Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Shattered Souls: Trina Joseph

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

Join veteran forensic investigator Karen Smith on the Shattered Souls podcast! Aubrey Joseph turned himself in after murdering his wife — but he told a much different story than the one told by evidence he left behind. It’s up to the detectives to make sense of the details, follow the evidence to find the lies, and give Trina Joseph a chance at justice.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. multiple times. He's calling somebody in New Jersey, crying about it now. Was he breathing when he left? I don't know. He doesn't know. He told me he killed his wife. How did he say he killed her? He said he stabbed her. Just trying to figure out where he's at so we can mess up everybody here. I just hope the wife's okay. You're down on Jacksonville, DePriest.

You what? So long. Farewell. To what you thought would go so well. You can hold on 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. Welcome back. This is episode eight.

When we left off, I was in the middle of investigating the death of Trina Joseph, the wife of murder suspect Aubrey Joseph. Trina had been stabbed to death in the living room of their loft apartment after coming home from a night out with friends. Four knives lay on the floor, and Trina had been left on the recliner after Aubrey changed clothes, locked the door, and drove himself downtown to the police building after calling his sister, a 911 dispatcher, and an elder from his church. He told both of them that he killed his wife. Yes, in the apartment. Was he breathing when he left? Was he breathing when he left?

I don't know. He doesn't know. This fellow that I know as Quintus or mine just called me and told me he killed his wife. He said it was Silver Springs apartment. How did he say he killed her? He said he stabbed her up. Just trying to figure out where he's at so we can mess up everybody here. I just hope the wife's okay.

You're down to onville, the precinct. You what? We just had a guy walk in our public reception area. Told my public reception officer that he had just killed his wife. He's got blood on him. We had an officer going around there armed to handcuff him. He's locked in. He can't go anywhere. But we're going to need a patrolman from here to start an investigation.

He was taken into custody while a crime scene detective and a patrol officer made forced entry into their apartment and found Trina Joseph dead on the recliner. They're making forced entry now. They made forced entry in what? In contact. and found Trina Joseph dead on the recliner. I'm afraid so. They're already calling for homicide. I had been called out to the scene early that morning to finish the investigation that had been started by two other detectives who needed to leave for vacation. The medical examiner investigator, a homicide detective, and I were prepping Trina's body for removal. When I saw evidence on her body that we almost missed, we were five hours into our investigation. And I called out to the homicide detective who was upstairs in the loft to come down and see

what I saw. He ran downstairs and looked at Trina Joseph's face and shoulder where I was pointing. Aubrey Joseph was downtown being interviewed by the lead detective. He denied over and over again to using more than one knife on Trina, despite the fact that four bloody knives remained on the floor at the scene. He admitted to changing clothes and to leaving her there without calling for help. He said that he called his sister, a 911 dispatcher, and that he called the church elder. Aubrey said he didn't know if Trina was dead when he left the apartment. Aubrey Joseph also had a cut on his left finger, which he sustained during the active fight with Trina as she battled for her life, and a blood trail from

his finger led right to the parking space where his truck had been parked. What Aubrey Joseph didn't admit to was cleaning Trina Joseph's body up before he left. On that last once-over of her body, that last moment that I had to make sure that every injury, every bloodstain was documented, I finally saw the most obvious piece of evidence that had been right in front of me the entire time. On Trina Joseph's left cheek, just above a horrible stab wound to her lower jaw, there was an altered blood stain. It was a peripheral stain left behind when the drop of blood that caused it had been partially wiped away. Blood dries from the outside in, and when the still wet blood from the center of a stain is wiped away, the edges of that stain can remain in place since it's had time to partially dry. I looked closer and saw additional altered stains on her shoulder where more blood had been removed.

Why was this so important? Because it placed Aubrey Joseph at the scene after Trina's murder for a long enough period of time for that blood to partially dry, and then he wiped it away. He tried to clean her up before he left. There was no doubt about it. No rescue efforts had been made. The previous detectives had not touched her body. The medical examiner investigator and I had only photographed her injuries, and we hadn't touched or moved anything that would alter a bloodstain like that. The homicide detective found a wet cloth in the kitchen sink that was collected. There was a bloody, waddedded up white tank top in her lap,

and another bloody towel was at her feet by one of the steak knives used to stab her at some point. We had all been so focused on the horrendous number of injuries to her body that our tunnel vision had clouded our ability to see these important areas of evidence. The ME investigator and I documented all of it with more photographs, scales, and descriptions in our notes. The investigator would need to relay this information to the medical examiner in order to assist with the approximate time of death. We had an ear witness to an argument outside of the apartment at around 11 30 the night before. Another witness heard a scream and thumping on the wall at about 1 30 in the morning. Aubrey Joseph turned himself in at about 2 30 and told his sister that the murder had occurred about 45 minutes before he turned himself in. What time did this happen?

About 1.30. This morning? Yes. 45 minutes ago. About 45 minutes ago? Yes. It was only a 10 to 15 minute drive to the police building from their apartment. That left 30 minutes unaccounted for. In that 30 minutes,

based on the evidence, Aubrey Joseph took the time to try to clean his wife's body at the same time he was changing his clothes and calling his sister in New Jersey. Once the homicide detective saw this evidence, he picked up his phone and called the office and spoke with the lead detective, and he told him about the bloodstain evidence on Trina's body. Hey, it's me. Is Joseph still in the box? Good. What's he saying? After listening for a minute, he interrupted.

Oh, bullshit. He didn't panic. He cleaned her up. Yeah, I'm sure. Karen's with me. She can describe it to you. You tell that piece of shit that we've got him dead to rights. Ask him why he cleaned her up if he was in a panic. No, no, you know what? Fuck that. Just give him an orange jumpsuit and book his ass for murder. I'm on my way. And I said, tell them to put his clothes in bags, his shoes and socks too. When confronted with this information,

Aubrey Joseph continued to deny it, but he also denied using any other knives but the folding knife that he left on the fireplace mantle. He could deny the heinousness of this murder all he wanted. The truth would play out in court. After the homicide detective hung up and we finished processing Trina's body and injuries, she was transported downtown for autopsy, and I still needed to document and collect all of the other evidence left at the scene. As we loaded her body into the transport van,

my phone rang. It was the midnight sergeant, the same one who had relegated this investigation to me almost seven hours earlier. Hi Sarge, I'm still here. Hey, how much longer are you going to be? Well, it's going to be a while yet, I said. I didn't ask for a vague answer, I asked you how much longer you're going to be. I looked at my phone, wondering what in the hell her problem was. Well, the medical examiner investigator is

still here and we're just, she interrupted me. What do you mean the investigator is still there? It was four o'clock when I left and she was on the way. It's 1030 now. Yes, ma'am. She was called way too early. I wasn't ready for response at that point. We're just loading the victim now. What are you doing that's taking so long? She asked. It's a homicide, Sarge. It's going to be a while before I can release the scene. There are bloodstains everywhere. The victim had to be fully documented.

And she interrupted me again. Well, how much evidence do you have left? What, just a couple of knives? You should be done soon, right? And I said, no, I have a ton left to do. It'll probably be later this evening, if not tomorrow, before I can release the scene. Knives, you should be done soon, right? And I said, no, I have a ton left to do. It'll probably be later this evening, if not tomorrow, before I can release the scene. And she countered.

You'll go into overtime at one o'clock, so try to be done by then. And I said, you want me to leave at one o'clock? No, I want you to leave before that and have everything submitted by one. I'm not granting you overtime so you can finish during your regular hours tomorrow. I was speechless. In her supervisory brio, she neglected to look at the calendar. My regular days off began the following day, meaning that overtime was happening now or later, unless she wanted to assign the final stages of the case to yet another investigator. And the sad truth is that I wouldn't have been surprised if she did. So I hung up with her and I called the homicide sergeant directly. Hey Sarge,

it's Karen. What can I do for you, Kay? My Sarge won't approve overtime and she says she wants me out of here by one, but there is a shit ton left to do. And he said, no, no, no, no, no. You do your thing. Submit your overtime through me. I will handle it. And he called my supervisor and read her the riot act. My cell phone was quiet for the rest of the investigation. I was pretty hotheaded after that. So I went out to my van and put on the air and the radio on full blast. And after a few deep breaths and some cold coffee, I went back inside to finish documenting all the other evidence. I started a pretty basic reconstruction by sequencing the events using the position of the various knives on the floor. The blade of that big butcher knife

was on the carpet between the recliner and the kitchen wall, and a steak knife was lying crossways on top of it. Both of them were stained with blood, but the blood patterns around them were very different. A drip pattern on the carpet continued underneath that large butcher blade, meaning that Trina was already injured and bled onto the carpet prior to being injured by the butcher knife, which was broken in half and fell on top of those existing stains. The steak knife was used after the butcher knife and was subsequently dropped on top of it. I continued to sequence the events using the available evidence, showing the absolute viciousness of the crime

and the numerous times that Aubrey Joseph needed to walk away from Trina Joseph's body to retrieve another weapon to continue his attack. The metal handle of the butcher knife was located a short distance away on top of a large saturation stain on the carpet. The handle was virtually devoid of visible blood, unlike the whole surrounding area, which was covered with small droplets from the blood that dripped from Trina's head and splashed into the existing pool. Clearly, she had sustained a very severe injury prior to the moment when Aubrey retrieved the butcher knife and broke it. The evidence began to reveal the unrelenting, calculated manner in which each sequential decision was made. All of the knives were swabbed for DNA, and I was very hopeful that a mixture of Trina Joseph and Aubrey Joseph's blood would be located on each one. The saturation

pattern on the recliner cushion above her head needed to be explained as well. I looked behind the recliner, which was partially tucked into an alcove under the stairs. There was a cardboard box with a blood-into-blood drip pattern on it, and following that pattern up to the top of the chair, I saw something that I had never seen before and I haven't seen since. The blood dripped off of the fabric and created a partially clotted ligament that led directly to the blood pool on the cardboard box. It looked like a bloody stalactite. In order for that to happen, the chair had to have been reclined at some point post-injury, and that was consistent with Aubrey Joseph's body weight pushing the top half of the recliner back as he continued to inflict blow after blow.

When I finished with the recliner, we wrapped it in butcher paper and loaded it into a van to keep it in the property room until trial. I went upstairs to survey the loft bedroom. There was no indication that any violence took place in the loft, but the area needed to be searched. Clothing was scattered all over the floor, the bedclothes were rumpled, and the bathroom looked normal, contained the usual variety of personal hygiene stuff. There was a single dried blood drop on the top of the bedpost at the foot of the bed. I scraped it off with a scalpel into a glassine envelope with the hope that that belonged to Aubrey Joseph. I picked up each item of clothing and looked for evidence of cleanup or blood, and there was a white basketball jersey.

It had been wadded up between the bed and the dresser, and when I picked it up, there were red stains all over the front. One stain in particular stood out, a transfer pattern consistent with the front and back of a knife, as if the wearer took the blade and pulled it across the fabric to wipe it off. Aubrey Joseph could have been wearing this jersey when he committed the murder, kept one of the bloody knives in his hand, and wiped it off on this jersey, or he just used it as a cleaning cloth. But this was another detail that would help disprove his quote-unquote panic defense. The additional spatters, cast-off, and transfer patterns were documented, photographed, and diagrammed, and I released the scene at about nine o'clock that night. Nearly two years went by,

and the case went to trial in February of 2011. Aubrey Joseph's defense was crime of passion, as he alleged during the interrogation. He said that he recalled cutting Trina, but he didn't remember his actions as being severe enough to kill her. The defense counsel's opening statement to the jury mitigated Aubrey's involvement and instead focused on his lack of faith in their relationship and a suicide attempt he made by drinking bleach and taking pills

several months before the murder. The prosecutor countered that argument. In her opening statement, the prosecutor said, Trina Joseph is dead because this defendant wanted her dead. She was killed in a most horrific and brutal manner at the hands of her own husband. This defendant used several knives. A large butcher knife he thrusted into her body so hard that the blade snapped from the handle. But that didn't stop him.

He just went back to their kitchen to get more knives. He continued his brutal attack, stabbing her numerous times in the forehead, above her ear, by her lip, in her belly, in her cheek, in her jaw, in the top of her head, in her clavicle, in her hand. She sustained stab wounds to her thumb, her ring finger, her middle finger, wounds that she would have sustained while trying to protect herself. This defendant stabbed her with such force that the neighbor awoke to the brutal screams of Trina Joseph as she struggled for her life. This defendant stabbed her with such force that her ribs were fractured, her lung was pierced, her liver was perforated, and her voice box was cut.

But what could Trina Joseph have done to deserve this? The answer? Absolutely nothing. According to the defendant's own mouth, he thought that Trina Joseph had disrespected him earlier that night. He thought she was going to leave him, so in his words, he stabbed her up. He killed her, and when he had completed the task he set out to do, he drove himself down to the jail, turned himself in as calm as could be, no emotion, no regret. You'll learn that on July 31st, Trina Joseph, the defendant, and some friends went out to have some fun. They went to Jim's place,

a place they usually went to. But once there, the defendant started getting upset at Trina Joseph. Trina was sitting at the bar talking to another man, and this defendant didn't like it. When he went up to Trina Joseph to confront her and the man, Trina Joseph tried to calm the situation down, chill everything out. But the defendant took this as Trina Joseph picking the other man over him and disrespecting him. After opening arguments, the medical examiner took the stand. She testified that Trina Joseph likely bled to death after living through each and every stab wound and fought back until she just couldn't anymore.

The doctor described each injury in detail and photographs were shown to the jury. I was called to testify on the second day to detail the timeline required to leave the various stains and altered patterns behind. The photographs of her injuries flashed up on the big screen in the courtroom. Trina Joseph's father was seated in the front row of the gallery, and he was unprepared to see them. The victim's advocate gently escorted him out of the courtroom after he cried out and the judge took a short recess. It was heartbreaking. The father remained in the hallway for the rest of the trial.

After the prosecution was finished and I explained everything that I had to say about the bloodstain patterns, the knives, and how I conducted my investigation, the defense attorney took the podium and asked me questions about the cleanup of the bloodstains on her body and why Aubrey Joseph would leave the rest of the evidence to be found if his intent was to hide evidence of the murder. The defense attorney asked me a couple of innocuous questions about my experience, and then she moved to talk about the knives collected from the crime scene. Now, you collected a couple of knives, a blade and a handle, right? That's correct. And several of those items, they appeared to still have red stains, perhaps

blood on them? That's correct. They didn't appear to have been wiped clean or wiped off or cleaned off? And I said, it would be difficult for me to make that determination, but if they had red stains or were anywhere in the apartment, they were collected. It wouldn't appear through your experience and your view of the scene that the assailant in this case had tried to mask the crime scene. The woman's body was still there, correct? Correct. And the knives were right there next to the recliner? That's correct. And there's blood on the wall and clothes and other parts of the apartment. Is that correct? That's correct. So it didn't look like somebody had done a thorough job in trying to hide or mask the scene. And I said the only thing I saw were the altered bloodstains that we discussed earlier.

And that was basically it. And you wouldn't be in a position to speculate as to why a stain, a drying stain, may have been wiped off of her left cheek. And I said, I can't tell you why. I can just tell you that somebody or somehow it was wiped off after it began to dry. She dropped it at that point, but she moved forward to the blood spatter on the wall and surrounding areas. And she said, I believed you used the term medium velocity blood spatter, correct? And you're not able to give an opinion as to the force or thrust, you know, the speed of the blood moving or anything like that, are you?

And I said, for this particular scene, it would be difficult because I didn't do a full reconstruction. It was unnecessary. However, I can tell you that medium velocityvelocity spatter, in general, travels at a distance of 5 feet to 25 feet per second. That's how fast it's traveling, which is indicative of either blunt force trauma or, in this case, a multiple stabbing. Would it be fair to say that it would be slower than a gunshot, but faster than just dripping? And I said, that's correct. I have no further questions, Your Honor. When I finished my testimony, the DNA analyst took the stand. The analyst was to testify about the results of the swabs taken from the knives at the scene. She said that there was a mixture

of both Trina and Aubrey Joseph's blood on three of the four knives and a one in a quadrillion chance that the DNA belonged to anyone else. The evidence was clear. Aubrey Joseph stabbed Trina Joseph 16 times using four different knives. He attempted to clean up her body before he left her there on the recliner to bleed to death because he was in a jealous rage that Trina's ex-boyfriend made a pass at her at Jim's place. The jury exited the courtroom and deliberated for less than one hour. Aubrey Joseph was found guilty of first-degree murder.

Two months later, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. I searched numerous Internet resources for any information on Trina Joseph, and I couldn't even find her resting place. So, it is up to all of us to remember her name. kevinmcleod at incompetech.com. All rights reserved by Angel Heart Productions. This is an iHeart Podcast.