Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Shattered Souls: Pain

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Join veteran forensic investigator Karen Smith on the Shattered Souls podcast! Twenty two-year-old Jessie Bracelett was stabbed and left for dead in a dark parking lot in 2012. His friend, Maurice Johnson, also suffered a stab wound and called 911. . . and so did several eyewitnesses. Detectives would rely on the forensic reconstruction to detangle this twisted case. Detective Kim Long discusses the case with Karen.Subscribe to the Shattered Souls podcast and catch up on all of Season 1 available now:Apple PodcastiHeartSpotifyMusic: The New Real by Sam Johnson at www.samjohnsonlive.com Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. on the ground and pull me off it. Oh my God. He landed in the street. We've got rescue coming to him, okay? No. Somebody just tried to rob us. They stabbed my partner. I tried to help them, and they stabbed me too. Did someone try to rob y'all and stab you? Yeah. This is Shattered Souls. I'm your host, Karen Smith. This podcast contains graphic language that is not suitable for children.

This is the new real. Christmas. The time for peace, joy, and goodwill toward your fellow man. For one young man's family, Christmas time would never be the same again. One would think that Christmas time might give some respite to violent crime, but often it's just the opposite, and one area of the criminal element never stops. It churns 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Drug deals. It's no shock that not everyone on this planet is on the up and up. Some people make a living doing things that go against societal

norms and mores, and a lot of the time they fall victim to violent crime. I am not the judge and jury regarding anyone else's life decisions. I'm also not privy to their background, circumstances, economic disparities, or perhaps the things that were completely out of their control from the beginning. My job is to work the scene, find the evidence, and use objective means to do so. My job is not to judge, it's to solve. In the following case, the victim was a drug dealer, and maybe someone whose choices would cause conviction because his life was different than your own. As a detective, I would obviously caution you against that.

To us, a victim is a victim, regardless of the reasons we're called to the scene, and there will always be somebody left behind who loved them. But let's move on to this story. On December 17, 2012, at about 2.30 in the morning, just two blocks down from the Zone 3 police substation, 22-year-old Jesse Bracelet lay bleeding in the parking lot of Williamsburg Apartments. Patrol units raced to the scene from every direction when a call came into the 911 call center reporting screams coming from the area next to Toledo Road. Please hurry up. Yes, ma'am. It's already been sent. You're on the phone with me, not the officers.

They're driving over there, okay? There's somebody out there on the ground and a police officer. Oh, my God. Okay, tell me what's upsetting you. Do you know these people? Oh, my God. He's laying in the street. We've got rescue coming to him, okay?

Jesse Bracelet's friend, Maurice Johnson, also called 911, and he was out of breath. Someone's trying to rob us. They say I'm a partner. I'm really, really good. And I try to help them. And they stab stabbed me too. Did you get a description of the person? Uh, two armed, three, three armed black patrol.

There was three armed black males. Two patrol officers were nearby at another call and heard the screams. They pulled their cars into the complex parking lot just a couple of minutes later. They immediately saw Jesse lying on the pavement. When the first officer approached him, he was still struggling for breath, but he died a moment later, just before the paramedics arrived. A perimeter was formed, and while officers searched the complex and the surrounding area for the perpetrators, Maurice Johnson appeared from the shadows

and collapsed next to an ambulance, bleeding. Where are you exactly? Are you at the intersection with Toledo and St. Augustine? Hello? Paramedics attended to Maurice and transported him to the trauma center. He had been stabbed in the upper left chest. Jesse Bracelet remained face down in the parking lot that was now encompassed by patrol cars and yellow tape. Bright red blood flowed from his body and spatters covered the pavement in every direction. Onlookers began to gather and they leaned over balconies

and crowded the stairwells to watch the controlled chaos and a few eyewitnesses came forward. Robberies and assaults were very commonplace at this apartment complex, and sometimes witness accounts are not completely accurate. It was still way too early to figure out loyalties and rivalries between everybody involved, including the witnesses. Detectives would need to sort everything out during the interview process, including Maurice Johnson's statement to the 911 dispatcher about being the victim of a robbery. Any information he could provide about the assailants would be crucial to the investigation. At the emergency room, Maurice Johnson was treated by a trauma surgeon who said that his injuries were not life-threatening.

The cut on his chest had gone through the muscle, but it had missed all of the major arteries. My cell phone rang at about six in the morning with a request from Detective Kim Long to come to the scene and assist her. She said the scene was pretty extensive and that we would likely be there most of the day. I rolled up to the complex as the sun peeked over the horizon, illuminating the area around Jesse Bracelet. A temporary shield had been placed by his body to prevent the crowd and news crews to the north from seeing the details, but his body was still visible from the east, west, and south. Kim briefed me about the evidence aside from the body that had been marked so far. A blood trail leading between two buildings that extended to a back porch, bloody shoe prints on the pavement and sidewalk, and a to do an analysis of the bloodstains around Jesse Bracelet's body,

on his clothes, and on the surrounding blacktop. This is Detective Kim Long. They had located a blood trail leading throughout, and this is a large apartment complex that went in between buildings. You could see the blood trail on the sidewalk. It looked like it had crossed over a parking lot. There was like a large pool of blood, especially around his head. His body was face down on the pavement.

His white tank top was stained red and pulled up to the middle of his back. The majority of bloodstains were situated on his right side, and a closer look at the injuries to his neck showed the reason why. His attacker was clearly right-handed. The slices to Jesse's neck started on the left side and pulled across the front and ended near his right ear. His left arm was outstretched above his head, and his right hand was tucked under his face. His legs were straight, and there was no blood on the bottoms of his bare feet. Blood covered nearly every square inch of his upper body, but the backside of his blue

sweatpants was pretty clean, with very little blood anywhere on them except along the waistband. His lower back and the bottom left side of his white t-shirt also lacked any bloodstains. Moving away from the victim onto the black top, the bloodstains were still wet and very bright red. They had definitive directionality evidenced by the long spines that moved right and back away from his neck and his body. These repeated patterns were indicative of a throwing motion close to the ground as the weapon was moved from left to right and back. They were cast off, created when an object is swung through the air and blood is released in a tangential line, or 90 degrees from the point of departure, continuing in a straight line until the droplets land on an

intervening surface or are overtaken by gravity and come to rest on the ground. In this case, the stains had pointy ends that landed on the ground in a semicircle, starting at his neck and continuing all the way back to his right knee. A large pool of blood surrounded the upper half of Jesse's body and was concentrated mostly on the right side as well. The sun was now shining, so it was much easier to visualize the bloodstains, and I moved backward past his feet to the beige Toyota Solara parked about 15 feet to the south. The car was pulled into the parking space, and several evidence markers near it identified shoe prints and additional blood drops on the sidewalk near building number one. The rear of the Toyota was covered in small bloodstains.

Some were circular in shape, and others were elliptical. These were the end result of that cast-off, forced off of a knife or some weapon as it was swung backward. Because the car was parked 15 feet away, a great deal of force was necessary to send those tiny droplets that distance. Little droplets of blood like that lack the mass required to travel very far without a good deal of kinetic energy or energy possessed as the result of motion. This broke the blood into droplets that flew through the air and ultimately

landed on the rear lower half of the Toyota and all over the intervening pavement. The circular droplets landed at a near 90 degree angle and the elliptical droplets landed at an acute angle. The important aspect of the droplets on the car, besides the fact that they existed at all, was that all of them were located on the lower half of the vehicle. Not one droplet was present on the roof, on top of the trunk, or any surface higher than about 40 inches from the ground. This meant that they originated from a low position to the north of the car, right where Jesse's body was. The perpetrator was low to the ground when the blood was released from the weapon, and it required a great deal of force to send those minute stains 15 feet through the air. The medical examiner investigator arrived,

and she took her initial photographs of Jesse's position and injuries to his neck, his back, his hands, and his arms. The medical examiner and the body removal people responded to turn him over. I actually remember we all kind of gasped because they had to literally hold his head to keep it from basically just hacking. Just the brutality of the marks on his, you know, trying to saw his head off and, you know, cutting him.

The investigator asked for our assistance and we very carefully rolled Jesse over onto a white sheet. He also had cuts along his bicep, both forearms and fingers, which all suggested that they were defensive wounds, and he tried to put up a fight against the killer. One of his fingernails had been ripped off and was found under his body on the pavement, along with the tip of his index finger. The investigator picked both of them up and placed them into envelopes for the pathologist. I took swabs of Jesse Bracelet's hands, his arms, and his neck, just in case the suspect's blood might have been combined with his. Blood covered most of his body, but now that he had been rolled over, one area on his right side stood out to me immediately. Just above his saturated boxer shorts,

there was an abrupt change in the blood that stained his skin. A 90-degree angle void pattern. This area looked like a capital letter L, and whatever caused it had blocked blood from being deposited onto his skin. I took photographs with a scale and put that image in my memory bank for later in case it became important. Paper bags were slid over Jesse's hands, and he was transported to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy the following morning. As we worked the scene into the afternoon, Maurice Johnson was brought from the hospital to the homicide office for questioning. They had stapled the three-inch

laceration on his left chest shut and put a large compression bandage over it and sent him downtown. He was placed into the 10 by 10 room where he immediately wrapped himself in a hospital sheet and put his head down on the table for a nap. Back in the parking lot, now that Jesse's body had been transported, I could do a more detailed documentation of the bloodstains and their directionality to show the jury during trial. It would also help jog my memory if years went by before I testified. I used a yellow grease pencil to mark the direction of each major stain group on the pavement, which ended up looking like a warped clock. Stains by the Toyota were marked and the arrows all aimed out and away in a semicircle from

Jesse's original position. I used sticky scales to delineate each stain on the back of that Toyota, and I measured their height. Then I swabbed each one for DNA. I knew that blood likely belonged to Jesse Bracelet, but I couldn't make that assumption just in case the suspect had been wounded as well. Kim Long continued to work on the blood trail, and along the way, she found a black t-shirt. I believe there was a shirt on the ground where it had been collected,

and they said that's where the suspect, who originally came out as the second victim, had been standing when he said he had been stabbed, he had been hurt, and rescued, took him off to the hospital. Kim packaged that shirt for us to do an analysis the following day. She followed that blood trail down the sidewalk between the buildings buildings, and back to a courtyard, where they abruptly changed direction. Halfway into the courtyard, leading to the back building, and that's where the drip stains stopped. But then you could follow the trail, and they started going back towards the scene. A clot of blood was on the sidewalk pavement next to an outdoor patio where a number of drip stains were located in a cluster. The trail led back to the Toyota in the parking lot and the area where Maurice Johnson had collapsed. We looked at the interior of that Toyota. There was very little blood inside, with the exception of a couple of

drops on the driver's seat, a swipe mark near the door, and there was no blood on the passenger side at all, a fact that would become very important later on. One of Jesse Bracelet's flip-flops was on the driver's floorboard, and the other was on the driver's seat. The center console lid was up and there was a small swipe of blood on the top of it. Down at the homicide office, the interview room door opened and two detectives entered, tossed notepads on the table and sat across from Maurice Johnson. Wake up, the detective said. Maurice slowly lifted his head and rocked back in his chair. The lead detective read Maurice his Miranda rights and had him sign a form that he understood. Maurice waived his right to an attorney and agreed to speak with them. After some small talk,

questions about the events at the Williamsburg apartment complex began. Maurice immediately asserted that four unknown suspects robbed him and Jesse Bracelet while they sat in a car in the parking lot. He said that he fought off two of the suspects. One of them had a gun, and the other one had a knife. My friend's in the vehicle. Okay, he said someone tried to rob y'all and stab you? Yeah.

They pulled out a gun. Okay. You said someone tried to rob y'all and stab you? Yeah. I pulled out a gun. Okay. I just, I just saw the guy with the gun. Did you get a description? Huh? Did you get a description of the person? Uh, two arms. Three, three-armed black, so there's three-armed black males. His story continued to say that he and Jesse were sitting in a car, and Jesse had fronted him some weed. Out of nowhere, some dudes surprised them on both sides of the car, two on Maurice's side and two on Jesse's. He said the suspects pulled Jesse out of the car at gunpoint and pointed the gun at him as well. He said the man with the gun pulled the trigger and he heard it click. The detective interrupted him and said, wait, you fought a guy with a gun? And Maurice said that he was, quote, shell-shocked from doing eight years in the Marine Corps. Maurice then said that one of the other men had a knife.

And the detective looked at him and said, so one has a gun and one has a knife? And Maurice said that he told Jesse to just give up whatever he had. And the detective countered, wait, you took your eyes off of a suspect holding a gun on you? And Maurice got a little flustered, and he said that he was about to tackle the guy when the gun clicked. And he said at that point, he thought there weren't any bullets. The following is Maurice Johnson's verbatim answer from the court transcripts. And one note, Maurice calls Jesse Bracelet Bill, the nickname given to Jesse by his grandmother. And that's when I heard it like click or whatever, bounce, you know, so it didn't sound too real. And that's when the other dude starts attacking with the knife.

He's jumping on me. So Bill, they all got, and they start jumping on Bill too, because I hear him scuffling with them and shit. So now you're fighting two guys, the detective said. I'm fighting two dudes. I'm fighting to hurt somebody now because I already know the gun is useless. So now I've got, you know, this guy with the knife and that's when one comes across right there. Like he, when I went to swing at him and he went like this and hit me've got, you know, this guy with a knife. And that's when one comes across right there. Like he, when I went to swing at him and he went like this and hit me like, you know, trying with the knife. What kind of knife was it? A razor? A box cutter? The detective asked. Like a pocket, not a pocket knife, but you know, like a regular blade. So this, you know, I grabbed

the blade after he started stabbing, after he was stabbing me and shit, because I got stabbed in the leg. So I'm hitting him and he goes to like stab me again. And that's when I grabbed the knife and shit. So, you know, that's where, so I go to grab the knife and shit. And then I guess the other dudes, you know, they get whatever off Bill, but I don't hear Bill, like, you know, they're scuffling and shit. So I told Bill, I was like, hey, the gun's not real and shit. So I, me and the dude, we get to scuffling and shit and I'm hitting one dude and one dude is stabbing me. Can you smell the bullshit? Good Lord, I hope so. While the homicide detectives tried to sort through Maurice Johnson's rambling story, Kim Long asked me to go head over to the homicide detectives tried to sort through Maurice Johnson's rambling story,

Kim Long asked me to go head over to the homicide office to document Maurice's injuries and get the rest of his clothes. I packed up my camera and my DNA kit, and I drove downtown, and I met with the lead detective. What's he saying? I asked. He is full of shit. He says they were robbed by some dudes, he said and rolled his eyes. I asked if I could go in and take photos and collect his clothes and some DNA samples. Yeah, sure, go ahead. Are you going to book him? I asked. Yeah, he's not going anywhere. So I went and looked at the video monitor,

and I saw Maurice Johnson wrapped in the hospital sheet, snoozing away. Where's his shirt? I said. Hopefully at the scene. He came in with the sheet. I smiled and said, yeah, Kim found it in the bushes. We'll give it a check out later. I grabbed my camera and my DNA kit, and I opened the interview room door. Hey, Maurice, wake up. I need to get some things from you. He lifted his head and looked around. What's up? What's up is I need to get photographs and some swabs of your hands. Where are you injured? He pulled his left arm out from under the sheet

and looked down at his shoulder, which was covered by a large white piece of gauze and tape. I took a few photographs of his whole body and the bandage. I couldn't remove it because I didn't want to risk any type of infection. Anywhere else? I asked. He tilted his head back. My nose, he said. He had a couple of stitches at the base of his nose, so I took some photos of that and said, where else? My leg, he said, and he proceeded to stand up and turn sideways. I could see tiny tears in his jeans. One of the injuries was located just below his butt cheek,

and the other one was on his thigh. They were really small, superficial stab wounds that barely broke the skin, and they didn't even bleed through the material. Knowing that everything I said and did was being recorded, I told him that a male detective would take photographs of those injuries I grabbed a couple of cotton swabs some distilled water and envelopes from my kit and I changed my gloves

the collection of DNA doesn't require a search warrant when it's considered a non-invasive process so I wanted to be sure to collect any blood or transferred skin cells that would directly link Maurice Johnson with Jesse Bracelet at the scene of the crime. Let me see your hands. As I photographed them, I could see reddish-brown stains between his fingers, and I took swabs along with a saliva sample known as a buckle swab, which is a known standard for DNA analysis. Hopefully the lab would

find a mixture of blood from both men on Maurice's hands, which would place him directly at the scene and in contact with Jesse Bracelet after his wounds were inflicted. I'm going to step out and leave you these paper bags. I need your jeans in one bag and your socks and shoes in the other one, okay? Yeah, what am I going to wear? He asked. Oh, we'll give you clothes. Not telling him that it would be an orange jumpsuit with pre-trial detention stamped on the back. I left and watched the video monitors as he complied with my request. He was wearing red shorts underneath his jeans, and I would need those as well since there were bloodstains on them. I told the lead detective to have Maurice put those shorts into another bag once they finished his arrest docket and gave him the orange jumpsuit.

I took his jeans out of that bag to make sure the blood was dry so that any patterns on them wouldn't get all messed up. They were dry and absolutely covered in blood. So I put them back in the bag and I went back to the scene to help Kim finish up. When I got back to the complex, Kim and I looked at the bloody shoe prints on the sidewalk and I retrieved Maurice Johnson sneakers from my van. They were red and white Jordans, size 12, with a pretty unique tread pattern. Any reasonable person could see the similarities right away. We took several swabs of blood that had been embedded in the tread for comparison to DNA samples taken from Jesse Bracelet and from Maurice Johnson.

Kim had finished her documentation at that point, but the one thing we were still missing was the murder weapon. We called a canine unit to help us complete an article search, and we looked through every hedgerow, on every patio, in every crevice, trash cans, dumpsters, and even on the rooftops. After two hours, the sun started to set, and we had to call the search off. And we never found it.

It's really hard to walk away from a scene without the weapon used, but sometimes the best intentions don't work out the way you'd like. So Kim and I released the scene, and we took everything downtown to the property room. The homicide detectives were now into their second hour of interviewing Maurice Johnson. They put each detail he gave them into their notes in their memory bank for later. And after more questions and bullshit stories about the alleged fight and robbery, they began to ask Maurice about the extensive injuries to Jesse Bracelet.

When asked about Jesse, Maurice Johnson said he didn't know what happened to his friend, nor did he inquire. Next week on Shattered Souls, the conclusion of the Jesse Bracelet case. This is the new real. Opening music by Sam Johnson at samjohnsonlive.com. Underscore music by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com. All rights reserved by Angel Heart Productions. This is an iHeart podcast