Law&Crime Sidebar - Top 7 Most Chilling Admissions Revealed During Murder Trials

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Most murder suspects never admit to the crime, even when they’re convicted of killing someone. Numerous defendants have shocked courtrooms when they’ve openly confessed to their gruesome deeds in detail. The Law&Crime Network’s Jesse Weber breaks down the top seven most chilling admissions revealed during murder trials.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:If you’re ever 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/LawAndCrimeLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&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. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

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. I am a homicidal maniac. He lit a firecracker. He lit a bomb. From graphic killer confessions to eerie incriminating statements to shocking descriptions, of disposing bodies, we break down seven chilling courtroom admissions. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. All right, we want to thank Morgan and Morgan,

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Now, if there is one word I could use to describe criminal trials, it would be unpredictable. Because as best as we can guess what the case is going to look like and who's going to testify and to what, there's really nothing quite like hearing that testimony for the first time. And sometimes there are moments in court. that are absolutely chilling, the ones that resonate with you. And that's what I want to talk to you about right now, breaking down seven of some of the most chilling in-court admissions. And when I was thinking of this list, unfortunately,

Scott Nelson was the first person to come to my mind. So let's go back to June 2019 in Orlando, Florida. And this is where a 55-year-old ex-con, Scott Nelson, was on trial for the murder of 56-year-old Jennifer Fulford, a local nanny, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. Authority said that Nelson burglarized a family's home back in 2017 and kidnapped Fulford, who was the family's nanny and house manager. They say he stole her car and bank card, took money out,

and then killed her so she wouldn't be a witness. Her body was found in a wooded area left in a field, found with duct tape wrapped completely around her head, stab wounds to her back and chest, and at least two struck her heart. This is a savage, savage crime. And if that description wasn't awful enough, well, Nelson gets on the stand during his trial, and he doesn't deny committing this crime.

Rather, he admits it. Who killed Jennifer Fulford? I did. Did she appear to you to be terrified? I mean, I'm sure she wasn't happy. Well, you've had a knife this whole time, right? I think I left it in the vehicle. And then I had to go back and get it, I guess.

should I dropped her off in front of OPD? Just the matter-of-fact way of admitting this is really something else. Now, he would say that he doesn't remember the stabbing and that he brought her out into the field, not with the intent to kill her, but just to leave her. But he admitted. He said he killed her. And he says that he did all this

because he was left with no choice after he claims his probation officer, Julio Dominguez, ruined his life. A life that he says has been riddled with pain and agony after being locked up for so long behind bars. Well, sir, I'll be very frank with you. Jennifer Lynn Fulford would be alive today, had it not been for Julio Dominguez.

I was employed in Winter Park for a painting company by a alleged Christian family who took it in their interest because I was such a dedicated, hard worker, allowed me to live at their employment as well. Prior to that, I had been homeless after being released from federal custody, thrown to the street, homeless with no money.

He made it a point to create a situation with my employer slash landlord, which is one of the same, and he got me thrown on the street. After months of suffering on the streets of Orlando, he took it upon himself to, as he called it, a third party perspective. And he went to the owner and he used vulgar language

and said, what are you blank crazy for letting this man live here? And you're gonna let him work here? Get him out of here. And that got me thrown on the street. Being thrown on the street again for what? The third, or was it the fourth time by the government, be it state or federal? And you know, once you,

you kick a dog enough times, they tend to bite back. And really, they just don't care anymore. You don't know Reed Berman, right? Never met the man. And you don't know or didn't know Jennifer Fulford? No, I don't. There was nothing that either one of them ever did to you that would have resulted in you taking some sort of revenge on them for some moral cause.

I believe the term is collateral damage. Jennifer Fulford, innocent woman who gets caught up in Nelson's life, was just, according to him, collateral damage. Wow. Just his rationale, playing victim almost, credible. And in a case where the jury would have to decide life in prison or the death penalty, he had some final words for them too. I am a homicidal maniac.

Mr. Nelson, do you want to be sentenced to death? Yes. Well, as you can imagine, Scott Nelson was convicted of the murder of Jennifer Fulford, and despite his request to be put to death, the jury could not come back with the unanimous decision on the penalty, and so he was sentenced to life in prison, going back to the place that he hated so much. Now, I can't talk about chilling courtroom admissions without talking about another defendant on trial for murder, also out of Florida, James Scandarito.

Back in 2018, the then 49-year-old James Scandarito was charged with the first-degree murder of his father, 74-year-old James Scandarito Sr., a former judge. And his father's remains were found in suitcases thrown on a golf course days after his son reported him missing. The evidence, including surveillance footage, showed that the younger Scandarito was the last one with his father, and they tracked him to the golf course. It also didn't help Scandarito too much that he was to receive approximately $800,000 as the sole beneficiary of his father's financial accounts. But this son takes the stand and he says he didn't kill his father. No, he says that they were partying together, that they were doing cocaine and he found his dad unresponsive. So he says he panicked, he was buzzed, he was drunk, he was high on coke, he was paranoid, he felt that if he called the police, he thought he would get in a lot of trouble for the drugs. so what does he decide to do?

Well, he claims he tried to use a dolly to move his father's body into the bed. You have to kind of lift it up to turn it. And that's when, you know, problems occurred in terms of him starting to fall off the dolly, you know, me banging it into the walls. It was, I couldn't move it. I couldn't balance him on the dolly and work it around the tight corner of the

of the hallway. And I ended up just kind of falling and dropping, you know, the dolly with him on it and just kind of breaking down. And since that was too difficult, you got to hear from James Scandarito himself as to what he decided to do next because it is so disturbing. Have you decided in your mind what you're going to have to do? I have. And what was that?

That I'm going to have to dismember my dad to be able to move him out of the house. Do you leave him on the dial of dolly, take to the dolly, in the garage? Yes. Okay. And do you do that when you are dismembering? Yes. I rolled the dolly over when I am doing the dismembering of the extremities.

Okay. And so you are cutting those portions that are hanging off. that are hanging off of the dolly. Yes. You are actually cutting through your use of what? A saw. Okay. An electric saw or a hand saw?

No, it's a hand saw. I take a garbage bag and I kind of cover the part that is being dismembered. so when the arm let's say is finally dismembered it's kind of falls into the garbage bag and with those garbage bags individually what would you do with them Um, when I, uh, I ended up, eventually ended up putting them all into, um, three suitcases. How long does it take you to do this? I mean, it seemed like I was doing it all night. I mean, I know Dr. Mote said it was easy. Maybe it's not, you know, physically strenuous, but, you know, it wasn't, I would, it was not something that I, it was a quick, it was a long time.

Just taking a step back for a second, this guy is not only freely admitting to chopping up a human body, but the body of his 74-year-old father. Think about that. And he might be saying, well, of course, he was convicted, right? You would be wrong. The jury actually acquitted him of the murder of his father, but convicted him of abuse of a corpse. Yeah, I remember covering this trial and saying this story, the specificity with which he said it, the detail, how he described it, his emotion, seemed like the jury felt that there was no way someone could make that up. It had to be real. They felt he was telling the truth.

But he wasn't off the hook because James Scandarito was sentenced to 15. years in prison. Okay, let's move away for a moment from defendants' admissions in court. What about those chilling admissions made by a witness? That takes us to the 2019 trial of Roy Coons out of Tennessee. Forty-seven-year-old Coons was charged with the first-degree premeditated murder of 12-year-old Johanna Artega. Prosecutors alleged that Coons, a neighbor of Artega, went into her home, snuck up behind her, and strangled her to death. He was also charged with felony murder, aggravated criminal trespassing, and attempted child rape, because there was evidence to suggest that he may have tried to sexually assault her.

So at one point in the trial, a man named Moses Okoth takes the stamp, and he testified that he knew Coons, met him in 2016, but in 2017, just a few weeks after Johanna Artega's murder, Coons asked to stay with Moses in his tent at a camping site. Moses was homeless at the time, and they apparently became good friends. and what did Coons allegedly tell him? Well, he said that he wanted to move out to California and had enough of this place, pretty suspicious, but not as alarming as what he next told Moses.

Ray, during this time, ever make any statements to you concerning God and forgiveness? That was a normal conversation. We talked about like three times a day. It was always the same question. If I ever killed somebody, do you think God will forgive me? He just asked me if I ever killed somebody. I didn't ask him if he ever did, but he told me he has.

He didn't tell me who he was or how long it was. But he said he did, and this is his word, that shit sticks with you. That's what he said. As soon as I walked out of his tent, I was so freaked out. I never get scared. But I don't have hair. I felt like my hair was growing. I walked out of the tent, I tripped.

He even asked me, are you okay? I was okay. I said I was okay, so I went to my tent. And Alexander was sleeping in there. I kind of like just whispered in my head and said, just be careful with Ray because he told me he killed somebody. Pretty frightening right there. And in the end, the jury convicted Roy Coons,

but not a first-degree murder, actually second-degree murder of Johan Artega. They didn't believe that this was premeditated. They also convicted him of the other charges. and Coons was sentenced to life in prison, plus an additional 25 years. When I think about in-courtroom chilling in missions, I remember one particular description of a murder that was so haunting, and that is the famous case, the story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. This was the girl who pled guilty to second-degree murder in 2016

for the 2015 killing of her 48-year-old mother, D.D. Blanchard, when she was just 23 or 24 years old. Now, why would she do this? while the evidence showed that D.D. physically and emotionally abused Gypsy through Munchausen syndrome by proxy. That's a condition whereby D.D. convinced the world and forced Gypsy to appear to be sick and rife with all these health ailments to gain sympathy and gifts and money. Dedy basically was accused of imprisoning her daughter for years. And when Gypsy found out, when she found out the truth, She recruited her boyfriend, 24-year-old Nicholas GoTo-John, a man she met online, to kill her mother, and that is exactly what GoTo-John did.

Traveled to Missouri, went into D.D.'s bedroom with Gypsy right outside, and stabbed D.D. to death. His defense team argued at his murder trial that he was on the autism spectrum and at a low IQ and that he was manipulated by Gypsy. Well, if you want to talk about chilling statements, let's talk about what happened when Gypsy Blanchard took the stand in his trial and talked about the planning of killing her mom and what she heard as her mother was butchered and also what Go-To-John wanted her to do after the murder. Had you discussed alternative methods of killing your mother? Yes.

What other alternatives had you considered? Poison, arson, guns. Why did you not consider poison? It was too hard to find an odorless taste was poison. Why didn't you kill your mother? I didn't believe I could do it. Could you explain what you mean by that? I don't like blood.

I don't like the side of blood. Frankly, I'm too swamish. It was the defendant that told you he wanted to stab your mom. Correct. When the defendant agreed to kill your mom, at some point he told you that you He told you that he also wanted to rape her. Yes, sir.

You did not want the defendant to rape your mom, correct? Yes. And when he asked you about raping your mother, you actually talked him out of her, right? Yes. And you did so by offering the alternative that he would be able to rape you after the murder, correct? Yes, correct. Very disturbing to listen to. and frankly, shocking to hear.

And the main point there is the reason that testimony was so crucial is because it showed that Goetajon knew what he was doing, that he had planned certain aspects of it, and he had these sadistic fantasies regarding the brutal killing. And that could be why the jury convicted Nicholas Goetajon of first-degree murder and armed criminal action, and he was ultimately sentenced to life in prison plus 25 years. All right, as we continue our analysis of some of the most chilling in-courtroom admissions, We want to move on to a relatively recent case that stands out, and that is of Andre McDonald, the 43-year-old Air Force Major who was accused of murdering his 29-year-old wife Andrine McDonald out in Texas back in 2019.

You see, Andrine's body was found discarded in a field months after she was reported missing. She was beaten to death. And during his trial, this past year, the prosecution alleged that Andre, who was law enforcement's prime suspect, had actually confessed to Andrine's sister and mother about the killing. And that devastating testimony for the defendant, that wasn't it because prosecutors say that he killed Andrine because she had been having an affair and she was trying to start her own business and her own name. Well, that is when Mr. McDonald took the stand.

And did he deny killing Endrine? Nope. Oh, he said he killed her, but acted in self-defense. So he says that they got into a fight after a meeting at a tax office where he said that He found out she was ripping him off. So he says he needed to collect himself. He comes back home at around midnight. He says a fight broke out after he said to her he's going to get a divorce.

She gets angry. She starts shouting derogatory things to him. And that is when he says what happened next. So at that moment, she then repeats the succumbara Batiboy boy. But this time, at the end, she splits in my face. So at that point, it was just like brief when I grabbed her. because she's like right in front of me so I grabbed her head

I think we had like a clash of heads and I think it opened up like a cut somewhere on her face. She gets extremely angry and that's when she comes you know across the bathroom from the switch back towards the door or standing at to attack me.

She's like throwing like some punches so I'm trying to like duck down and like keep my head, my face from you know getting hit with the blows and then in between the skulls, I remember, like, grabbing her and, like, tripping her over one of my legs, and then she, like, falls, and that's when I kick her, like, twice. When she got the second kick, I think I heard, like, some type of reason.

Then he hears these footsteps and thinks it's his seven-year-old daughter, Elena, who was in the home. So he goes upstairs, leaves Andrine on the floor, tries to put his daughter back to bed, and when he comes back down to check on Andrine, here's what he finds. I know this Sandrine is still lying in the floor. So I bent over and then I like grabbed her face and then like feel like if I could feel like a pulse or something and then I put my ear next to her nose to see her she was breathing and she was like,

what kind of reaction is that way? So at that point, honestly man, I became like pretty frantic at that point because of fucking shit, you know, you know, she's dead on the floor you know we just had a fight obviously you know i'm going to get blamed for this and i got a seven-year-old artistic kid upstairs that he's going to take care of her so i mean it was a pretty scary situation and according to mr mcdonald he panics and he decides he needs to get rid of the body of his wife

before his daughter discovers what happened so he puts her body in trash bags drags the body across the house puts her in the trunk of his car and then drives her into the house and then drives her into the field. And if you thought him describing how he killed his wife and drug around the house and plastic bags wasn't disturbing enough, well, after he discards her body in that field, he goes back to it. And he says he started thinking about how angry he was at her for this whole situation. In fact, he claims he was the victim in all this. And then listen to what he does to her body. I get really angry. So at that point, I poured like the gas iron and I lit the fire. So at that point, you know, I got a hammer, and the body's like right there.

So at that point, I just got really pissed off and started, like, you know, hitting the body with the hammer. So I know I was, like, hitting, like, in the face and, like, the neck area. And I remember, like, at first I hit her in the face with the, like, the hammer front. And then I used the claw and, like, hit her in the neck area. I remember the claw got stuck in, like, her neck.

and then that's when I was like ripping the hammer out. I thought I was done. But as I'm like, sounding like walk away, I give it like one more whack somewhere on the body. I'm not sure where that landed. Now you might hear that and say it. Oh my gosh.

Of course the jury convicted him of murder. Well, you would be wrong. The jury actually found him guilty of only the lesser charge of manslaughter. So he was sentenced to 20 years in prison and then pled guilty to evidence tampering charges where he was hit with an addition. five years in prison.

Okay, sticking with more chilling statements made in court, let's go over to the tragic Waukesha Parade Massacre out of Wisconsin where Dorel Brooks Jr. was accused of driving a red SUV into a group of holiday attendees. This happened back in 2021 during the Walker Shrub Christmas parade. Six people were killed, dozens of others were injured. And since this happened in broad daylight, multiple witnesses testified to what they unfortunately saw and heard. I heard and saw the impact.

I watched the body fly up onto the hood and her head snapped back. And the body remained on the hood as it passed the side of my vehicle to where I thought I could have just reached out and grabbed her. The car veered kind of in front of me. I saw brake lights and saw what was Jane. Jane fall off the hood. He proceeded to, and she was on basically on the right side of his vehicle, and he proceeded to run her over with the right front tire, then the right rear tire, and at that point I was just focused on the body on the ground, but I remember

hearing the roar the engine again. Did you see the red SUV strike any people in the Catholic community group? Several. Did you see anybody like actually fly or roll or tumble? Yeah, so originally it was, we heard sounds like thuds and then it was in the air like bowling pins. I saw a man focused on the group ahead of him. Is that Daryl Brooks that you saw? Yes. Obviously, you can imagine those are sites that will forever change those witnesses. And honestly, that is testimony that I know has stayed with me and probably will stay with the jury forever. Speaking of that jury, they convicted the 40-year-old of all 76 charges, including six counts of first-degree intentional homicide, and he was sentenced to multiple consecutive life terms of imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

All right, our final memorable chilling courtroom admission is another recent trial, Darren Rubin Lopez. So out in Texas, Lopez was accused of shooting and killing 49-year-old American Airlines employee James Jamie Faith back on October 9th, 2020. But here's the kicker. James's wife, Jennifer Faith, was Lopez's high school girlfriend. Yeah, prosecutors say the two reconnected. They started an emotional relationship or affair exchanging thousands of tech. and calls, and Jennifer convinced Lopez that James was abusing her, which was a lie. And so Lopez drove from Tennessee to Texas to kill him in order to save Jennifer. She ended up pleading guilty to a federal charge of orchestrating her husband's murder.

She was sentenced to life in prison. As for Lopez, he argued he was manipulated by Jennifer. She deceived him, convincing him that she was in danger when she wasn't. Lopez is also a special forces veteran who suffered a brain injury that might have gone into consideration as well. Well, Lopez took the stand, and he explained how and why he gunned down James Faith. That's when I fired my gun into Jamie. How many times? It was a – well, I fired a total of eight shots, I believe, and seemed like only seven hits.

I missed one. You know, I started out in his chest. I saw, you know, from the autopsy report, you see the one in his upper right chest as he was walking. So then you see from the office of the autopsy report then. So that gets hit. Jamie starts to rotate to his right. That's what makes him fall. That's what on the top autopsy report also you saw the contusions and bruises along his knee, his shin.

I knew I saw I shot his chest he started the turn and then I continued to put in his in his side I mean into his I was aiming for the center mask but he was turning and when you were doing this was it your belief though that you were shooting someone who was dangerous yes he was going to if I didn't act Jennifer was going to die that day he was going to be drowned being a medic treating people on the battlefield, the human body can take a lot of damage and still live. I did not want Jamie to suffer. Even though in my eyes he was a monster, I did not want him to suffer. So I approached and I fired the rounds into his head. How often do you hear a defendant not only admitting to killing someone, but giving

a play-by-play description of it. And despite his arguments that he was not to blame, that he believed these lies that were fed to him by Jennifer Faith, the jury convicted Darren Rubin Lopez of murder, and the 49-year-old was sentenced to 62 years in prison. While those were just a sampling of some of the most chilling courtroom admissions that we have heard, I'm sure they will not be the last. Thanks for joining us here on Sidebar, everybody.

We really do appreciate it. Please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.