Crime Weekly - S3 Ep216: Julie Jensen: The Letter (Part 2)

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

On the late afternoon of December 3, 1998, Mark Jensen called 911 from his Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin home to report that his wife, 40-year-old Julie Jensen, was found dead in bed. When the police arrived, Mark suggested Julie might have died from an allergic reaction to new medication, he said she had been sick for a few days before her death. However, as the police looked around, they grew suspicious about the circumstances surrounding Julie’s death. They called in the medical examiner’s office and the district attorney’s office, both of which agreed that something was off. An investigation was opened, and it was soon discovered that for weeks before her death, Julie was deeply concerned that Mark, her husband of 14 years, was going to murder her. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence or abuse, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. You can also visit their website at www.thehotline.org. 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. EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% off ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping! 2. StitchFix.com/CrimeWeekly - Get $20 off your first fix! 3. 3DayBlinds.com/CrimeWeekly - Buy one, get one 50% off! 4. TryFum.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for a FREE gift! 5. DailyHarvest.com/CrimeWeekly - Get $30 off your first box and FREE shipping!

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we're diving into part two of the Julie Jensen case. And this case already has me livid. So I really, I can't wait to see what today brings us. But as a little recap, in November of 1998, 40-year-old Julie Jensen confided in several people about her fear that her husband of 14 years, Mark, was planning to poison and kill her. She mentioned that he had been buying syringes, researching poisons, and potentially tampering with her food. She was so frightened that she told her friend, a police officer named Officer Cosman, that if anything happened to her, the police should look into Mark.

Despite her obvious terror, her concerns were not taken seriously until December 3rd, when Mark called 911 and claimed he had found Julie dead in their bed. When Detective Ratzberg arrived, Mark suggested Julie might have died from an allergic reaction to new medication. He said she'd been sick for a few days before her death. However, Detective Ratzberg and the district attorney's office found this explanation suspicious, and they decided to launch an investigation. And thank God they did. Thank God they did. Because, I mean, obviously, the circumstances surrounding this are definitely suspicious. And that's just on the surface. That's before diving in to some of the other things that come up in this case. Yeah. I mean, obviously,

from part one, we know Mark's not a good guy. I mean, he literally tortured his wife for years with these pornographic images, putting them all around, trying to convince her that somebody else was doing it, trying to convince her that she couldn't trust anybody. Yeah. No, he's a bad dude. He's a bad dude. So this is definitely something where on the surface, as a detective, you could come in

or as a patrolman, come in there and say, okay, yeah, let's just take the husband at face value. He knows his wife better than us. And I'm not saying that sarcastically. That has happened where you come into a situation and the officers automatically assume that the person they're dealing with is a good person and telling them the truth. Well, you can't do that. And some people can be offended by that when we come in there and look at everything with a question mark. But that's why we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't.

So hats off to law enforcement here saying, OK, thank you, sir. We appreciate your suggestion or your opinion on this matter. But we're going to take a deeper look at this to make sure everything adds up. Yeah. And I mean, obviously, I'd rather have that. I'd rather have the police come in immediately suspicious so they do a thorough investigation than to come in and take whoever they're dealing with at face value when they literally don't know this person at all. And that's happened to me before where the police have been like, oh, well, they seem like good people. So and it's like, but I know they're not. I know they're not. So and you just met them. So it's it can be frustrating. And I think it does

come from laziness. Any good police officer is going to go into a situation like they encountered at the Jensen home and be on guard, especially given the statistics that many women die at the hands of their own romantic partners. Yeah, no, like I said, good job by them. And I'm looking forward to diving into the details because we're just starting to crack this one open. There's a lot more to talk about.

So while at the Jensen home, Detective Ratzberg told Mark that as part of the investigation into the cause of Julie's death, they wanted to search the Jensen home. And because of this, Mark would have to find somewhere else to spend the night. And Mark said, you know, that would be no problem. He would just stay with his father. Mark then read and signed the consent form, a decision that would come back to bite him later on. Now, that night, neighbors were gathering across the street from the Jensen home, hoping to figure out what had happened when Mark and his father walked over

and declared that Julie had had a bad reaction to medication and died. The neighbors couldn't believe what they were hearing. One neighbor later said they were surprised by Mark's demeanor. He broke the news with no emotion. He was matter-of-fact, and he sounded rehearsed. That same night, Julie's brother Paul showed up to Mark's dad's house, and while there, he overheard Mark and his father in a loud, heated argument about what not to tell the police. By the end of the following day, December 4th, authorities were done searching the Jensen home. During the two-day

search, they had seized Mark's computer and sent it to the crime lab for an analysis, but it would take a really long time for technicians to go through the computer. After the search of the home was over and the home was released back to Mark, the Jensen's neighbor, Ted, who remember was not only Julie Jensen's neighbor but her friend, he saw Mark and his father giving each other a high five and celebrating in the driveway. Around the same time, Ted handed Detective Ratzberg the sealed envelope Julie had given him for safekeeping the month prior. Inside the envelope was a photo she had taken of a list written in Mark's handwriting that include items like own drug supply, bag hands, and syringe. And Derek, I saw you shaking your head a little bit when I talked about Mark

and his father celebrating in the driveway. And obviously, you know, Mark has his issues and his father clearly also has issues. Because what's happening here is not only is Mark doing horrible things to Julie while they're married, things that his family probably supported, knew about, and endorsed, and maybe even at times helped him carry out this torture. But now in the aftermath of Julie Jensen's death, Mark and his father are high-fiving each other like, yeah, yeah, you really did it. We did it here. And this is something that's going to just increase and enforce a personality disorder like this when there's no accountability, when you're enabled by people who are close to you, aka your parents, your family. And that's what it appears to be is happening here.

So I have two things to say. I was actually thinking about something else. But to answer what you just said, yeah, I definitely think you can have a level of enabling going on there. And I think to a lesser extent, a lot of us as parents do this with our own kids where we try to justify something that they do wrong. Right. And it's not like a malicious thing. It's just, it's a natural instinct. But in cases like this that you're talking about, it goes to an extreme where there may be something that's most parents would look at and go, wow, this is a problem. These types of parents, again, find a way to justify it. Or like you even said, contribute or cover it up, which is only promoting that behavior and not explaining to them that it's wrong can lead to bigger issues down the road. And this could be an example. Now, just to qualify

this, it could be a situation here in this moment where they're high-fiving over a sports game that went on. We don't know what they were talking about, but based on the context and based on the timing, there should be no- Sometimes I feel like you play devil's advocate to a fault. This is the day after his wife died. Why would you be high-fiving over a sports game? And I know you're trying to cover our bases. Well, I was going to go there and say that it's no time to be high-fiving, but the reality is it's an assumption.

And I think that investigators and normal individuals can make this mistake. We're talking about the timing of the high five. There's no disagreement or any dispute, I think, by most people to say the timing of it, whether it's for a sporting event, whether it's because it's just like, hey, I love you, whatever the case may be, it's a bad time to be high fiving when your wife just died a day earlier. But it's an assumption to say they're high-fiving over the fact that they pulled off this murder. We can keep going down this road if you want, but there was something else I wanted to bring up that I'm reading in between the lines here as a police officer,

that's not in this script because it can't be because it wasn't written anywhere, but something that I have a strong suspicion about regarding this case. And that suspicion is this. I just gave the law enforcement officers involved with this case a lot of credit and a lot of kudos to go in there and be objective and not take Mark at his word. And I stand by that, but I'm going to say this, and I know it's probably not in a report anywhere. I have a really strong sneaking suspicion here that these officers had a little bit of insight going into this. Now that could have been officer Cosman that maybe tipped them off about this or

something because the extent of their investigation, including searching the entire house immediately tells me that they're either really, really good at their job or they went into this case. They went into this house knowing something's not right here. We've heard some things. We've heard some rumblings from some associates of ours. Don't go in there and believe this guy. I feel like they might have had an indication that there was some issues in the relationship before they even arrived at the house that day, because it seems like their investigation was not only very thorough, but very fast, which would indicate they had an idea that the preservation of evidence was

extremely critical in this situation. So again, I don't know, and I guarantee you it's not written in any report, but it has happened to me before where we go into a case, whether it's a narcotics case or an assault or a gang investigation, where we go in there and the report is written as if we are going in there with no preconceived notions, no assumptions, but the reality is through intelligence gathered from multiple agencies, officers can go in there with some type of information that may assist in that investigation prior to even arriving. And I feel like the expedience of this investigation may indicate that. Can't be certain, but that's what it sounds

like to me. Well, I think I'm about to tell you something that's going to enforce what you just said. Okay. Okay, good. Because although it's not technically, I guess, written in any report, I just told you that the police had found a sealed envelope. That's right. That's from Ted, right? Yes. That's from Ted. And inside the envelope, they found a photo. That photo was the list that was in Mark's handwriting that said things like own drug supply, backhands, and the syringe. Also inside that envelope was a letter. And this letter read, quote, Pleasant Prairie Police Department, Ron Cosman or Detective Ratzenberg. Now, the detective who was the lead in Julie's case was Detective Ratzenberg. But she says Detective Ratzenberg. I assume she meant Detective Ratzenberg, which means either a she'd already had interactions with him before and had talked to him or Ron Cosman, Detective Cosman was had given her his name and said, oh, hey, this is somebody you should talk to or this is somebody you should bring this information to. So Detective Ratzberg, it appears, before he walked into the Jensen home that day, already was aware of Julie Jensen, Mark Jensen, and what was going on between them. we discussed detective costman and we discussed the obligation when a friend comes to you and starts confiding in you about these things and what you should do as an officer and you and i

debated it for a little bit it was quick but overall regardless of whether he filed a report or not you know against his friend's wishes right julie's wishes is it fair to say that he may have informed some of his colleagues and his counterparts about these things to say hey listen this is going on over there we got to keep an eye on it absolutely yeah and then told julie hey i talked to my buddy detective ratzberg yep you know he's he's in the criminal division yep um i i kind of let him know what was going on he's people were aware of this yeah this didn't come this this her death did not come out of the blue. I would wager, I guess, that the whole Pleasant Prairie Police Department, to some extent,

knew about the Jensens. It definitely sounds like, I keep picturing that meme of like the dog with the side eye. I don't know, the beagle or whatever, when it's like got the side eye going. I feel like they walked into that house and Mark's like, yeah, you know, it looks like it was an allergic reaction. And they're like, mm-hmm. Sure. Mark, we're going to need you to leave the house. We're going to need you to leave.

Right? I mean, I'm giving them a lot of credit as far as like their intuition. And I'm not negating that. I'm just saying there might have been some information going into that house that they were aware of, which allowed them to deduce what they did so quickly. And that goes back to the state of mind of a person like Mark Jensen, a lack of self-awareness. He literally- He thinks he's fooling them. He thought he was fooling them. He thought- High-fiving.

I'm a super nice guy. I'm a legit business person. Charismatic, sociable. Yeah. Everyone loves me. Everyone falls for my charming demeanor. This is not going to be an issue. I don't even care how obvious it is. They'd have to prove it or, you know, they're not even going to suspect me.

Like, we see this, too, once again, with Mark's father. And when we go back to the Roden family massacre in in Piketon, which we covered what last month. You can see Jake's family, his mother, his father. They all took part in what they were doing to their son's romantic partners. They all created a narrative that would support and justify the treatment that they were doling out to their son's girlfriends. And some of this stuff was horrible, like custody battles and keeping their kids from them and making them feel trapped and not letting them talk to anybody. But in their heads, this is horrible stuff. But in their heads, they're like, well, this is what we have to do to protect the children, right? So they have to do that. And the whole the horrible thing is they do it so effectively that they completely convince themselves that they're the best people in the world. So it always surprises them when they encounter someone or more than one someone that sees through them.

And that's what's happening here. Mark's letting these people in. He's like, yeah, sure, I'll leave. Let me sign a consent form. Yeah, whatever you guys need. Acting like a damn fool, super suspicious. But in his head, he's like, who's afraid of little old me? Yeah. Well, I mean, the best, that's why they're a lot of the times the best liars. And I've said it to you guys out there numerous times. I've been in interrogations with people like this, where if I didn't have the video or multiple written statements from objective witnesses who were just at the scene, I would who saw this person there committing this crime, I would believe them because it's hard to pick up on a lie from someone when they believe the lie they're telling. So I'm going to continue reading this letter and

then we're going to take a quick break. But and we'll come back and talk about what the letter says. So she says, this is for Ron Cosman or Detective Ratzberg. She said, quote, I took this picture and I'm writing this on Saturday, 11-21-98 at 7 a.m. This list was in my husband's business daily planner, not meant for me to see. I don't know what it means, but if anything happens to me, he would be my first suspect. Our relationship has deteriorated to the polite superficial. I know he's never forgiven me for the brief affair I had with that creep seven years ago. Mark lives for work and the kids. He's an avid surfer of the internet. Anyway, I do not smoke or drink. My mother was an alcoholic, so I limit my drinking to one or two a week.

Mark wants me to drink more with him in the evenings. I don't. I would never take my life because of the kids. They are everything to me. I regularly take Tylenol and multivitamins, occasionally take over-the-counter stuff for colds, Zantac or Imodium, have one prescription for migraine tablets, which Mark uses more than I. I pray I'm wrong and nothing happens, but I am suspicious of Mark's suspicious behaviors and fear for my early demise. However, I will not leave David and Douglas, my life's greatest love, accomplishment, and wish. My three Ds, Daddy, Mark, David, and

Douglas." And this letter was signed Julie C. Jensen. So let's take a quick break and we'll come back and discuss. Okay, we're back. So a couple things that stood out to me was, first of all, Julie refers to the man that she had an affair with as a creep. And that's interesting to me because it makes me feel like she's still, even though she knows that Mark's kind of nefarious, she still kind of believes that this guy was the one who was harassing her with those pornographic images because that's what Mark told her. And that's pretty consistent with what being psychologically abused for so long will do to you. I also thought it was interesting that she says, I don't smoke or drink, but Mark wants me to drink more with him in the evenings. And she

kind of said something about that. We talked about it last episode where he was chasing her around the house with a glass of wine, right? Yep. Yep. I remember that. Yep. And you were like, I don't know why. And I said, I don't really know why either, besides the fact that it's just this like harassing thing and just keep you completely off balance. But it's interesting to wonder, why did Mark want her to drink with him in the evenings? Was it to just give him one more layer of having her confused and sort of out of it? Or was he putting something in those drinks that he wanted her to consume? Yeah, it's a great point. And I'm going to play defense attorney probably a little bit throughout this episode.

This isn't my personal opinions, but to stay in the middle here. The only thing that's concerning about this letter is clearly there's something here, no doubt about it, where our victim, Julie, is concerned about her husband and concerned about his behavior and making sure to emphasize that regardless of what's going on with her life, she would never take her own life because of her children. Wants to be very clear about that. Well, that can be true. And the fact that she died from an accidental mixture of drugs can also be true. So that's the one defense that I'd be latching onto here if I'm Mark and his team, because we're not necessarily suggesting that she killed herself. What Mark is trying to convey to law enforcement is, oh my God,

this was a lethal dosage, a mixture of drugs that resulted in an accidental death, not that she killed herself. So on one hand, you could have a situation where Mark made it look this way. On the other, you could have a woman who Mark made it look this way. On the other, you could have a woman who was concerned about her husband potentially hurting or killing her, but ironically ended up dying from a accidental mixture of drugs. That's the defense here. And as the prosecutor, I would say that this was before Julie died and she would have no way of knowing how Mark was going to set up her death to look. And she would probably assume

he would try to make it look as if she had done it to herself. And just in case that happened, she was letting people know, I would never do that to myself. That ended up not being how he posed it, but maybe that's because he knew she was telling people

that she would never take her own life. So he kind of preemptively came up with another thing. I would also say that Julie, in general, just feeling scared enough of her husband that she had to tell anybody is enough of evidence for any defense to come in and take the focus off of that and start talking about, It's a red flag for sure. we hear from defense attorneys or defense teams and their defense for their client doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense to everyone else, but they have found a way to convince themselves of whatever alternate theory they have come up with. So it's just something where you'll, when as a defense attorney, you're looking for holes in the case. This is one that I would attempt to exploit. Yeah. Listen, you know, they had their problems, they had their issues and there was a lot of, you know, things going on between them. However, you know, Mark didn't want to kill his wife and he is as upset about this tragedy as anybody else. You know, that's the that's the narrative you're going with. Now, that's before uncovering all these other behaviors that are now linked back to him. But again, on the surface, that's where I'm going with this if I'm one, in Mark's camp, or two, defending Mark. Okay. Well, good thing that

neither of those things are true. That is also true. IRL. Okay. So this letter actually confirmed to Detective Ratzberg and the district attorney that Julie's death was in fact suspicious. The letter and the envelope were submitted to the state crime lab along with Julie's death was, in fact, suspicious. The letter and the envelope were submitted to the state crime lab, along with Julie's known writing samples, and the lab eventually concluded that she was the one who wrote both. On the same day that Ted gave Ratzberg the letter, pathologist Dr. Michael Shambliss performed an autopsy on Julie's body, and while there was unexplained throat bruising and petechia in the upper chest, he was unable to determine her cause of death. Because of this, the Kenosha County medical examiner, Dr. Maureen Lavin, ordered additional toxological studies for Julie's kidneys, blood, and gastric contents. Unfortunately, results wouldn't be available for years.

This is bananas, by the way, because typically you do toxicology and it's back maybe a couple months, tops, years it took for these results to come back. So no one was sure how Julie died. All they knew was that her death was suspicious as hell. I don't even know how it would take years for the talk. I've never heard of that. You're right. There's got to be something else going on there. But yeah, I can completely agree with you. I don't know why it would take that long for the results to come back or maybe to be revealed. But this is always an issue that law enforcement has to deal with. And it's not necessarily any fault of the pathologist.

I appreciate the fact that they know how important that ruling is, right? They're not the main ones investigating the case, but their ruling could be the difference between someone being a free person or going to prison for the rest of their life. So those words, just the cause and manner of death, detective's ability or a prosecutor's ability to charge anyone if they don't have a definitive cause of death. So in many instances, if the pathologist is not completely confident in that, they will rule it as undetermined. And we've talked about that at length in cases that I've worked. It is something that always frustrates me. I've even gone to the extent of bringing in pathologists from other parts of the world to give a second opinion. And in those cases, those pathologists have come to a definitive conclusion. But again, it's two different experts having a difference of opinion. And ultimately, they're both right, because even though this is science, there is some subjectiveness to these

results and to these examinations. Yeah, absolutely. But why would it take so long? I don't know that part. After all that I just said, I can't explain that. That would take an expert. I'm sure it's the truth, but I don't know why it would take that long. The tests go out, even if there's a backlog. know with a homicide investigation they usually put some type of urgency on those yeah and i mean i i did i do remember reading that the the levels of the um the antifreeze in julie's system were like very low so maybe they had to do it several times i'm not sure but either way even yeah even years i in something more than likely something happened again, as far as the processing of this, where there's humans doing this, there's a chain of custody. There's there's a lot of things.

None of it's justified. None of it's an excuse. more to this story where there was a miscommunication, a lapse in handling of this, and it got lost in the shuffle, which it shouldn't have because I'm sure detectives were waiting on these results. Yeah, I want to kind of look into that because I tried finding out. I was looking into it. Why would it take so long? I also feel like that's probably something they don't want to publicize.

Like if they made a mistake or if the samples got lost or if the whole case kind of got shuffled to the back, they probably don't want to talk too much about that part. It can take a few months for sure. Now, and this was some time ago, it wasn't yesterday. So maybe add a couple extra months, but not years. I mean, we talk about Riley strain. Remember we were discussing that case. They were going to do the toxicology. They can take it from the eye. Even that case that's highly publicized, everyone's talking about it. It still can take a few months.

But years, that's a long time. Yeah. And I think they did Riley's toxicology. It was maybe not even a month where it came back. Again, they move it to the top of the list. But even with that sense of urgency- Why wouldn't you move this to the top of the top of the list. But even with that sense of urgency. Why wouldn't you move this to the top of the list? Well, that's the question. What happened here? What happened here?

Right. We don't know right now. And it's so frustrating. But anyways, detectives continued investigating Julie's death. They interviewed multiple people, including the neighbor, Ted, and his wife, the teacher that Julie had confided in. And, of course, Officer Cosman. And through these interviews, detectives learned that Julie was terrified Mark was trying to kill her, which only helped corroborate Julie's letter. As the investigation pressed on, Mark and his sons continued living in the home that Julie died in. And within one or two days of Julie's death,

Mark asked his friend and coworker, David, if it was appropriate to bring his mistress Kelly to Julie's wake and funeral. He said he would just tell people that Kelly was an out of town friend. Yeah. Read the room, Mark. Read the room. Oh my God. I mean. You know, can I, I'm doing this. I'm going to piss people off. But in a way, doesn't this almost seem like for a second where you're like, well, maybe he's not guilty because you wouldn't be this dumb. Like if you really did this. He has no self-awareness. This is exactly why I know he's a sociopath. You follow what I'm saying though? Yes. Like you at least put on the front that you're upset about this. If you actually murdered your wife, you would like at least

pretend like you were grieving. What happened in my head when I read this was like, OK, let's say you were innocent. Let's say you've been cheating on your wife for two years and you didn't even want to be married to Julie anymore. And you've had this girl, Kelly, in your life and you're in love with her and it's a real relationship. But you just stayed with Julie for the kids and you had this thing going on on the side. Even in that case, you would still not bring your mistress to your dead wife's funeral because you would have no hatred or vitriol towards your deceased wife. She was a good mother. She was a good wife to you. You just fell out of love. You were still friends. You worked as partners. You would still care about that person enough

to not do something that shitty to them and around their family and around your children. But the fact that Mark even considered doing it lets me know he had no care for Julie at all. There was no love in him for her. There was not even any mutual respect for her. If you're considering doing that, this is like something you do, like literally pouring more dirt on the grave, just adding insult to injury. This is something you do to continue torturing and messing with your wife even after she dies. This is not a normal person thing to do. I would agree. It's definitely a poor judgment call at minimum. Yes, we could say that. Yes. Now, it doesn't appear that Mark ended up bringing Kelly

to the funeral because probably everyone he asked was like, what the hell's wrong with you? And he was like, oh, this is not a good thing to think. This is not a good thing to do. Noted in his friggin robot brain. But he still managed to act inappropriately. He showed no signs of grief. And one woman later recalled, quote, Mark was standing maybe five feet from her casket and he had a group of men around him. He was laughing and joking. And it was just so odd. End quote. It's 1998. And like I know people

probably had cell phones and stuff back then. But this is why we needed smartphones back then, because, you know, if Mark was doing that stuff in 2024, somebody would have pulled out their iPhone and gotten this on video. And it would have been so much more impactful to see it instead of just hear it. Like a man standing with a bunch of his buddies joking and joshing around and laughing and having a good old time five feet away from his dead wife. To make matters even more dramatic, Dr. Borman, Julie's doctor, who prescribed the Paxil she'd been taking right before she died, he actually showed up to the funeral and told Julie's family that there was no way she died from taking the medication as Mark was claiming. Days after the funeral, neighbors noticed that Mark had thrown out Julie's clothes,

shoes, crafting supplies, and a sewing machine. He put them all in garbage bags. One friend later said, quote, it's like he wanted to erase her. He's erasing her from his life and from the house, end quote. It is exactly like that because he's moved on. And now he wants to pretend she never existed and any life that he had with her never happened yeah and some might say oh you know it's just it's too hard to see those things and it's awful quick to get to that point where it's too hard to see any of her stuff some people go the opposite route and never exact most people do or at least keep a few things you know her

sewing machine super important to her her clothes These are personal items. This isn't like a Pyrex dish that she'd store leftovers in. It's like the things that mattered to her, the things she wore, very personal. Yeah. Yeah. And you definitely have a situation here where it looks like he had moved on prior to her death and this was just kind of putting a bow on that behavior. Oh yeah. And around this time, his mistress, Kelly, started staying the night at Mark's house, even though she was still married to her husband. The suspicious behavior continued. And in mid-December, Mark and Kelly's company held their annual Christmas party.

Mark's co-workers had tried to postpone the party out of respect for Mark and his deceased wife. But Mark insisted that they have it. And while at the party, he lived it up. He drank, he laughed, he flirted the whole time. Then in January of 1999, Mark held a birthday party for his and Julie's oldest son. And you know who was there? Kelly. Kelly was there. And Mark introduced her to people as his friend. Three months later in April, detectives asked to speak with Mark. And to their surprise, he said yes, even though his attorney had warned him to not talk to the police. Remember, no self-awareness. Well, that's what we hope for as detectives. We want that false sense of security, that confidence,

because once you're in there and you start talking, it's in stone, whether it's on recording or on paper. Once we start locking you into a statement, you're toast if you're lying. And that's why maybe Mark's attorney was saying, hey, you shouldn't do this. The best thing you can do is just move on with your life and hope they don't come after you. So I'm going to play you a little clip from that interview right now, and then we're going to go to break. And when we come back, we'll discuss it.

But we need to find out what happened here. Oh, I did not do anything to hurt her. There was a question between myself and the kids that morning whether or not to call an ambulance. Her breathing was funny. She could hardly get out of bed. I mean, it was a god-awful situation. Here in your statement, Wednesday, December 3rd, Julie, they could hardly move. Your 9 p.m. told me that she was fine and she wanted to commit suicide and on wednesday morning julie asked me not to call anyone meaning not to call her help she wanted to die right yeah so on wednesday morning she asked me not to call anybody she's pretty bad off she wasn't looking

good she couldn't no water control did you call the rescue squad that wednesday you think she was bad off enough to where she should have called the rescue squad but she didn't want good. She couldn't. No motor control. Did you call the rescue squad that Wednesday? She was bad off enough to where she should have called the rescue squad, but she didn't want you to. She didn't want me to. Well, right, I should have. You know, in hindsight, I know that. She didn't do anything to aid her death. She didn't do anything to stop her from dying. I really didn't. I just watched it happen. Are you up to looking at some pictures of her? I can grab them real quick. Okay.

Show me where the position she was in there. Okay. Maybe you could explain it a little bit further. I've got the image in my mind. Okay. Let me do it. It'll take me just a minute. Okay. Let me bring back in the photos and I'll show you.

See, like, here's a picture of Julie. And you can see here, look at the nose. How it's bent. Like it was pushed into the pillow like somebody pushed it in there I don't know how to explain that Mark you know here's probably a better yeah I mean it's almost like it's broken I have Dr. Chambliss's report right here which says it's basically an asphyxia death she's suffocated and the only way you can suffocate mark is if you did something to her a 40 41 year old young female does just not stop breathing you had to do

something mark be honest with me be straight with me mark be a man tell me what happened here nothing more than what i told you you didn't get on top of her? No. Well, the evidence suggests that there was a pillow over her head. Do you recall? You saw the nose, same as I did. I got pictures of it. Right. Okay?

You saw the nose and put a pillow over her head. No. No. Nothing. No. Mark, how did she stop breathing, Mark? Be straight with me. Be honest with me.

When I found her... Mark, you had to do something. I did not. How can you explain this? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know? Let's get back here to Julie.

I mean, here, look at where you're sitting from my position here, Mark. Okay? One, we have a relationship, a marriage that was not good. Okay? That was not good. You, that was not good. You basically had a girlfriend at this point, the one that you were seeing before Julie. Okay, I've talked to some of Julie's friends and they said she was, divorce was mentioned, some of this other stuff, you guys were not having a good marriage.

Okay, you know, she contacts us a couple days before, and she leaves us this letter. Okay. Then all of a sudden, boom, she turns up dead. You know, I'm not making this up. This is true evidence. And here we have Julie Jensen telling me that if she dies, you're the person that did it. If anything happens to me, he would be my first suspect. I know he's never forgiven me for the brief affair I had with that creep seven years ago.

I have been doing this 15 years, Mark, and I've never had anybody leave me a letter telling me that if they die, it's this person that killed me. All right, so let's summarize that really quick. So during the interview, Mark told detectives that he was willing to speak to them because he didn't do anything wrong and he wanted to clear some things up. He was now claiming that he believed Julie's death was a suicide, not an allergic reaction to new medication, like he'd been saying previously. So I guess your defense attorney hat would have been effective in that scenario now that he's claiming it's a suicide what he was going in there for. Maybe just, he thought he was going to clear up some things for the detectives. I'm sure the detectives made it seem that way. Hey, listen, we just had a couple of things we wanted to clarify to put a button on this investigation, right? So he's going in there with this false sense of security. And then the detective throws a different alternate angle at him. Hey, listen, she didn't die from an accidental overdose or a Hey, listen, she didn't die from an

accidental overdose or a mixture of drugs. She didn't die from a suicide. She was killed. And the manner of death, the cause of death was asphyxiation. And as he said, right to Mark, she can't asphyxiate herself. And what he's describing there, and we don't have the images, which thankfully we don't. When someone passes away, you'll have a lividity, you'll have these different things, but you'll also have these impression marks. And depending on how the position you're in when you die, your skin kind of stays that way or your hands, your face. If your face was smushed down on something, those impressions will kind of stay. And what he's describing here is her nose,

where she's in bed and it looks like she died from this overdose, but yet her face suggests that she had something over it, that it was being smushed at the time of her death. And what the detective is saying here is, listen, she didn't do that herself. She wasn't even in the position to do that based on how medicated she was. You did it, Mark. You were the only one there. You put something over her face and you can tell the tactic he's using where he's not really asking him a question. He's telling him what he did and he's not giving him an opportunity to get out of it. And then he's also building up the motive, why he would want to do it. He's even, and we've talked about this before, trying to relate to Mark by saying, listen, your relationship wasn't good.

It was in a bad place. And then he pulls out the, you know, his ace in his back pocket and says, buddy, I got a letter right here from your wife telling me that if she died, you did it. And he's pulling out the letter, showing it to him. And the one final point I want to make, that's a little tidbit that behind the scenes, when he says, I have to go get the photos, that's intentional. The reason he's saying that is what we will do as detectives is we'll have kind of like a structure of how we're going to approach the interrogation. It'll be one person in the room, but there's multiple people watching that interview. And what we will do is kind of block it off where we want

to go. And as the detective in the room, you're looking for the verbal and nonverbal cues, but you're also relying on your partners that are watching from outside the room on video to pick up their own notes as well. So leaving those photos outside the room, it gives the detective an opportunity to go out there, talk to his colleagues, see if there's anything he missed, see if there's a different angle they want to go. And then he comes back with the photos. He wouldn't have forgotten those photos for this interview. So that's intentionally done to give him an opportunity to debrief with this team quickly and come back in with either the same plan of attack or a different approach based on how Mark's responding to certain questions.

I also think it's interesting that Mark's not saying up until now that this was self-inflicted, right? Saying she had an allergic reaction to her medication. And then the police get this letter. Mark doesn't know they have this letter. And now he goes into this interrogation and now he's saying it was suicide. Yeah, I did nothing. I just watched her die. She asked me not to call anybody. And the police are like, oh, that's interesting that you're saying now she did this to herself because, bam, I got a letter right here saying that if you ever say she did this to herself, it was you, you know. And it was like this perfect storm of before he was saying it was an accident, he could have pled ignorance about, you know, why would she say she wouldn't kill herself? I didn't say she did that. But now

that's exactly what he's saying. He's kind of playing into her hands now. And that has to drive him absolutely crazy that she sort of got the jump on him and he was not aware of it. So that's and that's interesting you're saying So, and that, that's why perspective is so important because everyone can look at the same thing and, and, and view it differently. I almost felt like he was trying to say, yeah, you know what? It was just a bad decision on my part. I know she said she was fine and she didn't need me to call anyone and she didn't want me to call anyone, but you know, I should have, I should have said, you know, no, I'm going to make the educated decision here and I'm going to call someone. And I didn't. And I didn't. And I'm sorry for that.

I shouldn't have listened to her. She said, don't call no one. I should have just went with my gut, but I didn't do anything. That's my crime here is the fact that I didn't do anything when I should have. I think that it may have been this thing where he's trying to claim, well, on that morning when she told me not to call anybody, I didn't know that she wanted to die. I just thought she didn't want me to call anybody. But now in hindsight. Yeah, maybe that's what she was. Yeah, I got you.

So I do think that that's what she was thinking, because he does tell the police not in this clip because we only have five minutes of this long interview, but he does tell the police, I don't think that she had an allergic reaction to her medicine. I think she took her own life. So after this change of story, detectives asked Mark some clarifying questions about things that they learned throughout their interviews, like about the photos, the pornographic images that he and Julie had been finding around their house, cars, etc., dating back to the early 1990s. Mark claimed that Perry, the man Julie had had a brief affair with, had sent the pornographic photos to him at work. Then Mark saved the photos so he could use them to upset Julie when, quote,

something would happen that caused him to get pissed off, end quote. He explained that he never did forgive Julie for the affair, so sometimes he would just leave the photos out for her to find, while other times he would bring them out, show them to Julie, and then tell her he had found them around the property. Detectives then asked if Perry, or maybe a prowler, could have had something to do with Julie's death, and Mark said it wasn't likely or possible. And when they asked if he was having an affair with Kelly, he said no, they were just friends. Detectives went on to tell Mark about the letter that Julie had written prior to her death, and he seemed surprised at first, but he then doubled down and said he had nothing to do with her death. Following this interview, Mark's attorney called the police and said he would not to do with her death. Following this interview, Mark's attorney called the police

and said he would not be speaking with them again. And you know how this conversation went, by the way. Like Mark leaves the police station, he calls his lawyer, he's like, hey, Bob, yeah, I just talked to the police. I don't know why you told me not to sit down with them. It went really well. Like they were really like friendly

and they pushed back a little bit, but I think at the end I had them convinced. And his lawyer's probably like, Mark, what what the hell happened I gotta get off the phone you think that you think that's the call he made yeah he was probably once again delusional no thinking that thinking that maybe it hadn't gone too well but then at the end he got him back and he didn't want his lawyer to get mad but just on the basis that Mark had talked to the police and his lawyer knows Mark and probably knows how free he is with information, his lawyer was like, God damn it. I got to call the police, Mark. I'll call you right back. I think there was a call beforehand, like you referred to where the lawyer was like, don't go do that interview. If they're not forcing you, don't go do it. And Mark's like,

I got this. They just want to clarify some things. They're probably going to wrap this case up this week. Let me just put a button on it. We're done. It's over. I'll be done in 15, 20 minutes tops. Then I think there's a call immediately after where he's going, oh my God, they think I killed her. They're coming after me. They told me in my face that I killed her. Why did you let me do this interview? And the lawyer was like, what? And I didn't tell me. And the lawyer was like, that's when he said, calls the police department says, yeah, he's never speaking with you again. We know where you're going with this. We're not helping you anymore. That's what I, and I think he was probably blaming his attorney. Like, what am I paying you for? Why did you let me do that? So I think, uh, I think Mark left that call.

Even we had a small clip of it. It's a lot longer. If you want to go check it out, strongly recommend you do so. This interview probably started off soft. It didn't just go into this. He set them up. He got them comfortable. They were both on a first name basis.

He was even referring to the detective by his first name. This was a long conversation. He set them up. He laid down the line and then he, and then he went for it. And that's why this is later in the interview guarantee where now the approach has changed. Now the demeanor has changed. Now Mark realizes why the detective actually called him in and it's too late to walk out now. And, and he can't blame himself for messing up. He's got to blame someone else. Right. And by the way, someone's going to come

back and say, well, he could have walked out. He absolutely could have. But now it's about optics. Now you're trapped. You came in. And he's trying to save it. He thinks he can. He has this delusional self-belief in himself that he can fix anything. Right. If it means saving his face, saving his image, saving his reputation, and protecting the image that he projects to the world. Yeah. Anyone watching right now or listening, if you're coming up, saving his image, saving his reputation and protecting the image that he projects to the world. Yeah. Anyone watching right now or listening, if you're coming up, waiting on YouTube, very interested to hear we're about halfway through with this episode. You just

heard the interview and that there's one thing I've learned about our channel. We don't always agree, right? And even you guys don't always agree with each other. So as of right now, with what we know and just seeing that interview, pause the video or pause the audio and go over to the comments. Let us know what you think at this point. Where's your head at? Do you think Mark's good for this? Do you think this could be a situation where wrong place, wrong time, not a good guy, but

this could have been an accident? Where are you on this right now? Stop real quick. Let us know what you think and then unpause the episode and keep going. All right. So the investigation continued. And in September, Mark and the boys moved to a home on the north side of Kenosha. Two months later, Kelly officially left her husband and moved in with them. And then she and Mark started living openly as a couple. Honestly, I'm surprised it took that long. I am surprised it took that long.

That was some real restraint on Mark and Kelly's part. So neighbors later said the Jensen children were immediately forced to call Kelly mother and had to refer to Julie as that woman we used to live with. Oh my God, I'm so mad. I'm so mad about this. This is disgusting. This is disgusting that he would do this, not even have them call Kelly mother, but to refer to their own loving mother as the woman we used to live with. I want to kick him in the face with steel-toed boots. That would hurt.

It would. So in January of 2002, just over three years after Julie died, Mark and Kelly announced their engagement with plans to marry on May 3rd of that year. But little did Mark know, the police were still building their case against him. Even though it was three years later. You know this dude Mark thought he was in the clear, man. He thought he was in the clear. He thought he was about to live his best life with Kelly.

Anyways, a computer technician was going through Mark's home computer. And this person was finding massive amounts of incriminating evidence, including a lot of penis pictures, only some of which were the ones Mark had used to torment Julie. What the other photos were for, all those other penis photos, well, the world may never know. And that's probably a good thing. The technician also found that Mark always deleted his internet browser history, but this didn't end up hiding much because the technician was able to recover most of it. The only time frame they weren't able to locate any searches for was between October 19th and November 10th of 1998, which is kind of interesting, actually, because that's the months leading up

to Julie's death and how was he able to permanently erase those web searches. But I can't talk about all of the searches or we would be here forever, but I do want to highlight a select few. Starting in early September 1998, a few months before Julie's death, Mark and his co-worker Kelly, his affair partner Kelly, began sending flirty emails to each other and it wasn't long before they were having a full-blown affair. The emails discussed how Mark and Kelly planned to ditch their spouses and begin cleaning up their lives so they could be together and take a cruise the following year. The technician noticed that whenever Kelly asked Mark how he planned to take care of Julie, he would evade

this question. Not once did he mention divorce. In fact, there were zero internet searches on Mark's computer for terms like separation, divorce, or child custody. On October 15th, just over a month after Mark started having an affair with Kelly, he used his computer to search the internet for botulism, which is a rare but serious illness caused by a toxin that attacks the body's nerves and causes difficulty breathing, muscle paralysis, and even death. It's also the thing that's in Botox injections. He then visited a site entitled Botulism in Low Acid Canned Foods. The next day, Mark looked at a story about a pipe bomber who tried to blow up his estranged wife. Then Mark looked at a website about a chemical detonator in the anarchist's cookbook. Not long after that, Mark went to his company's

website. He sent some emails to Kelly, did some other work-related things. Then Mark went back to looking up more pipe bomb-related stuff before ending his internet session by viewing the anarchist's cookbook again. On November 9th, Mark used his home computer to access a site titled Physician-Assisted Suicide, another site titled Toxology. These searches were around the same time Julie told her neighbor Ted that she saw syringes in Mark's drawer. They got into a fight and Mark chased her around with a glass of wine trying to force her to drink it. On November 29th, the same day, Julie told Ted that she didn't eat all weekend because she was afraid Mark was poisoning her. Mark used his computer to go to a site called SierraAntifreeze.com. And I think you can see where this is going. Yeah, this is bad. This is bad all the way around for Mark. It's really bad

because it's not just one thing now. It's not just the motive with the other girlfriend. It's not just Julie Jensen's note. It's not just the behavior that was displayed before the incident. It's not just the two detectives that were aware that there was something going on in the home. It's not just the questions surrounding her actual death and the unanswered things that are going on as far as the smushing of the face and the way she died, being at a young age, being relatively healthy. Now you have this added layer of some type of research being conducted that would align with ultimately the way she died, not perfectly, but in the realm, in the realm of the way she died. All of this in totality is extremely damaging for Mark. Really bad. And I mean, obviously bad for Julie too. Obviously very bad for Julie.

But I think I really want people to understand what we're talking about here because I don't know the details in between, but what I do know is there were multiple trials and some people might be sitting there going, wow. And I've even said it, you know, if it's not for the note, we're not sitting here right now. And Julie basically solved her own murder. It absolutely was critical. No doubt about it.

But what you will find is that this note becomes a big part of the story. And all these other things that we're talking about, like Stephanie describing the search history of the computer, these are the types of things that ultimately led to where we are today. It wasn't just the letter. So that's important as we go forward, because even if you question the letter itself, you have to then go ahead and question all these other things like physician-assisted suicide. Why would you search something like that? Think about that. Why would you search

something like that? Unless that's going through your mind? It's not just a random typo. So something to think about as we continue throughout this episode. So we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. In the morning of December 2nd, the day before Julie died, Mark went to a site titled Ethylene Glycol, which is a colorless, odorless, sweet-tasting compound found in many products, including antifreeze. The website Mark was on described the stages of ethylene glycol poisoning, which included apparent drunkenness and serious flu-like symptoms. The website also described how someone who ingested ethylene glycol could be near death in just over 24 hours if they didn't seek medical attention. That night, Mark looked at a site titled Antifreeze Poisoning. On December 3rd at 7.40 a.m., Mark used his computer to search the internet for ethanol glycol poisoning, and he ended up visiting at least three websites on the search, 740, stuck out because Mark had told Detective Ratzberg that around 7.30 a.m. on the morning of Julie's death, she could hardly sit up, was not able to get out of bed, and was not able to move around and function, which are all symptoms of ethylene glycol poisoning.

Had Mark been looking up Julie's symptoms just 10 minutes later? Hours after looking at websites about ethylene glycol poisoning, Mark left the house and picked up the boys from their schools. And after they got home, he called 911 to report that he found Julie dead. And as we know, almost immediately, authorities thought Julie's death was suspicious, so an investigation was opened. While searching Mark's computer, the technician found a total of 2,100 results for the word poison. And these searches actually coincided with the days Mark and Kelly were emailing. For example, on the day Mark was looking up botulism, he was also planning his future with Kelly. The technician also found multiple results for the word penis. As it turns out, Mark asked Julie about her sexual history, including details of her past partner's penis sizes. Then he wrote down descriptions of said penises.

Jesus. You know, to not harp on penises here, because I'm going to avoid that, like the plague. But to go back to the ethanol glycol poisoning, that wasn't a mistake there, what you guys were hearing. I picked it up too. December 2nd, he searched ethanol glycol. And on December 3rd, he searched ethanol glycol. And on December 3rd,

he searched ethanol glycol poisoning. So again, you think about defenses, possible ways to at least explain why this was happening. You search the same term two different days. And then what Stephanie was saying there, which is extremely important, is another defense could be, hey, that might've been searched on my computer, but it wasn't me. How many times have I heard that? If I had a dollar for every time I heard that, I would be a very rich man. And I mean, I'm sure sometimes that's true.

Sometimes it is true. You're being set up or multiple people use your computer. Yeah, like remember Cindy Anthony said, oh, my daughter Casey didn't look up all of those poisoning searches. I was looking it up because I was worried about my dog eating bamboo in the yard. So that was valid. It can happen. And that's why the prosecutors or whoever's displaying or relaying this information to us at this point is saying, hey, before the defense even goes there, we're going to play

defense attorney as well and explain to you not only were these terms searched thousands of times, 2100 times, I think you said the word poison was in there, but also around those times, those searches were conducted. There were things that were going on, the activity in that computer that would be directly tied to Mark, no one else, right? Emails or looking up certain history, whatever it might be. So basically they're painting the narrative without saying it outright that while these searches were being conducted based on the times and dates, it appears that whoever was searching these terms was also on the computer conducting business that Mark would have to do, whether it's an email or business searches. So jury, you put two and two together. We're just giving you the facts. You come to whatever conclusion you want to based

on that information. So great job by everyone involved here, especially the computer forensic expert who was able to find all this. We don't know if it was just all right there or they had to do some actual heavy lifting. No, they had to do some recovering because Mark erased his browser history. Exactly. So it's not just you go on there, you click a couple of things and it's there. So there was some work done. And then with the investigators taking the search history and tying it back to the physical

behaviors and the chronological timeline of what happened to Julie and the interactions between her and Mark and how they coincided, I think it's just incredible work. You can see the picture being painted without being skewed one way or the other. It's just, these are the facts and the investigators are relaying them perfectly so that everyone can kind of understand them. And I am going to talk about the penises because-

I knew you would. Yeah, well, you know me. Yeah, I know you. But listen, if some people might look at this and be like, oh, Mark asking Julie about her sexual history, wanting details about her past partners, asking about their penis sizes, writing it down, keeping like an Excel spreadsheet, you might think this is bizarre. I have seen this happen before. I'm not going to say who, I'm not going to say what, I'm not going to say when, but this happens. And it's so bizarre to normal people because we don't really want to know that. Like, you know, talk to

me about your ex-girlfriend for like five minutes and then let's move on and pretend it never happened. But Mark wanted to know. Not only that, he kept track. And it's usually because they just don't have a ton of confidence in themselves. And that's why they put on this fake facade. But I love the way this went. We break down that conversation. I'm talking about the search history and how it ties into the chronological behavior. Well, that's your job. You're the cop.

And you're like, you know what? Back to the penises. Don't brush over the penises. We need to talk about it. No, I am fascinated to hear, obviously, a woman's perspective on this. And I know our audience is predominantly women. And I wonder what, based on your comments, what people are saying, because I'm sure there's other experiences out there. And I'm sure you guys will be weighing in because I'm interested to see what other experiences people have had out there regarding this, because it does seem like something where if you have someone who, especially if this person, if they're asking about sexual history that wasn't tied to the actual infidelity, that seems suspicious to me. And I'm peculiar to go that deep and to want to know that much. In addition to going through Mark's computer, medical examiners and taxologists

were working behind the scenes to figure out what had happened to Julie. Like we talked about earlier, because the original autopsy performed by Dr. Michael Chambliss couldn't determine a cause of death, the Kenosha County medical examiner, Dr. Maureen Lavin, ordered additional toxological studies on Julie's kidneys, blood, and gastric contents, and these things had been collected during the autopsy. These additional toxological studies revealed that there was significant formation of olexic and acid crystals in Julie's kidneys. So I looked this up, and basically these crystals may stick together and form a solid mass known as a kidney stone. So it sounds like Julie may have had an excessive amount of kidney stones,

which was cause for further testing. Because yeah, you get kidney stones, especially as you get older and these things build up, you'll encounter a kidney stone here or there, but you shouldn't have this excessive amount. It's not a normal thing. It's a sign that there's a deeper issue at hand. So based on these results, Dr. Lavin asked a forensic toxicologist to run further tests, which ended up showing the presence of ethylene glycol in Julie's blood, gastric contents, and urine. There were 55 micrograms per milliliter in the blood, 720 in her urine, and 3,094 in her gastric contents. Now, the major difference in the amounts meant that Julie had received at least two doses of ethylene glycol, one at least 12 hours before her death, and then another right before she died. It was the toxicologist's opinion that Julie would have

been too weak to drink the volume of ethylene glycol found in her stomach without help, which would be obviously inconsistent with suicide. I mean, listen, what do I say here? What do I really say here? We just talked about the search history, specifically ethylene glycol. Now you have the body, the pathologist reading the body, no opinion on this case, just looking at the actual facts

and what the toxicology reports are telling this person. And here we are finding these high amounts of ethylene glycol in her system. And as they laid out here, based on her condition at the time when this all occurred, she would have been too weak to do this herself. So suicide's off the table. Therefore, it had to be administered by another person. Well, we know the people there based on the behavior that day and who was in that home. There was only one person. And it just so happens that that individual had also been searching the term ethylene glycol poisoning. I mean. What are the odds? Not looking good. Not looking good for good old Mark here. And that's not even talking about motive. And it does sound like we're being a little bit redundant here, but these are building blocks.

That's not, yeah. Not even talking about the motive of their marriage was bad, that he had been having a relationship with another woman for an extended period of time. Not even talking about that. Nope. We're just talking about things that are indisputable and that do not change over time and are not open to interpretation for the most part. You could still, I guess, have another pathologist say, well, she could have sat up and drank it, right? You could have someone. That's just the nature of the game. Or she could have had somebody else assist her, like come through her bedroom window,

spoon feed her this antifreeze and then sneak back out again without Mark seeing. Right. But that person would have also had to search ethylene glycol on their computer and then search up Mark's daily- No, Derek, they snuck in the house when Mark was like, he was working on his computer talking to his girlfriend. He had to pee. It was the guy dropping the penis pictures. Yeah.

And then, yeah, then some guy snuck in the window of his office, searched those things, closed the window out, snuck back out. Yeah, obviously. You know, listen, it sounds like overkill. And I'm not saying that sarcastically. It sounds like it's a done deal here. But the reason you have to go to this extreme is you have to tie up all those loose ends because there will be people out there that will say, I don't know. I think this guy could have just been wrong place, wrong time. And based on what happened beforehand, he's just guilty of being the only one there and that they're blaming it on him. And that's true. We all know that that can happen. So they're really trying

to drive home the point here that A, this individual was looking up the terms of a particular substance that was ultimately found in high concentrations in our victim's body. And he was searching this right before her death. And listen, there's something else that they found, which I think suggests even more strongly that Julie could not possibly have done this to herself. And this happened because I believe Mark

was trying to clean up his tracks. But what he didn't consider was how that would look in the context of claiming his wife had killed herself. And we're going to talk about that right after we get back from our last break. Remember, I mentioned earlier that Mark let the police search his house and how that would come back to bite him. Well, when the police conducted their search, they found zero traces of ethylene glycol anywhere in the Jensen home or garage. And you might be thinking, well, that's a good thing for Mark. How could he have poisoned her with antifreeze? Sure, Mark thought that.

Yeah, if it wasn't even the house. Well, this was, of course, super suspicious when considered alongside the toxicology results, because how was Julie, who would have been too weak to even drink that last dose of ethylene glycol, how would she be able to get rid of all traces of it in the extremely short amount of time before she died? Not just the fluid itself. She could have poured that down the drain. She could have poured herself a couple cups and then poured the antifreeze down the drain. No containers around. Nothing. Now, once again, Mark's lawyer could say, well, she planned this. She poured some antifreeze into some cups and hid them under her bed and then got rid of all

the containers and all the antifreeze in the house. Yes, I suppose you could say that, but come on. Come on now. Occam's razor. And this didn't make any sense at all. That's why the taxologist ended up concluding that Julie had likely been murdered. Following the taxologist's conclusion, Dr. Lavin reviewed the entire case study with the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office, which led her to officially conclude that Julie died as a result of homicidal poisoning with ethylene glycol. The final autopsy report was filed on March 19, 2002, more than three years after Julie died. The following morning, 42-year-old Mark Jensen was arrested and charged with first-degree intentional homicide, which had a maximum sentence of life in prison. Of course, he pleaded not

guilty, and a month later, he sold his house. He borrowed money from his father and sister and paid his $500,000 bond. Then on May 3rd, Mark and Kelly got married, just like they'd planned, because nothing was going to get in the way of his new life with his new wife and his children's new mother and that cruise they wanted to take. Don't forget about the cruise. And before the end of the year, get this, before the end of the year, Mark and Kelly, they welcomed a child into the world. They had a son together. After Mark was arrested and let go on bond, authorities continued their investigation into Julie's murder because there was still evidence to sort through. There was more people to interview and more warrants

to file. Wow. To the last part there, but to go back to what you were just mentioning as far as the autopsy report and now this three-year mark where the conclusion is homicidal poisoning with ethylene glycol. I feel like we gave them a hard time at the beginning of the episode talking about three years. It's making more sense to me now, right? It's an ongoing evolving investigation where as law enforcement is learning more through the specific searches that they uncover, they are able to develop a better theory as to how Julie was killed. It's very likely that maybe some of the tests that were done later, as far as her kidneys, all these things were not done initially. Maybe they're not part of a normal autopsy report unless they're requested. And I will tell you this, pathologists are absolutely

letting the body tell the story, but they also include the evidence or the information from the case to develop their investigation. They're not separate of that. They want to know the circumstances that led to this person being on their table in their laboratory being examined. And they will use that as a reasonable person should to decide how they investigate the body to figure out what happened. So I do think there were things that came up over time, over the few years as the detectives were building their case, where they discovered information that then went back to the pathologist and was examined then. So I don't think we were waiting on these results for three years. This was an evolving investigation where these tests were conducted much later, which is

when the pathologist was finally able to say, OK, now I have the full picture. Here's what happened. Yes. And we know that they do that. And, you know, they absolutely do. Detectives do that as well. They'll kind of pull in stuff that the pathologist finds and combine it with the evidence that they found to to draw a reasonable conclusion.

Absolutely. So what do you think? I mean, you're given the story here. What do you think about all this being arrested, being charged with this murder? And yet you get back out and the first thing you do is sell your house, get married and have a kid. of their own creation. And it is a world where no one else really goes. They don't, no one else really understands it. So you'll watch the behavior of these people and you'll be like, I don't get this. And you'll kill yourself trying to get it because your brain doesn't work like that. Trying to rationalize the irrational. Yeah. Trying to rationalize the irrational, like the absolutely trying, trying to be sane in insane places. It's not possible. You better to just not try at all. I wonder,

I'm trying to think of the angle here, right? Take away the emotion. The angle is it's just selfishness and delusion. He killed his wife because he wanted a different life, like Chris Watts, right? Could Chris Watts have been any more goddamn obvious? In the days following the deaths or the disappearances of his wife and his two daughters? Could he have been any more obvious? It's because he had one thing in mind. He wanted a new life with a new woman. This person, these people were in the way of that.

He had to get rid of them. And now anything that gets in the way of that, like, I don't know, getting arrested and having to post bond, it's just a very big inconvenience to the life that he believes he was meant to live. So now everybody's just trying to stop him from being the man and living the life that he deserves. I wonder if there also may be a financial component where he obviously he's not super wealthy. He's having to borrow money, sell his home, borrow money from his parents and stuff. But I wonder if there's a financial component where he wants to get everything into Kelly's name before this all comes to a head. Because that way, at least her and her son would have those items, even if he goes to prison. As part of their investigation, detectives obtained a warrant to search Mark's work computers, where they ended up finding, can you guess it?

More penis pictures. Way more penis pictures. Way more. How many more? Well, when combined with the photos found on his home computer years prior, there were at least 5,350 pictures of penises. But not just penis pictures, because Mark, he's a man with a plan. You know, he's a businessman. He's got to have things organized. Well, these pictures were organized in folders labeled small, medium, and large. I'm done. Just for that, he should go to prison.

Just for that. Unfortunately, this was not the end of the penis-related evidence the police would gather. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. In addition to searching Mark's work computer, detectives tried to question Kelly, but she wouldn't talk. And later, when she finally did talk, she said she knew nothing about Julie's death, only that Mark said Julie was depressed and sick and he had to get her medicine. Detectives also interviewed Mark's friend and co-worker. His name was David. And David said this started in November of 1998, not long before Julie died. And he said Mark was researching possible drug interactions on the internet several times a day on his work computer. When David asked Mark why he was doing that, Mark said he wanted to find an explanation for Julie's

unusual behavior. He described Julie as sickly and depressed and claimed that she had lost so much weight she was unrecognizable. Concerned, David went home and told his wife about this, and she was so worried that she set up a lunch date with Julie. But when they met, she said that Julie looked completely normal. David further told detectives that on a Friday not long after Julie died, Mark mentioned that he was surprised the police had not yet seized his work computer. The following Monday, David got to work and Mark had a new computer. He claimed his old one had, quote, been fried and he had to get a new one, end quote. David recalled that the fried computer was the one Mark had been using to look up drug

interactions. David had another interesting recollection to share with detectives. One time he was helping Mark in his office when he found a notebook that was quote filled with sketches of penises. Each page had a different illustration end quote And the prosecution later described Mark as having a longstanding fascination or obsession with penises. This is my first time, 20 years of investigations I've ever, and not to make light of it, just never had someone who was specifically focused on this. This is beyond a partner inquiring about relations with previous partners, right? This is something different. I don't know what it is. 5,000 pictures of penises labeled by small, medium, and large. I feel like it's a psychological thing. I bet there's like a term for this. I bet if I

reached out to a colleague, this is not the first time they've heard of it. Let's ask Dr. Chris, man. Chris Mohandy would be a great resource for this. But I just wonder, do you think he could have been gay? I don't know. I don't think so, actually. I mean, there's no indication of it. If he were and he was having a relationship with a man, at this point, they would have found it.

You think it would have been seen on the computer. They would have found it. So no, I think he probably had hangups about his own. Could he have been curious about it? No, I think he probably had hangups about his own member. So wouldn't he be just searching for, I don't want to make this episode about this. You'd think. You'd think.

If you had a hangup about a body part of yours, you probably wouldn't go searching for other people's body parts to make yourself feel worse. But that's exactly what they do. And just the categorizing. Anyways, anyways it's and here's the thing derek this is the new computer right because remember his old computer was fried from it was fried yeah so not only was he like let me get rid of this old computer just in case the police feel like coming and looking at it but then when he felt like kind of safe like oh they're not gonna come it's been years they're not coming he got this new computer and then filled it with almost 6,000 penis pictures. Yeah. It's just, no rhyme or reason to

it. It feels like kind of a compulsion. Like he can't even help himself. There's something, yeah. There's something deeply rooted there. I don't know what it is. Maybe something that happened as a child, some type of trauma. There's something there. I don't know what it is, but there's something specifically relating to a penis that he developed this fascination with. What that came from, I would guarantee you there's a story behind it. Maybe he was molested as a child. There might be something there, but some type of childhood trauma led to this. This didn't come out of nowhere. Yeah, I guess. Something happened.

Something happened, for sure. But this is not normal. No, no, no, no. I'm just going to say that. So while detectives were building their case, Mark and his defense team were preparing for trial, and they came up with a plan to argue that Julie took her own life and was framing Mark for her murder, you know, gone girl style. The defense tried to get multiple pieces of evidence banned from trial,

including the voicemails that Julie left for officer Cosman, where she said she thought Mark was willing to kill her, including the letter she wrote to the police and gave to her neighbor, Ted, and including the statements she made to Ted and her son's teacher. So basically anything that made Mark look bad, they wanted to get excluded from trial. The letters and voicemails, sometimes referred to collectively as the statements, specifically became the subject of years of pretrial hearings

in circuit court where the prosecution and defense argued over their admissibility. I feel like why would you even have to argue for years about this? They're admissible. But that's the whole game. That's the game here. By time, keep people in a constant legal battle. No, but not only that, when defense can't explain away specific pieces of evidence, the next best thing is to get that evidence thrown out. If they don't have an excuse for it, then you got to find a way to question it to the

level where it's inadmissible. Hey, listen, we don't have a rational reason to explain away this. We got to get it thrown out because if it's in there, it's damaging. That's the game. The state argued that Julie's statements should be allowed because they could be used to show her state of mind near the time of her death and help counter the defense's argument that she took her own life. In turn, the defense argued that Julie's statements should not be admitted under the

confrontation clause, which gives a person accused of a crime the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses. Obviously, Julie wasn't available to go to trial to be confronted and cross-examined, so she was considered an unavailable witness. The circuit court eventually ruled that Julie's letter could be used at trial, but not her voicemails. But then, after that ruling was made, the United States Supreme Court decided on an unrelated case, Crawford v. Washington, which established that an unavailable witness's hearsay statement is inadmissible under the confrontation clause if the statement is testimonial and the defendant had no prior opportunity to cross-examine the witness. Now, I know this is not good. A statement is considered

testimonial if the person making it knew it might be used in a trial. For example, Julie's voicemails to Officer Cosman and the letter she wrote to the police could be considered testimonial because she likely thought they would be used to prosecute Mark. But the statements she made to her neighbor and teacher might not count as testimonial because she likely didn't say those things thinking they'd be used in a trial. It was more like she was just talking to a friend. I think this is such bullshit, by the way, that even like they are screwing victims so much. So even if you're a victim and you're in an untenable situation that you can't get out of, but you just want to warn people, if something happens to me,

look into this person. You're not saying, if something happens to me, murder this person. If something happens to me, immediately arrest this person and throw them behind bars without a trial. You're saying, if something happens to me, I'm going to tell you who I think should be a suspect, considering it's me. And if you were the victim of a crime and you didn't end up dying, the police would ask you, hey, do you know who could have done this to you? Do you have any idea who might have had a reason to hurt you? And you, the person who was victimized, would say, yeah, actually, my husband is a psychopath. You should look into him. And then the police would do that. But this is ludicrous that it's like, okay, Mark's already taken away her voice. And now the Supreme Court's like, let's do

it some more. It's disgusting. I'm disgusted. So stepping back for a second and looking at this from just a judicial process, you have to just look at what we have here. And I want to say that this is the only option the defense has. So let's talk about it. Suicide's off the table. That's been ruled out. They can't go that angle. The mixture of a lethal dose of multiple medications is off the table.

So they can't go that route. Everything points, all this evidence we've talked about tonight, points to the fact that Mark killed his wife. So what's the only option left for that defense team? It looks so much like Mark, our client did it that he had to have been framed. That's the only explanation because it's so compelling that he did it. Someone must have set him up. And it looks like Julie set him up before her death to have him end up in the situation he's currently in.

He is not the offender. He's the real victim. That's what they're going with. And then having this case law, this angle to take out all of this critical evidence from the case, I'm sure this was a huge blow to the prosecution. And that's why I mentioned what I mentioned earlier about the other things we have, because although this was taken out initially, we do have a lot of other evidence that they have to kind of dispel through this case. But on the surface, this is the angle they have to go with. But the Supreme Court never should have made that decision because you can't put somebody in prison for murder based on just this testimonial evidence from the victim who's no longer with us.

You'd have to have other things, which they do. So the fact that you won't even let this evidence in to add to the pile of evidence that you would still need to prove in order to put this person in prison for murder is ridiculous. It's just part of the evidence. It's not the only thing that matters. And if that was the only thing you had, a jury would still look at that and be like, well, that's not enough. Right. I agree. This has to be in totality. But I completely agree with your sentiment, by the way. I mean, you have a victim who is trying to make sure that her offender is held accountable if something happens to her, and they're being silenced by case law. So it's a terrible situation at this point,

but let's see how it plays out. Disgusting. So after the Supreme Court decision in Crawford, Mark asked the circuit court to reconsider its previous ruling on allowing Julie's letter and voicemails at trial, and the circuit court did reconsider. And in the end, they ruled that Julie's statements could not be used because they were in fact testimonial. But that wasn't the end of this whole ordeal because the state appealed the Circuit Court's decision. The case went up to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. They agreed that Julie's voicemails and letters shouldn't be allowed under the confrontation clause. However, they asked the Circuit Court to determine whether Julie's statements were admissible under the forfeiture by wrongdoing doctrine. And at that time, the doctrine stated that a defendant gives up their constitutional right to confront a witness when the defendant is the reason for that witness's unavailability.

Yes, finally. So the circuit court looked over the case again and ruled that Mark did cause Julie's unavailability. Yes, finally. So the circuit court looked over the case again and ruled that Mark did cause Julie's unavailability. Therefore, her letter and voicemails should be allowed at trial. This was an unprecedented decision as statements like hers had never been allowed in trial before. Julie Jensen would become one of the first people, if not the first person in the United States history to testify in her own murder trial. And thank God the Supreme Court made this decision because it was a good one and it was the only one at that point that could have possibly been fair. And it's interesting that the circuit court found

Mark Jensen was the cause of Julie's unavailability. It's basically saying like, yeah, you killed her. Even if you just did nothing by not calling anybody, even if you just watched her die, you're still culpable for that. And you're still the reason it. And then, you know, great outcome in that situation. And I think what you said there, the first in United States history to testify in her own murder trial. It's an incredible statement. It's an incredible statement. So fascinating case. I believe we're going to have one more part of this series. One more, yes. One more part. And we're going to bring this home and see the outcome because we're not done yet. There's other things that are, this is not going to be smooth sailing from here. This is not the end of the bumps in the road.

Of course not. You're dealing with Mark Jensen. And, you know, in a defense team that's going to try to convince a jury and everyone else out there that this man was set up. He was set up by Julie and he's, he's taken the fall for it now. So looking forward to the next part, any final words from you before we wrap this one up? No, no, no, no. I just, I hope I didn't offend anybody. If you have 6,000 penis pictures on your computer, I hope I didn't, I hope I didn't offend anyone. I was thinking about what we're going to title this episode.

And I mean, I know what it should be based on penis pictures, but we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that, Stephanie, but I mean, listen, what it should be based on penis pictures, but we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that, Stephanie. But I mean, listen, we talked about it enough. Oh, what about poisoning and penis pictures? Yeah, no, nope, nope. We're not getting demonetized, but that's going to do it for us, guys. Everyone stay safe out there. We will see you next week.

We're going to have a new Crime Weekly news coming out later next week, and we'll have a new audio episode, the final audio episode for Julie Jensen on Friday, YouTube on Sunday. Everyone stay safe out there. We will see you next week. Bye.