Going West: True Crime - Corey Wieneke // 441

Episode Date: September 28, 2024

In October of 1992, a 22-year-old man was found brutally murdered inside his Iowa home. Years passed with no answers, until a witness, who had been just nine years old at the time, came forward about her witnessing a black candlelit confession... Then finally, a previously eliminated suspect was arrested. This is the story of Corey Wieneke. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host teeth And I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to going west. Hello everybody. I like that you put a little bit of a Fun and I'm your host Daphne. I I feel like I bit of umph on and I'm your host Daphne. I feel like I always just I'm like and I'm your host Daphne and it always just mumbles together so I liked it. I thought it was cute. Thank you. That's very kind of you. Thank you guys so much for tuning in today. I hope you're having a lovely day. I actually stumbled upon this case a few months ago and surprisingly I didn't find any recommendations for it in our email.

So if you did recommend it somewhere else, I'm so sorry, but I couldn't find anything in our email because I did check. But due to very spooky and pertinent information in this case, I thought it would be a good one to go. I thought it would be a good one to cover as we enter into the best month of the year. October.

Yes, absolutely. And also this case recently saw some advancements. So stay tuned for that. Also go check out photos of this case and all the other cases that we cover over on our socials. Sorry, I had to swallow there for a second. You can find us on Instagram at goingwestpodcast and we're also on Facebook. Absolutely, so without further ado,

let's dive into this one. All right guys, this is episode 441 of Going West. So let's get into it. What's 2FA security on Kraken? Let's say I'm captaining my soccer team, and we're up by a goal against, I don't know, the Burlington Bulldogs. Do we relax? No way. Time to create an extra line of defense and protect that lead. That's like 2FA on Kraken,

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Use them for that long-awaited vacation. Points never expire, so use them how you want. That's the powerful backing of American Express. On eligible cards, terms apply. Learn more at mx.ca. In October of 1992, a 22-year-old man was found brutally murdered inside his Iowa home. Years passed with no answers until a witness who had been just nine years old at the time of the killing came forward about witnessing a black candle-lit confession, bringing forward a previously eliminated suspect. This is the story of Corey Winnocki was born on March 25th, 1970 as the only child of Susan and James

Winnocki in Muscatine, Iowa, which is situated on the Mississippi River across from Illinois. But they later relocated closer to family in the rural community of West Liberty, Iowa, which is just about 30 minutes away. So not a big move there. So his parents lovingly remember Corey as a happy, easygoing, and gregarious kid, while his friends and classmates remember him as the class clown and a naturally gifted athlete. During his time at West Liberty High School, he played center on their football team,

making it to the state semifinals. And during these teen years, Corey started dating his high school sweetheart and future fiance, cheerleader Jody Hots. So they had that small town cheerleader football player thing going for them. And Cory graduated in 1988 and went on to work behind the bar at the locals favorite dive Winks Bar and Grill, which was actually owned by his grandma Betty. And Winks still exists today and it's still owned and operated

by members of Cory's family. This bar kind of is a decently important piece to what happened to him and the story of his final evening. I mean he spent a lot of his life at this bar, a lot of time working there, a lot of time with family, so this is an important location. From the beginning, the bar kept their staff in the family and everybody pitched in to help, including Corey like I'm saying. He was very friendly and agreeable and he often worked the night shifts, which he really enjoyed because he loved getting to chat with the regulars. Now though he was a responsible employee, he was also remembered as a heavy drinker and a frequent

partier and he spent many nights out that originated at his family's bar. But he wasn't known to do this on the job, so, you know, nothing wrong with going out and having some fun. And also, as you're about to mention, he's still pretty young, so this is completely typical of a person in their 20s wanting to go out and have some drinks. Yeah, especially when you're working and you're in the atmosphere. It kind of like sets you off for that type of evening. Yeah.

So in the fall of 1992, 22 year old Corey had recently asked Jodie to marry him and they moved in together in a quaint house outside of town, still in Iowa, of course. in together in a quaint house outside a town, still in Iowa, of course. But sadly, his engagement to Jodie didn't stop him from having relationships with other women. Corey was well known and well liked by the local women, and it was no secret that he'd affairs with many different gals from West Liberty, and actually, the whole town pretty much, including Jodie, knew this. One of the women named Wendy Marshall had even wound up pregnant, even though Corey

admitted to not being serious with her, so he didn't have intentions of leaving Jodie for her and raising his baby. And knowing Corey's history, Wendy acknowledged this fact, and through all of this, Jodie stuck beside him. Well, on the evening of Monday, October 12, 1992, Cory was working his late shift at the bar as usual, but on that particular night, he had a couple of visitors. Wendy, who Daphne just mentioned, and another woman who was also sleeping with him. A woman named Annette Hazen. Annette was both a part-time employee and

a regular at Cory's family's bar Winx, and by her account, she met up with Cory there in hopes of going home with him that night. Now, that night she also said that she had too much to drink and she was unable to drive herself home, so she recalls shutting down the bar and climbing into the passenger seat of Corey's car, just kind of waiting for him to take her home. But when he walked out of the bar with Wendy, having offered her a ride home, Annette became irate. Wendy remembered that she refused to get out of the car, that Annette refused to get out of the car, so Corey planned to drop her off first, but Annette then threatened to jump

out of the car as they were driving. She apparently got her way because Cory dropped Wendy off at home and then went over to Annette's house. Now, Annette was still pretty upset when they got to her place, so they kinda argued briefly and then they slept together. And according to Annette, they even exchanged I love yous for the first and last time before he returned to Wendy's as he promised When Cory got to Wendy's house, they apparently just talked for a while before he headed home to his fiance Jodie Well later that morning, which was Tuesday, October 13th

1992 Jodie awoke early for work as usual Around 8 1515am she headed to nearby Iowa City where she worked at a bank, leaving Cory asleep in their bed. Around 6.30pm she arrived back home for the day to find their dog wandering around the front yard, and spotted Cory's car out front when he was already supposed to have left for work. She also noted that the screen door was open and the front door was unlocked. Puzzled by this, Jodie went inside to find Corey lying motionless on their bedroom floor, covered in blood. Jodie placed a frantic call to 911, telling them through intermittent tears and sobs, quote, I think my fiance is dead.

He's all bloody and he's not breathing and he's cold. So first responders quickly arrived to find Corey on the floor next to the bed, badly beaten, with blood spilled all over he and Jodie's bedroom. Law enforcement believed that he was sleeping off his late night and was struck while he was still in bed. And it was clear that he had been dead for hours. And this was clearly a brutal, very personal crime. Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Ken Sandy said, quote, there's nothing at the crime scene to suggest that it is an unrelated incident.

It would be our belief that the person responsible for Corey's death either knew him or knew someone who knew Corey. So yeah, they don't think at all that this is just some random attack or a robbery gone wrong situation or anything like that. But instead that somebody came into the house with intentions to hurt and or murder Cory Yeah, absolutely and obviously I'm not trying to victim blame whatsoever But you know he was having many sexual relationships with different women and that could easily create some enemies Well, and that is exactly what they thought that this was based off, especially once they learned about Corey's affairs, that, you know,

there must be a man out there that didn't like that, or maybe he was sleeping with somebody's girlfriend or someone that somebody was seeing because it really almost seemed like Corey had a hold over these women. I mean, even looking at how upset Annette was when she learned that, you know, like Heath said, he was going to take Wendy home that night. And Annette was when she learned that, you know, like Heath said, he was going to take Wendy home that night and Annette was really upset by that. It seemed like everybody wanted a piece of this guy. So who else is he seeing and is he interfering in somebody else's relationship?

Muscatine County Sheriff Ron Hazen agreed, but added, quote, everyone who we thought had a connection passed a polygraph. Jodie was interviewed first with detectives curious whether she had finally had enough of Corey's relationships with other women and wanted revenge. And then there was the fact that Jodie was the last known person to see Corey and in their own home at that. But her alibi was airtight.

She had been at the bank where she worked as a teller 25 minutes away in Iowa City for the entire day, and this was later confirmed with her coworkers. And obviously, as we know, Cory had been dead for hours. So you might be thinking, oh, well, maybe Jodie took his life and then went to work, but there's nothing indicating that that is what happened. Now Wendy and Annette were also questioned, of course, but both women had alibis as well for the morning after they had both hung out with Corey. Annette showed up to the police station herself and admitted that they had shared a heated

exchange in the early morning hours of the day that he was murdered. And she also offered multiple tips to law enforcement and even submitted to a polygraph examination which she passed. Investigators surveyed the crime scene and ruled out the possibility, like I said, of a robbery or a home invasion, due to the lack of forced entry and the fact that nothing was missing. Authorities believed Corey knew his killer and said that there was no evidence to suggest it was a random killing.

Investigators also said they did not believe the murder was related to the sale or use of drugs, and again, leaned more toward it being connected to a relationship that he had with a woman. And let's talk about what happened to Corey, what was done to Corey, because like I said, this had been a brutal murder. The cause of death was concluded to be blunt force trauma to the body, and detectives believe that he had sustained about 12 blows to his head and to his torso.

Shortly after the discovery of Corey's body, a local man named John Schneider came forward about having seen an aluminum baseball bat discarded on the side of a gravel road. So he kind of wondered if it could be connected to the case. Now John had been out with a few other men that day picking up seed for their animals and they happened to pass directly in front of Cory and Jody's house. When they did, they noticed quote, a couple people standing out by a car in front of the house. When they returned from the other direction, both the people and the car that had been out front were gone.

John and the men then spotted that baseball bat on the side of a gravel road around 1 30 p.m. on the day of Corey's murder and tipped off police about it. And here's why, you know, it's not like they just found this bat and thought it was weird. They reported this bat to police because they noticed blood on it. Yeah, they're saying that they saw fresh blood on this baseball bat. So it's not like, oh, there's just a random baseball bat

on the side of the road, and maybe that could be connected to a crime. It's like, no, clearly there is blood all over this bat. Yeah, it was just tossed aside and then finding out what happened to Corey and taking note of what they had seen outside of his house this is an important witness sighting well and on top of that the baseball bat still had its original barcode which led investigators to believe that it had been purchased with the intent of carrying out this crime. So they're saying that somebody bought this baseball bat, particularly to commit this

murder. Premeditated. It definitely appeared that that was what happened. So after collection, the bat was forensically processed while detectives waited anxiously to see if any fingerprints or DNA could be pulled from the bat. Now unfortunately, they could not. However, the bat was confirmed to be the murder weapon in Corey's case, so now they're absolutely sure and this baseball bat was found just one mile or 1.6 kilometers away from Corey's

home. In the months following his death, more than 400 people were questioned, but no one could be connected to his murder. Family friends described Corey's parents as numb in the weeks afterward. And Jodie quickly moved out of town wanting to mourn in peace and just distance herself from the town where rumors were swirling, with some people still accusing her of being involved. Sadly, in a surprising twist, after Corey's murder, Jodie discovered that she was pregnant

with Corey's child. So months later she gave birth to their daughter, Megan, a single mother from the start. But interestingly, Jodie later wound up marrying one of Cory's best friends. As residents moved on with their lives, the town still unsure who had committed this murder, this cold case still haunted the tight-knit farming community, and people came to their own conclusions about what really happened that day. Many muse that the murder was tied to organized crime, gambling, or drug operations because running the bar, Corey did come across many people involved in

the use and sale of drugs and Corey himself was known to use recreational drugs on occasion as well. But police never found any validity behind these claims, they were just simply rumors and speculation. So years continued to pass, and then two and a half decades passed without a single lead in Corey's case. That is, until 2017, when a woman who had grown up in the area came forward with a memory that turned out to be the key piece of evidence leading to a conviction in Corey's case. From the executive producers of Lost. This place will not break us. The phenomenon returns to Paramount+.

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A day of sunshine? No. A box of fine wines? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. This is where things take kind of a spooky turn. Now Jesse Becker had been nine years old at the time of the murder. In 2017, so 25 years after 22-year-old Corey was killed, Jesse, who was working as an ICU

nurse, was being questioned by a detective in the matter of a patient. During this questioning, she was reminded of something that she had seen as a child and wondered if it actually had merit in Corey's unsolved murder. So she asked the detective if she could give him a statement. Jessie remembered that in the days after the murder and just before Halloween,

she went over to the home of a friend named Kayla for a sleepover who were being looked after by her friend's aunt for the evening. Because remember, they were just 9 years old. While asleep upstairs, the girls began to hear sobbing. So hesitantly, they descended the stairs slowly and saw Jessie's aunt, Resistantly, they descended the stairs slowly and saw Jessie's aunt crying and surrounded by lit black candles. Although the aunt was alone, the girls listened as she apologized to someone named Cory. Jessie later remembered, quote, We came down to the bottom of the steps and heard her aunt, and she was sobbing and crying.

She was lighting black candles and apologizing to Corey, and she said, quote, I'm so sorry, Corey, I never meant to hurt you. I loved you, Corey. I never meant to kill you. I'm so sorry for killing you, Corey. Jesse recognized later that it was likely that the woman, her friend Kayla's aunt, was trying to commune with Cory's spirit and apologize to him. But of course, at the time, she didn't know anything about Cory or his case, even though, again, this happened shortly after he was killed because she was a little girl. So the girls returned upstairs and tried to go to bed, but Jessie was rattled by what she had seen.

Her friend really didn't seem concerned and later wouldn't even remember the evening, but it stuck with Jessie, especially because of the woman's reputation around town. Her friend's aunt, the one who was sitting around, apologizing to Corey around black lit candles was none other than Annette Hazen, who had openly been having an affair with Corey at the time of his death, and had been doing so with him just hours before his murder,

before he left her house to go back to Wendy's, and then finally to his own home with Jodie. And Jessie had another personal tie to Annette because strangely, Jessie's mom Cynthia and her stepfather Lester had recently undergone a divorce because Lester was having many affairs, and one of them was with Annette. Her friend Kayla was the daughter of Jackie Hazen, who's Annette's sister-in-law, who happened to be the one who provided Annette's alibi, saying that they were together running errands on the morning of Corey's murder. When Jessie's mom, Cynthia, picked her up

from the sleepover the next morning back in 1992, Jessie immediately divulged what she had seen. But Cynthia was hesitant to report it to the authorities for multiple reasons. Annette Hazen was the niece of Sheriff Ron Hazen, who we mentioned earlier, who was investigating Corey's case at this time. So it's like...

Conflict of interest. Conflict of interest. So many weird connections here. And also with Jessie just being nine years old, her mom kind of questioned if what she heard was completely accurate. Fearful of the problems that this may cause, Cynthia told her daughter that it was just kind of better

to let law enforcement handle the case. Her mom Cynthia remembered, quote, "'I was scared. "'Ron Hazen was the sheriff at the time. And I mean, he's a relative. Who's going to believe a nine-year-old child? And who's going to listen to her? Plus, the fact that my ex-husband was still friends with the Hazens, this family,

and he threatened me on a separate occasion that, if I didn't keep my mouth shut, that he would kill me. So I was scared. I was a single mom with two small children, and I didn't know my mouth shut, that he would kill me, so I was scared. I was a single mom with two small children and I didn't know what to do. So, the family kept the experience to themselves and just kind of hoped that the investigation would work itself out. But Jessie thought about it frequently over the next 25 years of her life. In her early 20s, she tried reporting it to an officer, but they didn't take her story

seriously. Then, in 2017, the third time that she tried reporting it, the detective, Department of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Trent Valletta, listened to her and actually pursued her claim. Annette had been 29 at the time, remember, Cory was 22, and was the single mother of two children. According to multiple sources who knew both of them, Annette was far more serious about Cory than he was about her, obviously, because, you know, he had a fiance, and he wasn't

officially leaving her for anybody else. But she actually told multiple people in the community that she and Corey dreamed of leaving West Liberty behind and running away to Missouri with her children to start over. She said that they would open a bar, get married, and have kids of their own. So it's very clear that Annette has strong feelings for Corey, or you know, of course did at the time of his murder. She got upset whenever he gave attention to another woman. This is all very obvious. Yeah, and I mean, to even go so far as to say,

I'm going to jump out of your moving car if you don't take her home first and come to my place. I mean, it's very manipulative to begin with. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, all this information wasn't much, but luckily somebody is finally deciding to take Jessie seriously. And investigators felt like this gave them a person of interest for the first time in a decades old cold case. So they acted on the only information that they had.

As you'll remember, they of course questioned Annette back in the day, but because of her alibi from Jackie, and the fact that she passed a polygraph, you know, showing up at the police station herself to let them know that she was innocent, she was let go. I mean, I just think it's suspicious on its own that you show up to a police station to let them know that you're innocent, but also on top of that, it's like, how much did her uncle Ron Hazen, the sheriff at the time, know about the situation and was he ever suspicious of her?

Yeah, or is he the reason that they didn't pursue her further? That they just said, oh yeah, she's good, she's fine, I know her, I know her character, you know? Kind of what I'm thinking here. It's super disappointing So based on Jesse's tip Trent Valletta stopped by Annette's house to speak with her once again And this was happening in 2017 2018 At the time of the murder Annette had been known for her antics around town She she was a heavy drinker and like Cory was carrying on relationships with multiple people

But of course, this is natural heavy drinker and like Cory was carrying on relationships with multiple people. But of course, this is natural. She had just gotten out of a relationship with her children's father. So she's just trying to have fun and, and you know, uh, enjoy herself, go out, go out with different men, which is not a problem at all. But there is a problem with what the truth is here because Cory hadn't even graduated high school yet when Annette first set her sights on him,

because they had actually allegedly met at Winx when he was just 16 and she was 23. That's kind of some Predator type shit. Yeah, and they, I don't know when they exactly started their relationship. We just know that it lasted for three years. So did this happen before he turned 18? I'm not gonna say that that happened

because I don't know for sure. Obviously that is a crime on Annette's part, if that were true. But she always seemed to be more serious about Cory than he was about her. And that's when jealousy started to get the better of her. Now after Corey's murder, Annette eventually remarried and started going by the name Annette Cahill.

She also gave birth to another child, her third, and was a proud grandparent at the time of this second questioning in 2017 and 2018. And get this, she had even been working in law enforcement and was employed as an office assistant for the Police Law Institute in North Liberty, Iowa. But by all accounts, Annette had been living a normal, quiet life in the years since Corey's death. Detective Valletta remembered her being very emotional about the murder even so many years later and that she didn't seem to be surprised that he wanted to question her about the case. Detective Valetta asked if they could continue

their conversation at the police station and Annette agreed but told him that she only had an hour to spare. When he asked her about her relationship with Corey, she said that at one time, he was the love of her life, and added that she was still hoping for closure in the case of his murder. And Annette seemed to be honest with him about her relationship with Corey. She said that they would frequently meet to hook up,

and that these took place concurrently with his relationship with his fiance Jody. Annette alleged to have slept with Corey at her house, his house, Corey's car, the apartment above the bar, and even at the bar itself. She was also able to add some details to the story she gave investigators about the day that Corey was killed. On the morning of October 13th, 1992, Annette claimed that she went into work with Lester McGowan, who was Cynthia's ex-husband and Jessie's stepdad.

Lester was a contractor, and Annette accompanied him to a job site where they were removing a roof from a home. Lester introduced her to the crew, and about an later her sister-in-law Jackie pulled up in a red car saying that they should go run some errands and Annette left Lester and the construction site that day. Annette then added a detail which she had not originally shared which was that she and Jackie stopped by Corey's house the morning of the murder around 10 a.m. And let's remember that Jodie, his fiance, left around 8 15 to head to work. Annette claimed that she knocked on the door, but that he didn't answer, so she left a note on his

car. This was likely when John Schneider drove by and spotted two people in an extra car in front of Corey's residence. Now, in her initial interview, Annette also claimed that she called him from a payphone, just kinda hoping to wake him up, and that she planned to stop by again on their way back into town. She then claims that she and Jackie drove to Iowa City, which is about 30 minutes away, and ran errands. But the only receipt that could account for her whereabouts was a receipt from Best Buy

time stamped at 1.25pm, meaning that she would have plenty of time to commit the murder and then drive to Iowa City in time to make this purchase. When the hour was up, detectives asked to meet with her again, just hoping to glean more information about her movements and whereabouts in the days leading up to the crime. Well, Annette obliged and made an appointment to return the following day, which she later cancelled. And after this, she began dodging Trent Valletta's calls. Suspicious.

Absolutely. Well, the next time that Trent was able to speak with her, she was guarded and much less friendly. As soon as she caught on to what the probing questions were leading to, she grew furious, yelling at him, proclaiming her innocence and throwing him out of her house. But with Jesse's first-hand account and Cynthia's cooperation of her story, prosecutors felt that they had adequate material for an arrest.

So they returned to Annette's home with a warrant and finally, after months of probing and building a case against her, 55-year-old Annette was arrested on May 31, 2018. When Annette's children learned of the investigation into their mother's involvement, they were absolutely shocked. Initially, her daughter Leanne claimed that Annette was actually hoping for answers after the case had been cold for years on end. Regarding building a case on Jesse's eyewitness testimony from so long ago, Leanne said, quote, "...it would be normal to light a candle and cry over a friend that you had just lost.

It would be normal to say that I'm sorry you're gone, or I never meant to hurt you even would be normal to say. Because we always spend that time regretting things that we said to somebody after they're gone. Her son John was equally dumbfounded, calling his mom a sweetheart, and describing her as a gentle and doting parent who loved to cook, quilt, and do crossword puzzles. Of her arrest, John said quote, She's just overwhelmingly sad and upset and can't believe this has happened. As we know, the case against Annette was mainly built around Jesse's story. There was no forensic or DNA evidence tying Annette to the scene.

And Annette maintained that she had an alibi and that she spent all morning running errands with Jackie. But her timing could not be accounted for and she also couldn't explain why a passerby had spotted her in front of Corey's home and why she had changed her story about calling Corey and stopping by at his house. Annette blamed this on the passage of time and said that she had forgotten certain details in her early interviews and was now omitting details in her current interviews simply by accident. I do think though it would make more sense if she explained originally that

she had gone to Corey's house and then later forgot because yeah, two and a half decades passed absolutely. But why would you remember that two and a half decades later and not the next day? Yeah, it seems like it would be the opposite. And it's just very suspicious when you're leaving out details like this. Yeah because maybe she just left it out in the beginning because she didn't want them to say oh you were at his house you did this. Right. If she is claiming that she didn't but it just makes us question you know makes you look bad. So when the case went to trial in March of 2019, Annette maintained that she couldn't

remember what she said when she was initially questioned, so her account was flimsy now 27 years later. After two days of deliberation, her first trial ended in a hung jury on March 12, 2019, and was declared a mistrial, meaning prosecutors needed to build a stronger case against her. Now for this second try, prosecutors were able to source a second eyewitness account who said that he had seen Annette disposing of evidence in the days following Corey's murder. A guy named Scott Payne, who was a former friend of Annette's,

claimed that he saw her burning bloodstained clothes in the day or two following Corey's murder. He said that Jackie was there too, though she said that she does not remember this. I feel like that's not the good response. A better response would be this didn't happen. Now, I don't remember being around her burning bloodstained clothes. That's not coming to mind.

Yeah, I'm so curious. Was I there when she was burning these bloody clothes? I just can't remember. You can't remember, really. Weird. So, of course, with this new information, the defense tried to paint Scott as an unreliable witness, just based on the fact that the people he and Annette hung out with were heavy drinkers and they

used drugs. And Scott did admit that he smoked marijuana that night. And so that kind of complicated matters, but also on top of that, but mostly he did not mention this in his initial questioning in the earlier investigation. Which is also again like why didn't you do that? Now you're coming forward with this information that could help solve a murder and you could have done that 27 years ago? Yeah when it was fresh in your mind and you saw this happen maybe because they were friends he didn't want to out her and years later he's like I'm gonna do the right thing.

But yeah, it is definitely weird and it makes you question if he's telling the truth. But Scott maintained that he knew what he had seen and that the presence of blood was unmistakable. Jackie was also asked to testify and reiterated her account of the day that Corey was murdered, claiming that she and Annette had headed to Kmart and ate Long John Silver's for lunch. However, when asked if they had been together for the entirety of the day, she says that she couldn't remember again.

There's so much, like, misremembering going on here. Which, of course, makes sense because of the passage of time. I think it's more so, like, that was a very significant day. You would imagine that she would remember or at least more so about the bloody clothes. Now when questioned by the prosecution about whether or not Jackie lied to protect her sister-in-law, she said that she didn't recall that she had, but that she could not remember. Which is also such a general statement. I think a lot of people use this so that they're not technically lying under oath and saying, no, I didn't lie, I didn't do this.

Right. I just don't remember it. So then you can't really be at fault. Yeah, exactly. It's a way of not implicating yourself. Either way. Yeah, either way as a possible accessory or obstructing justice in some way, you know. Well, Cory's parents were hopeful that their son's case would finally see resolution, with his mom Susan saying that she and Cory's dad James have been permanently frozen in

1992, unable to move past the brutal final moments that their son faced, and that this has given them the closure that they needed to move forward. Susan said quote, "...we knew it was going to be hard, but I didn't think either of us realized quite how bad it was going to be to go through everything again. We just hate the thought of going through it again, but we're ready to go through it again.

And the town has just been 100% backing us. On September 19th, 2019, after multiple more days of jury deliberations, a guilty verdict was finally reached, and 56-year-old Annette Cahill was sentenced to 50 years in prison. She's currently being held at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville, Iowa, just five years into her sentencing when this episode is being recorded. She and her team have maintained her innocence and have pushed for retrials multiple times. However, on March 25th, 2022, an Iowa appellate court rejected her request for a new trial. Annette's team claimed that further DNA evidence testing was required for Annette to see a

fair trial, but the judge who handled her appeal claimed that her team had been free to pursue testing, and that her defense team should have done so with enough time prior to the trial. The court also concluded that there was quote, significant enough evidence to prove Annette's involvement in the crime and lead to a conviction, and maintained that the prosecution had attempted to test the human hair found on Corey's hand, but that it was not suitable for DNA analysis. It is really wild though that there wasn't more DNA evidence in this case, just that small hair on his hand that was not enough for DNA testing, and there's just nothing

else even though he was brutally beaten? Yeah, you would think that there would be some other source of DNA found around the house or anywhere else, potentially on the murder weapon, but there just wasn't I guess. But in December of 2023, her team did attempt to appeal her again, citing that evidence from the scene should be properly processed and tested. Like they're hoping that maybe there is evidence that was at the scene, that they just are kind of shoving to the side, and that they can test to help prove that she's innocent.

And now, 32 years later, testing on the bedding, the murder weapon, and a few hairs that were found at the scene will be much more comprehensive, and Annette is confident that the inclusion of forensic evidence will exonerate her. So we will keep you updated on what happens with that, or if Annette is just kind of grasping at straws for her release knowing that she is guilty. Meanwhile, Corey's family is satisfied with the outcome and thankful to see resolution in the case, however delayed it may have been. Corey's dad told Dateline, quote, I'm very, very sorry to her family.

They're very nice people. I want them to know that I'm not mad at any of them. And I feel very, very sorry that they had to go through this. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. We don't know when those items are going to be retested, but hopefully that will be soon and we can give you guys an update on what's going on with that.

It's always interesting to me when somebody who has been convicted of a crime is pushing for DNA testing to be done. Because you're like, if you know that you did it, why would you want it to be done? Because that's only going to cement you as the perpetrator even further. So I don't know. I guess we'll see. Yeah, I mean, maybe this is just her way, like you said, of, you know, kind of a last ditch effort to potentially try and get out of prison. But I don't know. I guess we'll see what they find. you said of, you know, kind of a last ditch effort to potentially try and get out of prison.

But I don't know, I guess we'll see what they find. But hopefully either way, Cory gets justice. Absolutely. So thank you guys so much for tuning into this one, and we will see you again next Tuesday. All right, guys. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thanks for watching!