Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Shattered Souls: Scratches

Episode Date: November 14, 2021

Join veteran forensic investigator Karen Smith on the Shattered Souls podcast! Who killed 19 year-old Moussa Maida in his family’s small shop? The killer left behind ample physical evidence. The entire crime was captured on video. It should have been an open-and-shut case, but Karen and the team hit wall after wall in bringing Moussa’s killer to justice. Karen shares the most anguishing moment of her career. Subscribe to the Shattered Souls podcast and catch up on all of Season 1 available now:Apple PodcastiHeartSpotifyMusic by Sam Johnson Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Like hell But it doesn't matter how you feel This is the new real This is the new real This is Shattered Souls. I'm your host, Karen Smith. This podcast contains graphic language and is not suitable for children. This is the new real. Welcome back to Shattered Souls.

This is episode five. When you deal with victims of violent crime, yes, the detectives, the investigators, the officers, all the first responders are affected. That's a given. But I'd also like to talk about the families of the victims for a moment. For a parent, the loss of a child surpasses any grief and pain that's imaginable. Stories that are told by mothers and fathers of a child who was ripped away from this earth by a tragic accident, neglect at the hands of another, or even at the hands of a murderous killer. They differ in tone, but the result is always the same. to make notification of a death like that. The people on the receiving end experience every single type of emotion and reaction imaginable. They can laugh and go into denial

before we have to repeat the words again and again and make unwavering eye contact before they know it's real. Some people get violent and they'll destroy anything in their path and some collapse in absolute agony, unable to process it. And some just stare straight ahead with no emotion at all. In short, there is no quote-unquote normal reaction to tragedy. And before we knock on the door or ring the doorbell, every police officer has pretty much the same routine. We take a deep breath in, we look down, push our shoulders back,

lift our chin, and do a quick rehearsal of the words, I am so sorry to inform you. And after those words are spoken, we just brace ourselves for the inevitable and the unknown. When a young man named Musa Maida was mercilessly killed in the early morning hours of May 4, 2008, his mother and father would hear those words just feet away from where his body was. Musa Mehta was 19 years old, and earlier in his life, when he was a young teenager, he made the journey to the United States from war-torn Syria in order to help make a better life for himself and his family. He really excelled at learning English in high school, and he used his extra time to help other Syrian students overcome those barriers. He was a helper,

and on the weekends and sometimes during the week, he would tend the family store, which was a modest one-stop type store in an area of Jacksonville that was a little bit on the rough side with drugs and burglaries pretty commonplace. But just down the road from their store was the quiet campus of Jacksonville University. Musa already knew that his destiny was to become an engineer, and he had enrolled at the local university to start classes that fall. And he was working every hour that he could, socking money away for tuition payments and future expenses. He spent all of his time and energy focused on his dream.

And his dream was cut short by a thug with a gun. Early that morning, Musa drove the short distance from his house to the store, and he opened the doors just before 8 o'clock. And he set up for the day by loading up the register with cash, and he was stocking cigarettes and cigars on display in the cashier's booth. The cashier's booth was very large, and it stretched almost the entire width of the store, and there was a two-inch thick plexiglass door with a brass deadlock that served as the entry and exit point at the far end, which was by the restroom. The entire booth was encased in that plexiglass as a precaution against any potential harm. The front windows of the store were peppered with neon sale flyers and beer advertisements with burglar bars that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Now you have to understand, businesses in an area like

that that handle large amounts of cash transactions are always susceptible to the criminal element. But the Maida family took what measures they could to protect themselves, including the installation of video cameras, color video cameras with audio that covered the interior angles, the front doors, and just over the edge of the pavement toward the parking lot. And Moose's father told him that should a robbery ever happen, he was to hand over whatever was demanded without question. Money, material goods, those were replaceable, but lives weren't. They also installed a remote control button underneath the countertop by the register, and that button, when it was pressed, would automatically magnetize the front doors,

sealing them shut, and either trap a suspect inside the store or lock them out until the police got there. Now, the family had been very fortunate in avoiding any violent acts, and the days were filled with regular customers coming in to get a soda, a pack of cigarettes, a snack, or maybe a bag of boiled peanuts that were simmering in a crock pot by the soda machine. On that morning in 2008, a regular customer entered shortly after Musa opened up for business, and that customer walked toward the back of the store, toward the beer coolers, and the door barely clicked shut before it flung open a second time, and a masked man stormed in and ran through the open cashier's booth door,

and he was armed with a handgun. Musa was there, stocking his cigarettes and his cigars, and he looked up, and he backed away with his hands in the air and said, Don't shoot. Put the money in a bag, the man demanded. Musa kept his left hand in the air, and he punched no sale on the register with his right hand. The drawer popped open, and Musa took a plastic bag from the rack, and he stuffed cash in the bag.

The suspect snatched it away, and he made his way out of the booth toward the front door. Well, Musa, knowing the button was under the counter that would magnetize the front doors, he pushed that button. And then he ran to the booth door, that two-inch-thick plexiglass door, and he deadbolted it shut, believing that he was inside a bulletproof safe haven until the police arrived.

Well, seeing Musa's movements, the suspect spun around and he ran back to that locked door. And he looked at Musa through the glass and he fired a shot through the doorknob. And he tried it. He was trying to get back in. And Musa stood there and stared at him. And then the suspect dropped the money bag, took careful aim, and fired a single shot through that plexiglass door.

And that shot penetrated the door and hit Musa squarely in his chest. Musa stumbled backwards into the counter and the suspect picked up the bag of cash that he'd dropped and he ran back to the now magnetized front doors. And he yanked on the handles and neither door would budge. So he started to panic and he took out his gun again and he fired three shots, shattering that glass. But the burglar bars were

still blocking his exit. So the suspect dropped the money bag again and he climbed up onto an ice cream freezer, which was just to the left of the door. And he yanked and pulled and was maniacally, crazily yanking at the burglar bars, trying to rip them out of the door. And he yanked and pulled and was maniacally, crazily yanking at the burglar bars, trying to rip them out of the ceiling. And as he was doing that, his hand slipped and the metal ripped open his forearm and pumped blood several feet in every direction. He jumped down from the ice cream freezer and he yanked the bars out of the floor and he tore out three of the four screws holding the bars to the wall and the cash scattered everywhere. Blood was spurting from his arm and he was desperately pulling on the metal, bending it just far enough to squeeze underneath

the burglar bars. He stuffed some of the cash into his pockets, and then he pulled himself out onto the sidewalk, and he dropped his gun just inside the threshold. But he reached back and grabbed it, leaving the money bag behind. And he got up, and he ran across the parking lot toward his getaway ride, and he left a trail of blood across the pavement. Musa was laying slumped against the counter, gasping for air, and the sound of his breath became louder and more rattled as blood filled his chest cavity, and he was quickly fading away. Unbeknownst to the suspect, the customer, who had come in just after Musa Mehta,

had hidden in the back of the store during the entire crime. After the suspect fled, the customer peered out from a display rack and went to the booth door. And he pulled on the doorknob and he pounded his fist on the glass. Musa didn't move. So the customer ran around to the front counter and looked for another way inside, but he couldn't find one. So he went to the front doors, and he pulled the burglar bars away from the front door just like the suspect had, and he crawled underneath through the shattered glass and the blood to get help. And as he ran across the street, Musameda drew his final breath.

Officers taxed their engines to get to the scene and the alert tone sounded the dispatcher relayed an update that the clerk had been shot. Patrol cars swarmed the area with their sirens cutting through that Sunday morning and when the first officer arrived, he advised that he needed to clear the business and another officer pulled up in quick succession, and they realized that the front doors were locked,

despite that blown-out glass from the bullets. One officer put his shoulder into the burglar bars, and they swung open from the bottom. So with guns drawn, they shimmied through that blood and glass as a fire truck rounded the corner. And the officers rapidly cleared the interior of the store for any other victims, any suspects, and then they tried to get into the cashier's booth. Neither of them realized that Musa was already gone, and they were desperate to try to save his life, so one officer climbed onto the countertop, and he punched a hole in

the ceiling tiles. He pulled himself into the crawl space and he used his boot to kick another hole through the insulation on the other side. He jumped down and he felt for a pulse and he looked back at the other officer outside and he shook his head. Several other officers surrounded the parking lot and tried to preserve the evidence they saw outside, some of the money that was now blowing in the breeze, and they put rocks on each bill that they could catch. An onlooker started to show up, and the area was cordoned off with yellow tape, and everybody was backed up. And dispatch was updating the investigative radio channel, and I was already hauling ass over the Matthews Bridge when a call screen popped up

on my laptop. A few minutes later, I pulled my van just past the edge of the parking lot, and I could see blood-stained cubes of glass scattered in every direction on the concrete walkway. And I met with the officer who had entered the booth through the ceiling, and he confirmed that the victim was deceased. Many of the officers in the area knew who Musa was because the store was a frequent coffee stop for the on-duties when they were in the area, and he told me who the victim was, and I shook my head in disbelief. So I walked to my van, and I opened the side doors to change the battery in my camera, and I was prepping some equipment. Little did I know at that moment that I was about to experience one of the most heartbreaking moments of my entire career.

Two detective vehicles pulled next to my van, and a light blue sedan came wheeling around the curb and stopped quickly, and a man in a dress shirt and a tie got out of the driver's side, and a light blue sedan came wheeling around the curb and stopped quickly. And a man in a dress shirt and a tie got out of the driver's side and a woman in a blue hijab flung herself out of the passenger seat and she ran right at me. Her arms were outstretched with a look of anguish and torment that I will never forget. And the next sequence of events just happened so fast that I didn't have time to process them. She ran up to me and she grabbed my face and her fingernails raked down my neck all the way down to my bulletproof vest. And she screamed. And she collapsed at my feet. And she screamed,

no, no, tell me it's not so. Tell me my boy is fine. No, no, no. And her husband came over and he knelt down. And he looked up at me and his eyes were filled with tears. And he said, is he dead? And the woman screamed, no, no, he is not dead. He is not dead. And the husband said, shh, shh, we have to know. Is Musa dead? And he was cradling his wife in his arms, rocking back and forth, looking at me. And I looked down and threw an enormous lump in my throat. I said, I am so sorry. And the sound that bellowed from Musa Maida's mother in that moment was sheer, indescribable agony. It was a roar that echoed into the souls of anybody within earshot.

And a homicide detective rushed over to offer them assistance, and she very carefully placed her hand on the father's shoulder, and she said, Sir, why don't you both come and sit in my car? Come on, I'll help you. Come on with me. And she helped them up. And I just stood there as all three of them shuffled across the parking lot to the detective's car. And the mother's guttural cries were only slightly muffled as she closed the back door of her car. And the detective walked back over to me and I, I hadn't moved moved and she said, good God, are you okay? And I looked at the front of the store and I said, this is a mess. And she said, do you need anything? Because she just scratched the hell out of you. And I said, I'm fine. I'm fine. I just need to get to work. So I got in my van and I looked in the rear view mirror and I could see bright red streaks running down my neck.

I repositioned the mirror, took a gulp of coffee. I had to focus on the case. I could not focus on his mother because the more I focused on her, the less I would be able to help find out who did it. At that point, onlookers had surrounded the store, news vans had parked across the street for their breaking news live shots, and I unloaded equipment.

The homicide detective took Moose's parents to the station, and everything eventually quieted down. So I worked my way around the exterior scene, took my photos, and I collected all the cash we could catch in the wind, but no doubt some early bystanders pocketed part of it. So after a small break, I pulled out a Tyvek suit, and I went in through the prop front door. And the officer who went in through the ceiling came over,

and he apologized for the mess that he made, because the insulation and ceiling tiles that was kicked loose when he was trying to save Moose's life had landed squarely on top of him. But you know what? He did the right thing in trying to attempt to save Musa's life had landed squarely on top of him. But you know what? He did the right thing in trying to attempt to save Musa's life. And when I got inside the store, blood was everywhere. It covered every surface near the front doors. There were swipes on the floor, spurts covering the windows and glass shards,

floating in pools. It was everywhere. Now, obviously, none of that belonged to Musa. So forensically speaking, for me, it was very helpful. But one thing we had to do first, they had this incredible video surveillance footage system, but it was located in the cashier's booth. And the only way inside at this point was through that hole in the ceiling. And we couldn't force that plexiglass door open because there were bullet holes in it that needed to be documented. So I made a phone call, and the homicide detective returned with a key from Moose's father. We had to watch that video prior to doing

any processing because it would provide a clear sequence of events and a direction for us to move. So I took a DNA swab of the doorknob, I processed it for prints, and then we very carefully went inside to the cashier's booth. We focused our attention on the television screen. The footage was on a VHS cassette tape, so the detective ejected the tape, she snapped off the little record tab, and she pushed it back, and she adjusted the time for review to 7.40 in the morning. And we watched a grid of four camera angles. The upper left was the cashier's booth, the upper right was the aisles of the store,

the lower left was the front doors, and the lower right was the back door. At 7.54 in the morning, Musa Mehta entered and walked around to the cashier's booth. The customer walked in a minute later and turned right toward the soda cooler. Musa was shuffling some boxes, the front door pitched open with a slam, and then we watched the suspect run around the counter and confront Musa at gunpoint. The suspect was wearing a camouflage hoodie, a mask over his face, and an orange glove on his left hand. Everything got really heavy and silent as we watched and listened to this horrendous chain of events, and a wave of nausea hit me as I watched the video of Musa's body convulse, and I heard him draw his final breath and then exhale through the rattles of liquid

in his lungs, and the clock read 7.59. I glanced away from the television and looked to my right, and about four feet away from me was Musa's body. And I looked back at the television screen and back at Musa, and it was, it was surreal. And my co-worker at that moment broke the silence, and she said, I've got to get out of here for a minute. And she pushed past me out the front doors. And the rest of us just stood there for a moment in reverence and fury and disbelief. And the detective ejected that VHS tape, and she said, I'll take this if you don't mind. And she tucked the cassette under her arm.

And I looked at her and I said, well, all that blood belongs to that piece of shit. And she looked at me and said, well, let's get him. We walked back outside, struggling to digest what we just watched without allowing it to enrage us any further. Two patrol cars remained on guard, and onlookers had pretty much dispersed at this point, and only a couple of news vans remained. And across the street, I could see big tripods

that sat there without the cameras attached as the reporters sequestered themselves in their air-conditioned mobile studios. And I took an inventory of my supplies. The suspect had left copious amounts of evidence, so I was very optimistic that we would have him in custody relatively quickly. So I went back inside, and the first thing we had to do

was get Musa's body out of the booth. Now, watching that video, there was no close quarter combat or any contact between him and the suspect. So that meant I only needed to take photographs and take measurements of his position. And the medical examiner investigator showed up a short time later. She went into the booth with me and she lifted up Musa's green and white striped rugby shirt to show a single hole almost perfectly centered in his chest. And as she rolled his body forward, a trickle of blood ran onto the floor. And she looked at me and said, I can't believe this went through bulletproof glass.

And I said, yeah, I don't know what that is, but I'm sure there'll be a lawsuit when this is all over because this is just damn senseless. And she lifted up the back of this shirt and she said, yeah, I don't know what that is, but I'm sure there'll be a lawsuit when this is all over, because this is just damn senseless. And she lifted up the back of his shirt, and she said, there's no exit wound, so the doc will get the bullet for you. So we knew it wasn't a through and through. The medical examiner would retrieve that projectile, and we would put it in storage for comparison later if we ever found a murder weapon. Moose's hands were placed in paper bags, secured with rubber bands,

and the removal attendants zipped him up into that neoprene bag. And as they wheeled him out into the parking lot toward the van, the photojournalists had reattached their cameras to the tripods and filmed the whole evolution. I'm sorry, but I can't help but feel a little bit of indignance where that's concerned because it's sensationalistic, and frankly, it's unnecessary. They're not going to air that on the news. Back inside, a lot of the blood on the floor and all the surfaces inside the front doors was still wet, which was really important for me for timeline purposes. So I put my yellow placards all over the place and I took samples of lots of bloodstains, about 20 of them in total. There were five shell casings. Three of them were

by the front door from where the suspect had shattered the glass to get out, and two of them remained by the plexiglass door where he had fired into the doorknob and then fired through it, killing Musa. So I swabbed those for DNA, took all of my blood samples, and a few of the dollar bills that remained on the floor were stained with blood, so I collected those separately. And I packaged that plastic money bag, and I told the detectives that it needed to be processed chemically for fingerprints. And I looked at the door to the cashier's booth. I wanted to do a reconstruction of the bullet path through that plexiglass, but unfortunately it wasn't possible. The heat from the bullet expanded that plastic to allow the shot to pass through, but then the plastic collapsed back and it left this puckered hole

that wouldn't accommodate a dowel rod for a trajectory. My only option was to measure the holes and do a diagram. The burglar bars on the front doors were bent, and they were only dangling from a single bolt in the ceiling. Since the suspect was only wearing one orange glove on his left hand, there was a chance that there were fingerprints left behind. So I took out the alternate light source and put it on the bright white light setting, because I wanted to look for any possible ridge detail in sweat, in oil, or in blood. I could see streaks of blood all over them. I spent, my god, it must have been at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half, looking at every single angle of those burglar bars, looking at every single surface. Not even a partial print was anywhere to be found. And then I remembered the customer who had come in after

Musa and the two police officers had climbed through that same opening and they may have inadvertently smeared any prints that were left behind. So at this point, my DNA swabs would have to suffice. So I called the lead detective who was downtown at the office and I said, hey, do me a favor. Do you still have that witness with you? And she said, yeah, what's up? We might have to separate his DNA from the suspect's, so please get a mouth swab for me. And she said, no problem.

You have any prints? Yeah, I wish. I collected about 20 blood samples. That's about all I've got. And she said, okay, great. Email me your top picks. What she meant was the state laboratory has strict guidelines that only five DNA submissions are allowed at one time to prevent

serious backlogs. So I sent the detective a list, starting with the swabs from the burglar bars, the door handles, and the parking lot, knowing without question that that blood belonged to the suspect. And the burglar bars were still left hanging by that single bolt in the ceiling, so the last thing we did before we packed up for the day is we unscrewed the frame and we took the whole thing. If the prosecutor wanted to bring that entire set of burglar bars into the courtroom for a demonstrative for the jury, they'd be in the property room along with everything else. Over the following weeks, I worked case after case, and I never heard back about the results from that DNA I had collected the blood that the suspect left everywhere. So I stopped for a coffee

between calls, and I called the lead detective. And I said, hey, what's going on with the Maida case? Any news? And she said, girl, we got nothing. What do you mean we got nothing? There was blood everywhere. And she said, yeah, I know. We ran the DNA and we got no CODIS hits. Nothing came back. He had a mask on, so we don't even have a description. But there's one good thing, though. We did get a partial palm print from the plastic money bag. But until we get someone to compare it to, we're pretty much screwed. I was shocked. How in the hell can someone bleed all over a crime scene, leave a palm print behind, and not get caught? She told me the suspect's DNA wasn't found in the CODIS system,

which is the Combined DNA Index System, so there was no known sample to compare with the samples from the scene. Also, palm prints were not included in any database in 2008. So until this perpetrator committed another crime and got caught, entered the military, fat chance, or had some other reason to have his DNA and prints placed into the system, there was nothing more for us to do. And at that point, the case went cold. Next week on Shattered Souls,

the conclusion of the Musa Maida 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. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.