Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body of Missing 11 Y-O Found Inside Storage Bin, Severely Malnourished

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. An 11-year-old boy, Roman, goes missing out of his own home. Every parent's worst nightmare. Your child goes missing, number one, and on your watch, number two. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. What happened to Roman? Listen to this. A man who says he worked with Roman's father describes the day the 11-year-old went missing. Everything was normal. You wouldn't have suspected anything.

Starting point is 00:00:54 It was like any other day. Brian Hinton says he was working with Roman's father on Saturday. They're both linemen from out of state, working in Placerville since October. He noticed Jordan Piper left work around 11 a.m. He had a family emergency. He had to run home. About three hours later, Hinton got a text message from Piper with photos of Roman. Hinton met Piper to start searching. You could tell that he was crying. You could tell that he was shook up.

Starting point is 00:01:19 He told us that his son, they believe he ran away, that they're certain that he left between midnight and 6 a.m. 40 co-workers help search until around 10.30 at night. Looking in dumpsters, looking in garages, trailers. You were hearing from our friends at KCRA News 3. It's very unusual for a child that young to just run away. You often hear of teens running away, 17, 18, 19. Once in a while you hear of teens younger than that, 16, 15. But when you're getting down to 13, 12, 11, not as usual to have a child that young run away. With me, an all-star panel to make sense of it all, renowned attorney joining me out of the Atlanta area, Daryl Cohen joining us, former prosecutor of felonies, Dr. Sherry Schwartz, forensic psychologist at panthermitigation.com,

Starting point is 00:02:21 author of Criminal Behavior, Justin Boardman with us, former Special Victims Unit Detective, author of I Was Wrong, an Investigator's Battle Cry for Change, Dr. Michelle Dupree, pathologist, medical examiner, author of Homicide Investigation Field Guide. But first, to Dave Minsky joining us, aceorter, public safety and military reporter with Santa Maria Times. Dave, thanks so much for being with us. I find it very odd that an 11-year-old child would just disappear. As a matter of fact, take a listen to our cut. This is Jackie Howard joining us from CrimeOnline.com. It was just about 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning in January when Lindsay Piper went upstairs to wake the children for breakfast, but 11-year-old Roman Lopez wasn't

Starting point is 00:03:11 in his bed. At first, the stepmother thought the shy four-feet, eight-inch boy was hiding. He liked to do that, so Piper checked the usual places. When Roman could not be found, a frantic search began. For two hours, Jordan and Lindsey Piper searched for Roman. Then, instead of calling 911, the Pipers drove to the Placerville Police Department about three minutes from their house. But it was Saturday. The station is closed. So, they go to El Dorado County Sheriff's Office. But a deputy wasn't available to speak with them. Finally, just after noon, a deputy files a courtesy report for a juvenile runaway.

Starting point is 00:03:48 According to El Dorado County Sheriff's Office records, the BOLO, or Be On The Lookout, report was entered at 1.17 p.m., and the missing person report was forwarded to the Placerville Police Department. Back to Dave Mizke joining us from the Santa Maria Times. So they realize he's missing at what time? It looks like I think he went missing sometime in the morning. I think it was around 9 a.m. that he goes missing. This little boy, just four feet, eight inches.

Starting point is 00:04:23 A frantic search ensues. And we get that missing person, Bolo, be on the lookout in that jurisdiction at 11, at 1.17 PM, nearly 1.30. So already there's 11 to 12, 12 to 1, two and a half hours. And I'm curious as to why they didn't realize he was missing until 11 a.m. First of all, I want to find out what day of the week this was. The day he goes missing, I believe January 11 would have been a Saturday. Yes. A Saturday morning.

Starting point is 00:05:02 So that might explain people sleeping late in the home and not realizing he was missing. What can you tell me about the area? We're talking about Placerville, California. What do you know, Dave Minsky? Yeah, Placerville, it's the county seat of El Dorado County, which a lot of us know here in California as the site of the California gold rush. It's where the gold rush began back in 1848. So that's the origin of the gold rush, but I understand that the population is now around 10,000. Where did all the people go? They spread throughout the rest of the state and the world, Nancy. And okay, it's nicknamed Hangtown. I wonder what that's all about. But my main concern, the reason I'm quizzing you, Dave Minsky, Justin Boardman, is because 10,000 people, that's very sparsely populated. That's going to really narrow potential suspects that may have taken this boy. also an area where a lot of transients come in for you know it's not just the gold rush nowadays but they have the green rush so a lot of people come in from out of town to you know grow cannabis

Starting point is 00:06:12 process cannabis and get it ready for the uh the market so there's a lot of people coming in and out of the area from all over the world i don't like that number oneients, because do you guys remember? Let me ask you this one, Daryl Cohen, a high profile lawyer joining me out of Atlanta. You remember the two little girls that go missing on the bridge, the trestle bridge. Remember them? Yes, I do. And we have a picture taken by Liberty and Abigail, the two little girls. And we have his voice on one of their cell phones.

Starting point is 00:06:51 We have a description. We actually have a picture. And they still can't catch him. Small area, just like this Delphi. It's got to be a transient. Or locals would have known him. That's why transients present a problem. When you have an area like this, and for Pete's sake, for pot,

Starting point is 00:07:13 you know, that's a bad omen right there, Daryl Cohen. Nancy, it's not good when you have someone that's not known. He or she can hide anywhere, but on the other hand, they also stick out. So that's also something that's a good thing. But when you've got a lot of transients, it makes it much more difficult. All we know right now is that cops are exploring the idea. This little boy, just four feet, eight inches, ran away from home. And they're now looking at potential suspects. Who would have taken this little boy? Take a listen to our friend Jessica Minch, K-R-O-N. The Placerville boy went missing Saturday morning, sparking a massive search around his home on Coloma Street in Placerville. Neighbors tried to help. The Placerville police came by and I helped him get access to the property behind us.

Starting point is 00:08:05 And we searched all the trailers and stuff that are back out in there that could be kind of an attractive to a, you know, to an 11 year old boy to hide up in something like that. He says Lopez's family moved in down the street a little over a month ago. They're new to the neighborhood. Investigators spent Sunday combing through Lopez's house and backyard. It's in hopes of figuring out what exactly happened to the 11-year-old.

Starting point is 00:08:28 Okay, David Miske, join me from the Santa Maria Times. So is it a very rural area? Sort of. Posserville itself is about 10,000 people. It's kind of nestled. It's in the foothills

Starting point is 00:08:43 of the Sierra Nevadas. It's east of Sacramento. So you've got Possible and then you've got a lot of these, you know, I guess, farms, cannabis farms kind of scattered throughout the countryside among the hills. What were they before they were pot farms? Gold farms, as far as I know. I don't know. I'm not entirely sure about what they were before they were pot farms. Yeah, you're right. It doesn't matter. They're pot farms now. So

Starting point is 00:09:10 you mentioned something that interests me, Dave Minsky, many things actually. But you said that Placerville is nestled between, I think you said the Sierra Nevada Mountains. So in order to get out of Placerville, do you actually have to drive over a mountain or around a mountain? No. So it's, the mountains are, so Placerville sits on the eastern or the western side of the Sierra Nevadas. And it's just a little bit east of Sacramento.

Starting point is 00:09:40 So there's not a lot of, there's some hills and stuff that you have to drive through, but not technically not mountains until you go further east on Highway 50. Do we know if the family had nanny cams or anything like that in the home? Any kind of ring doorbells, any type of video surveillance? That I'm not able to determine, but that's something I'm kind of looking into. There's not a lot of details in this. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

Starting point is 00:10:23 To Justin Boardman, former Special Victims Unit detective in West Valley City, Justin Boardman, former special victims unit detective in West Valley City, Justin Boardman, when I hear of teens running away, they're usually 16, 17, maybe 15, rarely 14. But when you're down to 11 years old, that's a rare occasion. Yeah, there's a lot of issues when it comes to the AIDS, especially. That screams all sorts of things to me. That would be abuse issues. That's going to be certainly things like that. One of the first places I would start, however, would be a consent search of the home.

Starting point is 00:11:11 We always work from the inside out. So we would go wherever we could look, wherever we could find for someone the size of our kiddo that we're looking for might be a lot of times we'd find somebody a sleep closet sometimes we'd even find them asleep between a bed and a wall and parents couldn't find them so we would start from the inside and start working our way out another thing dr sherry schwartz joining forensic psychologist, is to look at friends' homes because when we were growing up, our best friends, there was a neighbor, neighbors

Starting point is 00:11:53 across the street that had four children and one of them fit all three of us. So, me, my brother, my sister. So, we were always back and forth across the street and would often spend the night over. That's another place I would look immediately. However, in this case, they've only lived there for about a month, which could reduce how many friends the little boy has made in the neighborhood. Yeah, that's true. And if it's a fairly rural area and the kids don't have a neighborhood to go out and play in that's another factor which would hinder making friends but I agree with you it's one of the first things I

Starting point is 00:12:29 thought of has he met anyone at school and when kids are that young they don't necessarily think oh I've been gone from home for this many hours my parents are going to worry and we don't know if he has a cell phone or has any way to contact anyone so that's a definite possibility that could be with their friend another issue to justin boardman special victims unit detective formerly west valley city justin i would blanket i would blast all of this child's social media. Because at 11, I've noticed that minors of that age don't always use big devices like a big screen or a laptop, even an iPad. They play a lot on their phones. But whatever device, I would get that subpoena pronto and start looking through that to see if he went anywhere. But you're right. You start within the home.

Starting point is 00:13:25 Justin, what do you do in a big rural area like this, Placerville, to look for a missing 11-year-old who's only 4 feet 8 inches tall? How do you do that? Well, I think you start with certainly on the inside of the home. We're going to do an interview with the parents. How long has he been there? Does he have any? Of course, we might do a reverse 911.

Starting point is 00:13:48 So we would let people know in the area to look out for someone of this size. After we would search the inside of the home, then we would start bringing in more resources. But my question is, how do you search a big rural area? You're going to have to grid search, go through ditches, the tunnels underneath the road, sewage tunnels, you name it. And a lot of these homes have, let me just say, sewage out back. They're not into the city sewage system. You have to look in those.

Starting point is 00:14:35 You have to look everywhere. So what do you do first? That's my question. So I start organizing that grid search, but also calling for additional resources, additional officers, things like that. A lot of times I'd take a dry erase marker to the hood of my patrol car and we would start mapping out the neighborhood right there and start canvassing from house to house to house to house, working our way out. I'd also assign details to each officer that came in. Maybe that is you find out about all the friends, you go that way. You look for all the schools and go check the playground. You know, I'm hearing in my ear right now that we've got an update that he was actually noticed to be gone at 9 a.m. 9 a.m. not

Starting point is 00:15:28 11 a.m. Guys, take a listen to our cut. See. More than 40 people from Jordan's place of work joined in the search for Roman Lopez. Police searched the home in case the boy was hiding. Neighbors helped police search properties and outbuildings. More than 250 flyers were printed and handed out in restaurants, bars, parks, and businesses all over town. The search continued for more than 15 hours, and come nightfall, Roman Lopez had still not been found. Stepmother Lindsay Piper says police officers told her they were hopeful he would just walk through the front door. You know, I wanted to go to you, Dr. Sherry Swartz.

Starting point is 00:16:14 People, parents say they believe the child is just going to come through the front door. Why? Do they cling to that for self-protection? I think on some level, yes. They think, oh, this is all, this is just a nightmare, but it's going to be easily resolved because kids do these things without thinking and they're just going to come home and they're going to be safe. And yeah, there's a self-protective factor in there because the alternative is just horrifying, right? What parent wants to think my child is missing and they may never come home. So we know that over 40 people from Jordan Piper's place of work joined the search. That's a pretty good search team. They searched the home where he lived in case he was hiding. They searched it thoroughly. Let's never forget

Starting point is 00:17:02 the case of JonBenet Ramsey, who hours after police show up, have civilians search the home and they find the dead child in the basement. Neighbors help. They go to properties. They go to outbuildings. They put up 250 flyers almost immediately in restaurants, bars, parks, businesses. This goes on for over 15 hours, and then it turns nighttime. Take a listen to our friends, Placerville Police Chief Joe Wren. 11-year-old Roman Lopez was reported missing from 2892 Coloma Street in the city of Placerville. At the time Roman was reported missing, he lived in the home with his biological father, Jordan Piper, his stepmother, Lindsay Piper, and seven additional children, ranging in ages from one years old to 17 years old.

Starting point is 00:17:58 The family had recently moved to Placerville and had only lived at the house for a very short time, less than two months. After an initial search of the home was unsuccessful, a second, more extensive search of the home was launched. Placerville police investigators then located Roman's deceased body inside a storage bin located in the basement of the home. To Dr. Michelle Dupree, forensic pathologist and author of Homicide Investigation Field Guide, Dr. Dupree, inside a storage bin, this child didn't run away. He was not missing. He didn't put himself in a storage bin, put the top over it, secreted away somewhere in the home, and just die.

Starting point is 00:18:45 It doesn't happen like this. This child had to be murdered. That's right, Nancy. That is the only other explanation you can come up with. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I mean, Dr. Dupree, you have done thousands of autopsies and worked even more homicide cases. The reality is there are only a handful, literally, of causes of death, COD. You have natural, you have accident, you have suicide, you have homicide, and you have undetermined. Isn't it true, Dr. Michelle Dupree, that pathologists, medical examiners, coroners look at so-called extrinsic evidence to determine COD and MOD manner of death.

Starting point is 00:19:47 You don't just look at the body. Here's an example. I prosecuted a case where a woman, the wife of a millionaire, died in a fire in the home. Turned out she was covered in bruises. She dies of smoke inhalation, but when the fire truck pulls up, the husband is lounging Romanesque style across the street in a neighbor's yard watching the fire. He's fully dressed, including belt and wallet. And when the fire truck pulls up, he talks for about 60 seconds to two minutes and then says, oh yeah, my wife's in there. What?

Starting point is 00:20:34 All right. Then we find out that a few days before the fire, and I went to a lot of laundries to find this. He, the husband, took out all of his shoes, all of his nice suits and clothes, and put the clothing in a laundry to be dry cleaned. He had removed all of his family photos, not her family photos, but his family photos. He, unlike every night before this, according to the neighbors, parked his car out on the street. Then we find out he checked the weather the day before the fire to find out if it was going to rain. With all that evidence, the coroner ruled that it was a homicide.

Starting point is 00:21:29 So you do look at evidence beyond just what you find in the body. Absolutely, Nancy. We look at what we call the totality of circumstances. We look at scene markers. We certainly look at the body because that's where most of our answers are going to come from. But you're right. We look at everything else. And then we put it all together. We try so hard not to get tunnel vision and focus on only one thing.

Starting point is 00:21:45 You have to look at everything and the surrounding circumstances are a big part of that. Back to you, Dave Miske. This little boy, just four feet, eight inches, is found in a storage bin in the basement that cops miss the first time they do an initial search of the home. Hey, guys, take a listen to our Cut 14. In the initial search of the family's home, police say they did not find anything. But in a second search of the home, investigators are now revealing they located Roman's body inside a storage bin in the basement. An autopsy of Roman's body found no obvious trauma, but found he was severely malnourished and dehydrated at the time of his death.

Starting point is 00:22:28 To you, Dave Minsky, were there other boxes on top of him? Where was he in the basement or do we know? That part I haven't been able to determine, Nancy. Like I said earlier, there's a lot of little details they're just not really revealing you know and what we do know or what i was able to determine is that there were six other children living in the house at the time and when they found roman that he was quote severely malnourished and dehydrated at the time of death so that wouldn't show up immediately dr michelle dupree or would it because they're not able to deduce a cause of death just by looking at the body. Well, it depends on how malnourished she is, Nancy. If you can look at,

Starting point is 00:23:10 you can see the ribs and you can see the turgor or the lack of that skin elasticity, you can tell how long this has been going on. Would that give you the COD immediately just because you notice that he's underweight? No, we would always do an autopsy. An autopsy is going to be the definitive. And how would they know just by looking at him that he's underweight? No, we would always do an autopsy. An autopsy is going to be the definitive. And how would they know just by looking at him that he was dehydrated? Again, you look at the skin and if you pinch your skin on your forearm

Starting point is 00:23:34 and if it sort of stays tinted up, then you're dehydrated. Very severe cases of that, of course, are just going to stay that way. You can just tell by looking. I didn't understand what you said, Dr. Michelle Dupree. If you pinch your skin and what? And severe cases of that, of course, are just going to stay that way. You can just tell by looking. I didn't understand what you said, Dr. Michelle Dupree. If you pinch your skin and what?

Starting point is 00:23:52 Yes, pinch your skin right above your wrist on the forearm. And if it sort of stays in that position, tinted, then you are dehydrated. Normal skin has a lot of elasticity and flexibility. And you'll just pinch it and it'll go right back into place. But someone who is severely dehydrated, it's called tinting, and it tints up. Tint, O-T-E-N-T-I-N-G. Sorry, it's a southern accent. Got it. No, I thought you were saying T-I-N-T-I-N-G, tinting.

Starting point is 00:24:16 Same thing. Okay, got it. Now that makes perfect sense. Let me ask you this, Dr. Michelle Dupree. So you find this child's body, 11 years old, 4 feet 8 inches, in a storage bin hidden in the basement. Can you tell how long he's been there? Perhaps. Again, it's going to depend totally on the condition of that body.

Starting point is 00:24:37 It is just going to depend on the environment. Was this, you know, a moist basement? Was it really dry? And again, what does that body look like? Well, that's not really answering my question. Can you be more specific? I mean, if the body had been there for a week, could you tell that? A day? Three days?

Starting point is 00:24:54 An hour? 30 minutes? How could you tell? We're going to look at the condition of the body, how it is degraded or how much decomposition, if any, there is. We're going to look at, again, that condition of the skin. Is it starting to slough off? Is there any signs of, again, decomposition that is liquefying or things like that? We're going to look at that total condition.

Starting point is 00:25:15 Look, I know nobody wants to say it out loud, but this is what an investigator and probably a jury at some point is going to have to figure out. You were just hearing from our friends at ABC regarding the discovery of this child actually in a storage bin, a storage bin inside the family basement. The search is called off, obviously, because the child has been found. That was ABC 10. What do we know? What do we know happened? So they find out, I guess the mom finds out the boy's missing at nine. They search and search. After two hours, they start going to police. They end up at the sheriff's department and the report is issued at 1.30.

Starting point is 00:26:02 Still a long time. I'm curious why they didn't call 911. In any event, take a listen to our friend Zach Fuentes at ABC 10. Missing posters still line part of B Street in Placerville. That's where neighbors say 11-year-old Roman Anthony Lopez recently moved with his family. The community came together when he was reported missing Saturday, but the search left everyone with the result they dreaded most. To have an 11-year-old boy die on us, that's pretty sad. Placerville police announced Sunday at a brief press conference that Lopez was found dead on Saturday and that his death was suspicious. Today, they provided this update in a Facebook post

Starting point is 00:26:43 saying that to protect the integrity of the investigation, they will not release new information. For the first time, they did confirm that there is no threat to the public. One Placerville man I spoke with says he and his family held on to hope when they first heard Lopez was missing. All of us decided to kind of get together in the community and post and share about how he was, how he was missing and how it all happened and how it all went down. And it was in the midst of those efforts that Daniel says they heard the tragic news of the boy's death. It just kind of ripped my heart out. To Daryl Cohen, high profile lawyer, former prosecutor of the Atlanta jurisdiction, Daryl Cohen, they said there's no threat to the public. We know what that means, right? That means watch

Starting point is 00:27:26 out because there is a threat to the public that they just don't want them to go crazy and worry and look under every rock, every leaf to see if there is a threat. I would have said just the opposite. I would have said, we know who the perp is. Don't worry, we're on it. No threat to the public? Seriously? They just said that in the Alex Murdoch case, didn't they, Jackie? Yeah, when the wife, Maggie, and the son, Paul, are found shot dead, the police say no threat to the public. That tells me they think they know who did it, and they don't believe that the perp is going to hurt anybody else. You don't see that, Darrell Cohen?

Starting point is 00:28:05 I see it, but then I see the other way as well, that you want to make the public relax, and even if you don't have the perp, you don't have to hurt anybody else. Relax? So you can end up dead in a trash bin too? In the basement? Really? Relax. Relax. Don't worry. You're not going to end up dead. You're okay. Just people relax. Okay, I think that's bass-ackwards,

Starting point is 00:28:24 and I'm going to give you a few moments to rethink your answer. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Take a listen to our cut for this is Jessica Mitch, KTXL Fox 40. He was a sweet, kind little boy. Rochelle Lopez is trying to hold it together while her whole world falls apart. Her only son, 11-year-old Roman Lopez, found dead hours after he was reported missing in Placerville Saturday. Police are calling his death suspicious. I had to find out that my son died from a news article. Nobody called me. His dad didn't call me. She lives in Wisconsin. The child's

Starting point is 00:29:15 father is primary custody and recently moved his family to this house on Coloma Street in Placerville. I ended up getting deployed when Roman was about a year old to Iraq. She says she came home from serving in the military with PTSD, health problems, and substance abuse issues, which is why she says she was not given custody of Roman. This is literally my worst nightmare, you know. I moved to Wisconsin and started treatment so I could be back with my son. And it's like, I feel like I just missed it. If I would have done this

Starting point is 00:29:45 a month sooner maybe it would be different right now all Lopez can do now is hope for answers and that her son didn't suffer oh my stars Dr. Sherry Schwartz I can't even imagine what bio mom is going through she gets deployed she doesn't want to go. She gets deployed to Iraq. There, she sees all sorts of atrocities. She comes back home, has to go into PTSD rehab, post-traumatic stress syndrome after what happened to her and being away from her child in Iraq. I can't even imagine when my twins, I think you lived through part of this with me, went away for a week to scout camp, I thought I was going to die. That said, she comes back.

Starting point is 00:30:32 She can't have custody because she's in this rehab for PTSD because of Iraq. She gets on drugs they give her and gets addicted. She's got to get off that to get the son back. And while she's trying to get herself straight, he ends up in a storage bin in the basement. I mean, I don't know if she's ever going to be able to live with herself after this. This is so tragic. Here's a woman who honorably served our country, right? And she suffers because of it. And because she's trying to put herself back together, she leaves her son in the trusted care she believes of his father and his new girlfriend, wife, whatever she is, and thinks, okay, this has given me the time to get myself back together,

Starting point is 00:31:19 and then I'll be reunited with my son. So here's somebody who's already suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. This is a major setback. And that's an incredible understatement. I mean, the level of treatment she'll need. Horrible, horrible setback for this woman, the bio mother who thinks that she's doing the right thing. So we find the little boy in a storage bin in the basement. They can't tell the COD, but they do know immediately that he is malnourished. And we also know that he is emaciated and dehydrated. Straight back out to Dave Minsky with the Santa Maria Times, while we don't have the final autopsy report, I do notice that the stepmother, Lindsay, Lindsay Piper, age 38, has gotten a separate charge of willful poisoning. Is that correct?

Starting point is 00:32:21 Yeah. According to the Sacramento Bee, Nancy, Lindsay was given that charge. And the charge is, quote, having mingled a poison and harmful substance with food, drink, medicine and pharmaceutical product and placed a poison and harmful substance in a spring well, reservoir and public water supply. Dr. Michelle Dupree, she obviously, that sounds like part of a statute, straight out of a code book, criminal code. She obviously is charged with mingling some type of poison or harmful substance in this child's food or drink. How can you tell that from an autopsy? Well, Nancy, part of the autopsy, we always do toxicology. And that is where we would determine, if any, and the amounts of foreign substance that would be in the body and what that substance is. Now, when you do a typical lab set, toxicology, do you search

Starting point is 00:33:18 typically for poison? Or does the state have to file a warrant to have that done? In most jurisdictions, they do not have to file a warrant for that. And depending on what the poison is, heavy metals are not searched for routinely. Other items are not searched for routinely. There is a standard set. It includes street drugs as well as prescription drugs. If it's something unusual, we would need to have a suspicion of what that drug is in order to search for it. Guys, take a listen to our cut 17. This is Placerville Police Chief. Although an autopsy revealed no obvious signs of trauma, Roman was found to be severely malnourished and dehydrated at the time of his death. Much of this case involved the analysis of forensic

Starting point is 00:34:04 evidence, including obtaining search warrants to seize electronic devices, review the data on those devices, working with medical professionals and experts in the field of child abuse. Adding to the complexity of this case was how often the family had moved and the various agencies they had encountered along the way. The combined investigative team contacted multiple agencies in another state, including child protective services, medical providers, law enforcement, and the courts. To Dr. Sherry Schwartz, you know, I've prosecuted a lot of cases, a lot of homicide cases, and the mind of a poisoner is completely different. Would you agree?

Starting point is 00:34:45 Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, this is predatory behavior, right? You are looking to do harm. And you are watching your victims suffer from whatever they ingested. It's so intentional. There's no question that you didn't mean to do it. I mean, to you, Daryl Cohen, when you poison someone,

Starting point is 00:35:05 there's really no question regarding intent. And I noticed the stepmother is charged with that, not the father. Yeah, that's very interesting, Nancy, because poison is not something that happened by accident. I didn't have my gun shoot somewhere else and accidentally shoot someone. Poison is directed at the person or persons that you're trying to poison. And in this instance, obviously, there was a very successful and very sad ending because of it. You know what I heard?

Starting point is 00:35:32 I'm sorry, Gerald, go ahead. No, I'm just saying this is not an accident. It's not, oh, let's just take a look and see if the antifreeze will work, as happened here in Atlanta before. No, this is awful. You're talking about with Lynn Turner, who poisoned not only a husband, but a boyfriend too? Yeah, she was a busy, she loved to buy antifreeze. And she loved to make jello, didn't she? To Justin Boardman, did you hear at the get-go where the co-worker said the bio dad, the bio dad, Jordan Piper,

Starting point is 00:36:03 got the phone call, then called back to the office, and you could tell he had been crying. That's not consistent with him having poisoned the child. Well, it's not consistent, but, I mean, you can also kind of fake crying sometimes, right? Well, on the other hand, he may not have poisoned the child, but he certainly had to be around when the child was being starved. Absolutely. Certainly is part of this homicide. So these two show up in court. Take a listen to our cut nine. This is Marissa Perlman at CBS 13 Sacramento. The courtroom quiet this afternoon. Jordan and Lindsay Piper appearing here virtually

Starting point is 00:36:46 Roman's biological mom watching it all happen via YouTube from Michigan. She says she's not surprised by what happened today in court. I'm totally disheartened, obviously. Disheartened, but not surprised. The Lopez family spokesperson, Christian Jabs Ellenberg, says Roman's mom, Rochelle, was expecting the couple abuse and child abuse. The Lopez family spokesperson, Christian jabs Ellen Burke says Roman's mom Rochelle was expecting the couple to plead not guilty. I

Starting point is 00:37:11 think every who knows them kind of figured that. They won't accept any responsibility for anything. Jordan and Lindsey Piper appear virtually from the El Dorado County Jail sitting side by side in orange jumpsuits and masks looking down at their hands. The Pipers charged with torture, child abuse,

Starting point is 00:37:25 and Lindsay Piper facing poisoning charges. The 11-year-old was found dead, malnourished, and dehydrated inside a storage bin in the basement of the family home. Kind of like something out of a really bad horror movie. Well, they may be crying in court looking down at their laps, but they weren't crying and acting embarrassed when they were starving this 11-year-old little boy. And when step-mommy, truly the evil stepmother, was literally poisoning him, according to the state. Now, you were hearing this little boy's mother, Rochelle. Since she gave that interview, she has passed on. She's in heaven now with Roman, her son. We don't know the cause of death, but we do know she lost her life after

Starting point is 00:38:19 her son was poisoned dead, starved, and neglected by his own father. Now who will speak for little Roman? We wait as justice unfolds. Nancy Grace Crime Story signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body of Missing 11 Y-O Found Inside Storage Bin, Severely Malnourished

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