Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Young Woman 'BEHEADED' on Sidewalk, Broad Daylight. NO FORMAL CHARGES.

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

America Thayer was decapitated in broad daylight in Shakopee. Video footage circulating online appears to shows her long-time boyfriend, Alexis Saborit, pushing Thayer’s bloody body out of her car before walking away. Thayer's head was discovered near her body.Joining Nancy Grace Today: Randy Kessler - Atlanta Trial Lawyer, Emory Law School Professor, Past Chair ABA Family Law Section, Author: "Divorce, Protect Yourself, Your Kids and Your Future", www.KSFamilyLaw.com, Instagram: @rkessler23, Twitter: @GADivorce, Dr. Shari Schwartz - Forensic Psychologist (specializing in Capital Mitigation and Victim Advocacy), www.panthermitigation.com, Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrialDoc, Author: "Criminal Behavior" and "Where Law and Psychology Intersect: Issues in Legal Psychology" Dr. Kendall Crowns – Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Travis County, Texas (Austin) Robert Crispin - Private Investigator, “Crispin Special Investigations” www.CrispinInvestigations.com Paul Blume - Reporter, KMSP-TV FOX 9, Minneapolis, Twitter: @PaulBlume_FOX9, www.paulblume.com Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. A beautiful young woman beheaded. Yes, that's what I said. Beheaded. Has her head chopped off on the sidewalk in broad daylight. And the Minnesota district attorney is still trying to decide whether he should seek life without parole. Really? He's still trying to decide.

He's mulling. Wow, what should I do with this case? Should I plead it out on probation? What is going on in Minnesota? A woman gets beheaded with a machete on the sidewalk in a subdivision in broad daylight. This guy needs to be under the jail. One of the things I had to learn early on, as in day one, when I began prosecuting violent crime, is that there is no happy ending. I want there to be a happy ending when it comes to violent crime. But even when you try a case and you get a guilty verdict and you get a maximum sentence, I never went out and celebrated or had a celebration dinner

because everybody leaves the courtroom with a broken heart. You can never get the victim back. You can never take back the damage done. The defendant's family is all torn up because he or she is going away to jail, or worse. So everybody is upset. That's the reality. But I can tell you this. You can get justice. You can walk out of that courtroom

with a broken heart, but knowing you got justice in one case, at least. So I would like to find out, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock. What is this Minnesota prosecutor waiting on? With me, an all-star panel to break it down and put it back together again. But first, take a listen to this. The first question I asked the cop when I asked him if I could tell him what I saw was, that was real? And he said yes. Alexis Pruhl was cleaning her house Wednesday afternoon on the corner of a busy four-way stop intersection in Shakopee when something suspicious out the window prompted her to start filming with her cell phone. I thought it was a joke. I thought it was parked outside of the parking lot of the parking lot. The car was parked outside of the busy

four way stop intersection in Shakopee when something suspicious out the window prompted her to start filming with her cell phone. I thought it was a joke. I thought it was some type of prank. I didn't think it was really

thought maybe it was a doll. The doll was actually a lifeless body pulled out of the car by a man who then grabbed her decapitated head. I saw him go in his backseat and put on his backpack and walk away like nothing happened. The victim was America Mafalda Thayer. Charged in her death is her boyfriend, 42-year-old Alexis Sabaret. According to the criminal complaint, witnesses at the busy intersection who drove around the car apparently saw the suspect hacking the victim but didn't realize what they were watching. And he just, he smelled something and he just stopped.

The next day, a woman walking her dog found the bloody murder weapon, a long machete with a deeply serrated edge. It was very awful seeing it and I wish I hadn't. I'll never be able to unsee it. You were just hearing our friend Lou Raguse, K-A-R-E 11, reporting on what happened. Again, let me tell you about our all-star panel assembled today to make sense of this, if that's even possible. We're now on trial attorney joining us out of the Atlanta jurisdiction, Randy Kessler, Emory Law professor and former chair of the ABA Family Law Section, author of Divorce, Protect Yourself, Your Kids, and Your Future. You can find him at ksfamilylaw.com. Dr. Sherry Swartz with us, forensic psychologist specializing in just this sort of crime at panthermitigation.com,

author of Criminal Behavior and Where Law and Psychology Intersect. Dr. Kendall Crowns, deputy medical examiner, Travis County, Texas. That's in Austin. And also Senior Lecturer at University of Texas and Texas A&M. Robert Crispin joining us, Private Investigator at Crispin Special Investigations, CrispinInvestigations.com. He was a homicide investigator and with the DEA. But first, to Paul Bloom, reporter of Fox 9 News there in Minneapolis. Paul Bloom, let me understand.

Minneapolis doesn't have the death penalty, so basically you can behead as many unarmed women on the sidewalk as you want to, as you can get away with, and you're still not going to get the death penalty. Is that right? No offense, but isn't that true? No offense taken, but absolutely as horrific as that sounds, Minnesota is a non-death penalty state. In fact, a prosecutor has to make the decision to take a murder case to a grand jury, get a grand jury to sign off on that first degree murder indictment. Oh, hold on, hold on. You got me drinking out of the fire hydrant too much, too fast. Hold on just a moment. You said the district attorney has to, quote, make a decision. In other words,

think for a minute before he, she takes the case to the grand jury. Isn't it true, Paul Bloom, that in Minnesota, like everywhere else in the country, there is a grand jury empaneled for every grand jury session? They need to, my understanding of the legal system is they need to empanel a grand jury. This is outside of Minneapolis, so this is a quieter county, if you will. They would have to empanel a grand jury. This is outside of Minneapolis, so this is a quieter county, if you will. They would have to impanel a grand jury and take the evidence to that jury of the peers and indict on a first-degree murder count. Okay, Randy Kessler, you know the deal. Every jurisdiction has a grand jury empaneled. Empaneled sounds like it's individual to that case, but the reality is that grand jurors are very simply selected automatically.

There's not a person drawing a name out of a box or anything. Typically off the voter registration list, because those people are in Fulton County or whatever county we're talking about. And then once they get to the courthouse on their appointed day, their question, do you still live in, let's just pretend, Fulton County? Paul Bloom, what county is this? This is Scott County, Minnesota. Scott County.

So once you get, just let's pretend, 40 people off the voter registration list, it's just like when you get a jury summons. You're not special. You're picked off the driver's license list or the voter registration list that signifies your age and the fact that you live in the correct jurisdiction. You're summoned in, and if you're, for some reason, not the right age or not in the jurisdiction, you're thrown out. And everybody else basically stews in the same pot with the other poor people that get dragged in for jury duty. Agree or disagree, Kessler? Agree.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a jurisdiction where there was such little crime that we had to wait until there was a crime committed to impanel a grand jury? Yeah, you know what? You said that so much better than I did, Randy Kessler. This is how it works. Every time there's a crime, you don't impanel a new grand jury. You have a grand jury on hold. Now, in the jurisdiction where I practice,

Intercity Atlanta, we had a jury. The term, I believe it lasted six months. And the grand jury would come in, about 40 people, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And they would hear cases for about three or four hours. Each case lasted about three to 15 minutes. Bare bones case, the cop comes in and says, this is what happened. Bam, indict, or no bill.

It's really that simple. If they didn't have a lot of cases that day, they'd get out early. But what it meant to me is that about once or twice a week, I'd get a whole caseload of brand new indictments the grand jury handed down. So Paul Bloom, joining me out of Fox 9 News, Minneapolis, and I know you don't have a dog in this fight,

you're just the messenger. Are you telling me the elected district attorney of Scott County is still sitting there with his thumb up his rear end and this case has not been indicted for murder one? That's a yes, no, Paul. It has not been indicted. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we're talking about a beautiful young woman that was literally beheaded

on the sidewalk. And as of right now, the perp, the the killer has not been indicted for murder one. Why is that? Take a listen to this. We're learning new information about a woman's death in Shakopee. We want to warn you some of the details are disturbing and not appropriate for young people. Police have identified the victim as America Thayer. We're told she was found around 2 30 yesterday afternoon at the intersection of 4th Avenue and Spencer Street. Police tell us they found her body beheaded. A man police say knew the victim

was arrested on suspicion of second degree murder. He's in jail pending charges. Second degree murder? What do you have to do to get murder one? He beheads her in broad daylight on the sidewalk. People see it happen. Okay. Let me understand what happened. Paul Bloom, before I bring in the rest of our panel, Paul joining us there at Fox nine news, Minneapolis. Tell me what happened the day of the beheading. Well, I mean, it's horrific. Basically, the assailant here, America's boyfriend, longtime boyfriend, Alexis Sabret, hanging out. He's got a court hearing that day, just basically an hour before this grisly attack occurs. Our understanding is America is trying to convince him to go to court.

We don't know exactly what happens in the car. They're driving around. He elects not to go to court that day. He was accused of trying to burn down his own apartment a year earlier. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He's already accused. No, you're not off track. You're perfect.

He's accused of burning down an apartment and he's going, wow, should I go to court? In what universe do you get a summons to court and you go, hmm, I wonder if I should go. And so she's trying to talk him into showing up for court and he beheads her. Is that right, Paul? Yeah, that's where it nets out.

He refuses to go. There's an altercation in the car, some sort of assaultive behavior occurring. He pulls over to the side of the road. We're just two blocks from the courthouse in Scott County, right? Downtown Shakopee, as you mentioned, broad daylight. I think it was a Wednesday afternoon. Did you say this is two blocks from the courthouse? Yeah, just blocks.

Somehow that makes it worse to me. Two blocks from a court of law, and he thinks it's okay to drag his girlfriend out of the car in broad daylight and behead her, and the DA is still thinking about it? You just heard from our friend Sheila Reeves at WCCO CBS. Now take a listen to this. A local resident reports to police that her dog has found a knife in a nearby garden. A bloody shirt and shoes are also recovered in an alley a few blocks away. A police report notes that a black handle was sticking up from the ground, concealed in a bush. The blade was almost

entirely shoved into the dirt and difficult to see. Documents describe the weapon as a black machete with a partially serrated edge. Police say the blade was covered with a blood-like substance and there appeared to be strands of hair on it. The knife also appears to fit a sheath found at the crime scene. Okay, the reason I'm having so many long pauses is because it's just very hard for me to take this in. Let me remind everybody that this woman, America Thayer, has a family. She has children. How do you live with knowing your mother was beheaded in broad daylight two blocks from the courthouse

in a suburban area, in a setting where a woman looks out of her kitchen window and sees a beheading. This isn't just some statistic or some name on a police report. This was a beautiful young woman with children. And did I hear Paul Bloom, Fox 9 News Minneapolis, that a dog, what did a dog find? The machete. A day or two after the attack.

And you know what else I heard? Dr. Sherry Schwartz, forensic psychologist, who loves to tell me why people are, that they're insane at the time, insanity under the law and i'm sure randy kessler will correct me if i'm wrong is you don't know right from wrong at the time of the incident it doesn't mean you come into court and babble or speak in tongues or turn around in your chair or refuse to eat it means at the time of the incident, you did not know right from wrong. And let me point out Dr. Sherry Schwartz, that this guy conceals the weapon. He takes off his bloody shoes. He takes off his bloody clothing and hides it and leaves. He knew what he did was wrong. For Pete's sake, right before he

murdered this woman, he apparently was angry because she thought he should go to court on an arson charge and he didn't want to go to court. He knew everything he did was wrong. That is the litmus test for insanity. You're absolutely right, Nancy. It would be very difficult for any forensic psychologist to opine, to render an opinion in this case that there is that legal concept of insanity. You know, he's, there's evidence of guilty mind right and that's one of the things that we look for somebody discarded the machete he was the one with it witnesses saw him presumably and it winds up in somebody's garden and then you know a little distance away there's his bloody shoes i'm assuming they're his. Bloody shoes, bloody clothing.

Obviously, this is evidence that he was trying to conceal the crime. So that would preclude any insanity defense, any opinion by a forensic psychologist that there's legal insanity here. You know, Randy Kessler, in many, many jurisdictions, the evidence of flight, when you commit a crime and then you run, or you're on the run from police, evidence of concealment, it's still allowed at trial. It can be argued both ways by the prosecutor and the defense, whether it's evidence of guilt. But the judge no longer, in many many jurisdictions can instruct the jury that flight or concealment of evidence is evidence of guilt. Of course it is. But that is for a jury to decide. That's why they change the judge's instruction. That is within the sole province of a jury considering the case, not a judge. But Randy, please come on, analyze it, man.

And don't go off on some legal defense theory and throw a lot of Latin phrases at everybody. We don't care. This is evidence of guilt. He took off his bloody clothes. He had the weapon. He had the clothes and left. All right. Well, I'll end with something you don't like.

But to start with, this is the most dangerous kind of criminal there is because this was anger. This was something, clearly, the facts are so horrific that evidence of flight isn't going to matter. The jury's going to hate him. But the bottom line is he acted spontaneously, right? And that's the thing you don't want to hear from me because it's a legal defense.

It was certainly not premeditated. You don't premeditate to kill somebody. Oh, do you have a machete in your backseat? Do you? Two blocks from the courthouse where people can videotape you. He had to bring a machete. Don't tell me it's spontaneous. Because he had time for premeditation.

Premeditation under the law can be formed in the blink of an eye. The twinkling of a moment. The time it takes to reach in the backseat, grab the machete, hold it up and swing it. That is time to think, wow, maybe I shouldn't behead my girlfriend. He's not going to get off light, but you know, he's got to have something to argue in the back that he did this right in the middle. You know I'm at when I'm correcting grammar. Okay, so let me stop myself.

Take a listen to our friends at Fox 9 News. Can't even, I have no words for it. It's, yeah, scary. Folks living in this residential neighborhood just blocks from downtown Shakopee, shaken by a horrifying mid-afternoon attack that left a woman dead in the street. Emergency responders and eventually crime scene investigators descending on the scene around 2 30 p.m. The black tenting here marking the spot. A male suspect initially fled on foot but he was captured soon after about a mile and a half away. Authorities combing several locations looking for evidence. Sources telling Fox 9 that a knife was used in the deadly assault. Yeah it's scary it. It's too close to home, I feel like.

And take a listen to more from our friends at Fox 9 News. It took place hours ago in broad daylight, and yet it remains taped off very much an active crime scene tonight. You mentioned quiet residential neighborhood of Shakopee. We're just blocks from downtown. In fact, where we stand, we've been listening into the music of the Wednesday night summer concert series, Rhythm on the Rails. Here, people are parking nearby. They're walking home. I see a gentleman with a cooler heading back to his car. I was speaking to neighbors today.

They are absolutely disgusted and alarmed by what unfolded here. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Describe the scene for me, Paul, because, you know, it sounds like this wonderful evening where there's going to be a summer concert series. It's a Wednesday evening. This happened that afternoon. Tell me about the location. Well, it's exactly as I said in my report. We're standing there. The scene's taped off. We now know what's happened.

Social media video of the event has circulated, so the community has seen it, and yet a block away on the riverfront in downtown Shakopee, a sleepy growing suburb, a couple of rings removed from Minneapolis. It's their river music series. So there's music. People have coolers. People are picnicking outside. They're going to the bars, the restaurant. We're breaking out of the pandemic. And they're literally walking by within a block of this grisly crime scene that investigators are combing over. They took hours. They meticulously photographed. They had their drone up that day. They wanted to map this thing out. It still bothers my mind how they didn't find the machete initially. It took them another day to find that in a nearby yard.

But, yeah, that scene was just a really remarkable sort of, you know, two different things. The horrors a block away and then the music continuing and people living their lives like nothing had happened. I just wanted our viewers to kind of picture that in that moment. I am. I am. Paul Bloom. Paul, joining us from Fox 9 News, Minneapolis. Robert Crispin, now private investigator at Crispin Special Investigations.

Robert, that dichotomy that Paul is describing, before he said the two very different things, I was thinking about that. And I think that's something that I never have gotten used to. And it brings to mind my very first carjack murder trial. And it was of a young man. He had come outside his home for some reason and he was getting out of his car. That's what comes by, wants the car, and he not only carjacks the car, but he murders the guy. And there is this beautiful front yard. I think the guy was pretty young too, like maybe 19, 20 years old that was murdered. And so it had to be the family home. It was a beautiful yard they worked on all

the time. And I remember the dichotomy in that case that just stuck me in the heart. The neighbor looked out the window and heard a gunshot and he saw the victim fall and the neighbor ran out and put a pillow under the victim's head. And the thought, I mean, the victim was already dead. He got shot in the head. The dichotomy of this lovely yard and trying to make the victim comfortable, there's just something about it that really twists the knife. Now, you deal with homicides.

You're a homicide investigator all around Florida, Fort Lauderdale. That's never a lack of business. And when we were discussing this case earlier, Robert Crispin, you said you investigated cases like this and why the women went back to the men like it was their fault?

You know, Nancy, the sad part about it is... No, didn't you say that? Go ahead. I did. Yeah, you did. We all heard it. What bothered me and what bothers me is these victims of domestic violence after they've been battered and, you know, after they've gotten out of the hospital, you know, within a week, they're going back to the judge and they're telling the judge it didn't happen that way. I want him to come home. I love him. And I don't want to prosecute. And it's just a recipe for disaster because the judges let these no contact orders go and these people get back together and it just keeps escalating.

And I tell you from experience in working these cases my entire career, domestic violence cases escalate. They do. Well, you're right on that, Robert Crispin. I was all ready to, well, I'm not going to say it on air. I don't think Fox Nation would like that very much. But you're right. You're right.

Very often they get back together. But the reasons for it are reasons we don't understand sometimes so that we can't relate to. Sometimes the woman has zero money, nowhere to go. It's the father of the children. She wants to have this beautiful, happy family that you read about and see on TV and thinks that somehow she single-handedly can fix the whole thing. So who is this guy? Take a listen to Minnesota blogger Scott Johnson. Listen. He's a Cuban illegal immigrant. He entered through El Paso in 2007, and by 2012, there were two deportation orders that he had racked up. And ICE was not able to deport him because Cuba wouldn't take him back.

So we get Cuba's felons, an illegal immigrant, entering through El Paso by 2012, two deportation orders. That doesn't just happen. You have to bring yourself to the attention of authorities to get a deportation order. Let's circle back to the crime. Joining me right now, senior lecturer at University of Texas and Texas A&M, deputy medical Examiner, Travis County, Texas. That's Austin. Dr. Kendall Crowns. Dr. Crowns, thank you for taking time out to be with us. Dr. Crowns, it doesn't seem to me that it would be very easy physically to behead someone. It's very difficult to, for instance, dismember a body. How difficult is it to physically behead someone? So it depends on how you go about the process of beheading them. If you are using a machete,

like in this case, machetes are usually not very sharp. They're kind of sharp and blunt. So it's difficult to get through the neck musculature, the trachea in one swing. So you're going to have multiple hacking swings. And then once you get through the soft tissue, then you have to get through the spinal column. And then depending on how you hit the spinal column, it is hard to hack through. So it's a fairly labor intensive process to decapitate someone with a machete. If you use a sharper implement, like a sword, you can get through the tissue and the neck structures quicker. But in the machete cases I've seen, it's usually multiple strikes. It takes a lot of effort to get the head off.

Multiple strikes. The reason I'm asking Dr. Kendall Crowns is not for the gory or prurient interest in what happened to America. I'm trying to establish premeditation. And as Randy Kessler and I were discussing, premeditation can be formed in the blink of an eye. It does not require a prolonged plan such as poisoning someone over a period of months. It can be formed in the time it takes to pull a gun and pull the trigger. It's just that fast.

So if the beheading takes a lot of effort and probably several hacking motions, Randy Kessler, that's time to form premeditation based on what Dr. Kendall Crowns has said. I agree, but even worse to the defense, if he's going to claim self-defense,

which he seems to be saying, one hack should be enough to keep her away from her to you, right? I mean, that just sort of gets rid of any claim he has that it was her fault or that he had to defend himself. So premeditation, maybe he could argue the first attempt wasn't premeditated, but when he kept going, you're right, that gets rid of any defense that this was not premeditated. He kept going.

So one time at it, this was a reaction. I just grabbed whatever I saw, and I hit her with it, and the hatchet was there. The machete happened to be in my car because I was working a job where I was using it. You know, all that goes out the window when it's more than one strike. This time you're right. Crime stories with Nancy Grace. To Paul Bloom, reporter, Fox 9 News, Minneapolis. Who is the elected district attorney in Scott County? His name is Ron Hochevar, county attorney here in Scott County.

But just to follow through on what you guys were talking about with the machete, you know, witnesses report here do do quote as seeing, you know, several strikes actually thinking it's a baton or a bat of some kind, you know, that they're watching something like that, like someone get beaten. They didn't realize in the moment that it was a machete that was being used to hack off America's head. Guys, we are talking about a beautiful young woman. I'm looking at a picture right now. Long, curly, blonde hair, perfect teeth. I mean, I'm looking at her at her job and she's smiling for somebody and she's dead. She was beheaded by this guy, an illegal immigrant, who has two deportation orders on him. But who is she and what was the nature of their relationship? Take a listen now to our friends at Crime Online.

Thayer's co-workers say they saw signs that America was abused. Three women, all Dollar Tree workers, say that Thayer had once come to work with a broken arm and bruises on her face. They say Thayer would set up a FaceTime on her phone so her boyfriend of seven years could watch her at work. Co-workers say they were concerned by Sabarit's controlling behavior, and often Thayer would stay over with friends to avoid him. Reba Scar told the Star Tribune that Sabarit would not allow Thayer to use the bathroom alone during a visit to her apartment. Scar also says Thayer would sometimes sleep at her desk at her MyPillow job or in her car at the Amazon Fulfillment Center parking lot. Fox 9 reporter Mary McGuire tweeted that one of Thayer's former co-workers says she asked why Thayer didn't leave. According to the co-worker, Thayer said,

if I leave, he will kill me. if I leave, he will kill me. If I leave, he will kill me. Well, there's your answer, Robert Crispin, as to why she hadn't left yet. She was afraid he'd kill her. It's exactly what happens. It's exactly what happens. They're afraid to leave these people. And, you know, these people in these suspects, they just flip out when they're going to lose their spouse. And this is what happens in these cases. It's just, it's sad. It's heartbreaking, especially when someone goes and lists a no contact order because they're afraid of losing their beautiful house or losing the income from the spouse of their two or three kids. Or in this case, being afraid he would kill her or her children. Listen, I have been to the exact same house eight to 10 times on domestic violence cases.

And every single time we went out, every single time we went out, the violence escalated and he would get arrested. And I will tell you this. In the O.J. Simpson case, that really helped law enforcement and prosecutors moving forward where back in the day, if you remember this, when, of course, you were a prosecutor, you know, law enforcement showed up and there was a domestic violence case. And she's like, oh, no, no, no, no. I'm OK. No, no, no. I fell. I hit my nose. I'm sorry. They didn't arrest. Now the state of Florida will prosecute you without the victim cooperating. them cooperate and sadly nicole brown was right because the simpson jury saw a picture of her up on a screen with her face mangled black and blue by oj simpson and they still acquitted him so i guess nicole brown was right guys if you disagree with the district attorney sitting on his rear end i guess he's having a big fat cup of coffee right now, probably an $8 cup of coffee from Starbucks.

Here's his phone number, 952-496-8240. 952-496-8240. Who will speak up for America there? Who? If not us, then who? And P.S., you can tell them I sent you. Take a listen to this. America Thayer and her boyfriend, Alexis Sabarit, had been dating for seven years, but the 42-year-old had a history of criminal domestic abuse. Sabarit was convicted in 2017 for an attack against Thayer. When police arrived at the home, Sabarit was holding her to the ground. Officers say Thayer told them the fight began when Sabarit thought she was talking to another man at a bar.

A pre-trial no contact order was put in place, but Thayer wrote to the court to have the order removed, according to The Sun. She told the court they had lived together for four years at that time and had never had a problem. The court granted her petition. You know, I'm curious about something you reported earlier. Paul Bloom joining me from Fox 9 News in Minnesota, in Minneapolis specifically. Paul, did I hear someone report that he would not let her go to the bathroom alone? He was controlling. Absolutely. There were issues in that house or that household. The police knew it in the immediate aftermath as I'm heading to that scene and they know who they're dealing with. They knew exactly this

couple, sadly, because there were these issues of domestic violence in the home. And he's busted a couple of years earlier. And as your panelists have been talking about, you know, the women, you know, going to a judge in this case, in that case file, tragically, America has this, you know, emotional handwritten note in the case file asking the judge to drop the no contact order and let Sabri come home, that it was one argument and that it's beyond them now. And it's just sort of a tragic element of the whole community. Would not let her go to the bathroom by herself. It sounds like R. Kelly.

Dr. Sherry Schwartz, I sense that some people blame the victim here, America. But you know what? Sometimes you want something so badly. You want to believe you can have this happy home. You don't want to acknowledge what's going on. What is that, Dr. Sherry Swartz? I mean, I know the word would be denial, but what is that where do tend to be high in empathy. But also she had been with him for quite some time, at least a few years prior to this other episode. Right.

So she probably felt that she could manage the situation. And she was clearly afraid of him. If she's telling friends, I can't leave because he will kill me. She's working at the Dollar Tree, so she's not somebody who's very wealthy and can afford to take her family and move to an undisclosed location. And her empathy probably made her feel sorry for him. And I've heard a lot of talk about what she did in terms of asking the judge to please remove this injunction so that they could communicate legally. And what we're not talking about is what he was likely doing to manipulate

her into doing that, which is after a violent episode where the person isn't killed, there's this honeymoon phase where the person, the abuser tends to be very remorseful and manipulate the victim's emotion saying, you know, I'm so sorry, you know, and maybe blame some external reason. Maybe I was drunk or I was high or even sometimes blames the victim and says, well, you know, when you do that certain thing, it just makes me crazy. And how am I going to survive without you? So I think it's really important that people think about it's not just the victim's behavior. It's what is the perpetrator, the abuser doing behind the scenes to manipulate this victim who's clearly afraid of him. Guys, we are talking about a beautiful young woman, now dead, beheaded in

broad daylight in a suburban area. If you have a Have her call. Toll free, 800-799-7233. Repeat, 800-799-7233. Paul Bloom, I'd like to know what's going to happen now. But as long as the elected district attorney does nothing, we don't have the answer to that, do we? We don't know at this point. No, obviously, the grand jury process here is secretive. So we have no idea. Again, I know you describe it as a very simple process. So I'm certainly not going to defend, you know, the county attorney's actions in the recent weeks. But there is a timeline that they do follow here in the courts in Minnesota. So we'll see if we get that first degree murder indictment.

In the meantime, just so you know, every grand jury is secret. Take a listen to our cut 17, our friend Tyler Hunt at Crime Online. On the day Thayer died, she and Sabarit went to a park, planning to go to a court appearance for an earlier offense. He tells police that on the way, Thayer allegedly says she wants to end their relationship. In Sabarit's words, she had gone too far. He admits to police he dragged Thayer from the car, hacking at her with a machete. Police arrived to find Thayer's headless body on the ground next to her bloodied car. Her head was a foot away. She was trying to leave the single most dangerous time for a woman in an abusive relationship.

Well, it's on the DA now. We wait as justice unfolds, God willing. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing out. Goodbye, friend.