Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Art of Finding A Missing Person | Crawl Space

Episode Date: September 21, 2024

The Art of Finding A Missing Person | Crawl Space

I said, you mean like even a year from now if I'm still living in someone's spare room and I can't pay my bills and I'm riding the bus? And she is, yeah, I go, I'm going to commit a massive, massive fraud. I'm going to leave the United States, $6 million still unaccounted for in Cox's case. And we like that money back. And then the narration is, you know, it'll be a long time before Cox can go to his Cayman Island account. It's like, who said Cayman Island?

What are you doing? You know, they do this whole thing. And as a result of that, my, my ex-wife, she used to come see me when I was locked up and she would make these cracks like, you know, I know you've got money out there. I know you've got money. I go, enough with I'm not talking. Stop, stop. And one day I pulled up to her driveway just after I got out of prison, got out, pulled a shovel out. She sees me.

She goes, what are you doing? Nothing. Don't worry about it. I start digging in her front yard. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I've got an interview with two really interesting guys. One is Tim. The other one is Lance from Crawl Space. Got a program called Missing, where they find missing people documentary.

So there's a bunch of cool stuff, and I appreciate it. So check this out. You guys, I had seen your episode on Jane and the, I want to say the Riverside, killer but is that right so close so close it's the uh connecticut river valley killer is what most people call it it's a little misleading because it is not located in connecticut so the connecticut river runs the border of vermont and new hampshire so these murders took place between 1978 and 1988 in this section kind of central vermont and new hampshire and that area between the borders called the valley okay okay so what probably the newspapers start started it and it just

took off like d b cooper um oh why right right right they said d b cooper and it's not his name was not you know yeah you're right you're right in a sense that i think it yeah it was media created um i love how into d v cooper you are by the way it just happened to come up twice just happened this in the last one um anyway i saw that episode and there were there were several um well i guess there were jane was a victim of his that you know that lived um and then i had jane on and then that kind of led to uh to me being interviewed on your program and now i'm interviewing you and i um so and then we spoke of course we spoke on the phone so now we're here and do you have do you have anything specific you wanted to talk about. I know we'd kind of, you know, talked about it, and you said you were

going to, you had a couple different things you were interested in cases you were working on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And well, now that you brought up the Connecticut River Valley Killings and Jane, so Jane Barowski was the last known attack victim, we are producing with our colleague, Jennifer Amel, a new podcast called Dark Valley. And that's going to be Jane's story. And that's going to be Jane's story, her attack, how she is connecting herself with the other victims and trying to tell their stories as well. She's a remarkable, you know, I mean, she's a remarkable person. She's a great, like, force of nature, and her attack is just harrowing.

The fact that she survived that is incredible. So, just a quick promo. And that was a shameless plug for Dark Valley coming out spring of 2023. Yeah. um okay so uh yeah it's but there's no link or anything yet oh yeah you can subscribe to the yep yep it's live on any um anywhere you listen to podcasts and you can uh subscribe the trailers there and we'll start dropping some um some more like promotional stuff uh after the new year okay well i mean send me any links and i'll put them in the description you know for sure not that you know

I think, you know, some of the, like, some of my videos get, you know, five or 10,000 views. Some get 20,000. So you just, you never know. Some will shoot. Some get 100,000. Who knows. So, but, so what are we, what are we going to talk about? What's going on?

Well, whatever you want, really. I mean, I sent you over a couple of cases that the, that the nonprofit, private investigations for the missing has been working on their active. cases that are being run by private investigators affiliated with PIs for the missing, this nonprofit that we're on the board of. So there's a couple of those we could talk about. We can get into that a little bit if you like. It's really your call. Yeah.

That sounds great. I don't, you know, I actually only link I ever got was like a week or so ago. I'd gotten just a link to the website. I don't recall getting another link. Okay, no, that was it. That was it. Yeah, there's there's just, I just put a couple of names down there. The website is Investigations for themissing.org.

And this nonprofit was founded in 2018 by Bruce Maitland. And Bruce is the father of Brianna Maitland, who went missing in 2004 from Montgomery, Vermont. in March of 2004. And it's taken Bruce a long time to sort of turn his loss, really kind of aim it at helping other people. And PIs for the Missing has a lot of people who volunteer for it. And it really came together in an organic way and really kind of just a beautiful way, to be honest.

So what are you? What are you actively working on right now? I mean, as far as the board is concerned, we will, there's missing persons that come to the nonprofit by way of the tip line, the email address, and we'll get these form submissions. So there's a process that happens. They'll go through the board, then the investigators who are volunteering their time, we'll check it out. And they'll start working with law enforcement to make sure that nothing

that is going to be said publicly, like through the podcast missing. We can't have information going out there that's going to negatively impact any investigation. So there's a whole series of checks that it has to go through before these cases come to us, before these missing person cases come to us. And we do our best to then put together all of this information, all of the circumstances of the person's life, their disappearance, where the investigation is at now. If we have the opportunity to find a family member who can come on, then we'll have a family member come on. And those interviews tend to be obviously very powerful. And they resonate a lot more than a, you know, conversation just between two people who aren't really involved with this person

on a, like on a personal level. If we don't have a family member, then we cover it through the researchers. So the case will start at the investigators, start with the investigators, and it will go to the researchers who will dig in as much as they can. Contact as many family members, as many friends, they will find as many articles that's written on it. They'll put together this research document that will be delivered to us, and then we'll we'll work off of that. So it'll be Tim, myself, our colleague, Jen, and we'll record an episode

where we work off of this document after we've perused it for a while and become really familiar with it. And I mean, when you say, I know your question was, what are you working on now? Everything, all at once. I mean, there's a working drive, a working folder that has all of these cases, all of these missing persons that just is constantly being updated. And we have a lead, I mean, Lou is sort of the lead investigator at PIs for the Missing. He's been in the law enforcement, I don't want to say business. He's been in law enforcement his whole life, like his whole professional life for the most part. He was a chief, he was chief of police in a town in Massachusetts. And he pretty much controls the investigative part. But he'll deliver,

I think it's like once a month, twice a month. He'll deliver like case updates. So we basically operate off of that and then they're the ones that just like stand out like erika franelich brianna maitlin who's bruce maitland's daughter uh she's not i mean they're all still they're all still missing uh briana maitlin eric franelich um those are those are two that that stand out now but what we have been working on i mean what are the ones so why do those stand out oh you know because like i'll just use erika franelich for an example because because because they're totally solvable they're totally solvable and you you can you know what happened you you hear the circumstances you hear from the investigator you hear from family members

you hear from witnesses like yeah this is what happened the this individual was being beaten by her husband and then she suddenly decides to leave her children and her husband by just hopping on a bus and never never heard from again so it's like oh okay you kind of kind of get what happened. So, yeah, the ones that stand out are the ones that are really solvable. Yeah. So they go back. The investigators have kind of re-gone over all of the, do they actually go out and re-interview everybody? Or they just go over like the police reports? So it depends. The cases that are run by private investigators, like the case Lance mentioned, Erica Franilich, That one does have a PI assigned to it.

Some of the ones that we cover on our podcast missing don't necessarily have that element. If they do, you know, you'll hear from the PI on the podcast at some point when it is beneficial to the case. Right. If that makes sense. Because, yeah, that's one of the investigators' tools. We are a couple of tools, Matt. And we don't mind I was just thinking that.

Well, I was, you know, it's I was just, you know, it's funny because I wish I could remember the circumstances, but this was not a few hours ago where I was talking to, shoot, I wish it was, I could remember who it was, but somebody was missing. And we actually were talking about it.

And, oh, know what it was somebody my my um a buddy of mine had seen a tick talk and the woman was screaming about how her no wait it was i'm sorry it was my girlfriend was it was a facebook thing where a girl was talking about how her mother was gone the police don't want to help her and she's been gone for like nine years and she doesn't know what to do and this and and and i was thinking to myself and you know actually and i said you know you know like i get her being upset but you get to a point where it's like, sometimes, you know, that there's just unsolvable. I'm not saying, you know, like, you know, like you said, you know what happened,

but the police can only do so much. And you get to a point where this person, you know, this person is missing. And of course, the police are always like, look, you know, either she's deceased or she's left and doesn't want to be found. Okay, well, you know, that's doubtful since you've got a daughter and grandchildren and, you know, friends and family. you're going to reach out to, you know, even if it's dangerous for you, you will most likely reach out to somebody for some familiarity in a moment of weakness.

You know, and I know that just from being on the run. And it was dangerous for me to, you know, I could have been arrested and incarcerated for contacting someone. It could lead back to me, mate possibly. So yeah. I know that most likely they're deceased, but then it's like, how much can the police do? They think this person, you know, may have harmed the miscarmed. the missing person but you know if they they don't have anything they don't have anything like how

you know i think initially initially obviously they do the investigation and everybody kind of you know clamors up and you know and then it's a matter of like a lot of these things get found got get solved like over time people start talking you know or a new investigator comes and sees it in a different manner and happens to go along a different track and next thing you know the whole thing blows open and so and is that's kind of the the goal for you guys is like somebody time you know time is going to oh you know uncover something or somebody's finally going to say look you know i didn't say anything for 10 years but i'm going to tell you and they find a body or or maybe she's discovered and no no i think you're right though that you're hitting

on one of the the main elements um of why p i's for the missing jumps into take on a case is, is time. And that's one of the ways a case can be solved. So cases that eventually become cold are the ones that PI's for the missing are interested in. We haven't taken on any recent cases. And so when a when an investigator will jump in, they'll contact law enforcement and, you know, turnover there happens. Investigators retire. People drop the case, you know, the cases just fall between the cracks. So those are the cases we want. And then maybe when our PIs go investigate these people who have probably been investigated or interviewed years before, they might, maybe something's changed.

Maybe someone's died. Maybe they don't want their here and their last name blasted around or a billboard in town with their last name out there when, you know, there could be someone buried on their family property. I will say, though, with time, if you are a perpetrator and you have done something to somebody and you've gotten away with it for 10 years, 15 years, I don't know, 5, 10, 15 years, you've gotten away with it. And typically, like, that person's probably not going to be like, I can't live with this anymore. They're going to say, well, I'm just going to continue to keep my mouth shut. But somebody who knows that person will finally say, listen, I'm tired of being afraid. You know, I'm tired of not saying anything because for whatever reason, this person has a certain hold. over me and I'm not supposed to talk about what I know happened. So that helps. The billboards

will help if you can strategically place one to motivate people to speak not to law enforcement, to speak to private investigators, to speak to people who aren't cops. People often talk to non-law enforcement a lot more freely than they do, you know, law enforcement. It's easier for them. Yeah. Matt, I'm curious from you, though, your past, I mean, you really successfully went missing. I mean, we talk about it, how hard that is to do. And it's like almost impossible these days, it seems to us. But I don't know. I feel like if anyone could do it, if I know anyone who could do it, it's you.

You know, I mean, I did it for three years. I know guys that went 20 years, but they typically left the United States. States, you know, and but I mean, my biggest mistake was like I had a few rules that I was told myself, you know, and what that main rule was if anyone ever learns your name, leave. And nobody can ever know who you are, who you are. And that's what happened was the girl I was dating, you know, she found out who I was. And because she knew who I was, she ended up confiding in a friend that friend turned me in like just like that just like what i knew you know because although i know she didn't want me to get get caught her friend was less likely you know or less

concerned about that and as a result of that i i you know i got caught and and it was just you know me breaking that kind of rule that i had and it was just you know and i think that's difficult because I had built a whole life with her. And when she found out, it was like, you know, I was in love. I didn't want to start over. I was happy. Ugh, you know? And so she ended up telling, you know, telling someone and that person turned me in.

You know, plus the other thing is publicity. Like you said, with the billboards and all these other things, like it's, it's, they want to find you. They're going to find you. It's just how much, how much resource do they want to put into? to it. You know, and it's, you know, it's expensive. Like, you know, private investigators are expensive. Like, and people don't realize, like, the police and their resources, they're like, oh, well, they had, they should do this. They should do this. There's only so much they can do before it's like, look, we're, we're, you're blowing a lot of money on a case that is very

unlikely to be solved. And now you guys, even with you guys having someone, guys that are willing to donate their time, like, that's a huge. sacrifice for them private investigative work is is extremely expensive like that's not like oh it's i take a two hours on saturday or something you know it's it's like ordering it's like going through writing an article like the amount of work that goes into writing like a nonfiction book or article as opposed to a fiction book you know is vastly different it's a lot it's a ton of research So a ton of reading documents and so I can, you know, so I think that's like a huge sacrifice for these guys or, you know, to be donating their time.

He's served over a decade in federal prison for bank fraud. And he still owes the government six million restitution, but he's good for it. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. stay greedy my friends support the channel join matthew cox's patreon yeah and the non-profit is always in fundraiser mode i think when we started this with bruce it was about assembling the team so that the inner workings could operate as seamlessly as possible so people submitting a missing person would know that the communication internally was happening about the person that they submitted so

that was where the focus was like let's make sure that people know that they're being taken care of and it's all worked itself out on that level and sort of categorizing here's the investigators here's the researchers here's the media part and right now we're in that fundraising mode because or fundraising phase and that's going to have to be like nonstop you know that has to be a department or, you know, has to have some, some representation out there because, like you said, like the PIs need to at least get paid for their expenses. They need to get paid something. That's primarily what it would be going towards is operating expenses and, you know,

the services of a private investigator. There's so many cases out there. And not nearly as many PIs that we would like to. have looking into these cases. So hopefully in the next couple of years, we'll have a really good system in place to raise funds for these, for these, uh, individuals who are donating their time currently. I, I wonder, um, you know, I mean, this sounds, I don't know if this is, you know, um, partner or not. Well, I think, I think it is. I think if you could probably, not that you need my help um but like doing like a tic talk where you you summarize the case you know throw some

some highlights of the case some of the more interesting aspects of the case in a a little two minute tick talk and put it up and explain that you're raising funds like that that may you know that may be a huge listen there's there's there's all it's it's amazing what people find fascinating and that type of thing something like that might be because it's so unique that may end up taking off and that would you know and believe it or not obviously that would bring awareness which would raise money

so something to think about anyway I was thinking about a case that there were there was a woman with her two daughters had come to Florida on vacation and met a guy at a gas station this is back I want to say in the 80s, met a guy in the gas station, and he struck up a conversation with her and said,

oh, you're here on vacation? Oh, okay. Well, he said, I have a, I have a boat. And he did, somehow or another, she wrote, he wrote something down for her and like a place to meet and said, I'll take you guys on the boat for the day tomorrow and like gave her a place to meet in a time and she she ended up driving somewhere you know driving wherever it was and she met him and they went on the boat and he ended up you know raping her and tying up the two daughters and tied bricks to all three of them and threw them out into the bay and they drowned um well I remember that affected me. Like, I remember hearing about it, hearing a documentary about, it was a document,

there was a documentary about it. It might have just been an episode on something, but either way. Well, they couldn't solve the case. Like this is, they had nothing, but they did have the note. And they couldn't, you know, they, they looked and they searched and they talked to everybody and there was just nothing. And eventually either it went cold, I want to say it went cold, something happened. But eventually they took the note and they put it on.

a billboard and said does anybody recognize this handwriting it was that simple and i remember when they said they were going to do that and i was watching the documentary i was thinking nope nobody's going to recognize handwriting driving down i4 at 75 miles an hour like that's never going to happen the guy's ex-wife or ex-girlfriend said called them up and said that i think is my ex-husband's handwriting and he used to do this and that and this and he you know it definitely looks like his handwriting and they were like why you know she was like why and they said well let's ask you some questions does he have a does he have a whatever a boat yes he does he live in this air this general area lives about two miles from there does he is he is he a six foot tall

white male yes he is does he i mean they just went down the pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop turns out they eventually grabbed him and I want to say they gave them you know DNA or did whatever it was and and grabbed him and I want to say he confessed or they found I forget what the exact situation was he ended up getting like the like the death penalty when was this I want to say it was in the 80s or 90s sounds familiar and you saw it on a documentary yeah I'm also recalling seeing it 15 or 20 years ago but I'm pretty sure sure it was like i want to say it was two girls on vacation with their mother and i definitely remember he took him out on the boat and and i remember it was a it was a scrap of paper and it was a handwriting that

the ex-girlfriend or wife recognized and then years years later 10 or 15 years later i remember hearing about him being executed and it was in florida for sure it was in florida i'll have to look it up and do a little search and see if i can find find it. But same thing. It was like, it was like an older case. It was a billboard. It seemed like a long shot. Just worked out. Yeah. Yeah, you just never know, I think, with, with that stuff. Are you guys looking for it? I think Lance is, yeah. Yeah, I'm looking for it. But then it reminded me of another case that we had another missing person that we had uh looked into chilling worth the no no no is that a similar circumstance the judge and his wife yeah right yeah they were thrown

into the into the water into the ocean i think um yeah that was a crazy case i think that was florida as well yeah yeah it was a lot of bad stuff happens to florida a lot of odd people yeah oh they really are And it does have that kind of reputation. And now you've seemed to live in a lot of different places around the country. What, uh, why? Yeah. Well, the FBI kept showing up. What, so why are you now in Florida by choice?

Well, when I got out of, when I got out of prison, my mother lived in Tampa. so you know i wanted to come here and spend as much time with her as i could you know she cool so you know and i got to spend about about two years with her before she died oh cool yeah well that's nice yeah yeah i used to live down there near uh clear water yeah yeah uh about an hour and a half you know yeah you remember you know the pirate cruise on clearwater beach the pirate cruise what you've ever been gasperilla are you mean Uh, on Clearwater Beach, there's, uh, there's a pirate, uh, sort of like, it's kind of like a vacation thing, like a booze cruise kind of, uh, Captain Memo's pirate cruise. Yeah. If you ever hit up, uh, Clearwater Beach, you'll see it. Okay. Yeah. Sorry for the diversion. No, I, I, I, I, I think of pirates. I always think of, uh, Jose Gaspar and the Gasparilla, you know, um, a festival and the Gasparilla, a parade. Right.

So can you think of any, do you have any other cases that you're, you know, working on? Like what any, just anyone that you have more, some specifics on or? Well, I mean, we've recently interviewed, we've had a couple of really tough interviews in the past, several tough interviews in the past few weeks recently. Just speaking to the parents, the moms of these missing individuals. Anita King was the most recent one. That episode is actually out today. Her daughter, Papeda Red Hair, Indigenous woman, is missing.

And just such a raw interview. It's going on three years in March. So she disappeared in March, like March 27th, March 25th, 27th. In 2020. And how did she disappear? Did she just go to work? one day and nobody saw again or were there what was what led up to the disappearance it's a bit unclear other than uh her her mom witnessed abuse uh she witnessed her daughter um being abused by

her her boyfriend at the time um so i think that's like he probably has some answers um has not uh obviously not given them yeah so she she goes to visit her boyfriend and her abusive boyfriend and she doesn't come back and that's where her mom's at that's her poor mom is like okay well where did she go and the boyfriend says i don't know my dad and i went went out and came back and she was gone maybe she got sick of uh maybe she got sick of me being drunk all the time something like that and there's nothing she can do i mean the you you'd mentioned earlier on in the conversation that police will say, you know, or people can go missing as adults. They have every right to go missing as adults. But these interviews that we've

been having lately, like, that's one of the common threads that we keep hearing is that police just keep telling family, hey, what more do you want us to do? They're an adult. They can go missing. It's like, well, there's a history of domestic violence here, too, you know? Did they go out and talk to the guy? Did they? Apparently once. But I don't believe he's being considered currently as a suspect. I think Papeda's mom believes that they, they believed his story and that Papeda just took off. But that's kind of just like a bullshit way to,

how old is she? It's an excuse. She is, um, what? Papeda? Yeah. Yeah, she, I think she'd be 30, 30 this year. Yeah. She was 27 once you went missing.

And she just, yeah. I mean, like people just don't take off and just. disappear forever i mean some not out of the blue like that no well i mean statistically let's face it even if you threw in the bad statistics it's yeah so unlikely it's not like it's something you would you would um you know lean on uh as far as saying well this is the answer why well it does happen yeah it does sure for one for one in a million people somebody might decide i'm gonna up and vanish but heart that hardly ever you know you know like what Was her bank account emptied?

You know, is her credit cards ever been used? You know, telling me all of her friends are never seen it. You know, come on, she's deceased. So, so that's something that kind of like I, you know, obviously you guys. Yeah, see, like that'd make a great TikTok. Like you get to show pictures. You get to. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. We've, we've been working on the TikTok game and trying to get that out there. Because that is really a huge resource. I mean, the, what did we hear that stat? like more more uh people within a certain age range like what was it 12 to 17 or something like that yeah they they're using ticot as more of a search engine than google really which blew our minds yeah that's like the exact reaction we had yeah it's a horrible search engine in my opinion but i don't know that much but um i was just thinking to myself even if it got blasted out

there and the police started getting phone calls it might force them to do something yeah or a newspaper newspaper article yeah i mean it was recently covered on the on the show disappeared which definitely helped um you know with with some awareness it's definitely not a very well-known case uh up until this this point in time as far as i've seen yeah yeah um tim gets fired up about a case where the main suspect is referred to as a good old boy oh yeah i was i was like i always like hearing this yeah so this is uh the jessica stacks disappearance um it's from new albany mississippi um i believe that's also around the same year uh 2021 yeah um was a New Year's Day.

New Year's Day. Sorry. Sorry, I'm looking here. Yeah, so she's been missing a couple of years. Yeah, she went missing on New Year's Day, 2021. And her boyfriend claimed that they went to, they went fishing. They went fishing at 6 a.m. on New Year's Day, New Year's morning in, in like 50-degree weather. And it's really.

pretty inexplicable. There's a, there's a leaking boat and they moved on this fast moving river. They were apparently hunting animals from the river from the boat with a gun. So it sounds like some sick and twisted like Mad Max scene. But it doesn't sound realistic also. And it doesn't, it's not something Jessica did. We spoke to her mom, Kathy. And, uh, That is not something that she did hunt or get into a boat at 6 a.m. on New Year's Day or hardly any time. And yeah, the sheriff in that county, Sheriff Jimmy Edward, Jimmy Edwards, Union County Sheriff Jimmy Edwards called Jerry Wayne Baggett, her boyfriend at the time, called him, oh, he's just a good old boy. that's what he told their mom her mom just a good old boy and and there's documented just a good old boy that's a good old boy who you know on occasion will beat up his girlfriend i mean

there's pictures she just never came back right he says that we went off we i came i came we went off and and she what fell in the water what's no he doesn't even say that she left the boat she left the boat went into the woods and never came back yep yeah it's not like you report her missing did he go to the police and me'll say oh my god my girlfriend i can't can't find her she she went in the woods and no no i believe they showed up four days later and he said like he thought that was weird pretty pretty much i mean i think it was like his kid's boyfriend um called later that night like you know 12 or more hours later or something like that yeah yeah the Yeah, and there's pictures of her with bruises.

Like her mom posts on social media pictures of her daughter saying this is what that animal did to my daughter. It was consistent. So that's one of those cases where it's like someone does something so out of the blue. She would fish, but she wouldn't fish at 6 a.m. And New Year's Day, they're not, they're not borrowing this boat that leaks. There was no paddle. They were using, apparently allegedly using a shovel as a paddle.

and then all of a sudden she needs to stop the boat so that she can leave and then she's just gone. Yep, just walked off. There was some extensive searches. They found some really weird things in the woods, like where somebody would have sat down. They found her, I guess her wading boots, like her water boots or her rubber boots that were cut. And he said that they had to cut them so that her calves wouldn't chafe. she was complaining that her boots were making her calves chaf there was like what was the weird fuses like big fuses that were in in like the crevice of a tree trunk right just like shoved into a tree yeah very battery or something like that yeah and then if you ever look at the picture of this guy her boyfriend he's the i love making this joke he's the type of guy where if you were at a family cookout and he showed up you'd be like ugh that guy he just he's got a very punchable face well i mean i feel like there was a shovel

involved um as far as the you know so i think he throwing the shovel in there is telling yeah yeah interesting yeah good good point yeah because the shovel was apparently used to steer the boat um yeah which doesn't really i mean i suppose you could do it but it's not everything Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, guys, the three similarities about those three cases that we just spoke of, Erica Franilich, Papita Red Hair, and Jessica Stacks all had abusive boyfriends before they went missing. Um, are there any, are there any cases where, I don't understand why these, why, by the way, just as you were saying it, I mean, just. I don't understand, like, why these women will get abused and then go right back. And it's like, you know, like, like, like, I don't know any, I don't know anybody that was in an abusive relationship where the guy straightened up and everything was okay. And he just never, like it progressively gets worse.

And it just never, you know, you don't know anybody like, oh, you know, yeah, he punched me a couple of times, gave me a couple black guys. But then he, you know, it was a bad time and he's been better, good for the last 10. years and it just doesn't like it's just not something that typically happens so it always escalates right it always escalates and it's really something that is put into someone's i guess fabric they're the the way that they live basically usually the individual has seen their parents being abusive to each other and those parents have seen their parents being abusive and they want to in a strange way help the person who's abusing them and they go back because they feel like this is helpful in some cases yeah well i mean i think i think women in

general want to fix the man um you know they think they're going to fix them somehow that's probably not going to happen um yeah i think it's just hard to leave too i think um a lot of women in abusive relationships uh you know when they try to leave they're more at risk than when they're not uh trying to leave right but like one of the i think one of the cases you were saying that like she didn't live with them the guy right um i think um i'm not sure about jessica stacks um i don't think Pepita lived with her boyfriend. I'm not sure about that either.

Yeah. But I don't know. It's just, it's so like systemic. And there's so many different elements and factors that go into why someone would do that to somebody else. And, you know, we always hear about the, like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the person's missing or, you know, the, the body's found. right well i'm just going to say too and it's always easy to you know hindsight's 2020 why this why that why this and it's always easy to say why would you should have done this and you should yeah well i didn't know was going to end up like this um it's it's always it's like watching a

horror movie and they hear something in the basement and they're like going down to the basement you're like don't go in the basement don't go in the but the truth is in my house if i hear a noise in the other room that's my house i'm going in the other the room even you know it's creepy in the middle of night like what's going on in here you know it's just that every situation's different course you know and then of course i end up getting murdered everybody goes why do you go in that room um so uh are there any are the are these like all women like you've got three cases that you're mentioning that are women like are do men ever i mean are there any men that disappeared sure yeah um there's one case that we've covered

pretty extensively the disappearance of Brandon Lawson out of San Angelo, Texas. And he actually went missing under circumstances where he was, his car ran out of gas. His truck ran out of gas on the side of the road. So his truck is left on the side of the road. And he's just gone. But there's a 911 call. And this has sort of been, I guess, analyzed and overanalyzed probably by the web community on the web salutes out there and us included because he's on the phone and you can hear it. But he's not really making much sense, but maybe he is. If he is, could he be talking about someone's chasing him? Because that's what he's saying. He's saying someone's chasing me and he's describing some scene, you know.

But it does seem like he was recently found out only like a mile from where he went missing on some properties. There was a great advocate for the case who led some searches and got some help from PIs for the missing in trying to locate Brandon via drone over that area. So they did some drone searches and the investigators from PIs for the missing helped out. But ultimately it was a foot search that probably found Brandon. And this was only a few months ago. And I don't think there's any update, no official update from Texas law enforcement. But I believe the like the description of the sneakers is the same. So it's generally believed to be Brandon.

However, not exactly confirmation yet. so how was he found like was he i mean buried or just pieces of him did you know the uh you know wolves get him or you know animals or something and and as far as not being able to you know like i dm like i mean there's DNA they you know the mother his mother and father's DNA have to be you would think that you could identify they could idea them yeah i mean we've theorized about why they haven't officially said that this is him the family has said his parents have said you know we believe this to be brandon how he was found like the condition of his body is not really something that we're that aware of we know that there were bones um and we know that the area that was searched was really rough terrain

as far as a lot of cactus a lot of overgrowth and and just really tough to maneuver around and was it a four-wheeler path that they just hadn't looked down yet. I think it was like an all-terrain vehicle path that they hadn't looked down yet. I don't remember that. I think it was property, yeah. Someone's property. Yeah, it was on private property, yeah. But I'm pretty sure it was like an all-terrain vehicle path or something that they

had gone down there. But yeah, it's, it's an interesting thought exercise to like theorize why it hasn't been officially released as him. So it could be a number of things. I don't know. Could be that the investigation is still open and they're trying to figure out how he died. I was going to say,

I mean, he's obviously there was something, somebody was chasing him. You said it sounds like somebody was chasing him. Well, based on what he was saying, it did, you know, but he was kind of all over the place with what are you saying. drugs involved he was yeah i think so yeah is it possible that he just wandered off and slipped and fell and harmed hurt himself and then died from the elements i think i think it's probably something like that yeah um but this was like a big big tough guy you know like so i don't i don't know it definitely

could have been could have been something some animal could have been just a situation where he couldn't have gotten out of um that snuck up on him but uh Yeah, I don't know. Very tragic case. But yeah, we definitely cover men going missing. But yeah, you're right in that there are typically different circumstances. Like the woman who goes missing who has an abusive boyfriend is, you know, a lot more familiar to us. You know, I don't think we've had it on where a man is being abused and goes missing that we've covered on the show.

No, no. Usually the men have some sort of mental health issue. Recently, we've covered several that have had diagnosed schizophrenia. We've covered a gentleman, Mike Montejo, who more than likely, was he diagnosed with PTSD? Oh, I believe so, yeah. Yeah. And he served 20 years in the Navy and did some, oh, I always. forget the name of it what is it it's like not seal it's um he was a submariner submariner yeah so pretty intense like operations i guess in the navy and then he he comes out and he has PTSD uh he starts self-medicating with alcohol um to the point where when he stops drinking he hallucinates and i don't know that could have some earmarks of uh him being abused as well because that's true yeah it's it's not one that we know um other that being a fact at least um yeah and you know the the wife has not done a uh or what what mike's family would describe as a good

job in helping to find him or you know so so there is some shades of something like that there at Lance, for sure. Yeah. And I'm I was going to say anybody who wanders off, you know, like if you wander off in the wilderness, it's not hard to die. You know,

you can die from the elements. You know, you can die. You can slip and fall. You can, I had a cousin who was rock climbing the day before his wedding. Sled, you know, and fell, you know, he just, you know, and died.

I mean, you know, there's, was it was Los Angeles. I watched this thing where there was, you know, There's a, there's a well-ridden bike path and a mountain line jumped on this woman and, you know, killed her. So, I mean, you know, that's, you know, that's, you know, that happens. Like there's, it's, it's, listen, it's wilderness. It's dangerous. Like always, it always cracks me up when these guys, like there was a guy who got out and tried to take a selfie of himself with like a bear behind it or something. The bear jumped on him and, you know, killed him. It was like, What are you thinking?

Like, this is dangerous. Like, people are knuckleheads, you know. People get lost in the woods and, you know, you go out in the woods and get lost, you know, it's a big place. You could be dead in four or five days or a week. Yeah, or after like 10 days or something like that. There was like a couple years ago, some woman went, got lost and they found her like 10 or 11 days later. That was amazing. Yeah, that was a great story.

Yeah. it was it Hawaii it was somewhere tropical i i think i think you're right um yeah that's it's it's it's you're lucky if you survive he built some of the nation's largest banks out of an estimated $55 million because 50 million wasn't enough and 60 million seemed excessive he is the most interesting man in the world i don't typically commit crimes but when i do It's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel.

Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. Man, we just talked about this man, this man, Colin Finnerty, who was also suffering from some sort of mental illness. Probably, was it CTE? He was a college football star. to make it in the NFL. He was assigned to, I guess, the practice squad of the Broncos. I think so. Yeah, I think he played for, yeah. Yeah. Broncos. Whose door is that? I'm at, I'm at home. That's, that's probably, you know, I'm sure that's, my girlfriend will come down and hopefully get it. But anyway, it was. But anyway, it was,

a Memorial Day weekend and he was with his wife's family and they were, you know, at a cookout and for whatever reason at 9.30 or whatever time at night, it was, it was later at night, 9.9.30, he decides that he's going to go fishing. He wants to go fishing. And they drive him out to this river and he has a pontoon boat. And then he never, they have to, you know, search for him. And they find him face down with, uh, they find him dead face down. And I guess the cause of death was determined to be pneumonia after he had asphyxiated on his own vomit.

Okay. Well, how. Okay. Yeah. Strange that it wouldn't be drowning. You know, I guess he slipped in after he. If you were sick, why would you go out there to begin with? It's not like you don't know you're sick. No, no, I don't think he was sick.

it was a combination of the anxiety this is what they were saying the combination of him him getting lost so he they find the boat so he had like he had docked the boat or i guess that's the term he went got out of the boat and was he made a phone call saying to his uh to his brother right or brother-in-law that he was he was lost he didn't know where he was so he they were saying the it was the anxiety could have been the pain meds that he was probably addicted to at the time and when they found him he was faced down his arms right aside he was still completely dressed and the pneumonia set in probably because his lungs got full when he when he was asphyxating on the vomit how long was he in there for not long yeah i don't know a day or two yeah yeah

But to your point, like, the people, it's easy to get lost and and perish when you go into the woods. And that is, I mean, the guy obviously wasn't going in there to like harm himself or, you know, this wasn't a suicide that he wasn't doing, he wasn't bringing a body and they, you know, like this was not a suspicious thing at all other than, you know, the reasoning for going fishing that late. for just a short period of time when he wasn't like a big time fisherman but he certainly wasn't thinking okay my anxiety is going to cause me to vomit which i'm going to choke on and i'm going to fall face down and then that's going to cause me to get pneumonia so fast that i die yeah it does yeah it things can go wrong quick yeah oh yeah what were those two that the two kids the boyfriend and girlfriend that were doing meth and decided to go driving in the snow I don't know, but that doesn't sound like a good idea.

It doesn't sound funny, but yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, they ran out of gas. They got lost, snowing, got lost, driving down some, you know, some road, some, you know, rule road somewhere and got lost, and it was snowing and it was night. And then the kid's phone went out of, you know, ran out of juice. He's calling, they called 911, they were trying to find them. He was like, oh, my God, this is the dumbest. thing i've ever done i can't believe this phone eventually runs out of juice and i think they found them a couple days later and you know they'd frozen to death in their car on the side of the road it's

like terrible you know you you you don't have to make you know if one stupid decision can you know go wrong and i don't even necessarily know that it it you know that the they were that they were on meth that was the primary cause of just a just being young and stupid and thinking hey let's go driving around like i mean you know in the snow and then things just one bad thing after another well you're you're kind of nail nailing another thing that we've talked about we've talked about a lot um and uh one thing is meth um so if meth is involved in a disappearance um sometimes what happens in fact probably most of the time law enforcement they don't take it as seriously um if they find out that that's been involved so we

You know, we end up getting some of those cases. And it, it tends to be like in the case that you described, it's not necessarily the reason they were out there, but it certainly kind of assisted. And we work with a detective who volunteers for PIs for the missing, and he's a former NYPD missing person squad detective. And he tells us, like, look for the vice. So if we're applying that, you know, and we know someone might have been high on meth the night they went missing. It's like, okay, well, if you did meth here, maybe where would you be? You know, that's kind of where you start, I think, with with something like that, a drug like that. So what is law enforcement?

You think, okay, well, they don't look into it as much because drugs are involved because they figure what we're not, it's not like a, it's not like an upstanding citizen. missing this is a drug addict like they're on their own pretty much yeah might be a little bit of that like well what do you expect when you when you do something like that right you know that's kind of the attitude and the communities that people like like the detective that timid mentioned follow the vice and if the vice happens to be meth that'll lead you to some answer so that that vice will typically lead you to the community in which that drug was acquired and those are probably communities that are marginalized and communities that are not considered a priority so it all kind of folds into itself and they may or may not go

out of their way to answer questions to the law enforcement also you know so exactly yep um they show up at their door and knock on their door they may you know claim her up pretty quick you're right um assuming they answer the door at all um I was, it's funny, you know, like we are, you know, basically talking about like investigations and stuff. And I wrote a story called the, is it the source? Yeah, I think I called it the source. It's called the source. And it happened while I was incarcerated.

I knew a guy in there who did legal work. And he was doing legal work for another. inmate and during the course of that legal work with doing this inmate's legal work the inmate was saying he was given a leadership role and that got him an extra 10 years so he got 25 years and he got an extra 10 years because because the government said he was the leader organizer of the conspiracy and he said I wasn't he said it was another guy by the name of I want to say Jose Pada. And so my buddy, my source, said, well, if we can prove, and he said, if we can prove, now his client, his inmate client said, was saying the government lied about this because he believed that Pata was a CI.

And so they were protecting it. And it just so happened that there was some transcripts where the government had said that Pada was like the leader organizer. If that makes sense on another case. So he said, if we can prove it's the same Jose Pada and that he was a CI, we can get the 10 years off your sentence. So you only have 15 years. Now, this guy had already done like nine years. So basically he's almost leaving prison. well the guy said well let's do that so they start investigating it and he's like yeah the problem

is we can't prove how do we we can't even prove this guy exists and the name jose potta is a very common name you know it's like john smith right and and this was in this is in um california well he says we'd have to prove you know we'd have to prove that he you know he was even the same guy and that he's alive and there's no way to track that guy down and he's like right right right well maybe a month or two later he comes the one guy comes back to the lawyer the jailhouse lawyer the source and says what if potta was murdered he was no he was what if potta died and he says what do you mean died died like got hit by a car died like two bullets in the back of the head died he is like two bullets in the back of the head and he said can you prove that it's the same guys well

he said there are newspaper articles that say it's drug related and he says if we can prove that he said did you have anything to do with that he said no i didn't i didn't have anything to do with it so they call the police the police come out talk to the inmate the inmate says the inmate, the police agree that's the same guy. They show him pictures of him. He says, that's the guy. That's the guy I was getting my stuff from. That's the leader organizer.

Well, then a few months later, while they're still doing the law work, the inmate ends up confiding in the source that he

ordered the murder of Jose Potta. and he was incarcerated. So he's now got him tied up in a, in a murder that he's doing because now the FBI comes in. Because now the FBI is tracking this guy down to the murder and the FBI comes and they're investigating the source saying you're doing his legal work. Do you know anything? And he says, listen, I, I can't talk to you. He was in California.

He said, I'll get killed if I talk to you. Have me moved to Coleman, Florida, and I'll talk to you there. So they move it within a week. He's on a, he's on a transport from California to Coleman. He's about to start talking to the authorities and explain what he knows. And he doesn't just know. He like knows the phone that was used. They have the phone record.

Like he can tell him everything. Well, when they go to his U.S. attorney and see. say when the homicide detectives go to the U.S. attorney and say, look, we want to talk to this guy and if he helps us, we want you to let him out of jail. He'd already done like 20 years or something on his sentence. He was getting out in five or six years anyway. So they're really only knocking off a few years. Well, the U.S. attorney said absolutely not and actually stops the homicide detectives from going to see him. So to keep the source in prison for a few more years. The U.S. attorney puts the kibosh on, on a homicide detective, on a homicide investigation

into the murder of this guy. And his, his, his, the source is my, my idea, my, my thought process is that the U.S. attorney doesn't care about some dead drug dealer. And here's what, and, and that's what he, he's like, that's what I think it is, is like, they don't mind killing that investigation, because he, He was. He was working with the cartel. He's importing cocaine. He's a drug dealer. Well, here's the part that kills me is that he was killed in front of his wife and his two kids. Oh, and he was also a Mexican. He was also here illegally. He was a Mexican. So what do you care about some dead Mexican drug dealer? And here's what kills me is that when he was kind of we were talking about. I was like, yeah, I get that. But he was shot in the head in front of

two kids and his wife you know you would think such a heinous crime you would want you would want to investigate and do you remember when i told you guys that i had actually called the detective to speak with him we talked about that um yeah off camera that was the whole thing i called the detective and we talked for like 45 minutes we talked several times i sent him the the whole investigation he'd all ray read my story because my story that story is on my website um and i've got i think i've got two or three hundred pages i even have handwritten notes from the guy that ordered the murder talking about multiple murders drugs like in his handwriting i mean it's it's a whole thing but yeah that's the whole thing it was just some dead drug mexican what do they care right right

think that you would like homicide is the worst possible crime like everything compels in comparison to that oh god yeah man i know i'm always shocked when i learn about biases uh that uh that law enforcement has or sometimes there you know we find out like how petty they are like some some offices or people in law enforcement don't like us it's like okay like uh all right i mean nobody likes to be made to look bad and and honestly let's face like like most law enforcement you know they're just it's funny it's like that one percent that makes makes them look bad yeah it's always that one asshole that makes everybody look bad yeah yeah i mean we we never try to make law we never go have gone out of our way to make law enforcement look

bad yeah well i mean but it happens sometimes well it happens and then i i i i definitely think you know i'm i mean i you know i definitely think they're over you know overworked unappreciated unappreciated in danger you know there's lots of things that's very you know and but the other problem is i think it also attracts people that you know that want to be in a position of power, you know? And a lot of times, you know, you see these guys like just being complete jerks and it's like, you know, there's no reason to go over the top. So, but anyway, I was going to say I talked to that detective and listen, his only concern. You can always tell like the homicide detectives, that's like the cream of the crop as far as law

enforcement is concerned. Like those are the guys that get to like the top, like that's the top. That's the job. That's the job they want they love that job they um and like i said it it homicide you know murder just you know everything else pales in comparison and all his only concern was he's like i my only concern is trying to solve this case and i i'm not allowed to go talk to this guy like i can't go talk to him that's so frustrating right so yeah it was a it was a it was a bad situation we do get along with some law enforcement though oh yeah yeah i don't want to make it sound like We're all enemies all the time. We're not.

I mean, we don't see it that way. I guess my point was it's just always weird to find out that they're like, they got offended by something we said or an episode we produced or something. It's like, really, they listened? You know, that always surprises me at all. I'm always surprised when they review. When they leave us reviews. When they leave us one star.

At least you can leave us three stars. We actually were invited by the detectives in Saratoga Springs, New York. They are investigating the only unsolved homicide in that city's history with Sheila Shepard. And we met them at this conference in Albany, and they asked us if we would want to basically check out the case file, do a couple of episodes with them. And we did. We did, how many? Like five episodes with them? I think more like seven or eight seven I think was it really well it's all a blur

but we we took some cameras there we did a little you know did a little like documentary style shoot that you can watch on YouTube and or I mean I mean we they just opened up the the door for us and and their boss had said you know basically pull out all the stops like whatever you guys have to do to get this case solved and for whatever a reason, they're like, Tim and Lance can solve it. And they brought us in. What happened? We solved it.

We solved it. No. We gave it a lot of good attention. We spoke with Sheila Shepard's aunt, and we spoke with, of course, the two detectives. Really great moment where they showed us the case file, and they were going through the pictures, and it was like the autopsy photos, and it was, like, graphic, and we're like, oh, okay. Of course, they're fine with it. And then they look at us and they're like, oh, sorry, guys.

We didn't realize that you don't look at these things every day. We're like, yeah, you know, little heads up would have been nice before seeing this. But I think we did a good job. I think we did a good job giving them some ideas that they didn't have previously. I think so, too. Unfortunately, what ended up happening was we also did an interview with the original investigator. Oh, yeah. Who was much more tight lips and did not want to share information.

information with us like the current investigators were cool with you know in their eyes it's like this has been 40 years you know like what what's the harm and the original investigator's like no so we we were sort of given some stuff and then we had like we couldn't use it um and that was frustrated because I think some of that stuff was really like the stuff that web salutes love to hear about like someone that they thought could have been the killer had submitted a like a newspaper like a classified ad in the newspaper and so they had some like clippings like that and that and like we don't know if that was from the killer or not and I don't know if anyone does but I think it was theorized at the time that it could be so they were like holding

that stuff back but in our eyes it's like well this is the stuff that web salutes want they're like you put that stuff out there because you know they might do some digging that that might shake some stuff up that might get this person scared if they know that stuff like that's out there and so sometimes you get that old school mentality and that new school mentality um sort of clash why i i don't understand why didn't so i mean it's still up it's still deployed police department's information, the old detective, like, why does he said, no, you can't show that. I don't want that shown. And they said, yeah, okay, don't show it. Yeah, he just wasn't comfortable sharing information. And he was actually surprised when the detectives, I think Tim asked the question

about, you know, like you pointed out from the, from the profile, you pointed out. That's interesting. You're like, this is interesting. And the, the old detective looks at the new detectives and is like, what? Like, how is this guy looking through our fire? like he didn't say that but the look like definitely express like guys because I mean back in the day there was no social media there was no uh like internet web sleuths that that actually were making a difference solving cases it was all like very close to the chest type investigating don't say anything and I mean some of them just never get out of that well yeah that method that mode um but i also think but i also think i'm sorry that would be like saying oh i don't want

i you know testing for dna oh i i don't know what that is that's new i'm not interested in doing that that's not how we do it well it's a new tool right use this i understand it's different and it's it's uncomfortable but if it in the end it's whatever it's not like it's ruining the case it's it's another it's just another tool at your disposal so i think some of those things in that case file like those classified ads specifically were holdbacks from his era back in the 80s so he didn't want any of that stuff going out because that stuff only the killer would know you know and so i think that was their thought whereas the new school that was his thought i should say whereas the new school investigators are like well dna is going to be what solves this case

It's not a holdback item from a newspaper clipping from 1988, you know what I mean? So again, it kind of those two methods clashed head to head. New school investigators were willing to make that risk because they believe that, look, DNA is the only thing that's going to solve this anyway. Even if you get a confession, you know, maybe it's not the killer. You know what I mean? Did they have DNA to compare it to? Yeah.

Yeah, they do. Okay. So they've got DNA. but they just they just now we just need a it's funny because you know people like periodically i think you got you have to i wonder how the system works if like they run it and they tag it in the system to say hey if anybody shows up it it should link to this because people are constantly every time i've every time i've ever been arrested and moved from location to location they take your DNA they take your DNA they i've had my DNA taken 15 times how do they um get your

DNA. It is like a swab? Yeah, it's just a swab. Yeah, they're not pricking your finger or anything. Um, but yeah. So, I mean, you would think at some point, like that's, if you actually did something horrible every time that these guys, every time they take that, they have to be concerned. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's always that guy that's, you know, about to get out on a DUI and gets arrested for a murder he committed, you know, 20 years earlier and thought for sure he got away with it. Right. right um yeah but yeah it's it's those new technologies they catch up with you eventually yeah it that's the same thing if there was a guy in hawaii that had been on the run for i forget what it was like 20 years or something and one day he got pulled over and they asked for a

fingerprint for some reason they just give us your fingerprint and he gave him the fingerprint and a week later they arrested him you've been on the run for 15 years or 20 years or whatever it was, you know, that's, that's the problem. Yeah. We just interviewed a wonderful woman and that episode is out yesterday on crawlspace, Kristen Middleman from a company called Authrum Labs and DNA Solves. And they have this powerful, amazing new technology that is literally solving cold cases daily now. They are a young company. They've raised a bunch of funding. I think she said that they're the only, they're the only company that is funded by the three departments in the government, like the Department of Justice, the Department of, something like

Department of Health or Human Services, something like that. And they're, they're solving all these cold cases. And they just solve the Lady of the Dunes case, which is like one of the crown jewels of mysteries. You have like DB Cooper, like Lady of the Dunes was one of those. that no one ever thought would be solved. She was found murdered in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the 70s, and they identified her as Ruth Marie Terry, Ruth Marie Terry is her name, and they figured it out. They're piecing it together now, and now there's an active investigation to find out who her murderer is.

This seems like a really novel idea. Like, you know, you have this powerful technology, and you have a group of people that are working really hard on solving these cold cases. And it's not just bringing answers to family. It's freeing up law enforcement from that problem that we keep talking about, which is they're backlogged. They're not, you know, they work too hard on these new cases come in every day that have to be bumped down the priority ladder because a new case comes in and a new case comes in. These, this organization, author, is literally like taking the bulk of all of these and they're daily they'll solve three or four now i mean they started off and it was like wow

aathrim just solved this one and then like a week later you'd hear another one and now it's like during our interview like she knew that the lady of the dunes was just solved as we were talking to her and go ahead what is what is the technology and you're saying of this new what is it is it a i ai is it a software software what it's 23 me just kidding well No, so their site is DNA solved. So they're building their own database of civilian uploaded DNA profiles. So that's one thing. They're asking for everyone's profile.

Anyone who's gotten their DNA through 23M, I guess you can upload your profile to DNA solves. But I think what's so special about what they do is they're only working with law enforcement. So they'll get a piece of something, you know, and they'll get DNA from that. And then they're also investigators to some degree, and they work with the law enforcement to sort of, I guess, work backwards. Like they do the investigative genetic genealogy part of it. So in the case of Ruth Marie Terry, like, you know, I guess I don't actually, I don't really,

maybe that's a bad example, but they will sort of like if they get a piece of DNA, they will work in genealogy and people's family trees, essentially. They'll get way up in your family tree. and essentially number it down to who it could be. And then they hand that over to law enforcement. So that DNA that you submitted to us is from, you know, one of these few people. And their technology is essentially a beefed up sequencer. Like they'll sequence the DNA.

Right. And it's just faster than the way state labs have run historically. And, you know, even we're still seeing it. know like they're just yeah it's it's great that they're sort of taking some on so many cases now and they are funded by the government now um so yeah i do think there's going to be a lot more ladies of the dunes uh type discoveries um from authrum in the next few years nothing's off the table like zodiac and things like that like all that stuff's on the table um if there was DNA solved or uh saved i should say yeah oh my god right she was even talking about like

how little DNA they need. They need like, honestly, like, when she spoke, when you hear the episode, it sounds like Tim and I come right in after, but that's only because, like, the gap after she stopped speaking was too long to keep because we were processing.

We were like a minute behind what she was saying. Because she's, yeah, exactly. She's a scientist and she's very well spoken. But she did give a fact about, like, when you touch your hand to another thing, like you leave a certain amount of DNA and they're able to pull like even if it's 15%

of that initial touch they can pull in sequence which is pretty amazing. Yeah, I saw one of these programs where somebody had he'd ended up, he had killed a he killed a woman in a store and he grabbed a towel

to wipe something off and put it down. He didn't leave any DNA, you know, you wouldn't think, they said, well, we know the killer touched his towel. And so they said, yeah, he just left some, some skin and some sweat that he had on the towel. And they then multiplied it enough to be able to test it. And then that was it. They ended up tracking him down.

And they got him. That was it. Yeah. It's amazing. But, well, so, so what are you guys doing right now on Crawl Space and this documentary you're working on? well uh let's see so we interviewed you yesterday uh so that's one one thing that's coming out next week coming out next week yeah i saw that i saw the um the thing on was it instagram yeah yeah tick tock as well yeah yeah that came out pretty good yeah i saw on instagram they just

oh you said it to me uh i put it i i think we tagged you on instagram and it goes to your DM the DMs you automatically But are you on TikTok? Yeah, I've got a couple different channels. I have a, I want to say it's Matthew Cox. What's the name of my TikTok? Jess? Why?

Well, she's not. Hold on. I think I searched for you yesterday and couldn't find you. Well, I have one that's called Inside the Darkness. It's got like 18,000 subscribers. And then I have. Matt Cox. Is it Matt Cox? What did they know? What this guy name it? Crime. C-R-I-M-A-M-C-C-R-I-M-K-K-K-K-R-I-M. Is it Matthew Koch crime or Matt Cox crime? There are, yeah, yeah. It's here. There you are.

Yeah, Matthew Cox. It's at Matthew Cox crime. Oh, great. 60,000 followers. Yeah, it's very cool. It's got, it's pretty, there's a bunch of, some of these have like a million, 1.9, 1.3 million. Yeah, nice. That's cool. Okay. So, you know, I'm almost constantly getting kicked off. Off of TikTok? Yeah, yeah.

You know, the stuff, because it's all crime-related stuff. Yeah. So they're constantly saying, you know, you got a strike, you got a strike, you got a strike, you got a strike. They're arguing about it. I've got one of my, a guy that watched my channel who runs it for me. And he's, you know, he's great. But, you know, it did pretty well. It got up to like 55,000, and then it's dragged since then.

I think it's now it's a little over 60. So it's still growing. Yeah. So who do you see yourself, who do you see playing yourself in the Netflix series? Stop, stop. Tim and I were going back and forth yesterday. We have how many versions? We have a young version, a middle-aged version, and then your future version.

And then my current version, the old version. No, no, no. We have someone much older. Yeah. I think the current Matt Cox would be played by Joaquin Phoenix. Yeah. It's got to be. Where's my girlfriend?

I see. Oh my God. I always say, I'm like, well, it doesn't, like, it can't be anybody that's taller than like 5, 6, 5, 7. Or if he is taller than he, everybody else has to stand on like a box. Yeah, like they do with a, like Tom Cruise has to do in his movie. but it's the other way around right um so or what it we are um younger you i thought younger you could be um am i pronouncing him right terran taron egerton i have no idea who that is he played uh

he played um elton john in the rocket man movie and he also played did you see um blackbird I think it was Apple TV but no I forgot the name of his character and the it was a true story about a guy who went to jail for it was

like light drug dealing or something and he was offered a deal to coerce a confession out of a serial killer he was transferred to this like maximum security prison to infiltrate this guy's existence in

coerce a confession out of him like where the bodies were located and both performances him and the guy who plays a killer are phenomenal like it's a it's such a good show but he's in prison and when we were talking I'm like yeah this that's a younger version of Matt Cox right there yeah um yeah I I had listen you know that the problem is it's like Look at, like, Jordan Belfort for the Wall Street. Like, you know, he was played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Like, they don't look anything alike. Like, what do you know?

So it's, it never ends up being a guy that's really close to. They pick who they want. So that's true. I was, you know, and also the other thing is like, you know, who I think I look like, you know, I think I look like Brad Pitt. Every, my girlfriend disagrees 100%. She's, listen, don't get crazy. Okay.

but yeah so um you know i i i don't i don't i don't know you guys are cracking me up i think the walking phoenix is pretty spot on older i'm older matt cox is michael douglas i'm like oh my god listen yeah that works too my mother used to say all the time you look like michael douglas you never tell you that you look like michael douglas i'm like mom michael douglas is old Well, the younger Michael Douglas, not too young because you're not, you're not that young anymore. So. That's an amazing impersonation of your mom. Oh, my mom was, my mom was a gangster.

She was hilarious. Yeah, she was funny. She was, you know, the Catholic, you know, are you guys, like the Catholic mother is just like the Jewish mother. You know, she's, you know. Oh, are you, are you growing a beard? Are you growing a beard? No. mom i just haven't shaved in a in in a couple of days oh okay well then you should shave

you know she'd say do you want me to buy you a collared shirt i go no mom i have collared shirts you don't wear them i'll wear a collared shirt the next time it was just a bam bam man are you know no oh you should get a haircut oh maybe you should i should i need a hair maybe you should do that So I have a question for you, if you don't mind. When you, when you were released in 2019, you started your YouTube channel and you started the show. How much, how much technology? Like, how, how aware of that are you when you're incarcerated?

Like, because you, I, so I really didn't start for probably over, probably I, I didn't start for a year. I started doing this about two years. ago where I should have started like as soon as I got out of the halfway house I should have started and the worst thing is is that this guy you know Danny with concrete I did a video with him and it got like one guy like in within a couple months it had a million views I had over a thousand subscribers on my channel before I ever posted a video just guys were just subscribing they would find me and subscribe to me and you're trying to get you to start putting up videos and Danny told me your your videos blowing up your story's going to blow up you need to

take advantage of this you need to start posting videos and I was like I don't why would I post videos I'm like I don't know I don't have the equipment I don't have any money to buy the equipment he goes you have a cell phone oh I know but it'll look like crap he was it doesn't matter what it looks like it doesn't matter he has put something up start posting once a week talk about you want to, people are fascinated by you. There's hundreds of thousands of people every month watching your video. And then by that point, I'd done like one or two others. Like I did valutainment. That got over a million. I did soft white undervalue. So within a six month period of time, I had three videos that were all getting hundreds of thousands of views. And I was just,

you know, I was super intimidated by the entire thing. Like I can turn my camera on. I can, I can work it. I can put it on the, you know, put it on the card. I can insert it in my computer. I can edit it. I know Final Cut Pro inside now.

Like, like, you know, obviously you guys heard earlier. Like it's the little settings. Like you went in and changed something on my camera. What did you change? I don't know if that is.

There's like 40 things you can change. I don't have time to figure out what you did. So, you know, which is, you know, I called a, um,

a Connor and was asking him. So, but I waited too long. and it was too uncomfortable, and I should have started. And as a result of that, I missed a massive wave that I was on. And as a result of that, I missed it. And so instead of me ending up with half a million subscribers, you know, I've got, what, 50 coming up on 60,000 subscribers. Because by the time I started posting and got everything the way I wanted it, you know, that was on my way down as far as the algorithm.

used to be if I leave another wave there may be yeah there may be but look this is you know and I said this on on your show and I've said this you know I say this all the time is that like I have a great life you know I just have a great life like to me people in my comment section they're always saying you know why bro why hasn't your channel blown up why don't you have more views why aren't you're well you know it's it's a you know it's a it's a grind but i'm doing better than i was yesterday i'm doing better than most i enjoy doing the videos and i can pay my bills so i don't have an issue with the way things are going i'm thrilled yeah i mean i i would say you're doing great like for like like like you've uh really really uh massed a large following i would say i

I would definitely not look at this as a missed opportunity in any way. You've made a lot out of your stories. And you've got a big following. But you're right, though. It's always getting bigger. You know, tomorrow it'll be bigger than it was today. Yeah. And honestly, something could happen.

Just like you said, you know, who knows. Who knows what happens. So I just want to be clear that when you were incarcerated from 2006 to 2019 for 13 years, years, right? That was a huge time in technology. I mean, everything blew up during that time. When you were in there, you didn't have access to anything like that, social media, anything like that. You have computers. So like if I wanted to email you, like here's the thing about like the federal system. It's way behind like most states, you can get tablets. You can get all of these types of things, right? Well, you have a computer, you have like four or five

computers for 180 guys in every unit. So 180 guys, you've got five computers. And what that computer consists of is I can log on to assist to the system and I can send an email to what's called Core Links, the Core Links website. And then if you're signed up with me, you can go from your computer at home onto Core Links and retrieve that. Then you can send me one back. Then I can go on like there's no internet it's like a communicating through through a um i don't know i don't it would be a doing a huge disservice if i were to say through um instagram or facebook or messenger it's it's similar but you can't send pictures you can't send screenshots you can't send it's all it takes about a two hour delay from one to the other it costs me money as the

So there's no internet search. There's no, I get to use the phone about 10 minutes a day. So you get 300 minutes a month. So that's basically a 10 minute phone call a day. And let's say I talked to you for 10 minutes and I hang up the phone. And I thought, oh, I forgot to tell him something. You know, let me call Lance back. And I pick up the phone. I can't use the phone again for an hour. And then, of course, you have to stand back in line. So you stand in line. You wait. You might wait 15 or 20 minutes to get back on the phone. You pick up the phone. And if you don't answer, after I call a couple times, you basically have to get up, get off and get back in line. Because the guys aren't going to say, you know, it's so yeah, there's no, there's no. That's even more impressive to me that

you came out and went right into it and amassed the following you did without. Well, in fairness, Lance, he doesn't know what the ISO is on the camera. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't just, This is true. In some ways, I've made a huge leap, and in some ways, I'm like, you know, people start talking, and I'm like, I don't know what you're saying. Well, I know. It's impressive, I have to say. It is impressive. The nice thing is that, you know, I'm okay with admitting that I don't know.

I know lots of guys that just, oh, I don't mess with that. I don't mess with why, because you're uncomfortable because it creates anxiety because you don't want to. to look stupid. I don't mind looking stupid. I don't mind saying, listen, bro, I don't know. I don't know. Help me. Tell me how to do this. And then a lot of guys are like, I have an assistant that helps me sometimes. She'll just go, here, just give me the phone. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I don't want you to get. I want you to show me what you're doing. I want to do it because I can't keep calling you. I need to know. And I think that that was a huge, for me, that was huge because initially I was like just do it and then I realized after six months now you can't do that you can't do that

you have to learn as uncomfortable as it is you have to force yourself to learn this you know which is horrible so especially for somebody who wants to be in control of everything all the time you know which is like an issue for me I want things my way were you were you like that before you went into incarceration? Yeah, I was. I, well, kind of, but I mean, I think I'm a little bit more OCD now, you know, like I hate clutter. Like if you saw my, like I have two areas in my living room.

I still have a living room. I live in a nice big house, but so I've got two studios. But the fact that there's multiple cameras with cords running all over the place. that's killing you it it bothers i don't even really look over here luckily my girlfriend is worse than me so like the bed's always made the pillows are in the right place all the clothes are always like she's very um you know very very oCD everything has to be in a certain place in a certain way so we get along you know great but like this one section of my house i just have to completely ignore yeah yeah do you when you're putting your dishes away do you

rotate dishes I know my girlfriend's in charge of all that ask her I mean not now I'm just curious because I do you don't want to eat off the same stale dish every single time so I don't know the ones that come out of the dishwasher go to the bottom and do you ever see sleeping with the enemy

I love that movie it's a great movie it was great yeah absolutely you know cans in the cupboard Yeah, when she opens up the covered. I remember getting goosebumps. Oh, shot up my one. Isn't that amazing that they can make that moment so effective? She opens the cabinet and it's just cans.

And it's so scary. Cans have never been so scary before in the history of the world. But speaking of movies, Matt, after we interviewed you yesterday, it dawned on me that your story reminds me of catch me if you can a little bit yeah i'm sure you've heard that can yeah that comparison um because you seem to be able to figure out uh all the ways that whatever the people in the system have going on like that there are like little loopholes that you can find you know that other people can't find yeah i'm i i definitely am i'm super inquisitive and i remember do you remember we talked about the

the manager that told me to white out the 30 day late? Yeah. It's funny. I used to drive her nuts. Like I would walk in. I'd say, hey, listen, I've got a client. She's married. She works. She this. And I'd go through the whole scenario and she'd go, no,

you can't. The most she can get is 80%. I'd go, okay. Then I'd leave. And I'd come back. I'd go, okay, here's the thing. Her husband gets social security disability. and he this and he that and she's go, what's his credit look like? And I go to this and this and she'd go, no, it's not going to work. Okay, I'd leave and I come back. Wait a minute.

Here's the thing. And she was like, she would get furious with me because she's like, you know, I kept altering what I was, you know, the, I kept altering the, I don't know, what factors or the variables trying to make the deal work. and you know and and she was like you're the only one that does that but then again i also was like the only i was also closing more loans than anybody because i was like i know there's a way to arrange this so that it it will work you know we've got two people here that both create

income and one of them has you know one of them has good credit and we've got you know so we would go back and forth back and forth and every time i've ever been told no whenever the under underwriters, you know, I get one of my brokers would come in and say, yeah, yeah, it was denied. And I go, why? Well, they sent this. It's denied. I'm like, why was it denied? Like, that's what's important. Who, you can get, you know, I don't care that was denied. I need to know why. We need to know what to do when we go to the next lender. How do we correct this? Like, and I always say this all the time. Like, like, I don't mind failing, you know, not trying is what I have an issue with. You, you, you, you, is like, you, is like, As long as you're trying, you know, that's fine. You can fail and fail and fail. I don't care. So, but, you know, yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm always wondering why, why, why, why, why. What can we do to get around this? What can we do to get through this? What can we do to get over this? You know, there's got to be a way here. How, what can we alter to make this work? There's a deal here. I'm so glad we're on this topic because I didn't ask a question I wanted to ask yesterday. You had mentioned that you learned things from, movies sometimes and you had used schindler's list as an example but you had a Freudian slip I think because you almost said Shawshank Redemption and my question is please tell me were you

thinking about ways to escape prison oh yeah I I I have like two two movies that are my favorite like one is Shawshank this is all before prison one was Shawshank one was a movie called Gattaca um wow okay that's a good movie oh it's a great movie right well I love the fact that he was unwilling to accept his plight in life, right? Like he was, despite everything was against him, he, he wouldn't accept it. He knew there was a way to get, to get to, you know, to become an astronaut. He just knew it. And he did everything he could to make that, you know, to make that, you know, a priority

or make that work. So, yeah, I definitely. Definitely, you know, Shawshank, I love Shawshank. And when I first got to prison, so when I got 26 years, my thought process was almost immediately was how quickly until they send me to a camp. Because camps don't have fences typically. There are a few. You know, I always have to clarify stuff like that. You notice that when you get the comment section, you start to realize I got to start altering the way I talk because people will.

constantly nitpick. So it's like, yes, are there camps out there in the United States that have fences? Yes, there's a couple. So typically there are camps. And what happens is you'll have 150, maybe 300 guys, and you'll have two COs, two correctional officers watching them. And they're in a separate building. So guys leave and come back, leave all the time. So my thought process was how long until they send me to a camp? And that was the first question I asked my counselor when I I got to the prison I got to the medium she's like okay she's going over my paperwork this and this and she goes she said um you know do you have any questions I go when can how how can I get myself to a camp and she was like oh wow you know

like you really shouldn't be here at all she said you the problem problem is you have so much time. So if you have more than 20 years to serve, you have to go to a medium. From 20 down to 10, you can go to a low. From 10 and under, you can go to a camp. And she said, I've seen them place people in camps with 12 years, make an exception. She said, so honestly, Matt, she said, you are probably looking at about 10 years before you can go go to a camp and so my first thought was 10 years i got 10 more years because i i was adamant that if nothing changed i would get to a camp and i would just leave you know yeah i figured i would befriend someone you know you'd befriend someone but just before you're going you convince them to

pick you up and you know and have provisions for you right like clothes a little bit of money so that I could immediately go and steal someone's identity, get an ID in their name, kind of start my life over again. But so I was at the low, I was at the medium for about three years, and then I went to the low. And, you know, that was like always in the back of my mind. But then I got my sentence cut. And then I got it cut again. They was like, oh, wow.

I might actually. I don't have to escape. This is great. not as dramatic as Andy Dufrein but I like that I like that you were thinking about it yeah who told me the other day somebody told me the other day climbing through that somebody had myth busters or somebody said that climbing through the um that tunnel that he would have died from the uh from all the escrimand you know the the the whatever it put off they said that it would have killed him he would have never been able to get more than

whatever a few hundred feet like why tell me that i know like i don't like that's when myth busters is just like okay you're smart i got it that i don't want to know that i don't ruin that for me who knows anyway you got to test it to find out for sure yeah i'm willing to put those two guys i'm willing to risk their life to find out if that's true so yeah is that it any no more questions the interview around on you. I'm sorry. I know, I know we're not like your typical guests. We don't have a criminal pass. But if you want, I could tell my inspection sticker story again. Yeah. Yeah. That's. I love you're sweating. Oh, I just, oh, my gosh. yeah i i it's so funny too because um like i i'm like knowing now what you know or you know

knowing what i know now in dealing with like law enforcement and stuff like you know before i just i i had this this completely warped perception of law enforcement you know which and And now after, you know, you've been around like correctional officers and police officers and FBI and you realize like, it's just, they're just regular, you know, schmows like everybody else. And so, um, uh, it's, I don't know. I don't know. I was just thinking, you know, what? If I do get pulled over for the inspection sticker, I'm going to, I'm going to channel you. I'm going to be like, what would Matt Cox do in this situation? And I say, are you? Are you telling. me that my sticker fell off? Thank you, officer. Thank you so much. Listen, I had a guy the other day. It's November? I had a guy come in come come on the other day and he said, you know, so the police came. You know, my girlfriend and I were there and they, they raided my house and they sat me down. They said, well, you know, I guess you know where we're here. And, and I, and you know, I jumped in.

it. I said, yeah, I do. My girlfriend's running an illegal steroid operation. I can't believe you got this showed up. I was going to turn her and myself. You need to talk to her. I'm going to go. Glad you're here. She's like, you would do that. You would do that. I always thought that it would be really, well, not fun. But if the police ever knock on my door for any reason, you know, whether they're looking for like a lost cat or something, I'm going to open the door and I'm going to say, took you guys long enough just to see what they say. I've been calling. I expected this day would come.

Something like that. Could you imagine just, all right? Hold your hands. All right. They're behind, they're under the shed. That's great. I don't know. Matt, it's got to be something of a good feeling to know that if you, if every, if things ever got too hot, you could just leave.

You could just leave. and take another identity and start over. You'd have to abandon your YouTube following and TikTok page. That might be what does it, though. Like, you're right, huh? Now I've got a million subscribers. And now that's your vice, is your followers. Oh, man, you know, you know what I told my, actually, I've told this several times,

but I was my, my probation all. officer was when they we were in the halfway house she she uh was questioning me you know they come they do like a preliminary talk with you before you leave the halfway house and you know we were talking and she's like so you know what are you planning on doing for work and i was like oh you know this and that and this we were going back and forth back and forth and and she said something she she said well you know you're on like one of the highest custodies for probation You know, so you've got to do, you have to, I'm going to come by your house randomly. You have to do urine tests.

You have to do this. You have to do a monthly statement. You have to do. She's going on and on. I was like, right, right, right. And she said, she said, you know, because, you know, the last time you were on probation, you, you know, over a million dollars. And I was like, yeah. Bad time.

She was like, you know, but you're all done with that. And I was, and I kind of went like that. And she goes, what is. what do you mean i was like well you know maybe and she was what is maybe i said well i said you mean like even a year from now if i'm still living in someone's spare room and i can't pay my bills and i'm riding the bus and she goes yeah i go i'm going to commit a massive massive fraud i'm going to leave the united states because that's where i went wrong last time and she was like she looked at me he was so funny i really thought that was the shock value was going to get her and

instead she went she goes you know she's said, I'm not as surprised at that as you might think. And I said, well, hopefully it doesn't come to that. She's like, hopefully it doesn't come to that. I hope not. Yeah. I can't believe you said that. Oh, yeah.

Well, she can't do anything. You know, she would, listen, I'm already at highest custody. It's not like, oh, I'm bumping you up. So what? So I, I, I, you know, guys asked me, they're like, do you, do you ever, so do you ever, you know, do you ever think about fraud? I'm like every day, every day I think about it. And I do.

I do like, you know, I joke with my girlfriend that, you know, yeah, things are going good. But if they go bad, I go, yeah, there's always fraud. She's, don't even play. Don't even joke about it. Don't even. It's out there. So, yeah, it's not going to be a surprise to anybody.

So you're doing, you're doing everybody a favor by putting it out there. And I just realized that the last scene of the Netflix series about you will be Tim and after you've disappeared again Tim and I receiving Tim and I No, we're gonna I don't live in Bolivia Yeah, we're gonna receive

like mortgage default letters In the mail and we're gonna go Matt It would be like the scene in Wrath or was it It's not Wrath of Con or what did the Star Trek Where Kurt goes you know Cod

Yes You know it's funny Um, in the, at the end of the American greed episode, the secret service agent makes a comment about Matt, about how there's like, I want to say she says five million or six million. There's like six million dollars still unaccounted for in Cox's case. And we like that money back. And then the narration is, you know, it'll be a long time before Cox can go to his Cayman Island account. It's like, who said Cayman Island? what are you doing you know they do this whole thing and as a result of that my my ex-wife she used to come see me when i was locked up and she would make these cracks like you know i know you know you've got money out there i know you've got money i go this i go enough with i'm not talking to stop stop and i always thought it'd be hilarious if you set up a camera and one day i pulled up to her driveway just after I got out of prison, got out, pulled a shovel out. She sees me. She

says, what are you doing? Nothing. Don't worry about it. I start digging in her front yard. I pull up like a safety deposit box, throw the dirt in, throw my car, get in and then drive off. What are you doing? It was at my whole time. Don't you worry about it. at least you know the better yeah good time okay we're we're listen i feel like i've milked this for as much as i can get out of it unless you guys have something else good no no this is this has been fun it's always fun chatting with you matt yeah we um you know it's so funny too I would love to do it. I would love to talk to you about that, the source, that story I wrote.

But I hate to even bring it up, mention it, because I hate it when guys are like, you know, hey, you should do this. Yes, yes, I need another project. Thank you. Let me spend two weeks on a project because you think it'd be a good idea. For you. Yeah. But, yeah, it's too bad. That's actually a really cool story, too.

And I have all these documents and everything. The problem is I just don't think it's ever going to be resolved. Even though, like, they know who did it. They know the whole thing. I just don't know what's going to come of it. But wild story. Yeah, it is. If you read the whole thing, it's just like, you know, the whole thing unravels in, in the prison.

So, but look, if you guys ever come across anything, ever want any, you know, want to, you know, come on the show and talk about a case or anything like that. Like, the more you can spread something around, you know, the better. Sounds great. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah. And vice versa, too. If you ever want to come back on Crawl Space, talk about anything, feel free. Lord knows we can talk for two hours if we want. Yeah. Listen, that's a huge plus. That's huge. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching. If you like the video, do me a favor and hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified, share the video, leave me a comment. I respond to a bunch of the comments.

Also, as I'm sure you will have realized by now, I have a Patreon account, and I would love the support if you were so inclined to do so. What else? Yeah, I think that's pretty much it. I have several books out. They're all on Amazon. All the links are in the description box. And so is my email if you want to send me an email. And I appreciate you guys watching. And thank you. And see you.