Sins & Survivors: A Las Vegas True Crime Podcast - Unmasking True Crime Lies a True Crime Convo

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

On "True Crime Convos" with Lanie Hobbs, Shaun & John discuss 3 interesting cases that have a unique fact pattern in common. Chris Porco: November 15, 2004 - Delmar, New York. The Porco family horror unfolds, revealing a twisted tale of lies, forgery, and a son's unimaginable betrayal. John takes us through the shocking details that led to Chris's conviction.Sydney Powell: March 3, 2020 - Akron, Ohio. Dive into the tragic case of Sydney Powell, a young woman caught in a web of deception and mental health struggles. Uncover the unsettling events that shattered a family and explore the complexities of her legal battle.Brittany Norwood: March 12, 2011 - Bethesda Row, Maryland. The Lulu Lemon Murders expose the dark truth behind a staged crime scene. Shaun guides us through the twisted motives of Brittany Norwood as she brutally attacks her coworker, Jayna Murray, in a desperate attempt to conceal her secrets.Domestic Violence Resourceshttp://sinspod.co/resourcesClick here to become a member of our Patreon!https://sinspod.co/patreonVisit and join our Patreon now and access our ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content & schwag!Apple Podcast Subscriptionshttps://sinspod.co/appleWe're now offering premium membership benefits on Apple Podcast Subscriptions! On your mobile deviceLet us know what you think about the episodehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2248640/open_sms Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sins-survivors-a-las-vegas-true-crime-podcast--6173686/support.

Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. To listen ad-free, visit zinspod.co slash subscribe. Starting at $2.99 a month, you'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you join through Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Thanks for supporting the show. Hi, and welcome to Sins and Survivors.

This week, we have a special treat for you. In December, we were guests for an episode of True Crime Convos with Laini Hobbs. The topic was three shocking instances where a killer committed a horrifying murder to cover up a lie. Chris Porco murdered his father and brutally assaulted his mother in 2004. Sidney Powell murdered her mother in 2020, and Brittany Norwood murdered her co-worker Jaina Murray in 2011 in a case that is often referred to as the Lululemon murder. We'll be back next week with a regular episode which concerns a young woman who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. You'll never believe the excuse the murderer attempted to use in his appeal. We'll also be speaking to the host of Diagnosing a Killer to

break down the psychological aspects of the case. Lainey is amazing in covering interesting and important cases, so please go check out True Crime Cases with Lainey wherever you get your podcasts. And now, without further delay, here she is to get us started. Hello and welcome to True Crime Convos. I am your host, Lainey Hobbs. I'm the host of the True Crime Cases with Lainey podcast, the paranormal podcast called It's Haunted, What Now? and the brand new podcast from Acast and Podster called Tracing Darkness. Now I'm about to welcome some very amazing and awesome people to the stage. I am excited to welcome them to the show for the first time. They're also very

new indie podcasters, which you know I have a strong affinity for. So welcome Sean and John to the podcast. They host the Survivors podcast. So welcome to the show, y'all. I'm happy to have you here despite the crazy things that are going on right now. Can you give us, before we get started, actually, we want to say something. Since you guys are local to the area, I think for sure you should go first about what's kind of unfolded in Las Vegas. You want me to answer that one? Yeah. Unfortunately, today, around noon local time, there was a shooting on the campus of UNLV. As of now, the police are still investigating and they haven't really given a lot of details that we're aware of, except that three individuals are dead. one individual's in critical condition and the alleged shooter was engaged with police and was

killed. So the shooter is dead. At this point, there's no more threat to the campus. But John and I, because we live here in Vegas, we have friends who are professors, friends who are doing some master's education at UNLV who were all at the campus today, I would say we knew about eight different people who were there. So it was a very scary time for everyone. And our heart just breaks for our community because, um, October one, it was more than five years ago now, but it's still really raw for a lot of people here. So just like always, I would say, you know, if you're experiencing any, um, ill mental health effects after this, you can always call 988. You can always call 988 and talk to someone about what you're feeling because it is traumatic for our community. So please reach out to folks if you need that support. a spree shooting here that happened overnight in San Antonio and Austin. We had, I think, about five people affected and lost. We don't have a ton of information that's out there yet. We do know

who the perpetrator is. I don't ever give any names when it comes to that. So once we learn the individuals who were affected, then that's typically when I will share some information. But I don't think the person should ever get any type of, you know, glory in that sense. I would love to hear more about your show and what helped you kind of get started, what prompted you to create a podcast. You know, you have been listeners for a while, so I always get so excited when I see, you know, listeners take the plunge and turn into creators. And I think it gives you hopefully a new appreciation of

what podcasters do and the work that they do behind the scenes to create, you know, compelling content. So give us some interesting tidbits on that. Yeah, it definitely does. And it especially, we find it impressive when people have more than one podcast, because I feel like some days we are drowning under the weight of our a single podcast. Yes. So many kudos if you can handle more than one or four in some cases. That's crazy. But really, the idea for our podcast, you're kind of partially responsible for actually. So we went to the True Crime and Paranormal Podcast Festival in Austin this year. Yes. I think, Sean, did you go before? No, no, that was my first year.

Okay, you've been to other ones. Yeah. Okay. So, of course, that's your festival, Lainey. It was great, and we absolutely recommend that everybody go buy tickets right now. Somebody throw up a link somewhere. We'll have to share that. And while we were there, as we were listening to all the speakers, it occurred to both of us that all of them, or a lot of them,

had a domestic violence angle in many of the cases. And, you know, the cases that we knew about for a long time and cases we were just hearing about. And Shauna will tell you about her work, so I don't want to spoil her story there and, you know, her background. But my immediate thought was that, you know, we always talk about the DV angle in these cases and we're like, Oh, that is another, let's talk about the DV there. And so many of those cases happened here in Las Vegas, shockingly. So it made sense to us to, you know, look into creating a podcast that addressed those two things since nothing like that seemed to exist yet. yeah there um i was surprised

that there wasn't really a vegas centric podcast for locations i was surprised for true yeah i mean there's literally been podcasts created everywhere for like every destination but i'm same surprised yeah especially if you watch our local news at night like john said will there be a case it feels like there's a case every night that to us um it's probably not accurate but it does feel like probably once a week there's something that we go that's another one yeah yeah um put in the list john said i would talk about my my work a little bit i i study criminal justice in college and i'm just always curious about what causes crime how we can build stronger communities and prevent crime. So I went to law school, but I really wanted to work in prevention.

So my whole career, I've worked with agencies that either directly provided services to victims, especially victims of domestic violence or child abuse, or agencies that address the factors related to that, like mental health, substance abuse treatment, things like that. But I did go to CrimeCon Vegas in 2022. That might be what you were thinking about when you said I went before. And that was Gabby Petito's year where she was all over the news. Her story was all over the news. And I, I didn't, I had some issues with the way that was covered and that was handled. And especially when I went to CrimeCon, it kind of sort of put my head, put the idea in my head that, you know, the true crime community could do, could do better. And when we went to your festival, it just kind of all clicked. Like, like John said, there's so much more we can be doing to address the issues of domestic violence as a part of, um, the ethical true crime work we always want to be putting out there. Absolutely.

No, and I'm, I love hearing kind of that feedback because that's what I want people to take away from attending the festival. You know, it's really geared towards supporting families and making sure they have a voice when so often, especially within what we do, we are, you know, being their voice in some way and some are doing it, you know, in a great way and others are using it for their own gain without really care or consideration. And so I'm really, I'm really thankful that that's what you took from it because, you know, if it ends tomorrow, you know, or we decide for some reason to never do another one that like have, I've heard this recently. It's been, it's been amazing and an

honor for me to, to hear that. So it's kind of one of the things I'm most proud of doing ever forget, you know, the podcast and everything. It's been incredible. So I appreciate you saying that. And also I'm talking positively about the true Crime Podcast Festival or Paranormal Podcast Festival. See, even I say it short. Anyhow, so I'm so thankful you guys are here. It was such an honor and so much fun to meet you in person. And then we've communicated a ton over Instagram. And so I'm glad that, you know, we've connected on the following cases that we're going to talk about today. And I've been planning it. What you don't know, while you're watching is that I am what I say is a Dumbledore. And we were supposed to do this like a week ago. And I was just like, God, you know, Sean is on it. She's just like keeping me on track and is like two weeks ahead of time and going for it. And then it was like, Hey, are you getting on this thing? And I was like, no, no, I'm not. Um, but I'm,

I'm really glad we could reschedule and kind of timely because we, I just covered these cases maybe a couple of weeks ago. And to me, they had the first two cases have some really interesting similarities. And then Sean, you recommended the last case, the Lululemon murders that were perpetrated by Brittany Norwood. And I was like, okay, that's amazing. Like they all kind of work together and there are some connections there that I think are really interesting. Now, if you're a listener who enjoys a deep dive, this will not be that, but you can definitely listen to some podcasts that do cover it. Obviously, self-promotion here, the Deceptive Co-Ed's episode that I did on true crime cases is out there for the Porco and Pal case specifically.

And then there are a ton of great podcasts out there who have covered the Lululemon case. It's going to be, my recommendation obviously would be Gen Y if you like kind of a discussion. The Sisters Who Kill podcast or so many other. Mama Mysteries has done it. So many podcasts to select from. But the first case we're going to dive into is the Chris Porco case. This happened back in 2004, around November 15th. And so this occurred in Del Mar, New York, which is really funny because I think Jay is on from Jayboy Nation, if you are on YouTube or familiar with him. He has an incredible channel and an

incredible following of people. I was on his show recently, and I had him read for the podcast, actually. And I was really like wanting to have a New Yorker on there because this whole this whole case, I mean, when you look back at the YouTube videos of the interrogation and then the investigators kind of doing follow ups, they all have these really very thick, like Long Island accents and everything. And so I was just like, I want people to feel what this was like. But this involves a Porco family, right? So the Porco family consisted of Peter, who was a law clerk to a man named Judge Cardona. And he had two sons with his wife, Joan, Jonathan, who was the eldest, and Christopher, who was the youngest. Now, both of those sons did not live at home at the time the attacks and murder occurred. The reason that the murder was initially discovered was because Peter, who had been a law clerk, essentially, for Judge Cardona, who was a district judge, he was extremely timely, always, you know, showing up to work on time, rarely missed a day. If he did, he was communicating ahead of time. Everybody knows somebody like that who's just like, you know, those perfect attendance kids at school turn into perfect attendance people at work and never miss a day, right? That was Peter. So when he was discovered as not being at work, people were really concerned, especially those he worked with and Judge Cardona. So he ends up sending a court officer to go and check on him. He says, listen, I really want to make sure he's OK. Who knows? I could have been that he overslept and

he didn't think it was possible. But, you know, stranger things have happened. So the officer ends up going. And the first thing he notices when he gets to the front door is that there's a key in the lock and the door is kind of pushed open just a little bit. And he's like, this is really strange. So he pushes the door open and when he walks in, he's immediately met because it's one of those houses where you walk into the foyer and you see the staircase immediately kind of leading up to the second story. So at the end of the stairs, Peter is drenched in blood. He's like essentially collapsed on himself and he's just drenched in blood on the staircase. So he goes, checks for a pulse and realizes that Peter is beyond help. He's already deceased. And he realizes that, you know, Joan might be in the house. So he does a quick cursory view on the bottom floor and then

runs upstairs. And he walks into the master bedroom and he sees Joan Porco, or what he believes to be Joan Porco, because she's not not really I mean, like she's literally been attacked with an axe that's laying right next to her. So you can imagine what she looks like. And if you see pictures of Joan now, you understand the extent of the damage that was done to her face and body. So she was just kind of a mass of blood. And he wasn't sure if she was alive or not, but he ran out of the house to call the police. He called the judge first, and the judge told him to call local law enforcement, which he did. And so immediately, you know, the house is descended upon by law enforcement, and a homicide detective by the name of Detective Bowdish ends up coming up. So while EMTs are helping Joan kind of taking her vitals, he has kind of this wherewithal instinct to start asking her questions because he notices that she's moaning and she's groaning and things like that.

So he recognizes that, hey, maybe she'll be able to answer some questions by, you know, an affirmative nod or something like that. So he starts going through a list of questions like, do you know who did this to you? And she nods her head and he goes, starts going through the families like, was it Peter? Thinking maybe it could have been, you know, an attempt at murder-suicide. And she says no. And then he says, is it a family member? She says yes. He asks if it's her older son, Jonathan. She says no. And then he asks if it was Christopher, and then she nods in the affirmative. Now, she's immediately rushed to surgery into the local hospital, and then she's placed in a medically induced coma because of the

swelling in her brain and to really just allow her body to heal. So they start going through and forensically evaluating the house and they see that there is a perfectly cut slash in the window screen to the garage, which, you know, if you've been listening to true crime and you've been watching true crime shows, you recognize a stage scene immediately. Right. You people who feign robberies and things like that. This is one of those things are like, I'm going to pull open a drawer and just throw things out neatly and things in situations like that. So this is the same thing. They immediately notice the cut and it's too nice. It's too deliberate. It's not anything that, you know, you're quickly, because you're trying to quickly

get through, you know, if you're trying to rob somebody's house or you're trying to do that, you're not taking your time. This is something you're doing probably for the thrill of it. And you're going to be, you know, very quick. So they go through, they see that there's, you know, some cuts along the screen, and then they noticed that the axe that was hanging in the garage was the one that was found in the bedroom, which again tells them that the person didn't come prepared with a weapon. And it was clear that this was meant to be an attack on the family. So it's odd that somebody wouldn't bring a weapon with them to attack somebody. Now, they end up conducting the autopsy on Peter rather quickly. It's not something that takes a really long time. Like you would expect months and months

to pass. This is happening rapidly because, again, Joan is alive. She could wake up. She, you know, could be able to name her attacker. So they want to get as much evidence processed as possible. So they end up discovering through the autopsy and kind of how the crime scene is situated, that they were both attacked when they were in bed. These attacks happened in the early morning hours of November 14th. So both of them suffered really deep wounds. Obviously, Peter suffered the greatest in terms of fatal wounds and had extensive brain damage. Now, because of the way he was hit in his head and how deep the ax went into his head, it actually altered his brain response to the pain. And he had no clue, like he couldn't process that he had just been attacked. So he

ended up falling back asleep. He wakes up with his alarm and he continues throughout his day. So he wakes up, he brushes his teeth, he empties the dishwasher. He goes and picks up the newspaper and he ends up locking himself out the door. So he remembers that he has a key under the flower pot, unlocks it. I mean, think about that. He's literally bleeding, right? Gushing blood. Because a head wound is, I mean, a really, you know, any type of head wound is going to be really bloody. Not to be graphic, but that's truly, I want to kind of allow people to picture that.

Imagine if somebody had just happened to walk by when he was out picking up the newspaper, how much things could have changed for him, you know. So he walks out, locks himself out of the house. He remembers the flower pot key and then he unlocks the door, walks back in, and that's when he collapses. So he went through a whole routine, packed his lunch, the whole thing. And it's just really insane kind of what your body does, you know, to kind of preserve yourself and your pain. Now, because Detective Bowditch had already asked that question of Joan, Chris Porco was the suspect. There wasn't really anybody else that they were considering at the time. And some people will say, who believe in Chris's innocence, will say, this is when the tunnel vision started. And this is when they wanted to make the evidence fit the crime or Chris fit the

evidence, right? They wanted to make sure that he was the perpetrator. Now, Chris is a student at the University of Rochester, which is about three hours away from their home. Did you go to Rochester? I did. I went to the University of Rochester. Yeah. Did you go in for a dorm? No, I didn't. I graduated about 10 years before him. We weren't in the same fraternity either. I looked that up and I was like, oh, my gosh, please don't let him be in my fraternity.

Well, I'm sure he's been expelled. So he's technically not in the fraternity anymore because, you know, they have rules about that. Yeah. They have conduct rules. Yeah. It's kind of violating those conduct rules. And when you're in a frat, you're in a frat for life unless, of course, you kill people. Then your membership status is revoked. Sorry, buddy. Yeah. And one of the interesting things about how Chris found out, he didn't find out from his family or from the detectives. It was actually through a reporter from the Times Union who called him and said, hey, what do you think about your parents being dead? I honestly can't believe that happened.

Yeah, it's insane. And he was like what what do you mean and she was like um you know I'm gonna have to call you back because she realized that like he hadn't been notified so he ends up calling 9-1-1 and if you want to hear that call you can also go on YouTube but it's also featured in the episode but he calls 9-1-1 to basically say um I heard my parents are dead. Do you have any information about that? And so that's when he's notified. And I find this part a little interesting in that he didn't drive himself back home. He ended up getting picked up by his uncle

and then driven back to the hospital. So at the hospital, he's approached by Detective Bowditch. They also had to put a bolo out on him just in case, but they saw him at the hospital. They knew he was going to be there. And so they told him to come in for an interview or would he be willing to come in for an interview? They didn't arrest him. He went voluntarily and he was like, sure.

Yeah. And I do find it really surprising that he fully cooperated, that he gave them DNA when they asked, he gave them their clothes. He wasn't happy that they wanted to process his car, but I mean, whatever they did. And then they asked him, I mean, he was willing to talk with them. I mean, I guess. Oh, hours. I mean, I have the full transcripts of the interview. It's thousands of pages long. Yeah, I'm surprised, but I mean, maybe I'm not surprised.

But they asked him when he'd last seen his parents. And I thought this was like, this feels like semantics to me. He said a couple of weeks ago, oh, he had been at the house and he had last seen his parents and I thought this was like this, this feels like semantics to me. He said a couple of weeks ago, Oh, he had been at the house and he had stayed over just a couple of days ago, but he didn't actually see his parents. Um, he was hanging out with his girlfriend and then he went back to school.

And when he went back to his dorm, he couldn't stay in his room because his, his, his frat director was sleeping in his bed and so he slept in the common area yes and so so this was like that part is weird yeah it's a wild story yeah because so much extra detail was staying in a completely different room at the time like he wasn't even then in there so there was there was a bed that was free so he easily could have slept in his bed and the director could have taken his roommate's bed and i was like why didn't anybody point that piece out

like why didn't anybody go where was your roommate and they asked him that and he said he was staying somewhere else and so the even the detective didn't follow up and ask like so why didn't you just sleep in your dorm room yeah i think that's um it is like a really i mean it's a really weak attempt i think in my opinion an alibi or an explanation as to what he was up to um so i guess when he was talking to the detectives chris explained that you know he didn't have a job but you know how where was his money coming from? So that kind of had the detectives thinking that there was some kind of financial motive there. And I guess they found out that his dad, Peter, had co-signed for that yellow Jeep Wrangler that he was driving. And they did ask around the dorm, like you said, about that alibi, but no one saw him in the common room

where he was sleeping. I guess a bunch of guys were hanging out and they were watching Shrek 2 and they didn't remember seeing. It's my favorite part of the story. I know. I know. Like that's what stands out. It's like, guys, it's important it was Shrek 2. But John, can you speak to the size of that common area? So the way Monroe, that dorm is laid out, it's sort of a, it's like a squished X. And there are, if I'm remembering it right, there are bedrooms in all the different corners, like doubles, and maybe there's three doubles in one single. And the center is a large common area. So they're really, I guess it's possible you could come in and just go right to the common area. But you couldn't get to your bedroom without going through the common area.

So if someone's sitting there watching Shrek, I mean, Shrek was, the first one was good. So if you're, I mean, if you're watching like one of the, like the second one, which wasn't as good, you probably noticed somebody walking by you. Yeah. But you also couldn't miss somebody sleeping on a couch there like it's not big enough that you had like 50 people sitting in there and you'd be like sure he could have been there it's not that they didn't see him and he was there it's that they didn't see him because he wasn't there and he had to have known that too and that gets to one of my theories my theories are just something that makes me shake my head about this

whole case, which is like these explanations he was offering are very much the most easily debunked claims you can possibly think of. Yeah. And they were checking this alibi while he was still in the interrogation room. So they were feeding this information real time to the detectives on the scene at the university, which I think is also interesting. It's like they're actively catching you in these lies. and survivors, we think it's so important to bring you new podcast episodes centered on the victims of domestic violence, but we need your help. Head over to sinspod.co slash Patreon and join one of our membership tiers starting at only $3 a month with a discount if you purchase a full year. You get access to our behind the scenes swing shift episodes where we talk about the

episode right after we record it and tell you more about our theories on the case going beyond what you just listened to. And you'll also get ad-free versions of all episodes and we'll even send you members-only swag. You get all this and you can feel good about yourself that you're helping defray the cost of producing the show every week. So head over to sinspod.co slash Patreon today. Yeah, for sure. And they started, like we were talking about the financial issues, it just became really evident that Chris was,

he was like a con man. I mean, he was stealing from his parents. He had stolen their laptops and then sold them on eBay. And where he had been working at a vet hospital, they had burglaries and he was selling their stuff, that stuff he had stolen on eBay as well. So he's just quite the scam artist. He's just a total con man. And he even impersonated his brother at some point and said that, oh, I'm Jonathan. I'm Chris's brother. Chris has of, you know, doing the, the right thing and trying to work on his grades, he just forged his transcripts. So he could be, you know, all A's and B's, you know, Chris, the honor roll. And it just, it really stands out to me that he was such a liar. And I'm not sure if his parents ever believed him or if they just kind of went along with what he was saying, even if they were kind of like, oh, that part's not really clear to me because he fooled them about everything. Yeah, I think they I think it's one of those things we'll see. I think the similarities

there with the Sidney Powell case, too. I think it's one of those things where he talks and he talks about something so convincingly to his parents, and they also don't have proof, like he's providing them the transcripts, right? And I don't think that they're thinking, you've forged this. I'm thinking, wow, I think it would make you honestly probably feel guilty as a parent, thinking your kid is full of shit. And then they hand you transcripts, you know, A and B, and you're like, man, I can't believe I thought my kid was, you know, this, this liar, essentially, you know, so I can, I can imagine that they probably like gaslit themselves in this when it was really Chris doing it.

So I'm trying to remember all the facts. So he lost a scholarship or something like that. So he needed to pay for his tuition and um i guess he tried to con his parents that there was some kind of issue that had to do with his grades being bad because a professor lost his final and because the professor lost the final the university of rochester was going to be so generous right and just cover his tuition because of their mistake. God, I wish that happens all the time. They're like, oh, that's our bad, you guys. Don't worry about tuition. We got it from here. Yeah. And to be clear, the University of Rochester, when I went a long time ago, it seemed expensive

at the time. It was like $20,000 a year. Now it's more like $60,000 a year. Oh, wow. So it was probably in the $40,000 a year range when he went. So it's an expensive private school. Yeah, they're not going to choke that down. Yeah. So he asked his parents, okay, let's take out a loan

so I can pay the extra fees that the school won't cover. I just have to pay the fees. Tuition's done, but I have to pay the fees. So they said, he told them, oh, it's going to be a loan for $2,000, but he accidentally took out a loan of $30,000. So he paid his tuition, paid his fees, and then bought that Jeep. Zeros. How do they work? And yeah, and he made a mistake it was it was a mistake it was an accounting error right in his favor yes and he didn't bother to correct it right so yeah i'm always curious how he ends up getting away with things like this

yeah and the other thing is i don't know if he thought he was going to get away with this stuff or like how long he thought he could keep this grift going. But he forged his father's signature to secure the loan and then ghosted his parents for weeks. And assuming, I guess, that they'd never find out. And again, going to like, how long did you think you could keep this up? Yeah, it's 30K. I mean, do you think Citibank's not going to make the call? Well, it turns out they did. And they contacted Peter confirming, you know, the loan.

And this, of course, alerted his dad to what was going on. So Peter, who is obviously very upset by this, really frustrated with his son, and is probably starting to wonder what the heck is going on he emails chris about it um i don't know if he tried to call first but he emailed i don't know yeah always calling yes yeah um and this is just two weeks before his murder and um and then again the incident with the yellow jeep the unmistakable absolutely unmistakable yellow jeep that uh that chris got on ebay um he used his father's funds he says he he says that he didn't forge that one but he he definitely got his father to co-sign for that one didn't he you know scammed his way in so he probably impersonated his father to get the co-sign on that. His father found out about that.

And at that point, his father said, like, listen, if you do this again, we're going to have I'm going to take legal action. Because, by the way, his dad works for a law office. Also went to law school. Yes. Yeah. Also went to law school. Not the right person to mess with. No.

But, you know, in a heroic act of solid parenting, signs the email and says, you know, we still love you, but, you know, basically you have to cut this out. Yeah. So the police start to identify these patterns of behavior, which are very clear. It appeared to me like as I was learning about this case that it was like, you know, there are puzzles that have like a thousand pieces that are all very similar colors, and it's very difficult to pick out the edges and fit all the pieces together. And then there are some puzzles that have four pieces that are like a dog. And you're like, I'm going to fit this puzzle together in five minutes. And this is sort of that. Yeah, it was really quick.

It was really quick. Like everything fell apart right away. So back in the day, in the before four, we had toll booth operators. I don't know if they still have these people that work in the toll booths. It was an absolutely... For the people who still need to pay cash when they go through? No, they don't anymore. Not in Texas. They just scan your license plate. It makes me want to drive through Western New York again and see if these people still exist. This was a plum job, too. They got like 40 or 50 bucks an hour to stand in those toll booths.

Those people fought over those jobs. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Interesting. But so in order to get from Rochester to Del Mar, he had to go through a toll booth because the 90 is a, the thruway, New York thruway is a toll road, which I traveled many times. So they have these cool things called cameras and they had them in 2000. And tollbooth operators, the humans in the booths, remembered the bright yellow Jeep going through the tollbooth. And they were able to be questioned about that. You know, they know who is working when. So they talk to the tollbooth operators at 1045 p.m.

November 14th. The Jeep passed through on the way to on eastbound toward Del Mar from Rochester. And then at 214 a.m., the their security system, the Porco security system starts to fill in some more of the gaps and give us, you know, another large puzzle piece. 214 a.m. Their home security system is disarmed using the code. I don't know a home invader who's like, I'm going to guess the master code. It's a four-digit code. But first, let me cut the screen. I will cut the screen first, just in case. Throw them off.

So then, 5 a.m., November 15th, the Jeep passes back through westbound the toll booth heading to Rochester. And when the police finally impounded and searched his car, they found receipts in his Jeep confirming that it was him. So then it wasn't until 8 a.m. on the 15th that he was seen in his dorm. He said he was there. No one saw him. That's because he wasn't there. So he was arrested for murder in 2005. And the attempted murder on his mom. And the attempted murder. Because Joan survives this attack, right? She comes out of her coma.

But I think one of the interesting things about this, and I don't think I mentioned this in the beginning when we talked about it, but the thing about Joan and one of the things I find interesting about that in particular and how it leads into the Powell case eventually is the fact that she wakes up and the detectives go do you remember what you said about Chris and she's all like no and she said they tell her like you said Chris is the one who did this to you and she's like I I don't have any recollection of it, but I don't believe that that would happen. Like, I don't believe that Chris could have done this. And it's not that a remembrance of, yes, I know he didn't do it. It's and I believe he did not.

So unwavering support of her son still to this day, like she does not believe that Chris is the one who committed the crime. You know, like she stands by his side. And I find that part so interesting because I think that would be so hard to do as a parent when it's the evidence to me is so overwhelming. And it's I wonder if it's just the fact that her brain won't let her believe that her son would do this to her and her husband. Because at the time time she definitely said yeah yeah it was chris mm-hmm laney did they have any other suspects because you said they had okay so they they thought it could have been jonathan because he was you know he was also away but he was i think in north carolina at uh on base because he was in the military. He was in the Navy.

And so they thought it could have been him. But then they checked his alibi. Nothing. They did know about the burglaries that were reported. But then once the information about Chris selling this stuff on eBay and it being tied, literally tied to his eBay account, you know, they were like, OK, there's there's no other motive here. The only person who stood to gain anything from any of this happening was Chris.

And one of the things that we learned was that he consistently bragged that he was going to be getting a substantial inheritance once his parents passed away. So, I i mean that's absolutely clear motive um you know he's having money problems he's bragging about his large inheritance so um also the fact that his father is now catching him in the act and threatening him with consequences um you know from all the stealing. And of course, yeah. No, go ahead. I was going to say there's,

it makes sense that the police would stop looking. There are definitely instances where that bias comes in and you think to yourself, I can't believe the police are still looking at this guy. Their, their bias has taken over and this is not the guy. And it turns out that it's not eventually, and they won't look at any other suspects but in this case it seems that the evidence was just so overwhelming that like yes why would they look at somebody else so despite the fact that his mom supported him and said couldn't have been him um he was found guilty and given a minimum sentence of 50 years in prison. And he has made appeals on some different and grounds, kind of sketchy grounds, but not been successful. So he is currently

living out most of the rest of his life in prison. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, so I don't know. I think we've already kind of touched on this, but to me, the evidence is super compelling. Like even going through the transcripts of the interview, I think definitely highlights his. His ability to make an excuse for everything, and if I'm been obsessively watching the Charlie Adelson trial, as you guys have probably seen but um georgia the prosecutor had a really great um opening when she or um closing statement and was like even when she questioned charlie and was like for you the simplest answer is not the correct answer for you you have an excuse for everything like don't you think that that's demonstrating that you have something to hide that you aren't telling the truth? And for Chris, it's the same thing.

It's like he had an answer for everything. I didn't forge my dad's signature because I didn't technically sign it. I pressed a button and it was an electronic signature. So I technically didn't forge it. Right. It's all electronic. So it was all semantics in that sense. Like, did I physically forge my dad's signature?

No. The bragging about the inheritance. Same thing. It was I was a dumb. Oops, sorry. I was a dumb kid. You know, I was just being braggadocious. I was dumb. I made mistakes. But would I kill my parents? No. of him she wrote a letter to the times union um basically saying that people are wasting their time uh convicting chris and they should be looking for um peter's real killer and to me it's kind of shameful that all roads point to chris in my opinion um and it's it's shameful i think that chris is allowing his mother to live with this being an unknown in her life like i really wish that he would just come clean and say like i did it i'm sorry i did it even apologize like you can't take it back but at least give her the peace to know you know it's done and that's kind of why i selected out of the many cases that could have been selected next why i selected um the Sidney Powell case. It was also a case I was watching actively on YouTube because it just concluded. Right. She was just Again, spoiler alert. I immediately was like, man, that sounds a lot like Gran Amato. That sounds a lot like Chandler Halderson. And I've covered them too, because I've

always been fascinated by these people from a very psychological perspective of why you think lying is going to prevent the truth from coming out and why you think murdering people is going to prevent the truth from coming out. Like the most obvious suspects, right? Grant Amato, same thing. Chandler Halderson, same thing. Chris Porco, Sidney Powell, the most obvious suspects. Sidney's case is a little bit different. But I just always go, was it worth this secret? I mean, the secret was revealed anyway. And now you've also killed your parent or you've killed your family. So that's why I selected the Sidney Powell case. This happened in 2020, so fairly recently in Ohio. The interesting thing here is that there's nothing of note in Sidney's childhood, right? there's nothing of note in Sydney's childhood, right?

There's nothing of note that would stand out when you go through this case and go, that's it. That's the turning point. Like you would for Chris, right? You would go, OK, he's been he's been actively doing these things and lying and covering it up. That's not the case, really, for Sydney. She has a younger sibling who we don't talk about, obviously, because he was a minor at the time when the crime occurred. But she is the daughter of Stephen and Brenda Powell. Steve had worked at this place called Akron Steel Treating Company for such a really long time, like over 20 years. Brenda, same thing, at the Akron Children's Hospital.

They had been members of this community and ingrained in this community for such a long period of time. They raised their children there. They grew up in that area. So they were really important, I would say, to their neighbors and everybody around them. They had established themselves. They'd also been married for 24 years, which kudos to them because you don't hear about that happening too often. How long have you guys been together? We've been together like 11 years. Yeah. Married like five, six, five, six. I should know that. I should know that. You should know that. When did you get married? Five, 2018. It was five years july 8th july 8th 2018 boom wow nice yeah nice i remember that because we didn't get married seven seven because of the everything was booked because seven seven seven seven yeah lucky seven yeah right okay so yeah you don't hear about that i've been around with my husband about the same time together, almost 10 years and then married seven. I think now I don't know how long since 2017. We'll make it 24.

Yeah. I mean, I hope so. Right. I have no desire to divorce because there's literally nobody else on the planet who could deal with me. People are the worst. And he actively chose to like procreate with me. So I was like, you're crazy. You crazy.

And I have to stay with you. But they, okay. So the Powell's again, nothing, nothing of Sydney's childhood up until she went to college, she had a quote unquote, normal childhood, very stable. She was, you know, high GPA and high school friendly, introverted in some respects until you got to know her. I call those people like ambiverted, right? Like they're really outgoing with their close friends, but in a bigger group, they're a little bit more introverted. Now the Powell's use this app. I've never used it in my life, but I know many people who do use the Life 360 app, which is kind of like the find my friends feature on an iPhone, but I think a little bit more sophisticated because it can actually send you

like alerts and things like that. Have you guys ever used that before? I haven't, but it came up in the research we did for one of our Tech Corner episodes about stalking, interestingly, because... can you use it without people knowing so abusers often put stalker wear on their um on their significant other's phone so like sean works at a domestic violence shelter so that's one of the things that when when people enter the shelter you have to make sure they turn off all location finding just to to be extra be safe. Because you just, I guess that's kind of the point.

Like, I guess if you had a Life360, you have to remember to kick people off of it. I mean, I feel like Sydney kind of forgot that her parents could see where she was at all times based on her behavior later as it comes up and stuff. So I agree. I think you have to be careful who has access. I do think there is a good use case for that app, though. I feel like it's a little bit helicopter-y from a parenting perspective, but I get it. I get that urge because we definitely have, like, find my fellow humans set up on our phones. Yeah. And it's, like, really useful.

It is. I mean, I do it for everybody. Yeah. Even, like, even traveling and stuff like that that, like the friends I'm traveling with. So like when we went to the studio, both and opening back in Massachusetts that I know where they're at. And, you know, like I want to be a responsible friend too. So if anything does happen, I want to know like where they were. And I also want them to know where I am in case, you know, something happens to me or whatever. So I get, I'm the same boat. Like I get the purpose of it. I am insanely paranoid about safety and security and all that stuff. So I am happy to use everything.

But I think it's also a fair warning for people who are in relationships or engaged in behavior that, you know, is not healthy, that this app can not be a great thing for them. But for the Powells, they were using it really to make sure their kids were okay. They used it for their minor son. They used it for Sydney. And it was just a way for all of them to kind of keep track with it with each other. So it's 1030 on the morning of March 3rd. And Sydney was supposed to be at school in the university. I think she was like an hour and a half away. But the Life360 app ends up pinging Steve and Brenda saying like, hey, Sydney just showed up at home. And they're like, well, this is strange. You should be at school. Like spring break hasn't happened. Spring break was

the next week. And they're like, you should definitely be at school. So why are you here? Right. But there was something that had happened earlier that day where they received a call from the university. Steve and Brenda received a call from the university to say like, hey, that check you sent, we are going to end up sending it back because Sydney's no longer enrolled. And they're like, I'm going to go home and talk to Sidney about this. And I think one of the interesting things, even though he is, you know, staunchly on his daughter's side in terms of supporting her and everything and and wanting her home, he ends up leaving his phone at work. So that Sidney's not alerted to the fact that he left work and is on his way home. And to me, I think that's really telling, you know, that he could tell something was off. Yeah, that he's like, I don't want to alert her. So I'm just going to say, you know, I'm just going to show up to the house, which is what he does. They have a conversation, according to him and his testimony is so heartbreaking, you know, because he's having a dual perspective of the shoulda, woulda, coulda that I think is a knife to the heart, really, of not only do you have the, if I would have stayed, I could have maybe prevented this. And if I would have had a

conversation and not told Brenda to go to the house, you know, I could have prevented that. So you can see that scene playing in his head and it's devastating to watch. It's devastating to see him go through that. And you kind of just, you really feel for him in that moment when you're watching him testify on the stand. It's incredibly heartbreaking. But he goes home to speak to her. They go through everything. Sydney starts telling him, you know, like, I don't know what I want to do with my life. I feel like a loser. I feel like I don't have anything planned out. And he's being really gracious and supportive with her and telling her, like, listen, not a lot of people at your age have their life figured out or know what they want to do. It's totally fine. Like we will figure it out. There's

a way to move forward. You know, we just got to call the school. So, you know, your mom's going to come home. He says they had a really great relationship. So I'm going to call your mom. She's going to come home. You guys can work it out. Talk to your mom about it and let's see what happens. He calls Brenda and he tells her and she's like, OK, I'll head home. So Brenda ends up calling back the university. She gets a voicemail and she says, hey, I need you to give me a call back so we can talk about what's going on with Sydney. And Steve goes back to work. So she last contacted him, Brenda did, at 1230, sending him a text saying like, hey, I just pulled up. So between 1230 and 1240, the university ends up calling her, calling Brenda back and saying like, hey, I wanted to talk to you about Sydney and just kind of answer as many questions as I

possibly can. Because, you know, once your kid's an adult and they go to university, this isn't like high school. You can't just go and ask, you know, about their grades or ask about anything. Their information is private, even to their parents. So, you know, they have to have permission from Sydney to discuss these things. Now, when they get on the phone and they have this really brief kind of conversation, like salutations and saying like, hey, yeah, we're going to talk about this. They end up hearing some screaming and yelling and really a couple of loud thuds. And then the call is disconnected. They keep calling her name.

They keep calling Brenda's name and stuff. And the call eventually, like I said, is disconnected. So they call back at least three times. On the third time, the person picks up and they go, is this Brenda? And the person on the other line goes, yes. And they instantly kind of get this chill down their spine and go, Sydney, we know this is you. And then the phone hangs up. So that's when they call the police to say like, we need to, you should do a welfare check at this address. We heard some commotion and some yelling and screaming. So we think that, you know, something's going on or somebody's been injured. We don't know

for sure. So this call goes out on the radio and a person calls Steve, like an officer that they knew, ends up calling Steve and says like, Hey, something's going on at your house or whatever. So he ends up calling Sydney. We'll get into that a little bit, but I watched the body cam photo of when they first approach the house and everything. And they end up coming up to the house. It's, it's so weird to watch and everything's blurred, which is great. But they walk up to the house and you hear Sydney, they open the door. She kind of comes running out at the same time. She's yelling at them to help her mom. Her hands are covered in blood. She's shaking. She's saying like, you know, the officer's

trying to calm her down, also getting her outside until, you know, she starts saying, you know, somebody broke in and my mom told me to get out and I ran outside but then I heard my mom screaming so I ran back inside and doesn't say of course which way the person went how they left the house or anything like that but she says like I came back and my mom was lying in a pool of blood they end up finding Brenda in the master bedroom and next to her is a frying pan, like a cast iron frying pan, essentially, and a steak knife that was still embedded in her body, like in her neck. She had so many stab wounds, blunt force trauma to her head. And she was still breathing when the officers arrived. EMTs end up taking her to the hospital and she's pronounced dead when she arrives.

So Stephen, you see him kind of drive up, right, because he had already been alerted by his officer friend. You see him drive up and he's telling them what he could about this, you know, about Sydney and about Brenda. And they're asking him, you know, does she have any mental health issues? And he's like, no, like Brenda was supposed to call the school. He was so confused and he didn't know what was going on. And you find out later that this friend of his in the police force, here's the radio call to his address and calls him and says, hey, I think there's something going on at your house. And he's like, oh, let me call Sydney and let me call Brenda.

He calls Brenda. No answer. He tries her again. No answer. He calls Sydney. She answers the phone, according to him, very calm and is like, hello, you know? And he's like, well, I just, I was, is everything okay? And she was like, yeah, mom is on the phone with the school, which at the time Brenda had already been stabbed and was dying on the floor. And she's like, yeah, mom's talking on the phone with the school. And he goes, oh, okay, well, you know, officer so-and-so just called me and said that they have officers, you know, police going to the house because of a commotion or something. And then instantaneously she changes and she starts freaking out, screaming.

And she says, you know, somebody broke in. I was down in the basement and mom told me, screamed at me to run, you know, get out of the house. Somebody came. And so he was just like, can you imagine like the emotional whiplash that's happening there when you're like, yeah, everything's fine. Oh, my God. You know, like that's how quick it happened for him. And he, he had, she started saying, you know,

somebody had broken in. So that whole thing happened. What happens after that? Um, he, well, you see, you mentioned that he told the police that she didn't have any mental health issues that she was struggling in school, but you know but things were getting worked out. And she was like tapping her head against the concrete. And they had her taken to the hospital and put under a psychiatric hold. And yeah, while she was there, she told them what had happened to her and her mom. And her story was that she heard glass shatter in the basement because someone was breaking in and then she blacked out. And when she regained consciousness, she found a knife in her mother's neck and she did everything she could to stop the bleeding. But this is in direct conflict

with that phone call you just talked about. It doesn't make any sense at all. So to doctors, they, they see that there's a number of issues that she's going through. They said that she appeared to be having, she was in a psychotic state and it was likely that she had schizophrenia and a depressive disorder and that she, like so many people do, she was, she was able to hide the signs from those around her and to appear um neurotypical um she was a perfectionist though and she had a deep fear of failure it just wasn't an option for her um so given all of this immediately after she left the hospital she was uh charged under suspicion of murder and she was released on bail just two days later. But I think the big question is, you know, why did this happen?

Why? Why did she do this? Why did she attack her mom? Like you said, they had a really close family. Her mom was like her best friend. I think they said that they were really tight and they never had any fights or arguments or at least none that anyone knew about. And like you said, Sydney was pretty reserved. She could be anxious, but she was chatty with her friends. And yeah, she was a perfectionist and probably had a large amount of anxiety when it came to wanting to meet her goals. There's no way she was going to fail. She didn't want anyone to see her as failing. So she, yeah, she was an honor

student. She earned a scholarship to the university she was at. And, but it seems like that, that change between high school life and college life was a real challenge for her. Yeah. And she, her grades were not where they had been in high school. She only had a 2.2. So she had been placed on probation. Um, and she just didn't tell her parents. I, I don't know why. I mean, I, I understand that she was afraid of admitting to them that she had messed up, but she pretended like nothing had happened and kind of withdrew she withdrew from friends stopped yeah stopped going to school and of course they suspended her from school but she was like still um living on campus and just kind of making up stories even for those

folks about something with like some issue with her brother and that's why she couldn't go home and it just kind of snowballed for her. Yeah, it was really sad. Yeah, and eventually they forced her out of the dorm. That's why she was home on March 3rd. It's amazing that she got through almost half a semester faking it like that. Yeah, it's amazing. They kept giving her, they kept saying,

listen, Sydney, you're no longer enrolled here. We'll give you a few more days, but you have to get out of of the dorms and she was like yeah yeah i'm working on it i'm working on it and she like stayed as long as she could yeah and um it seems like it seemed like the pressure had been building in her for a long time like the pressure that she put on herself it doesn't seem to me like her parents put a lot of pressure on her, although I don't know that for sure, but it seems like she put a lot of pressure on herself. And then, like you said, that transition to college is tough, man. It is. Yeah.

I know when I went to college, there was, like, for example, I'll give you an example. So I thought I was super smart in high school. Like this, maybe, maybe a little smart. So I took, I took an AP calculus class. I love telling the story. I told our son that because he took some AP classes. So I took AP calculus, not the hard one there too. I took the easier one. And I was like, and I did, I did well.

Like I was, I was like, yeah, I get this, whatever. So I was doing engineering in, at the University of Rochester. What's up? Shout out. And, um, when I got there, they allowed me the opportunity to not take the first calculus class, but take the second one that you take as a sophomore. So like actually the third class. So I passed out of a year of calculus and, um, that class kicked my ass so hard. Like like knocked you down a few pegs like nothing i had ever experienced in my life i remember i walked into the class this giant auditorium

and i was like holy crap all these people i was the youngest one there except for like the few other people who had taken the ap and passed out and the professor like did not care he was like all right second year people here we go and i was like, all right, second year people, here we go. And I was like, oh, I'm in such trouble right now. So yeah, the transition can be really tough. But I was very honest up front with my family about it. Sydney was not. She didn't get the help she needed.

It seems like she didn't come clean with her family. Even after she was gone from the university, she was like couch surfing and staying with her friends, just waiting for classes to be done. Again, like absolute deep denial going on, not just a river in Egypt, super, super deep denial. And it seemed to me that if you're couch surfing and you know, you're out, like this indicates an awareness that what you're doing is wrong and potentially very sketchy and that you are definitely lying. So when she got home and she was confronted by her dad first on the phone and then by her mother calling the university, um, you know, I, like I said, it seemed like the pressure had built been building for a while i'm not

a psychiatrist but it seems like at some point pressure can only build so much and it seemed like there was definitely a snapping action that happened um it all just came out so um that was when she finally had to like you know she'd been denying the truth for so long yeah um and her mental state had been deteriorating for so long that you know just came out yeah um but similar to our the first case we talked about her father steven was also in denial and he uh is just you know acting as her advocate he doesn't want her to be charged for murder. He obviously knows that she did it because the evidence is there, but he believes she's unwell, even though, of course, he was not aware of it before and that it wasn't her fault, which I think in this case, you can actually argue that she was unwell. I think there's a

legitimate case for that here. She for sure has some mental health issues, right? Has been diagnosed, is being treated still to this day, right? Like she wouldn't have been held in a psychiatric ward if she didn't, right? She stayed there for a while. So, yeah, definitely, I think, way different than the Porco case in terms of motive, right and it then the rationale and stuff like that behind it so for sure yeah i agree right it it definitely seemed like the premeditation was absolutely not there with her and it seems like it definitely was there with uh with the porco case especially because like you said they they medicated her. And at one point, her medication was clearly at the wrong dosage because she expressed to her grandmother that she was like having these feelings again.

And they changed her changed her dosage and they saw improvement in her condition. So it seems like pretty clear evidence that that, you know, has to do with her her mental state. That, of course, spoiler did not convince the authorities so um she was indicted uh on murder charges felonious assault and tampering with evidence of course because she decided to tamper with the evidence and stage the scene she she pled not guilty as you do i guess um but they later amended it to not guilty by reason of insanity which i think is getting closer to what was going on probably the thing um and you know saying that she only killed her mother due to a psychotic break um and her father her father this poor man you know this

poor family he's testified uh he said this isn't what anyone wants here i don't know how she can handle it which fair right fair um i don't know how i can handle it i'm just trying to keep my family together you know you see these stories all the time and the result is the family is utterly destroyed right uh the prosecution unmoved um they don't feel like there's any proof that she was legally insane at the time of murder i feel like that's a topic for another podcast that I'm not qualified to address. But I do have someone for you if you're interested in that. Yeah. I mean, the legal burden is much different than us just having, you know, the layman's understanding of insanity and what that means.

Absolutely. There's a whole, you know, Bob know bob motto one of my dear friends you know you know yeah um but yeah same yeah whole huge wholly different than um just knowing somebody's insane like or having mental health issues i don't like saying insane yeah it does occur to me it does seem to me though that if if this is your defense you you need to line up your expert witnesses that can prove that this is the case and unfortunately they were not able able to do that yeah but they did there was one one expert that testified that he had rarely if ever seen a situation where an individual was in such an utterly compromised psychological state

as sydney powell um as she was at the time of the offenses which i think is a fair thing to say where an individual was in such an utterly compromised psychological state as Sidney Powell, as she was at the time of the offenses, which I think is a fair thing to say. And I'm not sure you need a psychology degree to come up with that. But absolutely, I totally agree. She was, as you mentioned, found guilty on all four counts. And she was sentenced to 15 years. Interesting when you compare that 15 years to the 50 years that Chris Porco received. Yeah. Interesting.

So it seems like they may have considered that a mitigating factor. Yeah. On September 28th, really recently, she was sentenced. Everybody, her full family, understandably devastated. Stephen, her father, still adamant. This is not what Brenda, you know, would have wanted. Yeah. Still, I mean, truly, I think kind of the shining light is that she likely won't serve the full 15 years if she is granted parole and stuff like that. If she starts making, you know,

adjustments and things like that, I'm hoping that she's continuing treatment. I hope that, you know, the prison system does that for her. I have a little bit more empathy for Sydney than I do, obviously, for Chris. Absolutely. was really difficult to see black and white for me. Chris is easy, right? It's like, come on, dude. But with Sydney's, there's so much there. And I think the mental health care that if you want to use that word of super lacking in our country and stuff like that. And, you know, I don't know how true it is that they didn't know about Sydney's thing. She could have just been really great at hiding it. But I think as a parent, intuitively you do know when something's up with your kid or when they're not

doing something. Bridget and Sydney had text exchanges that weren't so nice to each other where there was some, you know, some trust that was lacking on both of their sides and stuff. But I think Sydney's dad talking on behalf of their sides and stuff. But I think Sidney's dad talking on behalf of his wife was really devastating to me because I couldn't imagine being in that position to try and be the voice for my spouse who's deceased. You know, for me, love of my life, you know, they were together 24 years. And then your child who you would likely lay your

life down for or switch places with them in an instant, you know, trying to save somebody and the complete helplessness that you can see he feels when he's testifying or when he's speaking about this. I, I wish I could hug him because it's, it's really sad. And I'm, I'm glad that in some, in some ways, even though it's a 15 years to life sentence, I don't think that she will serve the full term. I think she will be granted parole, um, probably within seven to eight years because, you know, good behavior and everything trims a lot of time down. So hopefully she does that and as well. But yeah, so I understand not putting a ton of leniency on that case because again,

precedence means that if this happens again and somebody uses the same excuse, then that could change it for other people. But now we're going into the Norwood case, the Lululemon murders case. I know not a lot of people like it to be said that, but colloquially, that's how it's known within the true crime community. But, yeah, I was I think I would love for you to share why you selected this case as a kind of third string to these last two cases we covered. I guess it jumped out at me. I mean, there's a couple things that I see are similar. And as we get into the details, I think I hope that everyone else sees what I see. But I mean, Chris and Sydney and Brittany Norwood, I mean, they're all kind of around the same age. And it seems like their, their motive for the murders are,

are similar in some ways. And like I said, some of the other details that they, they lean into in their stories, they just kind of seem similar to me. I think that's why that one jumped out at me. Yeah. So,

yeah. This crime, I mean, it's called the Lululemon murders because it murder because it happened at a Lul. So she got nervous and she asked, you know, a guy outside like, Hey, will you help me search, um, what's going on in the store? And the store was an absolute bloodbath. Um, there were two bodies, um, in the back of the store. Uh, they called the police and when the police arrive, um, they discovered one of the two victims was still alive. Both these people, they're both employees at the store. So Brittany Norwood, she's 27 years old. She was bound by zip ties in the bathroom, the back of the store. She's alive. She's badly bruised and she's bloody. But 30-year-old Jaina Murray, she was dead. She was badly beaten in a pool of

blood, a ligature around her neck, and just an awful, horrific scene. But they take Brittany to the hospital and she's able to tell detectives what had happened. So she said at the night before when her and Jaina were locking up the store, Brittany forgot her wallet inside. So she called Jaina and she was like, hey, you have the keys to the store, manager. Will you open the door for me so I can get my wallet? So the alarm of the records showed that the door was open to the store at 10.05. And Brittany said two ski-masked men followed them inside to rob them. And they were wearing gloves and dark clothes.

And one was about six feet tall and one was shorter. The women were then they were beaten. They were sexually assaulted. And Brittany was left lying on the bathroom floor where she passed out from all everything that had happened. And Brittany, Brittany said that the men did not kill her because she was. This is like awful to say, but she was more fun to have sex with. So the police began, I mean, this is a, this is in a, I guess like a strip mall, right? So there's a lot of other stores there and it was like a place where folks would go like for dinners or drinks or whatever.

So they, the police start asking around like, Hey, were you here last night? What did you see? Um, and there should have been plenty of people seeing, you know, people coming and going. Um, but they didn't really find anything. So they, they offered it $150,000 reward for anyone who could come forward with information. Um, and the stores, obviously they wanted to make sure their employees were safe and everything. So they put in security cameras around the area and hired security guards to escort the workers back and forth to their cars.

Everyone was on high alert in this complex. And next door to the Lululemon was an Apple store. And the employees there said that the night before, they believe they heard two women arguing, but they weren't sure that it was anything worth calling the police about. So they didn't. And yeah, like I said, there was no witnesses found who saw the two women get forced inside the store or anything like that. Guys running from the scene, nothing like that guys running from the scene nothing like that so this reminds me a lot of the porco case because the the the yarn that is being spun and we will now observe how the yarn just falls apart it's another four-piece puzzle yeah um so they start doing forensic analysis as you do yeah and even in 2011 as you

do to make progress and find out what the heck happened and uh what they found didn't make any sense was completely inconsistent with story that was being told um there were sets of bloody footprints um one of the two sets sets could be found throughout the store. One matched Brittany's shoes and the other was matched to a pair of shoes that was still at the scene. It was like a large pair of shoes, like a size 14 pair of shoes. So, okay. And there wasn't a blood trail that left the store. Okay, interesting.

And Brittany's injuries were also called into question. So the way they described it is that she had sort of superficial wounds, just cuts and bruises. She had a head wound that bled a lot. If you've ever had a head wound, I've had a head wound. I bumped the crap out of my head one time when I was like 16. Oh, did that bleed. It was crazy. these things really bleed um but none of her injuries um you know would have knocked her out or anything yeah yeah and the way they analyzed it they realized that all of the injuries could have been uh

self-inflicted and you know done while she was standing so there was no evidence that she should have been unconscious or anything um so it they were kind of wondering like well you know yeah given all this why did you not get up when you could uh jane on the other hand had been brutally beaten and had like 330 injuries from a dizzying array of weapons, including knives and hammers, probably from a toolbox that was left, you know, inside the store. Horrifying. And examinations showed that there was no evidence of sexual assault. And again, back to the idea of the Porco case, where these people make claims that are absolutely be just, you know, that will fall apart incredibly fast. So there's no evidence of sexual assault on either woman, although the crotch of Janus pants had been cut with scissors to make it look like that was the case. So Janus Carr was also part of the crime scene that was checked over and it was weirdly parked three blocks away rather than right near the

store as you would when you work at a store which didn't really make sense because she was just kind of running back there for a minute to help britney get back in the building and uh also weirdly blood was found in the vehicle so very strange and even worse testing of the blood in her vehicle indicated that it was a mixture of Brittany and Jaina's blood. So, like I said, four piece puzzle. When she was confronted with that finding, when Brittany was, she admitted that she moved the car on the order of the two intruders. The two hoodie wearing intruders. Apparently, they threatened to kill her if she didn't return in 10 minutes.

I'm like, how? A lot of questions there. If you're in a car, why not just drive away? Why not go to the police? Did not make sense. So, detectives, of course, are hesitant to question a survivor of assault like that, which makes sense. But the inconsistencies were really piling up at that point. So, a wealth of circumstantial evidence implicating Brittany and like right on the border of not so circumstantial anymore. So a week later, she was charged with first degree murder and eventually the truth came out. So at the end of the shift,

Brittany and Jaina had checked each other's bags because that's what you do when you work at a retail store. Apparently I've not worked at a retail store. Me either. I was was like i don't know retail life like that sean likes to give me a hard time and tell me that i've worked in every sort of time i guess i would never work in retail but it's funny because like i kind of did in college um uh bath and body works i don't know if they still do this but they did in the 90s um they when they change the store over store over for Christmas, they do an all-night thing where they just replace all the merchandise. So it's magical.

You come there the next day and it's all Christmas. So they would hire college kids to come and work overnight and switch out the product. But no one checked my bag when I left to see if I had taken anything. I took so many. I was like, all the lotions. We're still using the lotion right 10 figure discount so uh it turned out that she had a pair of leggings in her in his bag and jada called the store manager and they said they deal with it in the morning so britney's managers had suspected her stealing, but this was the first time they had had any proof.

It was later revealed that she had lied and stolen from friends and family and businesses like hair salons. And Brittany didn't know that Jane had already told management. So she panicked and hatched an absolutely horrible plan to get away with this and keep her job to keep her retail job fantastic so she called jana back to the store uh attacked her choked her to death with that ligature and then staged the store to look like a robbery moved her car and then staged herself as another victim i don't know where she got the zip ties i'm not sure who keeps zip ties with them but um they were in the store oh they were in the supply closet oh i guess for putting like you know how you uh with some of the clothing and stuff like that oh yeah that makes sense okay i was gonna

say if you keep zip ties with you i mean look in the mirror and figure out why that is you probably i have a little container of zip ties in my car, but for purposes. And are they like, are they like, they're not like these zip ties. No, no,

no, no. They're like, I mean, yeah, no, I have a thing that I've rigged up for my kids since the back of my car doesn't have air vents,

which is crazy to me. It's only in the front and stuff. So I have this like long to be thing that connects to the air. That is so cool. And like goes over her. So, cause it's Texas, you know, and gets super hot. So yeah, I have zip ties in there for that. I like your, I like your alibi.

I've worked on it, you know, I've worked on it. I've had time to think about it. You're practiced. You're, you're, you're not the level of liar that Chris Porco is. I'm better. So those Apple employees, when they testified, they said that they heard Jaina saying, talk to me, don't do this. And then God help me. That's so sad.

Yeah. Horrifying. And it's crazy that you would not call the police on the guy. Yeah, they reported that they thought it was just a security guard was also there. Like I've seen the the you know, I've listened to a ton of podcasts about it, too, but have seen when they cover the case like on I.D. and stuff like that, like they are sitting in a store like scrolling on an iPad or an iPod or whatever, and they're just chilling. And I'm like, you hear that and you don't think, and that's how you, I mean, I don't understand that. You're not, you're not doing a good job. You're bad at your job. Yeah. So by the time this made it to trial, of course, there was so much evidence that the defense team didn't even try to plead in a sense. Instead, they just tried to

mitigate the sentence and say that it wasn't premeditated, which. All right. Okay. Get that. That's fine. And the fact that unfortunately that she had staged the scene sort of kind of defeated this claim for the jurors,

apparently. And as the autopsy showed, the most vicious blows were aimed at her, Jane's head, unfortunately. So in January of 2012, January 27, the autopsy showed the most vicious blows were aimed at her jana's head unfortunately so in january of 2012 january 27th britney was sentenced to life in prison where it is probably better that she stays respectfully yeah so like like i was saying i chose these cases because or i chose this case to go in the set because the motives of um of the

three definitely seem similar that they're trying to like you said trying to prevent the truth of something from coming out and the details of the crimes are are so brutal to me just horrific like the the weapons they chose to use the the how went about it. I see a similarity there too, which I don't know if indicates rage or that it was really spontaneous in the moment. And it also seems like their families are either somewhat in denial about what their adult children are capable of. Brittany's dad, I guess, tried to plead for her to receive a lighter sentence, you know, saying that she is a good person. And I think like you said, it's really hard as a parent, you know, you're to think of your kids in like a black and white way. And like

we said, you know, Brittany had that history of theft. And she too, I read that she too had lost an academic scholarship after being caught stealing from a classmate, which really makes me think of like that's something the three of them also have in common. Right. Yeah. And Chris Porco seemed to have sticky fingers. He was always stealing things. Like the two, Brittany and Chris, have that in common.

And, you know, and they all kind of, or at least Sydney more so, you know, concocted the story about a break-in and another person being responsible is also really similar to Brittany. So it's just the idea that, you know, what was their motive seems so, so small. I mean, I guess as an adult, even thinking back to my twenties, you know, it just seemed like these were really minor things that are totally you can cope with. You can get through them. Kind of like, you know, Stephen tried to tell Sydney, like, this is part of growing up. You can get through this.

Like shoplifting, a pair of leggings doesn't need to end someone's life. But it truly probably won't see jail time for it. Like you're going to pay a fine. Yeah. Like you're going to lose your job. Yeah, for sure. But you know, these, and I think that's, what's really startling about them when you look at them as a whole, it's just these,

these little mistakes that people make all the time or these little stumbling blocks that, you know, young adults have just turning into these awful tragedies. And the thing that sticks out to me is the craziness of the stories that that I'm going to just say that Chris and Brittany spun. I'm going to put Sydney in a separate category where it seems like there's, you know, the mental health issue. So we'll put that one aside. But the the craziness of the stories that were spun, but really even they had to know on some level that they were going to fall apart with just even the most cursory analysis this house of cards was just gonna yeah you know fall over quickly i agree i'm so paranoid i'm not gonna make a u-turn in a school zone i think i'm

gonna get stopped and cited they just put up a u no u-turn sign at our kids school we used to make a u-turn there we don't i'm not i'm not making a damn u-turn i took a u-turn today and i was like bro you can't do that right right oh my gosh well look at you yeah no you i'm a i'm a texas driver so yeah i don't know what else to say about that it is what it is um but i i totally get. And, you know, definitely in line with everything you guys are saying as it relates to those three cases. And like I said, unfortunately, these types of cases with these motives, whether it's, you know, parent to child or vice versa, or even in Brittany's case, like this was not somebody she was related to. She really had no stake in

in the game in that sense. Right. Like you could have easily just walked away, but there was too much going on. Like, I mean, it's, it's all just really confounding to me that these little minor things, like you said, are just mountains for them, you know, and they don't, they feel insurmountable to them so much so that they're willing to do these really permanent things for a very temporary, you know, problem, which is again, just strange to me. I always just, I wish more than anything I could have a, like a frank conversation with them where it wasn't going to like penalize them in any of their appeals, but to just know, like, I could give them like truth serum and be like, all right, let's talk about this. Like what's the thought process? Like, I so wish I could do that because I truly do.

I just like I just want to know why. That's what got me into true crime is wanting to ask the why behind things and discover the why behind things. And what I found in the time that I've been doing this is that you really don't get any unless they're being forthcoming. And even then, most of the time, like when you see like the killer speaks and stuff like that, like these are people who are likely diagnosed as, you know, narcissist in some way, have some signs of sociopathy and everything, even though like psychopathy and sociopathy aren't used anymore, but you get the idea, are used to lying so even then they're not being truthful like i don't think they're capable of being truthful i think one of the most chilling things i've ever

seen that i've watched several times just to kind of go um like this is how evil is is watching btk's elocution on his crimes and what he did and just how blank and unmoved he was. Like he was asking, you know, being asked his coffee order, like I take my coffee with some cream and sugar. Like that's how easy it was for him to go through all of these things. If you've never seen that, I highly recommend watching it only because you can truly see like there's no emotion here so when i see things like killer speaks and it's somebody who's committed like incredibly atrocious crimes

i'm like and you're in it and then they're crying and they're like expressing remorse i don't believe it because i've seen somebody who's done the most terrible of things and his victims were widespread have absolutely no emotion whatsoever and again the mental health side of it in terms of the disorders or personality disorders obviously vary. But, you know, to me, it's really just kind of strange to see. And that's kind of what I've been chasing this whole time is the why. And I know that I'll never get it. I'm the dog. I wouldn't know what to do if I catch the car, you know. But anyhow, I definitely want to thank you guys for joining me today. Sorry we went over. But as a listener, you're probably very happy about this. You know, you get almost two hour episode out of us. I really enjoyed having you both on to discuss these cases. And it's I love doing this show in particular because I can talk about cases the way I can't, the way I want to. And what I don't do on my show with True Crime Cases with Lainey is I don't ever offer any of my opinion. I don't give any, you know, things in

there that I just, I tell you the case and that's it. I let you come up with your own opinion. I think the only time you ever see me kind of emote most recently, obviously, is with the Oakley case because that was really personal to me. and I struggled with it so greatly. But, you know, I love doing this show in particular because I get to talk it out with other people and learn from others and how they think, too. So, you know, to me, these nuances are super important to talk about and gain some perspective on the cases, why we selected them, our own thoughts about them. So people, you know, kind of see what went into making the episode. So without further ado, just let us know where the audience can find you. And of course, as you guys know, I will always put the links in the show notes. You're awesome. Thank you. Yeah, we, we had a good time, like,

kind of like you said, I mean, these cases are very not at all likely to be cases that we would cover on Sins and Survivors because we're very regional focused on Las Vegas and maybe some of the surrounding rural communities and domestic violence cases in particular. So we even though we, John and I talked about these cases, we never would have had this, you know, the opportunity to share our thoughts with everyone. So we appreciate this as well. Sins and Survivors is on all the podcast platforms. Our website is sinsandsurvivors.com and you can find us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook at Sins and Survivors. We have new episodes that come out every Tuesday. Yep.

Yesterday's episode was part two, a part two. Our first time we've done a two-parter the story of camille dardane's dotson she went missing in las vegas in 1994 and everyone needs to go listen to part one first and uh and then the part two uh yeah just dropped today uh in a couple weeks we're going to be talking uh about a very very related case of Camille's first abusive husband, whose name is Gary Dotson, who was the first person ever to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Normally not something we would cover, but we were.

It's really compelling. I was like, Gary is an abuser, but his story is something that all true crime fans could really get into with the DNA exoneration. I believe it was 1989. Oh, wow. Before OJ, you know, before, you know, so it's, it was really, it's really an interesting, compelling story. So we're looking forward to sharing that with everyone.

Oh, awesome. The first goat rodeo of a case. Yeah. So kudos to you guys. I could never do it. Um, I tried once and I was like, no thanks. Um, well thank you both for joining me. I really appreciate it. Thank you all for joining us live. If you were watching us on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and, uh, on Twitter, cause I refuse to call it X.

So on Twitter and all that fun stuff. Thank you all for joining us. Thanks to the people in the comments. I didn't highlight any of them today, but thank you for joining us. I really, really appreciate it. And yeah, that does it for tonight. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thanks, guys.

Thanks for listening. Visit sinspod.co slash subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and threads at Sins and Survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at If you are someone you know is affected by domestic violence or needs support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website, sinsandsurvivors.com. Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, is research written and produced by your hosts, Sean and John.

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