Anatomy of Murder - Granza - Part 2 (Claudia Maupin and Oliver ‘Chip’ Northup)

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Unpacking the mind of this killer gave investigators much more than they bargained for. For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/ Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

This episode contains graphic depiction of violence and body mutilation. Previously on Anatomy of Murder. There's two dead bodies. The crime was a masterpiece of technique. My granza and Chip, they had 128 stab wounds. Before he left, he sliced open the stomach to see the inside he put a phone in the woman inside the stomach and a cup in the guy the police don't know anything they're not telling us anything we have nothing so the person is daniel marsh is dan here dan

marsh it must be daniel yeah you sit there in shock. I'm fascinated with anatomy. Because Daniel is 15. You'd have an obsession. It would be a compulsion. Maybe more than anybody I've ever run across. 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. Last week, we started profiling the double homicide of Oliver Northup, who went by Chip, and his wife, Claudia Moffin, who is affectionately known as Granza, to our guest, Sarah Rice. Two months after the murder, investigators received a tip leading them to their prime suspect, a 15-year-old teenager.

So let's go back to the first time you thought about killing someone. And now FBI profiler Chris Campion is about to unpack this teenager's long obsession with gore. As you already know, Anastasia and I choose not to give a killer a platform any further notoriety than the press coverage they receive from committing a heinous crime. But in this episode, we believe hearing Marsh talk about his mindset, his twisted views on taking two innocent lives is a unique view into the mind of a true psychopath. And so we discuss and use his statements, hopefully as some type of insight

that perhaps by listening, we can someday understand or at least understand a bit more than we do today. And that really is our only hope for change to try and figure out how to stop at least some of these crimes before they occur. her. You're about to hear firsthand from a 15-year-old how his violent thoughts could turn to action. Marsh began to tell the agent for the very first time he ever talked about killing someone. It was the woman his mom had left his dad over. So, you know, Scott, I started to slur through. Okay? How are you going to do that? I knew where she lived. So, you know, Scott, I started to think about this. You know, is it so horrible that a 10-year-old would have these thoughts?

So, yes, like, they are incredibly violent, but it's also a 10-year-old who's had his stability, his family completely ripped from him. This is not the other woman's fault, but you can understand why this 10-year-old would put all his feelings against her, the outside person. But it also speaks to this child just being unable to cope. And it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to jump to be this someday killer. Well, I mean, slit her throat and he was only 10 years old. You know, it kind of goes back to a study from 2019 that was pretty shocking to me, to be honest. It showed that having murderous thoughts is actually normal.

More than half of us imagine killing someone. Usually the targets are our boss or ex-partner, but these are just fantasies, not something that people react upon. But I was pretty shocked about that. I mean, that's a huge number, 50%. I don't know. I think people say a lot of things. So does that study say every time someone says, like, I wish my boss was dead, is that part of the study? So I think it's very hard on paper to know what type of data that study is taking into account.

Because do I think that 50% of people actually fantasize in this type of detail about their murders? No. I think maybe wishing someone was dead but not by your hands might be something that more people have had that fleeting thought. But so, I don't know. It's certainly a large number, and it talks about something much deeper within our society, if true. So when's the next time that you remember thinking about killing someone? within our society, if true. Daniel admits that the next time he had murderous thoughts was in the eighth grade. And again in the ninth grade. Ninth grade is when it got more intense.

Every time I look at someone, in my mind I see flashes of images of me killing them in numerous ways, in numerous horrible ways, doing terrible things. I can't help it. It's just what comes into my head when I see them. I don't want it to. Anastasia is not talking just about fantasy here.

He's talking about compulsion. And it just comes to his head. And I can't help but think that his fantasies in his mind could be reality. But it also shows these thoughts are obviously part of his mind that they are almost taking him over and how desperately he must have needed help. And I don't know, I couldn't help but thinking like how many would-be killers have been thwarted by getting the mental help that they needed, you know, before they acted on those thoughts. Because as you said, like these compulsions are something that were beyond him that he couldn't control.

And they were growing and growing and growing until they at least appeared to have taken him over. When was the first time you started thinking about throwing these people down the street? That night, I just, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to do it. I lost control of my life. I just went take it anymore. I had to do it. I lost control of my goal. I just went into the street, wandered around for a while, just which house I should go to,

who would be a good victim, what time of night was it? I think it was like two in the morning. Well, I had been walking down the streets, scoping out apartment complexes and houses, trying to see, you know, who would be, which one can I do it to? Who left their door unlocked, who's windows open?

Everyone had done a good job of locking their doors and closing their windows until I got to their house. It totally makes sense that Marsh was familiar with Chip and Claudia's home now. His dad lived nearby, and at one point, he even visited the house. Think of this. He had been at their house before. Okay. So how long ago would that have been? A year and a half. Two years. But this time, when Marsh walked into their home, he was dressed in black from head to toe.

He was wearing a ski mask, and when he entered their home, it wasn't through the door, but through a window. I got a hole in the screen, not even a hole, just a flap that I could get in and out with. I climbed in through the back, went to their bedroom, I opened the door. And I just kind of stood over their bed watching them sleep for a few minutes. My body was trembling. I was nervous but excited and exhilarated. I was actually going to do it. I was there.

It's finally happening. Nervous, excited, exhilarating. He is using those words to describe what the prospect of actually committing homicide was making him feel. It makes me think of some reading I've done on psychopathy, which is a subtype of antisocial behavior. And it says that psychopathy is linked to thrill-seeking. It was almost like an out-of-body experience. I didn't feel like I was really there. Like it was real. And the woman woke up.

So I just started static. Over and over. You know, he talked about she woke up and the adrenaline that he got of like, now is my time. Like, I hold all that because that was my gran. I know my gran was fighting for us. She was fighting for her life,

but deep down inside, like, she didn't want to leave. She didn't want to go. I mean, is that your worst nightmare? A person dressed in all black, standing over you with a knife. Like want to go. That's your worst nightmare. A person dressed in all black standing over you with a knife. That is your worst nightmare. And then the husband woke up. And he looked over and just as he looked over I stabbed him in the neck. And then I went back to killing the woman because she wouldn't die.

I stabbed her a lot. Made sure they were both dead. And then I just kind of kept stabbing their dead bodies. Even when they were dead, I wasn't done. And I just kind of messed around, just cut open both of their torsos around here. This ties directly into Marcia's morbid fascination with anatomy. What happened right after that? Right after?

Mm-hmm. Got the phone in the cup. Put the phone in her, put the cup in him, and then I left. Just to listen to how matter-of-factly he speaks about murdering and mutilating Claudia and Chip, it goes to another sign of psychopathy, which is the impaired capacity for empathy and remorse. And when we talked about what would the significance be of these items, what did it mean? Well, Marsh made it very clear.

It meant nothing. Nothing. He was just doing it to throw investigators off any trail. And your head goes like, oh, crap. Like, how many times did I call Granda? How many times did I call her? And I still, to this day, can't take her phone number out of my phone. Because there's one day I just want to call her. But I'm not going to.

I never will. Because the idea of where her cell phone was, it's haunting. It's haunting. How did it feel, Ben? It felt haunting. It's haunting. How did it feel, Pam? It felt great. It was pure happiness and adrenaline and dopamine, just all of it rushing over me. You know, and I have heard a couple killers talk like this before about this feeling of just utter euphoria, just in the moment that they do that actual kill. And it is one of the most chilling aspects to me of this type of a killer.

Most exhilarating, enjoyable feeling I've ever felt. Throughout the interview, Marsh confided in Chris about different people he had desires to kill. But then Chris digs into how deep those murderous thoughts truly go. You mentioned that pretty much everybody you meet, you have thoughts about killing them and how you would kill them. Yeah. So, how would you kill me? There's a lot of ways. Choking you to death with your tie. Eating your face into the mirror until it broke and using the glass to cut your arteries.

Gouging your eyes out and just smashing your face into the wall. Nothing personal. It's something that just happens. And you know, Scott, you have to think for a moment, if we step back, that chance and luck really played its hand in this investigation. Because what if that anonymous call had never come in to 911, right? Because would they ever have then sat down with Daniel Marsh and found out about who he was and then gotten this admission? I completely agree. That phone call really launched the investigation. And I could see even to this day, the lack of physical evidence and the things they were unable to find in that pristine crime scene would have likely left this case wide open. What were you wearing when you left? Those boots, black socks, black pants like these, black gloves, and a black ski mask.

Now investigators then went on to conduct a search of their house because he told investigators during his interview that they would find all the items that he had worn the night of the murder in his home. Where are those things now? In my garage. They find his clothes, the mask, his jacket, and his shoes. And this goes to show how well planned out these murders were. To make sure he didn't leave any shoe prints behind, Marsh placed duct tape on the bottom of his boots. Surprise after surprise after surprise.

The surprise was all the things that he did and how he was meticulous and taped his shoes. I have never heard of anyone doing that, Anastika, and I was sort of amazed that it actually worked. Yeah, it's one that I've never come across and why I always say that no matter how long you've done this and how many cases you've seen, there is always something new. And this, in this case, was that one. I mean, think about it.

To have the forethought to place duct tape on the soles of his shoes so that the markings, like you might have on various brands of sneakers, wouldn't be picked up. Was there actually DNA left back there at the crime scene? There are unknown DNA profiles. I don't know if they're yours or not. We'll find out. Could be, might have made a small error at the house. I don't think I did. That's why I was... No, it was a very well-executed crime.

No doubt about it. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel Marsh says to Chris Campion. The pride. Daniel Marsh is feeling pretty good about himself right now. Well, I think I look at it into his mind. Certain killers want their skill at committing their crimes to be acknowledged. So yeah, I think there is that, oh, you saw what I did, and he is proud that that was acknowledged.

I really hope you don't cry anymore. Okay. Are you ready? Pretty much. Now with this admission from Marsh, they place him under arrest. I'm going to put you down to another part of the building. Start the processing. When they first arrested him, you know, we're sitting in this room at the DA's office,

and they were up there talking to us about, you know, we've got this guy, he confessed. We're 99.9% sure. And they're saying it with a smile on their face. And we're all looking at him like, why are you smiling? We're suffering. Like, we need to know, like, is this guy going to be put in jail for the rest of his life? Like, can you give us anything? And no, they can't because, can you give us anything? And no, they can't because they can't give us anything. There's a lot of positive things for prosecutors walking this case into court. Not just a powerful confession, although that would still need to be admitted into evidence, but physical evidence recovered from his home, statements he made to a friend. But the other hurdle is his age. Would he be tried as an adult?

He was 15, just turned 16 when he was arrested. And we were like, huh? Now, depending on where you live in this country, it depends whether you are tried in adult court or juvenile court at different ages. It used to be 16. It's recently changed to 18, at least in New York. But there are certain categories of crimes, murder being one of them, that you can be taken into an adult court at 13, 14, 15 years old. And it really makes a difference in the final outcome if there's a conviction of how much time you'll spend in jail and where you will be placed during any sort of commitment based on the court that you are tried in. A DA is in charge of determining, are they going to go to trial as a juvenile or are they going to go trial as an adult? Depending on the crime. It was ruled in our case by our DA

that he was going to be tried as an adult because of the severity of the crime. Marsh goes to trial as an adult, but the fireworks didn't begin in the courtroom, but in the halls just outside. We're standing in the hallway in this very, very tiny courthouse, and we're standing in the hallway with his dad, his sister, his sister's, like, entourage of friends that are also his friends.

And now Marsh's family is standing in the same hall, which again, that's expected that they may be there to be there for his trial. But they're not just there. And they're heckling us. They're mocking us. They're making fun of us. And then in that moment, two officers come walking down the hallway and he walks right in front of us. And I'm not kidding. He was less than three feet away from me. And it made Sarah and her family angry and also made them feel all the more vulnerable. It took everything in me to not lunge.

Our DA then came and took us into the room and you're like, what the hell just happened? This is the side of the story that that doesn't get told. The situation at times so tense and emotional, Sarah and her family feared for their safety. And my mom actually hired a bodyguard to sit with her the entire five weeks. He was an eight-time black belt, but he was also like a gentle giant, just kind of held the space for my mom. Marsh originally pleaded not guilty,

but then changes his defense to not guilty by reason of insanity. So how is the defense going to attempt to prove this, right? It's because, yes, of course there is something wrong with him if he is in fact the one that committed these crimes. Well, they're going to prove it based on the experts, by psychiatric reports, by looking at his history in the past. For the first four weeks, they had to prove that he was sane.

They had to prove that he had meticulously planned everything. But at the end of the day, what the law says is that many people suffer from various mental disorders, mental disabilities, that they commit crimes but still need to be held accountable. The test is whether you know right from wrong when you're committing the crime. Like they were showing pictures of like the perfectly placed glasses in the kitchen The test is whether you know right from wrong when you're committing the crime. Like they were showing pictures of like the perfectly placed glasses in the kitchen and the jewelry box that didn't have anything missing. Just the amount of like precision, the cleanliness.

There were no shoe prints, like weeks and weeks of just like showing all the details. Remember going into trial, the families of Chip and Claudia were spared much of the details of the investigation. And of course that incredibly gruesome crime scene. But now that they're sitting in the courtroom, the entire case will play out. And then the prosecution plays Marsha's taped interview. I stabbed her a lot. made sure they were both dead. At that moment, I watched my mom stand to her feet.

And she closed her eyes and she held her hands to her side. And she just stared at him with her eyes closed. And you saw all the bailiffs in the room. There were a lot, kind of get concerned. And for the next 45 minutes, my mom stood and listened as he talked about what he did. It's like bombs of information are just going off one after the other after the other. Most exhilarating, enjoyable feeling I've ever felt. You could see my mom's just like the veins coming out of her neck because she's just like sobbing and looking up to the sky and gripping her hands so tightly that they were white.

And at one point I turned around and I saw Granza in the courtroom. And that's just my own like soulfully feeling she was present. And my mom was honoring her because Granza fought for her life because she didn't want to leave. She didn't want to leave her kids. She didn't want to leave her grandkids. On September 26, 2014,

after a five-week trial, the jury reached their verdict. Guilty on both counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances. They found that Marsh was in fact sane when he committed these crimes. And with that with sentencing, he was given 25 years to life for each count of murder, plus two years for the special enhancement. While this was the end of the trial, it is not the last Sarah will hear from Daniel Marsh.

So three months later, I get another call. And I was like, what? Daniel Marshall is a part of this rehabilitation training or something in prison. And there's a TEDx talk that he did. This was one of those things, Scott, that I just put my head down, that this convicted killer, by all accounts, very guilty of all these crimes, that he was given this platform to speak and to put out what he wanted to say publicly. It's on YouTube. It's 14 minutes of him telling the world that he did bad things to people and that he's serving time for that, but that he's a rehabilitated man.

You know, it's one of those things that I would just never even take the time to view it for a second to not give him that audience. Yeah, I just gave it 20 seconds, Anaseka, to be honest. The only quote that I heard him talk about, he says, quote, there are no such things in the world as evil people, just damaged people. Embrace our humanity. And that was more than enough for me. And I hear that, but I do believe that someone that commits crimes like this is likely damaged. But I will not give them that as the excuse for taking that which has damaged them and then brutalizing other people. You know, I'm fuming. I've never heard my mom scream as loud as she did cry because not only

did he speak on camera, but he spoke in front of 200 people who gave him a standing ovation at the end that don't know what he did because everybody needs a second chance. It doesn't matter the crime. He's rehabilitated. And again, we are not experts in this at all, but everything that I have dealt with in the past and also talking with the prosecutors and the FBI investigator in this specific case, Marsh's compulsions were not going to be something easy or ever able to rehabilitate. And so with that, yes, medication can help with various things with many type of disabilities and health challenges that people face, but certain things are just never going to go away, which means that society can never

be safe if someone who has the mind like Daniel Marsh is ever let out of those prison walls. We knew that we couldn't get the video down because it was, you know, it's YouTube, right? We have really good friends that work for Facebook and Google. My friend who works for Google said, I know how to do this. And within 24 hours of him working on it, the video disappeared. And then Sarah hears about Daniel Marsh again. Proposition 57, which holds that juvenile court judges must decide whether juvenile offenders are tried in juvenile court or in adult court. So I was like, so what does this mean for me? And so what that could mean for Marsh's case, if it went back there, is it might be back to the beginning. So they took it out of the hands of a district attorney and they're putting it in

the hands of a judge. Well, that's great. That's fine. So what does that mean? Well, it means you go to a fitness hearing and they're like, if the judge determines that it should have been in juvenile court and it should have never gone to an adult court, he'll be out when he's 25. And I was like, no, no, no, he's 20. He could get out in five years. And they're like, yes, he can walk away in five years a free man, no probation, no criminal history. That's absurd. He could walk out of jail in just a few more years. He is out like you and me with us on the street. Then new legal challenges arose when legislators proposed a new bill, Senate Bill 1391, which prohibits juveniles under the age of 16 from being tried in adult court. Basically eliminates Prop 57, stating that no juvenile will ever be tried as an adult. If this goes into effect, Daniel Marsh can fall into, retroactively fall into SB 1391,

and he will, no matter what, be released when he's 25. He doesn't have to do a fitness hearing. Like, first of all, I can't let a person like Daniel Marsh get back on the streets, right? Like, I'm already mad. You already took two people from me. But if now you're going to tell me that this individual can get back out on the streets in less than five years, oh, you better believe I'm going to do something.

And Sarah proved herself to be a fighter, just like her granza. And she was going to do whatever she could to try to shake up the system and stop that bill from being passed. So I did. I did a press conference with my mom and with Chip's daughter, Mary, and we spoke and we got the news out. Sacramento is the capital of California, the seat of the state's government. And it's where Sarah would rally friends and family to raise awareness to this bill. And I'm like, maybe we maybe we do a petition. And we can't be the only family, right? There's got to be other families. So I start to put some feelers out there.

Three families right away that are affected by it, equally. And she really became an activist in every sense. They did press conferences. They had petitions signed with thousands and thousands of signatures. They conducted a rally. So we did the petitions and we got, I want to say we probably had 10 to 20,000 signatures. And our idea is to get as many thousands of signatures as we can to get it onto the governor's desk and beg him not to sign this into effect. After all of Sarah's efforts and the other families that also got involved, the governor signed the bill. It's just heartbreaking.

The governor signed it. And so in 2019, it went into law. Marsh had a fitness hearing per the rules of Prop 57, and the judge ruled that he does stay in the adult system. But he still had a sliver of hope with SB 1391 because his case is still in appeal. And yet the case still goes back and forth to court. So there is no finality, at least not yet. The legal wrangling still goes on. Think about what a scary thought that is for Claudia

and Chip's family, for the community, even those that knew Daniel Marsh, just the thought that he could get out of prison and walk amongst them. Sarah said it best that she and her family and those other victims of homicide, you never forget or move past what has happened. But it is possible to move forward. Am I re-traumatized every single time I get a phone call from whoever because there's something going on or I get the email that comes from the California Appellate Court? Yes, but you move forward. But you carry this with you forever. Yes, it's 10 years.

It's 10 years of some hard work. But I hope that if anybody out there is listening, like maybe see the light through my voice, the smile, that there is a lot of healing that comes through all your pain. I remember when a member of my production team from True Conviction first brought me the file on the murders of Chip and Claudia.

He was 87. she was 76. And seeing the pictures of them together, and then a few minutes later, the crime scene photos, and then watching the full confession of a 15-year-old left me with so many more questions than answers. And in producing that story, Anastasia, myself, and AOM's executive producer Sumit David, who also was the executive producer with me on True Conviction, had the opportunity to spend time with Sarah and her family, as well as the lead prosecutor and, of course, Chris Campion. No matter how much you think you know about human behavior or what people are capable of, a case like this comes along. The one thing I do know is that the strength and drive that possesses Sarah

to get that justice is a force to be reckoned with. A voice for both Chip and her granza, Claudia. There isn't a day that I don't think about my granza. There isn't a day that I don't think about my grandson. There isn't a day that I don't think about how she died. But there also is never a day that I don't think about how wonderful and kind and gracious and incredible she was. She was the most selfless woman. And if I can do what she did in this world for others, then that's my responsibility.

Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frosetti Media. Ashley Flowers and Sumit David are executive producers. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?