Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - JUDGE DROPS CHARGES AFTER 8-YEAR-OLD GABRIEL FERNANDEZ TORTURED DEAD

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

Gabriel Fernandez, 8, dies at the hands of his parents. He was beaten, shot, tortured. DCFS had received numerous reports from teachers about suspected abuse, but Fernandez remained in the home until he died. Charges are filed against the social workers who falsified reports on his care, but now in a stunning move, a judge instructs all charges to be dropped.Joining Nancy Grace today: Ashley Willcott - Judge and trial attorney, Anchor on Court TV Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, Beverly Hills Joseph Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics Jacksonville State University, Author of "Blood Beneath My Feet" Nicole Partin - CrimeOnline Investigative Reporter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. An eight-year-old little boy dead. When you hear what happened to this child's body and the way he was treated, not only at the time of his death, but for a long period of time of pure torture this little boy lived through, your blood is going to boil. In the last hours, a bombshell decision by a judge, a legal catastrophe, charges dropped. I'm talking about the case of Gabriel Fernandez. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Take a listen to this. What? He's not breathing. Hold on one second. I'm going to transfer you over to the fire department. Don't hang up. My son is..

It's your son, OK. And he's not breathing? No. Does he have a seizure? No, he was wrestling with my other son. And I came in, and he just wasn't conscious. Okay, do you have the paramedics on the way right now? Are you right there with him? Yes, I'm right here.

Okay, do you know how to do CPR? I'm just doing the compulsions on the chest right now. Okay, you need to breathe for him. If he's not breathing, you need to do two breaths and 30 compressions. Just need you to keep doing that until the paramedics come, okay? They're on their way. They'll come in as fast as they can. During that 911 call, the parents, Pearl and Issa, insist that their child isn't breathing because the two boys were, quote,

wrestling, and then somehow one of them stops breathing. And I've just got to point out how calm, cool, and collected they seem to be on the phone while their child is dying. With me, truly an all-star panel, Ashley Wilcott, judge and trial lawyer, anchor of Court TV, Dr. Bethany Marshall, renowned psychoanalyst. Joining us out of Beverly Hills at drbethanymarshall.com. Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University, death investigator and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon. Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute.

But right now to Nicole Parton, crimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Nicole, before I ask you the very first question, take a listen to our friends at Netflix. He had a depressed skull fracture, meaning you could feel his skull. You know, you feel your head and it's a nice round. His was like dented and you could feel the like, it's called crepitus, where it's almost like rice krispies.

You could feel it like crunchy on his head. I remember his throat just looked like somebody burned him, bruising and cuts all over his face, black eyes, cuts everywhere. He had, like, a weird cut above his penis. He had abrasions, like, on the top of his foot, like he'd been dragged, ligature marks on his ankles, like he'd been tied up. I mean, just every part on his body, like he'd been dragged. Ligature marks on his ankles, like he'd been tied up.

I mean, just every part on his body, there was just something. Oh, he's got a bullet in his lung. Oh, he's got a bullet in his groin. It's like, cigarette marks that he'd like, when people have been putting cigarettes out on him and different stages. I mean, he'd have a bruise that looks like it's almost healed,

bruises that looked brand new, like burns, cuts, abrasions. Everything you could think of all over this kid, all over him. He didn't look like a child. This little boy was so abused and mistreated. You were hearing right there Christine Estes, an emergency nurse, describing the injuries all over this 8-year-old child's body. And a judge is dropping charges. First of all, to you, Nicole Parton, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Describe to me about how 911 was called and EMTs arrived.

Let's just start at the beginning. The 911 call came in with a mother saying, my son isn't breathing. EMTs arrived to find him unconscious, laying on the floor. The boyfriend of the mom kept saying, he's gay, he's gay. What that had to do with the lifeless body laying there, I have no idea. They found several injuries. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital. The doctor declared him brain dead. Paramedics on the case said it was the most disgusting situation that they had ever seen. One guy had been doing this for 30 plus years. He said he had never seen a body that had been abused and mistreated to the point of little eight year old Gabriel.

They had plunged him in the bathtub, held him under, pulled him out. They had beat him. They had put him back under him under, pulled him out. They had beat him. They had put him back under the water, pulled him out. All of this while siblings were knocking on the bathroom door, begging for them to stop while they watched their young brother be killed. You know, Nicole Parton, I've tried a lot of cases and literally investigated thousands of cases before I started covering cases. And to hear the way you just put it to me, I can hardly take it in. I remember one time, once, and all the years I prosecuted Ashley Wilcott, I had to leave the courtroom. And it was a case, child abuse, of a little girl about two years old. She was comatose, and it ultimately died.

She had been in a coma for a period of time from a horrible beating. And because of HIPAA and various laws, I didn't get her full medical file until the trial. And something was happening in court and I was flipping through and I saw where this two-year-old little girl who's in a coma in a vegetative state had been raped. Two-year-old girl. And I remember I had to ask the judge, can I be excused? Never once did I do that before or after. Because I let myself think about what happened to this little girl, two years old. And you know, Ashley, all of us on the panel right now, we cover cases all the time because our goal is to seek justice. But if you really let yourself think about what Gabriel Fernandez went through, I just don't know sometimes if I can put one foot in front of the other. How can people be so mean, Ashley?

You know, I don't know, Nancy, and I agree with you. When you hear and see and really think about what happened, it's really unfathomable. It's unimaginable. What I regret is I can tell you when I'm on the bench, I see these types of horrific cases of physical abuse. So not only do I think this is to seek justice, this is to make people aware that there are evil people doing these things to kids. Joe Scott Morgan, death investigator, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University. I want you to take a listen to our friends at Netflix. This is the trials of Gabriel Fernandez. And we are reporting now in the wake of a bombshell and catastrophe decision by, let me just say, an idiot judge.

I usually don't say that, but I could say a lot worse. But that's not allowed by the FCC. Okay, listen to Netflix. I can't wrap my head around this. I can't wrap my head around how it got to this. I'll always remember his name, Gabriel. You're sad, you're angry, you're sitting there thinking, oh my God, not only do you not think he's gonna make it, but how did these people do this to him?

I mean, there's no way you couldn't have seen it. There's so much trauma, so much damage, and there's just so many questions. If CPS isn't doing anything about it, and the sheriffs aren't doing anything about it, how did this happen? She said he slipped in the bathtub. That was the 911 call that he slipped in the bathtub you are hearing an er nurse christine estes speaking to our friends at netflix Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

We are talking about a bombshell and disaster decision by a judge in the Gabriel Fernandez murder case. At the hands of his own parents, mom and her live-in, Pearl and Issa. Now, we already heard on the 911 call the parents claiming that he had been wrestling with his brother and then, oops, he just stopped breathing. Now we hear from the ER nurse that the mom says, quote, he slipped in the bathtub. So which one is it? What really happened? We're also hearing from Nicole Parton with Crime Online that at the time this little boy was in the bathtub, his siblings were outside bamming on the door, begging the parents to stop torturing him, I guess waterboarding him or putting

him under the water, then jerking him out, putting him in all the while angry because they say this little boy is gay. It's almost too much to take in. But I want you now, Joe Scott Morgan, to hear what we learn about little Gabriel's injuries. This is from EMT James Cermak. Almost every one of Gabriel's fingers was injured. And he potentially was trying to defend himself. Right. Cermak and Sean Fox, they thought that, you know, Gabriel had, like, a disease.

This wasn't somebody who had, you know, injuries or abrasions or things like that. This was somebody who, you know, had some sort of, you know, skin disease or something. Like, he had rashes, like, abrasions to his face, strangulation marks around his neck. His ankles were swollen. to his face, strangulation marks around his neck, his ankles were swollen, I believe his left palm

looked like it was burned, bite marks, bruises, head to toe, skull fractures, depressed skull fracture, like little holes as if he was shot, like with a BB gun or something. Just, you just, the more you look, the more you saw. It's just, it was just unbelievable. To you, Justice Scott Morgan, this is something I have not looked forward to as much as i respect everything you say your analysis of

this little eight-year-old boy's injuries and then we'll move to this idiot judge's decision okay joseph scott morgan what happened to gabriel listen nancy i you know i tried to watch the series i really did and i I've seen a lot. I haven't seen everything. But when I got that piece where the ER nurse is talking about these injuries, I began to weep. And it just broke my heart. Let me kind of break this down for you.

You know how the one EMT mentioned he had been shot with a BB gun? He wasn't just shot singularly. He was shot, the medical examiner recovered eight separate projectiles. Now, with a BB gun, that means that it has to be cocked and fired each time in order to facilitate that. So at minimum, he was shot eight times. This child had receding injuries over a long period of time. These things were resolving. He had a history going way, way back. And what's really striking about this is this kid, this precious

little baby, and he is a baby, Nancy. He was eight years old. You know, he only weighed right about 40 pounds when he rolled into the emergency room. Let that sink in just for a second for everybody that has a child. Forty pounds, Nancy. These people made this child eat cat litter, Nancy. Cat litter. Now, for folks that don't have cats, let me tell you what litter does. It literally absorbs liquids, and it turns into rock-hard little balls. So not only is he suffering from all of these injuries, including fractures, cigarette burns, his mouth is raw because he's eating these caustic substances.

His bowels are blocked, Nancy, on a regular basis because he's got cat feces mixed with cat litter in his system. His teeth are rotten. That happens with malnutrition. He's not being fed. He's not being hydrated. And he's being kept sequestered, Nancy. This thing just absolutely breaks my heart. We talk about, and the reason that the nurse, the comments of the nurse affected me so badly, and I can reflect on this as a medical legal death investigator. We see those things in life that the rest of society chooses not to see. We're always having, and I say this a lot, I know, we're always having to examine the abnormal in the context of the normal. Those of us that have kids, we know what baseline normal is.

We know what it's like to take care of a child. At what point on this earth do you get to the point where you have to deprive a child of well-being, where you have to not just deprive deprivation, but actively. And Nancy, I mean this in the strongest terms, actively torture. We had Vietnam veterans that were housed in the Hanoi Hilton during Vietnam that were not treated this badly. And that was a horrific set of circumstances. This is an eight-year-old child. I can't even begin to plumb the depths of this. All of this coming to light after a judge's horrific decision. I want the judge off the bench. They don't deserve to wear the robe. Take a listen to our friends at CBS 2 News, LA reporter Christy Fajardo. In the hours before his

death, Gabriel lay in an emergency room. His skull fractured. He'd been burned, apparently tied up. He was missing skin. He had BB pellets lodged in his lung and scrotum. Even the soles of his feet were bruised and swollen. A physician in the emergency room said someone has pulled out this child's teeth, and it was not a doctor, not a dentist. I just thought over and over again, how did this happen? Mary was not the social worker who investigated the reports of abuse, including the complaints from Gabriel's

own school. That social worker was also fired. Mary got the case after when the family was referred to therapy. She says she never saw anything troubling, but on one occasion, Mary spotted a bruise under Gabriel's eye and a BB pellet in his chest. I asked them about it. And the explanation from Gabriel, brother and sister and mom, her story was that some little kid in the apartment complex's mom got him a BB gun. OK, so we're hearing so many different stories from the parents. He was in a wrestling match with his brother. He slipped in the parents. He was in a wrestling match with his brother. He slipped

in the bathtub. Now we're hearing about neighbor boys, but it's not just the parents involved. Take a listen to this. This was the case that has followed me from that night. It's still hard. Gabriel Fernandez was at the time of his death eight years old. That was my friend and it really caught me because it was his parent who took his life. He was a very good kid, very playful, lovely. These two people murdered this child. How did this come to be? How did a child who had so many signs of repeated and long-term abuse slip through the cracks? It really wasn't until I got all of the evidence that I realized how egregious the case was. This was a story that could not be ignored.

The question was, could we uncover what was really going on? Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. We are talking about the death of an 8-year-old little boy, Gabriel Fernandez, at the hands of his mother and her live-in. But now in a bombshell decision by a trial judge that doesn't deserve to be there, charges have been dropped. Now you just heard that Gabriel's case slipped through the cracks what a euphemism what a line of BS he didn't slip through the cracks he was failed he was ignored he was tortured until he died an eight-year-old boy and now you're gonna hear the rest of the story who else was in on Gabriel's murder listen to this the Department Children and Family Services has significant involvement in this case.

Board of Supervisors have now taken notice. There's something about this kid's death. There was no medical follow-up, even to the injuries that were acknowledged by the department. You're thinking about it, right? How could this be true? As prosecutors, we need to up our game. She didn't just prosecute the mother and her boyfriend. She also took the step of prosecuting the four social workers. They had a job, and their job was to save a little boy. The system is overtaxed.

The most children I had was about 280. I did not commit a crime. When the details came out of how this poor child was tortured and all of these people knew, I think it shook the county to the core. Bureaucracies tend to function to preserve the institution at all costs. The system has this enormous power.

There are those who think that by not talking, you can limit the bad publicity. I believe the ultimate evil is seeing what's wrong and looking away when you have a power to make the difference. That is true evil. That is so true. Our friends at Netflix could not have said it any better. You have the choice to look away or to look at what is happening

and do something about it and in a very rare move the social workers who let this child die were actually charged now the judge is dropping all the charges let's just analyze what exactly happened to nicole parton with a crime online.com investigative reporter. How did this case, quote, slip through the cracks? The teachers were calling defects. Neighbors were calling. It's Department of Family and Children's Services, Child Protective Services. They kept leaving the child in the home. What, they'd leave on their lunch break or their coffee break knowing this boy was getting tortured until he died?

What did they do, Nicole Parton? Nancy, I think it's more of what they didn't do. There were over 60 complaints filed against Pearl and her live-in boyfriend, Azario. 60 complaints coming from neighbors, coming from Gabriel's school, coming from family members. The department claims that they opened eight independent investigations against the parents. But we have to remember, not only were these four case workers, social workers charged with child abuse, but they were all charged with falsifying public documents.

So many times when they were saying they were going to the home to see Gabriel or to check on him, they weren't even going to the house. They were falsifying the document, writing down that they went out to check on him when they hadn't even been there. They stood by and let this little boy die in such a horrific manner. Now, before I go ahead and tar and feather the judge, the judge, Lamelli, refused to drop charges against DFACS back in September 2018. They took it up to appeal, and a California appellate court ordered the judge to drop the charges. I think I've got that right with me. Ashley Wilcott, a juvenile judge, trial lawyer, anchor at Court TV. Ashley Wilcott, explain to me why these charges are dropped. Because I think those social workers that stood by went out to their lunches every day.

Hey, look, I was a government worker. I know what goes on. They kicked their feet back in their offices, whining about their caseload while this little boy died. Did you hear what Nicole Parton said? 60 complaints. The neighbors called. Family, relatives, teachers, please save this boy. And they did nothing. They had their thumbs up, their rear ends,

and now the little boy is dead. What the hay happened? Well, listen, obviously there was a failure, but Nancy, I absolutely do not. There was a what?

Obviously there was a what? A failure by the agency. But listen, I do not agree with you that there was. If you want to call murder a failure. They didn't murder. They did not. If you look at the definition of California,

Nancy of physical abuse, it is inflicted by, a failure. They didn't murder. They did not. If you look at the definition of California, Nancy, of physical abuse, it is inflicted by. They did not inflict it. They failed to act, but legally under the definition. Those are two different things. The parents inflicted it. The parents murdered this child. The agency failed to act. The judge, based on the definition in California, in my opinion, did the right thing. We are looking at a legal system where it relies on the actual definitions and laws as they are We cannot take away from the fact that the parents abused and murdered this helpless child. Now, the agency did fail to act. Are there resulting charges for a failure to act? Yes. Is falsifying records of crime? Yes. Do I think that should have proceeded? Absolutely.

But I do not agree that these social workers meet the definition of child abuse to have been prosecuted under that statute. They simply didn't. Isn't it correct, Ashley Wilcott, that when you assume a duty, you are then held accountable? For instance, if I walk by a pool and I see somebody drowning, I don't have a duty to try to save them, although I have tried. But if I take on that duty, such as I become a a lifeguard and then I watch somebody drown and do nothing, then I'm up the creek without a paddle.

Much is true. That there's a duty? Yes. Okay, that's just a simple answer, yes. And isn't it true that social workers at DFAC, CPS, take on a duty to monitor children and safeguard them? Would you agree with that? Sure. Would you agree that Gabriel Fernandez was one of those children?

Yes. Do you agree that there were 60 complaints to child welfare? Yeah, sure. Do you agree the child is now dead because he was not taken out of the home and the parents killed him? Yes. That said, I believe they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Let me ask you this, Nicole Parton, following up on what Ashley Wilcott said, there is a

myriad of charges that can be filed against the social workers. Are they going to walk scot-free? It looks at this time as though they will. And I think many people like myself had hoped this would be the landmark case that brought justice, not only for Gabriel, but there are half a million children, half a million children who are in the care under the protection of Children and Family Services. And I think many of us were hoping that this would be the case that changed the way the system operates to help better protect our children. But unfortunately, that didn't happen.

No, it did not happen. Take a listen to our friends at CBS2 LA. Gabriel had unconditional love for you you and you took advantage of that knowing he will never turn you in. But Gabriel's teacher Jennifer Garcia did report the abuse to a hotline. However social workers left Gabriel in the home where he was tortured and starved and eventually beaten to death by Aguirre and FernEZ. I KNOW I'M NOT ALONE IN HOPING THAT THEY EXPERIENCE THE SAME ABUSE IN THEIR LIFETIME AND WORSE. THEY ARE EVIL PEOPLE FOR WHAT THEY DID. SHE DESCRIBED GABRIEL AS A KIND AND HELPFUL BOY.

SHE NO LONGER USES HIS STUDENT NUMBER. I DON'T ASSIGN NUMBER 28 TO ANOTHER STUDENT BECAUSE I FEEL IT'S ONLY HIS NUMBER NOW. AND IT'S A WAY FOR ME TO HONOR HIM IN MY CLASSROOM. I'm going to sign number 28 to another student because I feel it's only his number now. And it's a way for me to honor him in my classroom. Five years after the young boy's death, justice. I'm just doing my job. That's it. Deputy D.A. John Hatami, a father of two young children, was emotional. I think Gables affected everybody, including me. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

Guys, we were talking about the horrific death of an eight-year-old little boy, Gabriel Fernandez, yes, his mother stood there and let him die. She participated in his death and let her live in and herself kill her 8-year-old little boy. But after 60-plus complaints to child services by neighbors, by friends, by family, by teachers. They left the boy in the home to be brutally murdered. Take a listen to LA CBS 2 Randy Page. Prosecutors also went after the social workers in that case, saying they failed to take the appropriate steps to protect Gabriel and then falsified documents related to the case.

An appellate court in January ruled the charges against Stephanie Rodriguez, Patricia Clement, Kevin Baum, and Gregory Merritt, all employees of L.A. County's Department of Children and Family Services, should have been dismissed. So the case was sent back down to the trial court today, and Judge George Lamelli did just that. Pursuant to the Court of Appeals directive, the motions to dismiss are hereby granted, and the information is hereby set aside. But we are very grateful for the court's decision in light of the fact that the court has found that they are all factually innocent, including my client. Now, the judge today did rule that the workers were factually innocent. That means their records will be cleared. Now the judge today did rule that the workers were factually innocent.

That means their records will be cleared. DCF this morning, DCFS this morning, released a statement saying it has taken steps to mitigate risk and to improve its ability to serve vulnerable children and families. That was KABC 7 News reporter Rob Hayes reporting. And you heard the DFA defects people groveling, talking about what a great decision it was. That's not true. It was a horrible decision. They actually falsified, faked records to cover up their gross, gross mistreatment of this little boy. Back to you, Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator and professor of forensic. Explain to me exactly what this child endured because they left him in the home in the

hands of his mother, who's Beelzebub, and the lover, the devil. Yeah, this is on linear time, Nancy. There is a timeline that you can follow with this. And at any point in time, particularly early on, if this had been interdicted like it should be, Gabriel would not have advanced to the point that he did. Instead, as a result of this, he went through, let's just take malnourishment just for a second. And we'd look at this. If they had just taken the time to examine him appropriately, examine the household, because that's what these people are supposed to be doing when they go out there. I've worked on many child abuse cases over the course of my career with a medical examiner. So when these people go out, what they do is they literally are supposed to be looking in the cabinets, looking in the refrigerator. They're supposed to be looking in the areas where the child actually indwells, you know, their bedroom, this sort of thing, and just see if it's clean, if food is

there, that sort of thing. If they had just done that, they would have seen early on that the child was not receiving proper nourishment because they also have to talk to everybody else in the family. It's that very simple. Now, if they had, in addition to that, examined him, they would have been looking for things like bruises, for instance. Because, yeah, little boys fall down. It happens all the time. They don't fall down 40 or 50 times. Really?

Do they get their teeth pulled out with pliers? No, they don't. And you also don't have all of these bruises all over the body. Cigarette burns, bullets left in his body where he shot eight separate times with a BB gun, waterboarding. I mean, you know, I don't even know if I can hear it anymore. Now joining me, special guest out of L.A., renowned psychoanalyst, Dr. Bethany Marshall. Bethany, I wanted you to hear all the facts before you weighed in on this devil duo, the mother and her lover. Nancy, it almost defies analysis, but I will give it my best shot. And let me say,

didn't this happen with JC Dugard? Was that the famous abduction where the social workers came to the house, knocked on the front door, took a quick look around. Pardon and parole. It was pardon and parole. The JC Dugard kidnapper and rapist had her hidden in a shed in the backyard. She was taken as a little girl on her way to school. And she gave birth to, I think, two or three children by her rapist. And they, corrections would come out, and he was already a felon, would come out and view where he was living. They somehow missed the shed in the backyard where she was kept, like, 20 years.

That's right. Giving birth, being raped out in that shed over and over and over, and just giving birth in the backyard. That's right, Nancy. Yeah, they miss that. They miss that. They missed a big one. But these social workers overlooked. I think that it's fascinating that when 911 was called and the EMPs came to the house,

that this stepfather kept saying he's gay of the little boy. And I know this is going to sound weird and like a stretch, but I wondered if the father, the stepfather had some perverse sexual interest in this little boy. And instead of acting it out sexually, acted it out through sadism in a way, used the little boy like a football, just throwing him around the house, an it, stomping on him, shooting into him, pulling nails out, pulling teeth out, and got the mother to act with him. They both obviously had hatred towards the little boy. Obviously, the sadistic rituals of abusing this child, I use the word rituals because I think it took on that magnitude in this household,

that the whole household's activities, their interests, what drove their behaviors, were all directed towards little Gabriel, as if he was their only reason for living in a sick, twisted kind of way. They lived to torture him. It's very common with child abuse cases that the parents begin to feel that the child is unconditionally bad and greedy. That's a kind of a core belief about the child. The child wants too much. The child needs too much. I've heard, you know, padlocks being put on refrigerators. I've even heard this in my practice because the parents believe that the child is going to get up in the middle of the night and quote unquote steal food as if the act of ingesting food and being nourished and taken care of, like the child is stealing from the parents.

The parents commonly believe that any need that the child has is bad. And it's almost like they're envious and resentful of the child for being youthful, having their life ahead, having needs. And they feel that the child is extracting from them in some way. I think this analysis only just scratches the surface of what happened to this child, but the word it comes to mind. In their minds, this was not Gabriel. This was an it.

This was a football. You know, I've been looking, Dr. Bethany, at something the teacher, Gabriel's teacher did. She repeatedly called social workers in the months leading up to Gabriel's death that she was concerned he was being beaten at home. She filed multiple complaints with social workers that Gabriel came to school covered in bruises and scratches, had a busted lip, reported an instance where he told the teacher his mother shot him in the face with a BB gun. Gabriel's therapist called 911 after discovering a suicide note written by him, but social workers later dismissed that complaint. Now Gabriel is dead. Very quickly, Ashley Wilcott,

why can't they be prosecuted for falsifying records? I think they can be under the definition. So that piece, I don't know. I absolutely think they can be. And I do believe they should be. That has happened in another state. And I think that's necessary when they have broken that law, which they did in this case. We also learned he was punished that night because he failed to pick up toys. But he had been being punished for eight months until he died. A judge forced by an appellate court to drop charges against defects. And I guess the beat goes on. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend.

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