott. Scott, I have to say it to you, since it's actually your name. You know, the police got this name Scott, but I think you can attest to that it is certainly not an uncommon name. I wasn't there. I wasn't there. I'm not saying you were. I promise you, I wasn't there. It's not me. It's different than being told that it's, you know, Anasiga versus Scott.

There's probably a lot more Scotts around, at least around here, than there are Anasigas, unless the crime happened in Iceland. You know, she mentioned Scott. Well, we didn't get a last name and we didn't really have a physical description for a while. You start out with knowing that this guy's name was Scott and that he had some connection to Ed. And so we're scrambling around trying to figure out which people named Scott ever rented homes from Ed and Helen and who this could possibly be. And all the while, you know, we don't know where Scott is. She went on to say that both her husband and Scott went out for a test drive. And when they returned, Scott asked about also buying a camper trailer that they had out back.

The two men went to go see the trailer. And then a short time later, Scott came back alone with a big gash on the bridge of his nose. When Helen asked about her husband, Ed, all Scott would say is the last time he saw him, he was walking just right behind him. And while she was worried about her husband, Helen tended to his cut. But all the while, Scott was scanning their home for valuables and made his move, grabbing Helen, dragging her into the basement, tied her up, and then gave her a warning. If she said anything to anyone about what had happened, he would kill Ed.

She kind of started to get worried and tried to call Ed on his phone. And that's when Scott assaulted her and tied her up and threw her in her basement and shut the door on her. Police went to the home, which was a crime scene, to see what they could find. And what they discovered returned this kidnapping case into a homicide. When police go to the scene, they began searching the camper, which is right outside of their home. And when they opened the door, they found Ed. They responded to the residents and located in the camper trailer outside of the home. They located a weapon, a knife in the trailer, located Ed's body, and he was stabbed 10 or more times. Of course, then obviously knew we were dealing with a homicide.

And when they inspected Ed's body, they could also see that beyond the multiple stab wounds, he also had multiple defensive wounds too, which tell you that he fought for his life. Helen's husband, Ed, was described as a real charismatic guy. Ed was a kindly older gentleman. He was a landlord. He leased or rented homes to a lot of people. And he would rent rooms to people, often giving them a break. Ed Martin was 78 years old when he was killed.

He had been a U.S. Navy vet for more than 20 years, and during that time, he earned the Good Conduct Medal for being an outstanding sailor in 1958. Wyatt himself had met Ed several times. I bumped into him from time to time, and he was the kind of guy that was never a stranger. You know, you could just have a conversation with him without knowing him real well. And he was just that kind of guy. Now police had two crime scenes, the Martin home, including the basement

where Helen was tied up, and the camper trailer where Ed was brutally murdered. And when they went inside that home, there was a lot of physical evidence. The Martins kept a safe inside their home, which was open. They also kept quite a bit of cash. There was a lot of physical evidence associated with the money that was stolen, paper bands that had been used to wrap a fair amount of currency. But one of the main things that investigators were looking for

was signs of who had committed these now two sinister crimes. They were looking for any DNA evidence that they could find or potentially collect. And they also were looking in particular around a sink area. One of the primary things that we were looking for was DNA evidence from the sink because he came in and he had a gash on his nose and she's taking care of him, taking care of the man who had just murdered her husband. They had rinsed some blood down the sink and DCI investigators did seize that evidence. Right there is an excellent opportunity to collect any of the bandages or tissues that may have been used to clean up his wound. You know, the suspect also told Helen

if she followed his instructions, Ed would be fine. Clearly, Ed was already dead, and investigators broke the news to Helen, and you can imagine how hard she took it. It was just devastating on Helen to lose Ed. I mean, that doesn't even need to be said. But all of the other things that happened, you know, she was robbed and, you know, of course, victimized herself. Helen really did believe that Ed was out there somewhere because even though

she had been tied up and left in the basement, she was able to free herself and escape with no major injury. So she really did believe that her husband was out there, hopefully fine. Knowing what we knew at that point, when we found out about that, it was just that much more sad because he misled her and he made her think that Ed was still alive and Ed was clearly dead. A homicide in a small town like Miles City is a whole different type of case for police. Miles City actually only sees a homicide every couple of years, so it is a very different place than a lot of the other cities you think about when it comes to the type of crimes that investigators have to routinely handle. Even though the agency is small, it doesn't mean

it cannot solve crimes. It just has to rely on surrounding agencies to assist it in large-scale operations or even using their assistance in processing a crime scene. They don't have a major case unit. They don't have a SWAT team. They write DUIs and disorderly conducts and that kind of thing typically. But when something like this happens, you need somebody to secure the home and stay on the home and collect evidence and write search warrants and communicate with the media. And it just is something that kind of envelops

every resource we have and then some. So yes, Mouth City is a small town. Custer County may be a large county, but it really doesn't affect their determination to catch a killer. When we have a homicide in Custer County, it's all hands on deck. A case like this just overtook all of our law enforcement agencies. They called in the assistance of the Division of Criminal Investigation from the Montana Department of Justice.

Whether you're investigating a homicide in a big city or a small county, you still try to control as much information early on that is getting out to the public. And the one thing that happened in this case, information was going up on social media very quickly. This community was almost as if the fire alarm had been pulled on the entire town. A lot of people were afraid.

I think there was some frustration with law enforcement because there wasn't anybody in custody. The school actually went into what's called a soft lockdown, where the elementary school had gotten some whiff of the information of what had happened, but they didn't know the whole thing except there was a suspect out on the loose. Kids were kept inside. There was no outdoor gym or classes or recess for a few hours until they finally actually spoke to law enforcement and they gave them the go-ahead. There were probably a number of people who didn't know there had been a homicide, but they are notified when the school's locked down. And that is pretty scary if you've got kids in school. And that's the kind of thing

that affects the entire community. And not only were people talking about what had happened, they were starting to talk about who they believed might have done this. A lot of speculation about who may have committed this crime. Concerned citizens were posting like crazy. The social media was going nuts. Everybody was throwing different theories around on social media. And some of that was monitored by law enforcement officers.

And I think it might have led to some conversations with people about the night of the murder. Police are racing to find a break in this case. Whoever did this had a critical head start because it took them a while to get the information from Helen. And police are anxious to find this person and get him off their streets. But the break that they get doesn't come via the police. One of the hospital staff showed Helen a photograph from social media, and she said, absolutely, that's the guy. That's the one who did this. And you would think that getting identification from the victim would help this case, but in this case, it actually hurt. Police now have an ID from Helen, but Wyatt has some doubts.

We don't like that type of photo lineup. So that was causing some issues in my mind at that time. I was like, oh boy. The thing that Wyatt Glade was worried about with this particular identification was that it was by its very nature, a single photo being shown to someone suggestive. And I'm not going to get too deep into the legality of all this, but I can tell you that every prosecutor, every criminal attorney, we spend lots of time litigating every type of identification procedure. And for just that, is it suggested? I think it's worth mentioning that there are plenty of ways for potential suspects to be ID'd. And here are some examples.

Officers responding to a fluid situation and when you roll up on the scene, an eyewitness points out a potential suspect and says, officer, that's him or her. And that is a great step in stopping and questioning a suspect, but that certainly isn't the same as a victim or a witness of a crime having an opportunity to look at a photo array, which you may also hear on some television shows referred to as a six-pack, which is simply one sheet of paper with six separate pictures displayed to see if a victim or a witness can positively identify. And the key word here is positively. The other type of identification is actually a live lineup, and I'm sure you've all seen these in the movies, where a number of suspects are brought into the same room and the victim or witness is behind one-way glass and they're given an opportunity in a live setting to identify or not.

Just think about the easy holes there are to poke into this. Well, of course the person picked out the only photograph shown to them when they hear that people on social media are saying that this is the person who committed the crime. So that is why right away, you know, I can picture Wyatt Glade, you know, hitting his forehead with his hand saying, ugh, you know, this is now what I have to do. So regardless, they have to see if they can now build a case around it with evidence, but particularly because of the type of identification,

a single photo being shown to a very fragile survivor of a crime and her saying, oh, that's what people saying, or at least that's the argument, that's the person, they have to make sure they have all the evidence around it to show that that identification is accurate. It's kind of taking a few steps forward and then a few steps back, knowing that that could be really problematic for your case. But outside of that one potential identification, it was all coming together for them.

They knew his name was Scott Price, and he happened to be no stranger to law enforcement at all. At the time, he was in his mid-30s. He had some low-level criminal activity that they were aware of in his past. He'd been in trouble for using and, I believe, selling drugs before, And he was on parole when he committed this offense. Now, we have talked about the incredible addiction that comes with methamphetamines and how often the users of that powerful drug violently act out. I'm not going to say Miles City is like this horrible place, but I will say that the meth epidemic is, I mean, it's everywhere. Methamphetamine's done terrible things all across Montana. Now let's remember Helen had told police Scott was there

to buy a truck, but that was not all. The home had been kind of ransacked and a fair amount of cash had been taken. In my mind, I believe that Scott went over to that home with the intention of getting some cash from Ed. You know, whether he was over there and saw the cash and then really made up his mind to do it or whether he went over there with the stated intent of doing that, I can't say. But that's certainly what happened. Once police figured out where Price was staying, they discovered Ed Martin's truck at that residence. It's not his home, but it's a home that belongs to a friend of his. Law enforcement officers discovered that vehicle and got a search warrant, got inside the vehicle and recovered some things in there.

Helen Martin's glasses, a couple of cell phones belonging to Ed Martin. And so, you know, when I first thought about the truck, I was like, well, where does that really get us? Because everything inside, at least at that point, belongs to the Martins. But it's where it's found that is the piece that starts to build this evidentiary case against him. The truck was at the home of Price's friend, Jacob Edlund. Who said that Scott had been staying there and that he left to go stay in a hotel that night. I believe it was Monday night. Scott left to go meet Ed, and Jacob said he stayed home to watch Monday night football. And we know that it's the very same night that the truck goes missing, that Helen Martin's abducted,

and we know that it's not long after that before her husband is now found. So it is where it is found that there is no reason for it to be there unless it's connected to Price. Police also found droplets of blood. And while those other items may have been there and could only be circumstantial evidence in a case, the blood showed them in a sense that it could be tied back to the suspect who brought that vehicle to Jacob's house. However, while they find these items,

what they still don't know is where is their suspect. He's nowhere to be found, and he's still out there. But something else happened with the interview of Jacob Edlin. He directed them to two women that Price had spent time with that night and had flashed a lot of cash to buy methamphetamines. Shelby and Katie were friends. Katie had interacted with Scott that night. And my impression of what had gone on is that Scott was really needing to buy some drugs. He needed some meth. So where can you find the money? It's either finding cash laying around or knowing who might be an easy target to go get the cash needed to get that drug.

Now, this is not a new ruse for criminals to rip people off. Often, they'll breeze through things like Craigslist or classified ads looking for people who are selling items or criminals will advertise an item for sale themselves that actually doesn't exist. Knowing the person who's coming to buy them has cash looking to rob them. Now, while police couldn't find Price, they did find both Shelby and Katie, and they spoke with them about their interactions with Price after what we now know is the abduction of Helen Martin. That's about the time that he went over to Ed and Helen Martin's home and came away from there with a fair amount of money. I want to say around $4,000.

And they started to help piece together the timeline, and they made very clear that Scott had given Katie $700 to go out and buy that narcotics of methamphetamine. They then rendezvoused at the motel here in Mile City. Somebody paid cash for a room for Scott, and he and Katie stayed there. They believe that he had left the next morning, which would now be a Tuesday, and that would have been the 15th. And it's probably by the 17th or 18th before the police actually know who they're looking for. At this point, police are still a few days behind Price, but things are about to change. Seven days after the brutal killing of Ed Martin,

police would hear about two other crimes in a county far away. Could they be related to this homicidal Crime Spree. Police were desperate to find the whereabouts of Scott Price. The last place anyone had seen him was back at a Super 8 motel in Miles City. An incredible break in the case came when two state agents from the Department of Criminal Investigation, Marvin Dahl and Anthony Poplar, received words about other crimes that were being committed in another county of Montana. The first offense was an attack on a woman who we will call Jane Doe for today's purposes. She had just finished shopping, walked to the trunk of her car, and placed the groceries in that trunk. And as she walked to the driver's side to get in, she noticed a man standing outside of a dark-colored Honda,

which was parked right next to her car. And she asked, and he did step out of the way. She put her groceries in and entered the car. As she got into her car, turned towards the passenger seat to place her purse down on the seat. He attacked her with a knife and stabbed her several times. And she screamed at him to stop. And after several stab wounds, the man stepped back, went into his car,

which was being driven by an unknown woman, and the pair slowly drove off. And another person in the parking lot came to assist and took photos of the vehicle. The victim was able to get a number off of a paper tag on that talk Honda. She was also able to get medical attention. This is a crime that sounds almost nonsensical, right? I mean, why? And so brutal. It didn't take too long until police discovered the identity of that attacker and his accomplice. That attacker was Scott Price and his accomplice, a woman by the name of Sarah McKnight.

Across town, Missoula police were responding to the reports of a gruesome homicide at a local motel. He went in the hotel and somehow caught Launette Keener in a room that she was going to be cleaning, and he killed her, left her face down in the bathtub. Witnesses told responding officers that they had noticed a male and female who may have been involved in the attack. You have to start to think about this now criminal team. I mean, they're more than just a homicidal Bonnie and Clyde because they're starting to almost come unhinged and they're doing random acts, making mistakes, things that just are not well thought out at all. Both he and McKnight fled the scene in Lawnette Keener's vehicle and abandoned the vehicle they had arrived in.

They show up in the vehicle that comes right back to Sarah McKnight, and they now leave in a car that's going to come right back to and is identifiable as belonging to a homicide victim. So even just from the standpoint of not getting caught, those are beyond the simple things that most criminals know not to do. And I agree. It's almost like they're not even concerned about being caught. They're becoming more brazen. So while Missoula law enforcement is dealing with two vicious crimes and those pending investigations back in Miles City, which is about eight or nine hours away, Wyatt Glade and every member of law enforcement they can muster up

are doing everything in their power to locate not only Scott Price, but now this dangerous criminal team of two. We had Missoula County, we had Mile City PD, we had Montana DCI, all working different cases, but with overlapping issues with Scott Price and Sarah McKnight. It's different law enforcement agencies, different jurisdictions, and very often that gets messy. And for different reasons, there are different databases. Something's happening with one jurisdiction that isn't necessarily being communicated to the other. And so while everyone has the same objective, there's multiple moving

parts in different moving places from different agencies that can make this work sometimes much more complicated than it already was based on the crimes themselves. Coordination is key if it's going to work out. This is Montana, and it may be a small department, but there is a lot of land to cover, and you need all of the resources you can find. There's a vast amount of land that needs to be searched. You talk about in urban areas, people commuting for an hour. They might go 15 or 20 miles. You go an hour and in eastern Montana, you cover 90 to 100 miles, you know, if you want.

We often talk about how a fluid investigation works and you gain information and it takes you in different directions. And in this case, investigators found a woman who admitted that she drove Sarah McKnight and Scott Price from the place they left the victim's car to a motel in Idaho. So now we have a direction of travel and we have a location. That is a very big break. And it wasn't long after that before Sarah McKnight and Scott Price were located by police. He was located in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which is not far from Missoula. And I believe both he and McKnight were taken into custody at that time. So with all these different departments involved, who gets to question them? Who gets to take a statement? How is the case developed on the prosecutor's side?

Well, that is always a big question mark. And it's two distinct things. The first obvious thing is where the suspect is and the law enforcement that have that person in their jurisdiction. But an important factor is always you want the person or people with as much information as possible about what you're questioning about to be the one talking because people are much more apt to give details or answer questions when they believe that people know it. But then you also have to get into where the cases will ultimately be tried. And that's a whole different ball of wax altogether. And then we're talking about multiple trials in different places, wherever the resources are best might be a factor. So there's no easy answer about not only the who, but the when, where, and why.

But in this case, the way the particular jurisdiction was decided was pretty interesting. In this case, we didn't really want Scott Price in our jail. Just because there were so many people in this community who were upset about what he had done, it just seemed cleaner for him to stay in Missoula, to tell you the truth. We got one shot at this. Let's not mess it up by sending three or four different investigators in there to wear him out or make him mad or what have you. And so the detective from Missoula ended up doing the interview. First to be interviewed was Sarah McKnight, and she admitted that she had spent the last week with Price on a methamphetamine-fueled tour of terror. She detailed how Price admitted

to her that he was on the run for a murder in Miles City and that they needed to keep switching vehicles and robbing more people to fuel their habit. She went on to tell investigators that the duo came prepared. In the car was duct tape, zip ties, and a plan was to drive around looking for somebody to kidnap and force them to disclose PIN numbers of any of their debit cards. And that's when they targeted the woman that we call Jane Doe in the shopping center. But the plan didn't work. She detailed how they fled the shopping center and then drove to a motel looking for another victim. And she got out of the car, noticed the maid cleaning one of the rooms, and she told investigators

that Price targeted that woman, forced her into an empty room, and told her to give up her car keys. And after she did, McKnight told investigators that Price killed her anyway. Also, them both jumped into Lynette's car, and as they were driving off, he tossed the bloody knife out the window, and the knife was recovered by Missoula police. Armed with this powerful confession, Price was next to be questioned. There's so much riding on this particular interview, but Missoula police weren't getting anywhere fast until all of a sudden,

Scott Price's statement took an incredible turn. They're asking him all these questions and you can just see it on video. He kind of just kind of stops and pauses and kind of thinks about it for a second and he says you give me a Marlboro Black I'll tell you everything you need to know they gave him a cigarette let him go outside and smoke, and he came in and told the whole story. When Scott Price opened up, boy, did he have a story to tell.

And he laid out that entire story for Missoula police. His version of the story was that he went over there to buy that pickup and then decided to buy the camper trailer as well and got out there and got in an argument with Ed Martin. And the argument kind of turned into a situation where he stabbed Ed Martin in the neck. I don't believe that at all. He did confess to murdering Ed Martin, but he kind of tried to make it sound like it was self-defense. And regardless, it's a confession. While he gives this really lengthy statement, which is chock full of admissions, you know,

common sense always comes into play. And I would have loved to seen any juror's face if this is ever going to be presented in a courtroom, because it is so clearly self-serving and trying to put his best foot forward to give a spin on the ultimate facts, which is that Ed Martin is dead from knife wounds that are going to come back to price. That, you know, it always comes down to if anyone says like, oh, well, if it's not a straight confession, don't use it. But it's just that common sense analysis makes so clear that it is him and that this was clearly an intentional act

during the felony of robbery and that there is no self-defense play at all. After this entire week of trying to build this case where we could convict him without that kind of evidence, to get that kind of evidence was a huge relief. But now let's get back for a moment. You remember that identification from Helen that was made based on what the talk was on social media? Well, now that's going to come back into play again. So we had the medical person show Helen Scott Price's Facebook photo, and she says, that's the guy.

And, of course, I learned about that. And I was, I was worried that's not a valid photo lineup. We all talked with the law enforcement officers and said, we got to do a valid photo lineup. And we, we did, and we did not get a positive identification of Scott in that second lineup. I mean, it's understandable how someone who had been through that situation might not be able to make a positive ID, but it dropped us back to needing some solid DNA evidence or other evidence. Would you still be concerned walking into court with that Facebook ID? You let it all unfold in front of the jury.

That here it is, she knew him. She's being shown the photo. Let the jury hear the circumstances. They're obviously going to hear from the defense that then she was shown this multiple array that included Scott Price and she didn't make an ID. But at the end of the day, this case to me does not rely on her identification at all because there are so many other pieces, both by statements by other people that were with him and also in the case of Sarah McKnight involved. But you also have some of the physical evidence and where he was and the different items that

they found that related back to each one of these attacks. I'm more than happy to go into the courtroom and try them for any one of these crimes. So at this point, something came up. It's very controversial. And we've talked about it before. It's deciding whether this could be a death penalty case. Legally, I'm not sure we had them in our Miles City case, but the way that I prefer to go about making those kinds of decisions is to involve the victim as much as possible

and to explain to them what you know, what the two options are and to help them make their decision on what way they want to go. And then we had a long conversation about the realities of pursuing the death penalty and the likelihood of us being victorious in that regard. You know, the family talked it over. I talked it over with them. And ultimately, they decided they did not want to pursue the death penalty, and so we did not. Ultimately, there was no trial in this case, and Scott Price pled guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole in Missoula County Court. During the conversation with Wyatt, he brought up the topic of treatment versus conviction.

And while we think it is a discussion for another day, we wanted you to hear his take as the Custer County District Attorney. This is everybody's worst nightmare. You know, you got somebody who's been through the system and supposedly we're protecting people from these types of crimes with the criminal justice system. Of course, it's not perfect and it doesn't work all the time.

I think the only thing you can do is try to front load the services to the people who are suffering from methamphetamine addiction. And unfortunately, the only real effective way or the most effective way we have of doing that is through the criminal justice system. Things like treatment court to work through treatment and relapse and probation. And you can't incarcerate everybody. That's the simple solution that is just not workable. In researching today's story, I reached out to one of my contacts at the DEA, which is the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, who told me something startling. To date, while much of the focus, including law enforcement, has been on heroin, fentanyl, and opioids,

drug cartels have shifted that focus. They're having a field day. It is clear the United States has become the methamphetamine consumption capital of the world. 50% of all global seizures by law enforcement occur right here in the U.S. That is half a bad recipe for a likely spike in drug-fueled violent crimes, including homicide. One article that I read about this case really said a lot to me, and they called this a meth-fueled cross-state crime spree.

But at the end of the day, it was one person helped by others that caused all this damage in the end of the day, it was one person helped by others that caused all this damage in the end. And there were so many lives that were impacted by the choices made and the crimes committed on those days. There was a 68-year-old woman stabbed. The motel worker, Loretta Keener, whose car was stolen and she lost her life. There was Helen Martin, who was locked in her basement and Ed Martin murdered outside his home. And at the end of the day,

I think I'd just come out with this. Maybe we all just take a moment and just think to ourselves, how, if at all, can we do something to make all of this stop? Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frassetti Media. Ashley Flowers and Sumit David are executive producers.

This episode was produced by Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?