Anatomy of Murder - Lighting Candles - Part 2 (Corey Wieneke)

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

The murder of a popular young man in Iowa remained unsolved for decades.  Secrets never before revealed, may lead to this cold case finally being closed. Or would they?  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

Previously on Anatomy of Murder. I'm so sorry, Corey. I never meant to hurt you. I loved you, Corey. I never meant to hurt you. I loved you, Corey. I never meant to kill you. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anna Siga-Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder.

Before we get started with today's episode, I just want to remind all of you, you can follow Anna Siga and myself on all of our social channels at Weinberger Media and at Anna Siga Negalazi. Just a reminder, today's episode is the second part of an episode we started last week. So if you haven't already listened, go back to last week's episode first. When 22-year-old Corey Winnike was found bludgeoned to death in his West Liberty home, it upended the Iowa town. And to make matters worse, over two decades passed after his murder, and still his case remained open. No one was arrested or even held accountable for cutting his life tragically short. Back in 1992, when this homicide happened, investigators had interviewed hundreds of people and chased down

multitudes of tips. They looked at several women he was involved with, including his fiancée Jody, the mother of his child Wendy, and his on-again, off-again romantic partner, Annette. But, the case went cold.

It was 25 years after Corey's murder that Muscatine County attorney Alan Ostergren got an unexpected phone call. An investigator who had been at the hospital on another case said that he had spoken with a nurse there, actually he'd been approached by a nurse, and her name was Jessie Becker. She is an ICU charge nurse. She has a master's degree. She's in the Army Reserves. She's the captain. She's super smart.

And she had a major tip related to Corey's murder. Back in 1992, Jessie was nine years old, growing up in West Liberty. She's known Corey most of her life. Corey is the fun guy who would let him play the pinball machine for free down at the bar during the day. Grandma Betty apparently had a freezer full of ice cream all the time, and Corey would pass those ice cream out to kids in the neighborhood all the time. So she knows who Corey Winnicky is. It was only a few months after Corey's death that Jesse had been sleeping over a friend's house.

The two girls sneak quietly down the stairs, and Jesse's in the lead. When she gets to the bottom of the stairs, she looks into the front room of the house. She sees a woman lighting black candles, weeping and rocking herself back and forth. And Jesse hears her say the following words. I'm so sorry, Corey. I never meant to hurt you. I loved you, Corey. I never meant to kill you.

I'm so sorry for killing you, Corey. The girls turned and scurried back up the stairs. And while you might expect they talked about nothing else the remainder of the night, that wasn't the case. The other girl, she wants to have nothing to do with the situation, refuses to talk to Jesse about it. And here's the thing, Jesse knew who the woman was, Annette Cahill. She was one of the three women romantically tied to Corey at the time of his murder. She was the one in the bar that night. She's the one who gets in Corey's baby blue Cadillac and thinks that Corey is going to take her home like they do almost every night after the bar closes. It's the same person.

Annette was also the aunt of Jesse's friend. Annette was living with her brother and his wife and his children in a farmhouse near West Liberty. They've watched movies with Annette. They've gone out for pizza. You know, Annette's been the fun aunt and Jesse knows who she is. Absolutely. And once again, when Jesse tried to talk to her friend about what she had heard, the friend became very defensive, saying she didn't want to talk about it,

explaining that her aunt was in love with Corey and was very upset about his death. And if we just look at the relationship for a second, Scott, you know, you can understand that, like, forgetting what was overhe overheard or at least allegedly overheard at this point. Here it is. It's her aunt. She's living with them in the home. And if she too heard what Jesse described, you can imagine that initial defensiveness, whether it's discomfort, fear or something else. Yeah, the scene sounds so surreal to me. I'm sure it was extremely confusing for a nine-year-old. But over the years, I'm sure she also thought about it and remembering, you know, she lived in a small town.

She knew about the murder. And maybe this was the opportunity to take this heavy burden off of her shoulders. So after investigators had sat down with Jessie, who remember now is not only a grown-up, but she was the nurse at the hospital, and that's how this conversation came about. So after they sat down with her and spoke to her, investigators knew they might be on to something big,

so now it was time to consult with the county prosecutor. It was an agent who I had not met yet at that point, and so when I talked to him and he told me what had developed with Jesse Becker, I have to admit, I just thought, this is the most amazing thing I've ever heard. I don't even really know how to process it, but this is really interesting. So Anastasia, walking into your office

with this kind of news, how would you approach that conversation? I think it's going to pique everybody's interest. And here you have a case that had sat cold for decades, but there's going to be more questions than any sort of decision making at that point. It's like, okay, what are the circumstances that she came forward? Why didn't she come forward for all these years? The fact that she was this young, did she outcry to anybody else? So I think there's going to be a lot more digging that hopefully will be done. So the agents who did talk to Jesse decided it was

time to reach out to Alan. But the conversation also left Alan, as you said, Anasiya, with more questions than answers. It was important to me at that point, we weren't just going on the word of the former nine-year-old. You know, Scott, we have spoken about this before, but again, whether it is from an investigator's standpoint or a prosecutor's, just the fact that she was so young when she overheard that, that is going to lead to some hurdles right there. Yeah, very true. Normally in a homicide investigation, if you're interviewing a young child witness, you'd have to take certain steps, as an example, to protect them, their emotional well-being during an interview.

You should employ aged appropriate language, employ a gentle and patient approach, and also potentially involve a child psychologist, a professional who could be there assisting all along the way. But in this case, you're interviewing an adult who is attempting to recall critical conversations from decades earlier. Why now? With that question, it still goes back to her memory as a child. You have to determine if she heard what she thinks she heard, what did it mean? And I also think they're going to have to look at, does she have any sort of motive to fabricate something like this either

now or back then. But either way, obviously, they just can't take it at face value. And Alan was also very well aware of that fact. They had not gotten to the point yet where they had tried to do any follow up on Jesse's information. And I said, find out who Jesse told. I had prosecuted a lot of child sex abuse cases at that point. Kids are going to tell a trusted adult things like this. So I said, who did Jesse tell? Now, obviously I can only imagine the weight of carrying a secret for that long, you know, the heaviness and the burden as we spoke about earlier. And it seems probable that she shared it with someone at some point during her childhood years, but at this point, they don't know.

One of the first things I asked the investigators was actually the information about Jesse's mom. And I said, she surely told her mom. When Jesse had gone home the next morning, she told her mother immediately what happened. So if Jesse's mom knows and didn't herself tell police, you have to ask why would she keep the story to herself? Child comes home and tells you she saw someone confess to a murder. Wouldn't you go straight to the police? Yes, she was only nine years old and maybe the mother just brushed it off. But actually, is that really the way it happened?

In order to answer that question, we have to look back at what was happening in Jesse's mom's life in 1992. Around the time that Corey was murdered, her mom had been in the process of getting a divorce. Her marriage had been tumultuous and her ex was, how shall we say, problematic. And he also had stepped out on their marriage with another woman. That other woman was Annette Cahill. Her mom realized that if she tells this story about Annette's confession, she could face serious retribution from her ex-husband.

One thing I think we have to acknowledge for a moment here, Scott, is that this case, when we are talking about it, in some ways sounds like a real-life soap opera. You know, unfortunately, for all involved and impacted,

this one is very real, but it certainly is a lot of what's happening with who and who's with who and then what's happening because of that. So while convoluted, all these pieces really are part of the story that is hopefully going to figure out what happened to Corey and who did it. I mean, clearly it's complicated.

But once somebody tells a member of law enforcement something like this, you just can't put the genie back in the bottle, right? So something has to happen and you peel back the onions here and you may find more than you bargained for. Here's where interpersonal relationships get this case even more complicated. So if she goes to the police with this, she realizes that there's going to be all this drama involved with all this. And so thinking about Jesse's mom not coming forward with what her nine-year-old had told her back then, I think about it in two different ways. From a prosecutor's perspective, of course, I'm thinking, why didn't she go to the police? It's one of those things that may have gotten this case the momentum it needed to be solved all those decades ago, at least

potentially. Also, there's that human element. And on that level, we can empathize with the fact that she was having so many of her own issues personally. She had just gotten someone out that she really needed out of her life and her daughter's. And to make that charge may well have brought him back in and that she worried for herself and her daughter that going forward might subject them to some sort of retaliation. So her approach was very simple. She was honest with the investigators and said she quite literally was afraid for her life if her ex found out that she went to police with what her daughter had told her. So that was the reason when Jesse told her that she did nothing.

She makes the decision, which she later deeply regretted, to tell Jesse, well, it's okay. The police will investigate what happened to Corey and they'll take care of it and doesn't take Jesse to the police and tells her that they're just, they're not going to say anything about it. And they don't. There definitely is something to a credibility factor just when you are talking to someone face to face, there's either the ring of truth or not. And Alan and his investigators did find the story believable, but they knew there was still more work to be done if they could ever even get to the point of making an arrest. So they approached Annette's niece to try to corroborate Jesse's story, but she had claimed that she had no recollection of the scene that Jesse witnessed.

So at this point, Alan just knew what had to happen next, and that was, you may have guessed it, speaking with Annette herself. But the bigger challenge was going to be figuring out how. How are we going to approach an interview with Annette? How do you approach somebody out of the blue? How do you get that person to talk? But talk she did. This almost killed me 25 years ago. Literally almost killed me. Allen and his team of investigators had started to strategize the best way to approach Annette.

They didn't want to let her know, of course, that Jesse had witnessed her confession decades prior. So what reason could they give her for wanting to speak? At this point, investigators have to keep their cards close to the vest and be very strategic about what information they reveal and that they don't reveal. One of the things that was a little bit more difficult than I anticipated was there's a limit to how many people you can go out and

interview without really giving away that you are going to file a charge. And you have to balance getting good information from the defendants and completely losing the element of surprise, so to speak. So they decided to rely on what they already knew about Annette. And that was that in the days and years following Corey's murder, Annette had cooperated with police and even expressed interest in wanting to help catch the person who had murdered Corey. Knowing this, investigators decided the best approach was a casual one. They would tell her that there were developments in the case, which there were, of course,

and wanted to talk to her about them, but their approach would be critical. Annette agreed to meet with the agent at the sheriff's office for a talk. We're going to play you audio from that meeting. Now, the quality isn't as high as we'd like to typically hear, but we thought it was important to share regardless. Since you brought up Corey, tell me how you first met him. Do you remember when you first met him?

I first met Corey when he was 16 and I was 25, and it was friendship at that point. I don't know how legally, but he bartended at length. I think you alluded to the fact that's going to progress to something more than that. How long does that take for that to become romantic or sexual? Three years. We didn't have sex at that time. He took me home from the bar one night and we messed around kissing in the car. So, Scott, let's just talk for a moment about the rapport and how important that is for the agent to build specifically here.

We talk about that a lot, about going into an interview with somebody and making them feel at ease so they can open up and they talk. And, you know, you start off by building that rapport. And that's exactly what happened here. They wanted to get her to open up and confirm the things that they already knew from just reading the case file, including important stories about Corey's wandering eye. I didn't think it was going to last, to be perfectly honest. He was so much younger than me, and he slept with anything that walked through the door. Then the agent moves to asking about Jody, Corey at the top of my list for words that time. Okay.

You know, I thought it was interesting, the wording and the way that she talked about this here. It's like she's really minimizing or downplaying the relationship between Corey and who we know is his fiancée. I mean, just think of the way that she says it. Like, you know, I don't know if this was a childhood form of engagement or not. It just sounds like someone who hasn't been able to maybe ever wrap their head around the fact that he had asked somebody else to marry him. But it's still in line with what was already known. But what she tells the agent next was something he didn't expect. We had talked about skipping town. In fact, the following Saturday,

the week after he died, we were supposed to go to Branson to look at Mars for sale. Corey had talked about leaving Jodi. You guys were, I mean, implicit in the fact that you guys were going to run away. Not unless Liberty wasn't talking

about leaving her. I don't think you would have broken up with her. But you had plans to run off to Brandon. Right. I'm guessing you're not taking her with. No. When Annette had been interviewed back in 1992, she'd given the impression that the relationship between her and Corey was really much more casual than intimate.

But now she's saying that they had plans to run away together, which, of course, sounds anything but casual. She really lays it on like she was in love with him and knew that there were other women in his life, but there was just something about him. And she was hoping that they'd go to Branson and this would work. And her original interviews with law enforcement about Corey certainly supported the view that they had a relationship, but she definitely made it sound a lot stronger in the follow-up interviews. You know, Scott, when you hear her talking about the relationship, you know, it sounds very much more one-sided or lopsided than she is willing to admit to.

What was your take about the actuality of the relationship between Annette and Corey? I like that word, actuality, because I think she really wants to make it clear to investigators that she had real feelings for Corey, and that affection didn't and really couldn't turn to violence. So I think she wanted to state her position right there,

that if you're thinking that I was involved, I'm not your person. My plans were more about running away together with Corey because I had deep feelings for him. But I think, too, it's almost the investigator. I have to think of them, again, and I've used this analogy before, it's like reeling in the fish

because the more she talks about how cemented their relationship was, that, you know, no, no, no, they were quite serious. They were going to run away together. Well, investigators knew that that just wasn't the truth. So they're just letting her talk and talk and talk to see where it gets them. Did you like the idea of going with him, moving with him? Yes. Tell me about that. I loved Corey dearly. I really did. He wasn't for one person. And Ken Sandy, and I talked about it in depth,

his analogy was, when Corey died, he was with Jody. I was going to be Jody. I was going to be the next Jody. And then there was going to be another Jody. So when asked about those statements, Annette went on to say that that was based on a conversation she had with a friend. But to investigators, they really thought that Annette seemed to hang on to this idea of becoming the next Jody. You know, I mean, for me, saying that she was going to be the next Jodi certainly raises a few BRFs for

me, as I always say. And it starts to point to potentially a motive for why Annette would want to kill Corey. But investigators wanted to continue the conversation with Annette for just a little bit longer. Just think about it. The interview is gaining useful information or intel who, by the end of the interview, could turn out to be your lead person of interest. Annette is currently being cooperative and agreeing to speak out of a desire to supposedly help the case. It makes sense to keep speaking with Annette

as long as you can to get as much information out of SIGA as you can get. Annette stops that interview. And it was interesting that she was really trying to put time limits on that whole interaction. You know, she agreed to do a follow-up interview soon after, and then was very hard to get a hold of, would not communicate. So he eventually just showed up at her house to interview her more. And it makes sense why she had been playing hard to get, right? She was clearly uncomfortable based on where the conversation had went. So now she's somewhat avoiding them.

Because during that first interview, the way that she talked about the relationship, well, when we view it now, she helped paint the picture of this possible motive that she, it was this unrequited love, if you will, that we know in actuality wasn't being returned. So if that's giving them motive, their next need to turn their conversation to opportunity. Now, this is probably where, where for me the case takes an interesting turn. Let's talk about timeline. According to Annette, she said she woke up around 730 to work at a roofing job for a friend. I just remember being on the roof and being in misery because I had the biggest hangover you can possibly imagine. You may be thinking she got up

and went to work as a roofer. You know, what's strange about that? Well, it certainly raised the eyebrows of another man who was working on the roof that day along with her. He says, I'm ripping the shingles off this house. Had no idea anybody was going to be going to a roofing job. I had no idea who she was. She showed up not dressed to be working on a roof. And she's supposed to help me rip shingles off for a while. He says this woman makes this kind of half effort to pull shingles. He has to show her how to do it with a shovel.

And she's there for like an hour. And then some woman picks her up and they drive away. So Annette says she was picked up by her sister-in-law and that they'd run a few errands in Iowa City. And just the reminder, this sister-in-law is the woman she is living with. Remember that the house that these statements were apparently made at? Well, that belonged to the sister-in-law who she's with. And so on the day of Corey's murder, Annette had to do this sort of unplanned strange stop at this roofing job that she'd never been to before. And now the two of them are running errands. But investigators taking and listening to the statement, they just weren't buying it. Out of the blue, Annette has a hour-long roofing career that starts hours after she's fallen asleep in bed, after drinking all day, wakes up a few hours later, is a roofer for an hour, and then goes with her sister to Iowa City to run errands.

None of that makes any sense. Unless you think Annette has decided she's going to go put a vicious beating on Corey and is trying to create some sort of alibi where people see her in different places. So Scott, do you buy her alibi so far? I know my answer. It looks staged to me, making extra efforts to be seen and offer opportunities for investigators to confirm her alibi because she's basically saying, yeah, I was on top of this roof. It's easy to prove. I was ripping up tiles and there was this guy with me

and he saw me and I handed him tools. So just run over to him, ask him the questions and clear me. Then she goes on to say that at some point in between the roofing job and the running errands with her sister-in-law that she and her sister-in-law made a stop at Corey's home. And you left for Iowa City around approximately 10 a.m. And you said on the way to Iowa City, you made a stop at Corey's.

Oh, okay. I thought that was on the way back. Tell me about that. Did you get to talk to Corey? No. Okay. And why was that? Did he not want me about that. Did you get to talk to Corey? No. Okay. And why was that? Did he not want to talk? He didn't answer the door. He didn't answer the door?

Okay. There's your record scratch. And it is exactly that. Admit what you have to. Deny what you can. So not only does she place herself at Corey's house on the day that he's murdered, but we know that's right in the five-hour window that the police believe the murder happened. And so why does she do that? Well, again, remember, it's this very rural area. So if the farmer, remember, who saw the two people outside of the house saw her,

she likely saw him too. Okay, so I'm going to walk this statement into your office. I mean, look what I've collected so far within this case. And especially this last interview with Annette about this alibi, that's going to be at the top of my folder. And I walk into your office and I say, Anasiga, I want you to follow my recommendation to press charges. What would you do? Well, I'm not doing anything quickly. You need to really go through it all and show me all the pieces because this one, like just looking at it, I can already think of so many hurdles that will happen in the courtroom. But I also think that here is a case that is likely never going to get better. And it is leading me down only one path. And that is that Annette is the person responsible for Corey's death.

So I think at that point, I'd probably say, you know what? It's time. Let's take that shot. And it's time to press charges. That's good because that's exactly what Alan thought. He felt he had more than enough to move forward. And he decided that he did have enough probable cause to authorize an arrest. I think Annette's interviews really helped that

and really solidified that picture that we could draw for the jury of her motive. But I was to the point where the case is never going to get any stronger. We're either going to pull this trigger or never do it. So we arrested Annette for murder in the first degree, which under Iowa law is a Class A felony, punishable by life without

the possibility of parole. In March of 2019, 27 years after Corey's body had been found, the case would finally head to trial and a jury would have to decide whether or not Annette was the person responsible for his murder. I knew it was going to be a very hard case. It turned in some ways on the word of a nine-year-old, even though there was a lot more to that, a lot more. But I felt like we had a righteous case that was never going to get any better and it needed to be filed. During the trial, Allen laid out evidence against Annette, the farmer that placed two people in Corey's driveway at the same time Annette and her sister-in-law were there. Annette's desire to run away with Corey and take the place of his fiancée.

And most importantly, he put Jesse on the stand to testify about the night she saw Annette admit to killing Corey. Then he put the girl's mother on the stand to corroborate her story and explain why she never brought it to police. After all the evidence was in, Allen rested his case. The jury went back to deliberate and what happened next stunned everyone. It was a hung jury. And not just that, it was 11 to 1 to acquit. You find out they're 11 to 1 to acquit. It's like, oh my God, you want to talk about having

a gut check moment as a prosecutor. I find it interesting that here you had 11 jurors who wanted to acquit her. And that is probably a devastating blow to a prosecutor in the courtroom, thinking that they presented the best case they possibly could. Well, the most devastating blow to a prosecutor is to get an acquittal. So at least a hung jury gives you the potential of doing it again. Now, it is beyond frustrating. And I have had hung juries myself more than one. And one of the things we always want to know is what is the split? Because again, if it's 11 to one to convict, well, then you're like, okay, I can basically hopefully present the same case and maybe tweak something.

But here you have 11 people that whether they thought she didn't do it or just that they didn't have the type of evidence they could rely on, well, now that is really something that Allen has to consider if he is going to go back into the courtroom and try this again. Part of it is freeing in that you think, OK, it's not going to get any worse. Well, it could get a little bit worse. It could get one vote worse. But I think it gave me a really good perspective

on how to have round two with Annette Cahill. The jury in the trial against Annette Cahill for the murders of Corey Winnikee had hung with 11 members wanting to acquit. But there was one person on that jury who believed she was guilty. And that was enough to send Allen back to the drawing board to prepare for a retrial. So when you have a hung jury, it's not automatically that it goes right back for a retrial. First of all, it depends why the jury was hung and what happens, whether it's a mistrial. But here it's just a straight hung jury. And again, it goes into what, if any, information can be gleaned about what the jury has to say. Here they were able to get so far

as they knew it was 11 to 1 to acquit. And again, whether they thought she didn't do it or whether they couldn't rely on the evidence presented, it certainly gave Allen a lot to think about. In Corey's case, Allen knew he had to make some changes going into the second trial. You know, this is a righteous case. We're going to prosecute this. And I'm going to figuratively throw out my trial notebook and start over and just completely rework it. Before he could do that, he really had to go back and analyze and figure out what might have gone wrong the first time around. When he first brought charges against Annette, Alan experienced a lot of backlash. Annette was a mother and a grandmother

with a passion for knitting and deep roots in her community. She was not a drug user. She was not a drinker. She was a very different person. You know, the fact that she became a different person, had a different life, doesn't excuse what she did in any way. But I think the people who were shocked, who knew Annette, were shocked for legitimate reasons. And now, obviously, there is no typical look for someone who commits murder. I think we have seen that. It is every shape and size and every walk of life. Unfortunately, people commit these crimes. But, you know, it is interesting, Scott, this idea that she is no longer the person by the time of trial than she was way back then and how, if at all, it should factor in. And certainly as a prosecutor, I should say that it doesn't,

certainly not in the charging, maybe in the sentencing. Yeah, but, you know, we've all heard the term evil eye, someone who looks like they're capable of committing murder. And the truth, as you know, Anasik, is that's a great through line for a movie or a show about serial killers. But killers come in all shapes and sizes. And you cannot know what's in the mind or in their heart by looking at them. And with Annette's appearance in court, she was a grandmother.

She was a mother. She was a pillar of the community. So just based on that, you cannot be thinking, oh, this is, the woman's not capable of it. It's not possible. And it all comes back to the community. So just based on that, you cannot be thinking, oh, this is, the woman's not capable of it. It's not possible. And it all comes back to the facts. So Alan did have to deal with it. You know, he has to convince this jury that the woman who's now sitting in this chair, who on the outside appeared sympathetic, that she actually had it in her to not only kill someone, but literally beat them to death. And he also had to do that with no physical evidence tying her to the crime. I can't tell you how many times

in the lead up to all this, when I'm telling somebody, oh yeah, you know, we have this case pending and murder happened in 1992. How many people said, oh, did you get some DNA? No? Wish we had. Thanks. No, no DNA. We have 0.0 new clues. So with 0.0 pieces of physical evidence, he relied heavily in the first trial on Jessie and her testimony. And he'd been called out for it. The news media ran articles leading up to the case and the trial with titles like, and I quote, grandmother faces murder trial and case built largely on testimony by child. And again, I quote, child's memory could send Iowa grandmother to jail for murder. I think I made a mistake of strategy for that first trial in that it's like, look at what Jesse Becker gave us. And then here's some additional proof. Now, it's easy to get excited about Jesse Becker as a witness. Okay, she is a dream witness.

But it's a lot to put that whole case on her shoulders. And I put too much of the case on her shoulders. Allen clearly had his work cut out for him with a retrial. But then, once again, he got yet another unexpected call. And I mean this seriously. I think God sent Jesse Becker to us because we needed help. And I think he looked down at us and said, these boys need a little bit more help.

I'm going to send somebody else. So if Jesse had been surprise number one, what happened next would be surprise number two. And it came from Corey's mom. Following the first trial, Corey's mom had a conversation with an acquaintance just outside of the courtroom and was shocked by her words. My son was really surprised that he wasn't called to testify at the trial because he talked to the police and they never called him to testify about what he had to say. And Corey's mom called investigators. Hey, why didn't you guys call this person, Scott Payne?

Because you interviewed him before the trial. And we're all looking at each other like, who's Scott Payne? Back in 1992, Scott Payne was friends with Annette's family and a regular visitor at their farmhouse. He was questioned after the murder, but didn't have much information to share. But like Jesse, Scott had been holding on to a secret ever since. So what he told us was

what would have been the day after the murder. Annette and Jackie show up at the property and appear upset, concerned. Annette gets a bag of clothes out of the trunk of the car and dumps it over by a burn pit. And Scott tells us that he sees blood on the clothes. And they get a gas can. They soak the clothes in gas and burn them.

I'm just going to point out that the woman he refers to who's with Annette Jackie, well, that's the same woman she had shopped with and gone to Corey's house with on the day of the murder. But getting back to what Scott Payne said, his story raises similar questions to Jesse's, like why had he held on to this information for so long? Well, at the time of the murders, Scott was not in a good place in his life. He told investigators that he avoided the police as much as possible. So maybe that explains the delay. But now what about the clothing itself? What made him so sure when he saw that that day that it was blood and not paint?

Alan had the same question. And he gave me the best answer I've ever gotten from a witness ever. And he said, because I used to be a sticker. Do you know what that is? And I said, no. And he said, I would work at the packing plant and I would be the one who would stick the pig in the neck to bleed him out. So, yeah, he's seen a lot of blood in his life. He probably came home with blood on his clothes every day.

Do you think that is completely reasonable, Anasiga, to assume that it's the truth? To me, it's one of those things that you just can't make it up. You know, who's going to come up with a story like that? That makes perfect sense that someone whose occupation has him face to face with actual blood day in and day out, well, he is going to be able to identify that as the material much more or more likely than someone that isn't. So it does go to me to that not only a ring of truth, but accuracy based on who he was and the reason he gave for knowing what was on her clothing. For investigators, when it comes to judging the validity of a statement,

especially one that comes decades after the fact, normally we've talked about how investigators must corroborate information, finding all the details that may line up with that story. But at the very same time, it's important for investigators to disprove something, meaning pulling apart a statement to try to find the holes, or what are the inconsistencies with here, Scott's statement, that could easily be confirmed? And does it hold up? That's an important way to approach these situations when you're trying to judge the validity of someone's statement, especially decades later.

And as Alan described it, sitting and speaking with Scott Payne gave him the confidence that he was someone that he would use now at trial number two. And if you're thinking about Scott's mom's statement that her son had spoken with police and then hadn't been called for the first trial? Well, it turns out that he had apparently been approached and spoken with a defense investigator. He had just thought that it was the police. So police and prosecutors really didn't know about his observations until his mom then spoke with Corey's mother post-trial number one. But they certainly now knew about him for trial number two.

Allen takes the jury back to the night before Corey's murder. I want to use the vantage point of the defendant. And you might think that sounds weird. Why would you want the jury to sympathize with the defendant? Well, I don't. But what I do want is that jury to put themselves sitting in the front seat of Corey Winneke's Cadillac, thinking about how you're about to have sex, and then you're going to run away on Saturday, and everything's going to be better. And then you see Corey walk out of the bar with another woman. I want that jury to think how they would feel in that moment.

And a lot of them are going to think, I might do something bad. Annette seemed to be in that mindset as she tried to get out of the car with Corey and Wendy. By the side of the road, after I made him stop the car, I threw this stuffed animal on the dash. I said, I'm walking home because he had this other girl with us. She had a kid by him. And I was mad. I was incredibly mad. But then, Annette flips and throws yet another twist into her story from that night. And I don't even know if I've ever, ever mentioned this before. That was the very first night Corey ever told me he loved me. And I can't look back at that with any joy.

Alan is slowly and deliberately painting the picture from Annette's perspective. She was in love with Corey to the point of obsession. And when she couldn't have him to herself, she got mad. And to say she got mad was an understatement. This is a woman who at that point felt used, maybe even abused. And she saw red. Why were you mad? Do you know the old saying, fish or cut bait?

The same way that I had taunted him with, I'm going to a concert with someone else. I wanted really badly to fish or cut bait, but unless he told me to go to hell, in reality, I would have put up with this shit for years. I think this is the fish or cut bait moment, which really shows the anger that was driving her the night and into the following day.

And for Alan, her motive to want to kill Corey had been made crystal clear. And that's what Alan conveyed to this now second jury. I think at that moment is when Annette realized that she would never be anything other than Corey's sure thing at Barclose. That she's nothing more than that to him. I think Annette was so angry and so hurt by what Corey did that she was going to teach him a lesson. She went over there at a minimum with the intent to deliver a vicious beating,

if not take it all the way, going there with the intent to kill him. What she did do was hit him in the head 12 times and crush his skull. And with that, Alan rested his case. Now it was in the hands of the jury. Would they agree with Alan's version of how Corey was killed? Or would this trial be just another piece in the puzzle for a murder that just couldn't be solved? After a day and a half of deliberation, the jury sent a note to the judge.

You know, I didn't know what was going to happen. We had given it our best shot. But the jury's out for quite a while. They tell the judge they're deadlocked, which was kind of a gutting feeling. So here Allen is having had a hung jury the first time around. Not only that, but 11 to 1 to acquit. And now he has redone his entire case. He has a new witness. He has structured it differently. And now they send out a note that they are hung once again. Like there is a feeling of frustration and just probably a fear factor

that this is a case that is never going to get past a group of people that cannot agree. It wasn't over yet. The judge decided to send the jury members home for the night going to get past a group of people that cannot agree. It wasn't over yet. The judge decided to send the jury members home for the night and asked them to come back the next day to give it another go in the morning. And they returned a verdict later that day of second-degree murder. And with that, the Winnikee family could at least put the criminal justice piece to rest in this horrible chapter of their lives. And that relief was felt by Alan too. should because the possibility of court involvements and then waiting for that process and what the outcome is, it just soaks up all the energy that you should be devoting to grieving the loss that you've suffered. So closure is not the right word for that. I don't know what the right

word is, but it's really rewarding to be able to be a part of helping a family with that process. Something that we haven't talked about yet, but is really kind of vital, I think, to understand the grief felt by the Winnikeys is that they didn't just lose a child, they lost their only child. And that just is beyond any parent's worst nightmare. And, you know, I've talked about this before. Having seen it, I had a cousin that was killed who was the only child of her parents. And I just watched them become shells of themselves for the remainder of their lives. And I just always think that beyond the devastation of murder, when it is the only child that a parent loses, it is just beyond any grief that I can even envision.

When I think about this case, really two things come to mind. First, Corey. To those who knew him, Corey was always ready with a kind word and a funny story, especially to those he served at Wink's Bar. And then I think about Jesse Becker, who made the decision, one that rocked the town of West Liberty, and answered a decades-old question, who killed Corey? Only to learn it was one of their own, shattering the tranquility of a small town, casting a new, unanticipated light on a mystery that had haunted the community for years. In thinking about this case, I just keep coming back to Corey's parents. They also had to watch all parts of his life aired out in a courtroom while they also tried

to process his violent death. They were and they are proud of their son and the person that he was overall. But it also goes to that they knew he was human. But to let all that be aired in a public forum, it couldn't have been easy. But they sat there with strength and with dignity and grace. And my hope for them is that to this day,

that they still have that strength and the support of those close to them and that grace and that their love for Corey now sits peacefully in their hearts. 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 the executive producer.

So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No!