Murder With My Husband - 216. The LIVE Stream Crime Scene

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of Tiktok streamers who stumbled on a dead body.  https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Discount Codes: https://mailchi.mp/c6f48670aeac/oh-no-media-discount-codes Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-dark/id1662304327 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36SDVKB2MEWpFGVs9kRgQ7?si=f5224c9fd99542a7 Case Sources Federal Way Mirror - https://www.federalwaymirror.com/news/landlord-sentenced-to-46-years-in-prison-for-deaths-of-austin-wenner-jessica-lewis/  Fox 12 Oregon - https://www.kptv.com/2023/04/07/man-sentenced-46-years-killing-tenants-stuffing-bodies-suitcases-found-seattle-beach/  The Seattle Times - https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/burien-landlord-found-guilty-of-murder-in-couples-deaths/  https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/burien-man-sentenced-to-46-years-in-prison-for-killing-couple/  https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/family-mourns-couple-who-were-fatally-shot-found-in-bags-on-west-seattle-beach/  NBC King 5 - https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/landlord-sentenced-46-years-prison-west-seattle-suitcase-murders/281-b692d95b-1da1-4913-94fb-fb19be9e6841  https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/tiktok-video-seattle-human-remains-investigation/281-1f3af118-f0cb-4f15-8cc8-cecda7b0ef7a  BBC - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63912186   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vVk_EeQr50  Kent Reporter - https://www.kentreporter.com/news/burien-landlord-found-guilty-of-murdering-tenants-placing-bodies-into-suitcases/  Mercury News - https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/26/landlord-accused-of-murder-teens-on-an-adventure-found-the-bodies/  New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/style/randonautica-app.html  Westside Seattle - https://www.westsideseattle.com/highline-times/2023/04/07/convicted-double-murder-michael-lee-dudley-sentenced-more-45-years-prison  Fox13 Seattle - https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/closing-arguments-in-trial-for-man-accused-of-killing-tenants-stuffing-their-bodies-in-suitcases  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit ancestry.ca and start discovering your family story today. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Morland. And I'm Garrett Morland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband.

I'm just putting this out there right now. If I sound weird, it's because I have Invisalign in. It's my first day and it's very uncomfortable and I feel like I can't talk. But I'm putting that out there for everybody so you all know before we jump into it a reminder we have patreon and Apple subscriptions all ad free content bonus episodes you get all of our live shows for free as well lots of stuff going on

so if you're interested check it out Payton why are you laughing at me right now am I talking that weird? No. Yes. Yes. It's so hard to talk in these. No, it's really not bad. Okay. It's really not bad.

It really is hard to talk in these though. Okay, do you have your 10 seconds? My 10 seconds? I wanna make it short because honestly, it's hard to talk and it kinda hurts. I got in a busy line today. You already said that. I know I already said that,

but I don't really have anything else. You can't do that. And also, I know I'm just sounds a little complaining. So whatever, but I'm really hungry right now too. And we're going to eat right after we record this. And so I'm pretty excited about it. We're going to eat some Mexican food. I'm gonna tell everyone I'm gonna get,

and if it makes you hungry, I'm gonna get tuna ceviche, and then I'm probably gonna get chicken fajitas or a steak and lobster. Very opposite end of the spectrum, I know, but I'll decide when I get there. Some chips and salsa, maybe some guacamole, a water, and yeah, that's what I'm getting. So hopefully everyone hopefully it's making everyone a little bit hungry and

On top of that note, let's hop into a true crime episode and on top of that note Makes sense. I don't know. It's not a thing. No, you would say and on that note or and on top of that You would say on top of that. I'm pretty sure on top of that note is a thing I'm gonna look it up kind of mean that you got to tell your order and I didn't get told my our source You like to tell your order. I'm just saying you never asked me Well, you have your ten seconds and binge to earn into the dark, you know, you don't get to hear those. Oh my gosh I want to hear your order. I forgot.

Let's hear it. Okay, fine, I will go. You don't have to bake me. Okay, go. I get two shredded beef enchiladas, flour tortilla, green sauce, rice and beans. Oh, nice, babe. Thanks.

Welcome. Our sources for this episode are Federal WayMir, Fox 12 Oregon, The Seattle Times, NBC King Five, BBC, Kent Reporter, Mercury News, New York Times, West Side Seattle, and Fox 13 Seattle. Trigger warning, this episode does include discussions of murder and the dismemberment of a body,

so please listen with care. Okay, I've talked in the past about, honestly, my complicated relationship with social media, just spending too much time scrolling on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, whatever it is, it can have a serious impact on your mental health. But even though we all know these sites aren't necessarily that good for us, we all just tend to keep going back to them again and again. It's so tempting to see what your friends and acquaintances are

up to, whether your exes or your enemies are doing well Or maybe not so well and obviously like the memes I'm a meme queen so I have to get on for the memes, but there's one thing most of us never ever ever Expect to see on social media and that is an active crime scene And so we're gonna be covering a case where that happened today. All right, let's hear it.

I'm intrigued. So in fairness, this is obviously not what three Seattle teenagers meant to broadcast when they were streaming live on TikTok back on June 19th, 2020. Oh, 20. So that was like in the midst of- TikTok blowing up. Yeah. TikTok blowing up.

Yeah, TikTok blowing up. So they're streaming, they're live streaming three teenagers in Seattle. So they were on Alki beach because an app called randonautica had sent them there. That's basically an app where it would generate a random set of coordinates. So if you want to spend the day exploring an area where you've never been before before you don't particularly care where it is You can ask randonautica where to go and it'll just give you coordinates and then you go there Do you know I don't know if it's still a thing, but I mean we were okay We were just looking for things to do I think a little bit at the beginning of 2020

Yeah So basically these three teenagers arrive at the beach according to where this app has sent them And they don't really know what they're gonna find there, but they were excited to check it out. They're live streaming the entire adventure. Everyone's going along with them. And while they're walking along the shoreline, the TikTokers were still broadcasting everything live.

And that's when one of them comes across an abandoned suitcase. So it's lying. Do you know where this is? Like, do you remember this? No, no. Okay. So it's lying in a rocky part of the beach. It's not too far from the waterline. It wasn't an area where someone was likely to just drop and forget their luggage. Like it was definitely out of place. It looked maybe like the tides had carried it in. Yeah. And so since the teens are live streaming and they're looking for a random adventure anyway,

they figure let's walk over and pop open the suitcase. Oh, freaking no, dude. Let's see what's inside. And they make a joke about maybe having like lost treasure in it. That's what they say on the live stream. Not that there was much of any reason to think this bag had anything really valuable inside, especially because once the teens walk up, they can smell something coming from the suitcase.

But for whatever reason, this doesn't stop them. It would probably stop most of us listening to this, but it doesn't stop them. So they decide to keep live streaming while they unzip the suitcase. And as soon as they unzip it, the stench became even worse. It was hard not to gag as they keep opening and inside they find a bunch of black garbage bags. And I mean, like the suitcase was stuffed with them. Now, obviously the garbage bags are not empty.

There were human remains inside of this suitcase. And these TikTokers had literally just live streamed themselves finding a dead body. That is so insane. I don't know what I would do. So they immediately turn off the stream, which good call. They are like, hey, we're ending the stream and they call the police,

but they couldn't take back all of the footage that they'd already live streamed. I mean, it's not like this was edited to the world. They were live. It was out there for anyone to see. And they didn't take the video down or set it to private once the recording had stopped. In fact, the video begins to go viral,

literally while detectives start their investigation into this crime scene. So as soon as law enforcement officers arrived at the beach, they opened the suitcase to examine it for themselves. And it was just like the Tik Tokers had said, there were garbage bags full of human body parts inside. Now, clearly the victim or victims had been chopped up and stuffed into these bags. Oh, so after some searching, the police also found even more garbage bags floating in the ocean.

Like the ones in the suitcase, these two had human remains in them. So three days after the initial discovery, on June 22nd, 2020, the police found yet another suitcase. Now this one wasn't by the beach, but it was in a river that ran by a power station. But just like that first initial discovery, this suitcase is also full of body parts.

Now, eventually the police determined that all of these bags and suitcases contained the remains of two different people. So two different dumping grounds as well. They assumed the victims had been killed by multiple individuals working together and they based this on a couple of factors. First, the cuts on the bodies weren't uniform. It looked like someone had used different tools, different methods for this dismemberment process.

That would make sense if there were several people working to chop up these victims together. So this is where the police go. They're like, because there's different tools, we think that there was multiple people. Now these two bodies were in bad shape, understandably. Not only had they been cut up and spread across multiple locations,

but they'd also been dead for quite a while. It took some time for the authorities to identify the victims. But later that summer, the detectives learned the deceased people were 27 year old Austin Wenner and 35 year old Jessica Lewis. They were a couple who had actually been dating for eight years. So a couple that was murdered and they'd been living together in their current apartment since December of 2019. So for seven months, Jessica, who went by, worked at an assisted living facility for the

elderly and her co-workers and patients absolutely loved her. She had a reputation for being the kind of person who could keep calm, just deal with anything that came up. She didn't let the stress of her job stand in the way of giving every patient the care and love that they needed. Now, this may not be surprising given that Jesse was also a mother of four. She'd been around the block in terms of taking care of other people. She'd seen it all and done it all and she knew how to keep her cool. Now, her boyfriend Austin actually used the nickname Cash, so Jesse and Cash, and he loved everything about nature and the outdoors. His hobbies included loading his dogs into his truck and driving off into the wilderness,

country music station cranked on the radio. Cash and Jessie's love story hadn't always gone smoothly or easily. Like any other couple, they had sometimes hit some rough patches. They got into fights, they struggled to make it work. But through the entire eight years that they'd been together,

they'd been totally committed and loyal to one another, but sadly their relationship had now come to an abrupt violent end. It's crazy because we do cases from all different years, you know, 1800s up until now, and it's just weird whenever there's one that's more recent because it just goes to show like this stuff continues to happen and will continue to happen until the world is gone. And this is just the epitome of a modern day murder for someone to be live streaming on TikTok for when the bodies are found. Exactly.

It goes to show how things evolve and it's kind of scary. Right. So as police are looking into Jesse and Cash, they feel like the murders came out of nowhere. They don't feel like this couple had any enemies, which meant so far as the police were concerned, there weren't any obvious suspects. And they didn't find much useful information when they tried to pull data from Cash and Jesse's phones. In fact, both of their phones turned off at around 7 p.m. on June 9th, 2020. So this was 10 days before their bodies were found. So it seemed like they were killed roughly a week and a half

before the murderer maybe dumped their remains. So interestingly, when the police notified Cash and Jesse's families of their death, their relatives weren't actually totally shocked. Of course, they never had imagined anyone in the world would kill these two, but they had noticed that the pair were missing even before their bodies were found.

So during those 10 days, they couldn't reach them. They had been doing some investigating on their own. Cash's dad, Dean, had drove out to the house that they'd rented in a Seattle suburb called Burien. He knocked on the door, the landlord answered. This was a 64-year-old man named Michael Dudley. He owned the house where they all lived together, so Michael stayed on the ground floor

and Cash and Jesse leased an upstairs bedroom from him. Now, when Cash's father explained who he was, Michael, the landlord, didn't really seem interested in talking to him. He just said the two had moved out recently and he didn't know where they had gone. So that was surprising to Cash's father, Dean, and he only felt more suspicious when he was about to leave

and he passed a garbage can on the property. He happened to glance into it and he recognized a bunch of clothes that belonged to his son, Cash, in the garbage. Now, it's true that some people throw out old stuff when they're moving, right? The stress of packing, unpacking, maybe help people realize how much clutter they don't need. But Cash and Jesse had been living in Michael's house for less than a year. They'd already been through the stress of moving recently and they'd already had their chance

to clean out their junk in the past. So more importantly, Dean knew his son was pretty short on money at this time. He wasn't in a position to go on a shopping spree, update his wardrobe, throw clothes away. If he was moving, he would have taken all of his clothes with him. So Dean told the police that he didn't believe Cash and Jesse had just

moved out of the house willingly and he found the landlord's story suspicious. So the investigators took a closer look at the home and the people who lived in it. So police go back to the night of June 9th. They're looking at what went on that day and they learned that several people had actually called 911 at around 7 p.m. on that evening. It was the exact same date and time that Cash and Jesse's phones were shut off. The calls were placed by multiple neighbors who lived next to Cash and Jesse and Michael, the owner, and multiple neighbors gave the dispatcher Jesse and Cash's address. They'd all heard the sounds of gunshots coming from that house,

and at least one witness had also heard a male voice say something like, don't do this, we'll just leave. Okay. So what the freak? Maybe that was Cash trying to talk down the killer. Maybe he was begging for his life. Either way, the police had responded to the call. They drove out to Jesse and cash's house. They knocked on the door, but nobody answered. Do you, I don't want to ask this question yet because it'll give things away. I'm sure you know the answer. So I'll wait, but I'm curious the time from when they were killed until the time that the suitcase was found

because of people now are like, Oh yeah, I heard gunshots and I heard this I would hope that it's within a couple days it was ten days oh it's ten days ten days so no one reported the gunshots for ten days they did report the gunshots okay the police go out to the house yeah they. They knock on the door. They knock and knock. Nobody answers. So the police just leave. Okay. And they don't follow up.

So multiple neighbors call the cops in Seattle and say, Hey, there were gunshots from this house. We heard arguing. That's insane. The police show up. No one answers. They leave and they don't follow up. Now, I think it goes without saying that this was a mistake. Like this is very clearly a mistake because when Jesse and Cash's

autopsy results came out, they said that both of them had been shot to death. So it is most likely that the neighbors were correct. Jesse and Cash had been shot in their house that night. Their cell phones then turned off. Police came out, knocked on the door, nobody answered and they left. That's wild. Okay, you guys, when I've tried meal kits in the past, it was effective but also time consuming. Making my first hungry root recipe was a breeze

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and its official partners Air Canada and MasterCard. So now the homicide detectives, obviously, they get a warrant to search the home. And the landlord, Michael, was there with them while they walked through the house. And they asked him about that night. Why didn't he come to the door when the police came to investigate?

And he acted like he didn't know what they were talking about. He says he didn't ever remember hearing gunshots. He says nobody came to the door that night. Maybe he was busy or distracted Next the officers went to the bedroom Jesse and cash had been renting and they discovered that there was fresh paint all over the walls Now the time they don't think much of it's not like the whole wall was repainted But later on the cops do come back and chip off this paint and underneath they find two bullet holes

do come back and chip off this paint and underneath they find two bullet holes that had recently been filled in with spackle and when they dug into those holes, they found three bullets embedded into the wall. All right. So next they scoured the entire house for Jesse and Cash's blood and they only found one small smudge which they determined was Cash's.

It was in that same bedroom, the one that he'd rented with Jesse, but it wasn't nearly the amount you'd expect if two people had been shot to death and then dismembered and stuffed into suitcases. I'm talking like, it was a very small smear. It could have been from a cut or a nosebleed. Plus those bullets the police found in the wall didn't have a single drop of blood on them either, which meant they didn't hit anyone. Those bullets that were in the wall didn't go through anybody.

This is crazy. Now on top of that, when cadaver dogs searched the property, they didn't alert. They didn't alert to any dead bodies having been there. So I know it sounds very weird and suspicious, but the police literally couldn't prove that anything violent had happened there. I mean, the only thing they have is the neighbors saying,

we heard gunshots and now they're saying, well, maybe he just shot the gun into the wall because the bullets don't even have blood on them. This leaves them with two possibilities. Cash and Jesse were murdered and dismembered somewhere else. The bullets in the wall and the 911 call from the night their phone shut off were both just red herrings. Possibility number two was that whoever killed the couple had done a very, very thorough job of cleaning up after themselves. So of course, if someone had scrubbed the apartment

down, that would mean that they would have had to spend lots of time there. If a stranger had committed the murders, the landlord or one of the tenants would have probably noticed someone spending a lot of time cleaning the bedroom. But if the killer was someone who lived there,

they could cover up the crime more easily without drawing suspicion. So the next step was for the police to talk to Cash and Jesse's landlord, Michael, plus all of the other tenants who had access to the house. From the sound of things, Michael, when he gets interviewed, is not a huge fan of the couple. And their conflicts went way beyond the usual roommate disagreements. Apparently Cash and Jesse had gotten into some kind of trouble with the law while they were living in Michael's house. And I'm not entirely clear on what those legal issues were.

The sources were pretty vague, but apparently he complained to another tenant that they were stealing from him. Makes sense why he didn't want to help or be involved. Not saying that it's okay or not okay, but it makes sense why he was doing what he did. Well, either way, it was clear that Michael was unhappy about the fact that Cash and Jesse were doing illegal things from their unit. And on top of that, the two of them weren't up to date on rent.

Michael had actually tried to evict them for falling so far behind, but Cash and Jesse just were refusing to leave. So Michael resented them for not paying their share while from the sound of it being less than ideal tenants. So this meant Michael had a motive to want Cash and Jesse dead. He wanted to get them out of the bedroom so he could get different tenants who followed the house rules and paid their rent.

Too easy, too simple in the way it's him. So of course he had access to their room. He could have easily scrubbed it clean for days after the murders, but none of those details were proof that he'd done it. All the police had still was circumstantial evidence. That is until they started talking to some of the other renters who lived in that same house. This includes a woman whose identity has

not been made public. But she approached the investigators with a truly shocking story. So once this all comes to light, she reaches out to them. According to this woman, she'd moved into the house late on the night of June 9th, 2020. This is the night that the neighbors hear the shots at 7 p.m. This is the night of June 9th, 2020. This is the night that the neighbors hear the shots at 7 p.m. This is the night that the couple's phones get turned off. In other words, the night when the police believe Jesse and Cash were killed in this house,

another woman was moving in. And when the woman showed up at the front door for the first time, Michael let her in, but she says he looked like he'd recently been in a fight. There were scratches all over his face and body, his glasses had been broken. Now this woman was not renting the same room that Cash and Jesse had lived in. She was gonna rent a different room that had been vacant. But while Michael was showing her around, this woman stuck her head into Cash and Jesse's room anyway just to check it out. And she saw fresh bullet holes in the walls

and in the furniture. Okay, I don't know, this is getting weird. So it's the same wall that was spackled over. It just seems too obvious for the landlord to do it because of course he's gonna be the first. Suspect. Suspect, sorry. I cannot talk right now. Well, so this lady is a little freaked out.

Like when she's looking around and she sees these bullet holes, she's a little freaked out. So what does she do in 2020? She takes her phone out and she takes a picture of the bullet holes. And then when she comes into police, she shows them. And she goes, but get this,

these bullet holes were not the creepiest thing I saw when I was touring this house. She says there was a huge heap of clothing on the bed in Cash and Jesse's room. And there was a human hand sticking out of the clothing. Oh my gosh. So as you're listening, you're probably like, why didn't she run screaming out of the house? Maybe it was one of those instances where everything was just so absurd. She was like, hey, maybe someone's just like sleeping.

You don't think that's a dead body. Halloween decoration. There's no way that's a real hand. Right, like she was just thinking, okay, maybe it's fake or maybe there's just someone sleeping under those clothes. And she goes, and it just kept getting weirder because there was actually a sink in this house that that was just like full of guns so she moves in and eventually Michael the owner is like

hey can you help me get rid of these guns that are in the sink and she tells police she comes forward and she says I did like I helped him I don't know why she didn't say no I don't know if she just felt like she couldn't say no, whatever it was, this was her last straw. Like after she helped him with this and everything she'd seen and done, she moved out. She went straight to the police to report everything that she'd seen inside the house. So this was obviously enough to confirm for the detectives that Michael most likely did this. He had motive. He wanted the tenants out so he could bring in someone who would actually pay rent, he had opportunity, he lived in the house,

no one would get suspicious if a landlord was cleaning a bedroom that had recently become vacant, and he had the means. Thanks to the statement of that anonymous woman, the detectives knew that there were guns in the home at one point, especially on the night of the murder. So not to mention the fact that he threw out Cash's clothes and lied about it, saying that he'd moved out, or his odd story where he claimed he never noticed

the gunshots that night when multiple neighbors did hear it. Well, between the woman's testimony, the 911 call, and the cell phone data, the detectives were able to build a decent timeline of the night of the murders. The detectives figured that Michael must have killed Cash and Jesse at around 7 p.m. He covered up their bodies with clothes and cleaned up just enough to not raise any alarm bells. He didn't have enough time to get rid of the murder weapon,

so he tossed it in the sink. And then for the next 10 days or so, he spent as much time as he could, scrubbing and cleaning that room to the best of his abilities. I'm gonna be so surprised if it's Michael. Really? Yes.

You don't feel like this is pretty open and shut? I feel like it's too open and shut. Okay. Police think that he did it until there wasn't a trace of blood left, but then he has the bodies to dispose of. So the police believed he chopped Cash and Jesse up into smaller pieces so he could fit them both into the two suitcases. He

dumped one of them on the beach where those TikTok live-streaming teens found it and then another one ended up in the river. Interestingly, once the police saw Michael as a suspect, they pulled his cell phone data and it showed that over the course of the entire summer of 2020, Michael only visited that beach once and it was very late on the night of June 18th 2020. This was the day before the remains were found. This was the last piece of evidence that they felt like they needed and on August 19th 2020 they arrested Michael and charged him with murder. No, no. I can't. It doesn't end here. I can't believe that this is the case. So let's keep going because I'm waiting for a, but so by the time Michael faced a

jury, it was December of 2022 and there was a lot of room for debate about whether or not he was actually guilty. In fact, there was so much back and forth between the two sides that the trial dragged out for two months. The prosecutors had all the evidence I mentioned already, the cell phone data, the bullet holes in the wall, the former tenant who was gonna testify against him. The defense had the utter lack of any kind of blood in this house.

Even if you consider the fact that he could have scrubbed his home top to bottom in the two and a half months that passed between the murders and his arrest, it would be difficult to scrub away every last piece of blood so that even cadaver dogs didn't find anything. And since the police never found the murder weapon, that was another piece of evidence against him that was missing. The defense lawyers tried to argue that the state was building a house of cards against Michael. It was flimsy. It could topple at any time. There was nothing tying him to the crime, but circumstantial evidence. I think one of the weirdest things that I can't stop thinking about is why did he or whoever go and paint over the bullet holes. So that is the one thing that is sticking my mind,

because that's crazy and it doesn't make sense. At Miele, our partner is the planet. Our appliances use less water and energy and are tested to last for 20 years of use. That's the ultimate form of sustainability. I'm Nelson Fresco, president of Miele Canada. From now until June 30th, every Miele dishwasher purchased supports the planting and preservation of Canadian forests through the Miele Forest Initiative.

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Tennessee sounds perfect. So they ask him about this obviously, and he says the bullet holes in the wall were just from an accidental discharge. He said that one day he wasn't handling his firearm correctly and it went off. It didn't hurt anyone, went into the wall. That was why the bullets didn't have any blood on them.

And that tenant who said that she'd saw a pile of clothes with the arms sticking out, well, apparently she had a long history of lying. She'd been in trouble with the police in the past. So maybe she made up the story with all of those incriminating details because she thought she might get something out of cooperating.

In fairness, there kind of were a lot of holes in her testimony. It was odd that she didn't speak up when she said she saw a dead body or when Michael supposedly asked her to get rid of a murder weapon. She only went to the police and gave a statement after she helped him basically cover this up. And it was odd that even though she supposedly did get rid of the gun for Michael, she couldn't tell police where or how. They still hadn't recovered it by the time of trial.

Michael's lawyer even presented an alternate theory about who might've really killed Cash and Jessie. And I mentioned earlier that he complained that the couple apparently brought some illegal activity into the home, and according to Michael, at some point their behavior was so bad that some unknown group of people had actually pulled a gun on them

in the house. So even though Cash and Jesse escaped this encounter, Michael thought maybe those same gunmen just came back later. So it kind of is just a little bit of he said, she said, like there's not really any physical evidence. How do two people die by gunshot wounds get chopped up into pieces, put in a suitcase, thrown in the beach, ocean, whatever, and nobody knows anything about it? In 2020, we're not in 1910, it's 2020. I mean, it feels obvious that it's Michael, but by the time this case goes to trial,

it doesn't feel obvious. the evidence isn't very strong. I mean, it seems the circumstantial evidence feels very strong, right? Like, I don't know, but then Michael comes forward and he's like, they've been in trouble. Like people had come after them before. I just accidentally like misfired the gun. There's no blood anywhere.

Those bullets don't even have blood on them. Yeah, and I don't know. I don't know Michael as a person. So I don't know how many people were like, he would never kill someone or he would kill someone. There's this, I don't know, man. But, you know, obviously the prosecution, when they hear Michael's theory about it was probably someone else who had killed them, they're like, Okay, but why the body under the pile of clothes if she's telling the truth and why would you make your renter hide a gun? If you didn't actually use it to kill somebody Ultimately Michael was found guilty of the murders of both Austin Cashwinner and Jessica Lewis Okay, his sentence was 46 years and eight months in prison. There's probably I I know you have a bunch of information in front of you, but

there's probably way more to the trial than this, I would assume. Yeah, I mean, I gave like the main pieces. Summarize for sure, okay. So he was already 65 years old at the time of his sentencing, which means that he would probably spend, he's gonna spend the rest of his life behind bars, especially because he did not have the possibility of parole. Now, one reason the sentence was so harsh was because the way he treated the bodies afterward,

the courts called the dismemberment contempt and utter disrespect for the victims. Was there any proof that he actually dismembered the bodies? No proof, right? No, just the bodies were found dismembered. Wow. So when Cash's father Dean read a victim impact statement,

he said he still had recurring nightmares about the way his son and Jesse had been killed. Clearly the jury was moved, but when he got his verdict, Michael's lawyer immediately told the press that they would appeal. As of right now, he's still in prison, waiting to see what his next steps will be. And since the case is so recent,

there's a good chance that more developments will come along after this episode is released. Now there's one more part of this story that I need to include. And it's definitely something we've seen recently and I feel like I just need to include it. So obviously that's the end of the story for Austin, Jessica, Michael,

but I still haven't covered everything. And I wanna go back to the idea that opened this episode. That was when Jesse and Cash's bodies were found. It was by a trio of teenage TikTokers who were live streaming. Like I said, they turned the recording off the moment they realized there were human remains in the suitcase.

But I also told you that they didn't remove the video of finding the luggage and opening it. And we know that people tend to be fascinated by strange things, a little bit dark. I mean, we're all here. It only took a few hours for that video to go viral. And by the end of that summer in 2020, it had more than 25 million views

of someone's body being found. And once Cash and Jesse's families learned the pair had been killed and once they realized that the viral video was of their family members' bodies, they asked for the video to be taken down from TikTok. And then the teens didn't respond. And so the family escalated by reporting it to TikTok. And the app was like, hey, we're not taking it down. Like they were just live streaming. They stumbled across it.

They didn't break any community guidelines. Apparently like they do have policies against disturbing content, obviously. But the posters had stopped recording before any actual remains could make it on screen. So you see the bags and the kids realize what it is. They didn't open the bags up and show. They did not show the live stream, the actual bodies. It's just the bags and then the kids saying, Oh my gosh, I think we found a dead body.

So the clip technically doesn't break any of the rules and TikTok said we won't take it down. So this was very painful for Jessie and Cassius families in an interview with CNN. Jessie's aunt talked about her mixed feelings about the whole situation because obviously on one hand she was glad the TikTokers found the suitcase right? If they hadn't it may have washed out into the ocean, their bodies may have never been found. But maybe Jesse and Cash's case wouldn't even have been solved without these TikTokers finding this body. This is according to the family. But still, it's incredibly difficult to watch knowing that your family member is in that suitcase and it's going viral. It's just, it's a hard, it's a hard thing. So eventually the video was set to

private. So the general public couldn't view it anymore. And it's unclear if this is something the original account holder did, or if Tik Tok intervened and made it private. And I think it's just hard, right? Because there's nothing wrong with posting online. And I also think, you know, the true crime community has helped solve multiple, multiple cases and get things done with their activism on social media, but it's important to make sure that you're also not just like chasing attention. And so I don't think the teenagers ever set out to traumatize anyone.

I don't think that's obviously they weren't doing that that day. They didn't know they were gonna find a body, but sometimes even when we start out with good intentions, it's something bad can happen and it's something we could all stand to keep in mind as we're scrolling online and you know active on social media. But that is the case of Austin Wenner and Jessica Lewis. First of all, very sad that they both were killed brutally. No one deserves to be killed. Right. At all. So that's really sad. I don't know. I don't know my thoughts on this one. Two people

were killed and I hope that it was brought to justice. I mean, the justice system said that they think they know who's guilty, so that's great. And hopefully some closure for the family. I know people are going to ask about her kids. So I just wanted to clarify. We'll just leave that out. I think it was kept private for a reason. Kept private for a reason. And then one of the first cases in a while where it had me thinking a bit on circumstantial evidence.

I feel like the circumstantial evidence is strong. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like in other cases we've had that were stronger and they were found not guilty. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like in other cases we've had that were stronger and they were found out guilty Yeah, I don't know like to me, but I don't I am also on the opinion of I Have no emotions involved in it. Yeah, like if I was the parents or someone it would be way different It would be like that's the person right and so it's it's it's always different from an outside perspective

I'm sure there's stuff we don't know as well that they know and I and I think mine's not even like the, the eyewitness, the tenant, cause I know that, you know, there were some holes in her story. And we've, we've done so many cases where people lie about saying things. I mean, that's very, very common. Um, mine's more just the fact that there was clearly motive. There had clearly been issues. I think when the dad went over and found clothes in the trash can,

I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that that means they were killed there. And if they were killed in that house, I don't know who else could have done it besides Michael, because who was going to be able to clean up that house for as much time as it would take for it to get that clean. No, you're right. Michael was the only one. And I just don't understand how you don't find blood. I don't either. That's pretty crazy.

Well, that's that's almost impossible, especially because there was dismemberment. Ah, crazy. Anyways, I'm glad it's solved. So, yeah. All right, you guys, that is our case for this week. And we will see you next time with another episode. I love it. I love it. And I hate it.

Goodbye.