Crime Weekly - S3 Ep219: Crime Weekly News: NC Home Invasion, Chad Daybell's Death Sentence, Surprise Call From Lyle Menendez

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

A family in North Carolina is left devastated when masked men entered their home in the middle of the night and assaulted them, stealing items and a car from the home. The intruders inflicted torture on the family, including the children, and asked for guns as well as money. Family members have set up a GoFundMe for the victims here which will go to medical costs and replacing lost items. Chad Daybell was sentenced to death after being found guilty of murdering Joshua Vallow, Tylee Ryan, and his ex-wife, Tammy Daybell. Chad Daybell, alongside Lori Vallow, believed in doomsday prophecies and carried out the murders of their family members, believing they were getting in the way of being together. Lyle Menendez makes a surprise call in to CrimeCon... 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: 7:40 - 9:30 - HelloFresh.com/CrimeWeeklyApps - Get your FREE appetizers for LIFE! 19:30 - 21:20 - Check out Serialously on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen to your podcasts!

Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And real quickly, just want to say thank you to everyone who came out to CrimeCon. What an event. Unbelievable. I know this is a little late. It'll make more sense down the road why that is, why we're talking about it now. Some of you detectives probably already figured it out.

But anyways, happy to report that CrimeCon was a huge success. We had a line for three days straight. And we were fortunate enough to basically get to meet everyone up until the last day where we were there on Sunday packing up. People were still coming in and we saw every single person. And I just want to say thank you to everybody who waited. The line was long, but as I was explaining to a lot of people who were waiting for us, we're trying to find that balance between spending enough time with everyone to hear what you guys want to talk about, sign everything you want us to sign while also being aware that other people are waiting. And you guys were awesome. Nobody

bitch, nobody complained. Everyone was super understanding. And also shout out to the team, Shannon, Sam, and Bella. They were handling the merch and the coffee and they were awesome. They were just on it the whole time. Everything went great. Unfortunately, we did not win the Clue Awards. We were double losers. We lost the Content Creator of the Year Award for Crime Weekly and we lost Detective Perspective Outstanding Podcast series. But, and I know it sounds cliche to say it, it really is an honor to be nominated when you think about the other podcasts that are in the same category with us. Some really heavy hitters and it truly is a blessing to be mentioned with them because it's not guaranteed. And there's a lot of podcasts that

attend these events. And so to be one of the very few who get nominated, who get to attend this event and have these experiences, we are very, very lucky and we wouldn't be here without you guys. So we're going to keep fighting. We're going to keep growing and learning. That's the benefit for these events is I just put up a post about it where we get to interact with you guys, hear about what you like, what you don't like, what cases you want to hear in the future. And we're getting to have those one-on-one experiences instead of just seeing them in the comments. So it's really valuable to us. I promise you we're getting as much out of it as you guys are. And yeah, it was just an awesome

experience. And Stephanie, anything to add to that? CrimeCon, awesome. Shannon, Sam, Bella? It was awesome. Everyone we met was so sweet. Just a pleasure to get to talk to the same people that watch the videos every week. And we talk to you in the comments, but to see you in person, to be able to put my arms around you, hug you, talk to you, have human connection. There's nothing that beats that. We're so thankful for all the support we get at CrimeCon. And we're so thankful to be able to spend any time that we get. And Derek always thinks I spend too much time with everybody because I have no concept of there's a line and we need to go. But you waited

in the line. I want to give everybody their due amount of time, and I kind of want to also spend time. Stephanie feels the need to physically dry each and every signature by blowing on it for two minutes. Because I don't want it to smudge, man. Yeah. So I'm like, come on. There's nothing worse than a smudged signature. No, I get it. I get it.

And no, it was great. If you go on our website, CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com, all the photos that were taken by Sam and Shannon are up on the website. They're the ones that we took. So if you took photos with us with one of our cameras, go over to CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com right now. You can go check out the photos and there's already a link for Denver, which will be next year. We can go over, you can sign up, you can use our code and you'll get a discount if you use it. That doesn't apply to VIP tickets though. It's just the normal general passes. So again, really appreciate it. And we're going to transition now. And I always hate doing this when we go from this positive story that we're talking about with you guys to something

that's not so great, but also very important because part of the reason we started Crime Weekly News is to cover topical stories and headlines, not only because they're terrible, but also because there's usually something to take from it, something to learn. And tonight's story is no different. So maybe some of you have heard about it, maybe some of you haven't. So we'll go over the specifics and then we'll dive into what we can take away from it. So for those of you who haven't heard, a North Carolina family of five was tortured with hot metal during a home evasion, according to police. Now, from what we know at around 2 a.m. local time on Saturday, June 15th, a family in Western Harnett County in North Carolina was sitting in their garage with their door open when a group of five men approached the home and allegedly assaulted the family before stealing some of their belongings.

Now, Stephanie's going to get into more details, but there's definitely information that we can take from this. But before we get to that, Stephanie, what do you want to add to this? Yeah. So this is actually terrible because what happened, according to Sheriff Wayne Coates, is the five men tied the family up with duct tape. But then they began to torture them as well, which, I mean, any normal person could say, hey, if you're there to steal these people's belongings, you don't have to torture them. But what they did is they put a knife and a fork on top of the stove. They heated up the metal of the knife and fork, and then they stuck it to the bodies of the family members. The sheriff, Coates, said, quote, they were trying to get them to tell them where their money and guns were,

end quote. And according to the sheriff, there were actually no guns in the home. The suspects then stole multiple personal items. They ransacked the home. They even assaulted the children and then took off with two stolen vehicles. It's also been reported that the men drove away in their own silver or gray Dodge Challenger. So they left in three vehicles. The family is currently still missing one of their vehicles, which is a gray four-door Honda Accord. Now, there is a GoFundMe where we get a little bit more information because the sister of one of the victims, her name's Myra Morales Scott, she talked about kind of what happened. She said that the masked intruders assaulted her sister, her brother-in-law, and the young children. The entire house was ransacked.

And then obviously the family's suffering physically, emotionally, and mentally. She said, quote, our extended family and close friends are devastated. Their home was vandalized. Their peace of mind and safety will never feel the same. End quote. Now, this GoFundMe campaign is actually started to raise money to cover health care costs, to replace stolen items and provide additional support for the family that was victimized. And one of the neighbors, Jeffrey Miller, he lives two doors down. He said that this family has been in the neighborhood for 16 years and nobody thought that anything like this could happen. This is very, obviously just, what's the point in this? You can

rob a family, you can tie them up. Why did they feel like they had to put a knife and a fork on the stove and burn them? Not just the adults, but the children as well. Yeah, I have some thoughts on this. I want to take a quick break and then I want to dive into it because it could be a couple different reasons. Again, it's all speculative, but I definitely want to explore those theories. So we'll take a quick break. We'll we're back. And I was thinking about this as I was reading about this story. And again, I'm going to give a couple theories, but there's also a lot of variables that we're unaware of at this point. This is an open investigation. There may be more information that if we were aware of it, it may change our opinions. But on the surface, let's talk about

what transpired. This family was outside. They were in front of the garage. You could have a situation where they were just victims of opportunity. There's no previous story connected to this and that this group of individuals had been casing the neighborhood, saw this family outside with the garage door open, saw easy access, and decided to capitalize on this vulnerability. Absolutely plausible, where that was just wrong people, wrong time, and it just happened to them because they were outside. However, in many instances, there's usually, not all the time, more to the story. And I've investigated dozens, if not hundreds of home invasions, different levels. And usually there's some premeditation, some planning

that goes into it. And there's a motive behind the home invasion. Not always, but in most cases, there are. So what could those motivations be? This could be an inside job. It may be someone who's connected to the family or a friend of the family who's aware of valuables that are inside the home. Could it be guns? Could it be money? Could it be jewelry? It could be any of those things or it could be multiple things. I also see situations like this. And again, let me qualify by saying I'm not suggesting it's the case here, but you also see a lot of home invasions where there's narcotics involved, where the attacks occur because a rival gang or a rival competitor knows that there's a large amount of money or drugs inside the home. And because these individuals are facilitating some type of

illegal activity, you have different individuals who are entering the home at different times of the day. They're exposed to the inner workings of the house and where things are located. They may inform other drug dealers of what's going on. And so this can be a planned attack from one competitor to another, where that's simply they're going in there to steal their product and their money. You also mentioned guns. Now, they were looking for guns. So another scenario is misidentification, wrong house.

It could be the exact scenario that I just described where this group of individuals were looking for a specific home that contained drugs, guns, and money, and they accidentally went to the wrong home. Sounds stupid, but it's happened before and it's going to happen again. So without having the full details, we really don't know what transpired here, but we can take some things from it. And I tell my kids about this all the time to a lesser degree. I live in a nice area, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter where you live. It can happen to anyone, anywhere.

And if there's a vulnerability that's exposed to the public, yes, 99% of the time, it might just be your neighbors that notice it. But all it takes is that one time where someone who has an ulterior motive, who has malicious intentions to see that vulnerability, make note of it, and then keep an eye on it for future situations. And what am I talking about here? Leaving your garage door open, leaving the gate to your backyard open, which could lead to a sliding glass door, leaving your front door open when you have like a glass door on the front or a front screen. This is what my children are guilty of all the time.

They'll keep the main door that has the deadbolt open because we have the glass door in the front that they can look out, they can wave to their friends, they can see everything that's going on. The dog likes to look out the glass door as well. It's all cute and innocent, but there's no protection there. An assailant can just break the glass or they can just simply open the door because my children never locked the glass door. And they always get upset with me when I'm like, what are you doing? Because I'll walk in and I'm like, how did I just gain entry so easy? Like, what are you guys doing?

Dad, it was only for a couple of minutes. That's all it takes. Garage door is open. Front door is open. Front door is open. Somebody walking by with no premeditation could just say, hey, here's an easy access point. It looks like just one individual is home or they may see just the kids in the front of the house and decide, you know what? I'm going inside.

And once they're in, what do you do then? Now you're at a disadvantage because they're inside your home. And if you can't get outside, you can't gain access to anyone to let them know what's going on. So there's a lot of issues there. And I think that minimum what we can take from this is you always, and I know I'm always scaring you guys, but you have to assume the worst in these situations. And I'd rather be safe than sorry. I know it's a cliche

statement, but you have to assume that it's not the people that you know you have to worry about. It's the people you don't know about. Just somebody driving by, somebody walking by. It could be someone that you've seen every day who walks their dog. You don't know who that person is. You don't know who they are behind closed doors. So when you can, you want to prevent these types of situations. And you can do that by taking simple precautions like shutting your garage door, shutting your exterior door, making sure that your windows have some type of locking mechanism where the window can go up, but you can put those brackets at a certain height where you can still open the window.

But especially the windows on the first floor, even if they're open, they can't go far enough where another human being could climb through them. Especially if you have air conditioning units that you can just kick in. That's a big thing that we see on first floors where if you don't have central air, you could have a unit that could be pushed in and that would be easy access for an offender. So there's a lot of things That we can do to mitigate these types of circumstances and that's really why we're here That's really why we're talking about it I was thinking like maybe it's drugs and it was just kind of a crime of opportunity where they're driving around and like oh

We got to get money. We got to get drugs We got to get something we can sell for drugs and they happen to see this family with the garage door open. Possible. Yeah. So it's like, oh, well, here's, you know, maybe they have money, maybe they have drugs. And it wasn't really like they knew for sure that they did. But it was like there could be a potential that they do. And we're going to torture them until we get an answer, because this is like an act of desperation. It looks like. Yeah. And you bring up a great point there where not only did they go into the home, but it does appear from what we're being told that there was some type of torture being conducted through a very poor interrogation tactic where they were assaulting the children and the adults

and probably assaulting the children to elicit a specific response from the adults, right? Like if the adults weren't willing to give up their information on their own, one way you could do it is by punishing the children in front of them. It's terrible to think, but it does sound like that happened, which is why I tend to believe there's definitely more to the story. It sounds like these individuals felt like they knew what was in the home. Again, it could be the wrong house, but it sounds like they were searching for something specific. And as it said in the article, they were requesting guns, which weren't there. So they went into this house under some type of

pretense that they were going to get a particular item and it looks like it was firearms. So they appeared to have escalated their interrogation tactics when they didn't get what they wanted. And I'm really interested to hear what comes out of this story because I think we're just scratching the surface. And I wanted to say it again and reiterate it, by no means am I suggesting that this family did anything wrong. I don't know them. I don't know the specifics of it, but there's definitely something going on here. And it may have nothing to do with the actual family, but maybe the offenders involved were, again, wrong place, wrong time, or they, like you said, they were in desperate need of something they could sell or they needed money. And this house was the first

one they saw that had a vulnerability. So I'm really hoping we catch them not only so they're held accountable for what they did, but also so we can find out more about their motives and maybe use that information to prevent this from happening to someone else. Yeah. I think that at the end of the day, like I said, torturing people with hot metal and doing it to kids, it feels like an act of desperation. It feels like they just didn't know whether or not this family had anything, but because it was 2 a.m., which, I mean, how many people are sitting in the garage with the door open at 2 a.m.? Probably not a ton. You know, it was 2 a.m. They don't even have to really put a lot of effort into a home invasion. They walk up to this family with the garage door open,

force them inside. They don't have to break in. They don't have to break any windows. They don't have to kick in any doors. So I don't know. It's very sad. Absolutely agree. Nobody wins here, even if the guys are found who did this.

And we're going to keep updated on it. If there's any future information that comes out about it, please let us know in the comments. If we hear about it first, we will let you guys know. Because again, not only do we want justice for the family, we also want to know the why behind this. So again, we can learn from this experience and better protect the people that we care about. But we will make sure to include the link to the GoFundMe account in the description box below if you would like to donate. We're going to take a quick break, but stick around because I want to ask Stephanie about a couple things that came up. One, actually both while we were at CrimeCon that we have not discussed in a public forum yet. So

stick around after the break. We're going to dive into it a little hint. We're going to be talking about Chad Daybell and the Menendez brothers. We'll be right back. Okay. We're back. And two things, Stephanie, we have not discussed this at all, but we mentioned at the top of the show, CrimeCon, a lot went down while we were at CrimeCon and two things that we are somewhat connected to because we had recently covered them. So first off, while we're at CrimeCon, we had this long line of people. And all of a sudden, there's this roar that goes throughout the entire convention center. I mean, loud applause, everything. I didn't know what was going on. And I looked at you and I said, what's going on?

You said Chad Daybell just got the death penalty. And I wanted to get your opinion on it because I believe Lori Vallow did not get the death penalty. She got two consecutive life sentences. So what do you make of all this? Yeah, she got consecutive. I think it's ridiculous. I think they both should have gotten the death penalty, obviously. They were her children.

She was definitely running the show in a lot of this we i mean we covered this case extensively yeah i thought we agreed to that when we did the the series on this case but i mean they're both culpable they're both responsible equally responsible in my opinion so like who was running the show who you know who was driving the ship it doesn't really matter at the end of the day like the actions were done by consenting adults who both understood the implications. There's nothing in me that thinks Chad Daybell is more culpable than Lori Vallow, but I don't understand what the reasoning is for it. Yeah, I was obviously not tuning into the trial too much, but my guess would be Lori may have done some of the planning, but Chad Daybell actually carried out the physical act.

So maybe that's why. Yes, I get it. But still. No, I'm with you. I'm just the driver and someone goes in and kills the cashier. In some instances, the driver can be held just as responsible as the shooter and can be given the same sentence. So I don't know. I'm with you based on everything we covered. It seemed like she was really heavily involved with everything that transpired. And I don't even know if these things happen if she's not involved. She was very manipulative, handling a lot of this,

and kind of, in my opinion, the brain behind all of it. So to think that she got two life sentences and he's getting the death penalty, it seems like maybe they got that wrong. But I will say this, I almost feel like Chad might be getting off a little easier because I don't know what's worse, the death penalty or being in prison for the rest of your life when they're relatively young. I say that because I'm 40. I want to pretend like I'm young. Yeah, it's relatively. But I mean, I don't know. I don't know what I would want more to be in prison for the rest of my life without the possibility of getting out or just a five minute thing where the lights go out and that's it game over. So depending on where you fall on that, you may be on one side or the other, but we always tell you, we're going to keep you updated on these cases, especially

the big series that we do. And that was the latest update. And it just so happened while we were at crime con. So, and, and I put it- And I put it on Instagram. Yeah. And it's still there. Yeah, I posted it because I missed the initial roar. But then when I figured out what was happening, I kind of pulled my camera out and it was just this like amazing connecting experience. And it's like, you know,

you hate to cheer for somebody being put to death, but at the same time, not in this situation. I think a cheer was necessary. It felt like, you know, I've been on this case since it happened. I was in a different house. I was in a different place in my life. I've been following this case religiously since then. And it felt, I just got goosebumps, but it felt like a culmination of all the frustration

and like pain and, you know, and ridiculousness of these two people. And then they kind of like going about their lives for years, just taking people out and nothing's happening. And then finally, it's like, okay, through the whole crime, which took years, through the whole investigation and then the arrest and then finally the trials. And it's been years and years. But finally, JJ and Tylee have justice. And it's not enough. It's not enough because these were two innocent children who became the victims of, I'd like to say they were crazy, but I think they're just evil, evil people. And they didn't ask for this and they didn't want this and they had their whole lives ahead of them. And so when I say it's some sort of justice, it's the only one that they are allowed to now.

But what they should have had was their lives to live. Yeah, I think overall we met a lot of people at CrimeCon and there's a lot of parents there. And I think that's what the cheer was. It wasn't necessarily because someone was sentenced to death. It was that. And it did feel weird. Like, oh, are we cheering for this? But that's like- No, it was more justice for the kids. That's how I took it. More justice for the kids that were

taken from us all too soon. But I want to switch gears one more thing before we go tonight in the same vein of CrimeCon, but also another case that we had just covered extensively, the Menendez brothers. There was another form of breaking news that only was known to people who attended CrimeCon. Now, we were at our booth. We were meeting everyone. But then all of a sudden, we started getting rapid fire information from everyone who was coming up to our booth. And it was regarding the Menendez brothers. Mark Garagos was at the event. And apparently, we were not there, but he was doing some typeendez brothers. Mark Garagos was at the event and apparently we were not there, but he was doing some type of speaking engagement and he actually got, I believe it was Eric Menendez. Don't hold me to that. Eric or Lyle. I can't remember which one it was. Maybe you know,

Stephanie, but one of the Menendez brothers. It was Lyle. Okay. It was Lyle. Got Lyle on speakerphone at the event. So everyone was hearing him at this event. And I don't know exactly what was discussed, but I guess they're filing for some type of appeal or something along that lines. But I just found it very interesting because we were just wrapping up the Menendez series. And while we're in the other room, Lyle Menendez is on speakerphone. So a lot of you came up to us and informed us that that was taking place. And talk about timing. Just an interesting turn of events at CrimeCon. It was.

It was weird because we had just finished the Menendez Brothers series. And then all of a sudden, like, Lyle's on speakerphone and everyone's rushing over to tell us. And we wanted to know. And it was, like, very interesting. And I was like, oh, damn, I wish I could go out there and like here but yeah he's apparently uh you know he's talking about his appeal he's talking about how he's gonna fight this and yeah just a weird kind of thing to to pop up yeah we can't escape him sometimes I wonder if life is real the way things happen it's like is somebody like are we in an ancestor simulation like is, is somebody planning all this out? Like, do we even have free will?

Or is this just like we're in some Sims game? And, you know, just the things that happen sometimes are so like bizarre and ironic. And it's like, how? Like the timing of this is just too, too odd. But yeah. Only at CrimeCon. Well, that's going to do it for us, guys. We covered a lot tonight, but we wanted to play a little catch up and we will keep you updated again on the headlining story that we talked

about tonight regarding the family. If there's any updates in that case, we will let you know. Way down in the comments below, what do you think about Chad Daybell's sentencing? What do you think about Lyle Menendez being on speakerphone at CrimeCon? Do you like it? Do you hate it? We heard multiple opinions on it. You know how we feel about it. We think they're guilty of murder, but we also think based on the circumstances that they should be out by now. So weigh in down below. Let us know what you think.

Like, comment, subscribe. As always, we really appreciate it. If you're listening on audio, you can leave a review. That would also be greatly appreciated. Until later this week when we start a new case, everyone stay safe out there. Have a good night. Bye.