Cold Case Files - The Baiting Game

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Investigators in Virginia have a the body of a murdered sailor, prime suspects and a timeline that fits their narrative, but they will still need patience to see justice served. Progressive: Progressive.com  ZocDoc: Check out Zocdoc.com/CCF and download the Zocdoc app for free! 

On a fall afternoon in 1992, a suspicious dumping is reported by some early morning hunters in the foothills of Virginia. Within 20 minutes, Henry County Detective Ronnie Minter walks into the woods to investigate. I came out and stopped and walked up this logging road and went up to where this pile of wood and a couch was. And underneath this, you could see the deteriorating head of a human being. The head is attached to the body of a man wrapped in a bed sheet and badly decomposed. Officer Minter wastes no time calling homicide. It was obvious that he didn't get under this pile of wood by himself. We handled this from the very beginning as a homicide because of the circumstances.

Investigators need to put a name to their victim. They follow the body to the county morgue, hoping an examination of the corpse itself will provide them with an answer. On the morning of October 3rd, Captain Kemi Nestor examines Henry County's John Doe. The body is extremely badly decomposed, as bad as any I've ever seen in my 20-some year career. Fingerprints offer Nestor the best chance of putting a name to the corpse, that is, if the captain is able to salvage a print from the rapidly decomposing hands.

We were concerned that prior to the body being delivered on Monday to the medical examiner, that the skin tissue might be further deteriorated or damaged or destroyed. Therefore, the decision was made to collect it at the morgue versus let it wait to the time the autopsy actually occurred. Using an X-Acto knife, Nestor cuts above the first layer of John Doe's skin, called the epidermal glove. He then slips the transparent skin off John Doe's right hand and into a jar of formaldehyde. The fingertips are sent 50 miles north

to the medical examiner's office in Rollinook. Forensic scientist Lyle Shaver is given the task of evaluating John Doe's harvested skin. He likes what he sees. I was much more excited to have that glove print, that outer layer, because I know that that contains the first layer of skin, which is the easiest to work with. Shaver identifies the right thumb as his best chance for recovering a usable print, but first he needs to transfer the friction ridges onto paper. He does this by slipping on the skin of a dead man.

It's just like putting on a glove. In this particular instance, I had the right thumb that I knew I was dealing with by the shape of the friction ridge skin. I was able to place that over my thumb, and you just lay that over your finger, and you're able to roll it as if it were your own finger. Wearing the skin of John Doe's right thumb, Shaver gently rolls the fingerprint ridges and a clear ridge outline appears. The transfer is a success. Shaver enters the print into the automated fingerprint identification system. In a matter of minutes, AFIS compares the lift against more than 10 million prints and produces a hit. 35-year-old Jerry McClendon. That was a big break in the case that we identified the unknown body, which led us to look for where his whereabouts were.

And we looked and found that he was from the city of Virginia Beach in Virginia and that he was a sailor. McClendon was reported AWOL 10 days earlier from the Little Creek Naval Base. Nestor contacts the Virginia Beach police and tells him that he has found their missing sailor. Unfortunately, he's dead. On October 6th, Virginia Beach detectives Pat Tucker and Doug Williams knock on the door of Jerry McClendon's home. No one answers. This was important. We had to make contact with somebody. Look in the windows. The house appeared to be empty, which was very unusual.

With no warrant to enter the home, Tucker and Williams prepared to leave when they noticed a mailbox by the curb. And we looked at each other and said, why not? So we opened up the mailbox and we noticed that the letters were addressed to Jerry McClendon, some of them, but there were also correspondence in that mailbox addressed to David DeShazo and a Roxanne Latham. Roxanna Latham and David DeShazo, the two names are passed on

to the Henry County Sheriff's Department to the desk of Captain Kemi Nestor. Nestor runs both names against his local police databank and gets a hit. David DeShazo's name pops up on an old police report. Even more interesting is DeShazo's current home address, Apartment B in the Log Cabin Complex in Henry County, Virginia. Detectives decide they need to talk to DeShazo to find out two things.

First, why is he receiving mail at a dead man's apartment? And second, why does he now live less than two miles from where that man's body was discovered? In the early evening hours of October 6th, David DeShazo welcomes Captain Nestor and Detective Adams into his living room. His fiancée, Roxanna Latham, stands by his side. The couple tell detectives they boarded with Jerry McClendon in Virginia Beach up until two weeks ago. Now Henry County is their home. They made the 250-mile move west to be close to DeShazo's family, and detectives note, close to the dumping ground for Jerry McClendon's body. I think they were very cautious in what they said, calculated,

and I think they were nervous underneath. David and Roxanna claimed they last saw Jerry McClendon two weeks earlier in Virginia Beach and had only recently learned of his death from the local newspaper reports. I asked them, you know, why didn't you contact us when you found out that this was Jerry McClinton from Virginia Beach and you used to live with him? The answer was more or less we were afraid that you'd think we had something to do with it. This is exactly what detectives are beginning to believe.

I had only been an investigator at the time for about seven months, but I could tell that they had something to do with it. They were acting too nervous about it. Circumstance has placed David DeShazo and Roxanna Latham in the crosshairs of a murder investigation. Hard evidence, however, would be required to keep them there. Cold case detectives return to their best piece of evidence,

the body of the victim, to see if it can tell them anything more about their killer. Dr. William Maslow is the assistant chief medical examiner for Western Virginia. For 22 years, he has been opening up bodies, hunting for clues, and extracting information from the dead. Most of the deaths that we investigate are reasonably straightforward. Each pathologist has three or four every year that are rather mystifying. And this one was somewhat mystifying. The body of sailor Jerry McClendon was discovered dumped on a trash heap in rural Virginia.

From the onset, detectives have treated the case as a homicide. A review of the body, however, presents a troubling question. If McClendon was murdered, exactly how did it happen? We didn't find any evidence that this person had died of any sort of violent injury, such as a beating or a gunshot or a stabbing or anything like this, because these he would be able to see. On October 5th, Maslow cuts into McClendon's body, hoping to find more subtle signs of murder. He immediately notes swelling along the inner lining of the throat and damage to the lungs,

both consistent with a loss of oxygen and death by asphyxiation. Toxicology adds yet another twist, reporting high levels of a tranquilizing drug called aprazolam, or as it's commonly known, Xanax. This indicates that the person, you know, had probably been in a relaxed state. Perhaps he'd been groggy. Perhaps they'd been asleep, passed out, if you will. Dr. Maslow's findings pinpoint the means of murder.

Someone blocked Jerry McClendon's airways and killed him. Detectives now return to what they believe is the killing ground, the victim's apartment in Virginia Beach. For the second time in two weeks, Virginia Beach detectives Doug Williams and Pat Tucker arrive outside 1764 Solar Lane. This time, however, McClendon's family has granted them permission to enter the building. The house is deserted except one room.

Inside Jerry McClendon's bedroom, detectives find signs of a struggle. You know, it certainly, it looked like something had happened. The bed is stripped, a pillowcase on the floor is stained with what appears to be bodily fluid. The fabric design matches the bed sheet found covering McClendon's naked body in Henry County. The story the room offers is consistent with Dr. Maslow's findings. With a pillow as his or her murder weapon, the killer appears to have smothered McClendon in his own bedroom, then dumped his body 250 miles away in the backwoods of Virginia. We didn't know why the murder had been perpetrated against Jerry McClendon. We can always speculate.

When homicide detectives begin to speculate about motive, one of the first things they follow is the money. Tucker and Williams pull McClendon's bank and credit reports. They find the victim's ATM account was very active within three Williams pull McClendon's bank and credit reports. They find the victim's ATM account was very active within three days surrounding McClendon's first disappearance. And luckily for us, the ATM machines that were used in 1992 had cameras. Detectives request all the photos taken when McClendon's account was activated and cross their fingers that their killer isn't camera shy. In the back of the Lynn Haven Mall

is an automated cash machine. Hidden above the console, a camera snaps pictures of each transaction. On September 22nd, the day Jerry McClendon disappeared, these images were captured. The first shows David DeShazo withdrawing $200 from McClendon's account. The second depicts DeShazo again, but this time his fiancée Roxanna Latham is with him.

This time, $100 is taken from McClendon's account. Over the next three days, the pair would return four times, six transactions in all, totaling $1,500. Investigators know Latham and DeShazo well. The engaged couple roomed with Jerry McClendon in Virginia Beach. The pair moved to Henry County the same week McClendon's body was found within two miles of their new home.

The coincidence is alarming. Detectives suspect DeShazo and Latham killed McClendon for his money, but without physical evidence, their case for murder is lacking. The next step we needed to take was to separate the two suspects. We knew that they were engaged. We knew that they were in love.

And as long as they stayed together, we would have less chance of getting anything out of either one of them. Detectives decide to arrest only Roxanna for credit card fraud, hoping some time in a holding cell might coax a confession out of the 29-year-old suspect. We wanted to hear what she had to say. We wanted to let her talk.

Tell us what you know. Tell us what went on. And then we were going to, you know, feel it out from there. On November 19th, Roxanna Latham is arrested in Henry County and driven 250 miles to Virginia Beach, and five hours away from her fiancé, David DeShazo. That transaction took place on the 25th, Roxanne. Seven hours after she was first placed in handcuffs, Detective Tucker and Williams confront Roxanna Latham about Jerry McClendon's murder.

I don't understand. I really don't. I am totally lost on this. I don't understand. I really don't. You, I am totally lost on this. I know absolutely nothing. We basically went on the view with her that she was a woman that was kept down. She had had a hard life. Go ahead and tell us what happened. But I think you know more than what you're telling us.

I'm telling you everything I know. I am telling you everything I know. I am telling you everything I know. What more do you want? She could turn the tears on and off at will. She could cry at a moment's notice, and she could dry up at a moment's notice. Roxanna tells detectives she knows nothing about McClendon's death. The questioning then turns from murder to her relationship with David DeShazo. She basically, in a nutshell, told us that, you know, her and David were an item.

They loved each other. She would do anything for him. He would do anything for her. I heard you say that you love him more than your life itself. Am I right? Yes. Do you remember saying that? Yes, I do. So therefore, what does that tell me? It tells me that you're ready to do anything to help David, but you've got to look out for something else besides David. Okay. You've got to look out for Roxanne. For five hours, detectives hammered away at Roxanna.

For five hours, she stays the course, admitting nothing but love for her fiancé and never once deviating from her claim of innocence. Roxanna offers no new information to police and they're forced to release her into the waiting arms of David DeShazo. Frustrated investigators can only sit back and wait for the relationship to fail. And we knew that there would have to be some type of a breakup there and that the breakup probably was going to end up being a nasty breakup and that would play to our favor and it was a waiting game. Six years later, investigators are still waiting and the investigation into Jerry McClendon's death has gone cold.

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Just download the app and start streaming. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. Cold case detectives suspect Jerry McClendon's roommates, Roxanna Latham and David DeShazo, had a hand in his death. ATM photos show the couple withdrawing McClendon's roommates, Roxanna Latham and David DeShazo, had a hand in his death. ATM photos show the couple withdrawing McClendon's cash on September 22, 1992, one day after McClendon was last seen alive. The couple claims Jerry was alive at the time of the withdrawals and consented to the transactions. Detectives believe otherwise.

If we could narrow down and specifically say when he was killed, that would show that this withdrawal of money was subsequent to the death. It would also show a motive for the killing. Detectives need to narrow down the time of death at a murder case six years cold. One man may be able to help them. He's been studying death for more than 30 years, and his story unfolds in Knoxville, Tennessee. The University of Tennessee football stadium stands tall along the banks of the Tennessee River. On game days, over 100,000 fans fill these seats, unaware that behind the west side bleachers, beneath the chairs, beneath the graders, resides a doctor of death. Dr. William Bass is the founder

of the Anthropological Research Facility, or as the students like to call it, the Body Farm, where the dead go to be studied. The idea was hatched in 1977 when Dr. Bass was asked to determine the time of death on a freshly dug up body. And looking at the K that I knew at that time, I said that, and looking at the body, that this was a 24 to 28-old white male who'd been dead about a year. The doctor was a bit off. The body was later identified as a Civil War soldier, William Shye, a colonel from the Confederate Army who died in the Battle of Nashville in 1864. Colonel Shye was a 26-year-old white male.

So far, I'm 100% correct. Except Colonel Shye had been dead 113 years. I only missed it 112 years. It's got something wrong here. The gross inaccuracy was a shock to Dr. Bass's expertise, as well as his ego. It also served as a catalyst for the creation of the body farm. So I decided, you know, we better do something about this. And so we set up what we call the Anthropology Research Facility, or what most people call the body farm. 25 years later, Dr. Bass still runs the body farm, the only facility of its kind dedicated to studying the rate of human decay.

Well, you're going to see bodies in all sorts of disrepair. The major research projects that go on out here are either master's thesis or doctoral dissertations. They're projects that the students have come up with. Each body represents a scientific test. Each tests an experiment in human decay. The one over here is an experiment going on on bodies that are clothed or unclothed.

Clothing tends to either slow down or speed up the decay process, depending on whether it's in the sun or the shade, things like this, how heavy the body is. We're finding that bodies lose about five pounds a day in the rapid decay stage. Dr. Bass and his students have tested the rate of decomposition in hundreds of conditions. They've learned more about human decay in their short years at the body farm than in the past 2,000. This body here under the tripods, we've been looking at how rapidly does a body lose weight when it dies. We do occasionally, we will reproduce a crime scene for law enforcement agents when there's no data.

What we've done is we've taken a body, tied it to the tree, and letting it decay normally to see how long that would take. At any given time, up to 30 bodies reside on this one-acre lot. Dr. Bass rarely says no to a donated corpse. To him, each death represents a new challenge. I never see a forensic case as a dead body. I see a forensic case as a challenge to me to see whether I have enough knowledge to figure out who that individual is and what happened to him. In 1998, Virginia Beach detectives present Dr. Bass and the body farm with a new challenge, pinpoint a date for Jerry McClendon's death from the 10-day span he was

listed as missing. I said, okay, this is what I need. I need the autopsy report, I need the crime scene photographs, and I need the police report, and I need the temperature. I need four things. Dr. Bass begins his assessment by studying crime scene photos and measuring the body's rate of decay. We looked at the body was bloating. There was skin slippage. There was hair slippage. Based solely on the body's decay, Dr. Bass can narrow McClendon's time of death

to no later than September 27, 1992, but that won't do for Virginia Beach. To make their case against Latham and DeShazo, cold case detectives need a date of death no later than the day the couple made their ATM withdrawals, September 22, 1992. Dr. Bass fine-tunes his analysis and turns his attention to bugs, specifically the fly larvae commonly known as maggots. They can very accurately predict the length of time since death. If you know the environmental conditions surrounding the time of the death and where that death occurred, maggots can be a very good indicator. Dr. Bass

knows flies are only active in temperatures over 52 degrees. He measures the maggot size from McClendon's autopsy photos, studies climatology reports from the third week of September 1992, and pinpoints the time of death to within 12 hours of the date police are looking for. He was killed shortly after he was last seen. And if that body was out there roughly the entire time he was dead or certainly at least 10 days out there. He said time of death is going to be probably the evening of the 21st maybe early morning hours of the 22nd and he was able to give us a time of death that we were never able to have before because the technology just was not there. Bass's findings confirmed that Jerry McClendon was already dead when Roxanna Latham and David DeShazo withdrew money from his account, adding a critical link in the circumstantial case for murder.

And at that point, David told me to grab Jerry's hand. And I told him, I said, David, I can't. He said, yes, you can, and you're going to do that. Billboards promote Virginia as the state for lovers. Not everyone in Virginia, however, has a vested interest in romance. In fact, members of the Virginia Beach Police Department have been hoping for one relationship to fail. They suspect David DeShazo and his fiancée, Roxanna Latham,

of suffocating their roommate, Navy Seaman Jerry McClendon, in 1992. For six years, the couple has professed their innocence and lived together in Henry County, Virginia. If we were going to break this up and get to the bottom of this, it would not be until after the two split up, if they ever split up. So it became, at that point, it became a waiting game. The waiting game pays off in 1998 when Special Agent Dan Rice from the Naval Criminal Investigative Services discovers the happy couple is no more. We figured that it was probably an acrimonious split, and it was probably a good time right now to make a move on her. Roxanna Latham has lost her fiancé to another woman.

Rice believes it might be the angle he needs to get Roxanna talking. He and Virginia Beach detective Pat Tucker drive 250 miles to Henry County, hoping to coax a tale of murder from a woman scorned. At 7.30 in the evening on June 9th, Roxanna Latham opens her door to find two cold case detectives standing on her stoop. As they sit at the kitchen table, Special Agent Rice explains their business.

So I said, we know that everything you've told us to date is a lie. And she sat there for about a minute and then she started to quiver and cry. And she said, if he ever finds out that I've told you anything, he'll kill me. I said, Roxanne, no one's going to kill you. And the only way to get rid of the guilt is to tell the story. And at that point, she began explaining that she was there when Jerry was killed,

but she did not take part. DeShazo did it, and she just watched. That's all that Roxanna remembers from the night Jerry McClendon died. Her story, however, raises as many questions as it answers. If David DeShazo alone did the killing, why didn't Roxanna come to the police earlier and of her own accord? And if she is truly innocent, why do police have photos of her and DeShazo using McClendon's ATM card to pilfer the dead man's account. The police reconvene with Roxanna two weeks later, this time in a more official setting. On June 23rd, Agent Rice and Detective Tucker once again sit down with Roxanna Latham.

As a video camera rolls, Roxanna now claims to have a better memory of the night Jerry McClendon died. There's a few things that I have remembered since that night, but there's still some things that are very fuzzy. All I will ask of you is just tell me, you know, as honestly as you can, what you do remember. Roxanna tells detectives David DeShazzo was jealous of McClendon and coveted his cash.

According to Roxanna, DeShazzo had talked of murder, but the threats never took until the night of September 22nd, when Roxanna Latham claims she walked into McClendon's bedroom to find her fiancé holding a pillow over McClendon's face. I looked at him and told him he had to be out of his freaking mind. But that was not the way I said it. What did you say to him? He had to be out of his freaking mind. Roxanna tells police she opened the bedroom door to a murder already in progress. As DeShazo struggled with McClendon, he yelled at Roxanna to help him.

According to Roxanna, she feared for her life and had no choice but to comply. And at that point, David told me to grab Jerry's hand. And I told him, I said, David, I can't. He said, yes, you can, and you're going to do this. And he said, when I get done here, you'll be next. Dan and I look at each other like, holy cow. I can't believe we're hearing this. It took us six years to get this, and now it's better than ever.

I took Jerry's hands off of David's from around David's wrists, because they were around David's wrists. And I put them down by his body. And then I walked out of the room. It's like putting together a puzzle. You know what happened, except you're missing three or four pieces.

And she was now filling those three pieces in, or four pieces in, and giving us, you know, the whole puzzle. Roxanna tells police she then helped to loot McClendon's ATM and dumped his body in Henry County, Virginia, because she was afraid of David DeShazo, afraid for her life. Is Roxanna Latham a scared and unwilling accomplice to murder, or did Roxanna herself kill McClendon and is now looking to pin the crime on her former fiancé? Cold case detectives suspect the truth lies somewhere in between. We needed to get David.

We knew he wouldn't talk to us. So we needed him, and we wanted to use her to get to him. Detectives believe if they get the couple talking to each other, the real story of McLennan's death might somehow emerge. Roxanna agrees to call her ex-fiancee as part of a phone sting. On the morning of June 8th, Roxanna calls David DeShazo.

He doesn't know she's calling from the first floor of the Salem Police Department. Hello, where's Mr. David, please? Um, Salem's next door. Can you go get him? This is kind of important, like an emergency. Um, all right, well, hold on. Thank you. As Roxanna waits, DeShazo's wife fetches her husband. Then, for the first time in six months, Roxanna and David speak. Hello? David. Yeah.

Hey, this is Roxanna. I'm sorry to bother you, but we have a problem. What? Virginia Beach Police left a card on my door last night, and then they called me at work this morning, and they're on their way here. What do you want me to say? About what? You know what I'm talking about.

I don't know nothing about that. David, come on, get real. I'm not going through what I went through six years ago. You don't know nothing about nothing? David, be honest with me. I'm saying, what are you not hearing? Detectives record and listen as Roxanna begins pushing for details of McClendon's murder. Well, explain to me, why did you do, why did we do this to begin with?

Why did it even happen? I don't know. See, like I said, you want to speak to little people, you probably recorded something. I ain't going to say no whole lot over the telephone. She told Dan and I, she said, well, you know, I can push his buttons. I know what buttons to push.

I know what buttons that would make him upset. And I know what to do. And sure enough, she pushed those buttons. And it worked like a charm. I don't want to go through this again. I can't do it. I have just now got my life back on track. I've got custody of my children.

And I'll be damned if I'm going to rot in jail somewhere for something I didn't do. Oh, 50-50. No, it was not. Yes, it was. It was 50-50. With those four words, David DeShazo not only implicates himself in McClendon's murder, but implicates Roxanna as a willing accomplice. The statement leaves detectives wondering,

are they dealing with one cold-blooded murderer or two? We thought he was still the main guy, but we also knew that she was much more involved and she had let us on from the start. David, I helped you. Roxanne! Roxanne! You can say your name over and over and over. Now I'm telling you.

And now I've been helping. Now you bring all this shit down on me, you'll go with me. I done told you to. Cold Case Files is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Let's face it, sometimes multitasking can be overwhelming, like when your favorite podcast is playing and the person next to you is talking and your car fan is blasting, all while you're trying to find the perfect parking spot. But then again, sometimes multitasking is easy, like quoting with Progressive Insurance. They do the hard work of comparing rates so you can find a great rate that works for you, even if it's not with them. Give their nifty comparison tool a try and you might just

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till the end for the check to come. We trade uncomfortable truths for comfortable lies, imaginary solutions to real problems. I'm James Sexton, host of Unlikely Sources. You may know me from my books or my many interviews, such as Soft White Underbelly, Lex Friedman, or one of the many other places I've shared my perspective on love, life, and the law. I know a divorce lawyer isn't the first person you think of for advice on how to keep your relationship strong, but wisdom is found in unexpected, counterintuitive places. In sickness, we see the value of health. The godfather, it can teach you more about business than an MBA. Fight club, it's actually about religion.

The most valuable practical wisdom comes from unlikely sources, and it's time we sit up and pay attention to what they can teach us. So if you're looking for compelling conversation, blunt talk about culture, religion, romance, and how to navigate life in the machine of modern society, I'll look forward to spending some time with you. I'm Jim Sexton. Unlikely Sources will be available May 28th. In July of 1998, Virginia Beach detectives believe they have found a rat. Roxanna Latham breaks a six-year silence and fingers her ex-fiancé David DeShazo for murder. In a videotaped statement, Roxanna claims she was forced to help DeShazo smother their roommate, Navy Seaman Jerry McClendon, or risk suffering the same fate. Roxanna's story sits uneasy with cold case detectives.

We weren't buying it. We led her to believe that we were, but we weren't buying it. To support her story, Roxanna agrees to call David from the police station. As cold case detectives listen, DeShazo implicates himself in the killing and reminds Roxanna that she was with him every step of the way. Do you hear me? It ain't gonna work. If I go to jail for life, you will damn sure be in jail for life. Roxanna's phone call is not going as she hoped. DeShazo begins to provide fresh details about the murder, details Roxanna never mentioned to the police. All right, whose medication is this?

Mine. All right. Who made the food? Who is this? Mine. All right. Who made the clue to who this is? No. For the first time, detectives hear Jerry McClendon might have been drugged the night he was killed, and that the person who did the drugging might have been Roxanna Latham. I was afraid she'd hang up the phone. So I just looked at her kind of nonchalantly and then looked back down. Well,

when I looked at her, her eyes as big as frying pans. Like, oh my God, they know. Tucker believes he's gotten the confession from David DeShazo and enough to implicate Roxanna as well. He calls in a SWAT team to arrest DeShazo and tells Roxanna to hang up the phone. David, they're here. Now they are? Yes, they are. Don't they're here. Now they are. Yes, they are. Don't tell them nothing, now you hear me? I'm gonna tell them.

Go. Roxanne, don't. Goodbye, David. Don't tell them. Still holding the phone, DeShazza was arrested outside his home in Henry County. Within six hours, he is at the Virginia Beach Police Station,

eager to give his version of the night Jerry McClendon was suffocated with the help of Roxanna Latham. David DeShazo has a story to tell about his ex-fiance's appetite for murder. I think the first thing out of David DeShazo's mouth, referenced this case was it wasn't his idea, that it was Roxanne Latham's. DeShazo claims Roxanna hated Jerry and often complained of McClendon's advances. Those complaints turned to threats on the night of September 22nd. The night began with Roxanna cooking spaghetti for dinner. According to DeShazo, the meal soon became a recipe for murder. She said, well, I just want a drug even. I was like, you have something to that effect. And I'm like, well, I don't have anything to...

She pulled out a whole bottle of wood oven, started crushing it up on the counter, and said, well, we'll put this in the spaghetti sauce. DeShazo claims he watched Roxanna empty her prescription bottle of Xanax into the simmering spaghetti sauce. She then poured the poisoned sauce onto a plate of pasta and fed the serving to Jerry McClendon. I watched her put enough shit in this man's spaghetti sauce

that you will not have to struggle. All right? What all did she put in there? There was a whole bottle of Xanax that I would get. Now, if you eat a whole bottle of Xanax, how much struggle are you going to get? The Xanax dosing explains how the couple was able to smother the 180-pound McClendon.

McClendon's autopsy report helps support the story. In the autopsy report, in the toxicology, it came back 48% aprazolam, which turned out to be a key ingredient in Xanax, which is one of the medications that Roxanne had been prescribed for depression. DeShazo tells detectives Roxanna was not only the brains,

but also the brawn in Jerry McLendon's death. She said, why don't you go in there and take a pillow and lay it over his head? I said, well, I can't lay the pillow over his head. She said, well, hold his wrist down for me here. Okay. I was like, well, this is, you know, yes, dear. Okay. DeShazo claims he held McLendon's hands as Roxanna placed a pillow over the victim's face,

a story that is diametrically opposed to the version Roxanna provided to police just a few weeks prior. If you talk to David, he'll tell you he held the hands down while she smothered him. It was her idea. If you listen to her, she'll tell you that she held the hands down and David smothered him, and that was his idea. So they're both pointing at each other, and we needed that. Two people each pointing fingers at each other, each helping to convict the other. On September 29, 2000, David DeShazo is convicted of murder one and pulls a life sentence. Ten months later,

his ex-fiancée Roxanna Latham is found guilty of murder in the second degree. She is sentenced to 15 years in prison. On October 15, 2001, Roxanna Latham meets with investigative reporters at Virginia Beach Correctional Center. Eligible for parole in just three years, the convicted murderer reserves a healthy dose of venom for detectives who, according to Roxanna, Beach Correctional Center. Eligible for parole in just three years, the convicted murderer reserves a healthy dose of venom for detectives who, according to Roxanna, offered a deal and then went back on their word. I put my trust in them. I told them the truth. I told them everything that I knew. And this is what they come do to me afterwards. I think one, she thought she was

smart enough to get away with it. And I think she also felt that if she owns up to knowing about it, but not necessarily let us in on her total involvement, that she probably would walk away with no jail time. As for David DeShazo, he sits in a maximum security cell downstate, willing, at least on the surface, to offer an olive branch to his old flame. Somebody asked me why her version is like it is. It would be that she made it that way so her conscience could be clear. And if it worked for her, I'm happy for her. And I wish her the best. I know what happened in that room, and he knows what happened in that room.

God knows what happened in that room. And I'm free. And David knows the truth. And he will be the one rotting in hell over it. It won't be me. Investigators may never know who really played the strongman in Jerry McClendon's death. The fact remains that they killed him together. Both were in the room, both watched him die, and for cold case detectives, both are where

they should be, behind bars. As to who did what, to me it doesn't matter. They both took part. They took the life, and they should pay for it. And now they're pay for it. And now they're paying for it. Pluto TV has over 300 channels and thousands of TV shows and movies for whatever mood you're in. Just open the app and something good will already be playing because it's curated by people who love TV as much as you do. So if you're in the mood for comedy, there's 18 channels that'll make you laugh.

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