Law&Crime Sidebar - Firefighter's Two Fiancées End Up Dead in Span of 4 Years, Families Demanding Justice

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

The families of two women who died in the homes they shared with Missouri fire captain Robert Daus are demanding answers. Grace Holland’s shooting death was ruled a suicide in 2020. Then in January 2024, Sarah Sweeney was found unresponsive. Family members of the victims say Daus had a history of abuse toward both women. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber analyzes the two investigations with former sheriff’s deputy Chad Ayers.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:If you’ve ever been injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: www.forthepeople.com/YouTubeTakeoverHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest 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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will 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. New questions surround a Missouri firefighter. First, his fiancé died in 2020 and then another fiancé died just now in January 2024. We're digging into the sad and mysterious cases of Dr. Sarah Sweeney and Grace Holland with former assistant SWAT team leader and founder of Proactive Response Group, Chad Ayers. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. A doctor's death in Missouri took a strange turn when investigators realized that her fiancé was previously engaged to another woman who also died while she was with him.

Yeah, let's break this down. So 39-year-old Dr. Sarah Sweeney, she was a podiatrist in the same Louis area. She had been living with her fiancé, 50-year-old Robert Douse, Jr., a fire captain. And her death has so far only been classified as sudden by the police. It's been reported that there were no obvious signs of trauma. Her mother had told Fox News that Dr. Sweeney had something called mast cell activation syndrome, and that can result in severe allergy attacks potentially cause fatal anaphylactic shock. But her mother said she always had preppy pen on her. So, you know, take that with a grain of salt. Think about that. for a second. But here's the thing. Law enforcement, they're currently waiting on the medical

examiner's full findings here. But the death of Dr. Sweeney has now brought new questions regarding the death of Douse's former fiancé Grace Holland. Why? Because back in 2020, Holland was found dead in the home that she shared with Douse and she was shot once in the head. Douse had called 911 to say that Holland had committed suicide in front of him. Time the medical examiner's office concluded that this was a suicide, but the local police department still has classified this death as a suspicious death. And now four years later, Douse is connected to this other death. I'll give you a little bit of backstory here.

So Dr. Sweeney, she had recently filed a claim against her former employer, Best Foot Forward. This is a podiatry clinic. And she accused the business and its owner of sexual harassment, gender and disability, discrimination, and retaliation. And in these court documents in this case, there were these communications between Dr. Sweeney and a friend. And this is a friend who had also worked at the clinic. And there was a lot that was revealed.

in these messages because Dr. Sweeney says that Douse was abusive and that he had been a suspect in his previous fiance's death. In one message, she writes, quote, but guess what, Danielle, I've been homeless. I have had to move in with my boyfriend the murderer, which has been scary at times. And in the middle of all this, Dr. Sweeney dies. So so far, let's be very clear here, Mr. Douse has not been arrested. He has not been charged in connection with either Dr. Sweeney or Holland's deaths. He has not been classified by law enforcement as a a suspect either want to make that very clear, but Holland's family does not believe that. They have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Dow saying they don't quite believe this

was a suicide. No, they say that she was right-handed, but she was shot in her left temple. They believe that he either killed her or that he compelled her or persuaded her to kill herself, highlighting this extremely volatile relationship between the two where he would allegedly verbally and physically abuse her. They even claimed that he had tried to pay her. to abort a baby and claim that on another occasion he told Holland that if she called 911, that, quote, his brothers in blue would not help her and that she's just the crazy girlfriend.

Holland's family also claims that her $20,000 engagement ring suddenly vanished. Sergeant Tracy Panis, the public information officer for the Prev Corps Police Department, says that the Holland case is still classified as a suspicious death and remains active. It will be incumbent upon the prosecutor's office to decide if any further action is required or if any criminal charges will be filed. Okay, let's talk about this. I am bringing back in one of my favorites, fan favorite, former assistant SWAT team leader and founder of proactive response group, Chad Ayers, who you can always count on wearing a terrific blazer that competes with mine here on sidebar. Chad, good to see you. Thanks so much for coming on. It's good to be back,

Jesse. I was good to join you and dive into these complex, mind-boggling news stories. you're telling me what do you make of this honestly it's like where do you start on this case you read one article on face the Sweeney case obviously we we need to wait a little bit longer for the medical examiners report to come back to kind of see what those toxicology reports show and then lo and behold they throw this another article out another fiancee that committed suicide in the residence but you laid out so many things that as I'm reading the story and I'm watching some some videos on this story that just blew my mind. First and foremost, she's right-handed, right? And the gunshot wound was to the left part of the head, extremely suspicious. The engagement ring. But more than that, all these text messages are extremely damning to Robert. Again, he's not been named as a suspect or a person of interest, but it gives law enforcement a lot to start diving into and looking at. Can we just talk about what it means that Dr. Sweeney's death is sudden and they're looking into it? What is that? Have you ever heard that classify? What does that mean sudden?

Just unexpected. So that in and of itself does not, I would not say that in and of itself is, you know, coming from a law enforcement background. It's not concerning to me. It's looking at everything else in the past. These text messages where where she says, you know, I'm homeless. I'm having to move back in with the murderer. Now, is that something that Robert had maybe confided in her about? And did she know too much? That's a theory. Does she? just suspect it because of his actions. Obviously, Sir Douse has a pattern of being verbally abusive. I mean, the text, I can at least attest to that. The text message is just show that. You know, here he is telling Sweeney to or Holland to kill herself. But again, the phone call where he, you know, on the original case where he's so calm and says, my wife just shot herself, there's no emotions whatsoever. You know, now we've talked about this a lot. Everyone handles stress differently. I get that. But if someone just witnessed their fiance, commit suicide right in front of them, there's going to be some type of emotion.

This was just a blank, you know, monotone voice of my wife just or my fiance just killed herself. Before we get back into the Holland death, though, just focusing on these reports, like the medical examiner's findings, toxicology reports. You know, I mentioned that Dr. Sweeney has this kind of allergic condition that can result in a severe allergic reaction, which I think is a bit concerning. What can we expect from the reports? What do you think is happening right now? How long does it take to get those reports back? Sometimes certain reports can be expedited, but you're looking at probably eight to 12 weeks for full toxicology reports to come back. Obviously, we've seen in some high profile cases where they can expedite those, kind of push those ahead a little bit.

But we're going to be looking for, you know, the chemists are going to be looking for any type of abnormalities, looking at, you know, blood, saliva, urine, anything that's still inside of her to see. Was there any barbiturates? was there any type of opioid use, was there any type of medication, alcohol? Once we kind of rule that out, then the medical, that report's also going to be able to show what did she, you know, die from. Was it to some type of allergic reaction? But again, this takes time and I get it. Families want answers, you know, immediately, but we've got to trust that process. Sure, sure. I understand that. And I just, there's so many unusual circumstances in this. I mean, you have a guy now who is surrounded by death. And obviously, people have questions.

Going back to Holland's death, though, was there anything other than the phone call? If the circumstances, I mentioned that the family has filed a lawsuit, they say she's right-handed. How could she have shot herself through the left temple? And, you know, they're obviously saying they think, and the way they're saying is either he killed her or that he compelled her to kill herself, which is so interesting. I think it could really be either one. Obviously, we have a documented text messages of him telling her to kill herself. What kind of sick narcissist says that kind of stuff to your fiancee anyway? The gun, the left hand, I'll be honest.

I just don't see someone that's right-handed transferring because even when you shoot, you throw, you right, everything is done with that dominant hand. So it would make more likely not to be gruesome, but that you just raise the gun, you know, to your natural side, your dominant side. Transferring it there, that's an odd angle. Even for someone like myself who shoots firearms and even shoots weak-handed, that's an odd motion for me. Could it have happened 100% in a stressful type of situation? it wouldn't surprise me if down the road we do determine, or maybe we don't ever find out,

I think it's more of a likelihood that he convinced her to kill herself, as I'm reading that more than- How do you can you even prove that? I mean, if I'm thinking about how do you stage a suicide or how do you prove that he would have convinced her to do that, the first thing that comes to my mind is there was that case of the Michelle Carter case where she pressured her boyfriend to kill himself over text messages and phone calls, if there's not that there, if he's in the room, how on earth could you be able to prove that? Again, I don't know if you actually can. I mean, we do have text messages where he's saying kill yourself. If we start to look at some of the evidence or some of these text messages where he

says, you know, get out of here, you know, abort the baby, kill yourself. All right, maybe you send that to your DA's office and have them look at. I don't know if, you know, if that's actually enough. Unfortunately, this may be one of those cases, Jesse, where we don't truly ever. forget the true answers unless we're somehow able to find some DNA if they dive into this a little bit further and they determine that he did killer. How difficult is it to stage a scene? So if he said this was a suicide, and again, I want to be very clear. We're speculating. We're speculating because we now have this new death and we're trying to understand. The family has already made an accusation, but I just want to

clear it up. How difficult would it be to stage a scene like that? Very. And for the normal person. The problem is we're actually not dealing with technically a normal person. This, you know, Mr. Douse has been around crime scenes the majority of his career or some type of, you know, being a firefighter, he's seen things. Is it possible? Yeah, but what I find is people under stress and that are doing stuff will make mistakes. They'll leave some type of evidence. They'll do something. I'm sure the family, friends and families are looking, you know, are going to have access to look at some of these photos at some point and may be able to pinpoint some things that are concerning to them. But again, keep in mind, this is his house. So staging things around the

house, you know, if it's just him and her that's been living in there, keep in mind she's been distant from her family for several years. Or I'm sorry, you know, Sweeney was. He's done a good job alienating himself, you know, from people, close friends and family members. Staging a crime scenes very difficult. You're going to screw up somewhere. It was interesting that you mentioned. I was going to ask you his background as a is a firefighter as a fire captain how would that play into it you you basically said that he's been around really tough scenes before yeah now do i believe that you know the good old boy system that covering up for a fireman uh in a murder or law enforcement officer anybody absolutely not oh you're talking about that phone you're talking about where he

allegedly said you know yeah call 911 my brothers and blue are going to basically protect correct not going to happen sure we've said it throughout this you know know several years now unfortunately there's a bat you know there are bad apples in every profession but the idea that you've you've roped in an entire homicide unit to be on your side and to cover up for for a homicide of your fiancee not gonna happen now it is interesting this $20,000 and I know we're kind of going back and forth between cases here but this $20,000 engagement ring that's missing I want to dive in I'm diving into this you

know where's where's her engagement ring you know she start looking at social media, start looking at photos. She always had it on. Suddenly, you know, she, she dies. She's deceased and the engagement rings gone. There's so much more, you know, I see the Creve Corps Police Department, and if it was me, if I wanted, you know, to do this the right way, I'm going to reach out to a third party law enforcement agency to investigate this, honestly, with it, with already some of the allegations he's made, I think it shows transparency. Reach out to the state police or a neighboring agency to take on this case, you know, and to look at this a little bit deeper.

Hey everybody. I want to take a second to thank Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring today's Law and Crime YouTube Takeover. Now, if you've seen our videos, you know that Morgan and Morgan is a very proud sponsor of ours here on Sidebar. I always talk about how one of the scariest things in life is if you get injured, if you get hurt. That can be such a difficult time. You may not know where to turn. You may not know how to protect your rights. Well, Morgan and Morgan, America's largest personal injury law firm can help. What they do really well is they make the process super easy for their clients because it can all be done on your smartphone from submitting the claim to talk to your whole legal team. It only takes a few minutes to see if you have a case

and your injury could be worth millions of dollars. You see, Morgan and Morgan, they don't settle for low ball offers. In the past couple of months, they've gotten verdicts of $12 million in Florida, $26 million in Philadelphia, and $6.8 million in New York. All of these, by the way, were significantly higher than the highest insurance offer. So if you're injured, you can start by easily submitting a claim at for the people.com slash YouTube takeover or by dialing pound law. That's pound 529 on your phone. So just to give everybody a little bit more context, apparently Douse was interviewed by police about the missing ring. And at first he claimed that he had given the ring, that Holland had given the ring back to him.

But then through text messages, it showed that he returned it to her. And then he claimed that the ring was lost, but then police see in the crime scene photos what appears to be the ring, he claims it was a fake one and that the, you know, it's still missing. That's my best understanding as to what happened with the ring. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, you don't have to be an investigator here to start at least picking up on some discrepancies and some concern, right? There's people who who lie to law enforcement, you know, I've always said it's so much easier to tell the truth because when you're lying in interviews to law enforcement or to anyone, You're having to remember the previous story and the previous lie that you told.

And that's where people screw up. That's where they forget. They said certain details. Your messages between friends, obviously, she's sharing information. She's scared of this guy. He's already showed the propensity for violence in the past. So it's just one of those interesting things. They're going to dive deeper into these text messages.

I got to ask you about this. I mentioned it before that you have this public information officer from the Kreb Corps Police Department saying that the Holland case, it's still classified as a suspicious death. It remains active even though the medical examiner determined it was a suicide and then saying it's up to the prosecutor's office to decide if any charges will be filed. Have you ever seen that before? What does that mean? No, actually, I have never seen that before.

And as soon as I see it, it makes me wonder, is this a little bit of C-YA in a situation like this? It took me a second. I was like, okay, now I know what that means. Yeah, I got it. But it basically, obviously, in any type of criminal case, you know, it either goes to the grand jury or the DA's office determines if they're going to move forward with charges. You know, that's in their hands. But why are we, is it left open because they are still actively investigating it? It doesn't seem like they're actively investigating it, that they're just waiting on, you know, maybe some more information to come out.

But I go back, Jesse, I think it's important right now that the state police or the Bureau takes on this. case and starts to dive in. They've got a lot more resources than that agency. I think it would show transparency, and we might dive a little bit deeper, you know, into the mind of this gentleman and what actually took place. Obviously, I don't know. There's not enough to tell me what, you know, have they seized his laptop? Has any search warrant's been executed on his residence, on his place of employment? Those kind of questions I have. I want to know what they currently have, evidence-wise, or what they took as part of a search warrant to, you know, eliminate him as a suspect at this time.

And remember, let's be clear. I'm going to end this conversation for this. He's never been formally identified as a suspect. He has never been arrested. He has never been criminally charged. We were just looking at some of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of both of these women that are surrounding Robert Douse, Jr.

All right, so Chad Ayers, thank you so much for coming on. Trying to make sense of this with me. Appreciate it. Love having you on, Chad. Thanks for having you, see you soon. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.