Crime Weekly - S1 Ep27: Death on Shady Avenue: Codi Joyce (Part 2)

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

Sign the petition! —> https://www.change.org/p/stephen-zappala-we-need-justice-for-codi-joyce-and-his-family-take-this-to-the-grand-jury-justiceforgeno?redirect=false 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. Get your Crime Weekly gear here! --> crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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apply. Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. Today, we're diving into part two of Cody Joyce. I'm going to give you a quick recap. Cody Joyce was a young man who went to a party. He was in an argument about a hot pocket with one of the other individuals there and before you know it there was a fight, there was a scuffle, he was getting beat up, there was some chokeholds happening. And then Cody was gone.

And nobody's been arrested for this, even though there were multiple people involved, multiple people who were seen not only hitting him, but choking him and cutting off his oxygen for an extended period of time. And his autopsy showed that he had died from a compression to his throat. So he was basically strangled and had lost oxygen to his brain for so long that he passed out and he died. But nobody has been arrested. And we're going to kind of go into that today. For those of you who hate me and are only here for Derek, I know I see you guys out there in the comments.

I know you're out there saying, she's stupid and annoying. I hate her voice. I wish Derek talked more. You're going to be super happy today because Derek is he's taking the lead on this one. He was boots on the ground in Pennsylvania with this case. He has had contact with the family and and you're going to be hearing from him a little bit more today than me. So I hope, I'm, I'm hoping it's, it's make some of you happy. First and foremost, nobody's buying that whatsoever. Cause I read, I can read too. And I see the comments and your, your troop is strong and please, I can see your face. You're full of it right now, but, but I appreciate the compliment. I appreciate you making it, you know, putting that narrative out there, even though it's completely false, but not completely false. It's like 20% false. It's pretty, it's pretty false. It's pretty false. It's not completely false. It's like 20% false. It's pretty false. It's pretty false. These are your people out here. And I appreciate you guys embracing me. If you guys haven't figured out the format yet, how we do this, Stephanie writes these incredible scripts, these narratives

that keeps us on track. And I'm not good at that, nor do I need to do that on this episode, because these are things that I lived after Breaking Homicide aired. And with any case that I've ever worked and with any case that you see us cover here, yes, we're covering it. Some are solved, but the end goal is always the same. And that's to move the case forward. Are we always going to be able to solve it by through a podcast or a YouTube video or even a television show? Most likely not, but it's getting it out there so that more people can see it and those individuals can put pressure or at least ask for justice from people who can make a difference in the case. And so that was the situation here

with Cody Joyce. And when I originally did it for Breaking Homicide, I believe I started working the case in 2018. I believe BH aired in 2018. It might've been early 2019, but I believe it was 2018. So Stephanie did a great job of kind of, we caught up, you guys know the case. So the question is what happened afterwards? And normally we wouldn't have an entire episode just dedicated to the aftermath, but I promise you this case deserves it. And you're going to see why as we go through some different things. So the show airs. And as soon as the show airs, like a lot of cases, I start getting phone calls, direct messages, emails, et cetera. And a lot of it is stuff we already know. Some of it is new. You never know. Can I stop you for a second?

Of course. Anytime. Stop me. Yeah. Remember when we talked about the text message at the end of last episode, we never actually talked about how she got the text message to cody's uncle and how the police wouldn't even talk about it or look look at it so we should we should talk a little bit about first yeah let's let's do that i think what do you think yeah yeah absolutely so uncle steve right so alissa juristy is the name of the girlfriend um she has the text message she runs into steve uncle steve cody's uncle steve somewhere out i don't remember where. Basically tells him, I have this text message. I want to show it to you.

She shows Steve. And what does Steve do? He brings her to the police department. He brings her himself to the police department. And to summarize, they said, hey, you know what? We're still waiting for the results from the autopsy. So we're not taking anything from you right now. Huge mistake.

She had the phone right there. They could have seized that phone. They could have kept it in evidence, made sure that it wasn't altered in any way until they got the autopsy report back. But they told her to come back. They basically told her to leave. But Steve was smart enough to take a screenshot of the text message. I will say this.

I reached out to Alyssa. We had a couple conversations, but understandably, she didn't want to have any part of the show. She did not want to be interviewed on camera, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But she did acknowledge on the phone to me directly that the text message I was in possession of, the picture that I read back to her, was in fact the exact text message she had received from Ryan Sabo. And that was good enough for me, because if she's saying it to me, she's also willing to say it to the courts, because she knew who I was and that I was planning, presenting that to millions of people who were going to watch the show. Does that kind of that kind of gives us the I mean, basically, again, they had an opportunity to seize a piece of evidence, which was an admission of guilt. And I believe it was the the initial police officer.

I don't even know if it was detectives, but they basically turned her and Steve away. And at this point, so much time has passed. It would be almost impossible to verify whether that text was real or not, even though both you and I do believe it was. It would be impossible for law enforcement to verify it because cell phone carriers don't keep their messages for that long. It would be impossible for them to store all of that information on their servers for everybody in the world who uses whatever network it is. So that's a problem because we would have to be, if a grand jury was called, we'd have to be just relying on Alyssa's testimony,

which I think is pretty reliable if you're testifying in front of a grand jury because you're under threat of perjury at that point. But we'd have to just depend on that. And that might not be enough for some grand jury members. Exactly. And they could have taken the phone, they could have downloaded the data, which becomes an archival file that's not altered. We talked about hashing and all this in a previous episode with the cameras. So then even though however much time has passed,

that data is still preserved. It's immortalized right there where it's not gonna change over time because it's in a secured facility. They didn't do that. So to your point, you could still bring it up in court. You could have Alyssa testify to it. But as you just mentioned, a defense attorney would have a field day with that. Why do you think they didn't take the message or even take it seriously? Because I believe Uncle Steve in Breaking Homicide, he said something like it seemed like they didn't even want to even see it.

Like they didn't want to talk about it. Like just the fact that they would know it existed would cause some sort of like issue. Yeah, I think it was mainly, again, this is speculative on my part, but they thought it was going to come back as an OD. I really think they were probably thinking to themselves, you guys are going down this path and we're never going to hear from you again after you find out that he OD'd on some drug. And then when that didn't happen, they got egg on their face. That's what I've surmised from it. But again, that's just based on what I've uncovered in my own investigation. I can't speak to what they were thinking at the time, although I can tell you definitively that was the wrong decision. Did they ever end up taking the text message or?

Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. But again, at that point, more time has passed and I don't know. Didn't like it. Did not like it at all. So we cover that. We're pretty much caught up. So the show ends and I receive an email and I'm going to say this officer's name and it's because at the end of the day, he's a police officer. I'm not asking anyone to contact him. I'm not asking anyone to look him up on social media. I'm actually asking you not to do any of that. Okay.

So please, you're going to make it worse for Cody's family and everyone else. If we start to make these people look like victims, you know, but, but his name is detective Dale Canafari or Canafari. He reached out to me through email and said, Hey, Derek, I'd like to speak with you. I'm now the lead investigator on the case. And I'd like to talk to you about some of the things that were in the show. And how long after you left Pennsylvania, did you get, you know, did he contact you? It was after the show aired. So whenever the show aired, it was very quickly right after that. It wasn't after nobody contacted me until the show came out. And I made numerous attempts. But once the show aired, it got back to me that there were definitely people out there in administrative roles saying this does not look good. You got to we got to call this guy because he's saying he has stuff that we don't have. He's got confidential witnesses in the show that are saying that they saw him.

We got a call. Was he the one that said, I didn't see the program, but it's all everybody's talking about? Nope. We're going to get to that. That's the email. That's the email. I'm assuming he watched the program. And the reason why I'm assuming the detective watched the program was because he said, listen, I wasn't assigned to this case initially when this happened, but I have it now. And we can both agree that this case needs to come to an ending, a closure, whether that's a grand jury, whether that's coming out and saying we're ruling it self-defense, there needs to be an ending to the story for the family. And I said, Detective Cannafari, couldn't agree with you more. That's all they're asking for. And so he said, well, what do you have? And initially I said, well, what do you want to know? I'm not going to give him everything.

You know, you called, you contacted me and he said, well, first off, I'd love to speak to the confidential informant that was in the show because that individual had some pretty damning information and I think it'd be valuable to the case. Sure. No problem. So I give him the information for this individual and immediately he says, oh, I know that name. We already spoke to him. We spoke to him when this initially happened. And I said, yeah, I'm aware. I'm aware of that. But I also know that he was a young kid. There's a lot of pressure on him. And he was a little cautious about saying anything to the police for fear of retaliation, but time has passed. He knows what he saw that night and he wants to speak again. And he's willing to testify to this version under oath. And he's also willing to say that his first version might have been a little skewed because again, he was a young high school kid and he just wanted this to kind of go away. And the detective says, you know

what? I'll give him a call. I said, I appreciate that. I think you should. I think that's a great idea. Week passes, no call. Two weeks pass, no call. So I call detective Cannafari back and I say, oh, detective, I'm just, you know, I don't want to tell you how to do your job. Just wondering if you're going to call this individual, because as we both know, detective, some people can change their minds. You know, one week they're willing to speak, something gets in their head or someone gets to them. And then all of a sudden they have amnesia and he says, no, I'm going to get to him, but I'm going to get to him. But just to be, just to be transparent with you, Derek, I don't really know what we can do with him because the defense is going to rip him apart because he gave an initial statement and now he's giving a new one.

And I said, well, I kind of disagree with you there. I don't think that's the case. I think it's understandable that his statement originally was vague and maybe not exactly what had happened. And now he's coming forward with a more definitive explanation of what happened that night. And it just so happens to be more in line with the findings from the autopsy. And he goes, yeah, yeah, you're right. I'll give him a call. I'll give him a call. So about another week passes and I call the CI.

I call the confidential informant and I say, did he call you again? He goes, yeah, he called me, but he didn't ask me any questions. He basically just called me to tell me, hey, I know you're the one on the show, but you gave an initial statement. And so even though you're saying something different now, it's worthless in court. But I just wanted to call you and tell you that. That's all he said to him. It's kind of like intimidation a little bit.

Like it's worthless what you're saying. So stop saying it is the way I guess I would kind of perceive it if I was that person. I think you're open, whatever you want. I mean, I just took it as he completely diminished what this kid was doing, which was coming out and being courageous enough to tell the truth, even though it took a few years. Yeah. When you diminish what he's saying and you-

That's how I took it. That's kind of intimidation. Like what you're saying doesn't matter, so don't say it years. Yeah. When you diminish what he's saying and you. That's how I took it. Well, that's kind of intimidation. Like what you're saying doesn't matter. So don't say it anymore. Yeah. And I mean, I didn't like that. So I was, I was pissed off. I was really pissed off.

And I called detective Cannafari and understand guys, I'm trying to play for the little big brother fans out there. I'm trying to play big brother a little bit with these people because you get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar. So even though initially I thought it could have been handled a lot better, I'm trying to be understanding and work with these individuals because they're the ones that can ultimately make a difference in the case. Even though behind closed doors, I'm like, what are these guys doing? So I call him and I said, hey, did you happen to call the CI yet? And he says, yeah, yeah, I'm like, what are these guys doing? So I call him and I said, Hey, did you happen to call the CI yet? And he says, yeah, yeah, I talked to him. So once he said that, I go, yeah, but you

didn't really talk to him. Cause all you basically said is that it doesn't matter what he's saying now because he said something different initially. And he goes, yeah, well, but I told you that. I told you that was the case, Derek. And I said, and I told you that I disagreed with you. And I don't understand how you're determining how valid his statement is. Why wouldn't you do what's called a supplemental report, take a new statement from him and present it to someone at the district attorney's office or your superior officer and let them make that determination. You're making that determination before even taking a second statement from him.

Take the statement, compare it to the first one, and then make that decision. Don't dismiss him before you give him an opportunity to explain himself. He didn't want to hear it. He really didn't want to hear it. So we weren't off to a good start. I can say that much. We were not off to a good start, but I heard him loud and clear. He was looking for a witness that had not spoken to police yet. And I was going to give him that. And we're going to talk about that right after this first break. All right. So we're back from break. And before the break, I had just got done explaining that this lead detective, the guy who's now overseeing the case, explained to me that although I had an individual who was at the party, who witnessed Devin Hinkle put Cody Joyce into a chokehold, who went outside with Ryan Sabo, was there with Ryan Sabo, asked him not to go back inside, and Ryan Sabo refused to do so, ripped his cast off, ran back in.

Although he was saying all this, the detective felt that his statement would not be credible in a court of law because he gave an initial statement that was contradictory to this statement. What do you think, Stephanie, at this point? Because I'm sure a lot of our listeners and viewers are coming at this from, they're hearing this for the first time because there was no episode on breaking homicide about these interactions. So what are your feelings right now? So this is Dale Cannafori, right? Dale Cannafori, yep. And he's a homicide detective. I don't know if there's a specific homicide unit, but he is the lead detective in this

homicide investigation. Well, the initial guy, the first police officer on scene, remember he said, call the paramedics and call homicide. Correct. So you're right. So there's probably a homicide division in Allegheny County. The initial, which we never mentioned this name before, the initial officer that I spoke with before going out there was a Lieutenant Andy Sherman. He was kind of overseeing the case initially and now Dale was.

So I guess I'm over here wondering, you're a homicide detective. You are investigating this case as a homicide, I assume, because that's what you do. It's an open homicide investigation. And you're not going to take evidence or listen to witnesses who support the fact that it was a homicide. Doesn't that seem kind of dumb? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't understand it.

I still don't understand it. We're going to get more into it. There's more layers to this conversation and this story. I wish this was the worst part. It gets worse. But it does seem like he was speaking to people at the Allegheny County District Attorney's Office. They were probably advising him because of some other things that he said, which we're

going to get to at some point. Because you went back there after Breaking Homicide came out and everything. And you said in this press conference, you said, I'm not here with my TV cameras. I'm here as me on my own dime because I care about this case. And you were very clear. And you said, I'm a law enforcement advocate. I am pro-law enforcement, of course, because of what you did for what, 20 years. You're going to be on the side of police because you understand that, in your opinion, the majority of them are doing the right thing and they want to do their jobs and they want to solve these cases. But even you, in the face of all of this, you had to say, I don't support this and I can't find

a reason, a logical or valid reason why this would be happening because you would come there saying, whatever the truth is, I'll find it out. If the truth leads to the fact that the police did nothing wrong, even though I'm sad for what happened to Cody and I'm sad for his family, I'm not going to ignore that. But you couldn't find any evidence. You couldn't find anything that led you to believe that the police had done this case justice or even, in my opinion, taken it seriously as a homicide from the beginning. Because if they had, they would have taken that text message. They would have listened to these witnesses. They would have been doing what you were doing.

Collected blood samples. Then you collected cell phones from these four individuals. And they would have been doing what you were doing. Because I think before we left for the break, you said, well, I knew he wanted somebody who hadn't already given a statement to the police. So I was going to find that. That's kind of like his job. It's kind of what he should have been doing if that's what he wanted. Right.

And maybe people don't want to speak to them directly. But to your point, everything you just said, you know, I was really hopeful when I first spoke to detective Ken Afari, because I figured, okay, there was another detective on it. Maybe he was, you know, an ass clown, honestly, maybe he just was a complacent guy. He wasn't doing his job. This new guy seems like he, he really does care. And the fact that he reached out to me is a good sign. And I think we're on the same page. And I think he's going to take everything he has, take everything I'm able to provide for him, bring it over to the DA's office and let them decide where they go from there. And if they don't have anything, come back to us and say, you know what, Derek, I, Detective

Dale Cannafari, took it over there. I made a nice package. They turned me down. They didn't want to convene a grant. Sorry. That's what I was hopeful nice package. They turned me down. They didn't want to convene a grant. Sorry That's what I was hopeful of initially And you weren't being combative with him at any point because like you said you're trying to play both sides Like you want him to think i'm on your side like blah blah blah. Were you being not initially but we Not initially though, right? Yeah, we had some when you got pushed back. Did you start pushing back?

Yeah, we were jawing a little bit. We were jawing a little bit for sure. But kept it cordial. No name calling, but he knew I was pissed off. And we're going to get there. So he says this guy, this first confidential informant that was in the show, that anyone who's seen the show or listened to our podcast, you know about. You know what he's alleging. Pretty damning.

But apparently, according to this detective, it's alleging. Pretty damning. But apparently, according to this detective, it's not going to work for him. So what do I do at that point? I can't fight it too much because at the end of the day, this is the lead detective. So I said, okay, I'm going to find you someone that hasn't spoken to police yet. And I said that because I already had someone. So I'm going to read some Twitter DMs that I received from people. The first couple ones are character witnesses. They're not the smoking gun, but we're going to read some Twitter DMs that I received from people. The first couple ones are character witnesses. They're not the smoking gun, but we're going to get there because everything I'm reading to you now, I screenshot and sent to Detective Cannafari in an email.

So there was nothing that I left out. There was nothing that I held back. And I wasn't trying to do his job where I'm going to read a few of them, but I received many messages and I sent him everything I had because I wanted to give him the opportunity to develop his own don't know where they came from, just in case this case ever goes forward. And I want to keep these individuals, their identities, you know, safe. my entire life and the girl has hopped into numerous fights with boys as long as I can remember. There is no way Cody hit her. I've seen her swing at males countless times too. Thank you for doing this. I truly hope justice is served. I wrote back to her. Thank you. Have you ever spoken to police? She said, I have not. I wasn't friends with those kids because they are bad news and I cut ties in early high school, but I know what they're like. So I can believe all of the evidence leading to them for sure.

Just speaking to their character. That was, that was one initial statement. Here's another one. So this is another individual. She, she writes, uh, okay. She says, I want to talk about the text message that Ryan Sabo sent to Alyssa Juristy. I know that it's true. 100%. I'm pretty close friends with Angel. Maybe I can try to help. I know that the text messages from Alyssa Juristy are 100% real as well.

I worked with her at the time of the death and she was a complete mess and showed me her phone at work days later. Okay. And I've heard it from her mouth directly. Cody was not an aggressive person unless he needed to be. But I do regret not going to the party that night, or I would have came forward with what I had seen initially. With all of these, every time they speak to me, I end it with, are you willing to speak

to police? And everyone that I'm saying to you now, they all said yes. Again, it's another person saying Angel did have a bruise, but it was known throughout circles that the bruise was not necessarily from an assault. It could have been from the fight that night, but it wasn't specifically from Gino and an angel. Apparently, allegedly, again, this is all allegedly, this is from people who are DM me that anytime anyone brought up Gino to angel, she would, she would get angry or upset because she knew that she was kind of, she was kind of in the middle of all this because a lot of people that were choosing to side with the four individuals were basing it on the allegation that Gino was beating her up. And then you have the other side that had spoken to her and said, hey, did Gino ever put his hands on you? And allegedly she told them he didn't. So everyone was looking at her like, hey, what really happened? So after her initial, whatever she told certain people, and I have reason to

believe just based on my own speculation that she probably told whatever story was convenient for the person who was asking. You following me there? Yes. And I just want to remind everybody too, Gino was Cody's nickname. So same person, Cody Joyce is Gino. If you see justice for Gino, it's about Cody Joyce. That is correct. But there's a real reality where if people who are with the four individuals asked, hey, did he hit you? He hit you, right? Maybe she out of fear. Yeah, yeah, he hit me. And then on the other side, you could also make the argument that maybe he did hit her. And when Melody or one of the family members from Cody's side asked, she denied it. You don't know. Whatever her statement to police was is what they're going to go with. But again, as I said last episode, if that were the case, Allegheny County PD would have more than likely already closed this case as a self-defense situation. They have not. So that leads me to believe that there is no substantial evidence that would suggest Cody was beating up

on this girl or beating up on someone else. And he was the one that was out of control and everyone was just trying to defend themselves. What do you think about some of those initial DMs that I've just read? I mean, like you said, they're character statements. Did you verify these people? Did you verify that they didn't have like an ax to grind or things like that? To be honest with you, these are Twitter people. They're giving me their name, their information, their address, their phone number. But what I really want to do is not ingrain myself as much as possible.

I want to just be a conduit for police because at court, if I'm doing all this research or even the more conversations I have with these witnesses, it could be used against them. So I try to just serve as a conduit for the lead detective. And when they spoke to me, are you willing to speak to police? Thank you. I try to pass it on. I don't ever want to be accused of coaching them or influencing what they say. So I try, if it's not for the show directly, if it's afterwards, I try to minimize my contact with them as much as possible. So you made the introductions hoping that the police would do the verifying. That's it.

All these screen grabs that I'm reading to you now, again, just so he wasn't hearing just my words, I sent them directly to the lead detective so he could read it and interpret it any way he wanted along with their contact information. Well, I mean, from what I see, it's a lot of Angel had a kind of a reputation for being a brawler, even if there's men involved, you know, and I get that. I've been there. When you're young, you think nothing can hurt you. But if she was known to do this, then it's not out of the question that she would be doing this, especially in this kind of fight when it's four against one. And there's this mob mentality with young kids and teenagers too, where it's

like, well, everybody's beating up on this kid. He must be bad. Let me jump in. And she probably was collateral damage and didn't get hurt. I don't know for sure though. I don't want to kind of come out and say, this girl's lying about getting punched by Cody because there's that slim chance that this did happen. And I don't ever want to victim shame. But yeah, I'm definitely leaning to the side of that's probably not what happened. And like you said, she told many other people after like, no, he never touched me. So I don't know. Again, you know, there's a lot of he said, she said. I would think that if there was something definitive that would suggest these things were true as far as Gino's behavior, you and I wouldn't be sitting here today and I never would have went to Munhall in the first place.

So it's hard for me to believe that's true. And then on top of that, having these statements from individuals who know these people, it does line up with the fact that this was a mutual fight maybe initially. And four individuals were 100 pounds soaking wet, four feet tall, technically four-on-one could be seen by some as self-defense, right? But that wasn't the case here. And these individuals had the opportunity to remove themselves from the situation. And they chose not to. So in my opinion, the self-defense defense goes out the window at that point. I don't ever want to think that four against one could ever be considered self-defense, honestly. That makes me incredibly uncomfortable. So that's never the case, especially when you can restrain him. Four people against one person, I don't care if he's 260 pounds and they're each 100 pounds soaking wet.

Like you can still restrain him enough. You don't have to kill him. Yeah, you would think so. I'll give it, so my angle on it is, and by no means am I defending these guys. If anything, you guys know where I stand on this case. I think I've made that pretty transparent. But if The Rock comes into a bar

and me and my brother, who are decent sized guys, you know, walk up to him and, you know, he hits a girl. Sorry, rock. I love you, rock. Yeah, no, you wouldn't do that. But he just, he says, what are you guys going to do about it? Personally, I think I can hold my own, but there's a very good chance the rock is going to take me and my brother and they're going to smash our heads together and knock us both out. So I get what you're saying. I always try to play devil's advocate, even when I don't believe in it myself, because I know that we've seen it at trial with these cases where these defense attorneys come up with these crazy explanations and we just put our hands in our face because we can't believe that's the angle they're going with.

I try to preemptively think of them, even if I don't believe in them personally. Are you following what I'm saying? Like it is, it's crazy to think four against one could ever be considered self-defense, but that's kind of the mindset that I was trying to put myself in as I was going through this.

Like it's a possibility, I guess. Well, I'm glad you're playing devil's advocate. So I don't have to, because if it was the rock against you and your brother and then your clone and your brother's clone, I think that you could easily kind of hold back the rock so you wouldn't have to beat him to death. Right. No matter what he did. We could render him unable to able to you know unable to

further hurt anybody plus you did say i was pretty tall you're very tall yeah she was on the fence about that actually her husband said her husband said it first stephanie's like i heard adam from the background go wow he's taller than i thought adam doesn't have much of a filter does he no that was the first words and i had my back turned turned. I was like, oh, hey, Adam. But not to get off path. So we've kind of gone over some character stuff. I'm going to read this DM to you. And then we'll take a break so you guys can let it kind of resonate and think about it. But this is from an individual who has never spoken to police, as far as I know.

Maybe I think he's spoken to police as we sit here today. But at this point, when I received this DM in June, uh, after the episode aired, this is what he had to say. Um, and again, I'm going to paraphrase not because I'm trying to mislead you, but I'm trying to protect this individual to a certain degree. Okay. So I'm going to tell the story that he's telling here, but I'm going to kind of change up a couple of things. Nothing that's really important, but again, I want this case to go forward and I don't want to hurt it. So essentially there's a party that takes place after Cody's party down the road shortly after. It's a whole different party and Ryan Sabo and Devin Hinkle are there. And at this party, when it's going down, Ryan Sabo gets into an altercation with someone at the party. Shocker. I know. Well, the fight gets broken up and, you know, people are kind of choosing sides as far as like who is the aggressor or whatever. And apparently Devin Hinkle chose the side of the other individual where basically Ryan saw this and saw that like

Devin was consoling the other guy and not him. And it really, really upset Ryan. At some point, he says he couldn't believe Devin took the side of someone else when they took him down and never snitched on, on each other for Cody. And to put it to say it exactly, they took him down and never snitched or took the rap for one another as it relates to Cody Joyce. So whatever happened that night, they stuck to the story together when they both could have gone to prison to ensure that they both didn't. So they corroborated their stories, made sure they lined up, stuck together. And that's what really upset him. So he's essentially saying, I've had his back. We had each other's back. I thought he would have my back here. Exactly. And he specifically referred to the Cody Joyce

incident where he said, we did this together. We never snitched on each other. We're connected for life. How could he do this to me? Ride or die. Bad boys for life. So this to me is, again, another admission of guilt to somebody who has no skin in the game. This witness has no reason to come forward. But I did ask him, have you ever spoken to police? And he said, no, I'll be honest.

I've never spoken to police because out of fear of retaliation. And also I just didn't know it would help because I thought they already knew all this, you know? And I said, okay, no problem. So I called detective Dale Canafari. And by the way, this happens. Remember this, this was in June. Okay.

I'm pretty excited about this information. I think this could be a smoking gun. This person has never been in. Dale Canafari just got done telling me he was looking June. Okay. I'm pretty excited about this information. I think this could be a smoking gun. This person has never been in. Dale got a can of fire. He just got done telling me he was looking for somebody new, somebody who could relay this information that hadn't already been interviewed before. So I call him up. I explain this individual, by the way, I did do a background check on this person.

Upstanding citizen, never arrested, has a lot going for him. I'm not going to say what career he's in, but a very admirable professional. He's got a lot going for him. And I was excited to relay this information to Detective Cannafore. He seemed excited about it. He actually said, wow, this is good. Yeah, I'm going to get right on this. Well, that's not what happened. We're going to get more into it. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about it. Okay. We're back from break. Stephanie, I just read this DM to you. That's the first time you've ever heard it like that, right? I've hinted to it a little bit, but what are you

thinking? You've worked a lot of cases. You've researched a lot of cases, some that have been solved, some that haven't, but I'm assuming some that have been solved on less than this right here. So what's running through your mind right now? Well, first of all, I think Ryan Szabo needs to stop drinking and going out to party because clearly I think he's got some emotional problems, first of all, because to get that upset that your friend chose the side of somebody else in a party, to get that upset where you almost unconsciously implicate yourself in somebody's murder because you've drunk so much or drank so much that you just don't have that self-control anymore. Like, that's an issue.

I understand why the person might not have thought that they would be, I guess, that what they had to say would be taken seriously by the police. Like he said, he thought that they already knew all of this. But you said this is June, right? So how long after Cody's murder? This is over a year at this point, right? Well, yeah, the murder was in 2015. He didn't come to me in this DM until after the show aired. So this is, I believe, June of 2019.

So I guess it would have been better if he'd come forward at first. But like we said, this is a tight-knit town. They're not going to want to turn on each other because then they're going to be isolated. They're going to be cast out. You said that this was happening in this town, that there were sides being taken, that there was a very big division. So I understand why he didn't come forward, but I'm very curious to see what our homicide detective Dale did with

this information. Yeah. So I related to him. And again, my understanding from our conversation after I relayed this information to him and even before this, because we had multiple conversations, was that he was going to take everything case together, a package together, and submit it to the Allegheny County DA's office and say, hey, listen, let's see what we got. It's either all or nothing at this point. Either it's going to happen or it's not. And he made it seem as if, hey, listen, I can't decide whether or not we're going to pursue this. This is ultimately up to Allegheny County DA's office. Okay, no problem. So you're going to talk to this new witness. I gave you his information. He was willing to talk to you. Yes, I'm going to. Great. One week goes by. No call. Now, by the way, I'm in contact with the CIA almost every day. You know, one week goes by. No call. Two weeks go by, no call. Now, remember guys, two weeks, I have a guy

who will testify under oath that one of the four individuals connected to the initial investigation confessed to him. Yes, he was drinking, but this is now the second person that's shown something where Ryan Sable is admitted to killing Cody Joyce. You have Alyssa Juriste's text message. Now you have this. Maybe individually, it's not enough, but collectively in totality. I think that's starting to paint a pretty strong picture now. Didn't you tell me though that initially, or I thought I heard somewhere, initially he had made a statement, the homicide detective Dale,

he'd said, oh, I'm actually working with the district's attorney to figure out whether we should bring charges against these individuals. And later he tried to cop out and said like, oh, it's not my decision. I knew he was talking to them. And what I'm going to talk about next is going to confirm that. But yes, I believe he was talking to a Chernosky, last name Trinosky from the DA's office. This was the person who was handling the investigation and was handling it at the time when it initially occurred because John and Paulette had had conversations with this individual in the past. But again, based on what Dale Cannafari had relayed to me, I felt this fit

the piece of the puzzle that he was looking for in addition to what he was doing. So one week goes by, two weeks go by, three weeks go by, one month goes by, two months go by, no call to this person. Not even a call. So I call him back. So it wasn't that they weren't calling you they weren't even calling him no he told me he'd be back with me in like a week he they never called the ci they never called this confidential informant in two months so it's almost like he's dangling a carrot for you like oh this witness isn't good enough because we've already talked to him so we need this and then you brought that then they're like oh shit all, shit. All right. So, yeah, we're going to call him. Not maybe not thinking you would follow up. I felt extremely disrespected. And again, some of you made you're right if you say, hey, everyone should be treated equal.

But I thought there would be a level of professional courtesy there. I'm not a family member calling you, although they should be treated even better than me. I thought we were on the same page that we just wanted to do what was right. We don't care about the four individuals or Cody. We just want the truth to come out. That's where I thought we were. And, you know, I told him this initially, the show's over. I have no incentive to keep going.

There's not going to be a part two of the show. I just want to, I promised the family I would see this all the way through. I'm trying to help you do your job. Not getting any money for this. I'm just doing it because it's the right thing to do. And after he had not spoken to the CI in almost two months, I did call him again. And I said, Dale, what are we doing here? It was a different tone from Derek. I'll tell you right now. I said, what are we doing here? It was a different tone from Derek. I'll tell you right now. I said, what are we doing here? Because to be frankly honest with you, I feel like you're stroking me. That's exactly what I said to him. I feel like you're just playing with me here,

and you're just trying to push me off. And I'm telling you that not as a person with emotions to this case. I'm telling you that as a former detective, that I've never seen a homicide detective or even a regular detective get information like this and not even take five minutes to call this person or set up an interview with this person to find out if there's any validity to what they've told me. Two months. And he said, well, I had a homicide come up in between, so I got a little busy. I said, that's not an excuse. You called me, you reached out to me two months. You haven't had time to even call this person back to say, Hey, I'm going to be in touch with you. And he knew I was done with him. So he goes, well, I'm going to be honest with you. I've been talking to the DA's office.

I've been talking to Chinoski and the problem And the problem in this case is always going to be this, Derek. Even if we have this individual that you spoke to, we're never going to be able to identify the person who actually administered the choke because I don't know if you know this or not, but there were two chokeholds administered. And for anyone who doesn't know, there's supposedly the initial choke by Devin and then maybe another choke by someone else or Devin again when they're fighting in the other room. And he goes, so even if we go forward with this, we're never going to be able to charge anyone because we don't know who actually administered the choke. And I said, hold on a second here. Are you telling me that even though you have an autopsy report that's ruled it a homicide, that said it's due to asphyxiation, right? Compression of

the neck that you have multiple witnesses that have said there was a specific individual who had him in a chokehold. I've given you two witnesses that have pointed out the individual that put him in the chokehold with admissions of guilt from those individuals themselves. You're telling me that even though you have all that, you would rather charge no one than someone. And I said, well, let me ask you detective, if I had the same case and it involves someone that you care about, and we have three individuals, one of us has a knife. We all walk up to your loved one or the victim at the same time. One of the three of us stab that victim. Do all three of us get to walk away just because you don't know who had the knife? And he goes, well, that's not

a fair comparison. I go, it's a completely fair comparison. That's what you're saying to me right now. And I apologize. I'm getting a little loud because I'm getting fired up thinking about the conversation again. I said, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. And I said, but I know where you stand now. We don't need to speak any further. I see where you're at. And you're like, well, you don't know where I'm at. I might not be the best detective in the world, Mr. Canterbury, but I know where I'm at. And I know when I'm being slow played and I'm being slow played. And he goes, well, just so you know, ultimately it would be the DA, because he knew he wasn't going to convince me. He goes, ultimately it wouldn't be my decision anyways. it would be the DA because he knew he wasn't going to convince me.

He goes, ultimately, it wouldn't be my decision anyways. It would be the DA's office. I said, you told me it was you bringing a case to them to possibly convene a grand jury. Now you're saying it's the DA's office. Okay. Duly noted. You have a great day, sir. And that's how our call ended.

That was the last call we ever had. Isn't that the purpose of a grand jury though? You have four individuals, maybe even three three if you take Derek out of it. You got three individuals who we know were involved in this fight. So you put them all on trial. You present the evidence to the grand jury. You take these witnesses. You put them under oath.

Under oath. Yeah. And then they say what they say. And then the grand jury decides who gets prosecuted and what kind of movement goes forward with each of these three individuals. Isn't that the grand jury's job? Right. To convene to decide if there's enough for an indictment.

And whether it's an indictment of one person or multiple people. Right. And again, as we said in the first part, there's a third charge in, it's specific to the state of Pennsylvania, where you can be charged with third degree murder. And the threshold that has to be met for that is very, just a disregard for human life, third degree murder.

So there's no previous intent, just disregard for human life, third degree murder. So there's no previous intent, just disregard for human life. If you're choking someone to the point where they end up becoming incapacitated and then die from that choke, would you consider that a malice or disregard for human life? If you don't know how long a chokehold can be held until killing someone, that sounds like a disregard for human life to me. It is a disregard for human life. So is because they say they don't know who put him in a chokehold. OK, OK, that's fair.

But you what you do have is many other people. And I'll focus specifically on the four, the four boys. But you have all these four boys who are now lying and covering it up and not being honest about who put who in the chokehold. So I would consider that a disregard for human life as well. And what it seems here is the police and the DA's office, if they were involved in any kind of decision making to not move forward, it seems that they placed more value on the lives of these four kids than they did on Cody's life. That's just my opinion.

I may not be right, but that's what it feels like. Well, he's already dead and we don't know exactly what happened. We're not going to put the work into finding out because it's done. It's already done. And he was this troublemaker and we're not going to mess with these kids. Well, I brought up the last thing that Dale said about it not being in his court anymore, the ball not being in his court. He basically put the blame on the DA's office because he knew what I was saying. I was coming for blood at that point, no pun intended. We were not on the same team and my tolerance for his bullshit was gone. So he was trying to end it with me to leave me with one last thought that, oh, it's not him. It's the DA's office. But unfortunately for him, I'm playing chess. He's playing checkers because I had already

went that route with the DA and I had a different lead that I was following up that I never divulged to him, but he didn't know that. So we're going to get into that. We have one more break, but this next information we're going to talk about is extremely compelling because again, as Detective Dale Cannafari said, this is up to the DA's office. That's interesting. We'll get into why that's interesting right after this break. Okay. So we're back. Final break. We're going to get into this and we're coming to the end here. This has been a lot that we've already covered. The fact that we're, we're about 40, 50 minutes in, and these are all new things. It's not like we're just repeating the same thing over and over where we're, we're talking about new things every five minutes. So here's the final piece that

finally was the reason why I went back to Pittsburgh. I was working a lead where we have some great fans for Breaking Homicide. And some of them are local to the area of Munhall and happen to know people within the Allegheny County DA's office. They don't work there, but they know people, their friends, their neighbors, etc. And for those of you guys that are not familiar with it, with a DA's office, usually they'll hire former homicide detectives after they retire to work for the DA's office as investigators. So they may get a case, the lawyer, the DA in charge of it may not be certain as to whether they have enough or not, or whether to

believe everything they're seeing. So they'll have their own independent investigators look at the case as well. Now, remember before the break, I said that Dale Cannafari put this on them. So I had someone who was a supporter of the show. And again, just looking for the truth, reach out to an active investigator at the Allegheny County DA's office. And this person asked them specifically about this case because the show had just aired. And this email correspondence is shortly after the show appeared on TV. So again, I'll paraphrase to protect this person, but the fan of the show said, hey, did you see this breaking homicide the other night? What the hell's up with that? Sounds like a pretty clear cut case. What's going on here? And this investigator responded and he wrote, I didn't

see the program last night. And this is a quote, but it is all I've heard about this morning. I understand that many people are blaming the DA's office for a possible coverup. As you know, the officers in our unit could never, capital letters, never understand why charges weren't brought. I hope this moves someone to do the right thing. There are still good and honest cops here with total integrity. If I can ever help, just let me know. Good luck and God bless. That's an investigator from the DA's office. What do you think of that? That's a bold statement. I know you talked to some other police

officers who didn't want to give their names because they were afraid of retaliation. They don't want to lose their jobs, which I think speaks volumes all on its own. But this man as himself is speaking to this person and saying, we never in capital letters understood why charges weren't brought. That's very bold. I mean, it doesn't leave a lot of room for question, does it? That was my takeaway from it. And then again, these are individuals who are consulting with the DA's office when deciding whether or not to convene a grand jury or whether or not to bring charges. So did you ever get a straight answer of who decided not to bring charges? My opinion is that from my experience, the detective has to put together a

case. He'll get a meeting. He'll set up a meeting with the DA's office and say, hey guys, I know we worked this case in 2015. I got some new information. I followed up on it. I verified it. I think we have something here. And these are the individuals I think we have something against. Is there any way we could schedule a grand jury, convene a grand jury to present all this evidence to a jury of their peers and allow them to weigh in on whether or not there's enough? If there's not, and the grand jury decides that there's not enough to indict, you can't bring that person back in. So you only get one shot at it. But at this point, this is probably their best opportunity because nothing's

happened in three years at this point, 2018, 2019. So I believe it falls at the feet of the detectives. And I believe that they need to put together... The DA's office isn't going to do their job for them. They have to go out, they have to do witness statements, they have to interview people, put together a packet, present it to the DA's office, let the DA's office decide whether or not to convene a grand jury. Now, I will say this, I have nothing to prove that that didn't happen, but it doesn't seem like it did based on this email. Yeah, because usually that whole process is a lot more transparent in public. They'll talk about it in the media and they'll say, oh, the police did this. And then, oh, the DA decided to convene a grand jury or the DA decided because of this not to convene a grand jury.

And they'll kind of keep the public updated on the steps as they go. But as far as I could tell, it's been crickets. Nobody, no statement has really ever come from the DA's office, which is strange. That's right. Well, they said it's an open investigation, but that's it, that they can't comment on it, which again, it's just a lot of, it's a lot of blame game. Like nobody wants to take responsibility for why it hasn't gone forward. I, like I said, I believe it's with the Allegheny County PD, but you know, that's, that's my opinion on what I've heard. There was one more email between this fan and the investigator from the

DA's office. And again, there were things that were mentioned in there that would give him away, that would give this fan away. So I'm going to leave those out. But I thought there was a line in here that was, they were talking about one of the investigators on Cody's case initially, and how he's never worked for the DA's office at any point, because that was a rumor as well. But this is what he said here. Again, he goes, that person has never worked with us, but like I said, the unit here can't believe what happened from the very beginning with this whole case. He also went on to say, I hope you don't mistrust all police officers. Believe me, no one hates bad cops or incompetent cops more than the ones that go out every day and try to do the job the right way. Um, if I can ever help, don't hesitate to contact me.

And that was the end of that. Did you contact him? This was him saying it to the fan. He didn't know that I was going to see this. This was supposed to be between two friends. I was not supposed to have access to this. So you said the DA can't do the police's job, but with enough public pressure,

which I feel like did happen in this case, because there was a civil suit filed by Cody's family. You think the da would would be i guess pressured enough prompted enough to actually override the police and say yes we're sorry that this happened we're sorry that it didn't go the way it should have we're taking control of this now and we're going to look at the evidence and make a decision as to whether to convene a grand jury that didn't happen i agree I agree. It didn't happen, right? I agree. No, but you do say about public pressure.

This is after these emails and after the conversation with Detective Kanafari is when I decided to go public because I was pushing off Cody's family from having another gathering. I said, listen, there's some things going on behind the scenes. Let's just lay low for now because they were like, we want to go out there. We want to promote it. I said, no, let's just lay low for

now. Do the justice for Gino stuff. But I don't want to speak publicly yet because I'm speaking with individuals behind closed doors. After that conversation with Detective Cannafari, I knew nothing was going to happen. And so I did fly out to Pittsburgh. We had a gathering at a local park. It was in August of 2019. And I essentially laid out everything that I laid out to you guys tonight. I gave a speech. We're going to attach, there's an actual video clip from that day. Someone filmed it. That was there. There were multiple media outlets there. And I basically broke down what I broke down for you guys today to this group of individuals for the first time. And I wanted to let them know, but also let the media know what I was told,

what was being said behind closed doors in the hope that something would happen. Nothing never, ever did. I even went as far as telling people to contact the DA's office. I contacted the DA's office and one woman I spoke with said, you made my job a living hell because my phone hasn't stopped. But still, even with all that, as we sit here today, this case is still an open homicide investigation and nothing has happened as far as saying one way or the other, whether this was a murder or this was a case of self-defense. We're still sitting in limbo as we sit here today. So you got an autopsy report that says he was murdered.

You got several eyewitnesses who were there and stated what happened. You've got several people who were not necessarily eyewitnesses there at the time or even present, but knew the parties involved, all parties involved, and could speak to their character. You've got several police officers who came forward and said, yeah, we don't agree with what happened, but we're also afraid and we don't even want to be named because we don't even want to be involved in this. And that's crazy that nothing's happened. Is there some kind of call to action? Is there some kind of petition?

Is there some kind of pressure? Because I know we obviously don't, we don't want you guys emailing Detective Dale or any of those specific people, but I think it would be really, really helpful if the DA's office starts to get some more emails and some more letters and they start to feel like every single day when they come in at 8 a.m. and open their email or check their voicemail, if they're hearing Cody Joyce's name over and over and over again, there might be maybe some movement. I personally,

so I know like there's been talk of a cover-up or a conspiracy. I don't even know if it's that deep. I think it's the police completely screwed up this investigation. They didn't collect the evidence and they don't want people to know that. But I mean, still, it's been so long at this point that it would almost be worth it to throw those initial police officers under the bus and be like, yeah, they screwed up, but we want to make it right just to lay this to rest. And they haven't done that. So it does seem like they're closing ranks. And it does seem like there is some sort of conspiracy because a conspiracy doesn't necessarily have to mean like, oh, we're doing some grand plan it can just mean uh we know that this is this is what happened but we don't want other people to know that so we're all going to close ranks around each other very similarly to

how these kids behaved at the party when they were coming out with the same story that that really doesn't have any evidence to prove it was true because they all kind of decided on that before talking to the police, which is sad when the police department in your city or town is behaving in the same way that underage children do at parties. So that's disappointing to say the least. Yeah, it is disappointing. And, you know, I guess the call to action would be to call the DA's office, leave a message. I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you guys. We had over 1.2 million people watch Breaking Homicide. So maybe the power of Stephanie Harlow, maybe it makes a difference. I don't think we

should not act just because, but what I would say is just remain vigilant, but also don't hold your breath. There have been a lot of things that have been done in this case, but the reason I wanted us to cover the case here was because I made a promise to John and Paulette. Paulette's no longer with us, but I made a promise to John that I would do anything in my power to try to help push the ball forward. And having an audience like this with Stephanie, who has a big influence in the true crime space, having Crime Weekly where we're a small podcast, but we're a powerful one. I would have been remiss to not do this. And we had mentioned him by name.

So I'm glad we're doing it. exposed to this case and maybe just maybe one day whether we have a part in it or not someone will get off their their ass and finally do something about this case one way or the other yeah make some noise because i know there might be and i don't think that there's a lot of people thinking this because you wouldn't really be part of this community if you thought this but there's probably a lot of people out there saying well you know it's like a fight you know kids these things happen. Like imagine this was your child or your brother or your boyfriend or your husband. It's not even the fact that, yeah, it was a fight and let's see what happened.

It's the fact of, oh, they had a fight. Cody died and it seemed like nobody gave a shit that he was gone. And they didn't want to do anything to make it right. And if this is your child and you're out here fighting and making noise and still nothing's happening, that's a sign that the justice system is very broken. And if it's broken in this small town, Pennsylvania, how many other places is it broken? How many other people, how many other families are going through this exact same thing? So yes, it's just one case, it's just one person, but there is a bigger picture lesson to learn here, which is we can't let even one person get away with this.

We can't let even one law enforcement department get away with this because that sets a precedent and it starts a domino effect where all of these small towns all over America are gonna just kind of be doing whatever the hell they want, not following policy, not doing what's right. And no one says anything. No one puts a stop to it.

And it continues. And so Cody becomes John and Joyce and Elena and Helen and all these other people, all these other names that are lost. And they never got any justice. And we're not saying, like, throw these kids in jail. We're saying put them on trial so we can get to the bottom of what really happened. Because if it was just a fight, what do you have to fear? What are you afraid of? If you were defending yourself, prove it. Period. I'm not. And the period is the right way to say it because you just

said it perfectly. We're just asking for a grand jury to let them be judged by a group of their peers. My thoughts are with John, the rest of Steve, Jill, the rest of the family, Melody. If I'm missing anyone, I'm sorry. We're thinking of you guys. And again, we're not calling for the heads of these four individuals, so don't go harass them either, please. We don't really know where they are, do we? Well, maybe. Maybe one of us does but you know somebody's keeping a track on it but derrick i thought we were supposed to keep secrets from each other you're not keeping up your part of the bargain overall well you know gotta keep some secrets some aces in the hole right just in case um but overall i'm curious to know for those who are

watching on youtube or listening on youtube because we usually ask you guys a question and we want you to answer in the comments derrick and I had a little debate about self-defense and could four against one be considered self-defense. So I want you guys to answer that question because I'm curious. You know, it's just the two of us, so we have different opinions on it, but we also want to know what the general consensus is. In a four against one scenario, there's no weapons involved and nobody has a gun, nobody has a knife. That's important to make a distinction about. Do you think that four against one could ever in any

way, shape, or form be considered self-defense? And also, they're both men or they're all men or they're all females, so I'm not talking about, you know, kind of a mixed kind of gender thing here. So let me and Derek know in the comments of YouTube.

Absolutely. So should we switch it up to a lighter note before we end this one? We got some good news, right? First off, we want to say you guys will see this Friday or hear this Friday. Oh, yeah. Wednesday. Yeah. So for those of you who are listening on Friday, we have some exciting news, exciting news right yes do you want me to say it

yeah why not drop okay our merch is ready our first round of merch is ready we're both wearing it today yeah so you see how it says crime weekly it's got our logo on it can you model it for us and it says day oneers on the bottom. So that's going to be the special edition merch that we have for those of you who've been with us since day one. The people who are listening right now because we started off the podcast with nothing. No followers, obviously, like every other podcast starts off. And we wouldn't still be here and doing this if you guys weren't listening and watching. If you guys weren't listening and watching, listening and if you guys weren't listening and watching.

I'll get there. And you weren't commenting and interacting and following us on social media and giving us case suggestions and stuff like that. We wouldn't be here doing this. And we know that. And we want you to know that, too. So this this designs for all of you. We have long sleeve shirts and you're wearing a t-shirt right now right i am i am wearing the t-shirt right now we have sweatshirts we have tank tops

which is what i'm wearing right now um it happens to be my favorite because it is getting kind of hot here in new york uh we have mugs and stickers am i missing something nope you nailed it short sleeve long sleeve hoodie mug sticker, and the tank top. Yeah. So you go to crimeweeklypodcast.com, click shop. You'll see it right there. We teamed up with Bunker Branding. They will be shipping everything right out of Texas.

And we do have options for international shipping. So again, this will be a limited time thing. Eventually we'll sell just the logo, but this will not be on it. So we'll, we'll, we'll see what the interest is. We'll, we'll keep it there as long as there's people who are buying it. But at some point we're going to say, Hey, that's it because you could sign up and you're not actually a day one or at one point. So we want to make this for people who have like Stephanie just said, have been with us since the beginning so that down the road, hopefully as this can,

this channel continues to grow, um, this will become something that not many people have, which I think is kind of cool. And we are working on our undercover pineapple merch. We, we want you guys to send designs. If you're a graphic designers,

we have a couple, but we really want to just, you know, go through like a bunch and pick whichever one like calls to us because i found one that i liked and then derek was like i like it i like him i want to see as we start to ask i think we're gonna get a lot options okay he likes options i like options i do like but we but we appreciate it we appreciate your time um and we will see you guys next week. Now, next week, if things go right, should be the live show from CrimeCon 2021. I say that because we are, they never go right.

And we're waiting on the recording from CrimeCon and they're very busy. So we are covering Praveen Varughese. We're with lovely Varughese who was on stage with us. We would like to just take that and put it on here. So whoever could not attend CrimeCon will have the opportunity to hear Praveen's story. But again, we'll see how that plays out. Is there anything else I'm missing? I think you're good. I think I'm good. I will say at the end of this video, now that we're done talking, if you would like to watch the actual, um, the, the, the rally that we had where someone recorded the actual speech

I gave that day. And also John spoke and I believe Steve spoke. You can see it for yourself. We're going to be adding that to the end of this video. So feel free to watch that as well. Again, thinking of, uh, Cody's family and thank you everyone for taking the time to come here and listen or watch this. We really appreciate it. We'll see you next week, guys. Thank you so much. Later. You guys think I'd be on TV?

I think you should. Did you shut it off? No, you might have to talk to me right after. Right on it. Right on it. There you go. Awesome. Welcome to Pittsburgh.

Thank you. I'm back again. Thank you. Thank you. A short little story. Should I tell my traveling adventure? You should. Yeah, you should. Should I tell my traveling adventure today? So I flew in this morning and I got to D.C.

and when I landed, they decided to tell me they canceled my flight to Pittsburgh, so I wasn't going to be able to make it today. So John's like, oh, alright, well, whatever. I said, apparently you don't know me too well. So I rented a rental car and drove five hours. Woo! I'm not going to cover too much of what happened the night of the incident because frankly,

you guys know it just as well as I do, if not better for some of you. Some of you lived it. Some of you experienced it. So I don't want to sit here and rehash that. What I really want to talk about is what happened after the show, because those are the things you don't know about yet. And frankly, I've been keeping it from you because I've been trying to work with the Allegheny County Police Department. And for the integrity of the investigation, I haven't shared anything because ultimately we want justice, right? It's not about the show. It's not about television. It's not about these cameras. It's

about getting justice for Cody and having this judicial system work for you guys the way it's supposed to. So I haven't shared it until today. And unfortunately, due to some conversations I've had with the Allegheny Police Department, it's my gut feeling based on my 15 years in law enforcement that we're kind of at a dead end. But I'm going to let you guys be the judge because I'm going to share everything that happened with them. And as far as I'm concerned, professional courtesy is kind of off the table at this point. I let them do their job, let them have an opportunity to talk to the people that came forward. They didn't. So I'll share with you guys and then you can be the judge. How's that sound?

Okay. So first I want to start off with why did I take this case on? We get thousands of submissions for breaking homicide and and when i first read this case it seemed pretty closed and shut to me honestly you had a medical examiner who did a homicide with no sign of drugs you had multiple witnesses there you had individuals who had injuries to their arms that were indicative of a choke which was the cause of death for cody so for me, I'm like, you know, what's going on here? Why do I really need to go? And as I talked to John, and as I talked to Paulette, I realized it was one big question, and it was what's going on inside the DA's office? What's going on here? Why hasn't there been justice yet? Why hasn't there been

at least a grand jury? And so that's why I decided to come. And I said, you know what? Because I'm not going to lie to you, John knew this. I said, I'm not here to work for you. I'm here to find the truth. And if I find out that, you know, there's a reasonable explanation as to why charges haven't been brought, I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it on the show. I've done it before. And that was my goal to come in here and find the truth, not to find the truth for John, not to find the truth for Paul, Ed, or cody but to find the truth as exactly objectively what it was and what i left here with after completing my investigation was a bigger question why hasn't anybody been held accountable for cody's death it's that simple you have an autopsy report that ruled it asphyxiation

due to a chokehold you have multiple witnesses saying saying Cody was in a chokehold and yet nobody's been held accountable. I give this analogy all the time. You know, if I and three other guys go up to someone with a knife and that individual gets stabbed, if they can't identify who had the knife, we don't all walk away scot-free. It's just not the way it works. It's common sense. You don't have to be a lawyer to figure that out. So that's what I left you with. And I hoped that by calling out for a call for action, and I did on social media, some of you probably saw it, you know, reaching out to the Allegheny County DA's office, asking them to come out with some sort of statement or some closure for this family so that they can move forward. And I thank you guys for doing it because I can tell you that they received thousands of complaints and yet still no public statement.

However, because of what you guys did, I did receive a message from a detective, Dale Canafori, from the Allegheny County Police Department about a week after the show aired. So why do you think that is? It's because of you guys. It's because of you guys. Thank you for that. He reached out to me. He said he was now working the case. And we both agreed very, very quickly that this case needed to come to a resolution. There needed to be some type of closure. He didn't promise me an arrest. He didn't promise me a grand jury. He just said, you know, we've got to bring this case to a closure. That's the bottom line. And he said, if you have anything that you think would help i'd really like your assistance and i said well listen detective canafori i already have people emailing me and messaging me with information about this case that i think is advantageous to a possible prosecution he said okay i'm all for it but i'd like to start with

the uh individual who here saw the show. Okay, there we go. It was an individual on the show who was at the party that night and saw Cody in a chokehold, right? And saw what happened to him. And I kept that person's identity confidential for his safety. And the detective wanted to speak with him. So after confirming with that individual that it was okay, I shared that information. And the detective's immediate response was, oh, we already interviewed him. So after confirming with that individual that it was okay, I shared that information and the detective's immediate response was, oh, we already interviewed him. So, okay. You know, I'm not trying to question your work ethic here, but this guy, Detective Kenner Ford, he's been doing it a long time, 25 years in Pittsburgh.

I said, not to question your, you know, your rationale here, but in my experience, we do have cases as a detective where a victim or a witness will come forward at a later date with more information maybe it was because they were scared at first maybe because they didn't have time to remember maybe it was because it was scared of you know possible retaliation by the people involved there's a million reasons why someone wouldn't give everything to the police that very night when it happened it's called the supplemental report. There's actually a name for it. We do it all the time.

He said, all right, I'll call him by the end of the week. Okay, no problem. I'll keep this confidential. I won't put it out to anybody in the public. Week goes by, no call. Two weeks go by, no call. So finally, I called the detective back and I said, what's going on? Are you going to call him?

He said, yeah, I'll call him. Finally, after some phone talk, they get in touch. And the reason I know this is because the confidential informant called me and said, hey, Derek, I basically got me on the phone and said, you already gave a statement. There's nothing I can do with you. But thanks. I said, OK, that's that's interesting. So if you watch the show, then you know how I am. Nothing like that, though. So I call him back, the detective back, and I said, hey, Detective Canafori, what happened?

To his defense, he said, well, I told you. I think a defense attorney would rip him off. Now, I didn't say this to him, but last time I checked, our job isn't to play prosecution defense attorneys. They're gathering the information, collect it, and pass it along to the lawyers that make that decision, not the detective. However, I said, okay, so you're really interested in people who haven't been spoken to yet. That's what you're really interested in. I said, okay, well, I have a couple people who are character witnesses who can attest to the people involved with this case, the persons of interest, some of the individuals that were there that night. I'll pass that along to you. But more importantly,

I have an individual who has never spoken to police before, who came forward after the show, and will testify under oath that one of the persons of interest after the incident confessed to killing Cody. What do you think about that? That's great. You have someone who will say that they confessed to him? Absolutely. Let me confirm and make sure they'll speak to you. Sure enough, this individual, who is an upstanding citizen, never been in trouble, has no incentives to lie,

is actually friends with the persons of interest, was willing to speak with the detective. Gave him the information. He said, I'll call him first thing next week, Derek. That's big. Hey, thank you, Detective Canaporti. Beginning of the week comes, no call. End of the week comes, no call. Following me, no call. So finally I call the CI again. Did he call you yet? No, he hasn't. So I call Detective Canafori back again. Hey, why haven't you called him? Oh, I've been busy. You mean to tell me you have an individual who will tell you that one of your main persons of interest for a case you have not closed yet, that you ruled an open homicide investigation, is willing to speak and speak under oath that one of your persons of interest confessed to killing Cody and also confessed to covering it up with another one of the persons of interest.

It's never been spoken to police before, guys. Never. Yeah, I'll get around to him. Guys, as I sit here with you today, as I sit here with you today, he still has not called this individual. He's not going to. Why? I got to tell you, I'm not into sensationalism.

I was a police officer since I was 20 years old. I can tell you right now firsthand that I've never had a situation where we've had an open homicide investigation and someone wants to speak to me about possibly implicating someone in a murder and I don't call them for a month. I'd probably lose my job, to be honest with you. Absolutely. I'd probably lose my job. And listen, it doesn't, I don't take any pride in calling out cops because I'll be the first to tell you guys. Some of you may agree with it, some of you may not, I'm pro-law enforcement. I believe most cops are trying to do the right thing.

But when guys aren't doing their job, whatever their motive is, you gotta call it out. Especially in our society today where there's a lack of trust within law enforcement and our judicial system. That's why I'm doing this. My cameras for my show are not here today. I came up here on my own dime because it's the right thing to do. So that's why I'm doing this. My cameras for my show are not here today. I came up here on my own guy because it's the right thing to do. So that's why I'm here. There's no other incentive behind this, behind getting to the bottom of this, getting to the truth. And there's one more thing I want to share with you guys because it was kind of the nail in the coffin why I came here today.

Because after that last conversation I had with Detective Kana Hori, I asked him, Well, let me ask you something, Dale, before you call the CIA, because spoiler alert, I knew he wasn't going to call him. What's going to happen if he does, in fact, tell you that this individual confessed to killing Cody? He said, well, I got to be honest with you. It's not up to me. All I do is gather the information and then the Allegheny County DA's office will decide whether or not charges are brought forward. Come on up! Come on up! That's interesting because you told me at the beginning that you were going to work with them collectively,

make your recommendations, and we were going to see where this went. And now you're telling me it's 100% on the Allegheny County DA's office. He goes, yep, Kevin Chernosky is the guy you want to speak with. He's the guy that spoke with you guys before. He's the one in charge of this investigation. And frankly, just so you know, this is where I knew that he had spoken to Kevin Chernosky. Mr. Chernosky had attempted to set up a meeting with Paulette and John on a previous occasion, and they didn't show up. Well,

unfortunately for him, I already had that story from John. So I knew the truth. And I said, yeah, you're partially right. What happened was they wanted to meet with John and Paulette, and then John and Paulette smartly asked for a lawyer to be present why wouldn't you right and he said well who's the lawyer we're not going to say the name of the lawyer right now but they said oh no he can't come and if he comes the meeting's off so so john and paulette did not show up however correct me if i'm wrong you did show up at a later date had your meeting it was rescheduled it was rescheduled. It was rescheduled. So it doesn't make sense.

They showed up, they did their part, and yet nothing still has come out about this case. So why am I bringing that up? Well, as I just said, Detective Canafori said that the Allegheny County DA's office was responsible for this case. Well, we have some good fans at Breaking Homicide. And some of them are friends with investigators inside the Allegheny County DA's office. Investigators who are currently working there as investigators who consult with the lawyers because they're former homicide detectives themselves. So for the sake of this fan and also for the sake of this detective, because based on what he wrote, I believe he's trying to do the right thing. I'm not going to say his name, but I can tell you it came from his government allegheny county da.us email um and i'm going

to read you some of his responses after the show aired this was on june 18th at 147 pm okay this is from an investigator who currently works for the allegheny county da's office when they have homicides like this come in and he consults on it. This is what they do, okay? His response, not mine. I didn't see the program last night, but it's all I've heard about this morning. Thank you guys. That's because of you guys. Okay, so obviously they're talking about inside the business, all right? I understand that many people are blaming the DA's office for a possible cover-up. As you know, the officers in our unit never understood why

charges weren't brought in this case. I hope this moves someone to do the right thing. There's still good and honest cops here and with total integrity. That's email number one. Here's another one. The detectives here

at the DA's office are totally removed and not associated at all with the allegheny county police detectives like i said the unit here can't believe what happened from the very beginning but we were never involved these are actual cops inside their own offices saying this he doesn't know i'm gonna be reading it in front of all you guys in this news crew here, but we're doing it now. Again, this is his words. I hope this force is a grand jury and maybe this can be settled once and for all. Sir, I couldn't agree with you more. Absolutely. And he just, again, the last one here, he basically just says, again, we're not in charge of investigating this case. It was on the Allegheny County Police Department. And he's putting it on now.

So here's my problem. I want to work with them, but it's almost like I have two daughters. And it's almost like they're fighting over who has to do the chores. These are government agencies that are working for you. And they can't decide who's responsible for bringing charges. You have an autopsy report that indicates how someone was killed. You have bite marks on one of the persons of interest that indicates the charcoal wasn't in fact administered. You have a confession and a text message from one of the individuals.

You have a verbal confession from another one of the individuals. And yet I'm standing before you almost four years later, and it's still undetermined. I'm wrong. It's not right. Why is there a cover-up?

Who do you think they're covering up for? I'm not going to go to say there's a cover-up because I don't believe in conjecture and speculation. But I can tell you that as a police officer, I cannot answer why nothing has been done. I've consulted with lawyers from this area. There was lawyers on the show. And I don't understand that if this was a case of self-defense per se, that should have been set three years ago. As of today, this is an open homicide investigation they have all the facts they've interviewed all the people except the ones that i brought forward if they haven't ruled in self-defense yet they're

not going to but that's why i'm here today because i'm asking for your help again okay we got to raise the stakes we got to raise up the heat i can tell you i don't know if she's going to show up or not but i just got off the phone with Lisa Middleman. Yeah. Hi. I got a number from a friend, and I called her cell phone and said, hi, it's Derek. And supposedly she's going to stop by. We'll see if she actually does. And she wants to say a few words. She's familiar with the case.

So hopefully she shows up. But what I'm asking before I get into the politics of it, because frankly, guys, I don't live here. You guys do. This is your place of business. This is you work this is where you live this is where your kids live okay everyone needs to be treated equally so what I'm asking for you to do is we go out there we send emails to the Allegheny DA's office we send them to politicians we send them to anybody you think will listen phone calls I don't care do what you have to do be respectful

but be persistent and we're not asking we're not demanding for an arrest we're not demanding for a grand jury we're demanding an answer we want to know yes or no is there going to be a grand jury convened or are you closing this case and if you're closing this case we want the police reports released we want to see them for ourselves if you're going to take the law here in Pennsylvania and apply it to this case and come to the conclusion that no charges should be filed, we want to see those facts and circumstances that brought you to that conclusion. You owe that to this family. To leave them in limbo, it's not right. And I'll say something

else you may not agree with. You have four persons of interest connected to this case, and I'm not saying their names intentionally, but you have four individuals that many people believe should be in jail right now. Is that fair to say? Yes. Okay, let's look at it from the other side. Do they deserve to have this finally closed one way or the other? Either they go to jail or they're vindicated, one way or the other. Absolutely. They're going through their lives right now kind of in the middle because nothing's been released. So everybody deserves an answer and the only people who can give that to us is the allegheny county da's office and i have to call out kevin chinoski and i have to call steven zapala that's their job

get some cases where you'll have dna the science and technology hasn't caught up yet you have to wait this is not one of those cases guys so i thank you guys for coming um i'll definitely answer any questions that's a good question actually i gotta i gotta let mon haul off the hook a little bit here because overall the allegheny county police Department is responsible for the homicides. They turned it over to them very early in the process. So they are basically the overall jurisdiction for this case. And Munn Hall couldn't release anything even if they wanted to.

But as you saw on the show, there were some police officers who reached out to me who were in the show who are in fear of retaliation or losing their jobs. But I think we know how most of them feel they were there that night for the officers that were there and saw what transpired they know what happened good so we did what we were asked to do writing a letter to the fire association i'm probably with many steve for sure got letters back in the mail that said thanks but no thanks we can't do anything down here call the state attorney general. Right. We're going to be right before you. Correct. How do we as a team, where are we going?

You know what people really care about sometimes? Votes. Absolutely. Vote them out. I mean, how... Yeah, but we're small. You're small, but that's why we're doing this. And listen, I'm a realist. John knows this. I call it how I see it. I'm not promising you guys that you're going to get the fairy tale ended. I'm not.

I'm just telling you what the facts are as we sit here today. Because at the end of the day, I could just keep it to myself and you'd never know what happens. But as of right now, this is where it stands. And I'm telling you, I'll put myself out there telling you that as a former detective, I've never seen a case conducted this way. So I'm hoping that with the continued pressure and competition against them, if Lisa Middleman actually got the votes, apparently she did. She got the signatures required that something changes because Cody's family is not the only family that's experienced

this. So you may be one small group, but there are many small groups out there. And there's two options. You can try and leave it all on the field and say, hey, whatever happens, it wasn't for lack of effort. Or you can do nothing. That's up to you. Like I said, I don't live here. I don't vote. But I know it's right and I know it's wrong. This isn't right.

So collectively, where do we just keep pressure in our association, the DA, the AG, just everybody? Absolutely. Absolutely. Listen, from what I understand understand this is an election year right if you don't well keep calling out for them keep calling the media outlets they love that call them too and listen they're your best and listen i have my pros and cons with that media they have their pros and cons with me too but it's it's one of those things where they are an asset they are a tool and genuinely they want to get the truth out there. Hey, they're

here, are they? They are, yeah. Yes. So, again, you don't want to focus on the negative. Raise this phrase my whole life. Focus on what you can control. And what you can control is your voice and your words. And your vote.

Don't give up. And again, I hate the politics of it. Like I said, I'm not hearing, I don't know her from a hole in the wall. All I know is what's working right now with what the current administration is, it's not working appropriately. And it's not, people aren't being held accountable. And so I really can't tell you exactly why that is to answer your question. But I can tell you that this goes higher than just a couple people, in my opinion. When I first spoke to the detective, as I said, he was very optimistic about this. And then after he spoke with certain individuals, the story completely changed.

And if there's one thing I know, it's people. And I knew the minute I heard his voice where it was going. And that's why I decided to do this. We didn't want to do this. This is not what I want to be doing. It comes off as, you know, you're trying to sit in front of me. It's not what I want to be doing. I'd rather be down here for a press conference because they can be the grand jury personally.

But unfortunately, you got to do what's right. It's my own brothers and sisters that may be involved. And so be it. But I have a feeling there's people above them that are ultimately making the decisions. And that's the people we got to get to because a lot of them are in elected positions. They're not guaranteed their jobs. You decide. I would contact everyone.

What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? Contact everyone. Right now we're streaming this. There's probably a couple hundred thousand people watching. So you say you're a small group, but I have 500,000 people that buy in. So a few of them might have a call or email to make.

Trust me, it wasn't just you guys who made the emails and calls the first time. It was a lot of the people who watched the show. We had over a million people watch the show. So you just got to keep fighting. I wanted to share it with you because at minimum, regardless of what happens, you deserve to know. This was a national television show. And not one statement was made by the Allegheny County DA's office in regards to this case. To me, it's just a lack of disrespect. It's a lack of respect for this building. Why not even call them? You don't have to release anything publicly. Call them on the

side and say, hey, this is where we're at. We're still working it. Don't worry. Nothing. To me, that's not right. And if it was my kid, I wouldn't let it go. It'd be a sad day for them because I'd be there every day, personally. And that's why John's doing what he's doing. That's why Steve's doing what he's doing. And if Paulette was here, she'd be doing it as well. I made a promise to her beforehand, before she passed away, unfortunately. We were texting back and forth. We were very optimistic about the way this was going to go. And I promised her that. I couldn't promise her there was going to be a respite. I promised her I would never give up. I implore you to do the same thing

because I'm not going to stop you. So I hope that you do the same. I thank you guys for coming out. Steve might want to speak. I'm hoping Lisa shows up. She's the real person we want to push because she's someone who can make a difference. But I do appreciate you guys coming. I wish I had better news. But unfortunately, this is the reality. If you want change, it starts with us. So thank you for listening. And I'll turn it over to... Thank you.