Crime Weekly - S3 Ep114: Jennifer Kesse: "Chino" (Part 3)

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Orlando, Florida - Home of Mickey Mouse and sunny beach vacations, a city that 60 million people flock to every year whether it’s for the theme parks or just the sun and heat that South Florida is known for. But for the friends and family of 24 year old Jennifer Kesse, this city would become a symbol of all that was wrong and evil in the world. Jennifer was last seen on January 23rd, 2006, she spoke to her family and her boyfriend on the phone that evening and said she was going to bed, she was tired from a trip she had just home from. But the next day, when she didn’t show up for work, her parents traveled to her Orlando condo and found everything normal, as if she had woken up and planned to go to work that day. There was still water in the shower, clothes tossed on an unmade bed, and a wet towel in the laundry room. Days later, Jennifer’s 2004 black Chevy Malibu would be found abandoned a mile down the road, in a not so great part of town, but the car held no clues as to where Jennifer Kesse was either. The one clue that law enforcement was able to retrieve should have cracked the case wide open. It was surveillance video of a person parking Jennifer’s car and walking away from it without even a glance back, and the surveillance clicked a photo of this person every three seconds, and every three seconds this person's face was obscured by a tall wrought iron fence. To this day, Jennifer Kesse has not been found, dead or alive, and the people who love her have fought tirelessly for answers, a fight that included receiving over 16 thousand pages of police records on the investigation, and these pages held more clues which has only fed the fire of this mystery. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: PDS Debt PDS DEBT is offering free debt analysis to our listeners just for completing the quick and easy debt assessment at www.PDSDebt.com/crime. Beis Right now, BÉIS (base) is offering our listeners 15% off your first purchase by visiting BEISTRAVEL.com/CRIMEWEEKLY Alo Moves For a limited time, Alo Moves is offering my listeners, a free 30-day trial PLUS – get this - 50% off an annual membership. But you can only get it by going to ALOMOVES.com and use code CRIMEWEEKLY in all caps. Lomi If you want to start making a positive environmental impact or just make clean up after  dinner that much easier, Lomi is perfect for you. Head to LOMI.COM/CRIMEWEEKLY and use the promo code CRIMEWEEKLY to get $50 off your Lomi. 

Now at Verizon, we're locking in low prices for three years, guaranteed, on MyPlan. And you can get a single line for just $45 a month when you switch and bring your phone. That's our best price ever on Unlimited Welcome, with autopay plus taxes and fees, guaranteed for three years. Because at Verizon, we got you. Visit your local DC Verizon store today. $20 monthly promo credits apply over 36 months with a new line on Unlimited Welcome. In times of congestion, unlimited 5G and 4G LTE may be temporarily slower than other traffic. Domestic data roaming at 2G speeds. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions

apply. This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. I've got good news and bad news. Here's the bad news. Most protein bars are packed with sugar and unpronounceable ingredients. The good news, there's a better option. I'm Will and I created IQ Bar plant protein bars to empower doers like you with clean, delicious, low-sugar brain and body fuel. IQ Bars are packed with 12 grams of protein, brain nutrients like magnesium and lion's mane, and zero weird stuff. And right now, you can get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Try our delicious IQ Bar sampler pack with 7 plant protein bars, 4 hydration mixes, and 4 enhanced coffee sticks.

Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar. Go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Again, go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products plus free shipping. Again, go to EatIQBar.com and enter code BAR20. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur.

So today we're finishing up with the Jennifer Kessie case. This is the third and final episode. And tonight we're basically going to go over theories, basically, because there's actually a pretty strong theory that a lot of people believe is the theory to go with in this case. And we're going to talk about where the case is now, because actually as of 2023, I think January of 2023, there's been some new developments and there's been some movement on the case, which is great because Drew and Joyce Cassie have not stopped. And I don't think they will stop. They will either die or find out what happened to Jennifer, but they'll never stop trying to figure out what happened to their daughter. So we should dive right in. Do you have anything that you want to say?

Nope. Let's get to it. We have had a lot of people DM us about their theories as well, and people are commenting on the videos. So yeah, I think this is what people want to talk about. All right. So in 2016, Jennifer Kesey was declared legally dead by the state of Florida. And her father, Drew Kesey, said, quote, That was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. I stood in a courtroom alone while a judge declared her deceased, end quote. But this kind of kickstarted everything. This was really when Jennifer's family began pushing their own investigation into high gear. They hired a private investigator and they also retained a lawyer in an effort to obtain

Jennifer's case file from the Orlando Police Department. And in January of 2018, on the 10-year anniversary of Jennifer's disappearance, the police and Drew and Joyce Kesey spoke at a press conference during which a links bus with Jennifer's face on it, as well as information about how to obtain the $15,000 Crimeline reward for information about what happened to Jennifer, was on display. And something interesting I read in one of these articles about that press conference. So during this press conference, the papers reported that Joyce Cassie's car was broken into, and her purse and her cell phone were stolen. And this article doesn't obviously give a lot of details about this event besides to say that

the Orange County Sheriff's Office was investigating. But I figure if it was just like a standard robbery thing and Joyce hadn't been targeted specifically, we would have heard about that. You know, like Joyce's car was just one of many that was broken into that day when everyone, including the police, were busy with this press conference. But as far as I can tell, it seems to have just been Joyce's car that was broken into, her cell phone taken, her purse taken. And I don't know why, but that detail kept nagging at me because it's like, you're giving a press conference for your daughter who's been missing for 10 years. You're asking for more information. You're talking about the reward, $15,000 for information. And then your car gets broken into and your purse and your phone gets stolen. But it's not like just a random robbery. It seems to be targeted. Like, am I crazy for thinking

there's more to this than there is? I mean, you're not crazy for thinking it. It could be a coincidence, but I do think with the surrounding circumstances, it does make you wonder, is there more to it? Because with everything that's happened in this case, it does seem in certain situations like this was more premeditated than some random act of violence. So you wonder how deep it goes, right? Like how many people may be involved with this and what lengths would they go to try to cover it up? Yeah. And like, what are they doing with, you know, her purse, her cell phone, things like that? It's almost like somebody knows something, right? Maybe more than one person. They know what happened to Jennifer Kessy and they're still walking around out there. And we would assume,

you know, at least at the time of this press conference, maybe even still living in Orlando, Florida. And now this press conference happens and Joyce's car out of all the cars of all the people who are at the press conference gets broken into. So I just thought that was kind of strange. Like somebody's messing with her or they want something or something like that. I'm not sure. Could be completely random, but it could also be, it could be the person involved with this that was getting some type of gratification out of seeing what she had been typing in her phone. There's a million explanations for it, but I don't think it's fair to say, oh, yeah, just a random act of violence. Who knows? We don't know. Yeah, because it seems like her car was the only one. So that'd be a huge coincidence, I feel like, right? And usually

you'll have a string of them where multiple cars that evening will be broken into. It's not just one car out of the whole street. Yeah, there's like a car robber and they're like, oh, the police are doing a press conference and they're not out patrolling the streets right now. Let me just go in and like break into all of these cars parked in this parking lot. Yeah. Hand checking all the cars. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know about that, but I also found out that the Cassies ended up paying over $80,000 for case files. That's bananas. So like they actually paid the money to the Orlando Police Department to like have everything redacted and this, this and that. Like they paid over $80,000 for case files. And that was something I found out actually from a recent article,

which was dated in January of 2023, when the Cassies marked 17 years of not knowing what happened to their daughter. Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy that they had to pay that much to just get the investigation. I know there's probably a cost associated with it. Like you said, someone human has to go through and redact all that. So they basically have to read every single page because if they don't redact something and it gets out there, it's their ass on the line. So honestly, the cost is probably in line with how much it would take to do that much to read all those pages. However, I don't think the family should be responsible for that. With all the frivolous spending that

we have in our government, 80,000 sounds like a lot of money to you and I, but to these budgets that they have for this, they should find a way to cover that or at minimum offset the cost for the family. Because what if this family did not have the type of money that the Kessies were able to raise? They just don't get any answers? Exactly. Financial status should never be a barrier to entry for a family to get their loved one's case.

That's crazy. Yeah. Or to even try to continue fighting for justice when you don't think the police department is doing enough. And I think Drew Kessie said when all is said and done, they spent something like $600,000 or $700,000 up until now on, you know, searching for her and hiring PIs and hiring lawyers and, you know, just putting out rewards and stuff like putting her face everywhere. You know, it's on buses and there's flyers. And, you know, Drew Cassie said said, we still, even to this day, we want to make sure that South Florida is just like a walking billboard for Jennifer. We want

her face everywhere, which is, you know, super smart. But the Kessies would launch their lawsuit against the Orlando Police Department in December of 2019. And the year prior to that, Orlando Rowland became the chief of police for the Orlando Police Department. And he hadn't been in charge at the time of Jennifer's disappearance, but he found himself sympathizing with Drew and Joyce Kessie. So Rowland actually gave his investigators six months to continue working Jennifer's case to see if they could come up with anything new. And then after that, he decided he would support Jennifer's family in their fight for these files. Although apparently he didn't support a price decrease because- Yeah, clearly not. That might be out of his control to be fair. I mean, that's a city, that's a government thing, right? He's an employee just like the rest of them. Could he have advocated for it more? Probably. But I will tell you, these city halls, man,

these town halls, they're cheap i know man it was a joke you don't have to defend him damn going after roland and i love that i love i love the fact that he gave him a say he said yeah you know what as we said last episode it's been long enough i'll give you six months you guys are on notice solve it or it's going to him period i love it like he didn't just pull it out from under them He said hey, whatever you got left whatever you're considering Working you got six months. It's just a long time. That's a long time And to give them that courtesy internally to say hey, whatever theory you're thinking whatever avenue you want to explore

Do it because otherwise it's going out. I love that Yeah, and orlando roland said quote I can understand why they are frustrated do it because otherwise it's going out. I love that. Yeah. And Orlando Roland said, quote, I can understand why they are frustrated. I can understand why they would feel that maybe an agency like ours has not delivered in a way that they would expect for an agency to do. After the number of years that we've spent trying to solve Jennifer's disappearance, I think it was time to also honor the wishes of the family. The family wants closure. We want to find the person responsible for her disappearance. I think it's a win-win for all, end quote. The Kessies would eventually reach an agreement outside of court with the Orlando Police Department, and this would include

Jennifer's parents and their PI taking possession of over 16,000 pages of documents and 67 hours of video and audio. But part of this agreement stated that the Orlando Police Department would no longer be leading the investigation. From that point on, the only people who would be actively investigating were Jennifer's parents and their private investigator, Michael Toretta, who claimed that when he received and reviewed the files, which is something he did more than once, I think he said he ended up going through those files like three separate times. He said he was amazed at what law enforcement

hadn't done and the people that they hadn't talked to. Michael Toretta said, quote, there's never been a quarterback in this case. There's a lot of information that could have been developed that I believe wasn't in the most critical hours of the investigation, end quote. This is interesting to me. It doesn't look like the Orlando Police Department are just like taken off the case, but it's like they're not going to be actively investigating it, which it doesn't seem like they were

at that point anyways, right? In like 2018, 2019, we're gonna talk a little bit more about it at the end, but when the Kessies got these files, they said nothing had been added. Nothing had been written into the files or added in like over a decade. So it doesn't look like the Orlando Police Department was like super high priority with this case to begin with, which is odd to me because I feel like this is a case that, you know, a woman's missing,

so she could still be alive out there. This might be a case that you would want to follow all leads. And objectively, I think you'll agree with me once we go through this episode, that is not what happened here. Like, they did not follow all the leads at all. I am not quite sure why the police department in this case chose to sort of half-ass this. And, you know, once again, Orlando Roland comes on, you know on later in the game. He clearly has a grip on things. He clearly wants to see things done right. But by this time, it's kind of already been a mess and too much time has passed. And there's nothing you can really do to rectify that situation at this point. Yeah. So a couple of things. I apologize if earlier, and I might've said it

right. I can't remember, but I think I said 80,000 pages and you said it was $80,000 for 16,000 pages. So if I got that wrong, I apologize. Yeah. I'm with you. I want to hear the facts about the case. It definitely seems like there could have been more done. It's an interesting play there where they're saying, okay, we're going to release it to you. We're not going to fight you there, but we're no longer the lead investigators on it. And to be completely transparent, that's not a big loss because as you just said at this point it's a box sitting in a storage room and maybe every couple years a cold case unit might get together or a meeting where they go through it take a quick look at it but other than that just

collecting dust and it it could be considered negligence and i'm not saying it's not but it also could be there's so many other they might have if they had done their job let's just say they had investigated all leads well you can't get blood from a stone if they have no nothing else to follow up on their they have new cases coming in every day just like this one that are that are important to the people that were affected by it so it gets put into the evidence room and gets buried by the newer cases. Not saying it's right, just telling you the reality of the situation. But I think at this point, as you just said perfectly, they haven't really done it up to this point. So they're kind of trying to build a house on a shitty foundation. So that's why the chief is saying, Hey guys, if there's anything you wanted

to do, you got six months and let's be honest, you're probably not going to do much in six months because we know what we got here and it wasn't done correctly. So I don't think it's much of a loss to not have them as the lead investigators. And I don't think there's any evidence that the private investigator would collect at that point where there might be a chain of custody issue because it's not going to be a tangible piece of evidence like blood or anything of that nature. It might be a witness statement where he may go interview people. He's doing recordings. And if that happens, hypothetically, he goes and interviews witness X and they give a really great statement. He's going to relay that to the Orlando police department and they would have to re-interview

them. So yes, they're not the lead investigators, but it does seem like, Hey, if you come to us with something, we're going to, we're going to go from there. But it's the balls in your court. And I actually love this. I wish more departments would do it like this. I think that'd be great. Yeah, because it seems like, obviously, you know, the Kessies and their private investigator, they can't make arrests, right? They can't do stuff like that.

So if you find something that is substantial, the police will step in. If there's something that needs to be searched, the police will step in. Like if you have enough evidence to show that something may have happened here and we have to search this field or this lake or this forest, the police will come in. They'll make arrests if they need to. That's right. They're sort of taking a backseat, which, I mean, they have for the past decade on this. So no biggie. No harm, no harm,

no foul, no loss. Right. Nobody's going to investigate it harder than their own family anyways. And you have some initial stuff in there. I love the idea of having a PI on it as well as someone who may have an investigative background. So you are trying to do things close to how law enforcement would do it. Yeah. Like a liaison sort of, you know, you want to do it the right way because whatever you collect, you want to be able to use it. So you want to try to do it the right way and so that you can present it to the law enforcement in a way where they're going to be receptive to what you have. Yeah, and the PI, Michael Toretta, he said he wanted to put this case together one puzzle piece at a time. And so the first place he started was Mosaic and Millennial, the apartment complex that Jennifer had only been

living in for two months when she disappeared. And this is the place that both the Cassie family and the Orlando Police Department believed to be the scene of the crime, the location from which she was abducted. Michael Toretta believed and still believes that it was important to speak to some of the people who were living at the complex to get an idea of how others perceived life at Mosaic, whether they felt it was safe and secure, or if there were things that had left residents feeling unsettled. And we actually have a lot of firsthand accounts from people, specifically young women, who did live there around the same time as Jennifer or a little bit after. And many of these women spoke about somebody who did leave them feeling a little unsettled, someone who was friendly, but kind of also creeped them out

a little bit at the same time. And that person was a maintenance worker who went by the name of Chino. And this is not his real name. This is like, I guess, a nickname that he went by. And this Chino person, along with another maintenance worker named Ben, once again, not his real name, just a nickname, they were often seen together. And they seem to be the main focus when it comes to suspects or persons of interest. And there's just much more known about Chino, or at least these women who lived there had more to say about Chino. Most of the people who have made statements about Chino have asked not to be identified, so we won't be using their real names here. And we're going to start with Morgan, who was 19 when she moved into Mosaic at a millennial. She initially lived with two other roommates while she was attending college classes during the day and bartending at a local restaurant at night. And this was her first

real apartment, like her first place where she was living on her own. So she'd wanted to live close to downtown Orlando so she could go out and have fun with her friends, but she also wanted to be someplace safe as a young single woman living on her own. Now, Morgan lived at Mosaic between 2003 and 2007. And when she moved in, she said it was an up-and-coming area, and the complex seemed to be doing well because almost all of the units were full, and it felt more safe. You know, just in general, there was more people living there. It seemed like their promises of security were being held to better. But not long after, Mosaic began doing the work of converting apartments into

condominiums. And because of that, there was construction happening all year round, basically around the clock constantly. And people began to move out as well. So by the time Jennifer Kessie moved in, in late 2006, the complex was struggling to get tenants and there were tons of vacant units. Now, Morgan didn't know Jennifer Kessie, even though she lived in the building right next to Jennifer's. Jennifer hadn't been there long enough to meet the neighbors. You know, she moved in in November. She was missing by January. However, Morgan said that when she saw the figure on that surveillance tape, you know, the person who was parking Jen's car and furtively walking away,

Morgan said she recognized him. Morgan said the person on the footage looked like Chino. She said, quote, the posture, the height, the hair, it was him. I'd been there for three years at this point, and if it wasn't him, it was someone very, very similar in shape, size, and stance. To this day, it makes me sick to my stomach, end quote. So Morgan said that Chino was very thin, a very small framed person with a bit of a hunched over posture. She said even the way his clothes fit, oversized and baggy, this resembled the person of interest in Jennifer's case. Morgan said that Chino's hair was longish and black, almost in like a bowl cut. She said it wasn't faded or shaped up. It was just kind of long and flowy. But why would Morgan think

that this man, Chino, could have been involved in whatever happened to Jennifer? It couldn't just be because he resembled the person of interest. There had to have been something else that made Morgan feel a little weird about Chino. And we are going to discuss that when we come back from break. This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. I've got good news and bad news. Here's the bad news. Most protein bars are packed with sugar and unpronounceable ingredients. The good news, there's a better option. I'm Will, and I created IQ Bar plant protein bars to empower doers like you with clean, delicious, low-sugar brain and body fuel. IQ Bars are packed with 12 grams of protein, brain nutrients like

magnesium and lion's mane, and zero weird stuff. And right now, you can get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Try our delicious IQ Bar sampler pack with 7 plant protein bars, 4 hydration mixes, and 4 enhanced coffee sticks. Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar. Go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Again, go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20.

Okay, we're back. So Morgan knew Chino because he worked as a maintenance guy at Mosaic and Millennial. And she claimed that although Chino was very friendly, he also kind of creeped her out. On the House of Broken Dreams podcast, Morgan stated, quote, there was a gentleman named Chino who worked there. And when I would be out late at night walking my dog after my bartending job, three or four o'clock in the morning, he would just be out walking around the parking lot. He would always walk up to me. Hey, how are you? What's going on? I always had this uneasy feeling, but then I also just thought, you're being paranoid. It's late and it is dark, but you know this guy works here. You know him,

all of these things. I said, what do you do around here? He goes, I'm actually dating someone who lives in the building over there. He would point down yonder, but I never saw that person. I never saw him go in or out of the units, so I wasn't sure where he lived. There would be times when he would come over to try to knock on my door and just pop in, be friendly, ask questions, ask if I had any books to recommend. I'd share DVDs, and he was really, really friendly. Keep in mind, if any maintenance needed to be done, he was the one that was in there, so naturally, you start to have a relationship, you know, a cordial one. He would just come by often, unexpectedly, and nothing ever happened,

and I never was put in a really uncomfortable situation, end quote. So Morgan thought that it was a little strange that Chino would be knocking on her door late at night or early in the morning, and he always had an excuse or a reason. He would say, you know, I was just out walking around, and I thought I'd stop in and see what you were up to. I saw your light on, et cetera, et cetera. Or, you know, me and my girlfriend got into a fight. I needed to get out of the house. And he was always very friendly and attentive. You know, he would ask Morgan about

her night at work. How was school going? But Morgan felt that the whole thing was off. She said, quote, he was friendly, but it was in this fake textbook kind of way, kind of staged, didn't know his real name, didn't know his last name. He was this mystery guy who was just friendly, end quote. Morgan said that she went to college during the day and she worked at night, so she had a very set schedule. And it would have been easy for Chino, who was always at the complex, or someone else like him to have picked up on the pattern of that schedule. She said she would even joke around with him and ask, you know, what's going on? Like, how often do you and your girlfriend fight? Like, how are you always out here walking around? You know, why are you and your girlfriend always getting into fights at like three or four in

the morning? Yeah, I think there's a few things that I'm reading into this. So first off, this guy Chino, I know it might seem difficult on the surface, but there's some investigative work that can be done there to try to identify this person at minimum. I'm not saying that they're the guy, but to at least look into them. There's only so I know there's other people in the building, but law enforcement can go over to this building that he supposedly lives in. You could start knocking on doors and you speak to every single tenant in that building until you find someone potentially who has a boyfriend named Chino.

Now, if you don't, now it raises the stakes a little bit because now you have a person who's already lying to other tenants and you have to ask yourself why. Chino needs to be found. I don't know if they have. I don't know if we're going to get into that, but he needs to be identified. He needs to be spoken to. I don't know where this is going. You might tell me in the next section that they already did.

But one other thought that I had, maybe this has been done, maybe it hasn't, but it's no secret that many people think that there's a strong possibility that the suspect was someone who worked at the facility, a contractor, a journeyman, someone like that who was on the property. Okay. If that's the case, I'm finding out from building administration every single person that was working that day. And it might have to go to subcontractors, things of that nature. I know that some people, I see you nodding your head. To the best that I can, I'm trying to identify every single person who may have been working that day. Then what I'm doing, it would have to be voluntary at this point.

What I'm doing, again, it's outside the box, but I'm going to create a video lineup. And what I'm talking about here is I'm going to ask them, request that they dress in their work attire, and I'm going to have every single one of them walk by that camera the exact same way they would around the exact same time of day. And I'm just going to try to compare their figure to the person that we've identified on camera. We don't know who it is, but is there anybody based on the angle of that camera that has a similar walk, a similar posture, a similar maybe bun, something like that as they walk by the camera where I see the two videos side by side and it looks like it could be them.

For a lot of people in that lineup, it's not going to look like them. They might be too tall, too short, too heavy, too thin, but you may have a couple that are similar in size and stature, might narrow down your pool of people that it could be, and you can start to investigate those individuals more thoroughly. You were nodding your head, so I might be getting ahead here. What do you want to say? Listen, here's my question. Do you think it's appropriate for a man who works at the complex to be knocking on tenants' drawers, like doors, not drawers, doors, young women who are single in the middle of the night at like three, four in the morning? Do you think that's appropriate or professional? I know it's rhetorical, but absolutely. Yeah, absolutely not. That's suspicious to me in general. Yeah. A hundred percent.

Cause like, what are you doing? You know, what is your goal? Yeah. You got to find that person, especially on the surface. I mean, you might be like, oh, maybe they're just a weirdo, but that's all you have. So you have to look into it. You have to go down that, you got to go down that road until you get to a dead end. That's it. You have to go all the way now, whether they did or not, that's a different end. That's it. You have to go all the way. Now, whether they did or not, that's a different question. If they weren't able to identify this person, well, that's something you really got to look into. You said they did? They talked to them. Okay, good. So we're going to get there. But just on the surface, and I have a feeling this wasn't

done because it would be kind of a little bit of a logistical nightmare. I would try to get every single contractor that was working at that property the day before, the day after, the day of, and say, hey guys, you got nothing to hide. Listen, we just wanna rule you out. So everyone just, we're gonna transport you down the road. We're gonna have you walk. It's gonna take five minutes.

We're gonna have you one by one walk by this camera and we'll have someone radioing up to us so we have a way of tracking who's who, right? Hey, this is Derek Levasseur walking by now in three, two, have them walk by. You're going to get the same frame rate, the same camera, the same angle, the same fence, the same palm tree. And hopefully they're wearing a similar outfit because a lot of journeymen will wear the same outfit, especially if they're like a painter or something like that. So have them walk by worst case scenario. No one matches a description. Best case scenario, you get four or five that look just like the guy on camera.

And now you got some more potential leads to explore. Yeah. What it seemed like to me was the apartment complex, Mosaic and Millennial, didn't have like the best records about who was working there. That's kind of what, kind of the, and we're going to talk a little bit more about it. But that's kind of the impression that I got. Like, I believe people just showed up like it was kind of one of those things where it's like, oh, if you can work, you know, there was like a set amount of people who were employed by them. But then they had subcontractors and contractors and people who

just show up if there needed to be specific work done or if they were free that day. So it was kind of like you never really knew who was there and who was working and what was doing what. And we're going to talk more about that. And that's common, right? Like the apartment complex will hire a company, right? That's not super common, actually. Not at all. I'm telling you, firsthand, it's common.

I've investigated these types of cases where you have the company. When I hire a contractor, right? Even if I'm doing a you the company when I hire a contractor right even if I'm doing a studio right now I hire a carpet company I might speak to one person but I'm not asking them for the names and date of births of all their employees that are going to show up that day so when I'm hiring Joe's carpets Joe might have seven guys that work for him now I don't know if they're on the books, if they're off the books. So when you think about all the tasks

that are going on at an apartment complex, whether it's carpentry, painting, plaster, landscaping, whatever it might be, you're hiring five or six companies. Now, those five or six companies may have four or five managers, may have two different teams. Now, those teams may have guys underneath five managers may have two different teams now those teams may

have guys underneath them who are the lower paying guys where they're having trouble getting people so they're just bringing in anyone so you have this tear effect where you may have a point of contact for the main person who runs those companies but as far as who they're employing you could end up hiring five companies but have 40 different people on a job site any given day. That's, that's very common in contracting. So let me clarify, it kind of seemed like even the complex didn't really know who all the people were, like, maybe the guys would bring like their friends, or they would call a couple of their buddies and like, oh, yeah, if you work for the day, you'll get like 40 bucks kind of thing and so it was like nobody had like a complete staff list which i think is incredibly irresponsible when you're

dealing with you know a place where people live you know their homes they should feel safe and there shouldn't be a bunch of strangers walking around that nobody has any paper trail about right because it's a gated community right right? You can't just allegedly, you can't just drive off the street and go up onto Mosaic and Millennial and start like walking around and talking to tenants. Yet they have people who are like working there, I'm using air quotes,

who are just showing up and wandering about and nobody knows who they are. And you're not supposed to, that's just like, it feels irresponsible when you're boasting about how secure your community is. I mean, if it's a gated community, then you would think that every single person would at least have to check in. I don't think the apartment complex would be responsible for vetting every employee under the contract of their hiring. But if they wanted to create a situation where they were at least aware of everyone, you have a check-in or a sign-in every morning where if you're coming to work at that premise, at that facility, you got to check in. But I will say, I know that it doesn't

happen. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but these apartment complexes, sometimes they're agencies. They're not even like actual people who are on the premises they have a management team if they need hey we need these apartments done they'll hire this team this company for to do 20 apartments and they're not vetting every single employee underneath them which that company the subcontractor should be able to tell you who is working for them whether it was a one day person or someone who's there all the time, there should be a trail that an investigator can go, okay, who'd you hire? Okay. Now I go to the person I hired and then they can tell me. But there wasn't. And that's a problem. If the subcontractor can't tell them who was working for them that day, that's a problem. I completely

agree with you there. Yeah. So when I say like subcontractors, I don't mean like legitimate business people. I just mean like people that showed up to work. Yeah, I'm not following you. And I don't think our listeners. So what do you mean by that? So you don't think our listeners are following us, even though they haven't heard this yet because we're recording it right now? No, I don't. I don't think they because I'm not following you.

So maybe they're smarter than I am. So like I could be technically me, Stephanie, by myself could be like a subcontractor. Right. But I'm not like working for anybody. I'm just like, oh, hey, I'm a contractor and I'll show up and I'll do this work. But if I show up and do the work and I don't tell you who I am or where I live,

what my name is, where I'm from, I just take the cash, 20 bucks, 40 bucks that you give me and walk away. There's no proof I was ever there, right? So they use the term like contractor, subcontractor, but that can mean anything. It doesn't have to mean like a person who has a business license or a professional person

or a person who's under an umbrella. Any single person could be a contractor or a subcontractor or whatever. Like if you hired me to teach you about YouTube, I could say on my taxes, like, oh, Derek paid me $100 to teach him about YouTube and I was a contractor. I like, I don't paid me $100 to teach him about YouTube. And I was a contractor. I don't work for him. He contracted my work out. So the only reason I'm asking a lot of questions about this, because I think it's important because it's one of the more prominent theories. So what you're saying, and I'm writing this down too, what you're saying to me is,

let's say the person in charge of construction at the apartment complex was Derek Levasseur. What you're saying is, what I'm thinking is Derek Levasseur. What you're saying is, what I'm thinking is Derek Levasseur hired four or five legitimate contractors with insurance, LLCs, whatever, and then they hired people or brought people in that they weren't aware of. That's what I was thinking. But what you're telling me, or I want to make sure I understand this, what you're telling me is Derek Levasseur, the person running the apartment complex, was actually employing subcontractors that they didn't even know. They were just doing like cash on the day jobs.

They weren't even going through a legitimate business. No. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm following you now. So that's where the buck would stop, right? So Derek Levasseur, who is supposed to have a log of everybody he hired, is telling law

enforcement, yeah, I would find this guy if he was willing to paint the hallways, I'd let him in for the day to paint and there's no paper trail. Yeah. And I mean, listen to this. Okay. So Morgan, she said there wasn't even any, any like rhyme or reason to putting in a maintenance ticket. If you needed something fixed in your unit, you know, like, I don't know if you've ever lived in an apartment complex before, but let's say your faucet's leaking. And so you call the front desk and you're like, my faucet's leaking. And they fill out a work order, OK?

And then they give it to whoever's available. And then there's some like sort of, you know, paper trail about when the work order was put in, what apartment needed it, who was assigned to it, what time they're going there. She said there was nothing like that. It was just basically like my faucet's leaking and you'd find one of the maintenance workers that's just like wandering about and you'd be like, my faucet's leaking and they'd be like, okay. And so then your message would get to the appropriate person, I guess, through word of mouth. And I guess that would be Chino at that point, who'd be doing the work. And when that happened, there was then no heads up or notification that someone would be entering your apartment. They would just show up and let themselves in without even knocking. And Morgan said there was a few times she'd be in her unit and the door

would just open and a maintenance guy would like peek in and he'd be like, oh, sorry, wrong apartment, which I find sketchy AF. Okay. Like that's a concern. And I have lived in apartments and because of shit like this, I will never again, because that has happened to me. And then I'll call the front desk and be like, this is ludicrous. I should not be sitting. I could have been naked. I think I remember saying that one time because I was in my living room and the dude just walked in and I was like, I could have been completely naked. You guys have to let me know if somebody's coming to my place. Like, well, this is crazy that you don't.

And they're like, oh, you know, he wasn't supposed to. They always have an excuse. But she said that happened a few times. Worst of all, there was no documentation of when a work order was put in, when it was fulfilled, who showed up to do the work, or when they showed up to do the work. Therefore, there's no paper trail of who's in your apartment at any given time ever. Yeah, all of what you said, that's a problem. And this is a little bit of an assumption on my part, but it sounds like there might've been a master key or something of that nature where one key fit multiple units. And I mean, that should never be the case. Obviously every

individual apartment should be specific. You know, the key should be specific to that apartment and there should only be one or two different individuals who have access to those keys at any given time. There has to be a system in place, a sign out sheet where carpet guy needs to get into the unit. Derek, you got to go let them in. Then they can, they can leave at their own time because you should only have one or two people facilitating that it shouldn't be like hey here's a master key go to whatever apartment you need to go do your good obviously you could have someone take advantage of that they could make a copy of that key very quickly two dollars at the local locksmith store and or a little department hardware store they're gonna get a key made no problem you don't need to show any paperwork uh worse, you have someone who is just going in units and checking

and saying, oh, sorry, just to see who's in there and to see what valuable items they may have. They could be casing the joint disguised as a worker. That's even scarier. So I don't like the idea that it seems like random people had access to apartments that were occupied. Yeah. It kind of seemed like maybe they just kind of gave out a list at the beginning of the day, like this needs to be done at this apartment and like go ham. Yeah. Just a punch list. Yeah. Which is not organized. And when that's your home, when that's where you're living and you have some expectation of privacy, you have some expectation of peace and quiet,

you should be able to anticipate when somebody's going to show up to fix an issue, especially if that issue is going to take a long time to fix. What if you just wanted to sit in your living room and watch TV and now there's somebody in your kitchen? So it's just super awkward. I own rental property and I have tenants. And whenever we want to go into the apartment, whether it's to fix something that they requested, hey, Derek, my shower is leaking. Okay, no problem. I'm going to send someone over there on Thursday.

I still have to give them a, I can't just say it over the phone. You have to give them something in writing just so they can't say, oh, they entered my apartment without them. You can give them, it has to be 48 hours, I think. Hey, listen, the plumber will be there on Friday between 12 and 4. Please make sure that you're home or that you make me aware of it so that I can be there. And no one is ever allowed inside that apartment without a manager or the landlord to be present because now anything that goes missing, the landlord's responsible for it. So there's a system in place,

specifically in Rhode Island, where we have what's called Section 8. So it's a government assistance program where you there's a very strict requirements to entering a tenant's apartment with you have to have consent. It's very, very strict. Yeah. As it should be. Right. Yes. It's your home. Exactly. All right. We're going to take a quick break and I'm going to come back and tell you more stuff. This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. I've got good news and bad news. Here's the bad news. Most protein bars are packed with sugar and unpronounceable ingredients. The good news, there's a better option. I'm Will and I created IQ Bar plant protein bars to empower doers like you with clean, delicious, low-sugar brain and body fuel. IQ Bars are packed with 12 grams of protein, brain nutrients like magnesium and lion's mane, and zero weird stuff.

And right now, you can get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Try our delicious IQ Bar sampler pack with seven plant protein bars, four hydration mixes, and four enhanced coffee sticks. Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar.

Go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products plus free shipping. Again, go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20. All right, we're back. So when Jennifer Kessy went missing, Morgan thought about this. And she thought about it, you know, about Chino being kind of weird and about like the maintenance workers just popping in all the time. She knew that Chino and some of the other guys had keys to all the units, and she knew that often the maintenance guys would just let themselves in. So she was kind of like, did that potentially happen? Because they'd been told, the residents had been told that there was no sign

of forced entry at Jennifer's apartment. And she's like, well, if there's no sign of forced entry, and she was taken from her apartment, like, could it be that one of these guys just let himself in and took her? So she was kind of wondering that. And Morgan also talked about one of her roommates who ended up being so scared living at Mosaic and Millennial that she left. She moved out. This friend of Morgan's, let's call her Sarah, she claimed to see a person around the complex late at night taking pictures of her with like a legit camera, you know, one with a big zoom lens and everything. So Sarah lived on the second floor and sometimes this person would be like outside taking pictures into her window. Sometimes she

saw them like in the hallway or something like that. And Sarah reported this to management, but they did nothing. Morgan said, quote, she would see this person like sometimes in a hallway. She even said that she saw someone in a unit with blinds that was supposedly an empty unit. Yet someone was in there taking pictures across into her building. She felt uncomfortable that management didn't address it. She felt she had done everything she was supposed to do. She was seriously worried for her safety. She ended up moving out. She would only walk the dog with her boyfriend there and he would bring a gun to walk the dog. That was her level of fear or discomfort, end quote. And speaking of dogs, Morgan also said that she thought it was weird how she would often see dead dogs wrapped up in blankets placed near the dumpsters around the Mosaic and Millennial

complex. Morgan said, quote, it could be completely unrelated, but you want to think if this is someone's family dog, I can't imagine that this is how they would dispose of them. So it just makes you think, did somebody go out and murder these dogs? Because it wasn't just one, end quote. According to Morgan, she saw this three or four times. And she did say that the complex kind of butted up right next to the ASPCA. She said there's fences, though, and a clear division of property. And she didn't feel like it would make sense that the ASPCA would dispose of animals in that way. I don't know what to think about this dead dog wrapped in blankets things. She kind of went into detail. She said, usually they were

completely wrapped in blankets and you could just see like their paws or their tail hanging out. But one time she saw a dog with its head exposed and it was like a big German shepherd and it's wrapped in a blanket. And there's like a couple different dumpsters around the complex. And she would just randomly find these dead dogs wrapped in blankets near the dumpsters. And I mean, I hope to God that ASPCA wasn't like putting people's dogs down and then just like tossing them on the ground next to dumpsters. That would be pretty horrendous, right?

That would be horrendous. I don't think animal control, whatever. I don't think they would do something like that. It sounds to me like someone who's not in the field was disposing of these dogs how they were doing it obviously unethically they're not licensed or trained to do it you could also have a situation i'm going down a path here that could be completely wrong but when you think about potential serial killers and this and escalation they usually start with

animals and will elevate to human beings so could this have been a sign of someone who was living at the residence maybe or working at the residence and was fulfilling some type of sick fantasy by taking it out on small animals and then disposing of their bodies at these these dump sites maybe i'm going down a path here just because hey listen it sounds like this could be what she's saying like maybe this person who was involved with Jennifer's disappearance started with animals that's how they were getting their gratification and if that's the road she's going down who am I to disagree with her it's possible there could be an explanation for it as she said but we don't know so if we don't know why wouldn't we consider it because that is that is very odd to just find dead animals around dumpsters that's not a common thing yeah like dogs too yeah actually yeah dogs exactly even we we've had situations where and i've said this in previous episodes but we've had dogs cats chickens sometimes where you find them and specifically the way they're killed is even more important like you want to look into that as well yeah like a sacrifice things like that but

sometimes especially with serial kills if you look it up, they will practice things that they would like or have done on humans, on animals first. So if there's weird things being done to these dogs where you could have something that's old or it was hit by a car or something, and that you can kind of see that immediately. But if it looks like these dogs have been tortured in any way, that's a red flag. And it's something that everyone should be aware of. And if management saw this, they should have been notifying law enforcement immediately. Yeah. Management at this complex seemed to really be on top of things. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm getting that gist. Pretty horrendous. So yeah, I don't know. Like I wanted to know, like if you're walking around, you're walking your dog at night and you keep seeing dead dogs wrapped in blankets, where's your head going at first? Because it's not even like this dog died of natural causes and just happened to be by the dumpsters. Somebody wrapped them in a blanket, tried to conceal them in some way and then left them there, which that's kind of creepy. I would be creeped out too. I agree. Yeah. I would love to know how often this happened. Was it a one or two time experience where- She said at least three or four. Okay. And how long? She lived there for three years? That's a lot.

She lived there for three years. Yeah. Even if it happened over a three year period, you're averaging a dog a year. That's a pattern. That's a pattern. It's probably something we should look into. Yeah. So another odd thing is that Morgan claims she was never questioned by the Orlando Police Department or the FBI. No one asked her about Jennifer Kesey until 11 years later when private investigator Michael Toretto reached out to her. And I find that to be ridiculous because she lived there at the time Jennifer went missing. And not only that, she lived in the building right next to Jennifer. The police should have

been questioning every single person who lived at that complex, especially the ones in the nearby buildings. And from what I'm gathering, it wasn't like it was a super packed complex to begin with. It seemed like a lot of units were vacant and there weren't a ton of like full-time residents. So that should not have been a hard thing to do. And especially when you've run out of leads initially, and maybe you're a couple of weeks in, like what else are you doing?

Why can't you question these people to see if they heard anything? How are you supposed to know if anybody heard Jennifer yell if you didn't even talk to the people who were in the building next to her? That's my concern. How do we know that Jennifer didn't yell that morning or scream out for help when you didn't even ask the people who lived in the building next to hers? I'm with you. So what you're telling me is that the FBI might have made a mistake as well Well, I probably the FBI just followed whatever the Orlando Police Department Smug little ass. Yes, so the Orlando Police Department starts and then the Orlando Police Department the FBI is just gonna follow behind

So if the Orlando Police Department didn't do something Why is the FBI gonna do it? The point I'm making is and I will say this and I have friends are in the FBI But I will tell you right now, there's this impression that FBI is perfect. That they're better? And they're not. And I say that with love working with these guys, but there is this idea that the FBI is this bigger, better version of local law enforcement. And sometimes it's a case. Sometimes it isn't.

That's what we're told, right? That's what you're told. And I'm telling you from personal experience working with these guys, a lot of the situations, these FBI agents are not even from the area that they're working. They could be from a different part of the country

and they're just stationed there. So they're coming in asking the local guys like, well, what street is this? They just, they're there because they were assigned to go over there. Yeah, or like, where do you need me? But this isn't an FBI bash. I'm just saying I was, I was being sarcastic because it's an inside joke with local PD. Sometimes a lot of times we say FBI is good for filling out paperwork. We'll just say that. But I do have a lot of FBI guys who are

bad-asses who served over in Afghanistan and are the real deal. But back to what you were saying, talking about this whole inventory of residents at the property absolutely should have been done. And it reminds me of a little case in Delphi, Indiana, where law enforcement initially did interviews with everybody who was at the bridge that day and come to find out it had a big factor in the case many years later. That's why you do it. Yeah, the person might be on the up and up when you initially talk to them, but now you have a record of who they are. And if something comes up later, even if it's years later, you can go back and reference

that initial interview and see if they're giving the same statements as they did 10, 15 years ago. And you can start to compare and contrast. So absolutely agree with you. Should have, I knew it would have been tedious, would have taken a lot of time, but you got to go through names, date of births of everybody who lived at that property. And if you can, at least a brief interview with every single person so that down the road, if there's something to explore, you have those names and information to go back

and look at. And the thing that bugs me is the police clearly had like a list of these people, right? In the files, because that's how Michael Toretto most likely found at and the thing that bugs me is the police clearly had like a list of these people right in the files because that's how michael toretto most likely found morgan and the other people he talked to because i'm sure he would have been talking to them before 11 years after jennifer went missing if he had their information because they're no longer living at mosaic right they're places so now he's going to track them down but he can't do that if he doesn't know who they are so now he's finally got the files and he has their names. And he's the first person that some of these people have ever talked to. The first person asking about Jennifer Kesey that some of these people have ever talked to. And that's concerning, I think. That's bad. That's the scene of the crime, as the police have also accepted. When you're not talking to people around in that vicinity. And I think it's crazy. Yeah, it is. It is concerning. And I'll say that I'm starting to feel, as I think I asked you this episode one, that maybe there are more people on this property than we originally thought. Like it wasn't a building where just Jennifer was there.

And then, you know, this happened. It seems like, especially thinking about Morgan, she had been there for three years. So it does seem like there might have been a lot of vehicles in that parking lot a lot of people walking around So if someone went on the property that didn't work there, but just was casing the place They could probably blend in pretty easy based on the environment that you've laid out tonight Yeah, right cuz all these like random workers are there all the time Nobody's gonna quest a lot of cars a lot of people coming and going so that initial initial vision that I had that, you know, you got Jennifer's car in the parking lot and no one else around. No, it seems like this was pretty populated. And that also is concerning in another way, because if this girl was attacked and abducted outside her complex,

how the hell did nobody hear or see anything? It's tough to think that would be the case. So there's another theory that we're going to talk about in a second where maybe she wasn't. So Morgan also said that Mosaic was supposed to be a gated and secured complex. And initially when she first moved in, it had been that way, but it didn't take long for her to notice that the gates were usually left open. The gatehouse was unmanned. The gatehouse is where like a security guy will usually sit like checking license plates of cars, like seeing who you're there to see, making sure like you have a legitimate reason to be there, taking your name so there's a record of who is there. So basically gatehouse

is never manned. And the extent of the security there was two or three maintenance guys who would like be riding around in a golf cart around the property sometimes. And at the time that Jennifer went missing in 2006, there were no security cameras anywhere on the complex. They would be installed two years later in 2008. And I personally found this to be interesting once again, because Mosaic and Millennial was supposed to be this like high-end community, like super safe and secure, but they didn't have any security cameras. But just a mile down the street in a bad part of town in a less luxurious apartment complex, Huntington on the Green, where Jennifer's car was found, they did have surveillance cameras, at least as far as we know around the pool area. So I get the impression, and this is just alleged

because I'm not trying to malign any businesses here, but allegedly in my opinion, I get the impression, and this is just alleged because I'm not trying to malign any businesses here, but allegedly in my opinion, I get the impression that Mosaic and Millennial was selling people a false bill of goods. Right? So it was kind of like one of those things where it looks super good on the outside. And even Drew Kessy in an interview, he was like, it was so nice. It seemed so nice. It seemed like it was all nice on the outside and they were doing a lot of renovation and a lot of like work on it to make it appear to be nice, like a nice looking shell. But underneath all of that, it seemed like they were cutting corners where they weren't keeping a ton of their promises as far as like safety and security and luxury. And I think they were

probably struggling when people started moving out, which is why they were trying to like convert them to condos. Because, you know, once you have somebody buying the condo, you don't have to worry about keeping the condo occupied and getting your rent every month. And so it seemed like they were kind of going into this transition period and they were selling people a false bill of goods to get these units occupied. And that's what happened. I mean, in Jennifer's case, right, her and her parents thought this was going to be the best place. She'd be safe there. They thought she would be safe there. That was one of the main reasons they chose this, this location in this complex. Yeah. I don't disagree with you. And I, the one excuse I'll give them, which I don't even know if this is true, but maybe it was a vision

that they had hoped one day the complex would be, you know, that this would eventually be this luxurious place with this high security. And that was the plan down the road. And like you said, they're going through this transitional period where we're going to get cameras eventually. We're going to have a gated guard, you know, a guard eventually, but they hadn't yet. And so they should be more accurate in their descriptions, their current descriptions. I agree with you completely. That's best case scenario, by the way. So they were like manifesting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have apartment complexes where they're going through it

and they're like, hey, this is the goal. This is the vision. They'll have boards and pictures of what it could be. And this is the different phases of it till we get there. But I think it's fair to say, and I don't own any big complexes, but I think it's fair to say that if you're going to have a complex like this, that one of the number one things you put in are security cameras.

That's like the first thing for many different reasons, but just at minimum to be able to go back and see the work that's being done and make sure it's being done appropriately at minimum, it gives you eyes on all these people that you're paying for these services. So that's, yeah, that's like number one that you would probably install. And it took them even two years after she gets, she gets snatched to even put them in. So that makes me think they just didn't have the funds. Which is very possible. They have these loans, they raise these funds to do it with venture capitalists, whatever it might be. And they got a bone structure at that point where they don't have the money to do the extra things.

And they're hoping by selling the units, they can then use that money to get the things they need. So they're robbing Peter to pay Paul, and that's not a good business practice. Probably bringing in just random workers, paying them less than they would pay somebody who was bonded and secured and insured and just paying them under the table and stuff. Like, yeah, you're cutting corners here. That's just my opinion. I'm not saying this will happen. A lot of companies probably do that, by the way, but it doesn't come to this level of scrutiny until something like this happens something like this happens and then you're screwed apparently not i mean like it

seems like they just continued functioning just fine was there any lawsuit filed against mosaic at millennial no doesn't seem like there was no interesting i mean it might somebody legal representation might have told them there's no battle to fight there you You know, at the end, they weren't doing anything. You can't, there's nothing you can directly tie to your daughter's case. So they might have said, save yourself the money. Go after the department. It's not worth going after them. I'm sure it was explored.

Yeah. And I mean, they didn't sue the police department for money. They sued the police department for the files. That's all they wanted. That's right. And they knew that was going to be an expense, right? So it's one of those things where they probably directed their funds and their energy at one thing that they felt like they had the best chance of winning. Because it was never about money for them either.

No, they're not trying to be vindictive. They just want to find out what happened to Jennifer. The files are going to get them there, suing the apartment complex. Although I will say, I believe the apartment complex was negligent. Don't say that you're a gated, secure 24-7 place when you're not, because you're not. Especially if they were, like you said, if they were featuring that as an item. I don't know. So that is something that, yeah, I'm on board with you there. So another former tenant, Ashley, she remembered Chino as well. She said he was fun and friendly and talkative and he would come over

to her apartment quite a bit. After Jennifer went missing, Ashley wanted to ask Chino if he knew anything about it and she said, quote, you have keys to all of the apartments. What do you think happened? That's a really hard question to ask somebody that's sitting on the couch next to you, end quote. I don't think it is, but also on the down low, I think that there was something going on with Ashley and Chino, if you want to ask me. So in the end, Ashley said she and Chino never talked about Jennifer and Ashley didn't even consider Chino as being suspicious until nine months after Jennifer's disappearance, at which point Chino just picked up and moved out in the

middle of the night, never to return. Ashley felt this was weird because she thought they were friends. They talked all the time. He always visited her and he had the chance to tell her that he was moving, but he hadn't, which made her feel like maybe he was running from something. This is why I feel like there's something more going on because if some weird rando maintenance guy is just coming over to my apartment every once in a while, we're chatting and then he moves out, I'm not going to be mad that he didn't tell me. It's not that serious. I'm not going to be upset and all of a sudden be like, are you a killer? Because you didn't tell me you were moving out and I'm kind of pissed off about it. That's the impression I got.

So Ashley said, I sat on it for a little bit and it just ate away at me. So I did. I called the crime line back then and told them and they took my statement, end quote. However, Ashley said no one from law enforcement ever followed up with her. And this is going to be a pattern. So not only do we have the police not questioning the people who live in the complex, but we have people calling in tips and saying like, I think it could be this person who works at the apartment complex and like has keys to all the, the apartments and nobody ever like calls her to take her statement or to get

any information further. That's a problem. Yeah. It's, I wish not saying there would be a justifiable reason for it probably wouldn't be. And that's why we'll never hear from, from anyone,

but it'd be great to have someone who worked this case at this time on the show to sit down and maybe explain some of the, the reasons for not doing certain things or doing other things. Like I'm not saying there would be a viable excuse, but if we had direct connections with the investigators on this case, we'd say to them, Hey, why wasn't this ever followed up on? Well, the reason it wasn't was because of this, this, and this. Now we may look at it and side eye them and not agree with their practices, or we may say, Oh, wow, we didn't know that. That's interesting. So it's always tough when you're only getting one

side of the story, because on the surface, there's no other way to look at this, but bad. You have these, you have these leads Nobody calls and speaks with them You've told me what two three different women so far that have had these weird circumstances And they were never spoken to by police from what you're telling me. There's absolutely no excuse for that. It's completely unacceptable I mean there is no excuse for that right right? That's that's my that's my How else I'm not trying to be a Monday morning quarterback here. It's just, that's how it looks. If I have no reason not to believe these individuals that

they were never spoken to. And so I can't think of a reason where you wouldn't speak to them. So that's why I'm saying it would be great to have someone connected to it to try and give us a reason why that were the case. Why were multiple people? I could see if there were 30 people like this, maybe one gets missed in the weeds, but there's, there's multiple people here and none of them have been spoken to. That's, that's a pattern. It's not good. So like what I'm thinking is, okay, are you getting like a crap ton of tips in every day? And then maybe you can't handle them all.

That's understandable. And like, I get it. If somebody calls and they're like, oh, I saw her at a rest stop in California. You know, maybe you can't follow that. But if somebody who lives at the complex calls and says, I think that it's somebody who works here, he's suspicious, and you don't follow up with that, that's an issue.

Like, that's all I'm saying you don't I don't expect everyone to follow every tip and there may be some like and there's been a lot of crazy tips in this case like Joyce Cassie said somebody like approached her in like a strip mall and was like oh I I think my husband did this and she was just mad at her husband and trying to like trip her husband up you know know? So people do crazy things, confess to crimes they didn't commit, try to insert themselves, try to set other people up because of some vendetta. But at the end of the day, this is just like a girl who lives at the apartment complex, a girl like Jennifer Kessie who says, hey, this guy's suspicious. He's kind of creepy. He's got keys to the apartments. He's always hanging around. And he likes to go into girls' apartments

and talk to them at 3.30 in the morning. Maybe you want to look into it. And to just not follow up, yeah, that's an issue. I agree. So another former resident of Mosaic and Millennial, Colleen, she remembered something similar. When she had first moved in two years before Jennifer Kessie, security had been a bit more strict, and she said the guardhouse was manned at least 75% of the time, which still isn't great, by the way, if you're advertising a gated community out of three quarters of the time gated community. So at first, Colleen liked it there. You know, she felt it was safe. But then when the maintenance and construction workers began living in the empty units around the complex, things started to go downhill. Colleen said, quote,

when I would come home from work, there would be a large group of men outside drinking. And whenever I would have to walk past them, you know, there would be a little bit of comments or just a lot of uncomfortable stares. It wasn't a great feeling. I didn't like it. End quote. Now, Colleen did complain to the leasing manager, who was apologeticetic but said that there was nothing he could do and so these these construction workers were living at the apartment complex some of them yeah some of them was there paper trails for them were they filling out leasing agreements or they're just saying hey while the apartment's vacant you can just stay there yeah the latter that's crazy i got nothing drinking apparently i got nothing yeah i got absolutely nothing and i i think like and then for the leasing manager to be like,

I'm sorry that they're drinking and leering at you and making you feel uncomfortable, but there's nothing I can do. Yes, you can. They work for you. Tell them they can't drink on the job. Tell them if they're going to live there, they can't drink and make tenants uncomfortable. Like, what do you mean there's nothing you can do? Yeah, that's ridiculous. And they probably weren't even paying them. Then they were probably in exchange for housing, letting them live there and for the work they were doing. So that is what it seemed like. That's crazy. Yeah. Stupid. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. I've got good news and bad news. Here's the bad news.

Most protein bars are packed with sugar and unpronounceable ingredients. The good news? There's a better option. I'm Will, and I created IQ Bar Plant Protein Bars to empower doers like you with clean, delicious, low-sugar brain and body fuel. IQ Bars are packed with 12 grams of protein, brain nutrients like magnesium and lion's mane, and zero weird stuff. And right now, you can get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Try our delicious IQ Bar sampler pack with 7 plant protein bars, 4 hydration mixes, and 4 enhanced coffee sticks. Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar.

Go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products We're back from break. And now I want to talk about a woman named Tammy Valdez. So she did go by her real name. She seems pretty pissed about what happened to her when she lived at this complex. So that's probably why she has no problem using her real name. She seems pretty pissed about what happened to her when she lived at this complex. So that's probably why she has no problem using her real name. But she actually lived in the unit directly underneath Jennifer Kessie's. But she didn't live there until three years after Jennifer had vanished. She'd been living there for about six months.

She lived there alone. And she said that's why it was easy for her to pick up on, you know, maybe things that weren't the way she'd left them when she went to work in the morning, things that were out of place in her apartment. Tammy claims that someone or more than one someone was entering her unit when she wasn't there. And this happened at least over two dozen times. Tammy said, quote, when I first lived there, there was just a lot of entry from management without my permission. And every time that I noticed it, and there was a few times that I wasn't even aware they had been there, but eventually I ended up finding out things from the office. I thought I had put a stop to people coming in by changing the locks, but then they

came to me and told me that I had to put the lock back on that was there so they could have access to the apartment. So there was just a battle the entire time I lived there with management entering the home without notice or reason why, end quote. Tammy said there was a lot of signs that someone was in her apartment when she wasn't there. Food would be missing. Cans of soda would be missing from the refrigerator. There'd be garbage in her garbage can that she didn't put there. She would see footprints in certain places. Like one day she came home and saw a footprint in her closet and she said, listen, like I live alone. If I'm vacuuming in the morning and I'm coming home and there's footprints on my carpet that are not my footprints, then I know someone's been in here. And Tammy said she never wore shoes

inside of her own home. First of all, she was a neat freak and she wouldn't do that. And she had a size six and a half shoe, yet over six times she saw footprints in her apartment that were shoe sizes 10 and up. So she went to management to find out why the workers had been in her apartment, but they told her no one had been in there as if they have a log or a paper trail or a way of being able to distinguish that anyways. It didn't seem like they did. So a month after that, Tammy came home and found drips or drops of urine on her toilet seat, like a man had used her toilet seat. A few weeks after that, Tammy came home and found water in the kitchen sink as if it had just been used. One time she came home and found water in her shower as if her shower had just been used.

And she told the complex management that she knew someone was in her apartment when she wasn't there. Like she was getting pissed off. She's like, you guys keep telling me no one's here. I'm telling you someone's in my apartment when I'm not there. But management kept telling her, no, we don't know what you're talking about. No one's been in your apartment. Tammy said one day she would come home and find her underwear drawer had been tossed, or she'd find cigarette butts in a plant that she kept on her patio. And she actually collected those cigarette butts in a plastic baggie so she could throw them out. She just assumed like, oh, maybe it was the landscaper or something.

But the next day she found a full unsmoked cigarette like in her windowsill. She said she felt someone was trying to leave her a message, like they wanted her to know that they'd been there and she couldn't do anything about it. So one day she came home and a bag of beef jerky that she had just purchased was opened and a handful was taken out. Stuff like that was happening and it was driving her crazy and there was nothing she could do about it. So on the evening of November 18th, 2009, Tammy said she got home from work, she got into her pajamas, she cuddled up under a blanket on the couch to watch TV. And as she was

laying there, this weird feeling came over her. Tammy said, quote, that evening I'm laying on the couch watching television, starting to doze off, and I get the eerie feeling and I see a shadow. And I can see a shadow, which I learned later was him, going from foot to foot, so you can imagine he was looking at me through the cracks of the blinds, watching me, fully dressed and covered, watching TV. I literally banged on the door, thinking I was going to scare a raccoon off or something, and when I opened the door, thinking a pest or maybe even a deer was out there, in the corner of my patio, to the left, maybe six feet from me, is a man pleasuring himself with his zipper open, pants not down but open, and he was literally in the corner shook. He was

stunned. He was so shocked that he froze for like half a second, end quote. So Tammy said that she basically screamed at the top of her lungs and she was like, get out of here. She said she screamed, get out of here, motherfucker. I'll blow your head off next time you come around. And so he ran off. She called 911. Orlando police came to her apartment. They dusted for fingerprints, but then she never heard anything about it again. And according to Tammy, the man on her patio ran to a white van that was backed up to the iron fence that was like kind of nearby her apartment. She said this wasn't an actual parking spot. It was just like he had pulled up to the fence or backed up to the fence.

She said he jumped into the van and the lights were already on because the vehicle was already running. And this scared her because she said there's only one reason someone would have like this white van with these blacked out windows backed up by my apartment and running. Basically, like he's not just there to watch me. He may be there to like take me and put me in his van. And remember, Jennifer's brother Logan, when he came to find Jennifer the day that she was reported missing, he said he saw two men sitting in a white van and they were parked in the spot next to his sister's normal parking spot. And when he knocked on their window to ask if they'd seen Jennifer, they completely ignored him. Tammy said she thinks it's disgusting that although she saw this peeping Tom too, you know, face to face, like she saw his face, the police never called her. They never had

her sit down with a sketch artist. They did not appear to be interested in finding this person, even though they were well aware that just three years prior, Jennifer Kessie had been abducted from that same location. Basically, like I said, Tammy lived in the same building. She just lived in the unit directly underneath. So even though the Orlando police knew what had happened to Jennifer, they knew she'd been taken, they didn't seem interested in tracking this guy down, even though Tammy thinks that maybe he was kind of planning to do the same thing to her. I don't know if this is related or not. Three years later, it may just be another circumstance that has no correlation to Jennifer's case. But to not look into it, I don't understand why that

would happen again. No justification for it. But I will say the one takeaway that I'm having is that this apartment complex was a mess and it doesn't seem like things got any better after Jennifer's incident. So that's unfortunate. But this situation, it just seems like there's so many players in the game that are potential suspects. It would have taken a large team to go through all of this because it seemed that they had multiple incidents and definitely multiple people on the premises before, during, and after the incident that are potential persons of interest. It would have been a big undertaking, but it should have been done. But there just seems like there's so much here that suggests that whoever did this had some connection to this apartment. As've said in all all the episodes

we've covered whether they work there whether they lived there whether they were visiting someone there on multiple occasions someone had seen her in the past in some capacity and had decided to make her a target of some sort now why they chose that day or why they chose that night it may have been something like this where there was an escalation. We might have not have been aware of it, that they had been following her, stalking her, watching her moves until they saw an opportunity to act. One other thing I'll say to our listeners, which is more common now than it would have been in 2006. So by no way am I blaming Jennifer for this, But if you live in a complex that does have

cameras, because we keep talking about the cameras, right? That is one thing. But those cameras on that building are not guaranteed to work when you need them. They're not guaranteed to be pointing in the angle that you'll need when something happens. So I strongly recommend, especially at the price point now, we've talked about a few different systems here, specifically SimpliSafe. If you live in an apartment, get one for the inside of your apartment. I don't care if it's discreet or obvious, put it somewhere where there's a camera on your door, camera on your patio windows, any point of entry that someone could come in or exit your apartment, you should have it there. It's super inexpensive. You can have it on Wi-Fi. You can have sensors set up. So not only if you have a situation like this where someone's entering your apartment

maybe discreetly and not leaving you know signs of them being in there behind you would have evidence of it and even more importantly if someone enters your apartment you can set it up so that motion sensors will be activated and before you ever get home and you're surprised by someone you'll be aware of it and you can notify police we've seen numerous cases where this has been the situation and the tenant has been able to contact authorities and the suspects that were inside the apartment were apprehended. So a little bit of money, small investment, big payoff if something like this happens. Yeah. I mean, if you feel like somebody is stalking you or been in your apartment and the complex you live in isn't taking you seriously, get a new complex is my advice to you.

Oh, yeah. That's number one. Yeah. But in 2006, not as prevalent as far as security systems for the house. There were definitely a different world back then. It seems like it was yesterday, but it was. But now it's really something you got to invest in. I know we talk a lot about homes

having them, but I feel like there's sometimes a false sense of security when communities say, we have a security system, we have cameras. To me, whenever I investigated a case, it always seemed like every time I needed it, that was the camera that was out at the time. And it's been broken for six months or the DVR isn't working. So just don't rely on it. You got to kind of do your own maintenance with that. Even if they say they have one, get a camera system. You'll thank me later. Trust me. Well, according to Michael Tretto, the Cassie's PI, all of this stuff, all of these women who had their own stories to tell, that was important because he said there was absolutely nothing in over 16,000 pages of police files that suggested there were any problems at Mosaic.

But people who lived there said otherwise. They said they did have problems. And they reported it to the police. And they reported it to management. Yet none of that made it into the police files, which is also concerning. Right? Also concerning. So Toretto claims that after he was investigating for a while, he discovered that at least 10 construction workers had been living in the empty unit directly across from Jennifer Cassie's condo. And he believes that it was one or more of these workers who abducted her.

Drew Cassie, Jennifer's father, also believes that more than one person is responsible for taking Jennifer on that day so many years ago. And Michael Toretta believes that Jennifer left her apartment that morning. She locked her door, turned her back to the apartment door across from her, and it was at that point that the individuals across the way struck. He said, quote, she's locking the door and never sees it coming. She was probably attacked immediately after exiting. She's dragged into the other apartment, and that's the end." And you would think that the Mosaic and Millennial complex would have a record of who was occupying that apartment across the hall from Jennifer's, but according to Michael Toretta, they do not. He said there was no lease, not even a list of names, and many of the workers were people

officially employed by Mosaic, but as I said, some of them were subcontractors and some of them were undocumented workers. Retired Orlando Police Sergeant Rich Ring said, quote, There were numerous interviews conducted at the Mosaic. A lot of the focus, of course, was circled around their transient workforce, the painters, the construction people. There was a lot of focus on that. There were comments and we actually interviewed people who talked about workers at the complex and behaviors, and we investigated all those as much as we possibly could. I think the investigation revealed the fact that there was a pattern of misbehavior by the workers, not just by Jennifer's conversations with her father, but I actually spoke to a person who moved from the complex because she'd been taunted

and teased and sexually innuendos by some of the workers at the complex, end quote. So the police talked to these people and heard these things, but didn't think to put it into the files or anything? I don't know. That's another thing. We talked about that before, too, even when they do it. If it's not in the report, it didn't happen. If it's not on paper, we see that all the time where things are done at the time and we don't know about it later. So when new investigators look at it or when outside entities like a PI firm or even the

FBI, if you didn't write it down, how are they going to know? So it's very important. Even if it's a nothing burger, like I like to say, it's important to document the lead went nowhere so that someone else isn't repeating your work. And also, if they find something that contradicts whatever someone had said to you, even if they didn't come off as suspicious, you can go back at them with that. And you can bring the detective or police officer back in who initially interviewed them and see if that's accurate with what was written down.

So very important, very important stuff. You got to write everything down. You got to document it. So we're going to take our last break and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about Chino again for another minute because he was interviewed by police. And we're going to talk about that when we come back. This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. I've got good news and bad news.

Here's the bad news. Most protein bars are packed with sugar and unpronounceable ingredients. The bad news. Here's the bad news. Most protein bars are packed with sugar and unpronounceable ingredients. The good news? There's a better option. I'm Will, and I created IQBar plant protein bars to empower doers like you with clean, delicious, low-sugar brain and body fuel. IQBars are packed with 12 grams of protein, brain nutrients like magnesium and lion's mane, and zero weird stuff. And right now, you can get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Try our delicious IQ Bar sampler pack with 7 plant protein bars, 4 hydration mixes,

and 4 enhanced coffee sticks. Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar. Go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products plus free shipping. Again, go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20. Okay, so we are back. Let's talk about Chino because Morgan wasn't the only person who thought that he looked like the person of interest. You know, the person who was seen parking Jennifer Kessy's car just hours after

it's believed she vanished without a trace. In 2009, three years after Jennifer went missing, Detective Joel Wright of the Orlando Police Department was led to a source who'd been working as a housekeeper at the complex when Jennifer had gone missing. Joel Wright said, quote, That housekeeper had never seen a picture of the POI that you see walking by the fence. So I showed her that picture and she said, that looks like Chino. So I went to my office and entered the word Chino into the tracking system. And sure enough, the first week of the investigation,

a Crimeline tip had come in saying person known as Chino is involved in this, end quote. But of course, it wasn't followed up on back then, the first week of the investigation. So Chino wasn't spoken to until 2009. And at that time, Chino, along with the head of maintenance, Ben, who Chino was supposedly always seen with driving around the complex on a golf cart smoking weed, they were brought in for interviews. And also at that time, Chino was in prison for the sexual assault of a minor, which he had committed two years after Jennifer disappeared. Another factor that led to Detective Joel Wright developing him as a suspect. Wright said, quote, we did polygraphs and he passed with

flying colors. My gut feeling, as far as suspects go, they're right at the top. At a minimum, my gut feeling is they know something about it. The chances of ever solving this case lies somewhere in the people who worked there or lived there, end quote. And Detective Joel Wright was like, well, what do you think about Chino passing the polygraph test? And Detective Wright was like, I think that he passed the polygraph test. And that means absolutely nothing. He was pretty, you know, I think it means that he passed the polygraph test. He's like, people pass polygraph tests. Sometimes they don't. They're innocent. Sometimes they pass and they're guilty. That's why we don't use them in court because they're pretty much useless as we've talked about before multiple times. I don't even know why they're going to give them to him then if you're going to. I think obviously if he failed it would have gave him some ammo to go back at Chino with. But obviously once he passes it, it's a dead end. You can't go down that road.

Or maybe hoping to make him nervous and have him just confess instead of be caught. You know, kind of like Chris Watts. Yeah. So during the interviews, both Chino and Ben admitted to having been in Jennifer's apartment doing some painting the week before she'd left for vacation with her boyfriend, Rob, to St. Croix. Chino and Ben said that everything was normal. Jen was there, she got ready for work, and then she left. She told them to let themselves out when they were done. But that's not really the story we got from Drew Kessie, who remembered being on the phone with Jennifer when some workers were doing painting in her apartment and she was stressed because they were taking a long time and she wanted to leave because she had to get to work. Remember, Drew was like, don't worry about it. Like, just go to work, have them leave some of the paint and I'll do it. And then they were like, well, we can't leave the paint. And so he was like, whatever, I'll just get paint. Like, don't worry about it. Just tell them to leave and you leave. So Jennifer clearly didn't

feel comfortable leaving them alone in her apartment. So I believe that Chino and Ben saying that Jennifer told them, oh, just lock up when you're done. I think they're lying because Jennifer definitely did not seem like the type who would leave two men that she didn't know in her apartment alone. And we also know that anytime there were workers in her apartment, Jennifer made sure to be on the phone with her father, Drew, or her boyfriend, Rob. And her boyfriend, Rob, said, quote, I was on the phone with her because she had to let them in. And she said, I'm going to call you because I don't want to be in the house on my own with those guys, end quote. Now, Ben said that he and Jennifer had a normal conversation when he was there. She told them what work she wanted done, and that was it.

And he said he wasn't aware of anyone who lived or worked at the complex that had a problem with Jen. Now, the podcast House of Broken Dreams actually tracked Chino down to talk to him. They were unable to find Ben for a comment. But Chino told the podcast that he couldn't remember much about that time. However, whatever he knew then, he had told the FBI. He said it wasn't him on that surveillance camera. He didn't wear his hair like that at the time. And he's taller than the suspected person of interest.

He's 5'8". So technically he is taller than the FBI say this person of interest was. And, you know, Chino really wanted everybody to know that he took a polygraph and passed. And he feels that he's being unfairly targeted. Peter Van Sant with CBS News also paid Chino a visit in 2021. And Chino said, quote, I met Jennifer Kesey. She was a beautiful person. She had no problem with me.

End quote. He also said, quote, I even did a lie detector test. I mean, everybody knows for a fact that I had nothing to do with Jennifer Cassie, end quote. When asked where he was on the morning of January 24th, 2006, Chino said he didn't have to answer any more questions. So that's all. We're done talking about Chino for now. But I think that he is probably very suspicious in this. And the fact that he went to prison two years after Jennifer went missing for the sexual abuse of a minor lets me know that he doesn't have, like, a huge moral fiber. You know, that, like, attacking Jennifer or, you know, sexually harassing her, as many of these women say they felt sexually harassed by these

workers when they were living there it doesn't seem like that's something that's like out of his purview i should say i agree with you and i would also say this is not a good sign of the if you're taking the sampling as the type of clientele that were working at this facility this is one person what happened if they would have followed the breadcrumbs on other contractors that were working there or other maintenance people how many more people would have followed the breadcrumbs on other contractors that were working there or other maintenance people, how many more people would have this type of background as they started to pull back the curtains. So you think about all the plethora of suspects you would have if they weren't looked into as thoroughly as they should have been. Absolutely. And we don't even know where this Ben person is. And we don't even know Ben's real real name we don't even know chino's real name right people

have tried to find chino and like find his real name and stuff but and then they've like posted pictures and that's why i didn't want to like talk about anybody specifically or post any mugshots or anything because they don't actually know if this these people named chino that they're posting these mugshots of are the chino that might be involved with Jennifer Kessie. So like, we don't even really know who any of these people are, what their names are. But in this case, we also have two eyewitness sightings that could potentially be connected to the Jennifer Kessie case. Now, the first comes from a woman named Juliet who left her home on Snowflake Court in Orlando, Florida, pretty early on the morning of January 24th, 2006. That's the day that Jennifer went missing. Juliet said she was rushing around that morning because her husband had

recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and she needed to get him to a clinic across town by 8.30 a.m. for his first round of radiation. Juliet and her husband got in their car and they began driving, leaving Snowflake Court and heading to Moxie Avenue. And Moxie Avenue happened to be like kind of come out right across the street from Mosaic and Millennial, the Mosaic and Millennial apartment complex. So as they waited at a stop sign for a break in traffic, Juliet claims she and her husband saw a four-door black Chevy Malibu leaving Mosaic, and she said, quote, we saw a struggle in the car as if someone was taking the steering wheel out of someone's hand, end quote. According to Juliet, this happened around 7.30 a.m. on the day that Jennifer Cassie vanished, and this would have been right around the time that Jennifer would

have been getting in her car and leaving for work. Juliet said the car was clearly steering from side to side, but she couldn't see anybody inside. She didn't know how many people there were. She couldn't tell you if there was a passenger, a driver, nothing. Her husband also commented on the scene, saying it looked as if someone was fighting in the car, and he said they should call the police. Juliet said they didn't have time to call the police because they needed to be at the clinic. But while they were in the waiting room at the clinic, Juliette and her husband continued discussing what they'd seen and what it could have meant. It was when Jennifer Kessie's black Chevy Malibu was recovered and made the news that

Juliette finally called the police and reported what she'd seen. And a few days later, officers from the Orlando Police Department came to her house and took a statement, but they never followed up, and the FBI never contacted her. We know that Jennifer had told her mother that if she was ever the victim of a carjacking, she would try to crash the car, knowing that this would be her best chance. And Jennifer's father, Drew Kessie, had told her that if she was ever taken in a car, nothing good was going to happen. She needed to do anything and everything she could to draw attention to herself and that vehicle. So the question is, was that what Jennifer was doing this morning? Did these people put her in the car as we had suspected because there looked

like there was some sort of struggle on the hood of her car, put her in the car. She was conscious trying to take her someplace else, but she fought back. And she's got these like survival instincts because she's, you know, very safety conscious. And so she's trying to like wrestle the wheel out of her abductor's hands and try to draw attention to herself. So maybe somebody, you know, calls the police and tells them what they saw. Obviously, I don't know if it was her. I do have a question that maybe I'm confusing. I remember episode one, we talked about her having to be at work for around 9 a.m. or she just happened to get to work at 9 a.m. that Monday morning because she left Rob's house in Fort Lauderdale. So it's like a two-hour drive. So maybe she just ended up getting to work a little later.

Okay. So maybe she had to be at work for 8. Yeah. Well, maybe 8, 30, 9, you know, in Florida I here. And remember, we had the same talk about Casey Anthony, because when we talked about George Anthony and the computer searches and him leaving for work before the computer searches were done, and he said he liked to leave for work early because he never knew what the traffic was going to be like and stuff like that. Maybe in Orlando, the traffic's really bad in the morning, so people leave work early. Maybe she gets coffee on the way. Who knows? Well, regardless, I feel

pretty confident saying too much of a coincidence that our victim vehicle, a vehicle matching a similar description is seen leaving that facility and displaying erratic behavior on the morning of her disappearance. Too much of a coincidence. So I, although I can't say with 100% certainty, I feel pretty confident in saying that what these two individuals, two individuals, by the way, very key, two witnesses saying the same thing, saw a vehicle, Chevy Malibu, very distinct vehicle that you would be able to identify, especially 2006. The taillights are very different than most vehicles. description coming out of that area, displaying that type of behavior, I feel confident in saying this is probably a valid lead, which is obviously why law enforcement came and spoke with them and took a statement. Yeah, but then didn't follow up. Well, that's what I was going to ask you, because if they take a statement, it's a detailed statement. If there's nothing more, they don't develop anything from it. What, from an outside perspective, are you expecting them

to follow up on? If they took a detailed statement initially, what would be the follow-up? Well, I would assume that when the FBI came on, they would re-interview people, right? They did re-interview some people, but they never came and talked to her. And if she saw Jennifer Kessie or who she thought was Jennifer Kessie wrestling for control of her car back, you'd think just to cover their bases, they'd want to sort of like speak to her. Yeah, I can see it. I've been pretty hard on them this episode, law enforcement, as far as all the stuff they've done wrong. I'll say on this one, if it's a clear statement, I'm assuming the initial Orlando officers said, hey, did you happen to see anybody in the vehicle? And it was probably no. So if they're trying, if the investigation, as you said earlier,

if they got thousands of leads, maybe they figured, Hey, they told you before they didn't know who it was. There's really nothing more they can add. So I'm with you. A follow-up would be great, but I'll give them a little bit of a pass on this one from the law enforcement side, because maybe the initial investigation or the initial interview was very thorough. And they just, FBI didn't feel there was a need to go back. Because the first statement is always going to be the best, by the way. If you give people more time now that they've seen the news, they've seen other things, they start to remember things that they didn't actually see. So usually your first statement is going to be the best.

So I'll go easy on them on this one. There's too much other things that I didn't like earlier. So, but this is very compelling information to know. It really does give us a little bit more of a timeframe and an understanding of what might've taken place. Yeah. Because she said she didn't even see like what way they were turning. Cause they, like Juliet and her husband had turned to, to leave and go to the clinic before they even the other car, you know, assuming Jennifer Cassie and her abductor even like pulled fully out of mosaic. So they didn't even see which way they might've been 12 seconds, you know, you're talking. So it's like how much they want to be helpful.

They call police, but how much can they give you? So that statement might've been as detailed as it could be. And unfortunately it was nothing more that they were hoping to get out of. They might've said, Hey, if you have more information by all means, give it to us. But even then you have to take into consideration that now they're seeing the

media. Now they're seeing other accounts and they may start to try to fill in blanks because they want to help. Yeah. And I mean, not only that, I know it seems like a coincidence, but we don't know a hundred percent sure that it was Jennifer and her abductor at that moment. That's fair. So you could say like, oh, at least this eyewitness

gives us an idea of what happened. Like they didn't keep Jennifer at the apartment complex. They took her right away, but we don't even know for sure that it was Jennifer. So we can't even say that 100%. So it really leads nowhere. Not a hundred percent. But if we're gambling right now, we would both put a large sum of money on the fact that it was her vehicle. Yeah, I would. I would definitely agree if that's what was seen. If that was absolutely what was seen on that day, then yes. But we have to keep in mind eyewitness testimony is so unreliable.

It could have been a different day, could have been, you know, a different time. So we do have to keep that in mind, too. No, it's a great point. And I will say, if it is the vehicle in question on that day, we also have to caution you guys not to automatically assume that is exactly what it appears to be, which would be a situation where Jennifer is coming out of her complex, she's attacked, and then she's fighting for her life in the vehicle as they're driving away.

There's also a situation where at that point, she's already been rendered unable to defend herself any longer. And this is the suspect or suspects fleeing the scene erratically because they're trying to get out of there as quick as possible. That could also mean she may not be in the vehicle at that point in control in any way, shape or form. So, and I also think because I'm playing both scenarios out, I think a lot of people, and we talk about thinking outside the box, right? So I think a lot of people would look at this and say, okay, you have damage on the hood of the vehicle. So this is what happened. She comes out, she's attacked from behind. There's a struggle on the, on the hood of the car. And then she's brought inside the vehicle. And then as they're leaving, they're fighting over, over the drive, the steering wheel as they're fleeing.

That's possible. But here's another scenario. She comes out to the car. They want to get her, they want to get her inside the vehicle as fast as possible to avoid anybody seeing anything or hearing anything. So they let her open her door. They let her start to get inside. And as she's getting inside, they push her in all the way. They hop in the vehicle as well. They shut the door. Now they're driving out. They're fighting over the car. She's trying to fight with them instead of maybe jumping out of the car. This is where the witnesses see them. Now, once the offender or offenders, because there could be multiple people in there controlling her, they go to a close location.

They pull her out of the vehicle. And now they're fighting some more because as you said, Jennifer is going to fight. And that's at the point when the damage on the hood of the car occurs. When they get her out, they're trying to restrain her. They're fighting on the hood of the car. And unfortunately, whatever happens, happens after that point, they're there for an extended period of time. And then the car is dropped off at the other complex. So they could have been at a location that was a wooded area right in between the two complexes for an extended period of time. Then they drive down the rest of the way, drop the car off and walk back to the apartment

complex where their other vehicle is or where they had been working that day. Just something to think about. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think like what you said that she might not even be in that car at all. Correct. Is very telling. Yeah. She could be in a van, she could be in another car, but now they're taking their car out and they don't want to be in a van. She could be in another car But now they're taking their car and they don't want to be seen in it So they're you know, they're trying to get their seat whatever they're trying to do at that point Oh, we don't want to look this suspicious So they're you know, they're driving out of the parking lot fast and the good witnesses saw something that was out of the ordinary

It does sound like it was a struggle based on what they were saying, but that's open to interpretation It depends on their perception We have another witness who believes that she saw something that might be connected to Jennifer Cassie. And this woman wanted to remain anonymous as well. They call her Elizabeth. I think Elizabeth sounds a lot like Mrs. Doubtfire in my personal opinion. But Elizabeth said that in November of 2006, she'd been at her friend's house for the weekend. The friend's parents were in Philadelphia for a wedding, and this friend of hers lived on Lake Fisher in Orange County. And in 2006, there was only one house on this lake, the house that Elizabeth and her friend

happened to be in, and then there was one being built next door. Otherwise, no other houses, the area was pretty secluded. Elizabeth said the house that she was at had a back garden that overlooked the lake. And she remembered that on the Saturday morning of that weekend, it was a nice and sunny day. So around like 8.30, she went outside and she decided to sit by the pool, at which point she was looking out over the lake when she saw something on the other side. The other side of the lake at that time was just fields and a sloping hill. So when a dark-colored pickup truck began driving through the fields, Elizabeth took notice and watched as it pulled up to the edge of the lake

and parked parallel to the lake. She said a man got out of the truck, looked over his shoulder, and then pulled a large rolled carpet from the bed of the truck. Elizabeth said the carpet was pretty big and it looked like there was something inside. He threw the carpet over his shoulder, walked to the lake, and threw the carpet in before making his getaway. Initially, Elizabeth had said that she thought this was very odd. Why would someone throw a carpet into the lake? For years, she didn't say anything about it, but one day, she heard about Jennifer's case and wondered if what she had seen could have been connected. So she called the friend she'd been staying with to verify that it had been November of 2006 that

they'd spent the weekend at the house on Lake Fisher. This was a lake located just 12 miles from Jennifer's condo and just one mile from her place of work. The friend confirmed that Elizabeth had the month and year correct and hooked Elizabeth up with her boyfriend, who happened to be a Florida state trooper, and he got Elizabeth in touch with law enforcement officials responsible for Jennifer's case. But before the police could do anything, the Kessie family decided to make a move, and they brought in two cadaver dogs to Lake Fisher in November of 2019. And Drew Kessie claims that two dogs hit on something, that they smelled something, that they alerted to something.

But when the Orange County Sheriff's Department came in with their own dogs and divers, they claimed to have found nothing. Drew Kessie said that he was upset the police had only searched a small portion of the lake. He said it had been several years and the carpet could have moved or drifted, so they should have searched more of the lake. And the Kessie family and their PI ended up bringing in their own divers. They did radar. They brought in more dogs, but this time the dogs didn't hit on anything and the divers didn't find anything in the lake. Basically, Drew Kessie said they did everything but drain that lake. However, Elizabeth is 100% sure that that carpet is in the lake.

She said she saw a man throw a carpet in the lake and she believed it's still there, as does P.I. Mike Toretto, who claims that if they can get their hands on that carpet, even if there's no dead body inside, they can test it for blood or DNA or compare it to carpeting that had been removed from the Mosaic and Millennial Complex in 2006 when they were doing renovations and removing a lot of carpet, including carpet from that unit directly across from where Jennifer Kessie lived. The unit that allegedly housed 10 construction workers yeah this lake when we were looking into it for for breaking homicide this was one of the things that i had alluded to in episode one where we were our wheels were turning where what could we do with this you know how could we how could we make this an element of the show where we took it a step further by definitively ruling this lake out or or finding something in there that we could potentially use. There's also a world where you find the carpet and because of the condition, how long it's been in there, any type of evidence that would be contained within it may be gone. You wouldn't know until you tested it because obviously a lot can happen.

And what are we talking here? 17 years. 17 years. Thanks for the math there. That's a long time. So it was one of those, it was a financial thing, right? It was going to be very expensive. You would have to, this lake's huge, by the way, it's not like this little pond. So it would have been a lot of money and it definitely wasn't in the budget because it, so that was one thing where I had this dream of doing it, but it wasn't possible. You would need a dive team. Like I won't say the name of

the company that, you know, we've just covered on crime weekly news, but a company like that to go out there, you would have to have Elizabeth go back out there with them because it could, it could drift, but how far would it really drift? I don't know. That's why 17 years. I mean, I would think if the body weight, if you're, if you're talking a couple hundred, a hundred pounds, especially a carpet, once it gets it gets wet it would you know, you'd have to put off a radius

But I don't know what did they have fbi divers in there? I don't know what type of divers went in there. You're saying it was privately done by the kessie family, right? So the orange county sheriff's department brought in divers and then the kessie family also brought in divers That's a lot of divers. That's a lot of divers. That's a lot of divers. Even if some of them aren't as good as the others, you would think by accident they would find it. If it was there, you could all. I used to think like it was so easy to find stuff when you dive, but. Oh no, it's pitch black now.

It's really not. You basically got to walk into it or swim into it. Yeah, the carpet could like look like, especially if it's like a neutral color carpet like it could really just blend in with like the lake floor and it could be buried like you said like sediment and silt and all those other s words sand could just i mean this is florida so it could just be like completely covered up at this point i don't know i said this is florida i just think there's a lot of sand in florida yeah i, there is. But I mean, everyone should look it up.

Everyone should look it up. You can see what we're showing you. It's a big area and it's not the biggest lake in the world, but it would be very expensive to drain. I don't even know if it would be possible. I don't even know if they would do it. Yeah. I don't know if it would be possible. Not for this lead because, yeah, it could be connected.

It may be just someone who was dumping trash there for all we know. We don't even know if it was connected. So the resources and money to do it, you would like to think that the budget is unlimited for something like this, but that's realistically not the case. So do I think it was connected? I'm not even going to say whether I do or not, because there's not enough information to make that assessment. I believe Elizabeth, I believe she saw what she said she saw. I think the timing is interesting.

November. That's why I don't think there was a body in there. November. How many months after January is that? 11. Yeah. It's a long time. And I'm with the math tonight, by the way. Yeah. Everything else has died because I've been up for 22 hours at this point. So every other part of my brain is done. But the logical side is on right now. The math came in. Jesus.

But it was something we perked my ears up when I heard it when we were initially talking about it. But it was the exact conversation you and I are having right now. That's the conversation that was going on between my team and the producers. It's like, there's a reason they didn't do anything else. There's not much you can do. We could have went down there and sent other divers in because you never know, they might find something. But yeah, I think it's an interesting piece of information, but there is a very strong possibility that it's not connected in any way, shape, or form. And it may not even be a criminal act other than disposing of materials in a body of water where it should have been disposed in a dumpster. But I don't know why

contractors will usually drive around, find a dumpster nearby at an apartment complex or another construction site, and they'll dispose of any trash they have so they can avoid the dumping fees because it goes by weight. They don't normally drive out to a wooded area to a lake to throw a carpet into it. It's very suspicious. I will say that. And I do believe Elizabeth. And she said, you know, the guy, she couldn't really see him clearly, but he looked like he was wearing work clothes. And even the truck looked like a work truck. It didn't look like, you know, a pickup truck that somebody would drive for personal reasons. Like it was a big one and looked like a truck you would use for work so

yeah it's suspicious but even if you found a carpet because i don't think there would be once again i don't think there would be a body in there 11 months after she goes missing right or even you know 10 months because it's the end of january i don't think there's going to be a body in there so even if you found that carpet it doesn't even lead you to Jennifer and definitely doesn't lead you to the person who took her or hurt her. That's right. And you could end up spending tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars and not find a single thing. Could you imagine they drain the lake, no carpet? Someone's getting fired. Someone's definitely getting fired.

Just completely destroy a whole ecological. Yeah. That's those are all the other things that we don't talk about that come into like the, the process of draining a lake or any, any type of, when we think about, Oh,

why can't they just break up the ground and start using, you know, these are all think conversations that happen behind closed doors where it's like, okay, what's the financial significance? What are the environmental significance? You know, how much are we interrupting?

How many ecosystems are we destroying? Yeah, with DEMs in the meeting as well going, no, you're not doing that. So there's, yeah, there's a lot of different people that are involved in those decisions. And I think if it was stronger, for example, if they had said it was a black Malibu that was in the wooded area and it

was this the day after her disappearance i feel like they'd be draining that lake i feel like they would be more significant and they might say okay a chevy malibu black was over there and a guy got out with a white outfit on and he drops a carpet in there i feel like they're rolling the dice and and uh and draining the lake but because of the timeframe, because of the, a vehicle that probably wasn't on the radar, I feel like those elements were considered. Yeah. And I, I don't think at this point that they're going to continue going back to that lake either.

No, no. They've sent two different teams in there at this point. Yeah. And I mean, as of now it's 2023, right? The Cassie family is still fighting In January, just this past month, they were finally given the green light to have the case looked at by state officials. And although Drew Kessie believes that it will be a miracle if Jennifer's found alive, he's hopeful now that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is working with his team of

private investigators. Drew said, quote, I think right now we are in the best position in 17 years because the FDLE wants the case. They know what they are doing. It's a cold case division specifically looking at the case. They are feeding off the work my guys have done for the past few years. My guys can't go in and make arrests, end quote. And according to Drew Kessie, the FDLE has now received everything and they're eager to move forward. But the sad part is they have found that over the last 10 to 12 years, no one has been looking into Jennifer's disappearance. Drew said, quote, we assumed things were happening, but when we received the files, there was nothing written in the last 12 years. End quote. That's crazy to me.

The good news is that Drew and his family are still receiving leads. He said they keep receiving leads every week for the past 17 years, so there's paths to follow. But Drew sadly said, quote, we doubt very much that Jennifer is still alive. It would be a miracle if she is. We just aren't willing to say, oh, well, and leave it. End quote. In 2008, two years after anyone saw Jennifer Kesey, the Florida House passed Senate Bill 502, the Jennifer Kesey and Tiffany Sessions Missing Persons Act. This law requires law enforcement to begin looking for missing adults 25 years and younger within two hours of a missing persons report. Tiffany Sessions went missing on February 9th, 1989, while she

was attending the University of Florida in Gainesville. Her parents also believed there was a slow and lackluster police response, even though the FBI have said that the search for Tiffany was the largest in the history of Florida. again. And I love this law because we talked about this, I think it was last episode where it's like, if somebody says somebody's missing, do something about it. Don't wait 48 hours. And this makes them have to take action within two hours. So yay. Yeah, that's great. And it's good to see that they're creating new policies and procedures that law enforcement, there's a standard to be followed, right? Because a lot of times it's individualized by each department and they all have different standards that they follow. And that's when you have situations where one department may conduct an investigation one way when it comes to a missing person and one may conduct it another way.

Now you have a state bill, an act that's been passed that forces all departments to adopt a policy so that there's some continuity, regardless of what jurisdiction you're in. As far as this case is concerned, it's obviously extremely troubling. I think Drew said it best. And as the father, I'm going to follow his lead on it where it would be a miracle if Jennifer were still alive, but there is a chance. There is a chance. And I think regardless of what he may feel what his family may feel he's got the right idea where he's not gonna stop until he knows for sure he'll spend his last breath doing this and I think most parents would so where do we stand on this one

as far as what do we think happened what would we potentially looking at here I wrote down a couple things and just to qualify this is our opinions and Stephanie I haven't shared this with you so yours may be different but for me I wrote down a couple of things and just to qualify, this is our opinions and Stephanie, I haven't shared this with you. So yours may be different, but for me, it's definitely, and this isn't a shocker to you, but it's someone very familiar with the property. Why do I think that Jennifer's schedule? This is something where the person would have to know when she's coming out of the house,

when she's going in. And more importantly, they would know, is she with anyone? Is anybody else staying there? Is there a guy or a girl that they have a roommate, someone they have to be aware of that would be maybe walking out with her in the morning. So I feel like whoever this person was knew Jennifer to the extent of at minimum, I see this girl coming out of this unit every day around this time. And she's always alone. And that's something that has to be done over a period of time. So you could potentially say, Oh, well, maybe it's just a stalker like i said earlier in the

series and that is possible but i think through reasonable deduction and some of the other things that i'm going to talk about i think it's more likely that again it's someone who's familiar with this exact property and that is mainly because whoever this person was, they knew there was no security system there, right? As you said, this place was being marketed, advertised as a secure facility. So from the outside, if you're doing research, you're probably going to think, hey, there's cameras here. There's some type of system in place, maybe not the best building to pick as far as carrying out something like this. However, if you're on the inside, you know, there's no security cameras, you know, the security, the physical security

itself sucks. You know, that people are allowed to go in and out of the building at all times of the day. And you know, that there's a key or keys that can access the majority of the apartment. So, you know, that the security is shit and that's something that you can hide yourself within, but you wouldn't know that as just a person off the street, who's sitting in the parking lot, watching someone from a distance, this would be inside information. And then the, this kind of goes into the video. I wanted to talk about that as well, but this goes hand in hand with the idea that this person was someone from the apartment and that's the dog scent, right? You have the dog scent being tracked back from the other complex all the way to Jennifer's complex. I don't think that's a

coincidence. I think that that was tracked because her scent was on the suspect, the suspect that you see on that video, the suspect that appears to be walking back towards in the direction of Jennifer's complex. Why would they be doing that? Well, they work there or their vehicle was there. They have some connection to it. There's really no other reason to go back there other than they have something there that they have to go back to. Which brings us to the video. As you said numerous times, it's close to the mosaic. They parked at this other complex because they needed to be able to get back to the original location and have it be within walking distance. There's really no other reason you would park there because you're only creating a situation where you could be caught. You don't want to be anywhere near the

scene of the crime. I don't necessarily believe that the incident occurred at the property, although I have nothing here to say that it didn't. I just, my gut tells me that because of some of the evidence we have, Jennifer was still alive and coherent when she left that property. And the reason for that is because of the struggle, the sign of struggle on the hood of the vehicle. If she had been abducted and taken back inside, unfortunately, I think by the time she was removed from that apartment, she would be unconscious or dead. And there would be no struggle on the car unless the struggle happened When she was attacked and then she was rendered and brought back inside rain. Is it possible? Yes I just think if you're planning this out and this is some type of premeditated act

There's gonna you don't know what who's gonna walk out or who's gonna hear it. So you attack this woman outside She yells she screams somebody sees something you're gonna walk back into the building where you can be found by law enforcement or someone else for that matter, who may have seen or heard something. I think it's more likely that the person or persons would grab her and want to get her out of there as fast as possible. And I think the witness testimony that you laid out tonight affirms that, that there was something going on where either they were fighting in the car or they were leaving the apartment complex at a fast pace because they didn't want to be seen or heard from. That's really all I think we can surmise from all of this. Definitely was an

abduction. Who was involved? Nobody knows for certain, but I do think a lot of the evidence points in the direction of someone who was familiar with the property. I won't go as far as saying it's a construction worker, although based on the video and the painter's outfit, it kind of looks like if I had to guess, I would say that. But I think it's equally possible that it's someone who's part of management, someone who's part of their lackluster security, or someone who actually lived at the building as the main resident, or maybe just someone who had been staying with another resident for an extended period of time. I think all those avenues are still at play. Absolutely. I'm on the same page. I think it's definitely somebody who lived there or worked

there or both. There's no other way. Like you said, there's no other way that they would know she lived alone, that she wouldn't be walking out with somebody, that somebody wouldn't be wondering where she was right away, things like that. There's no way that they would have known that. There's no way they would have known her schedule if they hadn't been there and watching her. I would go as far as to say if you had to ask me who did this, I would say it was one of the maintenance workers. Yeah. I don't know who. I wouldn't necessarily say Chino, Ben. I don't even know these people. But if there's like 10 of them living

in the apartment across from her, they could be watching her. They could be even using their key to go into her apartment when she's not there. You know, they could be doing things like that, similar to what Tammy was dealing with. And they could be like stalking her, going through her underwear drawer, stuff like that. And she just didn't't notice she was only there for two months so that could have been happening but either way you know i i don't um i don't think it's going to be solved at this point because somebody knows something i think more than one person knows something but they've kept quiet for this long and there's absolutely no motive for them to to be honest and upfront about what happened now after all these years. Yeah. You could have a dying declaration, but chances of that are slim to none. I agree with you.

And I think we're in a situation where there's no way to avoid the fact that this was broad daylight and a pretty populated area, right? I mean, we're learning now that there was a lot of residents there, a lot of contractors. It was not a lot, but you know. A good amount. Enough where if I were the offender, probably not the time or place that I'm going to pick to attack someone. Cause there's too much risk that someone's going to see me, see my vehicle, see something

that's going to link back to me. There's a lot better places to take advantage of a situation where obviously the cover of night, a more private area, you know, somewhere it's a little bit more secluded, a lot better potential spots to pick a victim. Kind of feels like, like they were confident that nobody was going to see them, right? Exactly. To choose this time and location, you know, something, you know, that you're not going to be seen or heard. How else would you know that unless you're very familiar with that specific property? And I don't think we're like figuring out something really unique here. It sounds like in the information that we had, law enforcement believes that as well. They don't think this was a random act of violence. They think it's someone associated with the property. And I think we tend

to agree, which is why I just wish there was more done at the time when it happened, because that was when it was the best opportunity to really make people uncomfortable, including subcontractors, contractors, residents. Get everybody's name. Yeah, it's got to be uncomfortable. It's got to be uncomfortable. It's got to be invasive. If you need to get search warrants, then you need to get search warrants. But you got to make an attempt to identify every single person who had been at that property the week

leading up to it, the week after it. And by the way, anybody who decided within a couple of weeks to maybe not work there any longer or stop showing up or moved out relatively soon after, these are all things you got to be documented. They were like coming and going, you know, they just showed up when they wanted. So there wasn't any rhyme or reason or order to it anyways. Yeah. No, it seems like it would be a cluster, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't try. There should have been at least that minimum from what we've seen, there should have been more documentation showing that law enforcement was making people's lives very uncomfortable because they were being a pain in the ass, frankly, trying to identify every single person and speak with them one-on-one.

Yeah. It doesn't look like that happened. It doesn't. You're right. Maybe it did though. I don't know. Maybe it did and and they just they didn't talk about it or write about it or that's the problem though right that's the problem well because i don't think it happened that's why i think they didn't talk about it and write about it because if they spent their time like harassing people and trying to get their names and stuff you best believe they're going to be shouting themselves out on paper so that everybody knows how hard

they worked and what they did That leads me to believe that it didn't happen. But this is my opinion No, I think I think you're right and I think it's sometimes easy for people to say all well They didn't document it because it ended up as a it was a dead end. Well, I disagree with that I think most investigators would because it's as important to identify persons of interest or even suspects as it is to exclude certain people. They're both equally important because if you have a pool of a hundred people, what's going to be easier to solve a pool of a hundred people or a pool of 10 people, right? Well, the only way to do that is to go to all the other 90 people and find alibis or be able to definitively rule them out with exculpatory evidence. You can't do that unless you document it because other investigators are going to look at it and they're not going to know that that's been done.

And now you've got people chasing their tails. So you've got to document everything. You have investigators coming after you, even if they're cold case investigators and you want to set a good foundation for them. You don't want to just be like, well, I looked and didn't find anything. So that guy can figure it out for himself too. Like that's kind of a dick thing to do, right? No, you got to document.

Sometimes it's just laziness, right? I've had it be as a Sergeant. I've had it happen where it's, it's like, Hey, did anybody follow up with this case over there? Yeah. I went there last week while I'm looking at IMC right now. And there's nothing in there that says that you did it. It says it's closed, but there's no narrative.

So even if it's like two sentences where it's, you know, this date, this time, detective Levasseur went by this location, spoke with Stephanie Harlow, stated that they, she didn't see anything at this time and date case closed, you know, this date, this time, Detective Levasseur went by this location, spoke with Stephanie Harlow, stated that she didn't see anything at this time and date, case closed. You know, whatever the case, whatever, just something there is better than nothing. Because now you can go back and talk to that investigator if you want to follow up with them. If you don't write anything down, how do I know?

So it's not an isolated incident to Orlando PD. It happens a lot, unfortunately. But this is a frustrating case because it's a solvable case or it was a solvable case. And I think at this point, Drew and his family is just hoping that there's somebody out there with a conscience who may be aware of what happened to her, but not directly involved. And for some reason, whether it's there for their own incentive, because they get pinched for something else, or they just want to come clean, that they come forward and it gives them some actual

evidence or information where they can go and find Jennifer. And if she's not alive anymore, at least bring her home. They just want to find out what happened to her. That's it. I think they know that she's not coming home, but they want to know what happened to her. They've been working so hard. They can't just stop. And then it's all for nothing.

So our hearts go to the Cassie family, Jennifer's friends, everybody who cares about her, everybody who's out there fighting for her and has been fighting for her for 17 years. And we're right there with you. And hopefully there are new updates and this new direction that the FDLE is taking with the Cassie family leads to something good, maybe a break in the case, we are always hoping, and no matter how unlikely it is, that anything could happen. Thank you guys so much for being here. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Crime Weekly Pod. That's right. And if you're listening on audio, take 10 seconds. A lot of people have been doing it lately. Five-star

review, a little comment, it goes a long way. Helps boost us up on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Yes. Thank you guys so much. We will see you next time for a brand new case and I am going to bed now. All right, guys, stay safe. Good night. Bye. This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. I've got good news and bad news. Here's the bad news. Most protein bars are packed with sugar and unpronounceable ingredients. The good news? There's a better option. I'm Will,

and I created IQ Bar plant protein bars to empower doers like you with clean, delicious, low-sugar brain and body fuel. IQ Bars are packed with 12 grams of protein, brain nutrients like magnesium and lion's mane, and zero weird stuff. And right now, you can get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Try our delicious IQ Bar sampler pack with 7 plant protein bars, 4 hydration mixes, and 4 enhanced coffee sticks. Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar.

Go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products plus free shipping. Again, go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20.