Law&Crime Sidebar - Chilling ‘Pedo’ Note Left on Brutalized Victim

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Police in Jacksonville, Florida arrested Journee McGrew, 21, after they found a 41-year-old Waduta Woodley bludgeoned to death. But a sinister message left on the body brought up disturbing questions. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber analyzes every angle with criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor Kathleen Bogenschutz.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Check out americanfinancing.net/onthecase or call 866-891-3262 to learn how homeowners are saving $800 a month on average. NMLS 182334, www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. A 21-year-old woman is accused of brutally killing a 41-year-old man, possibly with a metal hammer. But police say they found a chilling note on his chest. Petto touches children. Was this a cold-blooded murder or something much more complicated? Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

21-year-old Journey McGrew is accused of murdering 41-year-old Waddued Woodley, that she allegedly bludgeoned him to death. In fact, with an autopsy, reportedly concluding there were several chop injuries. News 4 Jax reporting blunt force trauma injuries to the head and face. But here's the thing. Apparently, authorities found a note on Woodley's chest that said, Petto touches children, and that it was written in a green highlighter, which is important we'll talk about in a minute.

But you see, according to true crime news, McGrew had accused Woodley of grooming her since she was a minor, which, by the way, raises a lot of interesting legal questions and potentially a legal defense. So according to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office quoted around 3.30 a.m., Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office patrol officers responded to a dispute on Manotech Avenue on the west side. When officers arrived, they found an adult male suffering from multiple blunt force injuries.

Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department personnel arrived, but the victim passed away. Then it goes on to say how JSO homicide and crime scene unit detectives, along with the state attorney's office began investigating immediately. After reviewing evidence and interviewing witnesses, detectives identified. And then they say McGrew as the suspect. and officers arrested McGrew later that day, booked her into the Johnny Good pretrial detention facility for second-degree murder and tampering with evidence. We're going to break down the case.

We're going to break down the investigation. Let me bring in right now, Florida criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, Kathleen Bogan-shoots. Kathleen, thank you so much for taking the time. It's good to see you. Good to see you, too. I want to first start with the attack and the crime scene. Okay, you're talking multiple injuries.

Woodley found dead reportedly in the breezeway of McGrew's apartment complex. so apparently behind a stairwell, a lot of blood under his body, also blood on the walls and ground outside of the residence. True crime news reporting that the sheriff's office indicated there were blood-soaked footprints from the doorway to the bathroom of the home, and then they find this bloody metal hammer in the bathroom sink, more specifically, blood on the handle. Okay, from all of that alone, before we go any further, what do you take away from a prosecutorial point of view? or maybe from a defense point of view? Prosecutorial point of view, sounds like this was a sustained beating.

Sounds like this was something done in anger. And, you know, you can hear that on a TV show, but if you really put yourself in the position of the assailant continuing to hit somebody with a hammer who's fighting back, it really does take quite a bit out of you. And I guess the medical examiner will be able to tell us how many times he was actually struck, or at least give us a range of the number of times he was actually struck.

That being said, we also have the blood evidence. It's sort of covered in blood. I get the feeling we probably have some spatter and some cast off evidence. So once the first blow is landed and the person is bleeding, as the assailant brings the weapon back, it has blood on it. So it will cast off some spray onto the walls. And you're able to, as a forensic examiner, as a crime scene person, measure that. and try to figure out how many times somebody was struck, what was the speed of the instrument,

and what that instrument might be. Now, we found the hammer, so that's not really an issue in this case. And from a defense point of view, I wonder do they say, well, I guess maybe, I wonder if it goes into testing. I wonder if it goes into testing. How do they test for,

what is the testing done for this biological fluid for this, the blood, what is the testing that's done for this crime scene? And is that something in the defense, can use to their advantage in some sort of way? Sure. So in order, there is a liquid called luminal that is used in crime scenes. Usually it's sprayed on things to try to figure out if blood used to be on the surface or if very minute particles of blood, like little pinpricks of cast off, maybe from

something like this or from the top of the weapon, landed somewhere. And if it lands on a dark surface, sometimes it's very difficult to see. And Luminal, you know, the name kind of gives you a hint, but it glows in the dark. So that's something that they will do sometimes to try to determine whether somebody is cleaned up the scene and to try to see if there's maybe some other blood matter that's microscopic that they can test. So a lot of times the assailant will, I mean, it's difficult to kill another human being with blunt force trauma. I'm not suggesting anybody give it a shot, but the fact is that it's highly usual for somebody in a stabbing or in one of these blunt force cases to maybe injure themselves in the process. And there may be some blood or some other tissue from the assailant that's mixed in there, too, that you could do DNA testing on.

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They're ready to help. Take back your peace of mind with American financing. Call American financing today at 866891-2821. That's 866-891-2821. We're going to Americanfinancing.net slash sidebar. And going back to the defense here, I think it's impossible that seems from my point of view, before we even get into what she allegedly said to police, it seems impossible she's going to deny saying someone else did this.

I mean, you have all the evidence leading back to her, the physical evidence. It does become a question about what that evidence says about the attack. And I wonder from a defense point of view, again, we'll get into what a potential defense could be, if these allegations can be proven that she was somehow abused, put that to the side. Do they try to say it's not like something you said, hit me? that it's it's not as bloody as it's made to seem that this was more deliberate strokes meant to defend oneself that it wasn't just a brutal macabre scene where blood everywhere and it was a savage attack do they try to limit how much blood was actually found am i stretching here um well i mean i

think one of the things that that they could go for is uh to try to examine the footprints to try to figure out what the exact series of events were. So we've got allegedly a female assailant here and a male victim in this homicide. Generally speaking, women have smaller feet, smaller shoes, if she was wearing shoes, and there should be some ability to try to determine whose footprints were whose.

It's also possible that the victim was stumbling around quite a bit. The other thing that we can look at is, I mean, like I said, you know, this is a kind of a heat of passion kind of crime that you have to really get yourself fairly worked up to beat somebody like with a hammer to death. And so while the prosecution can say, you know, this indicates like a real serious anger, a real serious intent to kill, when you realize the note that was found on the body, I'm not saying that it's true, but you can connect that to the amount of anger that you can see in the effect. There's there's plenty of people who think that pedophilia or preying upon children is worse than a murder.

By the way, news for Jacks reported that the drain plug for the sink and the bathroom was actually found in McGrew's bedroom and there was blood on it. Is that important for the tampering with evidence charge? I mean, what do you take away from that? Well, I mean, it's potentially cleaning up the scene afterward. you'll oftentimes see crime scene units taking apart like the undercarriages of sinks, you know, the tubing underneath there to get to the point where there's the kink in the sink where you would find like you dropped your ring down the sink, where you might be able to undo the sink and remove that heavier item. So a lot of times there's information in there that can be found.

I mean, the cleanup, if she's leaving a note like that on the body, the cleanup is potentially very interesting to me because what is she trying to hide if she's admitting to doing this and putting a note on the body? So like I said, we don't have any proof that, and I don't want to claim that we know that there's some truth to the note here. Back when I was a prosecutor, we used to say, you know, I don't care what he did, you know, essentially what your mom used to tell you when you were a kid. Two wrongs don't make a right. We don't sentence people to death on the spot for doing this. It's a little bit different

now because I don't know how young she would claim to be when victimized, but in the state of Florida, we brought back the death penalty for capital sexual battery, which is sex bad on a child under the age of 12. Hasn't been tested at the appellate court yet. It was held unconstitutional about, I don't know, 20 or so years ago with the US Supreme Court case. But you really don't have that argument anymore in the state of Florida that like, well, you don't get the death sentence for potentially having these predilections.

And the answer is, yeah, in theory, Florida could sentence you to death, but not without due process of law, not without discovery, not without a defense attorney, and not without multiple rounds of appeal. By the way, real quick, as we're talking about this, are domestic violence attacks usually particularly heinous? Is there a reason for that? Do you see, did you see that in your profession?

Yes, a lot of times, so there's two things. Number one, there's usually a lot of anger, it's something pent up. It's probably something this person's been thinking about for a while, especially if they live together and there's that resentment brewing. But there's also the fact that a lot of times it's really not planned and it's somebody who just snaps.

So you're dealing with whatever, I have paid to put it this way, but whatever instruments you have on hand, and a lot of times those are knives or hammers or scissors or something like that in order to attack somebody, something that you can grab quickly. And, you know, I'm not saying that everybody keeps their guns locked up the way that they should, but the thing that you can get your hands on the quickest is probably like a knife block in the kitchen if you think about it. Well, that's a good point. News for Jacks also reported, there were other pieces of evidence that were collected by police so you have a pair of crocs that were apparently covered in blood a tank top pants also covered in blood and they also apparently found a notebook a notebook with loose paper and you guessed it a green highlighter so kathleen as we were talking about the evidence is going to establish it is very difficult for her to say someone else did this and this just adds to that right i mean yeah um i'm correct um and This is, again, and I harp on this all the time now that I do criminal defense,

a lot of criminal defense is sitting down with your client and having really serious discussions about what the evidence is, what it shows, and what arguments we can make with a straight face about the evidence, that we don't want to lose credibility here. So in this situation, I mean, I don't have all the discovery, but I would imagine that you would be looking at some kind of a diminished capacity defense. I will note she's charged with murder too. I don't- Yeah, I was going to ask you that. What is that?

What is second-degree murder under Florida law? It's basically a heat of passion thing. So you meant to kill the person, but there really wasn't time for reflection. And the classic example that we give to law students and to lay people is you come home, you find your wife in bed with another man, and you just act without thinking about it. And one or both ends up dead. So it's like a real sudden heat of passion type thing. In this scenario, I don't know if, I don't know if the facts will bear that out, but I will note that in Florida, the only way you can get to a first degree murder is by indictment by grand jury.

So most of the time, when you see a homicide case, you will see somebody who's going to be charged with murder one or we think they're going to be charged with murder one, be arrested on murder two. held without bond. And then once the state kind of gets their, I mean, I don't want to say get their act together, but they've got to get their witnesses together. They got to get EMTs and cops and civilian witnesses and everybody comes into the grand jury. They take testimony and they get an indictment. So it's not unusual to see murder two. My question here is whether that stays put or if we upgrade it to a murder one. To see if they can prove premeditation, which is interesting. Right, right. That would be the essential. They think they can prove premeditation anyway.

Which I want to get into in a second, but assuming for a moment that they stick with second degree murder and they don't go, murder one, either they don't get a grand jury to move forward with murder one or they just decide not to present evidence of murder one to a grand jury. A, if they stick with second degree murder, that tells you something about their views on the case. And two, what's the potential punishment for second degree murder? So second degree murder with a weapon. which obviously we have here, is up to a life sentence. Florida has a 1020 life law that you'll often hear there's minimum mandatories in Florida, but that's only if a gun is used. So if in this

scenario, you wouldn't be looking at a minimum mandatory, you'd be looking at a score sheet, and then you'd be looking at the weapon enhancement. So the possibility is for life no matter what. And in Florida, as I often repeat myself, life is life. You come out in a box, we did away with parole, excuse me, back in the late 90s. So if you hear of somebody getting paroled in Florida, it's a very, very old offense. So it's either, so how would it work? There's a possibility she could get, I don't know, 15 years, 20 years. There is a range here about what she could get and she would have to serve that full time. Right. And potentially, depending on what the state of the law is. Now, there was just a law passed in Florida, reducing the amount of time

you would have to serve on a sentence. So July 1st on certain enumerated offenses. So it's, you know, not sex crimes. We've never done gain time and good time for those. But that it dropped your average or the time that you would do from 85% to 72%. And that's actually a fairly significant reduction for most people that are in custody. But that's of July 1st, 2025. So, and for non-sex offenses, I can tell you that off the bat. But the other thing is that there may be quite a bit of discretion that the prosecutor could have. I remember a case that we had in Fort Lauderdale. Thankfully, it wasn't mine. But it was, there was a gentleman who had caught, somebody molesting his son and basically the whole homicide unit said not it, you know,

where there was there was evidence and the child would testify and I think the guy may have already been a convicted sex offender, but I mean, it was a real, it was a real like, you know, we have to hold this guy responsible for what he did, but does anybody really want to get involved in this? So it ended up that that that brings us to this. That is the central question this case because I want to get into what the defendant apparently said. So now we've established the evidence is probably pretty strong. She did it. What's the defense? So apparently this is what she said. News Ford Jack's reporting that officers, when they responded, they told her to come out. She did. And then she asked if Woodley was still alive. Okay. She then apparently

decided to provide statements to police. And she reportedly accused Woodley of sexually grooming her since she was eight years old and proceeded to sexually assault her. Now, to be clear, at the time of this recording, there has been no independent verification of these allegations. We simply don't know if any of this is true. However, she apparently claims that on July 1st, she texted Woodley that she was fantasizing about him. Now, and apologize for treating him badly and invited him over. However, she claims that by 1 a.m., Woodley was pressuring her into having sex. And this is apparently after the both of them had been drinking.

She says she refused, asked him to leave her place, but as they were leaving, she allegedly picks up that metal hammer and hides it behind her back. Remember where he was found, right? Not necessarily in the apartment, but outside. And she claims they get to the front door. He grabs her. However, reportedly, she acknowledges that he didn't really use a lot of force when he grabbed her or allegedly grabbed her. And that is when she used the hammer to strike him.

Now, this is interesting. Police asked her if her plan was to invite him over with the intent to kill, right? we're talking potentially first-degree murder and apparently her response was redacted let's start there Kathleen is her statement redacted because it was an alleged confession yeah so there's 119 is our public records laws in florida and any information about a confession would be redacted there's there's other subsections there that would also make sense you know redact the the name of the victim of a sex crime and you also maybe don't release the photos of a dead body at a homicide scene. But that, yes, confessions is one of the things

that that would be redacted just to not poison the public for purposes of a jury trial. I think we can all agree why these statements would be helpful to the prosecution. But let's talk about the defense here. A, is there any way they can keep these statements out from a trial? And B, if they can't, does this help in any sort of legal defense? If this is, and I guess the follow-up question is she'd have to prove that she was abused, right? Yes, she would. But we've seen in the past, well, I'm dating myself now. So I would say the past 20 to 25 years, there's a, we've all heard of the battered spouse defense where a spouse who's been horribly abused over the years suddenly kills their abuser after a period of time.

Um, there's also been something called the battered child syndrome, which is, which is similar, but it is, um, and it's not necessarily your child, but a child in the, in the household who reacts. She is not under, she's not a juvenile, but I could see the defense trying to go toward, um, kind of a battered child syndrome, um, response that there was this abuse over the years, assuming they can prove it. Um, and I would assume she's going to have to testify. to what kind of abuse she suffered over the years if they want to use this kind of a defense because somebody's gonna need to give them a good faith basis to be able to go forward on this. But over the years, all this levels of sexual abuse, it could form the basis for a significantly diminished jury finding or even a jury nullification or what we might know

is a jury pardon in this case. Also note that if there was this one child, one child that he started on when, when she was eight, the likelihood is there may be other victims out there. And I'm curious to see if anything else kind of, anyone else kind of pops up and self-identifies too. I'll ask you in a second about what, whether or not the judge will allow this to be researched and investigated, put that to the side. If this is allowed, you're saying these defenses, could she be found not guilty or would her punishment be reduced or the charge reduced. A jury could find that she was justified or that she did not have the mens rea or she

was acting at such a diminished capacity based on her past abuse that in theory they could find her not guilty. I don't know if that's going to happen. Most juries are, you know, most juries will will split the baby in these kinds of cases unless there's really strong evidence that goes one way or the other. But the fact she left a note at the crime scene, I mean, that kind of started the wheels in motion for a defense. And I will note that the flip side of this is we don't know if any of this is true. And, you know, if you're the prosecutor on this case, like, you know, you're potentially looking at it

and saying, well, wasn't it enough to kill him? And then you had to, you know, destroy his reputation posthumously as well. So I don't know if that's the tack they're going to take. I think it'll depend on if other evidence comes out. And look, it doesn't help her case necessarily that it looks like, I mean, she allegedly invited him over and then this happened. I will say news for Jacks reported they did a criminal background check on Woodley. there was no reported criminal charges regarding sexual abuse or assault of minors.

However, you and I both know that doesn't mean that the claims are false. Doesn't mean that the claims are false. It could have happened. He just was never charged. You think a judge is going to allow the defense to explore this and investigate this. And like you said, maybe see if there were other people who were allegedly victimized by this man. I mean, because at this point, these allegations, there's no way to verify them. Oh, that hasn't been verified, I should say.

Yeah, there's no way to verify them that we're aware of at this point. I'm assuming that we're going to download everybody's phones, everybody's computers. And once that starts happening, there might be some more information that's out there about, you know, past victims or were the lack thereof victims of this kind of offense. And I'm certain that, for example, I've had an iPhone since 2008. So in theory, you could go back into my ICloud account and get my messages from 2008. And she's only 21. So I wonder what kind of messages were passing between them over the years and, you know, at least since the advent of text messaging, which I think was around 2005, 2006. So that's fairly, I mean, you may have a fairly decent digital trail from which he could say, yes, this is consistent with some kind of sexual abuse or no, I don't even see any evidence of that. which is, you know, at least it's something that we have now that we used to not have back in the day.

So this all comes down. I think you're right to potentially her testifying. I think that's going to be a big part of it. I will tell you, by the way, the news and observer has reported that an arrest report reveals McGrew allegedly reached out to her father's wife at 2 a.m. on July 2nd, and the father starts driving to McGrew's place. And as he's driving there, he speaks to her on the phone. Basically, she recounts what. we described before with her even allegedly saying i think he's dead daddy and he apparently told her to call the police and he ended up calling 911 uh Kathleen that's an interesting factor to consider in this case yeah it is um and uh you know for somebody's first thought to be to call the police uh versus uh versus to go over their child's house when somebody's uh their child is telling them that somebody is deceased.

I'm questioning whether there's maybe family members that could corroborate that there was some kind of sexual abuse or even friends that could say that, no, she didn't just come up with this story that he was sexually abusing her after she beat him to death with the hammer, that she told me about this when we were 15, she told me about this when we were 16, she told me about this when we were 20, and how long it was going on, things like that may be a friend or a counselor or something like that right now miss mcgrew is behind bars no bond her next court date is set for july 24th and we'll keep a careful eye on this one really sad case kathleen bogan shoots thank you so much for taking the time appreciate it thanks for having me

and that's all we have for you right now here on sidebar everybody thank you so much for joining us and as always please subscribe on youtube apple podcast Spotify wherever you should get your podcasts i'm jesse weber i'll speak to you next time You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.