Crime Weekly - S1 Ep26: Death on Shady Avenue: Codi Joyce (Part 1)

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

In the early morning hours of September 27th,  2015, a fight broke out at a party at 4136 Shady Avenue in Munhall Pennsylvania, a working class community in Alleghany County. This fight ended with one of it’s guests, 23 year old Codi Joyce, becoming unresponsive and being rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Although it was understood that Codi had been in a fight with four other people at that party, his death was not investigated as a murder, until his autopsy report showed that he had died from asphixiation due to compression of the neck sustained during a physical altercation with multiple individuals, and the ME ruled Codi’s manner of death as a homicide. That was 2015, and yet today, in 2021, no one has been arrested for this murder, and the question we need to answer today is why. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

In the early morning hours of September 27, 2015, a fight broke out at a party at 4136 Shady Avenue in Munhall, Pennsylvania, a working-class community in Allegheny County. This fight ended with one of its guests, 23-year-old Cody Joyce, becoming unresponsive and having to be rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Although it was understood that Cody had been in a fight with four other people at that party, his death was not investigated as a murder

until his autopsy report showed that he had died from asphyxiation due to compression of the neck sustained during a physical altercation with multiple individuals. And the ME ruled Cody's manner of death as a homicide. That was 2015. And yet today, in 2021, no one has been arrested for this murder. And the question we need to answer today is why. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. Today, we are going over the case of 23-year-old Cody Joyce. Now, Derek has covered this case before. You covered it on Breaking Homicide, right?

Yep. Yep. Spent a week in Munhall. And before going down there, spent about another week and a half working on it with producers to kind of flush out the details of the case before getting there. And I'm not going to make any assumptions, but I'm fairly certain just from what I know of the case that you're probably not going to be defending law enforcement in today's episode. No, no, I'm not. We'll get into it as how, how far I've gone in not defending them. And we've kind of hit on it in other episodes. That's kind of why we're covering it now. Right. In the last episode, I mentioned Cody Joyce and I was like, you know what, let's just

cover it. It's a good case. And I know there are some people in our comments who say, you know, Derek's always defending the police. And, you know, I don't disagree with you. I was, it's almost like someone being in a field for the majority of their life. And I don't disagree with you. It's almost like someone being in a field for the majority of their life. And I was, I was a police officer. So am I biased? Yes. And I've said that numerous times. It's a special place in my heart. I do understand that there

are bad cops out there. I think I do a pretty good job of calling them out when I see bad police work. This is one of those cases. So we're covering it. I agree. I think you do too. You know, you're just not the person who's going to jump on and defend or not defend in every single case. Like you're going to look at it as unbiasedly as you can consider anyone's a part of the police force. Yeah. Right. I think, I think we can understand that. And I've always acknowledged it. Right. Even with you. It's like, hey, listen, I am. I can't say, oh, I'm unbiased. I mean, I've been doing this since I was 20 years old. And so, you know, again, I seen a lot of good police work throughout the years and I seen some bad. But yeah, I'm definitely biased. And that's why we have you. Well, I try to be unbiased. I do try to be unbiased, but you know, I think we all have our biases, right? Every single person.

Yeah, of course. Absolutely. But I do see, I do see the comments. I hear you guys, but I got to stay true to who I am and not just hop on the train of what everyone else is saying. If I, if I, the walks like a duck quacks, like a duck, it's a duck. But you know, there are some cases where I know you guys see me say, oh, I think they just made a mistake.

Agree to disagree. That's your opinion. You're entitled to it, right? Don't come for him. Don't come for me. Look at the Stephanie defending me. You know, I thought I would be kind today. I like this.

I like this. Stephanie's been kind to me twice today because for those of you who don't know, it's Memorial Day. And I guess we should say, not I guess we definitely should. We want to say thank you to all the military families out there, everyone who has sacrificed themselves for this country, those who are serving and have fortunately not been injured or killed in the line of duty. We know that the freedom we have is because of you guys. So when you're seeing this, it'll be a week later. But as we're recording it, there are fireworks going on outside. So we're appreciative that we have the freedom to do what we're doing with you guys tonight. And we wanted to say thank you to all the military families out there.

Yeah, Derek FaceTimed me earlier, like a little kid. And he was like, hey, mom, do you mind if we don't record at eight? Can we record at 830 instead? I want to watch the fireworks. Gross exaggeration. Of course, honey, whatever you need. But Stephanie was nice to me and gave me permission. I had to have my slip signed, but she gave me permission and just reminded me of it. And again, we're extremely appreciative of everyone out there, not only the people serving, but the families that are affected by having their loved one leave to serve the country

for us. So thank you again. Can't say it enough. This episode is definitely dedicated to you guys. We appreciate it. Well, let's talk about Cody. So Cody Joyce, he was a quiet, shy, and humble kid. He would never take credit for anything good that he did. So his grandmother, Jo Wisniewski, said that Cody loved playing sports when he was a kid, and he was really good at them. But if you would tell him that he was like a good soccer player, he would say, no, it wasn't just me. It was the whole team. Cody was also the first of the grandchildren to call her on her birthday and holidays. And he was overall just a really sweet and thoughtful kid. As he grew up, Cody started to come into his own and he developed a more outgoing and silly personality. He loved to make

people laugh. He loved to be silly. And he was fiercely loyal to his family and friends. Cody, who's also known by his nickname Gino, he was also an aspiring rap artist, and he recorded his own rap music under the name Gino Prestone. It's a good name, Gino Prestone. Those who knew and loved Cody would have no problem admitting that he wasn't a perfect person. He was certainly no angel, who among us is, and he had his share of issues and run-ins with the law. Cody's parents, John and Paulette, they had separated when he was a teenager, and it's hard on kids when that happens, and it was hard on Cody, especially when his father, John, moved back to his hometown in Ohio. For a time, Cody did live with his mother, Paulette, but their relationship became strained and he eventually moved out and he would sort of crash on friends' couches or stay with his uncle, Steve, who was like a second father to him. And I kind of got the impression that Uncle Steve

was kind of like a second father to a lot of the kids in the neighborhood. Like everybody kind of knew who he was. Everyone called him Uncle Steve. Steve's a great guy. Steve's a great guy. I had a lot of conversations with him, a lot of communication with him after the show aired. He's on the ball and you nailed it. Your assumption is right.

He was like a second father to Cody and to a lot of others. But him and Cody were very close. Cody even attempted to live with his father in Cincinnati during high school, but he ended up returning to Munhall in his sophomore year because he missed his friends and his family. He's got two younger siblings. Jill Welsh, she's the mother of Cody's best friend, Brandon. And during these times when Cody was unrooted, he would often stay with the Welsh's. She said that Cody's whole world fell apart when his parents got divorced. She said, quote, He was a teenager. It was a bunch of stuff altogether, but he had a good heart.

He was a good kid because if he wasn't a good person, all these people wouldn't be standing behind him. If he was a bad kid, I would not have brought him into my house. End quote. Jill Welsh also remembers coming home from work some days to find her son Brandon and his best friend Cody. They would be laying on lounge chairs in the yard, shirtless, getting some sun, showing off for the neighborhood girls who would be driving by. Jill said that Cody was a character. He was charming and good looking. The girls loved him and he loved that they loved him. But when Brandon got a girlfriend, Cody realized it was probably time to find a new place to stay. And he moved in with his friend, Jake Lard and Jake's mother, Donna. And we are going to come back to Donna later in this case,

because remember, we were talking about her statement earlier on the phone. Yep. But you nailed it. And Jill is a firecracker. She's very active on social media. As you guys who are watching this or listening to it, I know you're going to start doing your own little research. You're going to see Jill's name pop up a lot because she's very proactive on social media. She's not letting anything go away. Steve is like that as well. John is not active. Trust me, there's not a day that goes by that he's not working for Cody as well. But Steve and Jill are probably the people you're going to see most as you start to do your own deep dives as far as social media, specifically Facebook. Yeah. And so Cody, he had this this huge network of a support system sort of outside of his immediate family, you know, and I think that is the good thing about

growing up in a really tight knit, small neighborhood is everybody knows everybody. You kind of feel like family because he would he would crash on friends couches and their parents would sort of like adopt him sort of like they just they knew he was a good kid. They knew he was going through a hard time and they wanted to give him a place to to rest to stay to like ease his mind you know and um jill was great with that uh donna um jake's mother she was great with that she said that um she noticed cody was sleeping over a lot so she asked her son jake you know what's happening and he told her that what was going on with cody parents. He said Cody was pretty much homeless. And she told Jake to let Cody know that he could stay with them anytime, that she would rather have

him at her house than out there sleeping in his car or, you know, not being safe. And Cody eventually became like a second son to her. Donna said Cody dropped out of high school before he graduated, but he did get his GED. He was the perfect house guest. He never once caused trouble or misbehaved. Yeah. And I'm glad what you said earlier, because I've had these conversations with John and Paulette, and you're probably going to get into it. Paulette's no longer with us. But what I loved about Paulette and John, and you see it in a lot of cases is, you know, there's a victim in the case and then you only see the graduation photo, you know, or something that paints them in like, like a choir boy, you know, scenario and nobody is

perfect, including you and I. But it always seems like that's embellished when there's a victim in a case and they really want to present this person as someone they're not. Cody's parents were not like that at all. They're like, listen, our kid was going through some things, but he was a good kid at heart. He'd have your back. If you needed something, he was there for you. But we never made claims that he was perfect. And he was just this innocent guy who never did anything wrong and was just pointed out by these individuals and became a victim. they've never said that, which I respect. That's tough to do when it's your own child. But that's always why I wanted to work so hard for them because they were real people. And they reminded me a lot of my parents in a lot of ways, because they didn't sugarcoat things.

They're from a hard-nosed town, Pittsburgh people. They just did the workers and I respected the hell out of it. And I always loved that they were so transparent about that aspect of Cody because it made them more relatable. And it also made you feel like they just really wanted to get to the truth. They weren't trying to lie or hide. They weren't trying to make you have a false impression because that's going to make your job take longer. Right. And we're going to get into it. Yeah. And we're going to get into it. but they were very commonsensical. Their grievances with this case were very obvious to everyone. And so they were never sugarcoating it.

They said, hey, this is what we've learned. This is what we were told. You go do your investigation, see if you come back with the same stuff. But we're going to be transparent with you now so that we don't paint Cody as someone he's not. And as you're doing your investigation, you find that not to be true because then it's going to make you mistrust us even more. So I was like, hey, I appreciate the transparency. Thank you.

And I can tell you right now, as my investigation went, anything they told me, it was never embellished. They never lied about it. What I saw is what I got. That means a lot, I think. Especially as someone who's coming in cold turkey, trying to investigate something pretty quickly to have people you can rely on and know they're not going to sugarcoat the information to fit their narrative. That's a rarity, unfortunately. It also tells me that they knew their son, you know, like they knew who their son was.

A lot of times with younger kids, like now he's not a kid, he's in his 20s. But I mean, even when you're in your 20s, the kids will try to hide the bad things they're doing or the things that aren't so favorable from their parents. They want their parents to think that they're a saint. But I think Cody and his parents, even though they did have a strained relationship at points, I think they were pretty open and honest with each other and they knew who he was. And they were unapologetic about it because they loved him anyways didn't matter i couldn't agree more so when cody was 19 he was convicted for criminal mischief apparently he threw a rock at someone's vehicle and then when he was 20 cody pleaded guilty to one case of a misdemeanor simple assault

so do you know a little bit more about these incidences? And do you know why it was called simple assault as opposed to like anything else? I've never heard the term simple assault. Yeah. So simple assault is basically a minor assault. There's no serious bodily injury. So a simple assault can range from spitting on someone to smacking them, punching them, but the result of your actions doesn't cause bodily injury. Just the mere, just the fact that you did it is the assault itself. The result of those injuries matter as well, because if you smack someone, even though the intention is not to hurt them, but they lose an eye because of it, well, then it would be escalated to a felony

assault because of the injury. I remember, man, back in the day, back in the good old days, you could just get in fights, you know, and if no one got hurt and everyone walked away, all right, it was just, you know, you squashed it. Yeah, that's not the case anymore. Because I really do feel sometimes, like, especially, especially when you're a high school kid, people just need to get their asses beat sometimes. Yeah. And we did know about his criminal record. I can say that it didn't involve any of the people we're going to talk about for this case. And also the thing was he was 23 at the time of his death.

This was three years prior to that. So I was really looking for something that even if he wasn't arrested for, were there any altercations that happened in the months leading up to his death? Because those would have been important. Maybe a motive there, right? In this particular case, this involved an individual who had no association to the case that we're talking about tonight. And it's not an extensive criminal record. Not at all. No, but it does give credence to the idea that Cody was a scrapper. He wasn't someone who would use his words to get through problems.

Like, you know, he was a fighter and not necessarily someone who would always just, you know, he was just a defender. You know, if somebody, you know, did something wrong, he was, again, as we've already said, as John would say, if he were here right now, he was someone who made some bad decisions. And that's okay to say, because even though sometimes good people make bad decisions, and even when they do, it doesn't mean they should die for what they did. And this is one of those cases. He was a young guy, still trying to find himself, made some bad decisions in the past. And it's important for us to put that out there because we're not trying to paint Cody as someone he's not. And I mean, I think I mean, I can speak for myself. I got in a lot of fights in high school. It just was it was a thing. It was it just happened. I never hurt anybody like nobody ever had to go to the hospital. We'd always had to get

broken up by teachers or other students. But I just went to a high school where we fought a lot. And it doesn't it doesn't make me a bad person.. I'm not out there in my 30s right now getting into fist fights because I've grown out of that. I think we understand that sometimes younger kids fight. It's like the zeal of youth. Then when you hit 30, you're like, my back hurts too much to fight. It's true. I've never been in a fight in my life. Really? You're lying to me. Never.

Yeah. Half my teeth are fake for a reason. Well, so you've got this kid, right? He's got a pretty good life. It's not a life full of all the luxuries, but he's got a good support system. He's got a good family. He has no behavioral problems growing up, but then his parents split up. It's hard for him to come to terms with that.

He was probably a little bit upset with his mother, you know, probably felt that she chased his father away a bit, kind of forcing him to leave the state, which is now driving a wedge between Cody and his father. So his relationship with Paulette, it goes downhill. He then began to bounce around from place to place, not really having anywhere to call home. He drops out of school, gets into a little trouble, but he also, he finds a passion. He finds a passion in music. He launches himself into a potential rapping career, and he had something that he was driving towards, which can be a really big help for someone who's feeling a bit directionless. But early in his 20s, Cody did

begin repairing what had broken between himself and his mother, and his younger siblings always looked up to him. His brother Corey and his sister Kaylee, they said that Cody knew when it was time to be a joker and make people laugh and lighten things up, but he also knew when it was time to be serious and give really helpful and productive advice. And Cody's parents also said that he was planning to attend trade school, so he was really getting his life back on track. He was getting his relationships back on track. He was motivated. He was moving towards something. Yeah, it's all true. It's spot on. And it's funny, we were talking before we hit record, we went into a lot of Cody's background and what happens with the television show. I thought we did a very good job on Breaking Homicide again. I'm biased. Let's go to that bias

that I have. But talking about some of the constraints that you have with a show like Breaking Homicide is we filmed for five days or six days. And you might say, well, that's not that much time, but we filmed 12 hour days and the camera is constantly going. So we have hours upon hours of footage, things about their background, things, you know, different invested, different types of experiments we tried. And ultimately only 42 minutes make it to the, to what you finally see, which is something that was gut-wrenching for me because all the work we did, 90% of it, you don't, you don't get to see, we just have to have basically the highlights of it. Um, so I wish there was a longer version of a breaking homicide,

but I still will say a lot of what Stephanie has hit on already is in the episode, which is good because again, we don't paint Cody in the episode as some angel who never did anything wrong. And I think that was important for us as a show to make sure we were transparent with our viewers. Well, let's talk about what happened the night Cody died. It was a Saturday night and Cody's mother, Paulette, was heading to the casino with hercé, Randy. The casino is about three hours away, so she stopped at the house that Cody and his brother, Corey, lived in together. And this house was located in the southeast corner of Munhall. She said when she got there, it was around 10 30 p.m., Cody and Corey were playing Xbox with some of their friends, and she dropped off money in case

they wanted to order a pizza. And then she hugged her son goodbye for the last time. Paulette said that when she left Cody's house that evening, she had a strange feeling, and on the drive to the casino, she said she received some strange text messages from a number that she didn't know or recognize. There was two texts, and they said, the first one said, give you the num to call, so N-U-M, probably number. And the second one said, if you are out after two, I'll hit you, okay? So initially, Paulette thought these texts were coming from someone that she didn't know, someone who had just accidentally sent them to her instead of who they meant to. But now, you know, well, not now, but afterwards, when she found out Cody had died,

she said she regretted not calling the number back. So we have talked about this case a little bit off camera, but I did not mention these texts. Do you have more information about these texts? Have you heard anything about them? I remember hearing them because Paulette told me about them. We were never able to confirm. They were from a Pittsburgh area. She did try calling it back eventually. No answer, no nothing. So it could be a coincidence, but we never found any more details about it. And this was, obviously I came into the picture years later. So they had turned those numbers over to the police. They had done their own

due diligence and called the numbers back. Nothing ever came of it. And you said they did turn those numbers over and those texts over to the police. Yeah. They told them everything. I don't know if they showed them pictures of the text messages, but when they were spoken to by police initially about what could have happened, they gave them everything they had about Cody. And I guess I shouldn't say for certain they gave those text messages over because that's an assumption on my part, but I do know a blanket statement is everything they had that they thought was valuable at the time they gave to the police. So my assumption based on our conversations was that was included because they felt it could be important. But we just don't know if the police did anything with it. And that's a big part of

this case because you did go there. Oh, I can tell you that one. Yeah. They didn't. They didn't. So you went. They didn't do anything. Yeah, they didn't do anything really. But that's a different story. We'll get to that. You attempted to talk to the police and the district attorney when you were there in Munhall, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And they just wouldn't talk to you at all? Well, the DA's office didn't speak to me at all.

All they did was give me their previous statements. I did speak to some people at the police department, the Allegheny County Police Department in the show. I spoke to an active police officer that's there. I don't want to get ahead of us right now, but that who currently works there, who was working when this all took place. I, after the show was put in contact with a detective who was currently assigned to the case. So I did have some actual communication with them. I didn't like the way things went with the detective.

I thought the police officer was very transparent. Um, and although in the show you hear him speaking, we had to kind of, you know, change his voice and you never, you don't, you don't know his name, but I was able to confirm that this person was who they said they were. And that's, that's what mattered to me. So before the investigation, when I was in Munn Hall, I went to the Allegheny County Police Department. You guys didn't see that in the show.

They wouldn't even let me in the front door. There's like a pushbox where you have to be buzzed in. I said what I was there for. They said I had to come back. Isn't that funny that they're like public servants, but you can't enter and speak to them about things that you need to speak to them about? Yeah. No, I was very disappointed in it.

You know, it's not, it wasn't a me versus them. I went there with an open mind. I actually went there with a little bit of ignorance thinking like, oh, I'm a former cop. They'll be willing to talk to me. I'm, I'm, I'm on their team. Right. It was not the case.

And it was very, it was crazy because I heard the stories from John and Paulette. And, you know, there's sometimes an exaggeration as far as how bad the police are in my, in my experience, what they told me, how they were being treated and how they were being, the police were being dismissive. I felt it. Yeah. I felt it. Yeah. And that was a first for me. I gotta be honest with you. It was a first for me, but I felt it. And I went back to them and said, I'm sorry, guys. I thought maybe you were just kind of embellishing a little bit. You weren't kidding. And so, yeah, the police in their defense probably weren't speaking to me because of the powers that be.

But nevertheless, they wouldn't speak with me. And the police officer you did speak to on the show, he wanted to remain anonymous, obviously, for obvious reasons. He did mention he was scared, that everybody was scared about losing their jobs. And we're going to talk about some of the things that he said and other people who have come forward and spoken to you and who have spoken to the press and have also wanted to remain anonymous, which is kind of an indication to me of how this town really did close ranks, where if you spoke out, you would be an outsider. You'd be labeled an outsider. You'd be exiled essentially. Yeah. And Munn Hall is a very tight knit community.

And I said to you off camera, when we were talking about this before, I was on my, uh, a game as far as being aware of my surroundings, even when we were at the hotel, um, because it felt like certain vehicles were always in the same area as us. They were slowing down. We, everyone knew we were there. You know, I was dealing with a situation where we were investigating for individuals. Their families were connected as well. I knew the DA wasn't a fan of mine. I had read and heard things about him and his building and what they kind of did things inside of it. So I was very conscientious of being there and making sure that I was aware of who was around me and identifying people I didn't recognize because I was genuinely nervous. I was genuinely

nervous for my safety and for the crew safety as well. I could tell, by the way. So I've watched several episodes of Breaking Homicide. And in this one, you definitely seemed a little bit more like on edge, you know? Facts. You read it right. Yeah. And, you know, it was interesting to me that every, it seemed like, at least on camera, every single person you called either hung up on you or didn't want to speak to you as if they were warned, right? As if they were warned that you were there or that you were coming. So yeah, I would be nervous because they knew you were there clearly. And there were things that didn't make the show where we were receiving

calls from families and stuff. What are you doing here? Why'd you come by my house? You know what I mean? They knew I actually had one of my investigators come out to Pittsburgh with me. You see, you hear about him in the show Frank. And that's, that's his, he's a real deal investigator. It wasn't for TV purposes. I still work with him. He was, he was being, it was, there was one point where he was watching a house and had to pull off of it. Cause then he was being followed by a car. They spotted him and he pulled off and he's like, Derek, I'm being tailed. I'm like, what? He's like, I'm being tailed now, you know, and we believe it was one of the family members.

I never was able to prove any of it, but it was a, it was an unnerving feeling the entire time that we were there. Well, I think that once the listeners and the viewers, if you're watching this on YouTube, once you hear more of the story, you're going to understand a little bit more of why these kinds of what I think are scare tactics were being used. So Paulette goes to Cody and Corey's house. Now, Cody and Corey were living together at this time. So she drops off money. She says goodbye. She heads to the casino.

And after she left, one of the friends who was playing Xbox with Cody and Corey, he said he was going to go home. His name is Jared Ruffing. And according to him, as he was getting ready to leave, Cody asked if Jared could drop him off at a house party on Shady Avenue, which was on the way to Jared's house. Cody's brother, Corey, he also had plans that evening in Mifflin, I believe, West Mifflin. And so he'd invited Cody to go along and Cody said, yeah, I'm going to go here first and then I'll meet up with you later tonight. Jared Ruffing said that Cody was acting completely normally that evening. He was in good spirits.

They stopped along the way to buy some beer before Jared dropped Cody off at 4136 Shady Avenue. Shady Avenue. Isn't that the perfect name for this street, right? Yeah. And the street, I've been there. I've been to the house. It fits the name. It's a tough area. Again, it's a tough area. It's fitting for what we're talking about. We should make a YouTube docuseries about this case. Go back there and we can name it Shady Avenue. I'll tell you what, there's there and we can name it Shady Avenue. I'll tell you what, there's a lot we could look into, that's for sure. And I'm not even talking about Cody's case. That's just the tip of the iceberg. So I have family in Pennsylvania. It's kind of a similar area and I know exactly what you mean

by that. It's a tough neighborhood. um so this was the home of a man named daniel lenz and according to a wrongful death lawsuit that would be filed later by the joyce family um the the lawsuit stated that daniel's daughter jessica lenz she was the host of frequent parties at this home, and she threw these parties allegedly with the permission of her father. And allegedly, this house was known as a place where younger individuals would often go to drink. But I would also like to add that the Lentz's response to this lawsuit claimed they had no knowledge of this party, and Daniel Lentz himself was not present at the time of this specific party. So when you were there in the town, did you hear some of the same things when you talk to people? Like this is a house that we pretty much all know about. This is where like the high schoolers and the teenagers go and hang out to drink. Yep. It's kind of like my upbringing in high school and stuff. There's

always that one house where the parents are not home a lot. And that's where the parties are. And this isn't anything against Mr. Lentz or whatever. I was never able to confirm or discredit what he said as far as his knowledge of that party that night. This is just my personal opinion. I think it would be hard for him not to know what's going on. Maybe his daughter was underselling how many people were there. But we were able to confirm he was not at the house that night when this all transpired. Did you speak to him or Jessica? I responded to the home to try to speak to him or whoever was living there at the time. You can see it in the episode.

No answer. And I did make some phone calls to them. But again, because of the civil, you know, civil case and obviously the ongoing criminal case, nobody really wanted to speak with me other than the Joyce family or anybody who felt like Cody, you know, was a victim in this case. So the timeline is a little weird to me. So I have to have you clear that up because what I read is that Cody arrived at the home home around 1 a.m but some sources put him arriving at 4 a.m which would put him getting into that fight shortly after but most of the places i read said 1 a.m is that correct 1 a.m 1 a.m and yeah that's that's what i was thinking because it gives him time it was late yeah it was late it was very late when he got there but not right before he got into a fight, which happened around 4.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. My recollection is that the fight happened between 4 and 5 a.m. It was early in the morning. And so he was there for a few hours before that. And there was some, you know, he was drinking. There was a lot there. And no, it was closer to 12, 31 a.m. And the issue as to whether or not he was supposed to be at the party that night, that's

still in question, too, because there's multiple different accounts from multiple different people. So, for example, Jared Ruffing, he remembered that one of Cody's friends had invited Cody to the party. And even though Daniel Lentz referred to Cody as a defiant trespasser who had entered his house without permission and had failed to leave when he was asked. Another individual who was present at that party that evening said Cody had been invited. This witness, who did prefer to remain anonymous, said that everyone was cool

with each other. They'd all known each other for years. Hey, everybody. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll notice that Derek and I are both wearing different clothes. That is because when we recorded this podcast the other night, we had technical difficulties of some kind. And the whole last half of the podcast did not record. So because we love you guys so much, even though we are leaving for crime con literally within 24 hours we decided to re-record this all i tried to convince derrick that we should just skip a week but he he bullied me into into doing this this morning so he's waking up early though look at him look at his little bright eyed bushy tail i'm. I'm a night guy, so this is definitely not normal for me, but we're getting it done in

between dropping off kids at school and doing everything because we want to get it out to you guys. So we apologize if it's a little bit more concise than the first version, but we want to at least get the content out there so when we do part two, you guys are all caught up. So back to what we were talking about. Did you ever confirm that Cody had or had not been invited to the party when you were out in PA for Breaking Homicide? So my takeaway from talking to people was there was never an official invite from maybe

Jessica Lentz. But overall, there were people at the party that knew Cody and had told him about the party. So just like a lot of us when we were in high school or college, you get invited from a friend. It's maybe not the direct source of the party, but it's people who have been legitimately invited who then say to you, hey, I'm heading over to this party. Why don't you meet me there? And that's the general takeaway that I got from it. He didn't just show up off the street without knowing a single person there. And once again, he knew everybody there pretty much, right? Even though they were younger than

him. Correct. He knew everyone there and a lot of them knew who he was as well. And it's actually unclear about why the fight started. Once again, there's different stories depending on who you ask and who you talk to. But let me know if I have this right, Derek. So at around 4 a.m., police were dispatched to this party house on Shady Avenue, but it doesn't appear that a 911 call came from inside the house the night that Cody died. In fact, it was reported that no one at the party actually called the police. And it was also reported that other party goers were asked to not call the police. Who do you think they were asked to not call the police by?

That's a good question. I never got an answer to that. But to your first part, you're absolutely right. No one from within the party called the police. It was neighbors nearby who heard commotion, who heard that a fight was taking place. So if it wasn't for them, I don't know if anyone ever would have called the police for Cody, even though he was unresponsive. But it's a very good question as far as who were the people at the party saying don't call. If I had to guess, it would probably be Jessica or someone who had something to lose. You know, it's their house, which I don't even completely. I'm not like knocking her for that because I think that would be a normal teenage reaction.

But we know the situation. We know what happened to Cody. It's sad to think that if they had called immediately, maybe he comes out of this. Maybe he's still here today. I don't know, but you're 100% right. It was the neighbors that actually called the police for a fight at Shady Avenue. So the police report, which it was hard to read because there was so many misspelled words and typos. And I know you saw them too, because I thought it was just me at first. And I was like, have I like gone into some sort of seizure? Like, are these words spelled correctly? And I'm seeing them incorrectly. So I asked you and you were like, yeah, it was a mess, but that was real bad.

There is a spell correct inside the IMC software that most police officers use. I guess he just forgot to hit that button. I don't think he used it at all. I think you're correct. I think he wrote this police report on the note app in his iPhone. I think you're correct. It was a tough read. Well, the report, it says that when the officers exited their cars, so they get called to the party, they show up, they're like, what's going on? They get out of their cars and they see a group of people standing on the front lawn. And then the front door to the house was open at this point. But as the police approached, they heard someone yell oh fuck the cops i think it's more like oh fuck the cops not like oh because that's how i read it the first time like oh fuck the cops that's how i read it the first time but i think it was more like oh no the police are here

they weren't expecting it because nobody from their party calls so they yelled this and then they run inside and the front door slammed shut. The police heard voices in the backyard. And so obviously they're going to go around the house, check out these voices. And when they do, they saw three individuals, two females and one male exiting the back door of the house and then sort of like going behind other houses in the direction towards the road. So they were they were fleeing. They were trying to get the hell out of Dodge. The police pursued these three people. They put the male in handcuffs because he was heavily intoxicated. When the guy

was in the police car, his pockets were searched and a bottle of prescription medication with the name Daniel Lentz on it was found. The reason I tell you this story is not because it's necessarily super important to Cody's story, but we did talk recently about how Cody was no angel. He wasn't a perfect kid. He got into trouble. And I want to illustrate to you that it wasn't as if he was the only kid there or the only person there who wasn't a perfect angel. Obviously, most of the kids at this party were, you know, in their rebellious phases and they were doing things. They were drinking underage. This kid stole Daniel Lentz's prescription. So, you know, they all kind of were doing things they shouldn't, right? Kids being kids for most people out there, just making bad decisions. And I think it is

important to point out because it wasn't like, like you said, everyone at the party was this upstanding, perfect kid, and Cody just came in and he was a bad influence. That's good to point out. It's sort of how the police made it seem afterwards though, right? We can definitely get into it. I think they had a preconceived notion of Cody, and I think that's a bigger issue here that played into this whole investigation as far as their justifications for doing or not doing certain things. But I'm glad that you brought it up now because I do agree with you as far as they have a perception of Cody going into this and that carried through the entire investigation. And it wasn't a favorable one. No, it wasn't. The police also observed dried blood on one of the girls, but didn't see any cuts or injuries.

I think the dried blood was on her arm, and the police said, we don't see anywhere that this could have come from where it would be her own blood. Once these three people were handled, the police approached the front door. They knocked and announced themselves. They were like, let us in. It's the police. And they said as they knocked, the door kind of just swung open. And when it did, they could see Cody Joyce laying face down in the living room, just a few feet away from the door, shirtless and motionless.

As the police were taking in the scene, a female partygoer kind of came around the corner from the kitchen. She saw them and then she like ran back into the kitchen. And I believe that this was Jessica Lentz. All right. So the police officers rolled Cody onto his back and they noted that his face was blue and he was not breathing. So they began to perform CPR when they could not locate a pulse. While Cody was being given CPR, they called the medics and an AED device was also retrieved from a police car and used on Cody with no results. So the AED device, it's like the paddles that you see on TV are like clear and they try to like restart. Defibrillator, try to restart. Exactly. Yeah. That's the word,

defibrillator. Defibrillator. Defibrillator. Yeah. Close enough. We'll take it. And for anyone, I know when I was doing my investigation, there were some very minor grumblings about the police entering the apartment without permission. But at this point, they see. Yeah, it was more, it was nothing. It was more, like I said, an undertone. But just to reiterate, I went to the house when I was out there in Pittsburgh. The house is extremely small. And just by that door swinging open, the living room itself was only maybe 10 by 12. And that's

the room without any furniture in it. There was a big sectional in the living room as well. So just by them merely peeking in the apartment with the house without walking in, they would have been able to see Cody. And at that point, legally, they have the right to enter to render assistance, medical attention. Would they have had the right to have entered opening the door if they hadn't knocked and it hadn't swung open, if it was unlocked? So if the door was unlocked, so there's a screen door on the front of this house. It's like a metal screen door. I think a defense attorney could make a good argument for it, right? It's all subjective. It's interpretation. My interpretation as a cop, and I'm definitely more pro-cop, would be as long as they don't cross the threshold of said door, they're fine. So opening the screen would be okay. If the interior door was already open and they could clearly view inside and see someone who needs medical attention, I think they'd be in the clear. But I also think a defense attorney could probably make a good argument as to why they wouldn't be.

Yeah. But that would be, I tell you right now, as a cop, I'm going in and I'll take my licks later. Either way, because at that point, the only concern is the person who needs assistance. If they had walked in and found a bag of cocaine, would that have been thrown out based on a technicality? Possible. But at that point, all they really cared about was the person on the ground who was unresponsive. And I feel like they arrested three underage kids for drinking already, or at least detained them. So that's probable cause to enter the house, that there might be more of that happening,

which is illegal. So you know that a law is being broken and- Yep, yep. People fleeing the scene. Yeah. Totality of circumstances, I agree with you 100 100 but i'm sure we could get a lawyer on here who would completely uh debate us on that one well that's their job yeah ain't that the truth so while the police were waiting for the medics drive the mts uh they cleared the home and they found jessica lentz in the kitchen remember she's

the homeowner's daughter so that's her house and two individuals in the kitchen. Remember, she's the homeowner's daughter, so that's her house. And two individuals in the basement, Derek Marcon and a girl named Kelsey. All three of these people, Derek, Kelsey, and Jessica, were intoxicated, but none of them needed medical attention. Now, here's the thing that had asked dispatch to contact the police chief Patrick Campbell and the Allegheny County Police Homicide Division. The reason I found this odd is because we know that this investigation wasn't really handled as a potential homicide. Like besides the officer on scene having dispatch contact the Hom division. This is the only action to me that looks like they have ever looked at this or investigated it as a homicide. Do you agree? Yeah, that seems accurate. So initially this case was treated as an overdose, right? They wanted to

get this person out of there. They wanted to get into the hospital. You're going to go into some of the other reasons why it was treated as an overdose. But to the officer's credit, we're knocking him for the report. When you walk into this, you can clearly see that there are people fleeing the area. There is a decent amount of blood smeared on the wall and on the floor surrounding the immediate area of Cody. So that to me would dispute the idea, the notion that it was an overdose. So he saw what he saw. He realized people were fleeing and he decided to cover his own ass and call the homicide unit. It sounds like I was never, again, this is an open investigation, so I was never able to confirm this, but it sounds like maybe homicide pushed back and said, no, this looks like an overdose.

We'll send them to the hospital and we'll deal with it later. Because it wasn't treated as a homicide initially because they didn't secure the scene. They didn't preserve any evidence. They just got Cody out of there as fast as they could. I wonder if the homicide division got there before Cody was transferred to the hospital. I doubt it. I can tell you that. No, it takes a while. So there's a detective on call. He's probably at home sleeping and they call him in. He has to go to usually go to the station first, grab his equipment and then come out. There's also a real possibility that the police officer called the person in charge of the homicide division, a lieutenant or a captain, explain the specifics of the case, explain what was going on. And a lot of times they'll make

the call over the phone, whether or not to have a detective respond. That happens all the time. It's perfectly normal. That also could be the case here. But to clarify, I am uncertain of whether a homicide detective responded or not. I don't believe so. I believe it was just the initial responding officers and EMTs. But I was aware that homicide was contacted about it initially. Well, the police continued chest compressions until the paramedics arrived. I'm going to refer now to the EMS report. So in the first paragraph of the report, it says, quote, obvious signs of an altercation present, including blood on various parts of the wall, debris on the floor and furniture pushed out of the way, end quote. The report also states that Munhall PD was dispatched to this house because of a call

they received complaining of a loud argument taking place in the home. And when the medics arrived, they found Cody unresponsive. The report says that Cody had raccoon eyes and battle signs to his head, as well as abrasions and contusions to his head, but the report also claims that the neck findings were unremarkable. Now, we know that later in the autopsy, it comes out that there are some neck findings. So why do you think that the EMTs found his neck to be unremarkable? Do you think that he just didn't have any bruising yet? Yeah, I think they probably got it right. Just like if you were to choke me right now and I were to go unconscious, I may have some

slight, maybe some redness to my neck, but there may not be any obvious signs of injury. I think we've learned over time that most of, in most situations where there's a choking or asphyxiation, it's during the autopsy when they find the damage that would indicate there was compression, you know, to the, the underlining. Yeah. The trachea, or I always say, I think it's subdermal, you know, you know, those layers of the skin where they can see in more detail what's going on. So from a visual perspective, I could see how they're they're they're accurate in their their observations. Well, according to the medics, they saw needle marks and they would say this is a drug user or at least a previous drug user, because I do believe in the report it said that there was no fresh or new needle marks. These were kind of old and like already healed up, scarred needle marks.

But even so, they gave Cody Narcan, which is an overdose reversal drug. And the reason they stated that they gave it to him was because of the presence of these needle marks. But you did tell me on the phone the other day that you think there was also people at the house that may have been telling the paramedics, listen, like he was messed up on drugs, like he was on drugs when he was here. So he's overdosing. Yeah, I think it was more along the lines of like, man, before you got here, he was acting crazy. He's off the walls. He was, he was on something. And then that in conjunction with what they observed or what they thought to be track marks, they decided to make the decision to administer Narcan, which again, we've spoken about before.

There's really no negative to using it. The only negative is not using it as soon as possible because it can save, it can save their life if they, if they are overdosing. So I don't have an issue with them doing that. That's their job to try what they can on scene to bring this person back. But clearly those were not track marks. They were not track marks. I never found any indication that Cody ever used heroin. I'm not going to say he was a choir boy and didn't try dabble in anything. I don't know what they saw were track marks, but from my investigation, talking to friends and family, and again, they're biased, he was not known to use heroin. So in the police report, it says that the unresponsive male was identified as Cody Joyce

and he was transferred to the hospital. But at the hospital, they did not check Cody Joyce in as Cody Joyce. He was listed as Gavin Doe, even though the police knew his name. Everyone at the party knew his name. The paramedics knew his name. And we know that all of these people knew his name because it was on all the reports. And it says in the police report, he was identified as Cody Joyce. So when Cody's father later tried to get the hospital report, you know, after he's like, something happened here, something that doesn't make sense. I want to see what happened to him

at the hospital with the doctor said, they told him, no, we never treated your son that night. We have no record that we treated your son. So it took him months to actually figure out what happened and for them to realize their mistake. And then he finally got the records, I think, in that following December. So that's kind of strange that they would check him in under a different name. Gavin, where did Gavin even come from? Yeah, this was a big, when I came into town, this was something that we talked about a lot. And it's definitely important. And as far as how this happened, I was never able to follow the trail to say whether or not it was a mistake, whether it was something that was done intentionally for other reasons. But to your point, because of this, whether it was intentional or accidental, it did cause a lot of problems for John in getting the record for Cody because it was not under his son's name. It was under this Gavin Doe.

All right. Well, let's talk about the four individuals who are allegedly involved in what happened to Cody Joyce. And I'm correct in saying that all four of these young men were still in high school, right? Or at least under the age of 21, but I thought they were still in. Yep. Still in high school. Okay. So we have Devin Hinkle, Ryan Sabo, Connor Stevens, and Derek Marcon. Apparently, Cody knew all of them. They played baseball and soccer growing up together. Devin's father, Brian Hinkle, had been Cody's baseball coach.

And Daniel Lentz, the owner of the house that Cody died in, Jessica's father, had gone to school with Cody's mother, Paulette, and her brother, Uncle Steve. They all went to each other's birthday parties. The kids were friends. The adults, the parents, they were all friends. You know, barbecues, block parties, poker nights, things like that. They all hung out. And, you know, according to Steve, this tragedy has fractured friendships that have spanned two decades,

which somehow makes this whole thing even more sad. And I know in Breaking Homicide, when you were talking to Paulette, she said, we've been friends with these people for years and now they don't even look at us. They won't talk to us. Yeah, there was a clear division in that town and it's still there today. And it's interesting because you can really feel it. You're either on one side or the other. There's no in between.

And Paulette wasn't wrong. This is a tight-knit community. Again, it's a small community. So everyone knows everyone's business. And when this happened, everyone knew about it and they were kind of forced to choose a side. And like she said, it's like Steve said, um, that division is still very apparent today based on who I spoke with.

Um, they had very differing opinions on what happened that night and who was responsible and, you know, whether someone should, you know, be in jail for this. So it's, it's a really interesting story for that reason, because in a bigger city, it might have happened and gone away. Not in Munhall. It's a big reason why the community is so fractured, even in 2021. So technically, there's three versions of this story. There's one version where it says Cody came in and he was attacking these kids, and then they fought back in self-defense. There's another story about a hot pocket. We're going to get into that. And then there's another story about a girl and there's allegations that Cody had hit

this girl and then these four boys were defending her honor. So let's kind of go into that. One of the people at the party, his name was Connor Lanigan. He said that Cody had been on the front porch for the majority of the party. But at around 4.30 a.m., he went into the kitchen and then got into a fight with Connor Stevens, apparently over a Hot Pocket, which I don't understand the whole Hot Pocket thing. It's very confusing to me because it never is cleared up. They never say what the fight about the Hot Pocket thing. It's very confusing to me because it never is cleared up. They never say what the fight about the Hot Pocket was. Are you mad because he's eating the Hot Pocket? Did you

offer him a Hot Pocket? And he said no, and you were offended. Were you fighting over the Hot Pocket? We don't know what it was, which is why I think the Hot Pocket story is not real because there's no details about the Hot Pocket story ever. And I mean, you went there and you talked to these people. Did you ever get any more details about this elusive Hot Pocket fight? Well, it's as you said earlier, depending on who you talk to, there's two or three different scenarios as to why the fight started, right? I don't necessarily, I never found anything conclusive that would completely rule out the Hot Pocket story. But regardless of what

it was, my takeaway from the situation was that Cody showed up, he had this bravado about him, this confidence about him, and these other boys, these four other boys specifically, didn't want him there. And just like parties I've been to, I'm sure parties you've been to, someone shows up that the majority of the people there don't want there, they're looking for a reason to kick them out. They're looking for a reason to tell them, hey, you got to go. And so if I found tangible evidence tomorrow that suggested there was a fight started with Cody over a hot pocket, it wouldn't surprise me because they were just looking for something. And maybe up to that point, Cody hadn't really gave him anything.

So it wouldn't knock me off my feet to hear that there was some truth to this. But as you said earlier, three stories. This is definitely one of them. And it's not something that you had to dig deep for. This is a story that this reasoning made like newspapers as it being about a hot pocket. So there is some- This is the official narrative, pretty much. There's some

traction to it absolutely so i i almost kind of envision it because from uh different witness interviews and different articles i read there was some suggestion that cody was the one who would bring the alcohol to these parties and i mean that makes sense right because he's the only one over the age of 21 and they're all under the age of 18 and it reminds me of that movie super bad where michael cera is going the whole movie just trying to get the alcohol so he can bring it to the party because he really likes this girl and he knows that if he comes to the party with alcohol you know she'll like i guess like him better i don't i don't know it made more sense when i was younger when I watched the movie. He was trying to get laid. Yeah, he was trying to get laid. Shout out McLovin.

Oh, McLovin. By the way, after this, I'm getting a McMuffin. Honestly, that just made me instantly hungry, and I'm usually not up at this time. Coming for you, McDonald's. I need a coffee so bad. I didn't even have time to make coffee this morning i just got up and like got eaten on the bus and ran down but um so i figure you know maybe he's the one bringing the alcohol but he's also he's an older guy right these are high school girls

and i mean i'm not gonna lie about it like i've been to parties in high school and a college kid or an older kid would show up and all the girls would sort of flock to him. Now add on to the fact that this college kid is the one bringing the alcohol. And as soon as he walks in, everybody's excited to see him. And these four kids, Devin, Ryan, Connor, and Derek, they may have not had a problem with Cody. They may not have been like, oh, we hate this kid. But they may have been sick of him showing up with the alcohol and then hanging out and like taking all the spotlight. Because he was handsome. He was charismatic. You know, he's probably coming and dropping his bars, his rap music, like trying it out for all the girls.

And they were like, oh, you're the next Eminem. You know, and these kids are like what the hell man like every time this guy comes up in here we don't get any love so we're sick of it so it may have built you know as the party went on and then yeah the hot pocket was the the the volcano explosion the hot pocket was the straw that broke the camel's back and we've all been there i mean don't lie yep Yep. Somebody steps on your shoes and all of a sudden there's a brawl. But it's not about the shoe step. It's because something happened earlier and you've been holding it in and repressing it. And then all of a sudden it just comes out.

So some witnesses said that Cody had Connor in a headlock. Some witnesses said that Connor had Cody in a headlock. We don't know. Either way, when the fight broke out between Cody and Connor Stevens, obviously Connor's friends, Devin Hinkle and Ryan Sabo, they jumped in to try to break it up. Now, as far as Derek Marcon goes, we don't have any actual, like, any huge compelling evidence that he was involved. I do want to say that I think he probably did jump into the fray initially because, you know, your friends are going at it and you're going to say that i think he probably did jump into the fray initially because you know your friends are going at it and you're gonna but i think he probably kind of maybe

like disengaged himself early on he was probably like oh this shit's too rich for my blood and he sort of like faded into the background and just hope nobody noticed because we don't have a lot of eyewitnesses that say um they saw him being a part of this right Right. He was in the pile, so to speak. He was in the group, but it doesn't sound like he was one of the primary offenders of what had taken place that night. And we've all seen this happen too. You know, fights

happen and then, you know, you will have your friends jump in, but what we need to understand here is Cody didn't really have like super good friends here. These were acquaintances, people he knew. But all of these kids together at this party, they went to high school together. They were friends.

They were tight. And when push came to shove, it was four against one. No, that's right. That's absolutely accurate. They knew of each other, but they were definitely closer, the four. And to what you said earlier, as far as there's been a little bit of a dispute you know was cody did cody put connor in a headlock that did the devon put cody in a headlock my investigation revealed that the most likely scenario is that while connor and cody were fighting devon derrick and and ryan came into the room to break it up. To break it up or to initially.

But what I've found is that Devin put Cody in a headlock, most likely from behind and pulled him away. Now, maybe initially it was to kind of break it up. But as I've seen in other fights, if your buddy is in a fight, if you go into the room to break it up, and I'm doing air quotes here for the audio people, you're not going to grab your buddy. Because if you grab your buddy, you're now restraining him, not allowing him to defend himself. And usually that's when the other guy gets another shot or two in. So if you're going to grab anyone and restrain them, you're going to grab the person you don't like as much. Because that way your buddy gets one or two extra shots before the fight ends. So that's what I think happened here.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to lie. I don't like what happened to Cody at all. But I think initially, the first couple of minutes when Devin pulled Cody off of Conor, he was trying to like chill everything out, right? Because you have witnesses like Conor Lanigan. He said that Devin did have Cody in a headlock for a second because he said connor was off of cody within two minutes and then devin pulls cody off and he's like calm down man like we're not gonna fight but then cody obviously he's trying to break out of this headlock

because who the hell wouldn't like don't pull me in a headlock man you know yeah he's still trying to fight of course he is because don't put me in a headlock that's ridiculous and and then um as he was trying to break free within just i feel like just 30 seconds of devin having him in this headlock and trying to calm him down devin snapped you know it happened very quickly and he was like fuck this i'm not fucking with you and he started hitting him in the head repeatedly i think connor said it was over 10 times, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It just started hitting him in the head. So clearly like Devin was having some, I don't know, like anger issues that night because he went from zero to a hundred in a very, very short time. Yeah. And again, he could have been looking for a reason.

We can't get in the head of Devin, but you're accurate in that as well. There was a clear point where Devin was swearing at Cody as he was assaulting him. And it went from, let me, if he, if there was ever a point where he was trying to break it up, this, that clearly changed to this. Very fast. Within seconds. And you know, Cody is obviously trying to protect himself from these punches while he's in a headlock and he's also trying to fight back, which had him hitting anyone basically who was within arm's reach. So people at the party, they're trying to get Devin off of Cody, but they said nothing was working. So he was like hanging on, you know,

like a pit bull. He had his jaws locked and he wasn't going to let go. Now, Conor Lanigan said that he saw at this point some streaks of blood on the wall and he got freaked out and left the house. He was outside for a while and then Devin Hinkle, who's the kid who just had Cody in a headlock, he asked for a ride home. In the car, Devin told Connor that he had left the party because he didn't want to get in trouble for underage drinking he did not tell connor that cody had just passed out unconscious on the floor he said i don't want to get in trouble for underage drinking but uh devon also said that he was planning to get his brothers and then go and find cody the next day and beat him up with his brothers yeah and he left out the small part that when he left cody wasn't moving

yeah that's that's literally all that Connor said. That's all he said in the car. I'm going to go beat his ass tomorrow. And then it was silence until they got to Devin's house. And then that was it. He does not say, I made this kid pass out and he wasn't moving when I left. Yeah. There's a small possibility. Again, I was never able to dispute this. Maybe Devin left so quickly he didn't notice because he was intoxicated and he was trying to get out of there that Cody was completely out. And because maybe that's why he made that comment, we're going to finish this tomorrow. Maybe that was genuine. I never spoke to Devin, so I wasn't able to confirm that, but that's possible. I don't think so though.

Yeah. Based on what else we know, based on what we're going to talk about towards the end of this part. Exactly. A certain communication. Yes. And you know, this is a small town, right? So this happens. And within, I feel like hours, because I think one of the kids, I think it was Connor who said like he had run over to Steve, Uncle Steve's house and like banged on the door and tried to get his attention. Like everyone knows everyone. Everyone knew that Cody's uncle was Steve. Like they all knew each other. And the rumors started to spread because, of course, all four of these boys who were involved in this fight, besides Derek, Derek was there when the police got there, poor kid. But all the other three, they fled. They ran out. They didn't wait for the police to show up. So, of course, they're going to start sort of like telling their version of the story to their family.

And then their family is going to tell their friends and their other family members their version of the story. So now you're going to have like five different versions of the story swirling out there. And with so many people at the party between 25 and 30, there was going to be a bunch of different versions of that evening's events. Cody's autopsy came back showing that he had no drugs in his system that evening. And like you said, you found no sign of any evidence he'd ever done drugs. His parents said he did drink alcohol, of course, but he was never known to do drugs, though. Not only that, but as we had talked about in the intro, the medical examiner ruled Cody's death a homicide as a result of asphyxiation due to compression of the neck that had been this is a homicide and there's multiple people involved. So there's a way for the medical examiner to tell that. I wonder how. Contusions of different types of the body, you know, maybe it appeared, yeah, that would appear

to be done simultaneously and not physically possible for one person to do that all at the same time. That's insane. He had to be real messed up then, right? Yeah. I mean, I think it's so important that this was in there because we've done a lot of cases so far where it's kind of an uncertainty and it's open to, you know, it's open to interpretation as far as, you know, well, there is some, you know, there's this unexplained bruising over here, but they also had drugs in their system. So could be this, it could be that. No, this is pretty clear cut. And this is the initial autopsy. There's no secondary autopsy done by an outside party. This is the main guy right in Allegheny that that's conducting this or girl. I don't know if it was a guy or girl that conducted this autopsy and came to this conclusion based on what they knew about the case itself. And obviously, Cody, his body. I believe it was a man because I remember reading that he has stood by this ruling. He's never wavered from it. He's never been like, oh, well, let me have a second look. He's like, no, it was very obvious to me.

Like, I'm not going to revise this. Yep. Quick side note. I, it didn't make the episode, but I responded to the ME's office, walked right in. They were super nice. Never spoke to the doctor, but they did call me about an hour later and they said, Derek, we just want to let you know, we gave an initial statement, which is what you're reading right now, essentially, as far as what happened. We stand behind that 100%. And I was like, okay, thank you. So they're saying, hey, listen, we're not coming off for our conclusions. We know what we did was right. This is what happened. And I give them credit for that because I'm sure there was, oh, or I assume there was some

pressure to possibly edit those statements. I was surprised. This is what happened. And I give them credit for that because I'm sure there was, or I assume there was some pressure to possibly edit those statements. I was surprised they even called me back, to be honest with you. It was a media representative for the ME's office, but most of the time I don't even get that. So I was appreciative. Well, Cody had multi-system trauma to his head, spine, abdomen, extremities. He'd been in cardiac arrest for 30 minutes before even arriving at the hospital. And the hospital records said he had significant head trauma.

When this came out, all of this, homicide, multiple individuals, head trauma, all these terrible things, no arrests were made. None. Zero. Yeah. And John expected it. John told me when he first heard about these results, he was thinking, oh, I hope they're going to go grab them quick before they all have a chance to flee. Crickets. Nothing. And obviously, that's what you would think because somebody died as a result of being beat. You know who did it. So you'd think at least they would be taken into custody, separated, questioned, et cetera. Emmy ruled it a homicide. Yeah. So obviously when there's no arrests, Cody's loved ones, they started asking why. In some

of the police interviews, one or two of the party goers claimed that the reason the fight had happened was because Cody had punched a girl at the party named Angel Hinkle. And apparently, as far as we can tell, Angel is not related to Devin Hinkle, even though they have the same last name. And it's not a common last name. So that's kind of crazy. And I don't really believe the interviews, the police interviews, some of them, the ones that said he had Angel.

Because one of the girls who said he had Angel, and she said in her police interview that he punched her a bunch of times. I believe it was the next day on social media. She was also posting like, oh, this is so sad. Cody, Gino, we're going to miss you so much. You're a great person. So it's like, why would you tell the police that you saw him like punching a girl in the face multiple times,

but then the next day be talking about what a good person he was on social media. So it definitely makes me feel that this was a narrative. This was a story that they all sort of agreed on before everybody split and ran. And some of the people who were interviewed said, no, we didn't see him at Angel. And those are the ones that were like, listen, we're not going to lie, but we're not going to we're not going to lie and say we saw him hit her. But we're also not going to clear him. Go on a limb for quick. Exactly. And then some of the people were like, yeah, let's just stick with the story because that's what I was told to do.

And my peer group rules me at this point. I also think that it's some part of it. It's like you want to be involved in the story somehow. You want to be more involved than you may have actually been. Like, oh, look at me. When you're younger, yeah, absolutely. Yep, yep.

I want to ingrain myself in the conversation. I don't want to just be the witness. I want to be a participant because you know, because that's cool. Yeah, they watch too much Damn Law and Order, man. That's not cool. It's not cool, guys. Guys, it's not cool. The less you're questioned by police, the better.

And Cody's uncle, Steve, he was actually approached while out shopping by one of the suspect's fathers. It doesn't say who. And this man told Steve that Cody had been out of control at the party and had punched Angel multiple times. This man said that the boys who killed Cody had been heroes and the Joyce family just needed to let it go. Can you imagine someone walking up to you and telling you that your nephew was murdered and the people who did it were heroes? Like, I don't care what you think, if you're the father of this aspect, but that's in poor taste, no matter which way you cut it. Yeah. And this is just scratching the surface. Some of the stories that I heard while I was out

there as far as the intimidation that was taking place, I give the guy credit. At least he approached him and told him this to his face how he felt. But there were points where there were justice for Gino signs, people were going around ripping them off of houses, ripping them off of private property, cars driving by certain houses that were in support of Gino and his family, throwing stuff at their front lawn, at them, swearing at them. This was just the tip of the iceberg. There was a lot of this taking place at this specific time. And it still is. There's some residual effects of it now. A lot of social media sort of wars going on.

Like I saw one petition and I think it was Steve, Uncle Steve, who had started the petition and under it, somebody who's clearly using like a fake name and a fake profile picture. They were like, you guys are pathetic. Like this is disgusting and desperate. And it's just so sad because like you said, people chose sides and then they just started kind of bullying other people into seeing their, hey, it's kind of like the political climate in our country right now. Sounds familiar. Oh my gosh.

Our guys will see it though. Anyone who's listening, watching, if you guys go on social media, Facebook, it's not hard to find. This wasn't a deep dive. It's very, as Stephanie said, it's very active on social. You'll see Steve a lot on there. You'll also see Jill a lot on there. There's some voices for both sides that are very prevalent on social media. So if you do your own research, it won't be hard to find. Yeah. And family members of the four men, because they're men now, you know, they're out of

high school now. They've repeated over and over that this was self-defense. That's their story. They're sticking to it. But Cody's family isn't buying it. And I have to admit, it's a pretty hard story to swallow, right? Because the police never arrested any four of these men. Like you said, they didn't collect evidence.

They didn't collect their cell phones to see if they had sent messages or, you know, taken pictures or if there was videos. Because, you know, taking pictures or if there was videos. Cause you know, when fights break out at parties, man, everybody's got their phone up and they're recording it. I guarantee you somebody at that party has cell phone footage of that fight. I guarantee you. It's so great that you brought that up because I was telling the family didn't again, off camera that I, that's I was really hoping for. Because I agree with you. I believe there's something out there, whether it's a still photo or even better, a video, that's going to show us exactly what happened.

And I think, honestly, that also may be something that the police are hoping for, or at least waiting for. Hoping is maybe giving them too much credit. But needing for this case, in their opinion, which I don't agree with, they want something tangible that they can show. But I agree with you. Has it been deleted since? I don't know. But when this initially happened, I would agree that there's probably a video out there that showed this fight taking place in real time. And we just never got access to it if it's out there. Somebody hit it pretty well. Well, the police are going to have to do more than wait and hope

that something like that comes out because nobody's going to volunteer that they need to be getting warrants to check people's clouds, you know, because even if they erase it off the phone, it will, there'll be a, there'll be a thumbprint of it somewhere in the cloud or on the phone, still whatever. Don't hold your breath. Don't hold your breath as breath. As y'all get to, don't hold your breath. If they wait, they'll be waiting forever. And I think they know that. Allegedly, don't come for me. Yeah.

Multiple people who were at the party that night have said that Angel Hinkle was not attacked by Cody. One eyewitness who wanted to remain anonymous, you spoke to him on Breaking Homicide. It was the creepiest thing. You met with him on this dark street. He had a black hoodie pulled up over his head. His face is completely in shadows. His voice was disguised. And I was like, oh, Derek's going to die. What are you talking about? That was his real voice. That's exactly how he sounds. He has no face either. He's like the guy from Scream.

Yeah. I was intrigued. But no, yeah, we do that to protect them. And there's definitely a TV element where I even watch it back. And obviously, it's not like that when I'm there. But I cringe a little bit because I'm like, oh, you know. But that's what you got to do to get someone to speak on camera. Because most of the time, they'll speak to you. They just don't want to do it on camera. And from a production standpoint, that doesn't really work.

But you verified he was who he said he was. He was at that party. He was, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's in the reports. I won't say his name, but he's in the reports as being at the party. So this guy, Mr. A, we'll call him because he wants to be anonymous. He said he'd been drinking a lot at the party. He fell asleep in one of the bedrooms, only waking up when he heard commotion coming from the living room. So obviously he goes out to see what's going on. He walks out to see Cody, Joyce, and Devin Hankel fighting. He claimed that Devin had Cody in a headlock. They were fighting. They were bouncing off walls, bouncing off furniture, knocking things over. Cody was trying to get free so he could fight back. And Devin had Cody in a chokehold.

Mr. A said, for four to five minutes, maybe more. And I want to touch on, you did talk to, what was it? Cyril Wecht. Talk to Cyril Wecht. Yep, Cyril Wecht. In Breaking Homicide. And he said it's about 30 to 45 seconds before someone will lose unconsciousness when they're being choked like that.

30 to 45 minutes, 30 to 45 seconds before they lose consciousness. And then if they let them go, the oxygen is going to get back to their brain and they'll usually revive themselves. But if they don't let them go, and if you're deprived of oxygen for that long, you're not going to survive. And if you do, you're probably going to have some serious brain damage. And I actually asked Dr. Weck specifically, how long would it take to, you know, how long of a chokehold would you have to have to actually kill someone? And he said to kill them with, you know, probably three to four minutes.

So it's something where, even though this, again, this is how you compare evidence, this is how you start to build the investigation. This witness, this, you know, confidential witness didn't know that I had spoken to Sarah Wecht and that he had said these times. And then you have this individual saying four to five minutes starts to line up, right? And we know that Cody did die from these injuries. So that gives credibility to the witness. It does give credibility to the witness. And I mean, just the fact that he said four to five minutes, maybe more like obviously he he drank that night. We're not going to sit here and think that Mr. A is like the best judge of time.

No. Yeah. However, there was others there who who also mentioned that Devin had Cody in a headlock. And no matter what they did, they couldn't get him off of Cody. So that also feeds this narrative that it was quite a long time, more than 45 seconds. Let's just say that. Definitely. And he says he did more. He says four to five minutes or more because of what you're going to say next. He walked out of the room and wasn't there for when he finally let go. Yeah. So Mr. A says he didn't see Cody go limp or pass out because he tried to diffuse the situation by pulling a few people outside,

including Ryan Sabo, who had previously been involved in the altercation. The eyewitness said that Ryan had, the eyewitness being Mr. A, he had like a sling on his arm because he just had surgery. And Mr. A was telling Ryan, you know, don't fight.

Like you're going to hurt yourself. You're going to re-injure yourself. This is stupid. And they were not outside for long. I want to say like less than a minute before Ryan said, fuck it. This is actually his words. I'm not paraphrasing. He ripped the arm cast off and ran back inside to rejoin the fight. And why is that significant? Right. Because some of the argument is this might have been self-defense, and I'd said this to you before, that right there, whether you're a detective, whether you're just someone listening to this podcast because you enjoy True Crime Podcast, I think everyone can agree that being outside of a party, away from quote-unquote danger,

and making a conscious decision to go back in to fight more would not be a definition of self-defense. You're not defending yourself. You're the aggressor at that point. Even if you were worried about your friends, you call the police so that they can come and help your friends. You don't go back in because at that point, you're not afraid for your own safety. You're not afraid of some bodily harm. You're ripping off your arm cast and saying like, let's- Tadmo mobility.

Yeah, exactly. To help you beat up this person better because two arms are better than one, right? We definitely, uh, have people who dissent on our opinions in the comments. I don't think anyone's going to disagree with us there. That's a clear indication that this guy wanted to fight more.

He wasn't going to let it go. Oh, there'll be someone there'll be now. There will be. I just, I'd be like, Oh, you don't think so.

Derek, watch this. Challenge yes okay mother i got you i'm pausing the video right now oh my god you guys are funny we love you we love all of you yeah we enjoy it even the argumentative ones so mr a the anonymous eyewitness, he said that Cody was being wailed on. I don't know if people are familiar with that term, but it basically means he was getting the shit beat out of him by multiple people and he wasn't able to

defend himself because he was in a headlock the whole time. They were punching him. They were kicking him. Mr. A said, quote, they were really going at Cody, choking him and had him on the couch. And they were all beating him. It was very brutal and aggressive and uncalled for, end quote. He went on to say that Cody was pretty much motionless at one point, but they still continued to hit him.

The same person claims to have talked to the police multiple times, Mr. A. But he says it seems as if the detectives didn't want to believe him and they definitely didn't want him to get more descriptive or go deeper into what had happened. And this becomes a pattern in this case where the police are like, yeah, we'll take your evidence if you've got it, but they really don't seem to want it. And I don't think that they really pursue it.

Allegedly. Yeah. And I think it's for the reasons we said earlier, right? It doesn't have to be any deeper than the fact that they're looking at this as a possible OD in the initial months of the investigation. And it wasn't until they learned that there wasn't a single trace of a drug in a system that,

Oh shit, this wasn't an OD. We've been treating this case wrong the entire time and basically just sending people away because we thought it was going to come back that he died from some drug. Now, what do we do? It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. It's terrible. It's terrible. And again, I know there's a lot of people out there like, you're always pro-cop. It was a mistake. No, work i got no i got nothing for it sorry sorry allegheny pd i got nothing for you do better man seriously learn from this there's probably some

good guys there but the people involved with this particular case you you you fucked up i don't know i'm sorry for the excuse my language but yeah you screwed i mean i don't even know if i would say at this point that there are any good people there because you've tried to talk to them and tried to get and they've they've all closed ranks. So, I mean, well, you well, you do have individuals who've spoken out even with some anonymity that were in the show. And I know there's good officers there. I don't want to generalize the entire department because I was one of them patrolmen that you have these administrators who are like, if you say something and you go outside rank, you will be fired. So there's probably some good people there. And again, you could make the argument that if they're so good, they shouldn't care about their job. They should speak out. But if they have families to provide for, again, different story, different day. I do think there are some good officers there. One even spoke with me at the risk of losing his job. But I do think that everyone involved in it was more than just a couple guys who had a play in this case, who had the possibility of changing the trajectory of where it was going, didn't. And those guys, as well as some of the guys I spoke with after

the show there, I got no use for them. I will say that. I don't know. Write an anonymous letter. Write an anonymous letter to the attorney general or the investigator general or something. Do something. I'm not saying come out and be the mockingjay in the face of the movement. And then obviously, you're going to lose your job and be ostracized. Small town, like we said. But there's things you can do instead of just letting a wrong continue to be a wrong and not writing it. Agreed. Agreed. There's definitely, and I appreciated the officer who came out, but no, it was definitely a story that was going around the station and everyone was being told indirectly or directly, you speak out, I don't care if it's to a family member or friend, you're gone. I hate them. It makes me so mad. This is right from that officer.

I'm not made. This is from the horse's mouth. This is what he told us. All right. So what about the people at the party, right? There's 25 to 30 people there. Only a few have come forward and kind of told the truth. Others have come forward anonymously.

But why haven't more of them spoken out? Well, Mr. A says that the people at the party won't tell the truth because all of the girls were pretty close to Jessica Lentz, the girl who threw the party. Jessica was the longtime girlfriend of Devin Hinkle. And it seems that the people who saw this happen are more concerned with like crossing Jessica than they are with telling the truth. And during Breaking Homicide, you did speak to a forensic psychologist, Shannon Edwards, and she explained why this might be the case. She said that a person's brain, so all of our brains, humans, we don't finish developing our brain until the age of 25. So adolescents are more likely to side with their peers and their friend group than they are to do the right thing. Because being

accepted, not being ostracized, it seems much more important than telling the truth, especially when you have to go to school and see these people every day. So we might have a case here of these party goers closing ranks and following a certain code of silence, which I'm actually hopeful about because now these kids are no longer in high school. They're out of high school. Some of them might be out of Munhall. And hopefully as they get older and they go past that 25 age limit, maybe their brains will develop enough to realize how to be a good person and tell the truth. Yeah. The reason I went to speak with this forensic psychologist was not only for the show, but also because where we sit today, there has never been a grand jury

convened and a grand jury would just be a statement of all the facts. These individuals would come in, give their statements, give their witness statements, and then the jury would decide whether or not to indict one or more individuals. Why is this important? For every reason you just said, these individuals are older now. They know what happened that night, but they have a more developed conscious as far as right from wrong. They may not be. I would venture to say they're probably not close with most of the people they went to high school with at this point.

And then there's also this added stress of now I'm in a court of law under oath making these statements. So if a grand jury were convened today, I wonder if their statements would be different from what they said when they were 18 and they were a little bit more underdeveloped and under this peer pressure. And that's why I'm advocating for a grand jury hearing for these exact reasons, because they would have to testify under oath to what they saw and not for the benefit of keeping friendships. I 10 million kajillion percent believe that if a grand jury was called today and these people testified, they would tell the truth because who gives a shit about your high school friends?

They don't have power over you anymore. And even if they do, like, cause you know, it's a small town. They're probably, some of them are probably still in Monhal and still kind of living the same lives they were in high school, just out of high school, especially a couple of years after. I mean, I knew I was, but it's going to scare the crap out of them that it's like, OK, tell the truth or you might go to prison for perjuring yourself. So they're there. The the ability or the desire to self-preservation is going to override any loyalty that they have to anyone else. Agreed. And that's all that John, the family, myself, that's all we're advocating for is that opportunity. There's a petition out there for a grand jury, isn't there? Yep. There's a petition. I think we'll get into it in part two, but I went back out there for

a protest in regards to this grand jury being convened. That's all we're asking for, is an opportunity for a jury of their peers to hear all sides of the story. And then if they decide not to charge anyone, we can live with that. So there's going to be one more part after this. But if you're watching this on YouTube, I will put the link to the petition in the description box. If you want to wait till you hear the whole story to sign it, then absolutely you can. But if you want to sign it now, absolutely you can. Either way, hopefully you'll sign it and help find this family some justice. We appreciate it. So this anonymous party goer, Mr. A, he also said that Cody had not hit Angel on purpose. Apparently Angel had kind of also jumped in the fray and tried to break up the fight.

And she got hit in the middle of, you know, this. And I was the girl who always tried to break up fights at a party, too, because I thought I was badass. And I always got like collateral damage. So I completely understand. I mean, I did my share of damage myself, but yeah, I got some collateral damage. And he said that like she'd either been hit by Cody or maybe even somebody else, because at this point, fists are flying all over the place. Who even knows who they're attached to? Or she had kind of gotten flung back and hit her head on something. And Melody Morrison, who was Cody's girlfriend, you talked to her on Breaking Homicide.

She actually told you that she'd contacted Angel almost directly after Cody's death. And she was like, what's up? What are you doing? Are you telling people that Cody hit you? Because obviously, she wants to know the truth, but she also wants to know what's going on. I think you said Angel posted pictures of her and she's got this black eye, right? Yep. She posted a selfie. You can see a little black shiner under her eye. It's not a huge black eye. There's not a ton of bruising it's not even like a that weird greenish color that bruises get um it looks like yeah she definitely bumped herself or or accidentally got maybe elbowed or something but that's what it looks like to me for what it's worth we've all been in fights um

from what was described is that cody was beating her the couch. He was straddling her and he was beating her. That's what the eyewitnesses said. Yeah. Well, the couple who actually went along with that narrative. Yeah. Right. And this one bruise is not suggestive of that. And just from our experience being in altercations in our pasts, it's more in line with someone who is trying to break up multiple people and gets gets hit with an elbow or a fist That's unintended for them. That's what it looks like to me at least and and I want to say like I don't want anybody to Think we're over here like protecting or defending cody because he beat up angel As far as I know angel herself has never made these allegations publicly or to the police. So we need to keep that in mind.

And when Melody asked her directly, like, are you saying this? Angel told her, no, I'm not saying that. That's not what happened. It was an accident. I got in the middle of it and I got hurt. But no, I'm not telling people that. But some people were telling people that. And the families of these four boys who are now men, they kind of used that. They used that because how can you be mad? How can you be mad at four boys who are just defending the honor of some poor defenseless young woman who's getting beat up by this mean older guy? It was an effort, I i think to make cody the older kid the older man look like this abuser this predator and these these four kids were just trying to protect their friend and you know sadly he died but what were they supposed to do you know how can you be mad at heroes? Yeah. And, and you know, that's their family.

So you would expect that. Um, but again, what you just said, there's no one out that's came out definitively and said, listen, you know, I have to speak out.

Finally, Cody was beating up this girl. I was watching it. And these boys saved her. These boys helped her. Nobody has said that. Nobody has ever come. Nobody.

And if you, if that were the case, you would think everyone would be. Yes. be yes and listen i'm not gonna say that it wasn't said like you can clearly see in some of the police interviews that some of the people at the party said that but when people are interviewed by the media nobody is saying that and um and you're way nicer than i am because you're like it's their families you know i understand i don't understand like if you obviously you don't want to like throw your kid under the bus. So don't say anything that's going to incriminate them.

But your child has already been involved in taking somebody's life. Let's not like be a part of assassinating that person's character now. That's what I can't accept. Here's how I see it. Like if my daughter came to me, let's say my roles were

reversed. It was my daughter was Devin Hinkle or Ryan Sable or any of them, right? I'm assuming that Ryan or Devin are coming to their parents and saying, mom, dad, I'm going to tell you the truth. This is what happened. He was beating up a poor, innocent girl and I defended her. And so their parents want to believe them so they're gonna they're not doing their own investigation to dispute what they're saying so they're taking their son or daughter's word and i think that's where they're coming from so i'm not giving them a pass but i think that i don't think ryan and devin are telling them the truth let me ask you a question connor shoot your oldest daughter how old is she right now she's eight so she's not okay just eight okay

yeah when your oldest daughter tells you something can you tell when she's lying oh yeah so can i oh yeah oh yeah i got you trust me i got you i have a 20 year old i have a nine year old i have a four year old i know when each and every one of those assholes is lying to me and i never trust them by the way i always assume they're lying to me because I'm going to do like, that's what I'm saying. Like, I get it, but a kid's dead. So do you think you want to like do your own research and maybe look into it a little bit yourself before you just go out and blindly call somebody like a woman beater and call the kids? They don't want to know the truth. Well, that's then they're stupid then. Then they're bad people. Okay. Maybe they know the truth and they don't want to yeah i mean either way ignorance is bliss but it's still

ignorance isn't it yeah yeah it's a tough situation that's a it's a tough situation for the parents i'll give them that i'm not talking about the kids tough situation for the parents to be in when you know we're talking about these four boys but they are sons of someone who loves them oh for sure it's a tough situation to be in i agree but you're not doing your kid any favors by letting them have a pass and murdering somebody like you're not going to put out good productive members of society when they're over here being like yo we killed a kid and got away with it you know if that's what happened allegedly that's all i'm saying you're not teaching them any lessons but they probably also don't think prison is going to put out a good productive citizen either so i can't really

blame them i don't know i don't know what i would do but um melody also melody who's cody's girlfriend or cody's ex-girlfriend because he's gone unfortunately she said that as far as she knew there'd been no bad blood between c between Cody and the four boys who allegedly attacked him. But if she could guess who had started it, like if she could guess who had been the main aggressors, it would have been Devin Hinkle and Ryan Sabo, because they had a history of getting into fights. And I'm not saying this to assassinate their character. I'm not saying that getting into fights means you're going to beat someone to death because we're talking about Cody as well. You know, Cody had some histories of doing things that weren't right and getting into altercations. And I think that these all five of these people, Cody and his four alleged attackers, they were kind of the same, you know, like you had mentioned earlier, like they settled things by fighting.

That's how they were raised. That's how things went down. So I am not saying that to make them look bad, but Melody said she believed that they were the main aggressors. And as we know from the eyewitness testimonies, it appears that that was the case. Yeah. Connor was the initial interaction with Cody. And then it kind of stemmed from there where Devin andyan became the primary aggressors in that situation well we've covered a lot of information in this first part it's been like a three-day um expedition trying to get it out times two times two i'm gonna tell you derek if this recording here isn't good i'm not doing it again yeah no i'm i'm going to get a breakfast sandwich i'm done well. Well, before we go, I want to read you a text, though,

and give you a little teaser for next week. This is a text that Ryan Sabo sent his ex-girlfriend, Alyssa Juristy, the night of Cody's death. It was sent at 4.41 a.m., and it said, quote, I might be going to jail tonight. Me and Dinkle might have

literally killed Gino Joyce. I DK what condition he is in, and I didn't know how you felt about me, but if I go down, I love you, no matter how you feel. When we left, he was out cold. If I go down, I do love you, end quote. So what did he call him?

Dinkle? Dinkle. Dinkle is Devin Hinkle's nickname and IDK is, I don't know, just in case anybody didn't know that, just in case anybody IDK that. But it's an interesting text message. It's what you would call an admission of guilt. Didn't you talk to somebody on Breaking Homicide who actually worked for the DA's office? Yep. Laurel Gift worked for the DA's office, is now a defense attorney. I read this exact text message to her and she said what you just said, which was, it sounds like an admission of guilt to me. And I agree, it does. But I mean, we'll talk about that more. We're also going to talk about an interesting picture that Ryan Sabo posted to a Snapchat that night, which once again, just to me, adds fuel to the fire and just adds on to the evidence that these kids beat Cody to death. And they've never really denied that, have they? They've never

really denied that they beat him up. No, they haven't denied that. They admit that there was an altercation and I'll leave you guys with this for you to digest and think about until the next part. We have an ME who's come out and said publicly multiple times that this was a homicide due to asphyxiation. We have multiple witnesses showing that

Devin Hinkle did in fact put Cody Joyce in a chokehold. And although the police haven't said much, what they have said, even up to today, 2021, is that this is an open homicide investigation. Why is that important? Because even though we've told you everything we have in this episode, where there's been multiple accounts that this was self-defense. If the police had felt that was true, they would have already closed the case and we wouldn't be sitting here right now. But as we sit here today, even with everything they know, even with every statement they've

received, the case is still open. So let that sink in. But no arrests have been made. So let that sink in. Yeah, no arrests have been made. And again, that would be the ideal situation, but they haven't even asked for a grand jury to be convened. So that's a lesser level. And that hasn't even- How are they going to ask for a grand jury to be convened, man? They didn't collect any goddamn evidence. What are they going to present to the grand jury?

Laurel Giff said that as well. She goes, well, I think we found our problems here. There's some evidentiary issues where they didn't collect any evidence at the scene. They didn't preserve any digital data. So now what do you do? And that's exactly what she said. It's too bad, but we still hope. We'll get more into the other stuff, the aftermath, what happened after I filmed the show, after everything went public. There was a lot that went down. Trust me, this is all beforehand. After breaking homicide, there was a lot that transpired, a lot of conversations I had. I got to speak to Allegheny PD personally. The main detective didn't go too well, spoiler alert, but we'll fill you in on that

next week. We're also working on undercover pineapple merch. So if we have any designs out, like people who are designers out there, send us some some stuff and then we'll you know give you credit obviously and send you a bunch of shirts so you can wear your own work but um we did find out that undercover pineapple is code for swingers and spoiler alert we're not i mean speak for yourself oh sorry i'm i'm not a swinger but we're gonna work on him though he's not a swinger yet okay but the undercover pine your boat. We're going to work on him, though. He's not a swinger yet, okay? But the undercover pineapples, we're going to get him over to the dark side or the light side, depending on which way you look at it. He's blushing.

Oh, my God. Yeah, I mean, shit. All right, can we end this one? That's cute. All right, but send your undercover pineapple designs over to, what's our email address? Info at CrimeWeekly.com? No, the designs, it's contact at CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com. But honestly, it's better just to send it to IG.

Stephanie or I will get it. IG, Twitter. We'll get the, you know, somebody, a few people have already sent us some designs. It's easy for me to save it right there. Send it over if you got something. Cool. We will see you guys next week and we will see you at CrimeCon,

whoever's there. Until next week, Undercover Pineapples out. Goodbye. Later.