Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - New bombshells in search for Stacy Peterson & Penn State frat hazing

Episode Date: April 5, 2018

Former Illinois cop Drew Peterson is still behind bars for the murder of his third wife, but his 4th wife Stacy Peterson is still missing. The mystery is the focus of the newest episode of Nancy Grace's A&E show “Grace vs. Abrams” and this episode. Nancy digs into the case with Drew Peterson's former lawyer Joel Brodsky, Cold Case Research Institute director Sheryl McCollum, psychologist Dr. Chloe Carmichael, and reporter Robyn Walensky. Grace also updates the Penn State frat hazing case with lawyer Troy Slaten, prosecutor Wendy Patrick, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, psychologist Dr. Tiffany Sanders and reporter John Lemley. 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 on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 132. One wife dead, one wife missing, two other wives afraid to speak. I'm talking about the here and the now, not some ancient story with multiple wives. I'm talking about a police officer, a police officer that married and divorced three times. His fourth wife now missing, seemingly leaving behind her home and her children without a trace. That's odd, isn't it? Still no resolution in the missing person report of Stacey Peterson. Tonight, Answers on A&E at 11 o'clock

where Dan Abrams and I duke it out over Drew Peterson. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. With me right now, Drew Peterson's defense lawyer, Joel Brodsky, Cold Case Research

Institute Director Cheryl McCollum, New York psychologist, Dr. Chloe Carmichael, and WSB reporter, Robin Walensky. Let's just kick it off with Drew Peterson in his own words. Now, Stacey Peterson goes missing. According to those close to her, she desperately wanted a divorce. And at the time, she knew his third wife, Kathleen Savio, was murdered by Drew Peterson. Nobody else knew that. Listen to what Drew Peterson tells Dr. Phil.

Well, there have been many allegations that have been made against Drew regarding Stacey. And allegation, accusation, whatever you want to call it. Now, you know, we don't know if Stacey made these claims, but I have a graphic here with some of them. First, Stacey's family says Stacy told Drew she wanted a divorce shortly before she disappeared. Is that true? No.

She told me she wanted a divorce. And I hate saying this, but the reality of it, she told me she wanted a divorce once a month. So you're saying it varied with her menstrual cycle? Very much so. And I'm not trying to be disrespectful in saying that, but that was a reality there is an allegation or an accusation that Stacey told a neighbor if anything happened to

her it was not an accident that drew had killed her do you think that she actually said that to a neighbor I really kept the question the credibility of the neighbor because station I still even with her difficulties. We still had a very romantic relationship We still were together a lot. We still spent time cuddling that type of thing So but drew if you had a romantic relationship If you were still intimate and affectionate and together with one one another how could she disappear and you not dismantle the world looking for her i don't know i mean i don't know i've done i think i've done all that i can do and all i have the resources available to do but that defies common sense i

mean if if if you were in love with this woman were you in love with her when she disappeared yes very much so are you in love with her today i try to be but it's i'm having i have a lot of anger issues about it now that she took off like she did she also said that and i believe it's the same neighbor you probably know better than i that you always called and checked on stacy that you were very attentive and in fact it got to the point of being controlling but that you were called and checked on Stacey. That you were very attentive and, in fact, it got to the point of being controlling, but that you were always calling to check up on her. We were always calling each other. So I don't think it was a one-way thing, and I wasn't trying to be controlling.

When you have a romantic relationship with somebody, you're calling them all the time. It's also been alleged that Stacey told her sister that she feared for her life. Do you believe she said that to her sister? Again, I don't know. And if she was trying to set me up for some sort of divorce or anything, that might have been a way to do it. In that you did have a pattern of calling each other all the time. Why did you not call her the day she disappeared? I did.

But she there was she wanted her space she wanted her space so that day I gave her her space because there are those obviously say you called her because you didn't call her because you knew she couldn't answer but you're saying you didn't call her because you were given her space correct did you ever get physical with her did you ever attack her did you ever have a with her? Did you ever attack her? Did you ever have a physical fight? There was a physical confrontation where I cornered her in the kitchen one time and she hit me in the head with a frozen steak, but I didn't retaliate or anything. Because her stepsister says that you threw Stacey down the stairs, knocked her into

the TV and threw her across the room that never happened just never happened never happened why why are these people saying these things i don't know unless they're trying to add some sort of fuel to the fire you know what your stepbrother has said right that he says that he helped you move a blue barrel that was warm to the touch he told friends that he thought after the fact that he actually helped you move her body. That didn't happen. Was there a blue barrel? No. Did he come over and help you do anything, move anything, do anything? Never. The day I was with him the day before and I was attempting to get him a job at a grocery store. He just lost his job and he was so intoxicated or high on something

that i had to cancel the interview and we couldn't follow through with it so he's not a reliable guy i would say no well the phone records show that you were near the chicago uh sanitary and ship channel the day she went missing were you there there? Yes, I was driving through that area. What were you doing there? I was looking for in a couple spots I thought that she might be. I was looking for my car that she was driving. You just heard Drew Peterson talking to Dr. Phil, our friend, regarding a lot of points that are not lost on prosecutors. My first point would be Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, every time I would try somebody for murder or for anything for that matter,

the defense attorneys would say, she's just mean because she's on her period. I mean, you know, it doesn't matter what you're doing. It's because you're on your period. That's always what men claim. Why is that? Here's what's interesting to me, though. Every time she's on her period, all she asks for is a divorce. She's not crying, not fighting with him.

She just wants to get the hell away from you. So that to me would be a pattern that he would need to look at that it's not because of her period. She wants away from you. You know, to Robin Walensky joining me, WSB investigative reporter, Robin Walensky, the claims that she wanted a divorce are overwhelming. But we also know that at the time she goes missing, she had been boxing up Drew Peterson's possessions to kick him out and stacking them

up in the garage, Robin. Yeah, Nancy, she totally wanted out of this marriage. He's got a very, very long history of four wives, all who had their period, all who really wanted away from him. His first wife, Carol, was married six years. She claimed he was a cheater. They got divorced. Then there was Vicki, who said that he was abusing her and threatening her. Allegations, of course. And she told police, you know, after Stacey disappeared, that Peterson threatened to kill her and make it look like an accident. And oh, then there was Kathleen, who he was married to for 11 years, who mysteriously dies in a dry bathtub. I was there, by the way, the day they dug her up at the cemetery.

And then, of course, there's Stacey, who was only 19, and Drew was, what, 49, and she wanted far away from him, period or not. You know, tonight on Grace vs. Abrams on A&E, we actually speak to his wife, Vicki. She speaks out for the first time publicly. And it is just, it broke my heart speaking to her and her daughter, learning about life with Drew Peterson. But that's a whole other can of worms. Dr. Chloe Carmichael, New York psychologist, joining me, founder of anxietytools.com. Dr. Chloe, isn't it true statistically when women that have been abused try to leave the relationship or get pregnant, that's the highest incidence of their murders? Yes, Nancy, of course, that's absolutely true, because what that does is it provokes anger on the part of the person that they're attempting to leave,

which is why I actually think it's very interesting that this gentleman said that he was actually very angry with her. He said that he was angry because she left, which may have even been what she was planning to do. But, of course, we don't know that she left, and really neither does he. And so it's very unusual for someone whose spouse is missing to suddenly just say that they're angry with the person for leaving, because anger puts more distance between us. And when you genuinely miss your spouse and didn't want them gone, it's actually difficult to even connect with any feelings of anger, even if they're appropriate. So the fact that he's jumping to anger with her in the case of someone who is at best case missing, I think is very unusual and somewhat suspicious. With me right now, you know his name very well, renowned Chicago defense attorney Joel Brodsky. Let's just say this isn't our first time in the boxing ring.

Joel Brodsky defending Drew Peterson at trial. No. His longtime defender, Joel Brodsky. Now, hold a minute. I've seen many a photo of Drew Peterson, and for him to say the only physical incident they ever had was when she, Stacey, hit him in the head with a frozen steak. How'd she do that? Stand on a ladder?

He towers over her. Yeah, I mean, his position was he never was physically violent with any of his wives. And he would always his excuse always was that, well, if I as a police officer committed domestic battery, I'd lose my job. So I would never do that. But, you know, Drew was a trained, trained SWAT, trained army officer. You know, if he wanted to resort to violence, he could do it in a way that wouldn't leave marks. He was an expert at that, you know, from all the training in the department and the Army that he had.

You know, I know that there was, with Kathy, I know that there was evidence of some physical altercations. Nothing, you know. Well, you sure know how to put perfume on the pig. What do you mean by physical altercations with Kathleen Savia, later found dead, drowned in a dry bathtub? What do you mean physical altercation? You mean he beat her up?

No, they had a fight that was on, actually it was on videotape. Stacey actually taped it uh you know kathy was uh very you know uh very i went vivacious i mean she wouldn't back down from anything so they they went at it but drew was obviously so much physically stronger he pinned her to the ground uh and then the police came and charged them both with battery, kind of cross charges. But, you know, there was no evidence of him ever breaking bones or causing bloody noses or anything like that. Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, hold on just a moment. Cheryl McCollum, have I lost my mind? I mean, Cheryl, you know that for nine years I volunteered at the Battered Women's Center at night when I was prosecuting.

Absolutely. Do you hear Joel Brodsky still defending Drew Peterson? He says, well, there was never a broken bone. Right. But, oh, yeah, he pinned her to the ground. That was caught on video. Hello? Nancy?

It'll be a cold day in H-E-double-L. My husband pins me to the ground, and the police are not called. Okay? That ain't going to happen. Cheryl, what happened? I feel like I went down the rabbit hole. Here's the deal. pins me to the ground and the police are not called okay that ain't gonna happen cheryl what happened i feel like i went down the rabbit hole here's the deal the devil takes many forms and the the reality is a 19 year old girl was married to a 49 year old man and that was nothing about but control and he abused his money with her his emotions with her his sex with her his physical

being with her there's no doubt that every one of his four wives was abused in some way drew was not about to let anybody get his money well yeah they weren't gonna touch his retirement okay jump in joel drew was very controlling very control i mean there's no question he was very controlling of all his wives they all said that he would monitor them electronically uh follow them uh wait you mean the gps tracker i've got on my husband is wrong just kidding okay that's not true why did i say that joel bros, what is the defense for Drew Peterson? His wife, Stacey, just goes missing.

And another thing that he said, we just heard him tell Dr. Phil, was the brother-in-law was a drinker. He was this. He was that. That didn't happen. He didn't help him get rid of Stacey's body in a blue cooler. But they were caught on video together that night driving through a Starbucks. So the night Stacy goes missing. So how can he say they weren't together? I've watched the video.

Yeah, the video. I don't think that was before he gave that interview before any charges had been brought. So he had never seen the video at that point. He didn't know they had that evidence joel you know what you should consider professional dancing because you just danced around i'm going to call dancing with the stars you need to be there buddy joel i didn't ask you did the vid starbucks video come to light after his statement to dr phil yes you're just saying yeah he lied because he didn't know about the video. That's what you're saying. I mean, he obviously lied because he didn't know he was,

he had been caught. Um, you know, uh, if, if he knew about the video, he would have, uh, altered the story in some way. I'm sure. Made up a different lie, Jewel. How do you stand yourself? Help me out. I'm trying not to use such direct language, but yeah, he, I'm sure he wouldn't have said that if he knew that there was evidence to the contrary. But, you know, Drew was building, was, you know, making this trying to tell a consistent story about what happened to Stacy to keep with that, his position that she ran away. That was his, his story from day one that she ran off with some other guy. That's true. Joel, he's never wavered in his story.

Robin Walensky wsb let's start at the beginning we know she married him when she's 19 he's 40 something what happened around the time of stacy's disappearance as of right now today she has never been seen again the theory of drew pet Peterson and his lawyer with us right now, high profile lawyer out of Chicago, Joel Broski, is the fact that Stacey was super petite and she could have fit in that barrel very easily. And there were reports at the time when I was out in Bolingbrook that he had access to a small plane. And there was one theory that the Bolingbrook police and detectives were working on at the time that he had flown the plane and that he could have dropped the barrel into a forest area. And there were many searches at the time looking for that barrel. It had never been found in the forest, never been found in any body of water. But she clearly, Nancy, could have fit in that barrel. They had a very tumultuous relationship. She wanted out. And the next thing

you know, she disappeared. She disappeared and has never been seen again. FYI, right now we know that money has run dry, and Stacey's sister has actually launched an effort to raise money on a GoFundMe site to continue the search for Stacey Peterson's body. Her sister also, like me, believes that stacy is dead go to gofundme and look for help me bring stacy peterson home help me bring stacy peterson home at gofundme now what we do know now joel brodsky his defense lawyer is not going to admit to this. Former, former. OK, is that his brother-in-law, a parent from one

of his other marriages, showed up, was called over to Peterson's home that night and helped him carry a very heavy blue cooler out that was warm to the touch. And to this day, that brother-in-law,

who later tried to commit suicide, says he thinks he unwittingly helped dispose of Stacey's body. Her disappearance and or death still unresolved. I'll give you a little sneak peek about what's happening tonight. Here is Joel Brodsky, renowned defense attorney. And Dan Abrams and I are asking him just a few very polite questions. We are here with Joel Brodsky, so you know where the body is.

You know where the body is. You said you know where the body is. I said I know what happened. So what happened? Tonight, we uncover new witnesses and new evidence to shed light on the disappearance, and I believe the murder, of Stacey Peterson. It's A&E tonight, 11 o'clock, 11 o'clock p.m. Please join us.

This wasn't boys being boys. This was murder of our son. You sink your whole life into your children. You work for them. You save for them. You try to make sure they eat the right things and they get enough sleep. And the dream that they go to a great college

and somehow in your mind that ensures that things will be okay for them and they'll have a good life, right? Well, this teen boy, a star football player and honors student, dead at Penn State. Oh no, not by a knifing, not a gunshot wound, not a mugging in the parking lot, not a crash. His so-called brothers force him to run a, quote, gauntlet until he dies. And they let him lay there, according to grand jury testimony, with blows to the head, a ruptured spleen, as 80% of his body's blood drained into his abdomen. He bled out into his own stomach. Twelve hours he lay there until he died.

In the last days, all charges, all the major charges dropped straight out to John Limley, Crime Stories investigative reporter. Let's just take it from the top. What can you tell me about Tim Piazza? He lived the better part of his life before he went off to college in Reddington Township, New Jersey. That was his hometown. He was a graduate there of Hunterdon Central Regional High School. He played football, was on the spring track team. He took part in shot put, javelin, and discus. He was a very

involved student as well. He participated in the school's teen prevention education program. He volunteered to help kids teach special needs children's football, basketball, and baseball. He was a sophomore engineering student at Penn State University, where he was on the executive board of a special interest organization that benefited a Penn State dance marathon, a charity there. He loved spending time with his family, especially during the summers when they went to the beach. Friends went along on that as well. Jet skiing, playing golf, taking in maybe a pickup hoop in friendly basketball games. He was said to be smart, funny, friendly, and really just a kind guy. You know, I'm overwhelmed at not only what happened to him, but an alleged cover-up. I want to take it from, before I go to Z, I want to start at A.

We're talking about a teen boy, Tim Piazza, an athlete and an honor student. What happened that night? We know in the last hours, a Pennsylvania judge dismisses nearly 300 charges in the Penn State fraternity hazing death. I've been looking this judge up. I've been scouring everything I can find out to Alan Duke joining me out of L.A. You know, Alan, I've been looking high and low. Looks like the judge that threw out all these charges related to Timothy Piazza is not even a lawyer. I mean, I looked up his 2017 bio that was in the paper. And in his own bio, it doesn't mention a law degree or a law practice or anything and I then looked up the statutes regarding a magistrate judge in that jurisdiction

and it says a law degree is not required that you can take a quote class a prep class and you can be a judge many states states. Yeah, I remember in Georgia, back when I was in college, I thought about wanting to be a probate judge just part-time because you did not have to have a law degree. You could just get appointed. Yeah, back then. Back then. We're talking the 70s. Yeah, well, things have changed, Alan. Now when you make legal decisions, like throwing out 300 of the most serious charges when a boy has been found dead, you would like a legal mind to throw out legal charges? I mean, OK, I'm getting ahead of myself again.

Wendy Patrick, California prosecutor. I want to go through the facts as they relate to the charges. So that night, Tim Piazza is and that's not the prosecution's theory, that the fraternity brothers intended for him to die. So then what we do, as you and I have done many times in court, is we look at the standard of reckless disregard. And did the cover-up, and I think that's a great way to put it in cases like this, did that kill him? Did that contribute to his death that they obviously knew he was badly injured yet did nothing. And that's the kind of standard that many courts sustain murder convictions across the country every single day. But that apparently, according to the judge, was lacking here. And that, as you say, and as Alan eloquently put it, that's really the outrage,

is should that person have been qualified to make a call when you actually have a young person that is dead? Well, when she's talking about a cover-up, and Troy Slayton, I know you've got a response to that, but I want to hear the facts. John Limley, he goes to the party that night, this teen boy, a February night, and was forced to walk the gauntlet. What's that? Well, this is required of each and every pledge. It's an obstacle course of sorts, which requires the pledge to drink first a bottle, a complete bottle of vodka, drink a beer, and finally drink from a bag of wine. Now, that would be enough to knock out most fellows around the age of 20 or so, but it was later revealed that Piazza took prescription antidepressants, which just accelerated his

intoxication. And here's another key little fact in the piece in the puzzle. The fraternity was supposed to be alcohol-free after a suspension just a few years before that. Well, I didn't know that fact. I do know this. I know his blood alcohol was about 0.36. The legal limit is 0.08 he was forced to have 18 drinks vodka 18 vodkas in 82 minutes you would walk down a gauntlet of guys fraternity brothers all of them holding vodka and you'd have to drink it till you get to the end of the line like one of those dance lines dr tiffany sanders Dr. Tiffany joining me, psychologist out of Chicago, you know, where you go down the line and people are on either side and you dance down

the line instead of dancing, you'd have to take all the vodka they were holding and drink it. And that's running the gauntlet 18 drinks in 82 minutes. Oh my God. 0.36. That's blood alcohol poisoning levels. But that was just the tip of the iceberg, Dr. Tiffany. Then he gets blows to the head and lays there to the point his skull was fractured.

And nobody does anything, Dr. Tiffany. He lays there dying. Nancy, I'm a member of one of the largest African-American sororities in the country, and hazing has been on the forefront of many of these organizations' minds because of the loss of members and pledges over the years. And a sorority and a fraternity is about relationships, sisterhoods, brotherhoods. Sure, there's sometimes fun and silly pranks that people get involved in, but alcohol poisoning, I know that some of these kids are wise enough to be aware that drinking that much alcohol is going to have destructive effects. So it's very sad to hear that a young

man, impressionable, joining an organization, looking to his future brothers for support and guidance is leading him down a destructive and unfortunately deadly path. So as a member of a sorority, I'm surprised and sadly shocked at this. Well, to me, a bigger concern is that it's happening over and over again. And it doesn't seem to be stopping. It's getting worse. the hazing deaths. What more do we know about that night? Joseph Scott Morgan joining me, expert in forensics, professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University.

Joe Scott, what do we know? Well, as you had well stated, Nancy, he had alcohol poisoning. And what we refer to this in medical legal terms is alcohol toxicity or ethanol poisoning. And it's incompatible with life. You couple that with these blows that he received to the head. And as you had mentioned, he had had some abdominal trauma too, which caused him to slowly bleed out. If he has this much alcohol in his system, Nancy, there's not going to be an awareness that he is in distress. If all of these other people in this environment have a diminished response because they're all inebriated,

they're not going to seek help. And I think probably the term that rings in my mind relative to this that's come up is the word apathy and that they just didn't care, Nancy. And in these kinds of critical conditions, you have to have people that care, people that have an awareness that, you know, he could have been saved, in my opinion, Nancy, but it would have had to have begun with getting him to the hospital in as short an order as possible. They let this kid languish on the floor all of this time until he just died at their feet on that filthy floor. Justice Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University. What exactly medically were his injuries as discovered in autopsy? Well, he had a lacerated spleen. He also had a closed head injury, which is going to create... Oh, my stars.

I woke up in the middle of the night, Joe Scott Morgan, thinking about a closed head injury. I don't know why. I guess it's a hazard of the business. I was thinking about closed head injuries, particularly as they relate to infants. A closed head injury simply is when you get shot in the head. That's not closed head. Closed head injuries when you're, for instance, hit in the head and from the outside you can't really see a laceration or a gunshot wound. No, you can't.

But the lethal injury is inside the head. Sorry, Joe Scott, you just jogged a midnight memory. Go ahead. Yeah, and what happens in these events, Nancy, is when you have this so-called closed head injury, it can be precipitated by a blow to the head, which this child obviously, and he's a child that he obviously sustained with fractured skull. You're not going to be able to see this externally. So it's not like there's going to be blood all over the floor. Where that blood is going though, Nancy, is that it is encasing the brain and causing cerebral swelling, which means swelling of the brain.

And the brain is essentially being strangulated. And the brain is heavily depended upon being oxygenated. The more you choke it down with internal or intracranial pressure, that means the pressure around the brain, that means that it's being choked, the life is literally being choked out. And this takes a period of time. And this would have been quite obvious at autopsy. I'm sure that when they opened this child's head up at autopsy, blood literally came pouring out, clots and clots of blood. I've seen this a number of times in cases over the years. You will also have seen the same thing in his abdomen.

He's got internal injuries, and they're internal, so there's not going to be like a knife wound where he's spouting blood everywhere or a gunshot wound, as you had mentioned. This blood is building up. So he's got blood that is essentially strangulating all of his organs, and his cavities are just filling up with it, and it's a horrible, horrible way to die. The way he hurt his head was trying to leave and falling backwards, falling down, falling down stairs, one blow after the next, after the next. I'm not sure how he gets the lacerated spleen, though. Joe Scott, how do you get a lacerated spleen?

Do you get that from falling downstairs? That seems kind of hard to believe. Well, in my experience, when you have abdominal trauma, most of the time, you know, our abdomen is kind of soft and it's relatively protected. Most of the time, in my experience, I've seen abdominal trauma in one of two ways, either from being kicked or being in a motor vehicle accident requires a tremendous amount of pressure, direct pressure to that specific area. I've never seen someone fall down a staircase and sustained abdominal trauma like that unless they, you know, impale themselves. And of course, that's a closed I mean an open injury the head injury is easily explained in falling down staircase multiple times and having multiple strikes so yeah that is within the realm of possibility but abdominal trauma it's hard for me to buy that falling down a staircase it was for me too it was for me too what does the video show we find out later that a lot of video was deleted but what

does the video show as far as him getting the head injuries john limley well in the state of intoxication as we've noted he fell to the bottom of the basement stairs of the house knocked unconscious uh this is when he's carried to a couch, and this is where we received the first surveillance video of, you can clearly see the formation of a large and obvious bruise on the left side of his abdomen. One of the brothers, in fact, a fellow pledge, tried to convince the other guys that Piazza needed immediate medical help at that point, but he was just shoved aside, completely ignored. A little bit later, Tim regained consciousness. He rolled off the couch and three of these fraternity brothers picked him up and slammed him back onto the couch. This is when security footage shows the brothers slapping Piazza in the face, I guess trying to

waken him up, punching him in the stomach, which as we've noted, he already had some sort of injury to the abdomen, pouring beer on him. He remained unconscious. He didn't respond at all. He rolled off the couch again, curled his body and clutching his abdomen at this point. Okay, Troy Slayton, it seems to get worse because what happened with me is Troy Slayton, high profile lawyer, defense lawyer out of L.A. His name pops up all over the country in high profile cases. Troy, this is what's to me damning evidence. And I just don't know how the judge, the air quoting judge, threw out these charges.

But what we learn is the whole thing was videoed. And after Timothy Piazza had been lying there, people were actually walking over his body. He was at the foot of the steps. And that's on the video. And he is also seen being thrown onto a sofa, slammed down. And he is completely comatose. And they are filling up book bags full of books and laying on top of him so he won't fall off they're slapping him in the face and then we find out troy that they start searching on their cell phones for alcohol poisoning drank too much alcohol, body cold, body stiff.

I mean, come on, Troy. When somebody's body is cold and stiff, it's time to call 911. Just because something horrible happened, just because there was a tragedy that resulted in somebody's death doesn't mean that every single person around is guilty of crimes, is guilty of involuntary manslaughter. You said that his blood alcohol level was 0.36 several times over the state's legal limit. Yes, the legal limit for driving. And nobody was driving here. Nobody was putting him behind the wheel of a car. And are we to be completely shocked that young college freshmen and sophomore

were drinking that some freshmen had handed another freshman some beer? Is that totally shocking? And should that be a crime that if somebody dies, results in the additional tragedy of every single person who was around going to jail for decades. The judge sat here for days and days. It was a preliminary hearing of unprecedented length and found that the prosecution was unable to prove probable cause for the most serious charges. But he did hold them to answer for what was appropriate, some alcohol-related charges for giving their friend some alcohol.

I don't want to see it as apparent because I feel like it's going to be incredibly painful. And the last memories of my son will be him being abused for 12 hours and dying a slow and painful death. Straight back to John Limley, Crime Stories investigative reporter. What can you tell me about deleting the video when the cops show up, detectives arrive? What about who deleted video they did not want police to see? Who cleared out their cell phone text messages? What can you tell me about that, John Limley? What about who deleted video they did not want police to see? Who cleared out their cell phone text messages?

What can you tell me about that, John Limley? There was a scurry of activity in the, we think it was maybe 40 minutes or so, of debating what the next step should be after he was carried upstairs for the last time. The conclusion was made that Piazza's injuries were indeed serious, that he would require medical attention, and so panic set in. They started, you know, not only sort of trying to shore up their collective story, but also making sure that any evidence of texts back and forth, because early in the evening, someone had texted another brother and said, look, this looks pretty serious. I think this is going to be a problem. So they spent quite some time trying to delete from their own devices, from the security system. Before emergency assistance arrived, the brothers even tried to clean Tim himself up. They wiped

blood from his face, attempted to dress him. But as you've already mentioned, his body was rigid. It was too rigid to even put clothes on his body. Rigid? Okay, Joe Scott Morgan, the body is rigid? Yes, yes. And what this indicates is that rigor mortis had begun to set in in this child. And this takes a number of hours for a body to attain what we refer to as rigidity. Generally, you only see it come about in the small muscles of the face, and that's within, you know, I don't know, maybe about an hour and a half. But if you're talking about the limbs, the arms, the legs, this sort of thing, we're talking about a huge time delay here, Nancy, a tremendous amount of time, as a matter

of fact, way beyond what would be considered reasonable. Take a listen to what the prosecutor announced. The Commonwealth is prepared today to announce new charges, and these charges are a direct result of new evidence in this case. For those of you that are familiar with this situation and the death of Tim Piazza, we have new evidence. And that evidence is, if you have been following it, the State College Police Department was indeed able to recover the basement video in this case. And as a result of the conduct on that video, we are today announcing the filing of new charges from brothers from this fraternity. These charges range from manslaughter to hazing and also charges for the actual affirmative deliberate deletion of that video, which obviously pertained to capturing criminal conduct. So charges were filed in the

case. All right. In the last hours, we learned that charges have now been dropped. And this is the way it went down, as I understand it. Wendy Patrick, California prosecutor with me. The state filed the charges before this judge, who we believe doesn't have a law degree. Got to keep searching for that. One has not turned up no matter how much we look. So the judge throws out a ton of charges. Okay. They then find out about the deleted video where the fraternity brothers delete the video of what Piazza went through in the 12 hours before he's pronounced dead or before 911 is even called. They delete all that. It's found. The state uses that and files new charges. It goes back to the judge, and once again, the judge throws out the charges.

After days of preliminary hearings, take a listen to Tim's father. We'd like to thank the district attorney and the state college police for their continued commitment and efforts in finding justice for our son Tim's death. Tim was a happy and caring human being and a wonderful son who just wanted to join an organization to find friendships and camaraderie. Instead he was killed at the hands of those he was seeking friendship from. We have spent the past eight months wondering how can this happen on the campus of Penn State. The visions of him lying in the hospital bed battered and bruised and on life support looking as if he got hit by a tractor trailer make no sense. He was just trying to join an organization. Over the last several months we listened to

defense arguments centered around victim blaming. Or how could the defendants have known they were putting someone seriously at risk since no one died before, as if they were entitled to one free death. Or the catch all argument of, we don't know. They claimed, we don't know what else happened other than what was seen in the upstairs video. And we don't know what happened in the basement. Guess what, guys? Now we know. We're making holiday plans without our son Tim because of your actions. If you did not commit the acts you did, we would not be here today.

And we would be anxiously awaiting Tim's return home for Thanksgiving break on Friday. That is Tim Piazza's father. You know, I'm looking right now. Jackie pulled it up again. This is the one I found. It's Judge Alan Sinclair, Judicial Experience, Magisterial District Judge. You know, I was a clerk for a federal magistrate judge. He did have a law degree. And it says other experience, he worked in juvenile division

in the probation office. Then education, he went to Shippensburg University. I checked, they don't have a law degree. He has a BA in criminology from Indiana University, Pennsylvania. So I don't see anything there about a law degree. Troy Slayton, LA defense lawyer, that doesn't bother you? The judge is the judge and the law is the law. And because you didn't get the result that you may have wanted, you don't go attacking the entire legal system, Nancy. I'll tell you this much, if it were my child, and as he said, Joe Scott Morgan, did you hear that? That he looked like he had been hit by a semi-truck trailer?

Yeah, I did, Nancy. Absolutely brutal reminder of what was left behind of your child after you send them off to college, and just they're put through a meat grinder. But why? Why would he be covered head to toe in bruises? I don't understand that, Joe Scott. I don't either, Nancy. You know, the falling down the staircase, this thing. You know, and think about what else they're doing to him. I believe someone had said earlier they were stacking books on top of him to keep him from falling off of the sofa.

You've got this pack of kids that are huddled around him. They're racing stuff off of videotape. Who knows what was going on and what's missing, what the real story is here, Nancy. We do know this. This kid's dead. He's got a closed head injury. And he's got severe injuries to his abdomen. And he's been poisoned with alcohol because and he's got severe injuries to his abdomen and he's been poisoned with alcohol because that's what this comes down to. When you say alcohol poisoning,

what do you mean by that? I mean that, let's look at it this way, Nancy. His blood, the normal level for legally drunk to operate a vehicle is 0.8. If I remember correctly, his is at 0.30. This is in lethal range. You start to get up above, if I remember correctly, above about a 1.8. You're already at the point where you can't even string sentences together. It's at that point that the alcohol has now made, it's incompatible with life, as we like to define it. Your brain can no longer function. You have no motor skills whatsoever. It will literally throw you into a comatose state. Nancy, we know.

Who is that? Is that John Lindley? Go ahead, John. Yes. We know, Nancy, that he continued before he was carried upstairs that last time to try to stand up to get out of there. He kept falling back down. He tried once to go toward the lobby area of the house. hit his head into an iron railing, and then landed on a stone floor, which that's probably where the most serious head trauma took place. He got up from that, tried to reach the front door. He fell headfirst into it, knocking himself unconscious again. He later even tried one more time to go down those basement stairs, fell down again again and remained at the base of the stairs

until several of the fraternity brothers discovered him several hours later. And this is when he was already cold and had a rapid breathing pattern. You know, I've noticed that it seems to me, after reviewing everything, there have been accusations against Sinclair making errors of law in this case before. It's the district attorney, then DA, Stacey Parks Miller, says the courts failed miserably in the handling of the Beta Theta Pi case. That's this case. So it seems to me that this has been an ongoing problem with this particular judge. And Troy Slayton, it's not that I'm judge shopping. I just think dropping these charges is wrong. I think it should go to a jury to decide. The judge is supposed to serve as the gatekeeper. Not every single charge that a prosecutor wants to bring gets to go in front of the jury. The judge gets

to decide whether or not there is probable cause to hold these people to answer. And just because something horrible happened doesn't mean that everyone around him is guilty of these crimes. Now, where does a person's individual responsibility come into place? Nobody was holding his head down. He wasn't being held down, strapped down to a table and alcohol being poured into his mouth. He had a choice. He had a choice to be there. He had a choice to be involved in that fraternity. When they were drinking, he had a choice to leave if he wanted to. I mean, nobody was, when you say he was poisoned by alcohol by Joe Scott Morgan. Yeah, he was poisoned himself by alcohol. That doesn't mean everyone around him is guilty of involuntary manslaughter. I still have a problem with them standing by after they fed him the alcohol and the peer pressure to go down the gauntlet and let him die.

And they knew. And then they helped him. Then they help him onto a couch. No, they didn't help him. They tried. They hurt him. I mean, Wendy Patrick, how can that be viewed? I know Troy Slade is trying to argue they helped, but they knew the way they acted was wrong. They deleted the video and cleared out all their Google searches of body, cold, stiff, too much alcohol.

They knew what they had done was wrong. That's right. And, you know, this is all going to be great fodder for the no doubt the wrongful death action because you're right. It's a supposedly alcohol-free fraternity. They're probably scared to death that they've created this situation and then know that they've made it worse by the way they treated the body after this child had suffered the injuries that he did. And so even if Troy's argument would hold water at the front end, perhaps when it all started, it's still circumstantially when you look at what those fraternity brothers did or better yet, both did and failed to do, that is what the prosecutors were relying on for this involuntary manslaughter charge. And, you know, I note

the procedural history of this case as well. After those charges were not sustained, they actually refiled them once and still failed to sustain those charges. And it's true the judge cannot take to the airwaves and defend himself and the rationale for his ruling. We're still left with that record and all that went on during that unprecedented eight-day preliminary hearing. I don't know about you, but I've never been in a prelim in 20 years that lasted eight days and still fail to find the kind of evidence that, boy, the victim's father really made the closing argument for manslaughter that we wish that we were going to be able to hear. Nonetheless, we'll probably hear it in the remaining charges as well. Just a heartbreaking set of circumstances.

Is there anything the state can do now, Wendy Patrick? Well, it looks like they've exhausted the options legally available to them, barring new evidence being unearthed. And that's always what we look at is, will something surface that nobody knew about before? We saw that already once with the video. That would result in new charges, whether it's a charge of getting rid of evidence or something else, conspiracy maybe, but it would need to be based on new evidence because what they have thus far has been shot down not once but twice. Is there any way they can appeal this magistrate's ruling?

Well, based on what I've been reading so far, like everybody else, they've really thought through almost every avenue available to them legally. And if one comes available that would sustain that kind of an appeal, you bet they will. They have been relentless and passionate about pursuing justice for this young man. If there is a way to appeal it, I think that they will. For now, listen to Timothy Piazza's parents. This wasn't boys being boys. This was murder of our son. They tortured him for 12 hours. They let him suffer for 12 hours. He died a slow and painful death at the hands of these men of principle,

as they call it. He was just an awesome individual, and we're a little worse off as a world without a minute. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.