Law&Crime Sidebar - Smiling Killer in Undies Gunned Down Two Men in Two Days

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

A heavily tattooed fugitive, arrested in his underwear with a smile on his face, has admitted to killing two men in Mississippi. This Sidebar episode dives into the shocking details of Matthew Kidd's case, from a seemingly minor dispute over a truck to a double homicide and a swift court resolution. Criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor Michael Brown joins Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber to break down the investigation, the evidence, and the unusual speed of justice.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Get 24/7 Protection with Medical Guardian Today — 75% Off the MGMini With Code Sidebar75 https://medicalguardian.com/sidebar75HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, Alex Ciccarone, & 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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. It is one of the strangest arrests photos we have ever seen. A heavily tattooed man in his underwear with a huge grin on his face, flanked by two law enforcement officers, almost like he's posing for a Christmas card. But the reason that man is in custody is deadly serious. And just days after this photo was taken,

This case against him was fast-tracked. We are going to be speaking with a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor about a very quick court case. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. All right, we have this court case out in Mississippi that just wrapped up like days after it started. Yeah, the suspect in this case committed the murders, was arrested, indicted, convicted, and sentenced in like two weeks. And I will tell you, this is a brutal. case that we are talking about here the details revealed in court they lay out just the callousness

of the killer 35 year old matthew kid he entered a guilty plea admitting that he murdered two men in rankin county mississippi at the end of august 36 year old william billy morris and 33 year old christian story and help me break down each step of this case i want to welcome criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor michael brown michael thank you so much for taking the time to come here on sidebar. Thanks for having me, Jesse. Pleasure. So this case has rocked this community. You have two fathers of young children who were gunned down in cold blood. And before we even take a deep dive into what happened here, just talk to me about how you would approach this case, A, as a prosecutor, and how would you approach it as a defense attorney? Well, I think as a prosecutor,

what they did was they linked the two crimes together, which I think was important, because you can now use one crime to bolster the other crime and vice versa. So you have a common planner scheme and they have a lot of similarities and then they focused on an individual. And then what they obviously did was now try to establish proof for that individual on each of the two separate crimes. I don't know the particulars, but I would think that they would have gathered DNA. They would have went to his phone records. They probably would have pulled pole cameras. They would have looked that maybe possibly credit card receipts, things of that nature, so that they can piece together where he was at any given time.

And again, one case helps the other. So from the defense standpoint, I'd never like to second guess attorneys, Jess, who were on a case, but I would do my due diligence. I would like to examine all the evidence. I'd like to see what they have, potentially send my own evidence to my own lab, and have my own experts look at phone records, for instance, and look at the GPS records. And one of the troubling things and that you hit the, you hit it on the head is you went from arrest to conviction to sentence in a matter of 20, 30 days.

That's somewhat troubling from our standpoint. Let's get into this a little bit. So according to Rankin County investigators in early August, Kid's truck broke down along Highway 80, which is outside Jackson, Mississippi, on some property that belonged to Billy Morris. Now, Kid had left the truck there, and when he came back to get it days later, he claimed that there were items missing from. the truck. So he and Morris apparently get into this heated argument. Now, Morris allegedly told Kid that he wouldn't physically fight him, gave him 24 hours to get the truck off his property, or he would have a towed. Witnesses reportedly told deputies that Kid had made threats against Morris. Kid's ex-girlfriend showed deputies text messages where kids said he was, quote, trying to stir

the pot because Morris made him angry. You go to August 26. Deputies got reports that neighbors had heard eight gunshots coming from Morris's property. Now it's unclear if deputies responded at that time because Morris's body wasn't found until the following day, August 27th, when two friends who were worried about him managed to get in through a side window. Morris had been shot several times and died inside of that home. It is a horrific thing to find. So Michael, talk to me about this. How often do you see a criminal case stemming from, I don't, do we call it Rhodes? rage, a squabble over a truck? It's so senseless. Yeah, it is. And, you know, oftentimes in the murders that I've handled, Jess, you have maybe a relationship that went sour and you have a robbery

where it's over money. You may have a business relationship that went south. But rarely do you have such a crime, which is, as you put it, senseless. There's no reason for what happened. But it does happen. But I think it's the exception to the rule. Here's the problem. Here's what happens. So, wasn't like arrested immediately. No, he was brought in for questioning, but Rankin County Sheriff Brian Bailey told local news outlet WAPT, investigators didn't have enough to hold them on. They had to let him go. And local reporting suggests that deputies were looking into several possible suspects. But that's when the evidence against kids started to come in. Now, here on sidebar, we talk a lot about emergencies, but you know what we don't talk about enough is how to prepare so you can

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he owned a 9mm pistol. You know what's interesting about that? Nine millimeter shell casings were found at the scene. The Rankin County Sheriff said that Kid is a convicted felon out in Alabama, which means he wasn't allowed to have a gun in the first place. The very next day, August 28th, that is when kid shot and killed a second man, Christian story, and then stole property from his home. According to the district attorney John K. Bramlett, in both cases, Kid kicked in the front door of both men's home before gunning them down. WAPT reports that doorbell camera footage showed Kid walking near the home around the time of the shooting. And witnesses also later picked him out of a photo lineup. Michael, you talked about that connectivity, right? You talked about connecting

these cases, MOs, your similar pattern. But that's just one part of just a lot of evidence that was piling up here. Yeah, it seems like there was. And what I have heard is, again, the murder weapon matches the weapon that was found on the defendant. There was evidence and eyewitnesses to the initial swabble and in the initial encounter. And then there was this threat that was made. And I think all of these things, although there's always an innocent explanation for any one piece, what I would expect the authorities to have done is accumulate evidence, DNA potentially at the entranceway or within the houses, DNA at the murder scene. Of course, as we talked about maybe tracking the defendant and where he was at any given time, and then pulling various

cameras. Everybody has ring cameras. There's cameras at every gas station, every 7-Eleven or convenience store, and you put it together piece by piece. to build your case. Now, a lot of people are listening to this and saying, wait a second, if he wasn't released, he wouldn't have been able to commit this second crime. And that's the point, right? The sheriff pointed out to a WAPT reporter that they were required by law to release kid if they didn't have a solid reason to hold him. And I'm sure that is a decision that is going to haunt the sheriff, the deputies, that department. Michael, is there any way the department could be held liable for letting a murderer go free to kill again? Hindsight's 2020. But

But, you know, obviously they're facing questions here. Yeah, I understand. But at the end of the day, you know, we have a Constitution. And they have to follow the law and they have to follow the Constitution. Again, we're looking back and it's 2020 hindsight, as you say, we're Monday morning quarterbacking. But at that moment in time, if they did not have what they call probable cause to arrest him, they don't have anything. But the only option is to release him at that point. And clearly, if they had probable cause, they would have held him.

Now, how did they capture him? Let's get to that point. At this point, you know, Kid was a wanted man. Local officials, they put out a photo of him, asking for people to be on the lookout, warning he was armed and that he was dangerous. Well, a resident spotted Kid at a motel in Brandon, Mississippi, called the police. A SWAT team responded, executed a search warrant. They took him into custody. And that is when we get this. This bizarre photo of two officers in Kid, smiling for the camera. It was posted to the Rankin County Sheriff's. office Facebook page. Michael, what is your reaction to that photo? You see the defendant smiling and actually you see one of the sheriffs with a smirk on his face. But I think that speaks volumes of this defendant when he has that smile. He got caught two murders and the best he can do is this smile as if he's proud of what he's done and the fact that he got caught. That's the way I read it. Yeah. Remember I used the word callousness? Like that just kind of feels like that very much

when you're talking about two homicides. So he was interviewed by both the Rankin County deputies. and officers from the branded police department. And according to the DA, he confessed. He confessed to shooting both Morris and Story. A weapon was recovered from his motel room. He was locked up in the Rankin County Detention Center and denied bond. September 9th, Kid was arraigned. And according to a news release from the DA, the arraignment took place.

And then he and his attorney announced in a crowded courtroom filled with law enforcement officers and the family members of both victims that he wished to plead guilty. The court heard from loved ones for both victims before accepting the state's recommendation and sentencing kid to life without the possibility of parole. And by the way, when those loved ones spoke, one of them called kid a coward, while another reportedly said, I hate you and I hope you rot in prison. Now, a couple of things here, Michael. First, with the sentencing, we sometimes have cases that last several years and we hear victim impact statements. The pain doesn't go away, but there is a difference between somebody providing a statement in court so soon after a crime versus two years down the crime.

That felt very, very raw. It is raw. That is raw. But, you know, we don't see that, Jesse. We really don't see within a month somebody speaking at a sentencing. It just doesn't happen. Most of the cases, as you said, they may be a year to two years when they actually have the sentencing.

And that's when these families have been really traumatized. They've been struggling. They've been dealing with the death, dealing with the viciousness. of the crime. And after that year, two years, when they have the ability to walk into a courtroom and express themselves, it really is a sense of relief for these victims and their families because they're able to just get it out of their system. There is some closure to that, and I think it's cathartic in the sense that they can really express themselves. Why do you do it? Why do you plead guilty so quickly?

The only thing I can think of, they do have the death penalty in the state of Mississippi, and there potentially could have been some deal between the parties, the defense of attorney and the prosecutors, wherein, in exchange for your plea of guilty, we will not seek the death penalty. That is the only thing from a legal standpoint and strategy that I can think of, which would cause him to plea guilty. What he pleaded guilty, our understanding, to capital murder for Morris's death and murder for story's death.

Why the difference there? there may be life without parole on the capital side and whatever their intentional murder may have an indeterminate sentence where there's always the potential of going before a parole board life without parole means means exactly that you're done there is no parole board you're not going to be reviewed you will spend every living day behind bars could you anticipate what a defense would have looked like in a trial here because i particularly if you couple on the confession. Does a defense attorney, I mean, what do they do there? Well, well, before you get to the trial, Jesse, the real issue is, hey, what are the damning pieces of evidence? And let's talk about,

you have a confession, for instance. Right. So as a defense attorney, you want to attack the merits of that confession, whether it's voluntary, whether you waived your rights. And these are all held in pretrial hearings. If you can preclude that confession during this pretrial hearing, well, you've just knocked out of the box a very important piece of evidence. And quite frankly, there are other pieces of evidence that you would do the same with. For instance, if DNA was a very compelling piece of evidence, maybe there's a way to preclude the DNA in that particular jurisdiction. If there's a weapon and they claim it match the weapon from the crime scene to the defendant,

well, if you have a ballistics expert that you can hire and they say that's not true, it doesn't match it or the probability is much less than what the prosecutor says, you're chipping away at every piece of evidence. And what may have seemed like a very strong case in the beginning may not be as strong as everybody thought. And at the end of the day, you have to remember the loss here. So Billy Morris, is the father of twin boys, just turned four days after his death. Christian story's obituary says that he's been married for five years, had a son. It's really just a remarkably sad case and senseless.

I just go back to that word senseless. how do these families move forward you know we see this every day in the work that i do both as when i was a prosecutor and and as a defense attorney i'd like to say that these families move forward they never move forward it's always on their minds it's a very very difficult thing to do but when they do have young children i think that is the surviving spouses way in which they can really forge forward raise the children focus on the kids and do the best they can but they never forget they are scarred forever just horrible it's just horrible uh michael brown thank you so much good seeing you same here jesse thank you 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 you can follow me on x or instagram i'm jesse weber i'll speak to you next You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.