Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Surveillance video of Kidnap-Mom Sherri Papini darting across parking lot just released & boxer fakes own death in desert to sting killer-wife

Episode Date: November 9, 2017

A new clue in the mysterious disappearance of California mom Sherri Papini has Nancy Grace talking. She's joined by forensic psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Bober, syndicated radio host David Mack, and human trafficking expert Tim Ballard in a discussion about security camera video just released showing Papini running around a church parking lot in the minutes before she was found by police before sunrise on Thanksgiving Day a year ago. Lawyer Robin Ficker and reporter Maria Boynton join Grace and Bober to discuss the case of a Texas boxer who helped police fake his own death after his wife tried to hire a hit man to kill him. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. of the road after she says she was kidnapped. Sherry Papini went missing for three weeks last year. She says someone kidnapped her while jogging. I just got home from work and my wife wasn't there, which is unusual. This is a surveillance video that shows Sherry Papini running, unshackled, through a church parking lot at 4.15 on the morning she was found. She was spotted just seven minutes later on the freeway

with a chain around her waist and clamps on her wrist. CHP is on scene advising She has changed to something. CHP is advising. She is heavily battered. In the last hours, investigators released surveillance video in the mysterious case of a young, quote, supermom who vanishes for three full weeks. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. I'm talking about Sherry Papini. Just released is granny surveillance video of Sherry Papini. At first, you wouldn't even know it was her, but police are telling us it is, and now I can make it out. And she is darting back and forth, back and forth across a parking lot of a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall. It's around 4 a.m. in the morning, Thanksgiving Day.

About 15 minutes after this surveillance video, she is spotted, spotted running along a ramp on the interstate. What does the surveillance mean? Take a listen to what CHIPS, California Highway Patrol, says upon seeing her. that she has changed to something. Copy. CHP is advising she is heavily battered and it is confirmed she is nothing. The location is going to be just south of Yolo on Northbound I-5. When she's on the freeway? Eastbound Northbound I-5 just south of Yolo. So Dave Mack, syndicated talk show host,

that was the dispatch sound when Chips was called to the scene a motorist sees sherry papini running along the side of the interstate she is still bound with chains she has bindings on her limbs she is battered beaten there is a brand on her right shoulder. Her hair has been cut from waist length up to her shoulders, and she has a broken nose. She's also lost about 20 pounds. What do you make of the dispatch, Dave Mack? You know, she'd only been gone for 22 days, and as they discovered that they had found this woman, that they had no idea where she was and what was going on, and at 4 o'clock in the morning, all of a sudden, she pops up out of nowhere.

All I could think of is that they knew that they had found who they'd been looking for. They knew, all right, and now, almost a year later, more evidence is being released by the Sheriff's Department. Why? Let's talk about what we see in the video. Again, as I was mentioning earlier to Dr. Daniel Bober, forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Bober, you see her appear in this parking lot of a kingdom hall. It's a Jehovah's Witness church. And she goes one way, then the other, then back again, and then leaves the surveillance video scene.

And then she pops up on the interstate. Does it prove or disprove her story, Dr. Bober? Nancy, it almost sounds to me that in the interim, she was abused and neglected and essentially tortured and at some point got away. Now, I know from reading the story that she identifies two Latino females as her abductors, but male DNA was found on her person. So there's a lot that seems inconsistent here. Yeah, you know, statistically, this is virtually impossible that two females abduct her as she's jogging, that they keep her for three weeks, and there is no sex assault.

Now, another thing we find out about is that she was texting some guy in Michigan just before she's taken. But that guy has been questioned and has nothing to do with this at all. Dave Mack, I mean, come on. Just because you might text an old boyfriend or some guy you see online, that does not mean you're going to leave your husband and children and run off. It means nothing. It means you sent a 30-second text.

I'm not that concerned. And, you know, Nancy, a lot is made out of the, of the parts of the story that just seem unbelievable. You mentioned the two women. Then you've got the guy in Detroit, somebody that she had been talking to, tried to meet up with. The week that she went missing, they had had contact, but they never did meet up in California. Then she goes missing, this so-called supermom. And I'm not calling into question her character or anything else. It's just this is I'm watching the video that comes out, the surveillance video. And to me,

looks like she's panicked, running side to side, trying to figure out where do I go now? So to me, that video actually backs up the idea that she had been tortured and terrorized for a number of weeks. The woman lost 20 pounds in three weeks. She was tattooed. She was branded. Her nose was broken. And now she finally breaks free. She's still binded together. And she's just trying to find where do I go now at 420 in the morning. That's what the video looks like to me. You know, I want to go to Tim Ballard, human trafficking expert with the Operation Underground Railroad. Tim, thank you so much for being with us. Everyone is claiming that her story is a lie.

And I agree that her story sounds far-fetched. What disturbs me the most about her story, Tim Ballard, are two things. One, her foot. Her foot bothers me. And I'll tell you why her foot bothers me. Because when she was found, she stated she fought back against her attackers, two women, and she cut her foot. But when she was admitted to the hospital, there was no evidence of any such of an injury.

Also, Thanksgiving Day. Why would kidnappers who had beaten her, branded her, tortured her, bound her, chained her, starved her, broken her nose, suddenly decide, well, it's Thanksgiving, let's let her go. Thanksgiving Day would only have significance in that scenario to her. So she reappeared on Thanksgiving Day. That psychological clue is significant to me. What does it mean? I don't know. And for right now, police are standing by her and therefore I will do the same. So Tim Ballard, how does human

trafficking enter into this equation? Hi, Nancy. Thanks so much. Yeah, there's a couple of thoughts I have, notwithstanding some of the strange kind of facts that you point out. You know, when you're debriefing people who have been trafficked from from in human trafficking, which I've done so many times, it is very difficult. They've been they've been through an experience that makes it almost impossible to remember every fact and they get things confused. They've been rewired. And so I think we need to give her some time to kind of let the truth come out and consider the mental instability she's probably going through because of potential trauma. The other thing that concerns me and I think has a human trafficking angle is where this happened. This is in the Emerald Triangle of Northern California. I've worked in that. I've worked undercover in that area. It's a high drug smuggling area, a cultivation area for cannabis, for marijuana. And human trafficking and drug trafficking simply go hand in hand.

I mean when you have a group of criminals who are willing to break the law and they're already doing that, I've seen these guys. What they realize is that, look, I can sell marijuana. I can sell a couple of kilos of marijuana one time. But if I can get my hands on a person, on a girl, on a woman, on a child, I can sell that child, that product, if you will, multiple times, 20 times a day. It's much more profitable. And so once they kind of recognize that and they already have a taste for crime, we see them cross over. So when it's happening in this high drug area, I think it's at least something to consider and something to look at as, you know, a more likely scenario than others when it comes to a potential human trafficking case. You know, I'm trying to take in everything that you just said. If that were true in this scenario, Tim Ballard, then why would they have let her go?

And why was she never sexually assaulted? She says she was not. And the hospital supports that. You know, I wish I had more facts on the case. I wish I was the case agent in the case so I could get into the what, the why. I do know I've seen human trafficking victims who were kidnapped and they're trying to get a ransom out of them or trying to coerce them to do something else. There's just so many unknowns here to make any positive conclusions, I think. I want to go to Dr. Daniel Bober, forensic psychiatrist, joining me along with human trafficking expert Tim Ballard and syndicated talk show host Dave Mack. Dr. Bober,

the reason people are having so many problems believing Sherry Bupini's story is that statistically for two females, as she says, two Hispanic females to kidnap her, that's not a female crime. And I'm not stereotyping. I'm basing this on statistics that have been created and studied for decades. Okay. She was not robbed. She was not, her home was not burglarized. She was not sex assaulted, none of that. So they basically hold her like a pet, except they beat her and then they let her go. For what reason? What's the motive? Also, she cannot give a description. She says their faces were covered almost the entire time. That she couldn't really understand everything that they were saying. She didn't really know where she was held.

Nothing. So all that together makes people suspicious of her story. Dr. Bober? You know, Nancy, it seems highly questionable based on what you're saying. But, you know, to the other guest who specializes in investigating human trafficking crimes, people who suffer the effects of acute stress can often have disturbed perception and recall and memory problems. As you remember, the D.C. snipers were both African-American males, and that didn't fit the pattern either. You know, no one thought that two African-American males were going to be serial killers, which essentially is a white male crime. So I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it definitely seems like there are some things here that are at least questionable

and at worst highly suspicious. Well, I agree with you. To Dave Mack, I'm supporting her even though many people are saying it's not true because it doesn't seem to fit with our perceptions. And I also agree with Dr. Bober with firsthand experience after my fiance was murdered. I've got a huge chunk of time before his murder and into two years after his murder where there's so many things I can't remember at all. My dad would drive me to the murder trial every day, took off work. I barely remember that. There's just so much I just can't remember. And I don't really try to. And when I do try to remember Dr. Bober, I actually, I think I was talking to Dave Mack, I actually, Dave Mack, start to get a physical headache. So I immediately quit thinking about it.

So I hear what Bober's saying, and I don't expect Bepini to recall everything. Dave Mack, I want to get to the issue at hand, and that is the surveillance video. Many people say it looks staged. It doesn't look real, but think about it. If she had been let off, if she's darting back and forth across this parking lot, let's take her point of view for a moment. Maybe she was running to the structure to see if anybody was there, if it was unlocked, looking for a phone, even a pay phone, anything, not knowing which way to go. Man, see, assuming that everything about this story is true, that she was abducted and kept for 22 days and was released or escaped. Let's say she escaped at 4 o'clock that morning somehow, someway, getting away from these people that she couldn't get away from for 22 days and that she was hurt. To me, what that video looks like, it doesn't look staged at all because it's surveillance cameras that just happened to pick her up.

And it's at the top end of the picture. It's not you know, I don't see that as staged. What I do see is a woman panicked, trying to find a clear path at safety somewhere, somehow. That's what it appears to me. But that's assuming that her entire story is true. And this is the end where she's trying to get away from what she thought was a life and death situation, if you believe her story. Well, another thing. What about this? Let me throw this to Tim Ballard, who is a human trafficking expert with Operation Underground Railroad.

Other people would look at this scenario, Tim Ballard, and say, well, if this is where she was left off, where's the vehicle? What vehicle dropped her off there? Are there more surveillance cameras in the area, such as a store, a home, security system, at a red light or a stop sign where you often have, you know, surveillance cameras to see people run a red light? What about a tag grabber? It's all along the interstate. Did anybody's tag get grabbed? Is there any way to use this to substantiate or disprove her story? These are things that the police need to be asking. I hope they're asking these questions and I hope they're looking for those very things. What I do know, what we all know is something happened to her. Unless she took herself out and started beating herself up, I mean something happened to her.

And like the doctor said, we have to give her time to kind of let the dust settle even more. It could be years. I have seen trafficking victims take literally five, six, seven years before they can start even really recalling and remembering what happened. And it might be something like that where we have to wait that long to really get to the bottom of what happened or what she remembers happening. In the meantime, you're right, Nancy, the police need to be doing everything they can to find every camera, every angle to put this story, this really mysterious story together. Well, one thing I'd like to know is, is Sherry Papini left-handed or right-handed? And this is why I want to know that. The brand that had apparently been burned into her

was burned into her right shoulder. If you're right-handed, that would be virtually impossible to do. If you're left-handed, you could self-inflict that. Now, do I think she broke her own nose, inflicted a brand on herself, chopped off her hair, beat herself, and starved herself? I find that very difficult to believe as well. But what we do know now is police, law enforcement, has just released this video in the helps of renewing the case and finally finding answers. I want to pause very briefly and thank our partners making our program possible. It's LegalZoom. As business owners out there, you know how important it is. You gotta keep moving forward. But so often, things come up to take your time and focus away

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before the year winds down. For special savings, enter code NANCY, N-A-N-C-Y, in the referral box at checkout. Code NANCY. Special savings only at LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom, thank you for helping business owners across America and for being our partner today in our investigation into the Sherry Papini disappearance. The mysterious disappearance of the so-called supermom Sherry Pap, making headlines again right now as law enforcement releases more evidence. In the last months, they have begun releasing more evidence. Why?

For instance, they released sketches, as they are, of the alleged perpetrators wearing scarves or bandanas over their faces, the two female perpetrators that kidnapped Sherry Papini, according to her. They release information that she had been texting a guy in Michigan and that he has been cleared of any involvement in her disappearance. They release the 911 call where her husband calls 911. They release information that there is female DNA on her body and male DNA on her clothing. Neither of those DNA samples have matched up to CODIS, which is the National Data Bank on DNA, which means that as of now, neither of those individuals have a felony record that we know of. So what can we learn? Let's start with what we know.

We know we've got the 911 call her husband Keith makes the day he comes home from work, and she's gone. Listen. Hello, can I help you? Yeah, so I just got home from work, and my wife wasn't there, which is unusual, and my kids should have been there by now from like daycare. So I was like, oh, maybe she went on a walk. I couldn't find her, so I called the daycare to see what time she picked up the kids.

The kids were never picked up, so I got freaked out, so I hit like the find my iPhone app thing, and it said that her, it showed her phone like at the end of our driveway. We don't have really good service. Okay. Not the end of our driveway, but the end of our street. Like just drove down there and I saw her phone with her headphones because she started running again and it, I found her phone and it's got like hair ripped out of it, like in the headphones.

So I'm like totally freaking out thinking like somebody like grabbed her. Okay. What's your address? Redding. Okay. What's your last name? Yes. Papini.

P-A-P-I-N-I. And your first name? Keith. K-P-I-N-I. And your first name? Keith. K-E-I-T-H? Yes. Okay. And did you go pick up your children? No, I'm going to call my mom and have her do it.

Okay. What's your wife's name? I'm going to like knock on every door. Sherry, S-H-E-R-R-I. And same last name? Yes. Is she a white female? Yes.

Is she white female? Yes. What's her date of birth? It is June 11, 1982. Is her vehicle there? Does she not have a vehicle? She has a vehicle. It's at the house.

Okay, the vehicle is at the house. She's running. Okay. Yes, I'm in it right now driving and I took a picture of her phone on the ground before I picked it up. Okay, how tall is she? Five, three, five, four. How much does she weigh? A hundred pounds. Eye color? Uh, like a bluish blue. Okay, hair color? Blonde. Do you know what she was wearing? I have no idea. I'm assuming she went running. Okay, there's not an outfit she always wears or anything like that. Does she run with a dog or by herself?

By herself. Okay, what time were the kids running? She just started running again and we lived under a superman. When's the last time you heard from her? She sent me a text asking me if I was coming home for lunch. What time was that? Give me one second. She sent me a 1047 asking me if I was coming home from lunch from work.

And I said, sorry, long day. And that was the last, I never spoke to her on the phone or any other contact. Okay, and what time are the kids supposed to be picked up? Way before 5.30, she usually goes at like 4.45. Okay. 4.30, 4-45. Okay, are you headed back to the house or where are you at right now?

I'm at the end of the driveway where I'm at the Old Oregon Trail and Sunrise where they meet, because that's right where I found her phone, on the ground. She's telling me that something happened to her, the way I'm looking at it. There's like, then there was hair, like, in the headphones. Like, it got ripped off, like, the gravel. Yeah, no, I understand. To Dr. Daniel Bober, forensic psychiatrist, joining me. Dr. Bober, I know that you have repeatedly listened to this 911 call for any clues. I've got a few.

For instance, it was said that she left her children. Well, she did not leave her children in this kidnapping. Her children were taken to daycare that morning. So she knew that they were safe and sound at daycare. When her husband came home, the children were not home, and she was not home, so he called the daycare and found out they were still there. What, if anything, does that mean, Dr. Bober? It's hard to say, Nancy. You know, going back to what you were saying about whether she's right-handed or or left handed in the branding. I mean, it is possible, however bizarre and unlikely that some of this, at least we have to consider the possibility that it was self inflicted. But I mean, between the weight loss, the haircut, the branding, it seems to me that she was trying to flee, that she was trying to escape and that that's what the surveillance video was picking up. And because she's been traumatized, she's not going to be a very reliable reporter at

this point. Well, also, she had a broken nose. So it was bruised heavily and was chained, which leads me, Dave Max, syndicated talk show host, to the question, if all of this was self-inflicted where did she get all of that where did she get that the the ties her her all of her extremities were tied the chain that was tied to her waist and her left arm as i recall well how did all this happen you know everybody was looking for her intensely so she would have been spotted going into a Walmart and buying some chain or the Lowe's or the Home Depot, right? Right.

Let's play devil's advocate. We're talking about it from the standpoint of believing her story. But let's go back to some facts here. We keep talking about her long hair had been cut. But, you know, the woman who made the 911 call the Thanksgiving morning when they saw her on the side of the road described a young woman with long blonde hair. We've got missing for 22 days, a couple of days before she goes missing. Hold on, I want to address what you just said, Dave Mack, because I had made a note of that too. Somewhat different. Her hair had been down to, say, her elbows. It was cut. It was cut up to her shoulders.

When I first heard that her hair had been shorn, essentially, I thought it had been cut down to the scalp. It was cut to her shoulders. So I don't know what that means. Keep going. I don't either. But, you know, description of long blonde hair, you know, that to me is anyway, it just seems to be there's something not right about this story. And that's why we're still talking about it. And I get the idea that she was so traumatized that it's been almost a year and she's just now able to describe people.

But, you know, just playing devil's advocate for a minute. We've got a woman who has a past history of of problems with her family. Police have been called before when she was younger. She's in contact with a man, not her husband, who lives out of state. She's trying to meet up with him in the days leading up to this. And she goes missing for a couple of weeks and comes back, you know, losing 20 pounds and some physical markings. Yet she wasn't in the hospital for very long being treated for those injuries, Nancy. To my recollection, it was only a matter of hours.

And then she's pretty much been in hiding, sequestered or, you know, set away. You know, I'm hearing everything you're saying. But Tim Ballard, human trafficking expert with Operation Underground Railroad, I don't like the way that Dave Mack just tossed it off that she's texting a man out of state. Like that's some bad thing. I don't know what she was texting. I mean, if you looked at my iPhone, you'd be convinced I had a thing going with Alan Duke. Okay.

Because there's like 20 texts back and forth a day. And he's out of state. I think he's in L.A. right now and his posh pad in Los Angeles. But just because you're texting somebody does not mean you have a thing going on. That's right. Yeah. You know, that's right. And what I, what I do is like you said, Nancy, I try to stay with the victim and stay with their story and start creating hypotheses about what might have happened, knowing that they're not the best reporter. And I'm going to go back again to

my analysis. I mean, I worked in that area. I know that area very well. It is a high trafficking area. There's a lot of farmland out there. And we worked many cases in that area where, and this is just a hypothesis, but I think it should be looked at. And it would explain why she wasn't assaulted sexually yet, but they were trying to maybe coerce her or force her. So there's a lot of migrant workers in these farmland, and we find sex slaves all the time on these farmlands that service the workers. Now, these workers aren't there to rape people. They want to enjoy sex with people. And so we've seen cases where they'll, they'll take, they'll kidnap women, uh, put them on the, the, the, uh, the

farmland, tie them up and get them to comply. Uh, perhaps, perhaps, uh, this woman, the super mom, uh, she wouldn't comply. Uh, and so they were trying to get her course or tie her up, brand her. And she just, it wasn't worth it anymore and they let her go. Something like that. But wait a minute, she says she doesn't know what they were saying because they were speaking Spanish. So there was no discussion of being taken to some kind of a farm and being tied up to service migrant workers, as you put it.

I call that rape. I don't know what you're talking about, but. No, it's rape for sure. That doesn't fit with this. That doesn't that doesn't fit with what she's saying, what police are saying happened. Well, she doesn't know what happened. And so I minus more information. I would just if I was if I was looking at this as I have, you know, dozens and dozens of times, I would start setting hypotheses up and trying to see if anything fits what we know about that area. Her story doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense right now. And I certainly would not say that she definitely would have been raped,

but they try to, well, coerce these people so they don't have to fight, you know, so they won't seem like they're fighting. Well, another issue to Dave Mack, I think part of it is that human trafficking that Tim Ballard is talking about, and it exists and it's real and it's happening now in our country with children and women every day. It seems foreign to many people. They don't understand it. They don't believe it's happening. It was just a concept to me until I found out how real it is, Dave Mack. I now, knowing what I know, do not think it's inconceivable that she was taken and then rejected for whatever reason.

I agree with you 100%. I'm very familiar with human trafficking. I've worked with a couple of ministries that deal with young girls who are taken and put into it. However, we know that she was not sexually molested or abused by her own admission, by her own claims that didn't occur. We know from her own story that she was held by two women. We know they found DNA from a man on her clothing. We also know that we've got a history here with her. And again, I am not bagging on her. I have been behind her 100 percent on her story. I'm merely saying that there are some things here that just don't add up for me. And I'm just questioning them. She's got a history of potential drug use. We got run ins

with the law. We got mental illness. We've got parents calling the law on her in her past. And again, now the call or the contacting a man, not her husband, to meet up while he's in California. I'm not suspicious of that, just pointing it out that it is a fact that a couple of days after that meet doesn't happen, her husband finds her phone headphones with hair still attached and says that she was taken by somebody you know i which i agree i agree that it's a factor everything is important and nothing is important what i mean by that is every single piece of evidence every clue every scintilla of evidence is something that has to be looked at and evaluated to determine if it means anything and yes the timing is coincidental now i don't know about this

mental illness and drugs that you're talking about i know that there have been police reports and family brouhahas but uh i i don't know if that factors in to this. This is what we know. Granny's surveillance video has just been released of Sherry Papini just moments before a driver noticed her running out into traffic alongside of the road on the interstate there in California. Does it prove or disprove her story? Let me pause and thank our partner today, making our program possible. Everybody knows how much I love our family dog, Fat Boy, street name

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Man, what a story. Ray Sosa gathered evidence his beloved wife was offering two thousand dollars man that's a cheap price i you know two thousand dollars for a hit i mean you could get a payment plan and offer a little bit more than that anyway two thousand dollars to $2,000 to have him killed. His beloved wife, Maria, had approached the guy, but the man busted her. Now, what do we know about this wife? Joining me, an all-star lineup, renowned defense attorney out of the Maryland jurisdiction, Robin Ficker, no stranger to the courtroom. Also with me, Maria Boynton,

investigative reporter with V103 and WAOK and forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Bober. You know, before I go to Maria on the facts, just one quick question to Dr. Daniel Bober, who so often seems to sympathize with defendants. Dr. Bober, why don't people just get a divorce? Why go through the hassle of arranging a hit? Or, you know, as I always say, if you want a job done, just do it yourself. But, you know, you just can't teach people anything. So why not just get a divorce? What's that all about, Dr. Bober? Cheaper to keeper, Nancy. That's what they often say. Sometimes, you know, morality gets in the way of finances and it's just more convenient to knock them off, right? But if you're going to hire a hitman, you got to check references. It's very important. I'm looking at the photos this

guy had taken of himself, quote, dead in the dirt with a bullet wound in his temple, in his right temple, blood coming from his nose. He looks he looks dead to me oh there is a nice picture of him and his wife ray and his wife maria whoa they look so happy they're at some fancy extravaganza she's got on the quintessential little black dress she's beautiful long gorgeous raven haired uh colored locks and he's all dressed up as well. They couldn't look happier. So tell me what happened to Maria Boynton, V103. What happened?

Well, Nancy, what appears to have happened is this. The money got low. He was a gym owner, Nancy, and then the money started to dwindle. It got low. They were having financial issues, and she asked for a divorce. He had to stay in the home because the money was so low. Then she went out and said, you know what? I want my husband killed. Went to this guy who we know him as Gustavo and said, you know what? I want him gone. I want him dead. Gustavo even says that Maria put the fingers to her temple saying, I want him out of here. So what happened then was Gustavo knew her husband.

Wait, no, wait. So that's how it went down. He actually knew the husband, unbeknownst to the wife. Yes. How did Gustavo, which is a perfect name for a hitman, it sounds kind of creepy and possibly Russian. Anyway, so feeding into all of our deepest, darkest fears. So how did Gustavo know the husband? Well, the husband says that years before, you know, he's a gym owner. He teaches

boxing. He had mentored the guy. He had taught him boxing. So Gustavo remembered the husband and called him and said, yo, I need to meet with you. Somebody wants you dead. Okay, hold on. Robin Ficker, veteran defense attorney joining me from the Maryland jurisdiction. Robin, let me tell you a funny story. Talking about small world. I went to the dentist the other day, which I do not like to go to the dentist. Okay, so I'm there and they're looking back in the back of my mouth

and the dentist says, so you remember I was on your jury, right? And of course I couldn't speak because he has hand down my mouth. And I looked at him and suddenly it did come back to me. Robin Ficker, this guy was on a jury of mine that I struck right after I became a prosecutor and it was a bank robbery case complete with a bank robbery note the works and I found out midway through the trial that I had a convicted bank robber on the jury okay so I didn't think I stood a chance a snowball's chance in HELL So anyway, this dentist was on my jury. I did manage to somehow eke out a conviction, Robin Ficker. I'm sure you're sad about that. But so it's not, it doesn't strike me as odd or coincidental at all that Gustavo

knows the husband. How would I know, you know, 20 years later, my jury foreman would have his hand down my mouth. Well, I hope he didn't drill you so that it was painful. But I can tell you, you folks have it backwards on this. Husband Ray, he was in the dirt. He's a dirt ball. He reminds me of Robert De Niro of the raging bull who used to beat up his wife and couldn't control his emotions outside the ring. He had been beating her for years, and she had been telling everyone about it. She was one of these Me Too ladies. She was telling everyone, his business associates.

So then Gustavo and Ramon conspired to set her up, to entrap her. They knew she was angry at Ramman for all these beatings, so then they set her up and she made statements that she wouldn't have made to anyone else because she didn't really want him killed, but she wanted revenge of some kind because he'd been beating her for years. She was entrapped and her defense attorney should have brought that defense. There's no way she should have gotten any jail time out of this at all maria boynton w-a-o-k i've read exactly what attorney robin ficker out of the maryland jurisdiction has is talking about it's she

never made a complaint to police or uh there's never a police report, nothing about abuse. Where it came from, what he's saying, Maria Boynton, is the victim, Ray Sosa, said that for months before she tried to have him killed that she was bad-mouthing him, saying he stole their money, that he drank, that he abused her. Nobody came forward and supported that claim, Maria. Nobody. No, Nancy, they didn't. And, of course, the evidence is that she pleaded guilty,

received 20 years in prison. She's waived any appeal when she pleaded guilty. She pled guilty to the offense of solicitation of murder. And you go back to Ray, and you see this guy thought he had the perfect woman. She gave him massages. I mean, he sort of won her. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Can we get back to the massages?

Wait, no. Is this? Oh, yeah. She would give him massages and do his nails and rub his body with scented oils to, quote, relax him. And then as soon as the money dried up, all that was off. No more pedicures. Yeah, she wanted him out of there. What else do you know, Maria Boynton? Well, what we know is that, of course, when the money started to dry up, she wanted him out of there. She called Gustavo. She said, I want him dead. She put her fingers to the temple, as we said, because she

wanted him out of there. Of course, there was no way to get her to, say, beat him or something like that. Gustavo said, I asked her, do you want me to beat him up? She said, no, I want him dead. He's better off dead for me. And that's where we go from here. And, of course, Gustavo called Ray, said, dude, somebody wants you dead. Ray thought this has to be a joke. He knew Gustavo from years ago.

Gustavo says, you know, it's your wife, man. She wants you out of here. And, of course, what they did was they devised a plan, put a microphone on her, took the evidence to the police, who, of course, said, okay, we're going to get involved in this. They went out, dug a grave, got Ray, brought him out there, laid him out there, put the bullet, you know, seemingly bullet holes on him, laid him in the dirt. I mean, the pictures are there. He looks like a corpse laying in the dirt, Nancy. They put the blood coming down, the aged

blood turning all colors and things of that nature. They put it out there so it would seem real. And when Gustavo took the evidence, you know, the hit man let her know, hey, we've taken care of what you wanted. She apparently laughed it off, but it was all a joke. And the joke is now on her. Wait a minute. So Dr. Daniel Bober, forensic psychiatrist, they show her these pictures, and it looked very genuine. In fact, cops drive the husband out into the desert, and they place him in a shallow grave. Then they make it look like with, like, dramatic theater makeup that a bullet was shot through his right temple with blood streaming down his face. Now, they then hid Ray in a hotel for three days.

Okay? And what does it mean, Dr. Bober, that when they show her the pictures of him apparently lying dead out in the dirt in the desert, she starts laughing. Nancy, the woman, has ice crystals in her veins. Ice cold. It's pretty cold-blooded.

It's pretty psychopathic. She absolutely has no emotional connection or no remorse whatsoever. So it's pretty chilling. She must have been so emotionally disconnected from him that she was only interested in her own needs and just felt absolutely no empathy or emotion for him whatsoever. And there was the money and the green card, Maria Boynton, Maria investigative reporter with V103 and WAOK. Maria, what about the green card?

Yeah, Nancy, let me tell you, the only problems they had in their marriage was, well, she was from Mexico originally, so she would have to go back home, you know, to get recertified so she could come back over here. But marrying Mr. Sosa, now he's originally from Puerto Rico, he is an American citizen. Now, marrying him entitled her to a green card, meaning she could stay permanently in the U.S., you know, and that, of course, is where they opened this gem together because they were this loving couple. Remember now, she had done the hot oils, rubbed his feet, rubbed his back, loved him like a man wants to be loved. And then she wanted him

killed. What? What? What? You mean I've got to rub a hot oil on my husband and give him a pedicure? Listen, Maria, that ain't happening. Okay. It's all I can do to get up at five o'clock in the morning and get the children fed and to school and get all their homework done and work, make a living. Right now, Maria, do you know that I have under one roof, two dogs, two cats, two guinea pigs, three children, my mother, my husband. I mean, I don't have time to be rubbing hot oil on anybody. Forget it. So wait, I don't know how I got off on hot oil. Let me get back to this. So she gets the green card and then suddenly, Robin Ficker, whoopsie, the pedicures are over.

What hot oil? What, what? Massage? Forget about it, buddy. Robin Ficker, you don't see that as a little bit of a coincidence? I see this lovely young woman being falsely accused. He had the next babe lined up and wanted to get rid of her. And interestingly, he won't say anything about this new babe that he has.

He is duplicitous. Yeah, nobody has except you. He's an abuser. What next babe are you talking about? And she let it be known. He and his friend, his buddy, co-conspirator, Gustavo, entrapped her. He admits that he has a new girlfriend. And he had her in his sights before he got rid of the old one.

That's pretty common these days. Well, having somebody in your sights that you've been admiring at a distance, it's not the same thing as having an affair. Dr. Daniel Bober, I've got to admit, I go through life with blinders on. I am so not interested in another man. I've already raised this one. I don't want to start over with another one, but it would not hurt my feelings terribly if my husband happened to turn his head and look at a good looking woman. All right. I mean, I do believe he still has red blood pumping through his veins. I mean, OK, so he's going to look. I'm not hurt. But that does not mean you're cheating. Nancy, I agree with you. I mean, it seems like it seems like it seems like when the spa membership was over it seemed like the marriage

was over and uh she was intent on ending in her way uh i don't really see any evidence that you know he was going outside the marriage or that he was abusing her but uh you know certainly possible but i just don't see anything like that i mean after all maria maria boynton can you and jackie and i agree on one thing i mean a man is man is going to look, all right? They look. They're like, you know, dogs. They're going to look. Let's just be glad. That's all they do. Just because he is admiring a lady does not mean he was having a romantic relationship with her.

What it boils down to is Robin Ficker, who is a veteran defense attorney, now you see why he wins all these cases. He's got us also spun around with claims of affairs and abuse and this and that. He's ignoring the evidence right under his nose, and we actually bit on it, Maria. Vicar, is that how you win all your cases? You come up with these crazy theories and juries believe it? Well, I think it's a winning theory. And I think that perhaps there was a, this new lady had more enticing things than a little oil and pedicure. She probably worked other areas and that's how she got him

under her wing. Okay, Robin. You know, go ahead, Maria. And what Ray does say about a new woman is that he is now in a new relationship. He does not say at any time that he was cheating on his wife, that he was looking at other women. He says that now he is in a new relationship with a new woman. And we know he's hoping that things go better than the last marriage. Let's just hope this one doesn't try to kill him. Okay. He managed to escape with his life and she's in a slammer after pleading guilty. Okay, caught in the nick of time. Then I finally get to laugh about a story because the victim, the murder victim, actually lived. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off.

Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.