Small Town Murder - Black Candle Murder Party - West Liberty, Iowa - Part 2

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

 This week, in West Liberty, Iowa, we finish this wild story, with detectives completely baffled by the mystery murder, and the case going cold. That is, until a detective's chance meeting with a witness, who was 9 years old, when the murder happened. She says she saw one of the suspects performing some kind of ritual, with black candles, and apologies to the dead. There ends up being more than one trial, bringing the case to a close. But did they get the right person??   Along the way, we find out that you should always check for 4th graders, when performing a death ritual, that most people are surprised to be arrested 25 years after a murder has taken place, and that just when we think we know everything about a murder case, things can completely change!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Donate at patreon.com/crimeinsports or at paypal.com and use our email: [e-mail] Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay, and Choochoo! Yay, indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petro Gallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you so much for joining us today on another crazy, wonderful adventure known as Small Town Murder Express.

We're going to do part two today of last week's West Liberty, Iowa episode. And by the way, this was not intended. We did not intend to do a two-parter. Express is an hour for a reason, and we didn't expect it. But I got to say out of hundreds of times, this is the first time we've done that. So it's not, I'm trying my best here. I was like, maybe I could squeeze this in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just to let people know that's not something that's going to be a thing all the time. Consistent thing, no. From now on, we're doing a lot of two-parters here. It's not going to be it. So just till you know there. Anyway, definitely, head over to

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Here we go. Clear the lungs. Let's do this. Arms to the sky, everybody. And let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. All right.

Let's go on a trip. Here we go. We're going back to West Liberty, Iowa. It was so nice we had to go twice. We could not help ourselves. West Liberty, Iowa, by the, very Pacific, as they said. So that is eastern Iowa, far eastern Iowa, is where that is. Now, the murder, just to catch you up quickly, because there was a lot of place.

and a lot of characters here. Tons of characters. We'll do like when an 80s sitcom had a two-parter and they had like a minute-long recap at the beginning with some highlights. I've been watching The Office lately, James. It is crazy how many two-part episodes they did. And there was a week in between

where you would forget everything. So please, fucking catch me up, James. That's what I mean. You never know. So we were talking about the murder of Corey Lee Wenneke. or Winneke, who was 22 years old when he was killed in in 1992. He was brutally beaten in his own bed, blunt force trauma, didn't look like he ever woke up, just beaten severely.

I mean, horribly, horribly beaten to death. And the problem is, is there's a lot of suspects because he has like four girlfriends and a fiance and he's a bartender who sort of sells a little drugs and does a little drugs and has a little gambling operation going on in there. So there's like five different, you know, there's women, there's drug people, jealous husbands, there's, you know, whatever. I think there's so many different people, gambling people, somebody that might have not wanted to pay a debt and they thought it'd be easier to just kill the guy. Who knows what it is, or he owes them, whatever it is. The main people are Jody Hatz, who was one of the people that he was.

Married lady, right? No, no, that's a different one here. Jody Hatz was a 22-year-old, the two that they lived together. That's his living fiancé girlfriend, okay? Then there's the ongoing other sexual relationships, as a police officer put it, ongoing sexual relationships with at least three women, but we know of like five, actually. Hatz, Wendy Marshall, and Annette Cahill, who we talked about. And Wendy Marshall was the woman he got pregnant, I found out mistaken.

Yeah, she was pregnant. And Jody, his living girlfriend, knew about all these women, which makes her more of a suspect at that point. Maybe she couldn't take it anymore. Maybe she snapped and got tired of this bullshit. But she's got a pretty good alibi. Or that maybe eliminates her as a suspect because maybe she's just cool. You never know. She's got a pretty good alibi because she was at work all day and they think he was killed long after the time she got to work.

So that is a problem there. Then there's Wendy Marshall, the one who gave birth to Corey. daughter there. He didn't really have much to do with the baby. But she, Wendy told everybody that she loved him and wanted a future with him. And so she definitely didn't kill him. Then of course, there's the Missy Morrison who's married to the farmer named Bob who later on three years after the murder murdered her and then offed himself, Bob. So yeah, which I mean she was going around fucking bartenders and stuff. And I think Bob just snapped and couldn't take it anymore. So I'm shit. I'm not sure.

Maybe he shouldn't have been together at all. No, that's what I'm saying. I'm making excuses, but I mean, I think the dude probably wasn't there to begin with all that well. And then this was a messy relationship. But then there's also Annette Cahill, who is the one who's another one that's trying, wants him to run away with her to Branson to buy a bar. Now, on the night before this all happened, he got off of work. Wendy was with him. they end up going

Annette wouldn't leave his car him and Annette got in a huge fight he dumped Wendy off and then went back took one to home Had Annette home Bangor angry sex as she put it Angry sex with Annette Then went to Wendy's talked to her for a while

And finally went home And fell asleep at like 7 o'clock in the morning His girlfriend got up went to work And allegedly and that was that So that's where we ended up And of course the baseball bat found on the road. And Annette went right to the, which I believe is the murder weapon.

And Annette went right to the police when she heard about all this because she knows that she was at the house that morning. And she also knows a farmer drove by and could probably identify her. And he did, as a matter of fact, as being at the house that morning. She was there with her sister-in-law to give him a note or to say goodbye or whatever the hell her excuse was. So that's where we are right now. Okay.

He was going to run away with Wendy Marshall. He's going to run away with, because there's the other question. Him and Wendy were going to run away. So he had two plans to run away with people, neither of which were his fiancee who he lived with. It's just a lot going on here in this whole thing. You got that much action happening in one town. You can't run away from that. Yeah, you've got to stick around.

You're going to rebuild that life and Branson. It's like the Burbs. You're like Corey Feldman and the Burbs. I love this neighborhood, man. This is this. I love this street. Love this street. So the baseball bat that they found had no usable fingerprints.

And at the time, the only thing they could determine was the blood type on the bat, which matched Corey's blood type. And Jody said that neither she nor nor Corey owned a bat of any kind. And the bat was pretty new. So anyway, so we're looking between, is it drugs? Is it an angry husband? Is it one of his girlfriends? friends is it we don't know what the hell's going on here. So they said he was a strong young man and for that type of crime to have been committed.

I think a lot of had a lot of people scratching their heads asking for one who could have done this. And two, how could they have pulled it off because it did not appear that Corey had fought back. Well, we knew that a long night of we heard about his night, angry sex. The guy just came a little bit of him. Yeah. He's talked to three of his girlfriends tonight too. That has to be. I don't know what that's like, but it has to.

to be exhausting. That's taxing. So he's sleeping. So yeah, we had the, uh, Jody said she was not a, or Jody is not a suspect due to her alibi. Um, Bob Morrison is dead. So, you know, and also Bob Morrison, Missy's husband who killed her and killed himself, he took the day off the day after the murder.

The day of. The day of, yeah. So that's something also that, or the day of the murder. So, um, Annanette has passed a polygraph examination. Huh. As well, as we know about that. That happened at the end. The case has gone cold.

Very, very cold. In 1995, they had an investigator meeting, and they came up with a guy named Jeff Murdoch, who named a guy named Scott Payne, who knew something about the whole thing. By 2009, that's when they set up the cold case unit. Then they lost their funding. Okay. And here we are in 2011, after that, where there's no funding, the cold case unit is closed. in this case is all but over. It's almost 20 years old.

It's 20 years old. 10 years old. 20, 92. It's almost 24. 92. Yeah, it's 20 years old almost, 19 years old. And they have no more funding to run the cold cases. So basically, that's that.

Whatever. Unless some cop wants to work on this on days off. It's really nothing's going to come of this. So they pretty much just let it die. Years more go by from December 2011, all the way to December, 2017 goes by. Uh-huh. Okay. So this case

is closed and over pretty much. It's unsolved, poor court. There's nothing you can do. Nope. Then December of 2017 at the University of Iowa hospitals and clinics in Iowa City. Okay. There's a special agent named Trent Valletta of the Iowa

Division of Criminal Investigation. He's at the hospital to interview a stabbing victim of a case that just happened. Somebody got stabbed and he goes to, who stabs you basically. That's it. He's been playing clothes. He's standing on a floor where, you know, there's no obvious reason for him to be there. Just he's not visiting anybody. He's not, you know, he's not a doctor. So he's just standing there. And the charge nurse for that intensive care unit was a 34-year-old woman named Jessica Becker. And Jessica Becker sees an unidentified

my dude standing in the hallway and says, what the fuck are you doing here, essentially. Yeah. So Valletta, the cop says, she came and kind of aggressively asked me what I was doing there and basically told me I needed to leave, which is reasonable. Yeah. Yeah, you shouldn't be here. So he then identified himself as an investigator, as a police officer, and he explained, I'm here to interview the guy in this room who's been stabbed.

So then Jessica Becker changes the subject on him. It goes from you need to get out of here to let me ask a question. Real quick. She says, do you know anybody who works cold cases like old murders? Yeah. And he said, and I'm like, well, actually, I'm probably one of the two in the state that actually does them. There is nobody working these fucking murders. By the way.

I do. Me. Nobody knows me like me. Two people working all the cold cases. for a state is crazy, by the way. There is no way they can solve that shit. Unless you're Iowa. There's a lot of murders, though.

That's the problem. It's not like there's no murders. Wyoming, maybe, because there's no people, but there's people in Iowa. So she said, and I said, well, or she said, well, why is that? And she said, well, because I know who killed someone back in Muscatine County a few years ago.

That's what Jessica Becker said. Oh, you know. Now, how would she know anything about this? This 34-year-old charge nurse who was a child when this all went down. I guess she would have been fucking... All right. Would she have been seven? Nine.

Bear with me here. Okay. All right. Lester McGowan, remember him? The roofing guy who took Annette Cahill on the day of the murders took him to work with him for a minute. And watched her do a shit-ass job pulling shingles. She fucking did a half-ass job of yanking shingles off a roof and then left. Yeah.

Well, Lester McGowan had picked a net up at around 7 or 730 that morning of the murder, drove her to the roofing job site in West Liberty where she did the shingle tearing for a minute. And then her sister-in-law came, picked her up, and that's when they ended up at Corey's house. Yeah. And the farmer passed them. Okay, just to get the timeline down. Now, Lester McGowan was married to a woman named Cynthia. Yeah.

Okay. His affair with Annette Cahill contributed to the down. of that marriage. Because Annette was having affairs with everybody. Cynthia's daughter, so Lester's stepdaughter, from that marriage, was a nine-year-old named Jessica, Jessica Becker, who will be the charge nurse later on. So this girl said that this is what she saw. She said she was 1992. In 1992, she's nine years old.

her mother was Cynthia and her stepfather was Lester and you know basically by that fall they had been divorced and everything because of Annette so her family kind of got ripped apart by Annette Jessica was best friends with a girl named

Kayla Hazen okay Kayla was Denny and Jacques or Jacques or Jackie or whatever her sister-in-law that was her their daughter Kayla So that would be Annette's niece, I suppose.

So Annette's niece, as Kayla is over at Jessica's house, all right, or whatever. Jessica, they've hung out. Now, Jessica on this night, slept over at the Hazen family farmhouse, which is where Annette was staying with the brother and Jack A there. Okay, Jacques. Okay. Now, she liked Annette, but they all liked Annette. the way. Because that's fun. Yeah, she's a fucking party

is what she is. Yeah. This is, Jessica said, she would take us to get movies, scary movies, pizza, the fun lady. She was the fun, the favorite aunt, and we spent quite a lot of time with her too. She was the cool aunt. I had an aunt like that

too. Yeah, that kind of thing. You know, when she's four, you're 14, she'd leave her cigarettes out. You know what I mean? And look the other direction. That kind of aunt. So, She described Corey also as a big brother type who live down the street. By 2007, Jessica Baker's and ICU charge nurse at the University of Iowa hospitals and clinics, obviously. She was an officer in the Army Reserve.

She has a master's degree, a family. She's established yourself. She's really doing it. Yeah. So this is what she has to say. She said that I know that Annette killed Corey. She knows. Is what she said.

Yeah. Now remember, Annette's taken a polygraph. So essentially she's kind of been taken off the suspect list at this point. Okay. So that's what she said. I know that Annette killed Corey. Now, Valletta, the cop, says it's a one in a million chance that he goes to this hospital, meaning him, meets this person and tells him about a case that's more than 25 years old at that point in time. And then I confirm that the crime took place and that all the details essentially matched.

He didn't even know this was a crime that took place. Well, he was doing a great job at the cold case. Who? Yeah, barely not. But I mean, it's been, I mean, there's how many cold cases you think there are. He hasn't gotten here yet. Yeah, look up unsolved Iowa murders. There's hundreds of them. I mean, hasn't heard. And his last name starts with W. He hasn't even gotten that far. He's still in the G's. That's right. Now, Becker said this. She said, for some reason, I just felt comfortable with him and that I could share that knowledge and share that burden. and at least if nothing else to get it off my chest

to share it with somebody that had the potential to do something with it. Okay. So she's not just telling the janitor because what the fuck does he care? So here is what she said she saw here. Okay.

Oh, she saw something. This is what she said she saw at the farmhouse sleeping over with her friend here. All right. Sometime after Corey died, fall of 92. So sometime in about a month

after Corey died, she couldn't give an exact date or an exact month, but she said it was definitely cooler outside and was the same year. All right. She was at a sleepover at the Hazen Family Farmhouse with Kayla.

They were upstairs late at night, staying up late like kids do it to sleepover. And they decided to sneak downstairs. She doesn't remember why. A snack? Who the fuck knows? To be awake when we're not supposed to be. That was fun.

It feels fun. It just to sneak down the steps to the adults are doing. It's fun. So she said, I'm not exactly sure what we were up to, but something that we weren't supposed to be doing, being kids. So they got to the bottom of the stairs or the last step of the stairs. She doesn't know which. She doesn't know if it was the floor or the last step, which is really irrelevant.

Anyway, so this is what it goes. This is from later on, they say, and you said that you heard Annette. She said, yes. And what did you hear? She said, quote, well, we heard Annette crying and sobbing in the dining area. which is fine. Corey just died. That seems reasonable.

And we heard her make several statements, including, Corey, I never meant to hurt you. Corey, I'm so sorry. I never meant to kill you, Corey. Okay, that's, yeah. And Corey, I love you. These are the things that she said. Okay.

So, and she said she was sobbing. And they said, was there anything else unusual in that front room that she was in? And she said, yes, there was multiple candles. She was also lighting candles. black candles to be specific. What? She had like a whole candle set up of black candles while sobbing and saying, I'm sorry I killed you, Corey.

Which is a really weird setup. I mean, it's very. Maybe that's how she gets horny. I'm not sure, but it's weird. Yeah, maybe she masturbates to the memory of him with a black candle. But so none of that on, on its face, none of that necessarily screams guilty. It just screams. like a weirdo.

I'm sorry. I never meant to kill you, Corey, is pretty... I've never said that. No, but... You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm just saying you could... You could interpret somebody's death as your fault and say that. True.

Well, I could see I never meant to hurt you emotionally. I'm so sorry. Well, you know, I get it. I never meant to kill you is really... That's a... You got a... That's weird. But it's still not proof of anything.

It might be a good. We don't know if she had half a bottle of whiskey and she's just spouting off at the mouth and thinks she has, you know, maybe somebody that she had something to do with. She thinks did it or something. Who knows? She's doing black candles. It could be some sort of seance that she's just saying random shit. Maybe that's how you get Corey to come back from the grave and talk to her. That's what I'm told.

We don't know. That's who the fuck knows. I read it on the internet, so I'm doing it. Yeah. In 1992. I read it on the internet. She saw, now Jessica saw Annette from behind, never saw her face, but she knows what she looks like, her hair, her voice, and she's the only other person in the house. It's not like somebody broke in and had a seance, you know what I mean?

Right. She could see her pacing. She could see that she was tearful. She saw her wiping her eyes and things like that as she was crying and sobbing and saying that. The two girls, A, the last thing you want to see when you're nine is some freaked out adult crying. That's the worst thing you could say because it's just weird. Yeah, well, I'm going back upstairs. It means this, we're not safe with this person.

Or, yes, is something bad happening that I don't know about, that they're not, you have no idea what's happening when you're nine. And you just look for cues. And if you look to adults for cues, and if they're crying, that's a cue that you should maybe be worried. Oh, great. We're all going to die now. Yeah, Jesus. The house on fire. I don't smell smoke.

Okay, good. So the two girls went back upstairs so they wouldn't get caught being downstairs. All right. now what happened next in 1992 was jessica tried to talk to kala about it but kela didn't want to talk to her about it no she wouldn't talk about it um jessica said she became defensive and had explained that her aunt was in love with kori and was very upset about his death and she didn't want to talk about it anymore so she's like well that's not making me feel any better not at all i'd like to know your aunt didn't kill this guy but so jessica then went home

and told her mother. All right. So she said, I was here and this is what I saw. Yeah. And they said, what did your mother tell you when you told her this?

And she said, quote, sometimes people light black candles and it means they can speak to, you know, spirits or bring out evil spirits. Yeah. Or that's the color candle she had left in her closet.

It, I mean, if it, you know, yeah, plural could be two. But if she's, got 12. That's a different story. It's a little weird. But evil spirits and all that, that just sounds very very just, come on, give me a fucking

break. Yeah, it sounds really stupid. So, this woman did not take her daughter to the police to talk about this. She's just like, I got this. It's fine. Which is very, very odd. And this is what her mother said

after that. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, that's exactly this is her mother. Quote, I was scared. Ron Hazen was the sheriff at the time. Hazen related to Annette. Annette was a Hazen and also her brother. Ron Hazen was the sheriff at the time, and I mean, he's a relative. Who was going to believe a nine-year-old child and who was going to listen to her? Plus, the fact that my ex-husband was still friends with the Haysons, this family, and he had threatened me on a separate occasion that if I didn't keep my mouth shut, that

he would kill me. So I was scared. Her ex-husband would threaten her. Yeah. So she said, I figured if I told the sheriff that his relative was in on this and how do I know what my nine-year-old told me, they wouldn't believe it anyway. And my ex-husband would kill me. So it seemed better to just let it lie. They weren't going to listen and I was going to die.

So, you know. So this is crazy. So Ron Hazen is Annette's uncle. And it's just so much. and the ex-husband, the roofer, who had cheated on her with the suspect, had threatened to kill her if she talked. Sheated on her with a net.

That's her ex-husband. So this is a mess of a small town, just entanglement of shit here. So Jessica in 2001 graduated from high school. Shortly after that, she was at the West Liberty Police Station over an issue involving somebody's pet. And in a conversation,

the Corey Winnexie. murder came up. And she said, I said something about Annette, and I believe the officer dismissed me, and I couldn't even tell you which officer it was. So they said, well, did you tell the officer that you'd seen Annette say that she killed Corey? And she said, well, no, I didn't say that. And they were like, oh, well, that's probably why.

So her mother, though, in a deposition, said her daughter mentioned the candles. Her mother remembered the candles, too. remembered having the candle conversation. Now, here's the problem. This Valletta guy, this sounds all great and good. Right. But he said, you can't just take a confession and charge someone with it, especially a confession you didn't hear.

Even when someone makes a confession in an interrogation room, they have to ask a lot of follow-up questions to make sure they're actually, they actually did it. They want details of the crime that no one else would know, things of that nature. Yeah. I'm sorry I killed you, Cor. in a living room 25 years ago.

He doesn't do much. That a literal third grader heard. Yeah. It's a lot. That's a big stretch for evidence. He said you have to corroborate facts within the confession. Obviously. Otherwise you get false confession.

So he decided, let me run a background check on this Jessica Becker just to make sure she's not a nutcase who like goes to the cops all the time with wild stories. She seemed fine. So he's like, okay, she's not a criminal. She doesn't do this all the time. Then he read DeHole Corey Wenneke. homicide file, which is the last episode and a half. And a fucking mess. A great read.

If you're looking for a good story to read, you're like, wow, then he's fucking this one. Oh, wow. Then him to, wow, how do you get away with that? Yeah, this is fun. So then his team went and interviewed Cynthia Krogue, who, that's Jessica's mother, who confirmed her daughter had come home from the sleepover, told her about the black candles and what Annette said. And it's the same story 25 years later that from then.

So they were like, okay, that's important corroboration, the cops thought. This child didn't just hold this in for 25 years. They told her mother. She told her mother and the mother remembers it and remembers exactly what she said, and it's the same thing she's still saying. So that's good. He said it's also worrying. She said, I'm concerned because memories change over a long period of time.

I didn't think that maybe she was being dishonest, but I was concerned that the memories from something that happened to you when you're nine years old and you're now almost 40. which is true. There's so many things that you remember. How many movies have you seen not seen in a long time and then seen them and go, I remember this totally differently.

Or just like, I don't remember this plot point that changes the whole fucking movie. Forgot that person was in it. How'd I forgot that? Yeah, it's the weirdest thing in the world. So they said, okay, let's test this out. He has Jessica draw the area from her vantage point on the steps in the dining room.

Draw me what you saw. Show me how the room is set up down there and all that kind of thing. So she did. Then they went to the house, which was still there and structurally unchanged. Okay. And photographed it from multiple angles. And they decided, yes, she could have seen what she said she saw in exactly the way she said she saw it.

She drew exactly how it was. That's exactly the view she would have had. That all matches up. So memory-wise, she's matching up with the views. then also, this is interesting. In spring of 2018, a DCI agent named John Turbett goes and talks to Annette and asks Annette to draw a diagram of the Hazen Farmhouse like it was in 92 to jog her memory here. So she drew it. She draws it.

Her diagram shows a fully enclosed staircase with a door at the base coming down the stairs. The door hinges on the right and swings away from the stairs. So the landing at the bottom of the stairs is a tiny space, barely deeper than the door itself when open. It's just like a step worth. It's not much. So that means to see into the dining room, a person coming down those stairs would have to open the door, then close it again behind them to see. Because it's swinging out in their face, in their view. Otherwise, the open door blocks the sight line entirely.

So you'd have to open it and then close it again to be able to see it or be basically outside of it in the middle of standing next door essentially. So they said the two nine-year-old sneaking down for a snack, don't open the door, close it behind them, then stand in the open lit room where they can be seen because they're trying to sneak. Yeah, because I'm trying to get snacks. So then they realized that there was no door there. In 2019 or 17, there's no door.

The only evidence that there was a door there was a net. drawing. No one else says there was a door there. Oh. That's the thing. So Annette drew a door, but no one else said a door. Jackie, Annette's sister-in-law, who lived there, said that she was never asked about a door, which is interesting. The cops never asked her. So they said the door, if there is a door, maybe it was open, basically, is how they did it. So the door is a thing. Now, they did find at the house and evidence of hinges. There's a frange with hinge marks there, but they don't know when that door was there or when that door wasn't there.

The frame, yeah. The frame. Okay. So that's what they do. Now, the other girl on the stairs, Kayla, who was standing next to Jessica here, they interviewed Kayla and they asked her some questions here. They said, did Jesse Becker give you any other names of anyone else who may have been a witness to the event she'd.

described. And she said she said that Kayla, which was her friend at the time, because this is an agent being deposed about what they were told. She said that Kayla, which was her friend at the time, Kayla Hazen, would have seen and heard the same thing she did. So they said in the deposition, did you follow up on that? And he said, we did not interview Kayla, which seems like the first thing you would do. They said, and who made that call? Like, who the fuck decided that was good? Who said this? We don't need to corroborate this. And they said, well, he said, well, I don't remember specifically who said, don't talk to Kayla. And they said, well, why didn't you contact Kayla Hazen?

And he says, Jesse makes it very clear that even immediately after Annette had made the statement, she talked to Kayla. And Kayla had said she did not want to talk about it based on Jesse's statement. It was thought that Kayla would not be forthcoming or cooperative in speaking with law enforcement. Oh, because her grandfather is the... Yeah, and also because they think... If she didn't want to talk about it at the time when she was nine, then she won't talk about it now either, basically. Which, isn't it your job to kind of get people to talk about shit?

Isn't that the art of interrogation? Yeah. Not even interrogation, the art of just... This is the whole thing. If you're a homicide cop, your number one job is get people to tell you shit, period. Yeah, it's hard to... Sometimes words matter as much. as evidence.

Yeah, yeah, and you don't, you don't collect evidence. That's the crime scene guys, a lab guy, they do all that shit. Your job is to get people to tell you things. That's how you solve it. And then if you get lab shit, then great. But you want people to tell you. But anyway, Kayla, when the officials finally did talk to her, she said she hadn't heard anything at that time. Oh, wow.

She heard nothing. So now spring of 2018 comes around now. So 26 years later. Special Agent John Turbett drives to a house in Tipton, Iowa, and knocks on the door, and that's Annette's house. Okay. Now, Annette is a completely different human being than she was in 1992. How do you mean? Totally different. She has been married for 25 years to the same man. She's now Annette Cahill. She's 55 years old. She has three adult children, four grandchildren, been married to the same guy forever. She's a man. She hit 30 and completely said, time to settle down. And that was that. So, and she did. Wow.

She's worked. She'd understand if her husband of a long time was fucking somebody else. I wonder if she'd get that. Yeah, that'd be. So she worked since 2009 as a proofreader and a customer service assistant at the Police Law Institute, a company that produces online continuing education training taken monthly by roughly 10,000 police officers. nationwide. That's what she's doing. Wonder how she got that job.

I don't doubt her uncle had anything to do it. So basically she's a grandmother who does police training work. That's who she is now. Grandma works at the police department. Yeah. She used to be a party, though. Oh, she was. You never know.

Kids, when you're looking at your grandma, you have no fucking idea what she was about, especially kids now. Right. Because your grandparents in like the 70s and shit. Oh, my God. They were doing coke off each other's dicks back then, and you have no clue. And now you're like, go fishing? They did the same thing.

They just did it in fish nets and neon colors. Absolutely. So, Jeff Turbitt, as he's walking up to the door, he said, my goal as I'm walking up to the door of a suspect's house is, what are the hurdles this going to be this person wanting to even sit down and talk to me? And I don't know that when I come up. And I know that when I come up and knock, that this is going to be a really difficult conversation for this person to have. For sure. Yeah. Hey, remember your whole past that you've forgotten and everything?

Let's talk about it in excruciating detail. What do you say? Very, very specific things. She let him in the house. She didn't tell him to fuck off. She didn't seem surprised that this conversation was coming, which is odd. He said she does at least create a perception of cooperation. She does invite me in after.

I identify myself and I tell her who I am, she does not seem at all put off or surprised by the fact that I want to talk to her about this murder that happened a number of years before, which at this point is what, 27 years, 28 years, or 26 years. So they talked for about 25 minutes at her home, and then he said, hey, let's move this to the sheriff's office if we could. So you see she's being cooperative and talking and says, I'll take a shot and try to get her at the sheriff's office. and that's when they go to the sheriff's office. Okay. They sit down in a room at the sheriff's office, and she tells him, I have an hour. That's all I have, one hour for this.

Okay. Yeah. Now, earlier the day, in the day in her living room, she was telling the cop that this was the most important thing in the world. And now she's like, I only have an hour for it, by the way. I'm not going to be late for some shit. It's not that important.

Yeah. So it's interesting. She said, Corey's the love of her life. He was always the love of her life back then. She still loves him and she's waited. She said, I've been waiting decades to hear who killed him and to hear the outcome of this and to get some justice for Corey. So he then says, it seems to me at this point that Annette is trying to create the perception of cooperation versus actually being cooperative. She's willing to cooperate with me to the extent that she can control that.

and then no more. So in the interview, this is where the angry sex came from. It was this interview that she described it as we had angry sex after on that night when he drove me home. 30 years later, she remembers that really rough sex that we had. Angry sex. And she then says something that has never come up in an interview in the last 26 years. She said, quote, and I don't know if I've mentioned this before, that was the first night Corey ever told me he loved me, which would seem strange.

When our relationship's good, I love you, but when I'm trying to hang out with some other chick and you won't get out of my fucking car and I take you home and have angry sex with you, now I'm going to tell you I love you. That doesn't make a lot of sense. He was trying to ditch her and literally kick her out of a car an hour earlier. He appeased her with the sex, made her a slam pig for a minute. Yeah. And then told her that he loved before or after the slam pig sex.

Sure about that. So they said, why is this the first time we're hearing about this? Why didn't this come up in any of the other dozen interviews that we've conducted with you over the years? Very first time he said it? You'd think that would be so significant. And she said that, you know, listen, why would I be mad? He chose me. He told me he loved me.

Things could not have been better. Why on earth would I kill him? I thought things were great. Well, because he left your house to go then drop another woman off and then go sleep in his fiancé's bed. that's possibly why. So he said, she said about Corey that she said, you know,

that he didn't do anything to deserve this. Yeah, it's just, it's weird. So she basically says, look, Corey deserved to get beat badly, but he didn't deserve to die. That's what she,

that's what this cop said. What? Yeah. Because it's weird. She said, you know, one of the things that she said was that they have a quote from the kid was her saying, go knock the shit out of somebody if you're that mad.

Don't do this. Okay. So that means she's kind of saying someone else did it at that point. So he says, she says, this is the cop. She says basically, look, Corey deserved to get beaten badly, but he didn't deserve to die. Now you would have to ask yourself, why would someone who's being accused of beating someone to death say he deserved to be beaten? It's almost, we call it a cold case confession for lack of better terms because she's admitting to exactly what she did without saying she did it. Okay.

I don't know if I'd call it that or if I'd call it her just saying that, I mean, he was fucking around with a lot of people. So maybe people thought he deserved to get beaten up, but no one should have killed him. I could see that too. And keep in mind, it's a small town and she's not necessarily a CEO of anything. She's going to talk like a. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, people say knock the shit. She's not a lawyer, you know what I mean?

That's speaking in legal terms. And out of nowhere also, unprompted, she offers a comparison about her first marriage where her husband cheated on her and she got a divorce. She said, I didn't kill him, did I? Oh. So that means I'm free. She didn't condone the cheating, though. No, but that means I'm free and clear. Anybody could die around me and I obviously didn't do it.

I didn't do it. So then she gave them some inconsistencies. her account of October 13th, 1992, no longer matched her old account on several points, which is to be expected over 26 years. That's, memories change over 26 years. So that's actually normal, especially if she didn't do it. She wouldn't be, the stuff wouldn't have been that stand out. But if it's a moment in history that changes your life so dramatically,

because this is a man that he just told you he loves you. Yes, true. But 26 years, long night of drinking, long night of all that kind of shit. Yeah, I guess the fantasy of being with him fades. It's what I mean. Anything could happen in 26 years. Well, she initially claimed that she couldn't remember stopping at Corey's house at all that morning until they put her prior statements in front of her. So in this interview, she said, I wasn't at the house that morning. And they were like, not what you said when you ran to the police station and told us that after he was dead. Oh my God.

That's weird. It's very interesting. And in these interviews also, she had talked at some length about her lifelong love of Gothic candles as well. That comes up. I always have candles. I love candles. I just like them. They're just cool.

48 minutes into the interview. Remember, she said, I have an hour. 48 minutes, she said, I'm done. So she's, I don't know if she's a psychiatrist or what, but she said, I got a 50-minute hour and that's all I'm doing here. Yeah, I got a prep for my next client. Yeah, she said the hour's up and she'd come back and do another one at some point. Then she called and said that an old friend from high school had turned up unexpectedly and she had to go out to dinner so she couldn't meet. So she had made another appointment to talk to the cops.

And then when that came up, she was like, oh, surprise dinner. I can't make it. I feel like life's going to get in the way of her talking to the cops a lot now. A lot. Well, then she left the state for a couple weeks, which they're like, okay. Then she came back but didn't do the interviews again. So they're like, this is not what we were expecting. Another friend from Facebook popped up.

Yeah. And later encounter, agents came to her home again. According to her daughter, who got a text message about it, Annette had initially been excited believing there was new information in Corey's case. Then it became clear she was the one under investigation. and she said that basically they came to the door and she said, leave, I'm calling my lawyer now. Now she's calling a lawyer. Okay.

I've tried to duck you guys and I can't do it. Yeah. If it's figured it's been this long, maybe you guys will retire eventually and then I can deal with the next batch of cold case investigators. May 31st, 2018, they walk up to her door, knock again. This time they arrest her. They have an arrest warrant for Annette this time. And the cop said, told her she was under arrest and she was being charged with murder. She was just very stoic, just sat in the back and didn't say anything.

You would hope that she'd be screaming in the back saying that we got the wrong person, but it seemed to us like she knew it was coming. So we don't know if she's just a calm 55-year-old woman. Yeah. Very stoic or if she is, you know. Or she's waiting to find out what they know. Yeah. So she is charged with first-degree murder, and Bond is set at a million dollars.

Oh, wait. Yeah. So the, yeah, the criminal complaint here that went out to the whole nation said that Annette Cahill had told someone Corey was killed with a baseball bat before that information was public or the weapon had been recovered. That's part of their thing here. That's a damning claim. That doesn't sound good. But later on, the authorities told them that was wrong. But that's what went out in the media, because that's what they put out in the media.

It's not the media's fault. This was the cop's fault that she knew about the baseball bat, but that wasn't true. She didn't say anything about a baseball bat or anything else before it was public. But by then it had been in every, it was on the Associated Press, the local papers. So Corey's uncle, Ken here, said that. you know, this is a lot of reactions to this whole case being solved. He said he got to be a young gentleman and the next thing you know, they take you away from him. So he was very excited someone was being held responsible at this point.

And they also said, you want to throw up, you know, you don't think anything like that can ever happen to your family. And he said, for years, we heard all these rumors. Well, we heard this and we heard that. and I just look at them, just look at them and shake my head like, well, if you know more than I do good, I mean, I don't know. If you know something, tell somebody, basically. He said he's filling in the blanks a little bit more now, but that doesn't help any because he said, you know, that was their, his parents only child, Corey. They said, they took it away. How do you tell them you're sorry? Sorry doesn't cover that. And he said, I've been asked a million times, who did it, who did it? I don't know.

So maybe I do know now. I don't know. We'll see. People come to her defense like crazy, by the way, and now? Oh, big time. Yeah. Within two weeks, it was a big deal. The David Oliver of North Liberty was her boss at the Police Law Institute.

He donated $1,000 toward her defense. He said, I've known her for the better part of a decade, and this is not the person that I know. she believed fully in our mission. She was very much about due process and how to do it. She's very pro-law enforcement. Well, yeah, they never murdered anybody. Hey, everybody, if you love cops, it means you're incapable of murder. It's the craziest thing.

It doesn't mean you think you're above the law because you know a bunch of cops, which is about, I'd say it's 50-50. You either think you're above the law or the other way around. Or you want to kiss their balls so that they leave you alone, which is also chicken shit, pussy stuff too. Yeah. Well, yeah. I said, I remember through my childhood her talking about her best friend being killed. There's no doubt in any of our minds, she did not do this. He described her as a sweetheart, a quilter, a great cook, and a crossword puzzle enthusiast.

I mean, yeah, but bad people have a lot of good qualities. Especially 30 years later, they have fine quality. I mean, if you, let's be realistic here, if you let Ted Bundy go, by the time he was 60, he'd probably have stopped. He might be pretty docile. Yeah. He'd have gray around the ears, some bifocals on sitting there reading the newspaper. He goes, there's no way he could have fucking rape people's heads after he cut them off. No way.

He might have been doing that New York Times every morning. Yeah. BTK didn't do shit for decades. Yeah, at the end there, he was just mad that they weren't talking about him anymore. He was just bored, yeah, had no life. So it's crazy. Her son, John, said we don't have any doubt that she's not capable of this. When this first happened, I was around seven years old, and I remember her being absolutely heartbroken and also said he has nothing.

She had nothing but love for this Corey guy. Her other son said they need to find the answers they deserve, but I'd love to see my mom back. She's not the one who did it. I think to figure out who really did it would help not only the family but her too because it's someone she cared about very, very much. I think I'm a little upset by this, but I do understand how the justice system works, and I don't think it has any truth. They claim the word of a witness from 25 years ago that sat 25 years with this information on a murder. That just doesn't make sense. There's a serious disconnect in my brain right now.

He called her a selfless woman, and, you know, she said she's so selfless. She said she's planning to use a public defender so her family wouldn't bear the cost. But she didn't use a public defender, by the way. No, she didn't put it on the taxpayers? She was, quote, talked into hiring a good lawyer. Yeah, you know, her family talked to her anyway. So. Your cop dad said, lady, everybody goes to jail that gets those.

Yeah, that's what happens. So she sat in jail until September 2018 when a judge decided to release her to electronic monitoring. Oh. Decided she wasn't a threat, even if she did do it, it was 30 years ago. And she's obviously not in the same position now. Yeah, she did training videos to make. She kept working at the police law institute while awaiting trial on a murder charge, which is... Wow.

For 10 months, American police officers got their continuing legal education from a company whose customer service is handled by a murder suspect. An arrested murder suspect. An accused murder. Oh, a murder suspect with an ankle bracelet. Unbelievable. Yeah, coming to work at the police, whatever police thing. with an ankle bracelet on. That's hilarious.

Innocent. So proven guilty. But that is a fascinating, fascinating position to be in. Suspended with pay. How about that? Look, we don't think you did it. We got your back. We want you to keep your back.

But it looks bad. It just looks bad when you walk in with the bracelet. It just makes us look like we're really not serious here. You can't have a cop that shot people be out on the street the next day. He goes on paid administrative. For a minute until they start fucking. Until they investigate. Until they got to go fund me for him.

If they find that guy guilty, then I got to, or at least arrest him and put him on trial for it, they're not going to let him out with an ankle bracelet to go enforce the law? No, go out there and pull people over with your gun. Get out there and write some tickets, Johnson. Please. Yeah. So now before the trial, the defense filed two motions had either succeeded. Basically, the whole thing would have been over.

January of 2019, a motion to dismiss for pre-accusatorial delay. So a long delay in accusing her. 26 years has passed. Nine people who'd given law enforcement information about six other suspects had died or lost their memories. The defense named them. Jeff Murdoch, who confessed twice, was dead. Bob Morrison, Missy's husband, dead. Missy's dead.

Jeff Lobdell, dead. Nancy Power, Stanley Phelps, Harvey Padon, Brenda Peterson, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Jamie Marin had suffered strokes in 2014 and 18 and could no longer recall what he told the DCI about a suspect named Joey Brockert. And it's a mess. But the judge denies that, saying no actual prejudice had been shown and the delay was not designed to gain a tactical advantage. It was just because they had nothing to charge. February 2019, a motion to exclude a couple of witnesses here is what they need here. They said their testimony was so impossible, absurd, and self-contradictory that it called in a 1909 case with precedent.

It's denied. The court said the issues raised by Cahill's motion are more appropriate to be decided by the jury as a matter of credibility. So, okay. It affirmed the Court of Appeals and said, and again by the Iowa Supreme Court, which pointed out that Annette could not cite a single reported Iowa case, holding that inconsistencies and recollection are by themselves grounds for excluding a witness. All right. March 4, 2019 is the trial. The Attorney General here, the Iowa Assistant Attorney General, 16-minute opening statement, which is briefed. for a murder trial.

It's very succinct. You don't want to wear the jury out before they've even heard anything. So he said actions and consequences. That's what this case is about. Okay. Now, Cahill's lawyers

are casting claims on Jessica Becker because that's the whole case is Jessica Becker. She did it, yeah. Well, yeah, nine. She went in there. Really tied one.

Didn't know the guy. Just swinging that thing. She was upset. Yeah, maybe it was, instead of Jessica, Maybe it was Kayla. Can you imagine? It was the two of them?

Jessica and Kayla, yeah. You hold one side, I'll hold the other. So they said that they say Cahill confessed as tainted by animosity, basically. So this girl is upset that her family got broken up, so maybe she's making this up out of animosity, basically. Because Cahill had an affair with her stepfather, which contributed to the end of the parents' marriage. a childhood memory expert hired by the defense called Jessica's testimony extremely questionable. Dubious at best. Can you remember things that clearly at nine years old at 35, basically?

Questions. It's a good question. So the cop here, they put up a DCI agent here, Kenneth Sandy. He investigated a net in 92 and cleared her. Really? Yeah, he was one of the guys that did the polygraph and all that. laugh. He said there was no physical evidence at the scene of the crime, including no fingerprints to link a net to the crime, right? And that's the question. He said, correct. He also got

him to say on the record that another investigator had been interested in the theory that Bob Morrison killed Corey because Corey was banging Missy, Bob's wife. So they said also, was he involved with gambling? Was he involved with drugs? Yes and yes. Right so. Okay. Jody, his living fiancé at the time, she said that he was called him an easygoing, just lighthearted, easy to talk to.

He was sweet. He was just a kind person. And they said, what about all his fucking sleeping around? Right. And she said, I ignored a lot of that and internalized a lot of that myself. Just held it in. Just it was fine. Internized it. She said she loved him despite the other women.

and that after his death, she never wanted to go back to that house. Wendy Marshall testified about Annette being in the car with the argument, that whole evening of what happened. Jessica Becker testifies about black candles. I'm sorry, I killed you, Corey. Yeah, Cynthia here also testified about being afraid of the sheriff and her ex-husband as well.

So there's all this going on. Now, deliberations. It is five women and seven men on the jury here. Yeah. They come back deadlocked. Yeah, because what, it's not a lot of evidence. It's a tough case. Judge sends them back again.

Go back as they always do. You're deadlocked. No, you're not. Keep trying. They say again. Yeah. They asked, to the judge asked the foreperson, is time the issue? Are you close?

Is there, would time help? And she said, not going to work. We are set and we're set. We're split and that's that. One juror appeared to be confused by that. answer and appear did not yes when the judge asked the question. So then the judge pulled them one by one. All 12 agreed with the four person. It's a mistrial. Oh my God. Okay. County attorney says, I was gutted is really a hard thing to go through a trial of that length and that intensity and that

ends up with a hung jury. And you find out that the jury did not really resonate to your case, your case theory and wanted a lot more. That was a low moment. He said, everyone gets up, leaves the room, and we're left standing, and everyone looked around and they said, let's get this stuff cleaned up and we'll meet in a half hour at the county attorney's office and talk about the next trial. Oh, boy. So they never had a thought to not have another trial with her. We're going to retry. Now, what went on in the jury room? Okay.

On the first round of voting, it was 11 to 1 for acquittal. Wow. That was the first vote. 11 to 1. Then they were sent. That was when they came in deadlock. They were 11 to 1. Yeah.

The judge said, go back. They deliberated again, and they came out again. This time, it was nine for acquittal, three for conviction. Oh, no. It's spreading. It's getting, yeah, that's why they said it's nothing. More time isn't going to help. Unless you give us another six months, maybe all those people will turn to guilty, but otherwise we're stuck.

Yeah. Second trial set for September 2019. In July 2019, we have a new witness. which you wouldn't imagine there'd be any new witnesses after all this fucking time. 30 goddamn years. But there is.

Scott Payne. Okay? It's interesting. Scott Payne's mother was talking to Corey Winnekees' mother in the course of that conversation it emerged that Scott Payne was surprised that he'd never been called

as a witness. An investigator opened a case file on the computer, searched Payne's name and found him and said, in his own words, why would we have called, why would we have called this witness?

I don't understand what he's talking about. Did he have information? So they went out and talked to him again. And this time, Scott was all fucked up back in the day when they talked to him. He's on drugs and booze. Now he's sober. Okay? He's an older sober man now.

People change. Yeah. And he had a huge drinking and drug problem and all that kind of thing. And at the time, he had a policy of never talk to the cops ever. A policy, yeah. Especially if you're a young guy who does a lot of drugs in Iowa. Don't ever talk to the cops. He said...

Punk rock against the grain shit. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. And he was a drug buddy of Annette's brother. That's how he knows Annette. He said that he saw on the day of the murder

Annette burning bloodstained clothing outside the house on the day of the murder. That's not good. When asked why he didn't notify police, he said, quote, I tried to avoid the police as often as I could.

Which if you have drugs on you, you avoid the police as often as you could. He said I was not in a good place at that point in time in my life. I was driving illegally and doing illegal substances, and I tried to avoid the police as often as I could. He knew Denny and Jackie Hazen. He went out to the Hazen Farmhouse to use drugs with other men who were there to use drugs. He said at one point he was, he worked butchering hogs,

draining out the blood from pigs, as he put it, which is a job that leads you. he said with a lot of expertise about what blood-soaked clothing looks like. He goes, I know what clothes look like when they're soaked in blood because I was soaked in blood all the fucking time. He said at some point in the mid-90s,

he loaned the Hazen family $5,000. They never paid him back. And he said that he felt they had lied to him. He said that a day or two after Corey's death, he was at the Hazen Farm, Annette came speeding up the driveway, drove around the back toward the burn barrel. he said, quote, she got out of the car and opened up the trunk and took out a paper bag with clothes in it and dumped them out.

And Jackie met her out at the burn barrel with a gas can and they lit the clothing on fire. Oh, boy. He described her as frantic like. He said the clothes looked bloodstained. He knew what bloodstained clothes looked like, obviously. And he asked Annette, what the fuck are you doing? And her explanation was, the clothes were covered in red paint. So I just got rid of them.

I just wanted to burn them. Not throw them out, not use them as rags or, you know. I'm looking at this paint. Some shit to wear next time you paint as you save. I have clothes with paint on them and shit that I use for whatever. Burn them. He said, one red paint, I know blood on, I know how blood dries on clothes. That was blood.

So he is added to the witness list. There is a motion to exclude him, though, because they said in 1996, they interviewed Scott Payne. and the report of that interview quotes him saying that Annette Hazen was seen burning a bunch of stuff after Corey was killed and attributes that information to a woman named Nancy Powers. So they were saying that this is secondhand information. Yeah. Yes. Now, and also in 1996, Payne told them that the stuff she was burning was a diary. And he said he hadn't seen it.

He just heard about it. All right. In the same interview, Payne named Jeff Murdoch as a man who had bragged at two local bars about killing Corey. At his 2019 deposition, Payne never mentioned the person who he said in 96 told him about the burn barrel. And he denied knowing Jeff Murdoch at all. Now he doesn't know him at all. He couldn't explain why his 96 account differed from his 2019 account. He just said, I don't recall that it is different.

To me, that's what I remember. Okay. He couldn't remember when deposed details from a law enforcement interview he gave a month earlier. He couldn't consistently say where he'd been living in October 1992. What? Yeah, in 1996, he was living in Keekuk and moved back after the murder. In 2019, he said he may have been in the Muscatine area but couldn't recall. And also that he had been at the Hazen Farmhouse for a multi-day hard drug party immediately after.

after the murder. At the sheriff's house. Holy shit. Now, he offered that he was drinking heavily in 96 when he was interviewed because they came right around the anniversary of his younger brother's death. So he knew he was really drinking a lot and he might not have been in the mood to talk, essentially. So they deny the fact that they deny keeping him out and say this is up to the jury to

decide credibility. Trial number two, nine women, three men on the jury, a plus two. alternates. The state's, it's the same trial as the first one plus Scott Payne with him saying the bloodstain closed. On day three, over the lunch break, the state handed the defense a document. It was an incomplete DCI lab report. No date, no signature, no case name on it.

It was identified as belonging to Winneke and that file only because the exhibit letters and descriptions matched the other DCI reports in the case. Okay. The report said that four human hairs recovered from Corey's left hand were not suitable for DNA-STR analysis. The state had discovered that morning after Agent Valletta called the lab, prompted by the fact that the defense had spent two days cross-examining state witnesses about four hairs. The parties made a record outside the presence of the jury the next morning, and this is what happened in chambers. the court said, have you developed a plan with this document? They said, well, as much as I'd like to introduce the fact that the hairs were not suitable for analysis, I don't really know how I can do that. The report's not signed.

It's not in the minutes. So my plan was just not to use it at this point. So if counsel wants to use it, I would not object to them offering it as an exhibit, but the state plans to basically let it lay. So the defense can use it as they want, but we're not going to use this because it really doesn't have any information. and we don't even know we can't investigate the veracity of it because there's no signature on it. We don't even know. We can't bring a person up and say, you did this, right? Fair.

Which is what you do in court. So they said, all right, with that, what does the defense wish to make of it? The defense said, just to be clear, the state is not intending to offer this. And they said, yes. And they said, okay, I think with that mind, we don't have any fighting issue here. So we're not going to fuck with it either. We'll just leave it alone. The report was never admitted.

the issue never came up again during the trial. Problem is, what the defense won't know for months until months from now was that a second mitochondrial DNA testing works on old, small degraded samples where STR testing fails. We all know that now, but seven years ago we didn't. Now, in closings, the defense said there were four human hairs found in Wenneke's left hand. Now they're going to use it, not for evidence, but for this. Look at the scene and the facts. Does that seem more likely than a killing by a 120-pound 5-foot-7 woman or something more likely done by a powerful man? And the state has presented no evidence that the human hairs matched to Nett's hair, either by microscopic comparison or with known hairs through slides or DNA comparison.

Moreover, the hairs tell us it's unlikely that Corey was unaware of his assault, meaning he did wake up because he fought. The fact that he was an experienced fighter, he's a bartender. and does drug. Yeah. Weighed 230 pounds and was a football player, make it unlikely that there was only one to sell it unless that someone was very powerfully built. The defense argued alternative suspects,

Bob Morrison, Joey Brockert. He's the other guy who beat another man to death at some point. Okay. So goes to the jury here. Around 4 o'clock, they come back and say, deadlocked. No verdict. The judge says,

Nope, here's what you do. Break for the day. Yeah. Let's not get out emotional. Go home, sleep on it, come back the next day. And we'll talk about it. Okay. So 2 o'clock, Thursday afternoon, after the Wednesday was when they were sent home.

After 16 total hours of deliberation, they have a verdict. Okay. Verdict is guilty of murder in the second degree, which is a lesser included defense. They made a compromise is what this is. Okay. Annette's daughter said, we absolutely did not believe there was going to be a guilty verdict.

The first trial, having been so much in my mom's favor with the jury, we just anticipated the second one would go the same way. Wow. Interesting. Now, the prosecutor said the jury was smart. They probably believed that Annette went over there with the intention to seriously assault Corey,

and that led to his death, which is second-degree murder. I think they took their time and reviewed the evidence and I think they got it correct. Before sentencing, Annette's lead attorney dies of a heart attack. So that's not good. So the judge,

anyway, denies a motion for new trial and the motion to compel mitochondrial DNA testing on the four hairs, which seems like, whatever we got, let's test it. What the fuck? What are we doing here? The court's reasoning on the DNA

was even if it showed the hair belonged to someone other than Annette, his fiancee, who lives there, or himself, would leave the jury only in a slightly better position than they were during the trial. Okay. And they said it was not reasonable or feasible to require the state to test the hair against every possible suspect the defense had raised as they raised 20 people.

So, victim impact here. His mom, Corey's mom, said her family was robbed of the future with him. She said that Cahill should receive, at minimum, the number of years the family had spent without him. 30 years in. She said, yeah, he's not coming back. We didn't have my son for 27 years. This woman lived 27 years of her life with her family, her grandkids, her husband, her children. We didn't have that.

She's where she belongs. And the judge says, you, ma'am, may fuck off the maximum 50 years in prison. She must serve 75% which is 35 years before parole eligibility, which would make her 90 when she's up to parole. Holy shit. 91, sorry. Court of appeals affirms it. They were going for a Brady violation about witness credibility, and they said, well, that's left to the jury. The jury can decide witness credibility.

The Iowa Supreme Court said one could question the severity of Hazen's knee injury since she was mobile enough to go on a shopping trip. Treatment turned out to be unnecessary, and the ailment for the diagnosis was pulled muscles. Because they were trying to say, her going out the next day going to the doctor, doctor and all that shit. That was basically a cover-up and that that woman didn't need to go to the doctor and all that kind of shit. So they said she said,

Hayeson also shopped at various locales around Iowa City at a time when the family budget was so tight they couldn't pay the phone bill. The Iowa Supreme Court says it took the defense, even with the incentive of a guilty verdict and a looming 50-year prison sentence, two

months just to arrive at a theory why earlier disclosure of the draft lab report would have been beneficial. What are the odds that anything different would have happened had this report been disclosed before? So they also deny it. Now, 2002, it's on Dateline. All right. And something, it's interesting. Basically, they put this out. And Dateline is, hey, look at this murder and this awful murder they did, basically. That's Dateline. This is different. After it, everybody who saw it said, hey, I don't think she did

that. No? Yes. So Jody Ewing, who runs the Iowa Cold Cases and has spent two decades cataloging unsolved murders, wrote publicly she does not normally question law enforcement's decision to indict, and then said this case left her with a sick feeling in her gut,

and she saw no credible evidence to support even the indictment, let alone a guilty verdict. Oh, shit. Interesting. And they're even saying that one commentator said that he and his wife watched thousands of true crime things and ranked this among the three weakest cases they've ever seen along next to Brendan Dassey, basically. So, yeah, it's interesting. So October 20, 2003, the wrongful conviction unit of the Iowa State Public Defenders took a look at the case. so did the Drake Law School wrongful convictions clinic here.

They all looked at this sort of thing, and the court entered an order for post-conviction DNA filing in 2023 and other testing of physical evidence based on an agreement between the defense and the state. On September 25th, the state filed a motion to dismiss, arguing the application had not been properly served. The judge denied the state's motion. The testing went forward on the bat. DNA testing. Okay. Three findings found. First, on the prosecution's presentation to the jury, they said, we discovered that the prosecutor lied to the jury, telling them they couldn't do DNA testing on the baseball bat when they knew of mitochondrial DNA.

Second, they didn't consider the alternate suspects. They had a box of documents and evidence they didn't turn over to Annette's trial counsel. And third, they tested the bat. neither Corey nor Annette's DNA is found on the bat. Neither of them. Oh, no. So at this point, they don't even know that there's the fucking bats the murder weapon. Right.

This might have been a couple of kids left a bat on the side of the fucking road. Oh, no. There is DNA on it, both male and female DNA. Neither of them low belonging to either of those two. So they said the state doesn't want to. to know who and the state won't compare it to the alternate suspects they'd previously identified. So the Iowa State Bar Association's own publication summarized it thusly. Recent and conclusive DNA testing has incontrovertibly shown that neither Kehill's DNA nor

Wenneke's DNA is present on the bat. The new scientific evidence does not support Kay Hill's conviction. I would say not. So they said it doesn't explain why there's male and female DNA. doesn't explain anything. So there's post-conviction petition claims here. They said there's newly discovered evidence that Kay Hill did not receive a constitutionally fair trial, credible alternate suspects with motive opportunity and means to murder Corey and advanced forensic scientific evidence that shows by clear and convincing evidence that Annette Cahill is factually innocent.

So, yeah, it's a lot. And nationally, by the way, out of 3,735 exonerations, 636 have come out of DNA. So this is how you clear people. Yeah, this is it. That's it. So Iowa has 17, by the way. Not one of them was attributed to DNA evidence in Iowa, though. They said it's proving much more difficult than anyone thought when we started this effort to correct an injustice and correct the wrongful convictions.

Other states jump at it. Iowa does not. They don't like releasing people. They don't like saying they're wrong, apparently. So the national average to correct a wrongful conviction is six to ten years, and she said Iowa is not average. So Annette is at the Iowa correctional institution for women in Mitchellville. She's, you know, in her 60s now, never confessed, maintain her innocence. She could be released as early as 2042 at the current sentence structure when she's 79.

So that's good. I guess they adjusted it. She got post-conviction trial relief. They're talking about here set for 2026. Her family says she's not well. Her daughter said, I know that she's hurting now. She's physically and emotionally she's hurting. She's not able to be able to take care of herself like she should be.

And that's really hard for me to know and not be able to do anything about it. It's hard when my kids ask, how's grandma? So she quilts and makes art. And her art was projected on a screen in a Detroit. at a Des Moines music venue here while her lawyer told several hundred strangers about her. So it's a lot. Now, the Winnockys are really upset because they're like, well, we don't want the wrong person in jail. They said, that's the part.

You don't want your relatives here, but you don't want the wrong person to be serving time for it. No, and they left the town. They said, here's how you carry around uncertainty in a small town. You know that every day when you walk down the sidewalk, that the person that you're meeting on the sidewalk might be the person that committed homicide on your son because they don't know who it is. I was so left back in the 90s and I could just never get over it. It was always on my mind. First couple of years, I don't think I had a day go by that I didn't think about him almost constantly. So 2025, they're still pushing it.

The wrongful conviction unit, they're still making speeches. they said, here's one saying, Annette Cahill, as you can see from her artwork, is a kind-loving, talented woman. We want you to learn about Annette's case because we're going to trial soon. It's a tragic injustice that she's sitting in prison right now instead of being with her family for a crime she didn't commit.

She was married. She was a grandma. I've heard she's a great baker. And had a nice, normal, quiet life with Corey's murder never being solved. So they said, yeah, who the fuck knows? There's a change.org petition. They're looking for 500 signatures.

They have 239 at this point in time. They're getting there. They want the baseball bat tested compared to the other suspects, essentially. That's what they want. That's the hope here. She's at the correctional facility for women in Iowa, and Corey is buried at the Oak Ridge Cemetery with the rest of the Oak Ridge Boys in West Liberty. Oh, wow.

So there you go, everybody. Oh, my God. That's the end. Iowa. That's it. That's it's till right now today. We have no idea. Annette sits in prison. We don't know if she did it. I mean, it doesn't sound like it.

I mean, if Corey's DNA isn't on the bat and there's blood on the bat, then that ain't the murder weapon, period. What are we talking about? There'd be plenty of DNA and a bat if you beat someone to death with it and there was still blood on it. Drop it on the side of the road. So, I don't know, everybody. Your guess is as good as mine.

what you think about it. Oh, boy. Let us know because, well, I'm open to talking about it because I think it's interesting and shit. We got a grandma until she's 90, James. Discuss your theories amongst yourselves, so, or with us. So anyway, there it is. There's West Liberty, Iowa. And you could see why this didn't take one because it was almost, that we're even long on this one. So anyway, there you go. If you like this episode, get on whatever app you're on, give us five stars. It helps so much. We don't know why. But it helps. So thank you. That Netflix, thumbs up. Thank you for watching. Two of them. Two of them. Double it up there. Thank you so much for doing that. Shut up and give me murder.com is where you get your tickets for live shows, all your merchandise.

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