Anatomy of Murder - Footprints in the Mud (Alex Woodworth)

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

A web of relationships led to murder. The question of who was the victim and who was the perpetrator loomed large. Muddy footprints would help untangle the truth.For episode information and photos, please visit: anatomyofmurder.com/footprints-in-the-mud Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

We filled out whiteboards with drawings on how everyone's related. This wasn't necessarily a love triangle, it was more of a love square. 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. As we've all heard time and time again, someone involved in a homicide often goes to great lengths to cover up his or her crime. And let's just say that some people are better at it than others. From wiping down fingerprints, disposing of the murder weapon, and destroying evidence,

to more elaborate schemes like creating false alibis and even framing an innocent person for the murder. Today's case is one of the more complicated or maybe it's just confusing at times. It's an investigation in which it was often hard to tell who was the victim and who was the killer. It all started on the cold afternoon of March 22nd, 2018, when the doorbell rang at the home of a local dairy farmer in Dunn County, Wisconsin. At the door, a young woman, barefoot, bleeding, and in obvious distress. Dunn County, where she showed up, is a farming community.

Where she was is a very rural area, not a lot of houses. Ryan Prock, a detective with the Eau Claire Police Department, played a pivotal role in what would become one of the most memorable investigations of his career. He saw that she had blood on her lips, she had cuts on her, she had mud on her feet and legs. According to the farmer, the young woman appeared to have been the victim of a violent assault and seemed to be in a state of shock. She really didn't give a whole lot of details about what happened. She was hysterical, he said. She was crying. She wanted him to drive her to Mayo Hospital in Eau Claire.

He didn't feel comfortable doing that, so that's why he ended up calling 911. A few minutes later, Dunn County sheriffs and EMS arrived at the scene. They saw some blood on her lips, saw some cuts on her hands and on her legs. Her clothes were torn. They're looking at this like, we have a victim of a crime. We need to figure out what happened. The young woman identified herself as 20-year-old Monica Carlin, but then in the first of many twists in this investigation, she then changed her answer. She then corrected herself and said that she was Ezra and explained how she changed her name from Monica to Ezra. And while we'll get into that a bit later,

for now, the young woman, Ezra McCantless, well, you're likely not alone in thinking that this might be the first clue that something about her story was not quite as it seemed. EMS personnel were able to treat many of Ezra's wounds at the scene, as thankfully, the cuts on her body were superficial and didn't require stitches. But there was one disturbing injury carved into her arm, with three letters spelling out the word B-O-Y, boy. There was clearly a story here behind this apparent assault, one that at first glance may have indicated some pretty dark motives.

But even after Ezra was transported to the local hospital, she had difficulty explaining exactly what had happened to her. I don't think we really knew what happened to her, and I think that's why we kind of were looking at this as all-encompassing, to include possible sexual assault, based on on where the cuts were on her pants. They're knife cuts. It's as if someone was trying to cut off her clothing. At the hospital, Ezra was met by Deputy Corey Reeves of the Dunn County Sheriff's Office. And eventually, a story began to emerge.

Ezra was a 20-year-old female from a small town, Stanley Boyd. She was in Eau Claire living with a boyfriend named Jason Mingle. They had an on-again, off-again relationship. Ezra was also a well-known local artist who could often be seen driving around town in her custom-painted car. She was a painter. She did photography. She was starting a comic book. She was very talented at what she did. According to Ezra, she had been in a car with a man she described as her ex-boyfriend, 24-year-old Alex Woodworth, when she was suddenly and violently attacked.

Officer Reeves even asked her about the cuts on her arms, and she said that Alex did it to her. But beyond that, her account to Deputy Reeves of the details of the attack or the events preceding it remained fuzzy. That night, he's taking the report, trying to figure out what happened, trying to put all the pieces together. And the big piece that was missing is she just doesn't remember what happened from the time she left Alex's house until the time that she was found at the farm. So we have to look at, okay, did they crash? Did Alex attack her, push her out of the car and steal

the car? We have to look at all of that. We really don't know what happened during those roughly three to four hours. And this lapse of memory is not uncommon for victims of assault, especially if they're demonstrating signs of shock, as Ezra appeared to be. But clearly, the deputies had to know what had happened and who might be responsible for her injuries before they could make much headway into an investigation. Last thing she remembered is when they left Alex's house, she was driving. And then at some point she had a panic attack, pulled over, and then she had Alex drive. And then Alex drove out into the country. And that's the last she remembers. She has no idea how she got there or where there even was.

What investigators did know was that they had an injured victim of some kind of assault and the name of a possible perpetrator or at least a witness to what happened. So once Ezra was treated for injuries, the job became pretty clear. They had to find Alex. We need to find Alex to figure out what happened. She doesn't know where he's at. Police did go and look for him, checked his residence, checked a couple places that he would normally hang out, and didn't find him that night.

But in the course of their search, they were learning more about Ezra McCantless and her sometimes-boyfriend Jason. And it's their relationship that gave police the first clues to what may have led to Ezra landing in the hospital. Jason Mingo was in his late 30s. He was a medic in the Army National Guard. She really wasn't working a ton. It seemed like, from what we learned,

that she was living a lot off of Jason. But the couple's relationship had been on the rocks ever since Ezra's romantic affair with a certain barista at their local coffee shop, who just happened to be the missing Alex Woodworth. Alex was known as a quiet and philosophical kind of guy. And for a while, he and Ezra had kept their relationship a secret from Jason. Jason, he does not know it until he gets a hold of Ezra's phone and was able to get into it and saw the messages that were being exchanged. The discovery marked the end of all three of their relationships with each other and the beginning

of something much darker, starting with Ezra's reporting of a sexual assault at the hands of yet another one of Jason's friends. When Jason found out about the messages is when she started coming forward reporting the assault and that the assault had taken place a couple weeks before she even reported it to police. So let's quickly recap because it gets a little confusing. Ezra and Jason are dating. Ezra and Alex are having an affair. When Jason finds out, they break up. And shortly after that, Ezra reports being assaulted by a third man to police. And in fact, it was Detective Prock who had spearheaded that assault allegation against a local man.

We will call John. Generally, she said that they were over at his house, they drank too much, and then they had sexual intercourse. She was saying that she didn't want to have the relationship with him and that he didn't stop when she told him to. The subsequent investigation into this alleged assault included an interview with Alex Woodworth, who told Detective Prock that he believed that Ezra's relationship with quote unquote John was consensual, and that if you looked at John's phone, he would likely find

that exact proof. We got text messages that showed that what Ezra was saying wasn't true. They talked very graphically about having more sex. And as a result, that sexual assault case was dropped. I think she was claiming this sexual assault so Jason wouldn't think it was truly a relationship between John and her. So this is February of 2018, just a month before she showed up at the farmer's door. Ezra's relationship with her boyfriend, Jason, had been upended by the discovery of not one,

but two different affairs. So as Ezra was lying in her hospital bed, police knew that she had rocky relationships in the past with several local men, any of which could be potential suspects in her assault, and one of whom was still missing. So as investigators started to piece together a timeline for all of their locations and activities on the day of this alleged assault, they made a shocking discovery. Jason, Ezra, and Alex had all seen each other just hours before Ezra's alleged assault. Earlier that day, she was at her dad's house in Stanley, came to Eau Claire to give stuff back to Alex and also give artwork to her friend Max.

After the artwork was exchanged, she went back to the coffee shop and ran into Jason. Jason would tell police that he remembered Ezra's demeanor seemed unusual, and he sensed her agitation. And Jason just said she had a look in her eye that didn't feel right or seem right. So when she took off saying she was going over to Alex's, he biked over to Alex's house. The three sides of a love triangle were on a dangerous collision course. But the result of this confrontation would be something investigators could never have expected. In March of 2018, a 20-year-old woman showed up at a farmer's door in Wisconsin, bearing the signs of a brutal attack. By the next day, investigators had determined that the victim, Ezra McCantless, had been in a relationship with two men. And according to her ex, Jason, all three of them had been together the morning of her alleged attack. So when she took off saying she was going over to Alex's, he biked over to Alex's house.

And once he got there, he saw her car was parked in the driveway, still running. According to Jason, he waited outside for several minutes for Ezra to exit, but she never did. He was worried, so he went into the house to check on them. Found them both were just sitting there talking, and they both said everything was fine. Still, according to Jason, he could sense some serious tension between Ezra and Alex. Whether either were displaying signs of potential violence, that he couldn't say. At that point, he came outside, and a school across the road actually called him in as a suspicious person lurking around the house. So that's why officers went there was to check on him.

Jason explained his concerns to the responding officers, stating that Ezra seemed unlike herself and he just had a gut feeling that something was wrong. And then the officers checked on Alex and Ezra. And they both said they're fine. They're just talking. And they are going to go to a public place to talk. At that point, Jason rode off on his bike and Ezra and Alex got into Ezra's car. Ezra got into the driver's seat. Alex got into the passenger seat and they see him drive off. So now, having filled in some of the timeline of her day of her alleged attack,

investigators go back to Ezra to see if she can confirm Jason's version of events. She's calmer, but she could walk me through, again, the whole morning stuff up until she had contact with law enforcement at Alex's house. She couldn't really tell me much about leaving Alex's house other than they were driving and they didn't know really where they went. Then she talked about going up to Don Sipple's house and then ringing the doorbell. So there was a huge chunk that she just could not remember or did not want to remember at that time. And remember, Alex, who was with her in the car, is still unaccounted for. And so is her car, for that matter.

Our first thing to do was we tried to find Alex. We again checked his house. His roommates let us in. We went upstairs into Alex's room and found that his tablet, his notebook were still there. His room was like, that's unusual. He never leaves without those. Detectives went to the coffee shop where he worked, the bar he hung out in, but no one had seen him or Ezra's distinctive car. She had silver white colored four-door sedan, but she had paintings and drawings all over it on the hood, on the roof that made it stand out. In other words, it should not have been hard to miss. After talking with her and not finding her car or Alex anywhere around Eau Claire, myself

and the other detectives went back to the police department and we discussed, like, what do we do? They decide to split up into teams, two officers per car, and then drive out towards the farmer's house. Ezra had seemed to show up out of nowhere, muddy and bleeding. Given her condition and the cold temperatures, police figured she must not have walked far. And then once we turned onto Don Zippel's road, we started driving up it, and about a quarter mile to a half mile before his house, there was a muddy field entrance.

My lieutenant at the time found footprints in the mud exiting the field road. So detectives followed those footprints along the muddy road. We then walked the field road up over a knob. And once we got to the top of it, we could see Ezra's car was stuck in the mud. We could see property was thrown about outside the car. And we could see a human body half sticking out of the rear driver's side door. Detectives approached the scene carefully, and as they got closer, they could see it was the body of a young man showing clear signs of traumatic injury. The lower half of his body was in the rear driver's side footwell, while the upper half

of his body was hanging out the door. We could see he had a scarf wrapped around his neck that was saturated in blood. We could see a puncture wound in his head. We got close enough to see if he was still alive so we could give life-saving measures, but unfortunately he was deceased. And while he wasn't carrying any identification, police had a good idea who it was. We see it's a male, but based on everything that we've learned up to this point, and her leaving with Alex, last being seen with Alex, we knew it was Alex.

With blood all over the crime scene and multiple apparent stab wounds, it was pretty clear that this was a homicide. So at this point, every action they took, detectives had to consider preserving evidence and collecting clues to who was responsible for Alex's death. And so we called their sheriff's department. They came out. They also contacted the Wisconsin Crime Lab to come and process the scene. The most important observations initially were, one, that there was a significant

amount of blood outside the car and on the ground, rather than just inside the car. And two, Alex has sustained not one, not two, but 16 stab wounds, including one to the back of his head, one to his neck, and one to his groin. And while the crime scene was technically not in his jurisdiction, given his history with Ezra and Alex, Detective Prock was asked to lead the homicide investigation. Duncone asked that I continue on with the case as I had built a rapport with Ezra after talking to her. So Saturday morning, myself and a Duncone detective went and interviewed Ezra at the hospital again.

As that was happening, Alex was taken for an autopsy to try to identify his cause of death. Anastasia, there is a lot to unpack here, but I want to focus in for a moment on the location of one of those stab wounds to the groin. And we've seen it before. Sometimes we've seen it in cases where it's post-mortem, meaning after death.

But either way, that seems deliberate and personal to me. And that's it more often than not, right? It has to do with someone's rage or if not personal, it's a statement, but that gets into a whole deeper something probably about someone's psyche. But the other question here is what about Ezra? You know, we know that she was last seen with Alex and now Alex is dead. So, you know, isn't she going to be just automatically, obviously the first suspect here, you know, isn't she going to be just automatically, obviously, the first suspect here? You know, and from there, it's going to be what is the detective's approach to get to the bottom of that?

Yeah. And I think it's his injuries that may lead investigators towards the truth. My approach was see if she's remembered anything. Because still, at this point, we know Alex is deceased. But yet we still have to treat Ezra as a victim until we can prove that she's not a victim. And that's the way I looked at it. She's still a victim in this until I can prove that she's not. But he also knows that he could learn a lot just from Ezra's reaction to the news he was about to share. I explained to her that we found footprints in a mud road. I explained to her that we went up over the knob and we found that her car was stuck in the mud and we found Alex deceased.

Remember, Alex was someone she described as a longtime friend and ex-boyfriend. So her reaction to his brutal murder was surprising, to say the least. She really wasn't emotional, wasn't shocked. She was black. There was no emotion. But while news of his murder did not trigger any emotional response, it did seem to spark a recovery of her memory of the day in question. And Ezra McCantless was suddenly able to recount

how Alex had pulled off the main road onto the half-frozen field right before the car got stuck in the mud. She was in the back seat looking for stuff to stick under the tires to try to get the car unstuck. And he came up from behind her with the knife and started to attack her and was starting to cut her clothes off. As she explained it to Detective Prock, the attack was sudden and unprovoked. That's when she started talking about how Alex carved the word boy into her arm, that he was trying to assault her,

and that he was the one that cut her pants and cut her shirt. Okay, I'm just going to hold up here for one moment to address the elephant in the room, Monica slash Ezra. She's a young woman, but now there's a carving made supposedly by her ex with the word boy in her arm. Well, basically it's this. Ezra was born Monica, and at some point in life, she decided to identify as male. So she changed her first name to Ezra. Now, a little while later, she changed back to identify again as she was born biologically as female.

Absolutely, there's a lot to unpack there, but that's for another day. But right now, we just didn't want to leave you out there scratching your heads. But for where we are in the story now, according to Ezra, she feared for her life and was desperately looking for any way to defend herself. She said they fell into the back seat, at which point she was able to grab the knife with her hand, was able to grab it across the blade, and was able to get the knife away from him that way. She said once she had the knife, she just started to stab him anywhere and everywhere. Then she said she just ran because she was scared and didn't know what to do.

According to Ezra, she then threw the bloody knife into the woods and ran back down the road towards the first house that she could find, leaving Alex's body in the backseat of the car. I think she knew when she left him that he was deceased. There was nothing that jumped out at me that she seemed surprised he was deceased. And so I'm asking myself after going through this information here, is this story even plausible? And I say absolutely. You know, for an investigator in that situation, absent of any other real statements, physical evidence, of course, an autopsy report, and you're walking into someone who's describing a violent sexual assault who claims they were forced to take someone else's own life, you have to look at it as it could it be plausible.

And at this moment, I say, sure, it could be plausible. First of all, we all know that as history has shown us, too often sexual assault survivors were not believed, right? Or at least they were just disregarded. So I think our first reaction is automatically like take someone in and take them at their word. And I think that's what it should be. investigators, here now they have a homicide, and they have to decide, is this a legitimate first crime of sexual assault? Or is it being used kind of for exactly what I'm saying, right? Because people's first instinct is going to be, hold up, I've got to believe this person. Or is it being used to cover up something much more dark? And that's an actual murder. And I really think, Scott, that is the trickiness of this.

But as you said, it's important to question it legitimately to get to the truth one way or the other. And that was exactly Ryan's approach as he sat down with Ezra McCantless. As I'm doing this interview with Ezra, we're also getting information from the autopsy about what they're discovering. And during this time, we learned that Alex was stabbed 16 times by Ezra. So that kind of brings more questions into this whole situation when we started talking about where she stabbed him, how she stabbed him, and what order she stabbed him. And when you read the autopsy and see the details of the wounds that were inflicted on her supposed attacker,

it starts to sound less like a woman fighting for her life and more like someone on the offensive. Her first stab wound, she said, was the side of Alex's head. It was deep enough that it punctured his skull. She said her next one was to his groin, which punctured, I believe, one of his testicles and maybe even his penis. And then she said her third stab wound was to his neck, which was severely cut and bleeding heavily. She remembered stabbing him at least once or twice in his back as well. In total, there were 16 stab wounds, any one of which could have been fatal.

The whole time she's saying this was self-defense, he was kept coming after her. She was doing what she needed to do to get away from him. So now armed with both the autopsy results and Ezra's version of Alex's brutal death, Ryan decided it was time to see how well Ezra's story actually held up. Once I let her tell me her whole story, I started confronting her with things that didn't make sense to me. Ezra had told investigators that while she was in the car with Alex, he had found a knife in the vehicle, suddenly grabbed her arm and began carving the word boy into it.

She said Alex was in the driver's seat, she was in the passenger's seat, and that Alex had held her arm down and then carved the word boy. Right away, that didn't make sense to me when I looked at it, because one, the letter B was by her elbow with the Y down by her wrist, and that if Alex would have carved it, it would have been the other way, where the B was by the wrist and the Y down by her wrist. And that if Alex would have carved it, it would have been the other way where the B was by the wrist and the Y was by the elbow. And not only that, the letters were actually legible, right? So let's think about that for a moment, because if someone is cutting you against your will,

it is so much more likely that those lines are going to be anything but straight, right? Because just naturally by instinct, you're going to be anything but straight, right? Because just naturally, by instinct, you're going to be thrashing around trying to get away. And then the last thing that jumped out was how shallow they were. If she's saying Alex did this, there's no way he would know how much pressure to put on the knife just to scratch her enough to put this word boy into her arm. He would have cut her deeper, which would have required stitches.

According to Ezra's statement, she and Alex then somehow ended up in the backseat of the car, where Alex began cutting her clothes before she was able to grab the knife by the blade and take it away from him. Based on the trainings I've gone to, if someone has self-defense wounds and they're grabbing a blade of the knife, their hands are going to get flayed open. It's going to be a wide open cut. Meanwhile, she had superficial scratches, which told me that she didn't grab the blade of the knife. And that, again, these lines were the same depth and straight.

And it made me believe that she did this to herself. You know, but as a prosecutor, I'm laser focused on the number of wounds inflicted. Remember, because Ezra McCantless is claiming that all the wounds she caused were necessary as part of her defense. 16 stab wounds. If you're trying to get away from someone, maybe there'll be one, two, three stab wounds and then you run. But 16 of them, why do you need to keep stabbing someone if you stabbed them in three lethal spots? You know, there's a lot of things here that we can talk about, Scott. First of all, you know, have this idea of fight or flight when, okay, clearly you have 16 wounds. That is a lot. So we have the legal considerations and just the common sense ones. Because I know as a prosecutor, obviously, that you are only allowed to cause enough injury

to save yourself or someone else, basically until the threat is over. But then if I step out of it for a moment and just think about it common sense-wise, if someone has attacked you, caused you harm, done something reprehensible to you, there is that while you might be defending yourself, but in the moment, and it just takes seconds that you go overboard. So it definitely

can get tricky, even if what she was saying is legitimate. I'm still laser focused on that one wound to the groin. How is that defensive in any matter of form? Could it have been the position that she was in? Could have been how she was swinging her arm? Sure, it could be. But it still sounds or even looks in the Emmy's report to be deliberate. So as a defensive wound, or she's trying to sort of push him off of her or protect herself, I'm not really buying that. It's a good point, right? Because certainly as a prosecutor, I'm always trying to pick part holes in stories. Do they line up? Do they not?

And again, I can go the other way because if they're in the car and this has become a bit of a, you know, get away from this assault and they're in a closed space, well, you could end up striking anywhere, including groin. So they really do need to be careful here.

They're parsing it out, but I'm now looking at other things. Well, do they line up? Which way do they go? For example, memory loss. Like It doesn't really happen like that, that you just black out at that exact moment that you remember everything before and right afterwards, at least not in the way that she has been telling it to investigators. And again, I'm not an expert, but I have been told that by many who are. And so it's just another thing to help put the pieces together to figure out where the truth really lies. And just stepping back for a moment from the injuries that were caused by this Sharped Edge instrument, this occurred in a car,

which is a very closed-in crime scene. So outside of the injuries, could there be other things within the vehicle that gives you certain indications? You know, spatter, the amount of blood, when the fatal wound was struck. So if what she's saying is not legitimate and it's actually a crime, it's not self-defense, and she's just making up the story, but then what's the motivation? You know, is it something that she planned out because of this love triangle gone wrong? You know, is it something that they got into an argument? And it's a heat of passion. There really just is so much to unpack and very carefully in this case. So outside of just a violent assault and attack inside the confines of a vehicle,

what other evidence do you think right now Anasiga is there to suggest otherwise? Physically, you want to go outside. You know, if a knife is used, where did the knife come from? Did she bring it with her? Well, okay, that's something that I want to put in one of the boxes. Were there any text messages, any voicemails, anything else that can be looked at outside of that start to lead us down this road? You know, and I think again, she says this happened in the back of a car. Is that the only place that there's blood? I mean, you really need

to start to look at physically, can you corroborate her story or does it not line up with what investigators may or may not find next? Investigators, of course, scoured the crime scene and were able to make

a couple of key recoveries. The knife was recovered in the ditch between the muddy field entrance road and Don Sipple's house. Now, Ezra McCandless admitted that she threw the knife away. And then you have to ask yourself, if this was truly self-defense, would that person feel it was necessary to try to hide the weapon? To me, this is one of those things that goes in the column of maybe what she's saying is false. Another key piece of forensic evidence was blood at the crime scene,

the majority of which was found outside of the car. And another real indication of something that we often say is crime scenes don't lie, especially when you have the ability to methodically piece together and determine what stories could be viable and what stories just don't seem to be credible. And there was just way too much blood. It was found on the grass. There was a big green dumpster. Blood was found on that. That was about 10 to 20 yards away from the car. There was blood found on the back seat, on the back of the driver's seat, and then on the doorframe and the inside of the door. The fact that there was blood outside the car contradicted her version of the events,

that the attack had been contained to the back seat inside the car. And then they find Alex's cell phone, which appears to have been smashed against a rock. At this point, I'm thinking Ezra McCandless was not the victim of the crime. She was the aggressor, and she had gone to great lengths to cover up her crime. Even the cut wounds to her legs, where she said Alex was trying to cut her clothing off, those were at her arm lengths.

So if she was holding a knife and put her arm straight down, that's right where the cuts were on both her legs. Again, leading me to believe that those were self-inflicted. When confronted with the likelihood that she had carved the word boy into her own arm with a knife that she kept in her car's console, McCantless quietly admitted that she had, but she stopped short of saying that it was part of a cover-up. She then admitted that she carved it into her arm and that she did it so she would remember what happened. But Detective Prock, he just wasn't buying it.

She was trying to set up her self-defense. She was trying to say, Alex carved this boy into her. And I think this was all part of her big play on self-defense. McCantless had presented herself to first responders as a survivor of a violent crime. But now it's becoming clear that not only was she not a victim,

but that she herself just might very well be a cold-blooded killer. She admits to carving the boy herself. She admits to stabbing Alex multiple times. She admits to the order that she stabbed him. Walking out of there, I now felt that Alex was the victim of a homicide and she was the one that did it. But law enforcement still faced a very imposing challenge.

Could they prove it? In a typically quiet rural county in northern Wisconsin, law enforcement was suddenly facing a very high-profile homicide case. Two weeks after Alex Woodworth was found dead of multiple stab wounds, 20-year-old Ezra McCandless was arrested and charged with his murder. She was charged with first-degree intentional homicide. McCandless claimed that she had killed Alex in self-defense, and at her arraignment, she pled not guilty. When her trial began 18 months later, the media attention on the small town had grown into a frenzy.

And again, let's just lay this out here because this is a case that I actually knew back then because it was carried live on court TV. And I really thought, and I think clearly some of the fascination or certain people's fascination was because of the fact that Ezra was born Monica, female, then identified as male, and now is back to female. But, you know, to me, the most interesting thing about this is that there is this defense of self-defense from a attempted sexual assault. And in this day and age, when we have learned the lesson that too many people, survivors were not believed, have not been believed when they are legitimate survivors of these crimes, is this legitimate or is it being used as a sword and kind of asking people to use that, okay, automatically hands off, we've got to buy it just really as this defense. And I always thought that was the most interesting thing. But clearly, for all these different reasons, the attention being paid to this trial was great, certainly much more than this small town had ever seen before. But in the chaos, the family of Alex Woodworth never lost sight of the most important thing,

that he was a person who was loved and who did not deserve to die. And their show of support in the courtroom was a stirring reminder to the jury that this case was not just about the alleged killer, but about the victim. His parents were there, his grandparents were there, and some of his siblings were there. His aunt and uncles were there. Prosecutors argued that the motive for Alex's murder lay in McCandless's infatuation with not Alex, but her ex-boyfriend Jason Mengel, and her belief that this brief affair with Alex had somehow jeopardized her future with Jason. killing Alex because she blamed him for undermining her allegations of sexual assault against another of Jason's friends. Allegations which investigators believed were fabricated to cover up her own infidelity. And this infatuation with Jason, it was fully on display during the trial, especially on the day the testimony came from the prosecution's main witness.

During most of the trial, she didn't look up much. She drew quite a bit, wasn't really engaging much. But then the day that Jason Mingo came to testify, she had put on makeup. She was dressed up. She was bubbly. She was perky, staring at him, constantly looking at him and smiling. It seemed like she was trying to flirt with him

during this time. And her behavior was not missed by the press, by Alex's family, or by the jury. Oh, everybody saw this. I mean, it was front and center, I believe, even on court TV, her reaction to him coming in. When McCantless took the stand, she presented both calm and confident in her claim of self-defense. You can tell she was well prepared by her defense team. She knew what to answer, how to answer it.

She was well prepared. I mean, her defense team was very, very good. McCandless also added a surprising new twist to her story that could potentially bolster her defense, claiming that she and Alex had experimented with BDSM, sexual practices that can include bondage, dominance, and sadomasochism. So according to McCandless, that's how the knife play started, before it suddenly got out of hand. But during cross-examination, prosecutors pointed out the discrepancies between McCantless' him and methodically stage the crime scene, inflicting her superficial wounds after murdering Alex. And while she claimed to be in a state of semi-consciousness during and after the attack, prosecutors showed that McCantless was aware enough of her guilt to dispose of the murder

weapon and attempt to destroy Alex's cell phone to prevent him from calling for help. In other words, she had a plan and she executed it in the most brutal and cold-blooded way possible. And why? Because Alex wouldn't agree that their past relationship meant nothing. And he refused to lie to Jason about his and Ezra's past.

We feel that Ezra would have done anything she could to get back with Jason. We think they went out there to talk. And then once it was found that Alex wasn't going to change his story to what Ezra wanted, I think she panicked and didn't know what to do. And I think that's when she ended up attacking him and stabbing him. First in the back of the head, which likely killed him instantly, then in the neck, the groin, and in the back over and over 16 times. Once she realized what she did, she had to stage a scene. That's where she carved the boy into her arm. She put the self-inflicted wounds in her hands and on her legs. She left with his phone and the knife,

ran out, threw both of those, and went to Don's house. And I think she then just played up the, I don't remember what happened. I was being attacked. Let me just add that the prosecutor pointed out that McCantless claimed that Alex had his overcoat on during the entire time of the attack. And the prosecutor was able to show jurors holding up that very jacket that three stab wounds

on the left side clearly went through his sweater, but the corresponding side of that jacket had no punctures. Inconsistencies in her statement was a major part of the evidence against Ezra McCandless. In their conclusion, prosecutors argued that this was no crime of passion, but a planned, premeditated act of intentional homicide. Either he was going to agree to what she says, or she was going to do whatever she needed to to get back with Jason, to include, unfortunately, killing Alex. After summations, the jury returned in less than three hours with a decision,

which in many cases isn't a great sign for the prosecution. And look, prosecutors are always nervous before the jury comes back because now the case is just out of your hands. And when it comes to homicide, we often do have much longer jury deliberations because jurors realize the importance of their verdict for both sides here. Whether they think someone did it, that we just haven't met our burden when they're coming back that quickly without questions. But no matter what here, quick or not, prosecutor Ryan is going to be nervous until they come in the door and tell them what their verdict is. That was extremely nerve wracking because in my mind mind it's like, what did we do wrong that in two and a half hours they can come back like this? But in the end, the jury did make a swift decision, returning a verdict of guilty.

On February 7th, 2020, Ezra McCantless was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 50 years for the first-degree intentional homicide of Alex Woodworth. You know, I'm thankful we were able to give Alex justice, and she wasn't able to get away with this. That's the biggest thing for me, is hopefully the family feels we worked hard for them and Alex, and they can go to sleep at night knowing we did everything we could and justice was served. The jury definitely spoke in this case, and the facts were extremely clear. But the question that I'd like to raise is clearly there are cases where someone is attacked and does have the right to defend themselves to save their own lives. Our justice system is built, designed, if you defend themselves to save their own lives. Our justice system is built, designed, if you will, to get to the truth, but on the way, public opinion can be

brutal. Self-defense cases especially can cast doubt on the victim's credibility, scrutinizing the victim's behavior, like in this case, where she had a hazy recollection of all the events, or the boy carving, creating an environment where the victim had to prove their innocence. This is especially damaging in domestic violence cases, where manipulation and control tactics are often employed by the abuser. This case received a lot of attention. Part spectator sport, interest in the unfamiliar. But we want to refocus that interest.

Alex Woodworth was murdered by someone he cared for. But to Ezra McCantless, Alex became just a potential roadblock in the rekindling of another relationship she wanted more. She thought that if Alex said they just had a physical fling with no real emotion either side, that her ex-boyfriend might take her back. But to Alex, he just said, no, that's not what this was. There was emotion, you know it, and thought it would end there. But this case came down to McCantless's obsession. Obsession for an ex that caused her first to claim sexual assault instead of another fling with someone else. And now she'd upped it to murder.

She took another's life. Alex is gone forever from his family and friends. And that is the reason we should all be paying attention. Alex Woodworth, you are not forgotten. 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 Forseti Media.

Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa, Megan Hayward, and Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?