Crime Weekly - S3 Ep126: Jacob Landin: "John" Reveals His True Colors (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

In April of 1987, 9-month-old Jacob Jeremiah Landin died suddenly from a subdural hematoma which had put pressure on his brain and caused irreversible damage. The medical examiner determined that Jacob had died from a blow to the head, and the autopsy revealed evidence of older wounds that were in the process of healing. A partially healed fracture of one of his ribs, another subdural hematoma that was in the process of healing, and a partially healed skull fracture; the medical examiner believed that these injuries were approximately three to four weeks old, and the overall picture suggested a pattern of abuse that the baby had suffered from for an extended period of time. Reportedly, Jacob’s mothers boyfriend confessed to hurting the baby, and he was arrested, but when investigators returned to the case in 2005 they found a labyrinth  of missing information, missing files, and more questions than answers. There was no report of what this man had confessed to, and even though he was arrested for child abuse, it appears he was just let go. Now, Jacob’s brother Eric is on a mission to find out why. Link to Eric's Podcast, 'True Consequences': https://www.trueconsequences.com/ 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: 1. ALO Moves For a limited time, Alo Moves is offering my listeners, a free 30-day trial PLUS 50% off an annual membership. But you can only get it by going to ALOMOVES.com and use code CRIMEWEEKLY in all caps. 2. Gametime Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code CRIMEWEEKLY for $20 off your first purchase. 3. PayPal Honey Get PayPal Honey for FREE at JoinHoney.com/crimeweekly. 4. ZocDoc Go to Zocdoc.com/CRIMEWEEKLY and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. 5. PrettyLitter Go to PrettyLitter.com/crimeweekly and use code crimeweekly to save twenty percent on your FIRST order.

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. And today we are, well, obviously things are a little bit different. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see that Derek and I are together in person and we're recording in person. I think this is the only time we've ever recorded a podcast in person. Only time. I actually put it on the Patreon yesterday,

today actually, because we've recorded in person, but it was like a live stream. Yes. Never recorded, like you said, like an actual Crime Weekly episode, which is very scary. I know, it is, right?

I'm super nervous right now with all the things that could go wrong. Yes. You're nervous too? Well, I mean, who can I really blame if it doesn't work? You. I can't blame anyone but myself.

You can't blame me. Yeah. So we got the setup here. Stephanie was down for the Taylor Swift concert, in case you didn't know, which I'm sure you knew. So Stephanie gave me the task of kind of converting the studio to a multi-angle podcast to kind of give you, it could be better, but I think it's pretty good for the quick turnaround i think it's amazing so we're in person we're gonna do the episode in person it's so weird actually i had like a little like i couldn't breathe for a second when we started

because it's so different and derrick's sitting right here and i can see when he looks at me and so then i'm feeling nervous but he's like right there oh my god that's crazy okay great episode tonight and uh i'm excited to get into it because obviously we're covering jacob landin yep spoke to eric spoke to eric yesterday we put out a couple tweets he's extremely happy eric is jacob's older brother that's right that's right so if you haven't listened to episode part one you definitely want to go do that so these names make sense to you but yeah so we i spoke to him he said there was a couple things that he he says there's nothing worth changing he said everything in there was was couple of things that he, he says there's nothing worth changing.

He said everything in there was fine. He's like, you know, but obviously it's personal to him. So he might have some tweaks in there in his episodes, but it's all, all the information was accurate. You know, we talked on the phone about what's going on and I won't go too much here because you might cover it tonight. But long story short, you know,

we were honored that he allowed us to cover it. We're going to try to get the message out there. It's, you know, it's now in the hands of the AG and I, and I already told Eric, you know, he had been looking for a PI. We talked about some things off record. I've already told him that my PI firm break investigative group will help him in any way we can after this is even done. So we're going to see what we can do to move the ball forward. There's never any guarantees. I did it on breaking homicide. It doesn't always matter how hard you try or how obvious it may be to you or you. You know, we're going to give it a shot and hopefully we get some good results.

Yeah, absolutely. So we're diving into part two tonight, today, depending on when you're listening to this. And as Derek said, if you have not heard or seen part one yet, you really should do that because none of this will make sense otherwise, unless you're just here to listen to us talk and us talking about true crime is your lullaby i don't know some people are like that and in that case you do you whatever you need to do you know what else is gonna be very interesting tonight i can never see what you're writing or what you're doing when i'm talking there's like total exposure for both of us by the way like there's been times where i'll like pick up my phone or whatever when you're going on a good narrative and i kind of already

know what you're going can't really do that right now because you're we're all angles well i mean i can't see what you're writing because of your handwriting scratch yeah it's pretty much it's encoded yeah but i think my handwriting is very easy to read so which is unfortunate for you because most of the time it doesn't make sense. Well, now you're going to see, you already see what I wrote. See, like, what does this mean? What does that even mean?

I don't know. Is that English? That's what you said. It says personal tweaks. What personal tweaks? What did I do wrong? Yeah, you didn't do anything wrong. And I said to him,

is there anything we need to correct? And he said, no, absolutely not. So, I mean, once you talk to him, I'm sure, but he, I think it's, nobody knows the case better than he ever will. Right. So I'm sure there's always like a, again, when you give up that creative control, there may be things you would have framed, he would have framed differently.

He didn't, he didn't say anything, honestly. I wouldn't worry too much about it. He was very thankful that we covered it. He got a little emotional at one point and I'll spare like what we talked about personally, but he's very appreciative of not only us But also kendall ray is covering the case again So having kind of covering it both from both angles he had put out a tweet today where both the episodes are charting So a lot of people are hearing this episode. That's just on audio. Never mind the youtube version

So a lot of people if they didn't already know about jacob's case they're gonna know about know about it now That's good. That's good. I just wanted to do it properly and completely properly. He was very happy. Now I'm a little stressed out. I have to call him and I have to be like, personal tweaks, what? I promise you he was very, very happy with the episode. All right. I shouldn't even have said it.

I know you shouldn't. Not right before we recorded. Yikes. Okay. All right. You've sent me into a spiral. Great way to start. Well, let's dive in oh yes i did go to the

taylor swift concert last night in foxborough massachusetts gillette stadium which is just like what i would say like 40 minutes from here not even well yesterday it took like two hours to get there because of the traffic and we went at like 1 30 even though the concert didn't start till 6.30. That doesn't surprise me with you. Yeah, I was like- I saw your post and there was nobody there. So I figured, yeah, that's about right.

There was nobody there because I needed to- You were super concerned. You said it like seven times. Derek, is there going to be parking? I'm like, you're going to be fine. No, there wasn't parking. Do you know how far we had to park? It was ludicrous.

And I had heels on, very high heels, okay? And I stood up the entire like six hours of the concert so walking back to the car was eventful yeah it was bad all right let's jump in let's just jump into it i'm i'm thinking my feet still hurt and then i texted you today and i'm like oh man i feel like i ran a marathon he's like oh boohoo stephanie you literally said to me i'm so tired i didn't get home last night from the concert till two as you were texting me last night and i texted you when you text me back saying i'm still at the studio trying to make this work with shannon by the way real quick shout out to our editor shannon i we always are very complimentary of her but she spent the last three days reviewing test footage as i

was trying to make these work and she's an absolute rock star i don't know what we would do without her so shout out to shannon hey shannon for the help. You really did make this possible. I can just hear people right now, like 10 minutes and we're not talking about the case. I mean, especially if we're in person, we'd be doing this all the time. I know. Yeah. Cause we don't, it's easy to forget the mics are running. Yeah. We got, we had a little off track. I mean, we've been here since what? 7.30 and it's 10.30 and we're just recording the episode. Yeah, well, learning curve. We got it. We're ready.

We're going to dive in. I'm not going to give much of a summary because, like I said, last week's episode should still be fresh in your head. And we're kind of starting off with little Jacob, nine-month-old Jacob, being admitted to the hospital. And after he was admitted to the hospital on the evening of April 9th, 1987, agent Sue DeWalt of the New Mexico State Police was notified of a nine-month-old baby who'd been admitted to the University of New Mexico hospital with a massive cerebral fracture that doctors believed he had sustained from a blow to the head. He was actually initially at one hospital and then they were like, we can't handle this here. They sent him to another hospital.

They were like, we can't handle this here. And then he was airlifted. They don't call it airlifted. They called it the lifeguard helicopter, but basically brought to this other hospital, the University of New Mexico hospital. Hopefully with the people there, the medical doctors there,

that they would be better able to handle. Specialists for his injuries. Yeah. Which is unfortunate because I also think about all the time that probably took, all the time that took, you know, to get to one hospital, be examined enough for them to know we can't handle this here. We can't do this. Another hospital, be examined there. You got to be admitted. We all know how long that takes, right? Even if it's an emergent situation, it still takes forever. And for them to say, oh, we can't handle this here get in the

helicopter go for a ride there and then finally they're you know addressing it but how long did that take probably hours right add on the fact that we don't know how long jacob was at the house right with john well he was there for an hour so he got dropped off around six so how long was he in that condition before john well remember that hour oh I don't know if I said it yet, but they believe that the injury to Jacob happened very shortly after him getting to the house. So you could be looking 45 minutes, 50 minutes of him being in that condition and think about how much can happen in that time frame if you're already injured.

So it's a long duration. Plus all the travel time from hospital to hospital. Yep. This baby, as we know, was Jacob Jeremiah Landin, and it was suspected that he had been the victim of child abuse, not only because of his current head injury, but because of other older injuries that were in the process of healing. Through the course of her investigation,

Agent DeWalt would interview numerous people in baby Jacob's life, but the first person she spoke to just before midnight on April 9th was Jacob's mother, Brenda. So understand that during this initial interview with law enforcement and Brenda, it had only been a few hours since Brenda had been notified that her child had been rushed to the hospital and she still didn't know what was happening or what Jacob's status was. I guess I'm trying to say she hadn't really had a lot of time to process what was going on. And Brenda told Agent DeWalt, you know, she said she didn't know what happened. She said she didn't know of anyone who would want to hurt her child.

And when asked about her live-in boyfriend, John, Brenda stated that he seemed to care about Jacob and he always took good care of him in front of her. And Brenda said that John was a good father who had two kids of his own that he had visitation rights with, and his own children had never been mysteriously or unusually injured. And I think I remember you asking me that question last episode. You were like, did anything like that ever happen with his own kids?

And allegedly and reportedly, no. And that could be the case because you think about it, Jacob wasn't his son. So maybe there's a psychological element to it there where It's not my kid, you know And and so he doesn't have the same type of love for jacob or eric that he would have for his own children So it's possible that he wasn't abusing his kids But man, i'll tell you what

I would love to know if they interviewed those children and if we could potentially still interview those children today. Because as we're going through this case, there are things that I've spoken about with Eric. He's going to be listening to this. There are things you can do now as you try to paint a picture where there's still people around other than Brenda, other than Eric that have this objectivity to them. They have no incentive, right? To lie where you could go back and interview them. And maybe it paints a picture for us. That would include the neighbor that you mentioned last episode. Those are individuals who hopefully would remember this enough where they could still be interviewed today. And maybe these kids, if they're older, if they did experience something like this, now they would be more willing to talk about it.

And imagine if they said they did, right? So if they were interviewed, it's nowhere in the records. Right's nowhere here and i would be i would venture to say they weren't i would venture to say cps was involved in law enforcement i know you're going to get to that tonight it doesn't seem like there was like this extensive case where they were trying to see how deep this went and if john was involved because if cps and the law enforcement really wanted to they could have went to those kids right there but it sounds like like it was kind of like, ah, they've already worked it out. Let's close it down for now. So it did seem initially that this was, and right from the get,

you can see that Agent DeWalt is looking into John as the prime suspect. So, yeah, it looks like they're like, okay, the doctors and the nurses at this hospital say there's signs that this kid's being abused. And they're going to look at, who are they going to look at? The stepfather. Not only was the stepfather. The last person with him. Yeah, the last person with him.

But also, I mean, just historically, numbers show that there's more chance of abuse when there's a stepfather or a non-blood related relative or like boyfriend, fiance, whatever in the home. That is just like Derek kind of said. You're less likely to hurt your own kids. More likely when you're not blood related or biologically like tuned in to protect that child, you're less likely to hurt your own kids, more likely when you're not blood related or biologically tuned in to protect that child. You're more likely to hurt not us, but somebody who would be abusive to children would be more likely to do it to somebody who wasn't related to them by blood. So he was a suspect. I wonder why, because I don't think that those kids were interviewed. And I don't think the neighbor who allegedly John brought Jacob to the house of this neighbor

and CPR was performed and then that's when the ambulance was called. I don't think that person was interviewed either. And that's concerning to me because I would want to know what state was John in. Did he seem concerned? Was he frantic? Was he the one that called 911? Or did the neighbor say, like, why hasn't someone called 911 yet? Or why are you trying to do CPR when we should be calling an ambulance? You know, what was the dynamic there?

And it's very important. We've seen that in many cases. Look at Chris Watts. The neighbor was one of the guys who ended up kind of alerting to the police, like this guy's acting weird. When I asked him this, this, and that, he acted weird and he had like video of Chris Watts

and he was showing Chris Watts the video of the van pulling in and Cece and Bella in the van and things like that and Chris got all stressed out we know how Chris acted in that situation with the neighbor because the police interviewed the neighbor in this situation we have no idea what what the neighbor did or said and I almost wonder if that's the same neighbor that called CPS on them because it seems like that person was kind of right next door so i wonder if that's the same neighbor that called cps so i'm i was gonna like question you not correct you but so you're telling me because i was referring to the neighbor that called cps you're telling me that within jacob's case it wasn't john who called the police about his condition it was a neighbor

there's two right so remember john said John said that Jacob fell off the couch? Yeah, but then I thought he went to a neighbor's. And he gathered him up in his arms, ran to a neighbor for help. Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. And they performed CPR, and that's when the ambulance was called. I wonder if it was the same neighbor too. But either way, that neighbor, and I was saying this to Eric,

the neighbor who reported the abuse, I would love to know how they deduced that this child was being abused. Was it something they physically saw? Was it something they heard? Was it a combination? Sounded like something they heard. Either way. I mean, and how sure were they? You know what I mean? Like, what did they see? What did they hear? Sure enough to call. Yeah. Because you add that into the equation when we talk about manner and cause of death. Yeah,

it's circumstantial, but we've seen cases in the past where you've gotten guilty convictions based on circumstantial evidence, you know, so, and the reasonable deduction, the neighbors is going to be someone we have to track down in the future. I almost even wonder, maybe it wasn't a neighbor. Cause like I said, you can call into CPS and be anonymous. Yeah. You can say I'm a neighbor, but maybe it was John's ex-wife, the same person who had called Jacob's father and was like, hey, your kid got left alone by John and he got injured. You should file a report with CPS. And when Jean Landine didn't do that, maybe this woman was like, okay, let me call and pretend to be a neighbor and say, I heard something or saw something. Hopefully that's not the case. It could, I mean, it could be. If it's an anonymous tip, that sucks. But it could be

something where they could go back and if there's a report, which there should be a report, even if it was closed, in that report, it'll have the, you know, the names of everybody they spoke with, including the initial complaint. That would be interesting to know. So after Brenda told agent D Walt about John, um, agent D Walt asked Brenda about her older son, Eric, and Brenda said that Eric had been extremely jealous of Jacob since the baby had come home from the hospital after his birth and sometimes Eric would shake Jacob's crib to wake him up. Brenda told agent DeWalt about the ear scrape and the bump on Jacob's head injuries to the baby that Eric had admitted to having inflicted on his baby brother and then agent DeWalt next interviewed Brenda's boyfriend

John and the person who had been with Jacob when he had sustained this newest head injury. And John repeated the story about dubbing some tapes in the living room. And he also told agent D. Walt about past injuries to Jacob that Eric had been responsible for. John said that he didn't know how Jacob had become injured this time. He said he must have hit his head on the coffee table after falling off the couch. But remember, he said he had not seen him hit his head on the coffee table. He just must have. He figured this must have been what happened.

After this, Agent DeWalt spoke to Brenda's mother, Merlinda Crawford. And Merlinda recalled that her daughter Brenda had dropped Jacob off to her that morning around 10 a.m. And she said that everyone had been worried because Jacob had been sick for the past few weeks. He'd had an ear infection and tonsillitis, and he'd been vomiting every time he was laid down. But Jacob had seemed to be feeling better, and that day was the first time that he had eaten in three to four days.

Marlinda also spoke about the previous injuries that Jacob had sustained, and she spoke about how they had tried to explain to Eric that Jacob was a little baby and he had to be careful with him. But Eric had been very jealous of Jacob since the baby had been born. And personally, during the first three months of her daughter and grandsons being back in Socorro, Melinda had witnessed examples of this since they'd lived with her for that first three months. She said every time Eric would walk past Jacob, he would hit him or kick him. And Eric had once made a comment about how Jacob had a pretty name and he, Eric, had an ugly name. And Melinda also spoke about one occasion when Eric was eating sunflower seeds and his mother had told him to be careful with the seeds because they were small

and his little brother Jacob could choke on one. And not long after that, they found a handful of sunflower seeds in Jacob's walker and another handful in his crib. There'd been another time when Eric had been playing with toilet paper. And once again, his mother had cautioned him to keep the toilet paper away from baby Jacob. Yet later, they found toilet paper wadded up in Jacob's crib and Jacob was found with a mouthful of toilet paper. But then Merlinda also said something interesting. She said she'd never seen any bruises or any other indication of abuse on Jacob, and she always looked the baby over very carefully when she had him because she'd heard stories about boyfriends abusing children.

So that is interesting to me for a few reasons, but we'll take our first break and then we'll discuss why I find that to be interesting when we come back. All right, we're back. So I kind of left off talking about Brenda's mother, Melinda. So this would be Jacob and Eric's grandmother. This was the woman that Jacob and Eric and Brenda had lived with when they returned to New Mexico. And they were kind of staying with her and her husband until they got their own place or until they started living with John. And she says some things about kind of witnessing Eric being a little aggressive, jealous towards his baby brother. That is interesting to me, especially the sunflower seeds, because the way that it was kind of portrayed was that John was always the one eating sunflower seeds and that's why they were in Jacob's crib. But now we have

Eric with the sunflower seeds. Now, could Merlinda and Brenda be remembering Eric being uber jealous and kind of aggressive towards his brother just because that's the mindset where they were in? That's what they'd been told over and over. So they were sort of mischaracterizing normal boyish like playfulness as aggression because they were kind of programmed to look for it as that. I don't know. But I also do know pretty much from the moment Brenda came back to New Mexico and Socorro, John was there. So he could have been giving Eric the sunflower seeds and being like, oh, you should put these in your brother's crib, something like that. You know, he could have been sort of programming him right from the beginning. Or it could just be normal

jealousy from a five-year-old kid towards a baby sibling that just came in the house and sort of took all the attention. I don't know. What do you think? I think both are possible, but I, and this is nothing against Eric, but we're going to be honest. We always are very possible that he was doing exactly what she described. I had a little brother 13 months apart. I definitely smacked him around a little bit. You know what I mean? Shout out, Matt. Love you, buddy. But it's one of those things where it's kind of a brother thing. And we're talking about a five-year-old here. We're not talking about a 14-year-old.

At five years old, you don't know right from wrong yet. You really don't. And, you know, there's definitely a potential that when the new baby came into the house and was getting all the attention, which is not, by the way, gender specific. You know, girls do this too, where you have a situation where, oh, this little one's getting more attention than me. I don't want them here. I was the baby of the family before they came in into the picture. So could he have been treating them different, jealous, smacking

them around, pushing them, the sunflower seeds, that could be something, or it could be explained where somehow Jacob brought him in there with him. Who knows? We weren't there. I don't necessarily think like the seeds were the big thing. I think there's a difference between what Eric was doing and what some of the injuries to Jacob suggested. There could be a combination where you have Eric pushing Jacob roughly, shaking his crib, and John doing more extensive damage and confusing the two as another adult in the house, thinking, oh, this injury to Jacob must have been from a time that Eric did it, although we never saw it.

And then we just have to call out the elephant in the room, which is the fact that the injury in question, regardless of what you believe, the injury in question, we know for a fact Eric had not been in that home. So we know definitively that he did not cause those injuries to Jacob on the day in question, the day that ultimately resulted in Jacob's death. And I think that's what we really should be focusing on because that's the problem here. That's the whole reason we're talking about this case. Well, something else I found interesting is that Marlinda said,

listen, I look this baby over every time I see him and I don't see any bruises or any sign of abuse. And I do this specifically because I know how common it is for mother's boyfriends to be abusive to children. That was kind of a telling statement to me. The fact that you would even be suspicious because obviously, yes, it is common. We know that statistically, but I would never think that me personally, my mother would ever say about any of my boyfriends, oh, I need to make sure I'm looking these kids over when they come to my house. Why? Because they knew my boyfriends, because they had one-on-one interactions with my boyfriends, even though I did have a child when I would have some of these boyfriends. And they just kind of could tell, like you have an instinct. This person's not going to hurt a kid. Did Merlinda have an instinct about John that he was capable of hurting a kid? And that's why she looked Jacob over so carefully every time he was with her. Because it's an odd thing to say, don't you think?

Like, it's an odd thing to just kind of say, especially if you know your daughter's with this person, like they're happy, there's no issues, et cetera, et cetera. Like, would you be concerned that he's going to hurt this baby? Probably not. There'd probably be a point where you'd stop looking the baby over every time you got him. Right. I agree. It does seem like there might've been something more than two little brothers, you know, going at it on the weekends or whatever it might've been. So yeah, there could be more there. What, what made her start to look him over like that? It's a very good question. And keep looking him over, you know?

And I wonder if Brenda and Merlinda kind of maybe had an inclination that something had happened with John, but they instinctively protected him. Like this must've been an accident. Maybe he was negligent. Maybe he wasn't watching the baby because we know he has a tendency

to kind of like get caught up in his music. And maybe he wasn't watching the baby and the baby fell, but do we want of like get caught up in his music. And maybe he wasn't watching the baby and the baby fell. But do we want to like have him arrested for that? Do we want to ruin his life? Or are we just going to kind of close ranks at this point? And you probably as a police officer seen people do that. You know, even though like a mother knows that their child's injury was probably caused by their boyfriend. They're like, oh, it could be an accident.

He said it was an accident. So I'm not going to like have him sent to prison. I'm not going to ruin his life over this. Yeah, definitely has happened, especially when it's very obvious. And they're just like, Nope, I'm not saying anything. I think what's interesting about this conversation we're having right now is yes, we're talking about the case in total, but it's also from a prosecution perspective, right? Like, so you have this situation where, and you just mentioned it, you have Jacob in the home, you have John in the home, and we know something happens in that house where Jacob ends up sustaining some injuries and he ends up dying from those injuries. So when we're looking at it from a legal perspective,

and I'm not a lawyer, you can come to some assumptions, but there's a big difference between neglecting the child and having the result of your neglect result in him falling off the couch and being injured and you causing those injuries deliberately and then resulting in his death. And that's, I think one of the wrinkles in this case that the DA and the AG are having a trouble. They might believe a certain thing, but how do they prove that what happened in that home when those two were there was deliberate and was intentional and i do think that when we're talking about previous history as far as previous abuse that's what they have to hang their hat on that's why it's so important to talk to like the neighbor and to talk to merlinda and to talk to eric and to

talk to brenda to see if there's any indications oh and to talk to his to Brenda to see if there's any indications. Oh, and to talk to his children too, to see if you can start his ex-wife, because you have to basically show what's this saying? I always say best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. You can show a history of this man being abusive to both children and women or whatever it might be. Then you can start to paint a picture for a jury because that is going to be the biggest hurdle here is what happened in that home. And it's two very different things. You can, you can say he was neglectful in that home and that resulted in his death. That's not, that's not murder. Well, would that be manslaughter though? I mean, child neglect. I mean, if I'm, if I'm in my home and the baby's in the crib, right. And I happened to leave the room and the baby grabs a cord or something that shouldn't be there, electrical cord or whatever from a nightlight, bites into that cord because I'm not watching the kid

and something happens to that child. Are you going to charge me with murder? That's different though. There's a difference between like, oh, this was just an honest mistake. I forgot to move that cord. And I'm not paying attention to this baby. I put him on a couch, even though he's only nine months old, and walked away and left him for long enough where this could happen. Or I was rough housing with him too much. You know, like there's a difference I think between I'm sleep deprived.

The baby had me up all night and I didn't move that cord, but he was safely in his crib where he should have been in all the safety precautions were taken into account, you know, and then just like not giving a shit and like putting the baby down and letting him roll off the couch into a coffee table if that's what happened so here's the thing how do you prove that right so this is what they have because he said he said that he put him on the couch and like that's that's proof isn't it you said you did that so i think i think what it comes down to is having to show a history of that because you could argue although very bad decision making and you know to put the baby on the couch i've had situations where you have good parents do something that

is not the brightest move and it results in an injury to the child now it was an honest mistake they clearly didn't make the right decision by putting whatever they you know putting the baby on the couch or doing whatever they did and so so it results in an injury. Are we going to charge those parents with a crime? No. And that's why I'm saying in this case, where we believe this was an ongoing thing, right? It's important for us and for the people in charge of this case, the investigators, the AG's office to show that, hey, listen, this wasn't an isolated incident. Yeah. In a vacuum, vacuum you could say honest mistake. John left him on the couch. He fell. He got hurt. He's never done anything like this before. But if you have other children or neighbors saying, listen, he was beating this kid up all the time. Well,

it doesn't look so much like an accident anymore, does it? Or an honest mistake. Now it looks like is this another occasion of child abuse where this one resulted in something serious? That's why they have to prove what was going on before Jacob's death. I think in order to charge him with, with a crime, it kind of seems like it's just super easy to kill a baby and get away with it. Honestly, is what I'm hearing. Right. Cause the baby can't say anything. Yeah. The baby can't tell you what happened. Once the baby's dead, you can just say, Oh, it was an honest mistake. It was an honest mistake. Like, Oh yeah. He smothered on all the blankets in his crib. I completely forgot they the baby's dead you can just say oh it was an honest mistake it was an honest mistake like oh yeah he smothered on all the blankets in his crib i completely forgot they were there my bad but you

could have smothered that child like yeah right are you going to talk about the autopsy tonight did we already kind of cover that a little bit i know we talked about a little i know we talked about it briefly and it's always tough to talk about it i will say when i was talking to eric i asked him outright like what was the cause of manner of death listed because i said listen if it's unfounded or accidental that's a problem right and he was like no i believe it said something relating to and it might i'm paraphrasing here but this was like a homicide or injuries resulting from some type of assault it said um no it said like on unknown or on that That's a problem. So it said. That's a problem.

The doctor said, yes, we believe that he sustained this injury from a blow to the head with an open hand. Right. Right. Because if it had been a hard object like the coffee table, then you would have seen more bleeding under the skin. You would have seen more of a fracture, a break of the skin. And we talked about this a lot in the Kathleen Peterson case too, like the difference between the skin breaking or just a bruise or a blood under the skin from a contusion, things like that.

I forget, like a laceration and a contusion. So a contusion is like, oh, I got hit, and there's blood pooling under the skin, and there's bleeding, but the skin didn't break. And then a laceration could come from a hard object or something like that, even though it sounds like it should be. Or a sharp object, yeah. Yeah, and that would be like the skin didn't break and then a laceration could come from a hard object or something like that even though it sounds like a sharp object yeah and and that would be like the skin's actually broken so in this case it didn't look like jacob had hit his head on something hard like a coffee table it looked like somebody had hit him right and i honestly think if this wasn't

the 80s you would have had some talk about which is a lot of what they talk about now in child abuse cases especially with shaking how the brain can make the injuries on the, basically the skull makes the injuries on the brain, right? If you hit a kid on the back of the head like this, because there's so much space in that child's head because his brain isn't done growing, the brain just kind of like goes around and they're like a ball. So the brain's going to go forward, hit the front of the skull, and then go back and hit the back of the skull.

And you're going to see bruising on the brain. I think they call it contra, contra and something. I forget, but it's something like that. It's like contra contusion or something. But it basically means the brain went boom, boom, like you would do in a car accident sort of. And because there's so much space in that skull, you'll see marks on the brain from the baby's own skull.

So it kind of seemed maybe like that was where they were going with it, but they just didn't have maybe the expertise to describe that completely. But it does say under cause of death or manner of death, it says like unknown or something, but I can double check. Yeah, that always makes it hard, and this is rhetorical, but I've had this in other cases where it's like, the doctor says, oh, it seems like the person was struck or hit and unknown. So when you rule it that way, listen, if it doesn't say homicide, you can't charge someone with a homicide. Why do you think they do that?

I'm not going to get into it on this podcast, but I feel like- Like they're trying to be safe. They don't want to kind of- They try to be safe. I think it depends on how conservative the doctor is at the time you know they're not willing to they'd rather err on the side of caution not end up being responsible for someone going to prison for a crime they didn't commit so they always go that way i've had cases like that i won't even go down that path one other thing though positive note something else that maybe can be done in this case and i'm i'm sorry for doing this multiple times in the episode, but now because I have like an investigative hat on and I'm looking at it from that approach as far as the possible involvement with this case down the road,

biomechanical engineer, that might be someone we want to bring in because if the theory is that Jacob fell off the couch, there are people out there like Dr. Rami Hashish is someone I've worked with before where you can recreate that scene, right? A child in similar size and weight, find a couch, shouldn't be had. You can use what's like pressure pads, basically, like they're heat pads where you could drop a dummy in the same weight and size on the ground and see naturally how the body would fall and where the injury would occur if that situation was recreated. And they'll do it multiple times to try to see if they can get something that's reoccurring, right? And so let's see if we have someone that size and weight, how they fall, is the injuries consistent with the

injuries to Jacob? And are they in a similar location to Jacob? If they're not, and you're able to replicate this in an experiment, then you can disprove the idea that Jacob fell off the couch, which rules out that possibility, right? Now he might be having something. So I know Eric's listening to this, probably taking notes, but that's something that I'm writing down here and something that may be a possibility down the road.

He had multiple different stories, which we'll go over, right? Multiple different stories about what had happened. But yes, I will say that in all of these stories, as we'll come to find, the falling off the couch one was kind of consistent. So he would add all this other stuff that would happen before the falling off the couch,

but it always kind of ended with the falling off the couch. And I think, because I don't believe that's what happened by the way, just allegedly. That wasn't, that wasn't apparent. I don't think, I don't think that's what happened. Shocker, shocker to everybody out there. But I think because he, that's the first story he told, he was like, well, I cannot just completely recant this story. Right. Cause then I'm just going to sound like a liar. So I have to just add on to it and make sure that this part stays consistent, which is smart.

I mean, if you think about it. Yeah, especially if he's getting away with it. And right, like, I think that people, the officials kind of felt like something was going on, but there was enough where they were like, we can't be sure. And do we want to accuse this person of murdering a baby if it truly was just an accident?

If they're buying it, why change it right so it says blunt trauma of head but undetermined so yes they're basically saying and it says blunt trauma of head healing skull fracture with resolving and superimposed acute subdural hematoma blunt trauma of the head but it's undetermined like how do you get blunt i mean i guess you could get blunt trauma to the head from an accident, but the doc, yeah, the doctor was like, it's, it's with the old window with an open hand. This is what it looks like happened. And that's something I always mentioned where I always say like cause of death, manner of death, right? So the cause of death was the blunt force trauma to the head, but the manner in which that blunt force trauma occurred, now you're asking the pathologist to go beyond the scope of what they,

they get a little nervous, right? Of course. Because now you're asking them to try to paint a visual picture of how it occurred. Not only, you know, in many cases, the pathologist isn't at the crime scene, hasn't interviewed potential suspects. So now they're being asked to take the injuries that they're seeing on the body and try to break that out to, okay, how did that occur? And I feel like they get a little nervous when they do stuff like that. And a lot of times you see that undetermined.

I know I mentioned this case before, Devin Schmidt. It was the whole reason, in my opinion, that somebody wasn't arrested for her murder because of that initial report. And I'm not trying to knock the pathologist here. No, I mean, I would be reticent as well. Yeah. But why are we asking the pathologist to do that? That's a question that I would have. Like, wouldn't you want the police after they performed an investigation to decide whether this is like, okay, so it's either going to be one of two things.

This was an accident or this was purposeful. Right. Right. So once you have- Sometimes it's either going to be one of two things this was an accident or this was purposeful right right so i hear you once you have it's more obvious but when in these cases when it's not these are the ones in that gray area then they use it kind of to like discount you know because that'll be used by the defense team to discount well the pathologist said it's undetermined so therefore well just because the pathologist said it was undetermined, it's because it wasn't obvious. But that doesn't mean it wasn't purposeful. And here's the thing.

You're the pathologist, right? Yeah. So you just identified blunt force trauma. So you say, okay, well, what do we have here to the detectives or whoever's there at the autopsy? Because with something like this, they would be there. Well, listen, you know, we do have some reports of maybe a previous case, a CPA case where it was investigated for child abuse. It was unfounded. The person that was there with them is saying that he potentially fell off the couch when he wasn't being watched. Well, guess what? Both scenarios are plausible, right? Without you knowing anything else. I mean, how can I say the couch thing isn't,

so they're going to go undetermined. I know. That's what I'm saying. I'm not faulting him for it. There are context clues, right? If you're a medical examiner, a pathologist, whatever, you're not just looking at the wound, right? There's context clues. There's other things on this child's body. This very same pathologist made note that there was trauma to Jacob's buttocks, that there had been, like, that this child had been spanked or hit there enough and hard enough that you wouldn't see anything on the skin. But once removed it you saw inflammation and you saw things like that so like

wasn't there other injuries like older injuries and then the older injuries right the rib and the skull fracture so to me it tells me as a pathologist i'm gonna be like okay i guess it's undetermined however this child wasn't treated kindly this child wasn't treated as a nine-month-old baby should be therefore child abuse and now he's dead from a skull fracture maybe it's not so much undetermined and you can't even go at the angle of all those previous injuries could have been from eric because there's injuries on his body like his pathologist wouldn't know that by the way i don't think a five-year-old has the strength to slap someone that hard on the buttocks at that point where it would cause those types of deep injuries where they'd still be seen by a pathologist months or weeks you know weeks or months later so that

too is suggestive of an adult right yeah and she the well he she whoever the pathologist is wouldn't know about eric they're not the police they don't have any of that information they have the body in front of them that's right yeah based on the body in front of you this child's been abused before this child's been hurt they wrote that wrote that though, didn't they? Didn't they write that the child had injuries that suggested they had been abused in the past? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

So I just, I don't, I don't understand why they would say undetermined at that point because I think it's pretty determined. But I do understand being like a little, a little like, you know, and it's a small community. Well, no, this would have been done in Albuquerque. So I wouldn't have even been like that. Yeah. But maybe you just, I guess. This is a countrywide thing i promise you it ain't isolated to albuquerque i see it all over the country it's a very common thing and some people may say hey that's you know they should be like that but i don't think they shouldn't make a cop's job easy

that's for sure i don't think they should be because they i think they should err on the side of like the victim okay not the person who could potentially be victimizing the child in this case you can say not undetermined that this clearly looks like it was kind of intentional and then the police will do an investigation and if that person's innocent then that person's innocent they're cleared and whatever but if you say undetermined now you're making it that much harder for the victim this child who already didn't have a voice because he couldn't talk he couldn't talk for the months he was being abused. But now you've taken away his post-mortem voice from his autopsy by saying undetermined because you're making that much harder to prove that this person did

something nefarious or intentional. There's gonna be some people that agree with you. And there's gonna be some that don't. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. So we're back. Let's get back to agent Sue DeWalt of the New Mexico State Police. She's taken over or taken charge of this investigation. And agent DeWalt was well aware that six-year-old Eric Landin was not even in the state at the time of Jacob's most recent injury. But she also was clearly still concerned that John was potentially responsible for Jacob being in the hospital because she signed a police hold that night after interviewing Brenda John and Merlinda in the hospital and this police hold placed baby Jacob in protective custody and prevented him from being returned home until a further investigation was conducted and completed

so basically this was before he died. They were, I guess maybe the police didn't know that he was going to die. I mean, nobody knew until he went in for emergency surgery, but they said in the, in the event that he is well and ready to be sent home, like he was last time, we're not going to allow that to happen. So clearly there was a concern that there was some abuse happening in the house. Unfortunately, like I said, this police hold would not be needed because as we know, in the early morning hours of April 10th, Jacob passed away. Well, maybe it was needed. I mean, it was needed. It was needed far before this.

Yeah, yeah. On April 10th, agents Sue DeWalt and Brenda drove to the Albuquerque International Airport to pick up Jean Landin and Eric, who'd flown in from California when they heard about Jacob. From there, agent DeWalt drove them all to the New Mexico State Police Office. And during the drive, Agent DeWalt said that Eric was crying in the backseat and she could hear him talking softly to his mother, but she couldn't make out exactly what he was saying. She did hear Brenda tell Eric that what had happened to Jacob was not his fault, that the baby stitches from the previous head injury had already healed and the injury

that Eric had admitted to giving Jacob had nothing to do with this injury and Jacob's death. At the state police office, Agent DeWalt interviewed Jean Landine and then with Jean's permission, she also spoke to Eric briefly. Jean told Agent DeWalt that his ex-wife Brenda had called him three weeks prior and asked him if Eric could stay with him temporarily because he had kicked Jacob and as a result Jacob had been seriously injured. Brenda had said that she felt that Eric might not be getting enough attention and she felt she could no longer control him and she was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Now Gene said that when Eric was with him he had talked to his son about how things were going at home. And Eric said that

his mother's boyfriend, John, had never actually hit him. But John had told him that if he ever lied again, he would hit him. Gene Landine also said that Eric was feeling an incredible amount of guilt over his brother's death. And he had told Gene that he'd loved Jacob, but Jacob had pulled his hair. And then, you know, Eric had hit Jacob, but he didn't know that he'd loved Jacob, but Jacob had pulled his hair, and then Eric had hit Jacob. But he didn't know that he had hit him that hard, and he was very, very sorry. But listen to this. Gene asked Eric what he thought had happened to Jacob this time,

and Eric said he knew what had happened. He said he had hit Jacob on the head, they had to operate on Jacob, and then Jacob fell off the couch and died. So Eric said that he felt if he hadn't hit Jacob, none of this would have ever happened. I wonder, because it seems like he knew some stuff, right, before coming back from California, because when he was talking to his father in California, he said, I know what happened. I hit him. He had to get operated on.

And then he fell off the couch and died. So I have a feeling, obviously, that his mother had talked to Eric on the phone before he flew back from California. And I wonder if John had also gotten on the phone and said, this is what happened and this is all your fault. And if you hadn't done this to begin with, this never would have happened. Like, this is a domino effect of what you've already done. Like, I wonder if there was some like prior coaching, because I think John knew, oh, shit, the person I've always blamed this on was not here. But if I can get this kid to keep admitting that it's his fault, then maybe there will be enough reasonable doubt that they won't look at me for this.

Plausible. And it's one of those things where it would make sense, right? He's the only one in the home. He's got to tie it back to someone else other than himself. So we can just say, hey, listen, yeah, although you weren't here, this is the residual effect of what you did. This is your fault still. I mean, keep in mind, John said that Eric had kicked Jacob in the head back in March.

But when recounting this incident to his father, Eric says, you know, he didn't kick Jacob. He actually says, he never says that he kicked Jacob. Even when he's talking to Agent DeWalt later, he never says, yeah, I kicked my brother.'s talking to Agent DeWalt later, he never says, yeah, I kicked my brother. He keeps saying, I hit him. I hit him, but I didn't think I hit him that hard. I didn't think I hit him hard enough to hurt him like this, but John claims he kicked him, right? Because you've got a skull fracture at this point, and you know that a five-year-old kid can't hit a baby hard enough to cause a skull fracture, so you have to say, well,

he used his foot, he used his legs, which are stronger to cause this injury. And that would make more sense. But Eric never says he kicked his brother. Gene then says two things to Agent DeWalt that at first glance might not seem connected, but I think personally they were. He mentions that he had thought with Eric out of the house, the issues with Jacob being hurt had been resolved. And he also says that John's ex-wife had called him and urged him to file a child abuse claim against John, which we already talked about. And I think those two things are connected because there's really no reason for Gene to bring that up right after talking about Eric. But it's almost as if he was saying, well, I thought with Eric out of the house, these things would be resolved.

But actually, now that we're talking about it, John's ex-wife had told me that I might want to file a child abuse claim. So I almost think he's saying like, clearly this wasn't Eric and we should be looking at John. I mean, I'm sure that, how would that not cross your mind? Even if you don't believe it, like just the different scenarios, how would that not be one of those scenarios you would want to explore? I feel like that, I feel like nobody really suspected John. And I feel like when John said that Jacob fell off the couch, people were like, yeah, I mean, he did already have that head injury. Maybe it just re-injured

it. You know, it's another skull fracture. I don't think if you're, if you're not a medical professional, you wouldn't know really the difference. You'd just be like, yeah, he did have this like kind of fresh skull fracture and now he died from a skull fracture. Maybe he just opened the old one up or something like that. It could have been an accident, you know? I guess the timing of it all, where you do have some evidence that you've witnessed yourself where Eric was a little rough with Jacob. Like that's,

we're not, we're not sitting here saying, Oh, he never, even Eric himself, which I said last episode is not sitting here saying I never laid a finger on him. He's acknowledged some of those incidences and even said like,

I don't remember all of it. I was five years old. So I think from a, from an adult perspective, you're looking at it going, well, listen, I'm not a doctor, but I know that my other son had been roughhousing with him a little bit. I'm not a doctor. Could those previous injuries result in something like this, where now he's more susceptible to serious injury because of what he sustained in the past. Okay. But the pathologist would have, would have been able to show that, Hey, listen, there's this previous injury. It looks like that's what was irritated. That's what that, that fracture is what, where this injury, where he fell and this is what occurred. He's not saying that he's seeing a blow to the head, a fresh blow to

the head. Correct. Yes. So kind of rules that out right there. I don't know. I don't know. It doesn't seem complicated to me. I don't know. That's why I'm not trying to be like an asshole. I just know. I mean, I agree, but we're different. I think we're different people. And I also would love to talk to Jean. I would love to talk to Jean and I would love to know if this dude is your best friend. You got to know stuff about him.

Like you had to have seen him at his worst. You'd have to have seen him when he's drunk or when he's mad. You'd have to have seen him like that more than once. Did he a tendency to be violent as well you know i will i'm speaking out loud and this isn't to give john any credit whatsoever i it's not impossible but i you had mentioned it a couple paragraphs ago it is interesting that never assaulted eric now the art it could be a very easy explanation that eric could speak so you don't want to hit the kid that can speak and actually tell on you. He can articulate what's happening. You want to,

you want to abuse the baby. That's only going to cry if something's wrong. And you want to convince Eric that he's the guy. He's your fall guy. So you can't do that if you're abusing Eric. Cause now he's even a kid's going to put two and two together and be like, well, you're hitting me and my brother's getting hit.

So that is interesting though. Right? Like you, sometimes you'll see that there's a, if there's abuse, it's across the board, all board all the stepchildren right it's not isolated to one but it would make sense in this case why he would choose jacob over eric because of the physical limitations as far as his ability to speak and i will say that in cases like this also it does seem to always be the baby the younger one because the baby takes so much attention of the mother

the baby needs so much time the mother's getting up at night the mother. The baby needs so much time. The mother's getting up at night. The mother's tired. Maybe the mother's not feeling like having sex at night. And now the stepfather or the boyfriend is like, well, if it wasn't for this damn baby being up all night, my girlfriend or my wife would feel more like getting it in at night. And now I have to blame, I'm blaming this child.

This is the person, the creature that is responsible for me not being able to be intimate with my partner. And that's why she's always tired. And she's always worried about the baby. And you'll see that a lot in child abuse cases. There did seem to be something personal that he had against Jacob. And what could you possibly have against a nine-month-old baby besides the fact that you yourself are a child and you can't stand that mommy's attention isn't on you.

So after Agent Ewald talked to Jean, she sat down with Eric and Eric told her that John had never hit him, but he often acted as if he was going to hit or kick him. And Eric said that John had threatened to hit him with a belt if he didn't be quiet once and when agent DeWalt asked Eric about Jacob's previous head injury Eric became very agitated and stated that he had not hurt Jacob. On April 10th agent Sue DeWalt received a call from detective Patrick Apodaca who was with the Socorro police department. They discussed the case and they decided that detective Apodaca would do an investigation into Jacob's death in Socorro where the family lived and then Agent DeWalt would finish up whatever needed to be handled in Albuquerque. Agent DeWalt heard from Detective Apodaca again two days later on April 12th and the detective told her that he had just interviewed John himself and John was still saying he had nothing to do with Jacob's death. So the detective wanted to give John a polygraph and this had been scheduled for April 15th at 1 p.m.

But then around 4 p.m. on April 14th, Agent DeWalt got another call from Detective Apodaca saying there was no need for a polygraph. John had confessed. And as I mentioned at the end of last week's episode, there really is no record of this confession in police records. We don't know what John confessed to what he said or even when he said it there's no recording no transcript not

even a summary in Detective Apodaca's writing the only mention of John confessing can be found in Agent DeWalt's notes on this case because she's like hey he said he confessed blah blah there are some notes of what John told a different police officer so that may have kind of been a similar thing that he told Detective Apodaca but I will still say Detective Apodaca's notes and transcript of whatever John confessed to is missing from the file and we know that he took notes because there's other notes in there and I'm going to talk about in a minute but when this detective interviewed Brenda he actually recorded their conversation so I assume that there's a recording somewhere of his conversation with John, because why would you record the conversation with Brenda, but not John? And unless it happened in a spontaneous type of situation during transporting them to and from somewhere.

Right. There's some scenarios where they didn't record it, but even if they didn't record it, there would be a report. That would be a summary of it. Some notes, a report, something to kind of articulate the specifics of what was done and what was said. Yes. Well, on April 20th, Agent DeWalt was contacted by someone else from the Socorro Police Department, Assistant Chief Johnny Trujillo, and he told DeWalt that he also had obtained a confession from John when he'd interviewed him on April 14th around 1030 a.m. DeWalt's notes state that Trujillo was evaluating the case, but an arrest had not been made at that time, even though allegedly John had confessed. On 4-21-1987, when agent Sue DeWalt signed and dated this report, the case status was listed as active, and the offense was described as involuntary manslaughter.

And this synopsis had been written in by Sue DeWalt. Quote, nine-month-old Jacob Landine died from a blow to the head. End quote. The next time we hear from Sue DeWalt on this case is several months later when she filed a supplemental report which stated, quote, On December 7th, 1987, I received the attached letter from Bruce M. Burwell, Deputy District Attorney for the 7th Judicial District, that there is insufficient evidence to justify filing criminal charges in this matter at this

time, end quote. And at the bottom, the words case status closed are typed. So what happened between Detective Apodaca and Assistant Police Chief Johnny Trujillo getting a confession from John on April 14th and then to the deputy DA deciding there was not enough evidence to file criminal charges just a few months later in December? What happened?

What changed? Maybe we can find some answers in the Socorro police files, the ones that did not vanish. Well, I mean, that's the whole thing, right? And this happens from time to time where they're going with involuntary manslaughter. So they don't feel they have enough for a murder charge because they can't prove intent. So they're going to go with involuntary manslaughter, which means the actions of this person resulted in their death, right? That's pretty easy.

The issue is it seems like all they had was this confession. There's very limited information as far as previous abuse other than the CPS report. And the injuries. And the injuries, right? But those injuries could be justified. Because when a DA looks at it, they're going to look at it as a defense attorney too, right? So they're going to say, oh, right, these other injuries.

What's the defense going to say when they look at it? They're going to say, well, there's a history of the little boy assaulting this boy to the point where, again, I'm just doing this for, to the point where the parents couldn't control him and had to ship him off to California because he was abusing this child so bad. That's what the defense attorney is going to say to a jury. And then on top of that, they're going to say, okay, maybe it was John, but maybe it was Brenda early in the day as well. How do we know for sure she wasn't abusing him?

So I'm not saying this. I'm not saying this, but I'm just saying that's what the defense attorney, by the way, multiple cameras, this is crazy. I'm not saying this. I'm not saying this. I'm not saying this. But you're going to have that world where they are going to bring up the reasonable doubt, right? That's okay. We're saying that this child was abused.

This child was hurt. That's fine. Let's go with that. But how do you know for certain it was my client? What evidence do you have to prove it was my client who caused the injury that resulted in his death? Well, the baby was alone with your client on that day. What if it's from a previous injury that he sustained by Eric? But John said the baby fell off the couch. So he admitted to being present when the injury happened. But isn't the argument, again, not defending here, but isn't the argument, John's argument, that he fell off the couch,

but it was the previous injury, the fracture to the skull. No, he never made that argument. I was just saying he may have said that to Eric to try to like, like on the phone before he flew back from it. He may have said that to be like, yes, this is your fault, right? Because why would a five-year-old be like, yeah, I know how he died. It's because of this injury that I caused. And then he fell off the couch. Why would a five-year-old come up with that on his own?

As far as I know, John's never said that. He's never said that to any of the police. He's admitted multiple times to like being there when this kid fell off the couch and said, well, I didn't know if he hit his head. So I suppose there'd still be reasonable doubt there, like for a jury trial, at the very least, if you, if it went to the jury, I might have a hard time finding him guilty based on past injuries and based on the fact that like you couldn't really prove. But involuntary manslaughter means the kid died on your watch and you didn't mean to do it. So I think that's pretty easy to prove that that's what happened. Right. I mean, I'm not I'm not a lawyer, but my problem with the whole thing is involuntary versus voluntary, because with voluntary voluntary you can have the intentional act

of another you know if i punch you in the face and your head hits off the concrete and you die from your injuries that's that's voluntary manslaughter not involuntary so involuntary is more of an accident where i guess that's what they're going with here where he was placed on the couch and that resulted in his death i don't know involuntary okay so it says involuntary manslaughter sometimes called criminally negligent homicide yep often comes in the wake of a deadly car crash caused by a motorist under the car under the influence of alcohol or drugs while the motorist never intended to kill anyone their negligence and operating of it like i honestly feel like if you knowingly consume alcohol or drugs and then get in a car

that should not be involuntary manslaughter. I'm so sorry. It should not be because you voluntarily and willingly knew exactly what you're doing and you put that in your mouth. But anyways, involuntary manslaughter does not have to involve motor vehicles. For example, if the operator of a dangerous carnival ride fails to ensure that all passengers are strapped in and people die as a result, the operator could be prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter. A building manager who recklessly neglects to install smoke detectors before the occurrence of a deadly fire might be charged for involuntary manslaughter. A building manager who recklessly neglects to install smoke detectors before the occurrence of a deadly fire might be charged with involuntary manslaughter too.

So honestly, I do still feel like that is involuntary manslaughter. You didn't properly make sure, like the carnival ride theory, you know this is nine month old, you know they roll all over, they're moving all over, you can't just put them on the couch and walk away.

You can't turn your back for a second. So that is still involuntary manslaughter. I agree. And so I guess that's the reason why they went with that. Because with voluntary, you're going to have to prove that. Usually a crime of passion sometimes. Yes, exactly. Or intentional killing.

Right. So like in the moment, you punch them with the intention on killing them. How would you prove that in a court of law? So that's interesting that we have involuntary manslaughter, right? That's the charges that investigators wanted to pursue. And the DA came back and said, nope, you don't have enough. You don't have enough to link John directly to it. They may not have disagreed with the idea that it was an involuntary manslaughter,

but then the question becomes who? Who's the suspect? Who's the offender here? Yeah. And maybe that's what the DA was concerned about. I feel like if we didn't have this previous history with Eric. That it would be easier to prove. That's my opinion.

I agree. But that's what I'm saying. Like, it just feels way too easy to hurt a child because this guy like convinced Eric that he was doing it. I also think it's convenient that while this is all going on, John is there when Eric's, you know, the, the abuser, right?

Yeah. He's always the one who sees it. Right. Could, could this have been something where this was some premeditation, right? Setting up a fall guy where, you know,

he's that, and that's, that's honestly where, what it seems like to me. So it's one of those things where you would hope that investigators would look into that as well. Bring, bring Eric Landin and bring the pathologist and bring this neighbor in.

If they, if it wasn't anonymous to really start to find out who was actually abusing Jacob. Yes. We know Eric might've hit him or struck him or shook him a little bit at some points. Were those acts enough to injure him to this extent? Jacob,

that being. And I also think it was interesting that Jacob had all these sicknesses, ear infection, tonsillitis. Every time we laid him down, he would throw up to me. That doesn't sound like an ear infection and tonsillitis. Every time we laid him down, he would throw up. To me, that doesn't sound like an ear infection and tonsillitis. Every time you lay him down, he throws up. It sounds like a brain injury. It sounds like a TBI. And it sounds like that was like probably not the first time since Eric had been gone that John had hurt Jacob. But this time it just went too far, right? Because he'd been persistently

just like battering on him. Right. And this poor baby couldn't take it anymore. Right. Yeah, because I mean, we're talking about this fall off the couch, right? As if it's a scenario. And sure, it's a scenario. But it's also possible it didn't happen at all.

Not a scenario that ends in the way that it did. Yeah. I'm with you. Well, Detective Apodaca interviewed Jacob's mother, Brenda, on April 10th. And in his notes, Apodaca writes that the interview was recorded and he even lists which tape the interview with Brenda can be found on. Like I said, this seems like he knows what he's doing. He catalogs things properly. Definitely, he interviewed John and recorded it, in my opinion.

Thank you for adding in my opinion. Definitely, one million percent recorded, maybe, in my opinion definitely one million percent recorded maybe in my opinion it's not a maybe definitely 100 did record it in my opinion and i'll say this i'm 100 sure in my opinion it's possible that the the conditions didn't allow him to record it like could have been a spontaneous utterance it could have been in a snack room or whatever because he's not under arrest at this point. I'm not saying you're not, it's not possible what you're saying.

I'm just saying there is a world that he didn't record. You don't always have to be the other side of the coin. But I believe it though. You could just, I do believe that. Do you believe it? Like what's your, what's your over-under on the fact that Apodaca,

who's like carefully documenting Brenda's interview. Yeah. What's the over-under on that? He didn't do that with John, the suspect. The fact that there's no report that? He didn't do that with John, the suspect. The fact that there's no report of it tells me it may have been more in the moment, that it might have been something.

I still don't know why he wouldn't write a report for it after. Or there's no report on it because the report's missing because it got taken out of the police station. It's not a theory. I mean, it is a theory. By definition, it's a theory. It's a theory. For those of you who are on audio, she's air quoting.

Literally, even the detectives who went in, a theory for those of you who are on audio but like literally even the detectives a theory quote-unquote but even the detectives that went in like 2005 they were like this is really hard to put this together because so many files are missing yeah i mean i will regardless of whether it was recorded or not we both agree if it wasn't recorded it should have been heavily documented and the fact that it's just completely missing altogether is very suspicious at minimum negligent right like at minimum it's just a complete lack of due diligence and doing your job oh detective apodaca yeah i mean if he didn't write it down he did he's in my opinion we really need to search him to search him up and i told eric i was like have you talked to this guy because i need to to know what I'd like. What was the confession?

What was the context? And it seemed like Apodaca was like kind of going hard on John from the get, you know, cause he called, um, agent DeWalt over in Albuquerque and he's like, okay, you're on this. Well, I'm going to start here. I'm going to get started on like interviewing people here. And he, and then he called agent DeWalt and he's like, listen, John's still saying he didn't have anything to do with that but i'm gonna give him a polygraph like well who's the other person i said he confessed to it wasn't just abu trujillo um the chief assistant chief trujillo so now that could also be a situation where assistant chief was just getting that relayed to him by abu daca or they were both in the room which you often see right yeah you'll see obviously there's probably there's probably one confession and i could tell like as

it goes exactly as it goes up the ranks it may be just hey lt or hey chief we got one you know he may not have been in the interview but either way i think it was no it seems like he was in the interview because there there are some notes that your heel makes that we can still find and we're going to talk about those later but i think they were both probably there so maybe the the confession was the same and it's just apodaca's records missing and Apodaca's notes missing, but we'll see. Cool. So he talks to Brenda. Detective Apodaca talks to Brenda.

And Brenda didn't completely throw her boyfriend John to the wolves at this point, but she was a bit more honest about him. And this is most likely because by this time she knew that her son was dead. Whereas when she spoke to Agent DeWalt, she still didn't know what Jacob's status was. As far as she knew, it was just going to be like last time he was going to have an operation, have to be bandaged up, he would be okay. But now she knew he was gone. And so Brenda mentioned how John kept telling her that he hadn't touched Jacob while they were driving to the hospital, how he had said this at least five times, even though she had not asked. And Detective Apodaca's report stated, quote, the baby would cry whenever John made a loud noise. The baby would clutch to Brenda and didn't want to be held by John.

On three occasions that the baby was left alone with John, the baby had suffered injuries. The injuries were always blamed on the six-year-old brother, Eric. Brenda stated that she and John were getting along fine. They occasionally would have arguments over buying a trailer. John would at times become upset when the baby would cry at night for his bottle. Brenda stated that on one occasion, John was playing the stereo very loud and the baby was trying to sleep. Brenda turned down the stereo a little and John became very upset. John told her that the stereo was his private property and for her not to touch it.

Brenda stated that John was angry and showed a big mood change then. Occasionally, John would accuse Brenda of acting like his ex-wife. Brenda stated that John's kids were never hit by John. Brenda's six-year-old son, Eric, did not like John. Eric would glare at John and did not like to be left with or spend time with John, end quote. So Brenda's being a little bit more honest here, a little bit more transparent now that Jacob's dead and she can't really, I suppose she could still write it off as an accident, but now she's kind of resentful, angry, hurt, you know, even if off as an accident, but now she's kind of resentful, angry, hurt, you know, even if it's an accident, probably wishing that her boyfriend had been more careful with her child. Oh, at minimum, yeah. Detective Apodaca also spoke to the doctors who

had cared for Jacob at the hospital, and he was told that the injury on Jacob appeared to have been made by a severe blow from a blunt object such as an open hand. And if Jacob had struck the coffee table or the floor like john had suggested the laceration on his head would have been more defined and there would have been bleeding under the skin on jacob's head so as i kind of had summarized earlier the doctor's literally saying this happened because of abuse i mean yeah that's one person's opinion but he is a doctor of who does surgeries on on baby's heads that's one person's opinion, but he is a doctor who does surgeries on babies' heads. That's what he was brought in for, and he's saying this is what I believe happened.

You assume all this was in the report, or should be in the report, when they're writing their affidavit and they're presenting it to a DA. It is all in the report, yeah. Yeah, the DA seeing this. I think what it comes down to, the big holdup here is how do we prove it was John? I think that's the big thing here. I think they, the DA, if we had them sitting right here, they might agree that Jacob was, was abused. And that's the, the injuries he sustained during that abuse was the result, what resulted in his death. And even the DA may know who did it, but it's like, okay,

but how do I prove this in court? How do my, how do my attorneys prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was unequivocally john yeah i mean i think that the fact that he said the baby's been left alone with john three times and these injuries happen but it's always been blamed on the kid so it's like every time jacob's left with john the responsible adult he's like oh eric heard him but it's like at some point well then do you separate these kids when you're together with them? You're being negligent in that point if you're leaving these two kids alone long enough together, this five-year-old who you know

has been violent, allegedly, and this nine-month-old together, and you're just like knowing that something could happen and you're walking out the room and leaving them alone long enough for that to happen. That doesn't sound logical. It doesn't sound like something that would happen. I think at some point, the law enforcement and the DAs have to use their brains here.

At some point, hopefully, maybe one day. Let's take a break. Let's take a break. We'll be right back. Okay, we're back from the break. On April 12th, Detective Apodaca got a call from John. And John said he was hurting and he wanted to talk. And Detective Apodaca told John to meet him at the Socorro police station.

And before John said anything, he was Mirandized. Now, April 12th would have been the date that Detective Apodaca called Agent DeWalt and told her that John was still refusing to admit that he'd done anything to Jacob. And that was why Apodaca wanted to hook him up to a polygraph machine. On this day, John did not confess. And Detective Apodaca's detailed notes about what John did say on this day are in the files. There's no notes in the files from John's interview with Apodaca two days later when he supposedly confessed. On April 12th, when he talked to the detective, John told basically the same story, but he added and changed some small details. He said that when Merlinda arrived with Jacob, he had taken the baby out of the car seat, placed him in his walker in the living room, and Jacob was walking around the living room while John was working on dubbing his tapes. And John said that shortly after arriving, Jacob had spit up on his shirt and he had to change the baby.

And then Jacob got into the trash and John slapped his hand lightly. And then Jacob kept getting into John's tapes. So John took him out of the walker and put him on the floor with a teething biscuit. But then Jacob cried like he was tired. So John picked him up planning to put him down in his crib. But as he was walking away, he heard the tape stop. So he placed Jacob on the couch quickly so he could change the tape. John said he then heard Jacob scream and he turned around to find the baby on the floor with stuff coming out of his mouth. The scream was a little bit different, because last time he said it was like a gurgle or something that he had heard, something like small. But now he hears Jacob scream.

Remind the audience real quick, how old was Jacob? Nine months old. Nine months old. What's your opinion? No, it's not even, it doesn't happen. Slapping a nine-year-old's hand. Oh, on slapping a nine-year-old's, a nine-month-old's hand? No.

Okay. I don't know. Maybe, guys, weigh in the comments below. Personally, that to me is a red flag. If you're slapping, I don't think a nine-month-old. Lightly, lightly. Either way, you apply, I was slapped by my mom, you know, but it's one of those things where you start to, because your brain's a little bit more developed, you start to associate a bad activity with that pain, right?

Oh, hey, listen, if I do that, that's going to happen. A nine-month-old isn't able to process that yet. So you could slap their hand as much as you want. They're not going to establish that recognition of, oh, trash equals hand at that age. Maybe somebody's going to disagree with me out there developmentally that they would, but I actually want you guys to weigh in on that one because personally, I'm not slapping mine. I had two nine-months-olds at one point.

I wasn't slapping them to correct them, even if it was only lightly tapping them on their hands. There's probably some people who wouldn't know that. Like if you weren't aware about child development, you probably wouldn't know that. But I think it's a red flag where he said the baby screamed. Have you ever had a nine-month-old baby scream when they fall? They don't scream. They'll start crying.

I don't remember. I don't remember. They'll start crying. Sometimes they don't do anything because they're like in shock. You know, my daughter Bella, oh, one time, and it was Adam's fall. I'm going to say it was Adam's fall completely. He was not watching her. She's on the bed. She was flying off the bed. Her head, her face hits the corner of the bedside table. She had a black eye that was terrible. Black eye here all swollen forever.

And every time I brought her out in public, I got so many looks and people even would accuse me of abusing her at some point like in the store. But she didn't scream. She didn't do anything. She was for a good 30 seconds completely quiet, like almost in shock. And then she started like crying, but not like a scream like you or I would make if we fell. And we'd be like, ah, you know, nine month olds, they don't do that. So why add the scream then?

And why change it from a girl to a scream? I'm asking you why? Why? Yeah. Why? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, yeah, why change it? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. What would be the rationale behind that? I don't know. I have no, I could not even tell you. Fair answer. So he turns around, sees the baby on the floor with stuff coming out of his mouth. John said he turned Jacob over.

He tried to clear his throat and then he ran to the neighbors to call 911 where he performed mouth to mouth on Jacob. And even after Detective Apodaca told John that the injury could not have come from a fall off the couch, John stuck to his story, but he did agree to take a polygraph even though he claimed he was afraid of failing it. And remember that Detective Apodaca called Agent DeWalt and told her that a polygraph would not be necessary because John had confessed, but apparently John would end up taking a polygraph. And according to Eric, he did this because Eric's mother and John's girlfriend, Brenda,

was suspicious of John at this point. And John told her he would take the polygraph to prove to her that he was telling the truth, that he was innocent. And on July 9, 1987, Brenda and Eric drove all the way to Santa Fe with John, and they waited in the parking lot of the New Mexico State Police headquarters while John went in to take the polygraph and a little while later John exited the building and they asked him what happened and he said they went well I passed and since he hadn't been detained or arrested Brenda and Eric thought he was telling the truth but he wasn't and he

hadn't passed the polygraph test but I am getting ahead of myself so let's go back to april of 1987 after jacob died brenda and eric moved back in with brenda's parents and brenda sort of at this point gave john the cold shoulder she was like not feeling super not super good about him at minimum you you were watching my son when he died exactly probably a deal breaker for a relationship i mean at least and we've seen like people get divorced over this one when they lose a child. You're holding the adult responsible for what they should have been responsible for in the first place. Yeah. So exactly. At the least, she's just like, you did not care for my son as well as you should have. Yeah. So she needed time to grieve, obviously. And she wanted to really

process what had happened and consider what part her boyfriend John could have had in her son's death. And during this time, John made many efforts to get Brenda to come and talk to him. He left her letters at work. He called her. He followed her. And he made several pleas for Brenda to meet him in the graveyard at Jacob's grave. And he said if she did that, he would tell her what had really happened. All I kept saying is, it was an accident, it was an accident, and meet me at the graveyard so I could talk to you. Why am I going to meet him at the graveyard when he put my son in the graveyard? Yeah.

You know, I'm thinking he's going to kill me over there. Well, I read that in the investigative report, and I thought that was really weird that he, I mean, even for him. Not just once, but over and over and over. He wanted me to go meet him at the graveyard, to talk to him at the graveyard. That's so creepy. Like, that is sick. Yeah.

Who murders somebody and then tries to take the mother of the child you murdered to the grave of the kid. That don't make sense at all. That's just like, what? I can't even understand that. So finally, after a few months of Brenda being suspicious of him, John told her, like I of the kid. That don't make sense at all. That's just like, what? I can't even understand that. So finally, after a few months of Brenda being suspicious of him, John told her, like I said, he would take the polygraph and prove to her once and for all that he was innocent.

And that's when he went to Santa Fe and he took the polygraph and told her that he had passed it. And since nothing happened to him after that, Brenda believed him and they got back together. The police reports tell a different story. In a letter addressed to Bruce Burwell, the ADA, and also sent to Johnny Trujillo, who was the assistant chief of the Socorro Police, Sergeant Willie Garcia of the Department of Public Safety stated that John had showed deception when he answered no to two questions. The first question, did you intentionally strike Jacob in the head area on April 9th, 1987? And the second question, did you intentionally strike the baby in the head area before he went limp?

Sergeant Garcia then talked about John's statements in the post-test interrogation, when John still denied having any part in Jacob's death, but did admit to not having been completely truthful during the initial law enforcement investigation. You think? That's a really big newsflash here. And this is where John's story of what happened on the evening of April 9th drastically veers from his original story. So John said that Jacob had been in a standing position, holding himself up by the arm of a wooden chair in the living room. And then John knelt down in front of the baby

and angled his chin in a position where he could playfully rub his beard between Jacob's legs, which, I mean, that's kind of weird to begin with. What the hell are you doing? You freak. What a weirdo. But yeah, he wanted to playfully rub his beard between Jacob's thighs. And John said while he was doing this, he felt Jacob losing his balance or he felt that Jacob was losing his balance and he was about to fall. So John said he whipped his head up so that he could catch Jacob. But instead, he figured out that Jacob's body had actually been like angled and leaning over his head. And when John raised his head up, he forcefully lifted Jacob off of his feet and kind of threw him with like his head. You know what I mean mean like if he was doing this to the baby like

and then the baby was over his head and now he does this the baby's going flying right kind of like with his legs up in the air yep like like a reverse for people who are listening to this on audio stop me if i'm wrong but like if you were to have like a kid on your shoulders right like someone's on your like you know a small child that was like straddling your neck. But from the front. Right. Kind of from the front where he's leaning this way. Again, for people on audio, this is going to be difficult. Let's say you have the child in the air and his belly's on your head. Top of your head.

And he's like a Superman kind of thing. Yeah. And his head is facing behind you and his legs would be out like by your face area. That's right. And then you lift your head and he goes flying back he rolls all down your back basically flips it does a there's a front flip over your back he kind of made it seem like he like flew yeah like a superman thing i'll let you continue before i weigh in this go ahead and john said when he kind of like forcefully

like threw jacob this caused jacob to hit the floor hard and john also said he was sure that at this point jacob's head had hit the wooden arm of And John also said he was sure that at this point, Jacob's head had hit the wooden arm of the chair that he'd been holding onto. I don't know how both of those things would happen because the chair would have been in front of John and Jacob's head would have been, like I said, facing behind John.

So I don't see how that would have happened, but okay. Like physically, it doesn't make any sense, but okay. So then John said, as soon as Jacob fell, John scooped him up in his arms and he held him for about 10 minutes. And during this time, Jacob didn't show any signs of being injured by this fall. However, Jacob did seem tired. And so John proceeded to walk into the bedroom to put the baby in his crib. Cause that's exactly what you do when a child has just hit their head on the floor and seems tired you're like let me put you to bed so that you can you know pass out from this concussion that you probably have I'm gonna put you to sleep like literally at the age of six I knew that if you hit your head you shouldn't go to sleep

you know I don't know how I knew that but it just was something that like my parents told me and I feel like John should probably known that right but John said was something that like my parents told me. And I feel like John should have probably known that. Right. But John said he never even made it to Jacob's crib because he heard the tape that he was dubbing stop. And then this is when he placed Jacob on the couch briefly so he could switch tapes. And while doing this, Jacob fell on the floor again. And when John picked him up, Jacob was now affected by this fall. He was convulsing and fluid was coming out of his nose and mouth. So once again, this couch story has got to come back, right?

All this other stuff happens before, but he still does fall off the couch. And now he seems to be, you know, sustained from an injury because John has to keep this couch story in here somehow. And John said he placed the baby face down over his forearm and patted his back, the baby's back, to try to clear Jacob's air passages. And when that didn't work, John held Jacob by both feet and continued to pat his back, held him by both feet, like held him upside down by the feet and patted his back. Now, when asked why he hadn't told the truth when first asked by the police, John said he was afraid that his girlfriend Brenda would reject him. And he was now concerned that when she found out the truth, that he hadn't been completely honest and that he had been a little bit more responsible for what happened to Jacob than he had previously said.

She was going to leave him basically. And he would feel really bad because this had been an accident, but she was still going to blame him. And maybe she wouldn't want to have kids with him. And, you know, she would think he wasn't a good father and things like that. So that was his concern. And that's why he didn't tell her the truth or the police the truth initially all right so i want to hear what you think about john's new story when we come back from break we're back from break that was was very telling. Telling of someone who didn't decide to tell this alternate version until someone said to them, you're lying and this computer proves it. It's the only reason he said it.

It's the only reason he had to add more to the story. Not to, for any other reason other than the fact that it showed signs of deception. So he had to justify. And the autopsy showed that what happened wasn't true wasn't true yeah so he's like okay this guy's calling me out it's showing him that i'm lying so now i have to explain why i'm lying with another lie right because he's not going to say the truth he's oh you you know what guilty i did lie you're right lied. Here's what really happened. First question I would have for Brenda, this whole position that he's talking about having Jacob in with the beard between the legs and like

this little, whatever it might be. Was this a common thing? Was it a common thing? Was this something he ever did before? Was he a playful guy like that? Cause the, the job that I'm getting through this whole thigh beard rubber. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not trying to laugh. It's terrible. I know, I know. But I would love to hear from Eric and Jake, not Jacob, obviously, but Brenda. Was this a common practice with Jacob? Was it a common practice with Eric?

I'm going to go and say it wasn't. Was this something he used to do with his own kids? Has anybody ever seen John do this type of horsing around before with a small child? Was this something that was kind of in his nature to, you know, wrestle like this a little bit? Not even wrestle, like that seems so like gentle, you know, and so like Loving? Yes, loving.

Overall, I think he's lying. I know that's not a surprise to you. He's definitely lying. There's more to the story and even so, the arm the armrest, the wooden arm that doesn't make a lot of sense. I think he's trying to paint a picture of, okay, he got a concussion during an accident. It wasn't hard, but it was harder than the fall off the couch. And the fall off the couch was just the icing on the cake that kind of put him over the edge,

where the combination of the two things, which were completely innocent, by the way, in case you were wondering, Mr. mr officer but they were all just an accident and a really tragic one at that and the reason for him not saying it ever was he was concerned that brenda yeah would leave him so i don't believe him that's just me i don't believe him i don't believe him either and i mean she already had left him by that point, right? If that was the truth, you can tell that version the first time. And it might not make you look great. I think the fact that even the first version, the couch story, made you look terrible.

So this doesn't make you look any worse. It doesn't make any sense why you would omit this part of the story because I don't think it's any worse than leaving the kid unattended on the couch in the first place. No. So for me... Because exactly, that wasn't a part of the story he just came up with that so he would have had no problem saying that to the police initially right because it makes you look like you know attentive you're playing with him it was complete accident you feel terrible about it leaving him on the couch on attendance you can switch over your dubstep tapes or what the hell ever like that's more of an issue than you would just have.

Which, once again, to me the mechanics of that don't even work. How are you flipping a baby? Because honestly, you feel the baby on your head. You feel the weight of this baby on you. How did you feel like Jacob was losing his balance but at the same time he was angled over your body? He's a baby. He's a tiny little baby you would feel him on you he's not like a giant baby right so it's not like oh he's so tall that I don't even know where his weight is displaced on me like you would feel the weight of him on your head so why in the world would you think he was falling

and why if you feel the weight of him on your head, are you flipping your head up? And how far is he flying? Like how far is this velocity of this flying through the air and hitting his head on the floor? Just because you whipped your head up. Like it's a boomerang or something or like one of those slingshots. It just doesn't make any sense. And then how would he also hit his head on the arm of the wooden chair? Like did that happen before? Did it happen after?

It's very weird. I'm going to get a little nerdy on you here for a second, but you know what else I would like to have done at the time? Could still be done now, to be honest with you, but I was looking this up while we were talking. So a blank tape. There's a couple different types of tapes, and there might be more for my tech people out there.

You have a C60, a C90, and a C120. A C60, there's 30 minutes on each side of that C60, a C90, and a C120. A C60, there's 30 minutes on each side of that tape. On a C90, there's 45 minutes. And on a C120, there's 60 minutes. I would love to know what type of tape this was, how long after he came into the house with Jacob, or how long he was alone with Jacob, did he put this tape on? And if we could kind of time that out where, okay, you were there, you got there, what time did you put the tape on? What time did this incident occur? And see if it lines up with the duration of that tape. Because he says this all happens during the time

when that tape would have had to been flipped over, right? Well, if it's a C-120 and it's less than an hour, right, this whole thing occurs where he comes in the house and doesn't immediately put it on, that tape wouldn't have needed to be flipped until about 60 minutes. So this whole thing, this whole duration with Jacob was less than that, right? About an hour in total. So you'd have to assume he didn't walk in the house and immediately put it on.

It might have took five or 10 minutes, right? And that matters. And then he was in the house with Jacob for a little while before the foaming and before he went to police. So it would have been going on before Jacob got there. Because she could have the tape on. So Marlinda dropped Jacob off. So John could have the tape on so merlinda dropped jacob off so john could have just been in there dubbing tapes and then jacob came and he was like okay this is

dubbing i know i got time i'll go grab the kid bring him in to know i just just just to kind of just to see if the tapes exist right right was he even dubbing tapes yeah but you can definitely these are the little things where again he thinks it's a minimal detail right like it's just something to add some some more credibility to the story by saying oh i had to switch over the tape and that's why i lost that's why i got distracted right because maybe the tape was on or was dubbing it or whatever but i highly doubt that the tape had to be flipped at that point and that's why he lost uh you know attention on jacob for a second and why would you put him on the couch you just had him on the floor why don't you just put him back down on the floor it's just a second why

would you put him on the couch and turn your back to him when you could just put him on the floor to ensure he doesn't fall off where he just was because it's just a second for you to switch the tape like it doesn't make any sense i think this is one of those little details where they could have got him and said they could have the tape wasn't even close to being over at that point they could what are you talking i don't even think they looked at those tapes i don't even think they questioned it and so you say like what tape was it let's play it what which kind of tape was it like what were you dubbing what song was it like just see if he even knows anything about these tapes these are the little things they sound insignificant right they would have done that

today i think law enforcement today would do that some of them right the good ones like you didn't want to say that. The ones who want to solve the case, I guess. You know, right. Unless you're going to turn on me and be like, oh, Derek, you would have. I mean, you probably would have. Right. I'm OCD.

So you certainly would have. You guys don't know that we were talking about it, but the set. I'm very OCD with a lot of things. And this set's driving me nuts. It's actually making me. There's cords around. There's cords everywhere. And even this isn't set up completely. Yeah. I digress. We're back to the story. Anyways. things and this sets driving me nuts it's actually making those cords around cords everywhere and

even this isn't set up completely yeah i digress we're back to the story anyways derrick would have done it i think that it's just kind of one of those like puzzle pieces that you want to sort of like have i think in in any situation in any police investigation you can't have too much information right so you can't interview too many people you can't have too many details the more the better i think and those details there's not a lot of details in john's reasoning right so the little things that he says you circle those things that can be recreated yeah and fact-checked to either a confirm his credibility or b discredit him and and start to create a narrative that maybe he's not someone that can be trusted

So these little details that he throws out there without really having a lot of thought behind them He's just saying them in the moment probably Allegedly. Yeah, probably allegedly definitely you can go. Oh really tape. That's awesome. Let's go get that tape. Let's go to tape Well, wait, what what do you want to do? Let's go get the tape. It's still there, right? It's right there on the living room floor. I got time you got time want to do let's go get the tape it's still there right it's right there on the living room floor i got time you got time yeah let's go do it that's what i'm saying like those are the things they don't expect yeah but that that should have been done and it doesn't look like really it was and probably because they he went to the hospital in albuquerque

right and there that's where it's starting and it's not even where they live yeah unfortunate but so after this point after this lie detector test failure that John never was, you know, well, at least initially wasn't honest about failing after this, this lie detector failure, police files go dark. There's no other mention about John or Jacob or the investigation until 1991. But just because things were quiet on the investigation front didn't mean that things were quiet for Brenda and Eric Landin. In fact, things were worse than ever for them. After telling Brenda that he'd passed his polygraph exam, John also informed her that

he'd committed some insurance fraud at work, where he'd put her name on some health insurance documents stating that they were married and now they needed to get married or he was going to be in big trouble. He basically was like, I'm going to go to prison if we don't make this a reality. And before John and Brenda were married, John had sometimes shown incidents of temper, you know, like the stereo incident she had spoken about where he got mad when she turned it down, which is a huge red flag, by the way, just so anybody knows that if somebody gets mad because your baby's trying to sleep and you turn the radio down that they're playing at full volume and they get mad about that, they're a dick. They have no consideration for anybody else. They're selfish and they're narcissistic prick. Okay. That's it.

And then when they start to say, oh, you remind me of my ex-wife because she nagged me like you, that's gaslighting. You didn't do anything wrong. And they're a dick. And honestly, that's a huge red flag that somebody would have that kind of like temper tantrum over the stereo being turned down while the baby's trying to sleep. That's not somebody who would make a good father, just in my opinion. But anyways, you know, little incidents like that. But after they got married, it all changed, right? After Brenda was his wife, even before he had never laid a hand on Eric or Brenda, but after Brenda was his wife, things really went from bad to worse. And this next clip is a little bit hard to listen to just as a warning. I really thought he loved me. He didn't love me. He just

wanted to use me and, you know, keep that over my head for three years. He abused me. He put a knife to my throat. He said the only way I was gonna get away from him would be in a body bag. When you have a dagger to your throat he said the only way I was gonna get away from him would be in a body bag when you have a dagger to your throat you know they say are you leaving after they beat you and put a dagger to your throat and say that to you of course you're gonna say no you know how are you gonna leave when they're trying to stab you in the throat and kill you right there this it's scary after Jacob died, everything changed. After, I don't know what he told me,

that he had to get married to me because he filed some kind of papers and he was going to go to prison and big old story. I don't know what it was, but he conned me into marrying him. I married him with a JP. After all of it was over, I went and asked the judge for an annulment. And I was granted one because it was so violent that nobody deserves that. After Jacob died, things started changing. You know, I mean, he was obviously, he was hitting you. And I remember, I think we were still on the other side of the

freeway we were still kind of not same neighborhood where we live in Jacob died because I think it was we were living in a single wide at that time before we got the double white okay and I remember one day we were gonna go somewhere as a family with it was like you me his him, and you guys were fighting the night before. And you were all like black and blue. You had bruises on your arms. Your eye was black. I remember we were all lined up almost like we're in the military.

All four of us. And he was walking back and forth. And he said, if somebody asks what happened to your mom what are you going to say over and over and over again until I said this answer that he wanted and until it was perfect and until he believed me and I almost felt like he was kind of like brainwashing us. And also, he would like get in my face and be like, if you fuck this up, I'm going to kill your mom. Like real quiet.

So that even his kids couldn't hear it. But he was like right in front of my face. There's a lot of things that happened that I never told you because he always threatened to kill us. And I believed him. I knew. You have to believe him. Your brother's in the grave. I knew he was definitely capable of it.

But like there were times when, when it was just him and I, you know, his kids were with their mom and you were at work or something. I wouldn't be allowed to leave my room all day. Like I couldn't even go to the bathroom. And I remember I had all this stuff in my room and at first I thought it was like, oh, I'm a lucky kid. I have a TV. I have a Nintendo.

I have a TV I have a Nintendo I have a refrigerator I have all this stuff in my room that most kids don't have but I think that was his way of imprisoning me try to make you hostage yeah and so I would have to knock on my door and I'd have to ask for permission to go to the restroom and if he felt like I didn't really need to go, then I didn't get to go. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. It gets worse. I'm sorry.

It gets a lot worse. And I didn't tell you, not because I didn't trust you, but because I didn't want you to fucking die, you know? One time he locked me in my closet, and he put the dining chair against the door so I couldn't get out of it because he was mad about something. I don't remember what it was,

but I couldn't even be in my room. I had to be in the closet. I just, I never told you. I feel bad about that, but I also didn't want us to get killed either. Because I was trying to save our lives. At least that's what I felt like. And I remember always feeling like we were walking on eggshells.

I mean, do you remember when he would get mad if I gave him what he thought was a dirty look? Yeah, he would get mad if I cleaned the bedroom. He was a psycho. He would get mad for just anything. Any little wrong movement. Say something wrong, you say something wrong you do something wrong every help breaks loose we I mean we didn't I don't like we really did anything wrong ever you know what I mean like I don't feel like we did nothing to

deserve that yeah he's the one with the problem I mean every times where he'd be like stop looking at me like that and And then I would just look down. And so I spent a lot of the time just looking at the floor because I was afraid that if I even just looked at him, that he was going to start beating the shit out of you. And then I would get locked in my room. And you know what I mean? Like it was going to be the same shit. It wasn't even about you. It was just anything I did. It wasn't. about you it was just anything I did it wasn't it was if he felt guilty you come home and beat on me because of what he was doing wasn't even like nothing to do with us I think the point though is that like we never knew what was gonna send him over the edge yeah it literally could be anything or

nothing sometimes. It's hard to react to a psychopath. It's hard to be prepared because you never know. Every time something would happen, he would always say, if anybody finds out about this, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill your mom. And I slept with, I had a can of Aquanet and a lighter and a steak knife under my pillow, and a bat under my bed. That's scary.

But I knew I needed to do something to protect myself. And I don't know if you remember this one time, it was like the middle of the afternoon, and he had locked me and his kids in our room, and he was beating the shit out of you for a long time. And then you stopped a long time. And then you stopped screaming. Yeah, I remember. And I broke out of my room through the window. I busted the, uh, screen window out and I started throwing rocks at your room window.

You saved my life. She was choking me with the wire hanger because I kept telling him I was going to leave. I was going to leave. I choked me till I almost passed out. And when he jumped out the window. Terrible to hear. Heard this story way too many times. And sometimes they get out. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes this is a story that ends even worse than it did as far as they're concerned. I think what we can take away from this is John's not a good guy. And I don't think that this just started happening out of nowhere. He may have been able to hide it for some period of time, at least with Brenda.

But overall, Tiger doesn't, or I should say, what is it, a zebra doesn't change their stripes. So I think it's one of those situations where he progressively became more who he really was. And unfortunately, it seems like the only person who was seeing a true side of John was Jacob. Yeah, and I mean, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that they got married. You know, you do see that a lot like dating you'll see certain glimpses of a temper or maybe like a potential to be violent but then once you're married and you're legally bound to this person and they know it's that much harder for you to get away the the real person comes out and sometimes it's gradual or sometimes it's quick it felt like this kind of was like as soon as they were married, he started doing it.

Here I am. Yep. This is who you married. And this actually went on for a few years, about two and a half, three years. But then something happened that really snapped Brenda out of it. Brenda found out that John had been behaving inappropriately with her 13-year-old niece. On November 19, 1990,

John had called this minor girl and told her that he thought she was pretty and that he watched her when she was at his house and he knew that she knew he was watching and he told her to come over when her aunt was at work and all of this stuff and obviously this girl told Brenda and when Brenda confronted John about this he denied doing it and then said maybe he had done it but he didn't remember because he was stoned later john would tell a detective joel haley that he had smoked some weed laced with cocaine and he didn't remember calling anyone that's always a great you know a great defense like i don't think i did this but also i was

like just taking a lot of a plethora of drugs all mixed together so i could have just forgotten it's like i'm a good person i just you know smoked some weed laced with cocaine we've all been there right just yeah i mean i did that last week yeah idiot and uh obviously this is when brenda filed for an annulment and she got away for good in january of 1991 brenda went to the sakura police department to give another statement about john and she talked to detective joel haleyaley. And Brenda said that at first she believed the whole thing with Jacob had been an accident, but she still felt that the whole truth had not come out,

which was one of the reasons that she'd remained in a relationship with John. She said she wanted to, you know, find out the truth. And Brenda admitted that during the three years she'd been married to John, he'd been verbally and physically abusive. She even produced a letter written to her from John in which he stated, I will never hit you again.

And this was evidence of his abuse. And Brenda also revealed that she had met John at the police station near the end of November of 1990. They hadn't gone inside for some reason. But I think what happened was this was when John was saying, meet me at the grave, meet me at the grave, and I'll tell you what happened. And she said, meet me at the police station. And they did meet at the police station, but it didn't look like they went in to talk to the police. So maybe he just thought she meant meet him in the parking lot of the police station. So he would tell her what happened, but apparently he did.

He told her he was going to reveal the whole truth to her. And in this new version of events, John claimed he'd been playing with Jacob that night. He was throwing the baby into the air and catching him, which had been a favorite game of Jacob's. But during one of these throws, John failed to catch Jacob and the baby fell and hit his head on a wooden chair very hard. And basically, Brenda was like, that was it. You know, that was all he had to tell me. And then the rest of the time that we sat there talking, all he wanted to talk about was getting back together. But now he claims this is what happened. He threw the baby up in the air and he missed him. He didn't catch him.

And Jacob hit his head. The following August, a district judge signed a warrant for John's arrest for abandonment or abuse of a child. And in this arrest affidavit, we get some information about what John told the police on April 14th, 1987. John told Assistant Chief Johnny Trujillo that he had placed Jacob on the couch with a teething biscuit when the tape needed to be changed. And while he was changing the tape, he heard Jacob choking and gagging on the biscuit that he had given him. And he grabbed Jacob and he was patting him on the back, you know, to stop him from choking. And which is not what you're supposed to do, by the way, when someone's choking, just as a means to be responsible here. That is, I think, the opposite of what you should be doing when someone is choking. Do not hit them on the back. But anyways, he's patting Jacob on the back. And while he was doing this, because

it didn't stop Jacob from choking, John held Jacob by both feet and hit him in the back and neck area between the shoulder blades, of course, to try to get him to stop choking on the teething biscuit. John said he didn't remember hitting Jacob on the head, but he could have because he was hitting him on the back and on the neck area to get him to stop choking. And then apparently this did stop the baby from choking for a while. So he put Jacob on his back on the floor, but then the baby started vomiting. So John rolled Jacob onto his side, pushed on his stomach and chest, but also continued hitting him to get him to stop choking or now to clear his airways because he's vomiting. Either way, he's hitting him on the back and apparently pressing on his stomach as well. And when he was pushing and hitting Jacob, John admitted that he panicked and he'd probably been hitting Jacob harder than he'd thought. And Chief Trejo asked John, do you think it's possible you could have hit Jacob on the head? And John answered,

anything's possible. John said that Jacob had done stuff like this before. Sometimes during the night, he would make choking sounds and Brenda would turn him over on his side. And that's what John thought was happening, that it was just this normal choking thing that the baby did. Which, once again, absolutely ridiculous. Not true. If your baby is choking during the night to the point where you have to turn him over on his side, that should be something you should bring him into the doctor for. And as we know, Jacob went to the doctor, his pediatrician, several times for a scrape on his ear. You're going to bring the child into the doctor for a scrape on his ear, but not because he's choking during the night and you have to roll him over on his side. It's just ridiculous that he would even say that. So John said that's

what he thought was happening at this point. And then John seemed to combine all of his stories into one. Jacob being thrown to the floor after John had rubbed his head on the baby's thighs, Jacob falling off the couch, gurgling with fluid coming out of his mouth, and then John throwing Jacob in the air and failing to catch him. And that's when he started hitting Jacob on the back and the neck because he was making choking sounds. Literally, John does this. He tells Assistant Chief Trujillo all of this. I was rubbing my beard on his thighs and then he fell and hit his head. And then I was throwing him up in the air and I missed him and he hit his head. And then I put him on the couch and he rolled off the couch and he hit his head. And this is just ludicrous to me that he thinks this makes him look not bad.

I don't understand. I mean, apparently it didn't because nothing happened to him. But anyways, he throws all of these stories into one. And then John said he didn't want Brenda to find out because she might not want to have kids with him if she knew. And he didn't want to face what had happened. He was feeling guilty about it. And he knew that people would talk

and he knew that even though it was an honest accident, people would think that he had done something wrong because he was the only person there. I mean, yes, if your story is true and you're throwing the kid behind you off your head and you're throwing him up in the air and not catching him, people are going to think you did something wrong because you did do something wrong.

Why would you throw the kid up in the air and play that game with him after you'd thrown him on the floor already with your head? Probably because it didn't happen. Just a hunch. Because it didn't happen. Just a hunch. So he didn't want people to start talking about him

and think that he had done something wrong. Detective Joel Haley spoke to John on August 25th, 1992, at which point John was informed he was under arrest. And Haley asked John to tell him what had happened because he'd given so many different versions of events. Because remember, the version of events I just gave you was what he told Chief Trujillo on April 14th, which I don't believe that Chief Trujillo would hear that and then contact Agent DeWall in Albuquerque and be like, yeah, he confessed, but I'm just going to look into this more. I'm not going to make an arrest right now.

Finally, in 1991, Detective Joel Haley does make an arrest. And he's like, OK, John, what actually happened now? And John said what really happened was that Jacob liked to lay on John's neck while they were on the floor. And John felt like Jacob was losing his balance at one point while he was laying on his neck. And so he went to grab Jacob's leg to keep the baby from sliding down off of him. But John had thought Jacob was falling to the right when Jacob was actually really falling to the left. And so he pulled him down faster with the leg. And it just all happened too fast. And John couldn't stop Jacob from falling and hitting his head on the chair.

Even though, once again, the mechanics of that doesn't make sense because how did the chair get so close down? If you're laying on the floor and the baby's laying on top of you and he's sliding off your back, where's the chair come into this? Is he hitting his head on the foot of the chair? Maybe that's what he meant. I don't know. But John said he picked up Jacob after this and Jacob's eyes were white and he wasn't moving. And Jacob was trying to catch his breath and not reacting to anything that John was saying to him.

And John said that he hadn't been honest when he was interviewed by Agent DeWalt at the hospital because he was afraid of Brenda's dad who had threatened to shoot him. So before he wasn't honest because he was afraid Brenda was gonna leave him. And now Brenda's already done left him. And he's like, I wasn't afraid of Brenda leaving me. I was afraid of Brenda's dad who's been threatening me.

And also, by the way, Detective Patrick Apodaca had also threatened me. So I was scared of everybody. So he's got all sorts of different stories now. Detective Haley asked if John remembered talking to the police in Albuquerque. And John said, not really. He had been put on Xanax to help him relax. And Detective Haley asked if John remembered telling Chief Trujillo that he'd hit Jacob on the back of, you know, with his back and his neck. And John said yes, because Jacob was choking on his teething biscuit. And when he held Jacob upside down by his legs, the biscuit came

out. So Detective Haley asked John if he remembered taking the polygraph. And John said yes, but he said he was messed up and out of it when he had taken the polygraph. He said he had ingested some allergy medicine and he didn't even know where he was. He said he had a moment when he was in the polygraph where he thought he was a child again back in the hospital and he didn't remember being asked any questions. So at first he says he does remember taking the polygraph and he had taken some allergy pills and then he's like, I don't remember any questions and I had like some hallucination that I was a child in the hospital, which is funny because like all you did was take allergy medicine. Like what kind of allergy? I think you probably had some more of that cocaine-laced weed, honestly,

if you're having those kinds of visions. So he said no. He didn't remember being asked any questions. He said he was stressed. By that time, he didn't know the difference between day and night. He was grieving and freaked out, and he'd been put in that same mental state that he'd been put in when he was going through his divorce from Brenda.

At that point, when he got divorced from Brenda, he'd had a mental breakdown, and he had to be checked into the hospital for a day or two. And John said he knew the polygrapher, said he'd answered two questions deceptively, but he'd also been told that the machine was broken. It wasn't working properly, so he didn't think he'd actually failed it, and that's why he told Brenda that he had passed it. And John said that he and Jacob had been very close. He said he used to call the baby Jake the snake and Jacob would go to John for comfort when he was upset, which made John feel good. And Detective Haley asked John if it

was possible one of the times he'd hit Jacob on the back, he'd actually hit him on the head instead accidentally. And John said, it was possible that I did that because I panic. I tend to panic in these situations and, you know, I don't always have control over what I do. And he also said he could have been drinking that day, right? Because this was a normal thing for him to be drinking during the day. And usually he would have like about two shots of alcohol a day. So, yes, it was likely that he had been drinking that day. And at the end of the interview, in the notes, Detective Joel Haley said, quote, I then concluded the interview and had Officer C. R. Avizu transport the suspect to the Socorro County Detention Center where he was booked and incarcerated on the issued warrant, end quote.

So John was arrested allegedly. There's a warrant for his arrest, but it doesn't look like he ever went to court. It doesn't look like he ever served a day in prison. And then nothing happened in the case for years until 2005 when Brenda wrote a letter to Lieutenant Pete Casitas of the Socorro Police Department. So when Brenda wrote this letter to Lieutenant Pete Casitas, she stated that her nine-month-old had been beaten to death by her boyfriend at the time. And she'd done everything in her power to get him justice, including speaking to the two former DAs, but nothing had been done. Brenda also wrote, quote, the reason Juanita Gordon gave me for not prosecuting is because she could not give John a speedy trial, and she also mentioned that she was afraid John might sue the county. This is a cop-out since John failed the lie detector test and confessed to two different

officers. To me, this is not a lack of evidence. Socorro County police are negligent, and they do not care that this person has never been punished and is probably still hurting innocent children. I did not have this information until 1990, but the DA's office did and they did nothing. Pete Casitas forwarded Brenda's email stating that he had assigned the case to Cold Case Sergeant Tom Christian. So Pete Casitas was like, don't worry, I'm giving this to Sergeant Tom Christian and he's going to follow up with you. Detective Christian began the investigation on April 14th, 2005, and he started by reading the case file. And then he contacted the person referenced in Brenda's email, Juanita Gordon, who at that time was an investigator with the DA's office.

Juanita Gordon said that Brenda had initially provided John with an alibi. And she had told the police that what had happened to Jacob had been an accident. Now, this is very important because a lot of the times these people will point to Brenda's initial interview with the state police, with Agent DeWall, and say, well, she said it was an accident. And she basically defended him. And she said he had never hurt his own children and she didn't think he would hurt her child and it was only after they'd have some marital issues and Brenda split up from John that she informed the police she now wanted criminal charges filed and that might look a little suspicious that she's just now deciding she wants this after he's done things to her where she might be mad at him. And by that point, the DA at that time, who was lead to Champs, he would not consider filing criminal prosecution charges against John

because of inconsistencies in Brenda's statements. That's what they said, allegedly. Now, Detective Christian also contacted Detective Joel Haley to see if he remembered what had happened to John after the arrest. Because Detective Christian is like, I don't know what happened to this guy. He seemed to have gotten arrested, but there's no records of what happened to him after. There's no sign that he was in jail, he didn't go to court. I don't know what happened here.

Or if he did, there's just no record of it. And Detective Haley said he couldn't remember, but he was going to speak to a couple people to see if they remembered. There's no follow-up here. Now, at the end of the day detective christian in 2005 wrote that he believed the criminal charge of abandonment or abuse of a child resulting in death which was a first degree felony was justified and should have been pursued he said that john was arrested and charged with that offense but after his arrest it appeared that nothing else occurred once the initial filing of the criminal charge happened and

detective christian was unable to determine why that had happened, like why nothing further happened to John as the records no longer existed and he couldn't find them anywhere. Detective Christian wrote, there was sufficient evidence in this investigator's opinion to prove that John knew of Jacob's recent head injury, which occurred several weeks before this incident and then resulted in Jacob's death. John should have been more attentive with Jacob's needs due to Jacob's recent head injury, end quote. So Detective Christian isn't even saying this was purposeful or malicious. He's saying it doesn't need to be. He's saying you knew that this kid had a head injury just a couple weeks and you're, what, throwing him up in the air and leaving him on the couch? If all of this stuff you said is true, you shouldn't have been that stuff if you if you were aware of his head injury which you were so detective

christian sent this report to the da's office basically saying charges should have been filed i don't know why they weren't but they should be now in this report he recommended charging john with this crime and then in november of 2006 he received a fax from chief deputy district attorney bruce burwell and the fax said that Burwell had reviewed the information from Detective Christian's investigation several times, and he felt there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a felony prosecution. Burwell said that due to the age of the case, along with the statute of limitations,

which was in effect at the time of Jacob's death, it would be impossible to proceed with prosecution, and the case was officially closed again. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I'm not an attorney, but I'm just going to read you some of the things that I'm finding online, looking at different legal cases. There's a couple that we could look up here, but overall, this is what I'm gathering. First off, there's no statute of limitations on felony murder. Okay. And as, as the detective described, we can, we can talk about it again here. The statute is section 30 dash six dash one abandonment or abuse of a child, which is exactly what was just laid out.

If you look under that letter H section H, whoever commits intentional abuse of a child, less than 12 years of age that results in the death of a child is guilty of a first degree felony resulting in the death of a child it essentially states in the felony murder rule that and this applies in New Mexico that anyone who is accused of committing a violent felony I think child abuse the one we just read would fall into that it's a felony could be be charged with murder if the commission of that felony results in the death of someone. So to me, maybe I'm reading this wrong. I'm sure we have some lawyers in the comments. Maybe we have someone from New Mexico. That would be amazing. Feel free to dispute this. It sounds to me like regardless of premeditation or intent the results of john's actions led to the death of

jacob and it even goes further saying with a with a felony murder you could have a situation where it would be reasonable for that person to understand that their actions could result in serious bodily harm and or death right so it feels like it checks those boxes and then you have this felony murder rule. So I don't understand why at minimum he wouldn't be guilty of felony or couldn't be charged with felony murder. Yes. So this says abuse of a child consists of a person knowingly, intentionally, or negligently, and without justifiable cause causing or permitting a child to be one placed in a situation that may endanger the child's life or health, two, tortured, cruelly confined, or cruelly punished, or three, exposed to the inclemency of weather.

So basically, you didn't need to intentionally do this. You negligently did this, which I think that is proved. And number one is placed in a situation that may endanger the child's life or health. And it says whoever commits abuse of a child, which does not result in the child's death or great bodily harm for a first offense, guilty of a third degree felony. And for a second and subsequent offense is guilty of a secondary felony. If the abuse results in great bodily harm or death of a child, he is guilty of a first degree felony. Yeah. Right there. Yeah. And there's no statute of limitations on, on capital felony. So, so I don't i guess initially

was i guess like in new mexico because i thought the same thing and i had talked to eric and he sent me this um so it changed in 2006 is that what it was yeah i recently did change um but let me read you 2006 new mexico statutes it looks like maybe that might have been around the time it changed it might be something different i will say this there's something there's a piece we're missing uh maybe initially it was a statute of limitations I do feel even after going overall why when they talked to him in April like when the police the coral police talked to him and he confessed saying like he had done these things yeah like why would they not him then? I don't know. I do know that with cases that are older like this, they have to be that much more concrete because now the DA is being

expected to retroactively go back and charge this person when obviously time has passed, evidence can be tainted or go missing or reports can go missing. Some of the people involved with the case may be deceased or no longer in the mental capacity to discuss the case because they don't remember it well. Witnesses can disappear. So there's some hurdles for it, none of which is a reason or a justification not to try. I really do think that the big thing here, and it seems like we have a lot of it, a lot of it already is going to be building a case to show that John before, during, and after Jacob's incident was an abusive person and chose to try and take advantage of people that he felt he could control. And at that point, the easiest person to control was Jacob because

he couldn't really speak, couldn't really defend himself. And the only person who could really defend against it would have been Eric, who was only five years old at the time, because Brenda wasn't always around for it. So she was going off what John and what Eric was telling her. I don't understand why we couldn't still go after this guy. I think there's things that need to be done. I do think the neighbor's going to be huge. I do think all of this needs to be put into a new packet, maybe relooked at by the attorney general, because Eric was telling me that now it is the New Mexico attorney general who is handling the case. I tagged them in a post today. That's who we got to talk to we have so we have the report for that it's hector

belder eras he's the new mexico attorney general and he actually sent in 2020 he sent a letter to the district attorney at that time clint wellborn and he said district attorney wellborn in early april of 1987 john allegedly beat to death jacob landine a nine-month-old child in socorro john was at the time the live-in boyfriend of landine's mother brenda john has never been John allegedly beat to death Jacob Landine, a nine-month-old child in Socorro. John was at the time the live-in boyfriend of Landine's mother, Brenda. John has never been held accountable for this crime. The case against John appears strong, and it appears John was charged by your office at some point. Moreover, he allegedly confessed to the crime, failed a polygraph examination, and gave multiple statements in which he placed himself as the only person with Jacob

when medical personnel opined that Jacob's injuries would have occurred. One of the concerns of your predecessor district attorney had in declining to pursue the matter was the statute of limitations. However, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in 2010 that obviates that concern for a first degree felony. See State v. Morales, 2010. That was the one that's up on here, the State v. Morales. There was another one, Ortega, too. Pursuant to that case, there is no statute of limitations for this crime. I respectfully ask that you examine the criminal case against John with fresh eyes. If, indeed, additional inquiry reveals that John is culpable for Landine's death,

I would also offer your office any investigative or prosecutorial assistance you might require in finally seeking justice for Landine's family. Assuming you agree that this case is viable, I look forward to collaborating with your office to bring Jacob's family the closure they deserve. And this is from the attorney general, the New Mexico attorney general. So I think that carries some weight behind it, right? I would hope so. Right.

I mean, I didn't even know the letter exists, but it kind of reiterated everything we're saying right now. Yes. So it sounds like that's a lawyer who's coming and saying, listen, sounds pretty viable. So pretty strong to me. So I feel like it might be a matter of doing our own homework, putting together a packet that articulates what we're trying to, we know what we need to have in there. So putting together chronologically, succinctly of a packet that clearly demonstrates the behavioral pattern of John.

Like I said, before, during, and after. Supported with statements, interviews, recordings, whatever we need. You hand that packet over to detectives. Obviously, you keep a copy. And you say, here you go. Just read it. Just read it. And then go out and talk to these people individually yourselves.

So you can then re-interview them and get your own statements if needed, present that to the DA. Obviously he has the support of the AG and we go from there. And worst case scenario, you submit it to a grand jury. They come back and say no true bill if they don't indict them. And then at that point, there's not much you can do, but at least you've tried. It doesn't seem like that's happened yet. So we got to get to that point and at least give it an opportunity to be heard by a jury

of of john's peers they will decide collectively whether he should be indicted or not and even if he's indicted it doesn't mean he's guilty yet he still has to go to a trial so there's a lot of steps that we have to go through but to not even allow a jury to hear it is crazy to me. And I want to know why he wasn't arrested. Like that's another thing. It doesn't make sense where it just kind of like fell off something. That's something. Something happened there.

Was it nefarious? A hundred percent. I couldn't say. Yeah. So Carl's a small place though. You know, it's not like they got a ton of things on their docket where it's like, we have so many people here.

We just can't keep up. So you felt the detective is saying, I don't know what happened here. Yeah. And I mean, when you've got the chief, the assistant chief calling DeWalt and saying like, yeah,

he confessed. Yeah. I'm going to do some more looking in. I'm not going to make an arrest at this time. I'm going to look into it a little bit more. These, you look into it more when he's under arrest. These are the types of cases that we did on breaking homicide where it seemed very evident to us and and then you go there and you get

resistance because what the reality is there's people who are responsible for this case who excuse my language fucked up yeah and by showing those errors you're exposing them as well so they obviously have a reason why they don't want that to come out. They don't want that. And it doesn't have to be nefarious. I know. It's just like, hey, I screwed up. I'm ashamed I made a mistake. I screwed up. So regardless, you can't go back and change the past.

All we can do is move forward. We're covering the case. Kendall's covered the case. Obviously, True Consequences is covering the case. I've already offered my services. I've been talking to Eric. We're going to see what happens. We're going to see what happens. But at minimum, everyone out there

listening, watching this right now, I linked it last week. I'll link it again. You can go into the description both on audio and on YouTube. It's a link right to True Consequences. There's also the petition you can sign as well. Make noise. Post about it on social media. Tag the AG. And if you live in New Mexico, that I think is especially impactful. Yep. Be respectful because you're going to get more bees with honey than you are with vinegar. And we'll see how it goes. No promises, but it won't be for lack of effort. We'll see how it goes. We're obviously thinking of Eric and Brenda and the rest of the family. And without again, saying too much, Eric was emotional and very appreciative that not only us, but Kendall as well, that

covering this and we hope we did it justice. Eric will be in the comments. We posted it on social media. He was in the comments responding to some people as well. Obviously this is very important to him, but yeah, go over, sign that petition, go listen to the episodes for true consequences. And if anything changes, we'll definitely keep you updated. It'll probably be more of a, like a crime weekly news type thing, right? If there's a break in the case we'll put it out there if we do work on this case behind closed doors we won't say too much for the for the obvious reasons i mean we just want want them to reopen the case yeah that's what no one's asking for you know this guy to be like thrown to the wolves or like pulled away to the gallows at this

point we just want them to reopen the case and i mean i would like i would like that but no one's like demanding that he you know like a mob with the holding like pitchforks goes to his house and pulls him out we just want it to be looked at by people who clearly you know have a more of a brain than the people who looked at it earlier or they don't have any reason to cover it up john worked for the county he was friends with the police there may have been a little bit like you know i know you don't like to admit it up. John worked for the county. He was friends with the police. There may have been a little bit like, you know, I know you don't like to admit it, but there may have been a little bit like, yeah, you're my buddy. I don't think you could have done this. I definitely

believe it was an accident. Not like, oh, I think you're guilty and you murdered this child and I'm going to help you cover it up. But like, no, you could never do that, man. We have beers together every Friday. I believe you're a blast. What you said the first episode, though, is John was given the keys. He had the keys. He wasn't given a blast. What you said the first episode though is John was given the keys. He had the keys.

He wasn't given the keys. He had them. He was given the keys to the police station and everything. He had every key. Eric said he had every key to every county building because he was a maintenance worker for the county. So I'm not going to say it's not possible. I'll just speak anecdotally from my own police station. We had people who would come in their maintenance

workers and they had access to the facility obviously all the main areas they did not have access to the evidence rooms or the uh this was 1987 you don't even know if people had an only speaking from my own experience that that was there was only two people in our building who would have that key at the time they're evidence custododians. Maybe they didn't even have no evidence room. Maybe they just had filing cabinets. It's possible. How many people were in your, like, town? 87.

There's over 25,000. Yeah, there's like 6,000 people in Socorro, man. Yeah. No, listen, I'm not saying, I don't know. You think they got an evidence room? I'm just saying it would be very unprofessional to allow maintenance workers to have access to any type of controlled area that's where you kept evidence that could be used in the courts later but i'm sure i mean you're also i think giving them credit that

that they had necessarily i'm not giving them credit i'm just saying it would be irresponsible to do that like but yeah yeah the whole thing they they really haven't earned the respect that you might give them to even give them the benefit of the doubt I mean, yeah, I don't even who knows who knows but and I do think you bring up one last point because It's always important and you brought it up tonight. Although this case does frustrate us And this is not to take diminish this It's not as slam dunk as some cases that i've seen and so we do have to let everything play out The way it should, the right way. So if

you know who this is, this person that we're not saying by real name, don't be an idiot and go out there and do anything because he does deserve his day in court. That's all we're really hoping for here, his day in court and to let the courts decide how this should all play out. But I don't want anybody going out there and taking things into their own hands. No vigilante shit. Yeah, no vigilante shit. Exactly. Any final words from you? from you no i mean i think that it's a slam dunk not legally but i think like given his change to me his changing stories are the most suspicious thing guilty yeah not right not good very suspicious and they're not even good stories they're not good stories they don't make you look good you're constantly changing them you're adding all these details to

make you look worse and worse and worse let's not forget the clips that we heard afterwards with Eric and Brenda, some of the stuff that they're telling you firsthand that they experienced from this guy. Yeah, so he's capable of it and he never told the truth about it. Even though he told many versions of the truth, I don't think any one of them were the truth.

So to me, why are you lying if you didn't do anything wrong? Why are you lying if you have nothing to cover up? And at the very least, right, it is a slam dunk by the definition that we read earlier, which is according to your own admission, multiple different admissions, but according to every single one of them, you put that child in a position

where he could come to great bodily harm. And you were from sound, you were in a sound mind where you would have known those things could have resulted in it. So I think it is a slam dunk like legally there. That's all I'll say. In a jury, a jury, it can be a wild card. If you go to a jury, they could be like, oh, so much time has passed.

We don't know how we feel about this, et cetera, et cetera. And then they do nothing. Okay. They may not vote to indict. It happens. But legally, John did commit this crime by the definition sounds like it and so i we'll see what happens with it uh final question for you thoughts on our first ever in-person episode i liked it it's easier isn't it it is easier it's too bad you're so far away it is

easier or you're so far away well the studio's here just recently though so well so bad you're so far away. It is easier. Or you're so far away. Well, the studio's here. Just recently though. So now you're so far away. So now I'm far away. No, it was good. It was good and I'm jinxing it here. We haven't sent anything to Shannon yet, but it could go really well. If you don't have an episode this week.

It didn't go well. It didn't go well. We'll just screen record some of this and send it out to you guys on YouTube or something. I'll just record it with my phone on the monitor over there. So, as always, we appreciate you guys joining here. Like, comment, subscribe to the channel. Let us know what you think about the in-person recording.

Do you prefer it? Well, I'm sure they do. Who wouldn't? It's so much more personal, right? But it's not practical yet. We're going to get you to move to Rhode Island. Get a house in Rhode Island. I want to buy buy taylor swiss rhode island there you go westerly she's in westerly isn't that rhode island yeah yeah that's a nice place i'm gonna just live

with her i think she doesn't have to move christina aguilera has a place in newport too i don't want to live with her okay like comment subscribe to the channel if you're listening on audio i apologize this episode might be a little bit more geared towards the video because we're in person. So now you're really reminded of it and we're looking at the cameras. Subscribe to us on YouTube then. Subscribe to us on YouTube. If you're listening on audio, leave a review. We'd really appreciate it.

Thank you, Eric, again from True Consequences for allowing us to cover this case. We hope we did it justice. We'll be back with a new case next week. We're not saying what that is yet, right? No, we already said. Did we already say what it was? We were saying Lori Vallow. Okay, we're going to do that case.

So that's going to be a multiple part series. And that's really it. That's all we got. I already started working on it because we have to record the first part on Monday. That's right. And it's Saturday. And it's Saturday.

You better get cracking. Yeah, I'm cracking, man. All right, guys, be safe. Have a good night. We'll see you next week. Bye.