Small Town Murder - The Bloody Dollar Murder - Perry, Utah

Episode Date: October 23, 2026

This week, in Perry, Utah, a strange encounter wih a middle of the night gas station attendant leaves a college student holding a bloody dollar bill, and having a bad feeling. This leads to the discov...ery of an absolutely brutal, and bloody murder. Detectives have multiple suspects, that seem to be together, but the real killer is completely off their radar. This real killer has excuses, but no remorse!!   Along the way, we find out that Utah is full of ghost stories, that vandalizing a dead man's room is in poor taste, and that when your gas station attendant has blood all over his shoes, you might not want to haggle over exact 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: crimeinsports@gmail.com 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!!

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:01 Hello everybody and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay and Choochoo! Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigal. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another really wild, crazy, insane edition of Small Town Murder Express.
Starting point is 00:00:36 This is all aboard the murder train pulling away from the station. This is one that seems like it's a real kind of, hey, what are we even doing with this? then it gets real weird and creepy and it's strange. So I can't wait to get into this. A lot of wild stuff. Before we do, head over to shut up and give me murder.com. Hell yeah. Last chance to get live show tickets for this year.
Starting point is 00:00:57 We got two shows left. The new schedule for 2027 is coming out very soon. Those tickets will be on sale in December. So November the 13th, Terrytown, there's only a few tickets left. I don't know if there's pairs left. I'm not sure if it's just individuals or whatever, but check that out. And then the next night, November the 14th in Medford, right outside Boston, get your tickets for that right now. Can't wait for that.
Starting point is 00:01:20 There are tickets available there. End the year strong. End it's strong. Shut up and give me murder.com. Speaking of that, great shows in San Jose in Sacramento, thank you to everyone who came out. A lot of people went to both shows. You guys are awesome. So thank you.
Starting point is 00:01:32 Thank you for supporting us and hanging out with us like that. So we do appreciate it. Another way to support is to get Patreon. Oh, yeah. And that's really, it's a favor for yourself, honestly. Patreon is great and we, it's worth it. Patreon.com slash crime in sports, just like the name of our other show there.
Starting point is 00:01:51 Great stuff. All you've got to be is $5 a month or above and you get so much. As soon as you subscribe, you're going to get like almost 400 back bonus episodes immediately. New ones every other week, one crime in sports, one small town murder, you get them all and they're a lot of fun this week,
Starting point is 00:02:06 which you're going to get. For crime and sports, we're doing more in other unrelated news because that was the most fun episode, I think we've ever done possibly. So we're going to do another one of those because they're a lot of fun. Then for Small Town Murder,
Starting point is 00:02:18 we're going to talk about this documentary, the widower documentary, till death do us part. It's a guy who had six wives and four of them are dead. Doesn't make any sense. Unless you're like 140 years old, that seems a little suspicious.
Starting point is 00:02:30 So it's a wild story. We'll get into all of that. It's on Netflix. You can check it out. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of that. And you get, on top of that, you also get all
Starting point is 00:02:42 the shows we put out. Your stupid opinions, crime in sports, and small town murder all ad free. Unbelievable. Add free. Just take it. And then on top of that, that's right, on top of that, you also get a shout out at the end of the regular show too. So it's all there. It's all we can do for you. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where that happens. That said, I think it's time, everybody. What do you say? I think it's time to sit back here. Let's clear the lungs, clear all to travel out of our lungs here. Arms to the sky, I guess you could say, and we're ready to go on a trip here. But first, we have to say,
Starting point is 00:03:21 Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Yeah. All right. We're doing this. We are going to Utah this week.
Starting point is 00:03:36 Fuck, yeah. Perry, Utah. Where's that at? P-E-R-R-Y, like Perry. It is, I'll say here, it's north central Utah, about an hour away from Salt Lake City, up north of Salt Lake City. Okay, between there and Provo. Kind of in the middle of nowhere, this place. It's five hours to our last Utah episode, St. George, Utah, episode 705.
Starting point is 00:03:58 Medicine made be murder. That was the guy who was blaming his medicine on everything. And he was a bad guy with medicine. Without medicine really didn't matter. So this is in box elder county. Like a box? Like your box? Like an elder's box county.
Starting point is 00:04:18 And two separate words. Area code 435, population 5,444. So not a big place and pretty rural out here too, especially when we're going to talk about it because Utah's blown up in population. Yeah. In the last 25 years or so. But this took a place a little before that. median household income here is higher than the national average, $89,069. And the median home cost here $472,900.
Starting point is 00:04:47 So pricey. It's pricey up there. The motto here is, quote, building a community together. Everybody's got to do their part. Everyone's doing something here, apparently. Pick up a hammer. Here we go. We're building it.
Starting point is 00:05:01 A little bit of history here. This is in the Bear River Valley. which I guess is a big agricultural area in Utah here. Orrin Porter Rockwell and his brother Merritt laid claim to some land in 1851 around here in a town. Those are called Mormons. Orrin, yeah. You bet. Oh, R-R-I-N, like hatch?
Starting point is 00:05:24 I think so. Bet your ass. This is the year that Box Elder was a town. It's now Brigham City. It used to be, or Brigham City, sorry, like Brigham Young. used to be box elder. And yeah, so that was how this all started. They got scared of Indian attacks.
Starting point is 00:05:41 That never really, didn't even happen, but they got scared of them and left. And then in 1853, a bunch of Mormons showed up and began to settle the area as well. A little bit of other thing. In 1896, a rainstorm happened before all the snow was melted, which caused a huge flood of water into the reservoir, which flooded everything. homes. Oh, no. If homes were lost, farms were covered in gravel and debris, just destroyed everything in the town. And cold water. Not good. Yeah, it was bad stuff here. So anyway, in 1898, they changed the name. It was three mile creek was the name of the town. Then they changed it to Perry in honor of Orin Alonzo Perry, which Orin Alonzo? Yeah. Alonzo is, to me, I mean, Alonzo morning is who I think of first. And Alonzo Bowden. Large black men is what I think of.
Starting point is 00:06:34 Not the whitest people who've ever lived. It's very, very weird here. Yeah, giant comic or a giant basketball player, one of the two. Alonzo Bowden's a really nice guy, though. Hell of a nice guy. He's huge and scary, but not when he talked to him. He's a great dude. No.
Starting point is 00:06:51 The humility that the man shows online, too. He's a great guy. He really laughs at himself about how, yeah, whatever. gave somebody a goddamn kidney. He's a good guy. Yeah. What a guy. So the population of this town in 1900 was 261, which is about 11 Mormon families, I believe, give or take, one or two. Two, three. Two, three families. Some reviews of this town. Here's five stars. It's such a cute little town, and the people here are so nice.
Starting point is 00:07:21 They have two elementary schools right in the town, which both have amazing teachers and staff. There are churches, I would assume there are. I bet there's a ton of those, and a nice park with lots of trees. There's also a Walmart and a Maverick. They have a gas station and a Walmart this place blowing up. I love it here. It must be the Maverick. It must be the Maverick, everybody.
Starting point is 00:07:47 Then the lowest rating they have is three stars. Here's three stars. Perry is a small town with great charm and positive atmosphere. However, there's a lack of diversity in the local shopping and dining could only be found in Brigham City, which is very close. So then what are you complaining about if it's very close? It's like five miles away, I think. Who expects diversity outside of Salt Lake City in Utah? In rural Utah?
Starting point is 00:08:12 In Salt Lake City, it's just all blonde people. It's mostly white people and a few Mexicans and Samoan people. Yeah. Islanders of some boy. Yeah, and a couple people who play for the jazz, and that's it. That's it. That's it. They said it would be wonderful to have one or two Perry-based businesses.
Starting point is 00:08:31 Yeah. They go all the way over there. They're never getting that. Nope. And then finally here, three stars. As with being in a small city, business is limited, and that curves the amount of income. I think curbs is what they're looking for there. Curves the amount of income that is produced by either small or large business.
Starting point is 00:08:50 Whoa. I hope you're not an economy. teacher because I didn't understand what the hell you're talking about. So that said, moving on. Maybe it's too advanced for us. Maybe they are. Maybe it's like high-level Harvard shit we just don't know about. Things to do here, there's a lot of ghost shit.
Starting point is 00:09:09 And since it's Halloween coming up here, let's talk about some ghost shit here. A couple of things. Brigham City's train depot was built in 1906, and it's said to be haunted by a shadowy figure. Come see Dead Mormons. Oh, yeah. and they've had orbs and electronic voice stuff and all that shit. Idle Isle Candy, which is a store. They say after closing time, objects fall from the shelf, furniture moves,
Starting point is 00:09:36 and a Native American man just appears. In the candy shop? Hanging out in the candy shop. Yeah. I don't know. He's standing out front holding cigars, perhaps. It's that a possibility. I don't know if he's just got a sweet tooth or what the story is here.
Starting point is 00:09:50 But one account says, is that the ghost ordered dinner for a cafe employee. Whoa. Who ordered this? The ghost got it for you. Don't worry about it. I didn't order a fastrami.
Starting point is 00:10:03 No. Crystal Hot Springs Resort, which is nearby. There's an evil shadow. I don't know how a shadow can be evil. What can a shadow do? How do you know it's evil? Maybe it's just bored and lonely.
Starting point is 00:10:17 Don't look at me. We have no idea here. There's all sorts of other ones here. Utah folklore. collector Danny B. Stewart documented a phantom clown sightings as well. Fantom clowns. One tale involves a clown in full regalia marching through Pioneer Park at 1 a.m., pausing to stare directly at an observer before moving toward him. Good, let's get it on, clown. Me and you. We're going to throw it out of this park and there's no one else here to see it.
Starting point is 00:10:49 You better have a weapon that doesn't squirt water. what I'm saying, because I'm going to have clown blood all over me when this thing's over. So there you go. That said, let's talk about some murder. This is a crazy story that when you first dip into it, I'm looking at it and reading it, and I'm like, that's not really, it doesn't have anything to it. And then you go peel a layer back and you're like, oh, this is crazy this story. Yeah. All right.
Starting point is 00:11:13 Here we go. Friday, May 25th, 1984. Yeah. That Friday night, two students at Utah State University, Ali Sabah, S-A-B-B-A-H and Bassam Barish, which that sounds like a band name, Bassam Barish. All right. I don't know. They go to school there. It doesn't sound like it.
Starting point is 00:11:35 Those Mormons recruit far and wide. Let me tell you some. They also have wild names. They do. They don't even know. You never know. Yeah. O-R-R-I-N.
Starting point is 00:11:44 Who would have thought of that? Yeah. So. these two on that night had stayed up studying. They've been studying for a final all night because it's the end of the year. It's May. So that night, when it flips over after midnight into May 26th, you know, they're studying, they're studying. And about three in the morning, they decide that we should take a break.
Starting point is 00:12:03 This is crazy. We've been up all night. Can't do this all night. Yeah, let's go. We'll go toward Ogden and find some place to get some, go get gas. We'll get, you know, some supplies and we'll get some breakfast maybe and then come back. Head on over to the new Wise Guys Club. Let's do that.
Starting point is 00:12:17 Oh, yeah. They're big comedy club fans here. Big club fans here. So, U.S. 89, the highway, runs out of Cash Valley through Sardine Canyon. Lovely name there. Good job. I'm sure there's lots of them there. Tons, not dried out in the sun.
Starting point is 00:12:34 And into Brigham City. And from there, the road follows the base of the Wasatch Front, as we talked about, the Donner Party. This is up against the Wasatch Mountains, toward Willard and Ossach. So it's past three o'clock in the morning, and it's Memorial Day weekend, too. Memorial Day is Monday. Through a windy mountain canyon road? Yeah, there's nothing there out there. So basically there's nothing along the stretch is open in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend.
Starting point is 00:13:02 And then they come across the Texaco shortstop gas station. Short stop, two different words. Only stop for a short time. Then fuck off. Stick around for a slim gym and fill your tank and get it. Get the fuck out of here. That's it. And that's the only place to go, really.
Starting point is 00:13:18 It's in the town of Perry. It's the only thing open in Perry. So they pull up to the self-service pump. And because they saw lights on inside. So they were like, oh, that place is open. Cool. And it's a 24-7 joint. So they pull up to the self-service pump before, like, as he's reaching for the nozzle,
Starting point is 00:13:36 a man comes out of the store and says, I'll do that for you. I'll take care of it. Oh. Seems to be the employee. He's about six feet tall. He's described as lean with. black hair, dark eyes, and a scruffy beard. Dude who works at a gas station in the middle of the night, basically.
Starting point is 00:13:52 Graveyard shift gas station, man. In the middle of nowhere. So, Sabah there, I think that's Ali, yes, Ali Sabah. He guessed that the guy was around 30, the attendant. He said the attendant had scratches and bruises on his arms, and there was something all over his clothes that looked like dried blood on his clothes. Yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 00:14:14 And something on his shoes that was like a wet liquid dark color. One of them said, I was looking at him and I saw blood stains on his hands. There was definitely blood wiped off of his shoes. You could see smeared blood on his shoes. So Sabah paid for the gas with five $1 bills. That's the gas they got. And the Barish guy, he started walking toward the store to go in and buy cigarettes. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:41 The man steps in front of him, the attendant, and says, I'll get them for you. I'll go get them for you. He's closed. He just said, I'll go get him for you. What do you want? And he told him, and the guy said, you know, Barish said how much? And he said a dollar.
Starting point is 00:14:54 So he said, okay. Oh, they're on sale today. Yeah. I looked, the average price of cigarettes at 84 was $1.6. So that's about right. Oh, that's about right. Yeah. So he, Barish handed him a five.
Starting point is 00:15:06 The man went inside, came back out with a pack of cigarettes, and gave him four $1 bills in change, which appeared to be. the same four bills that Sabah had given him for the gas. Probably gave him, yeah. So the other guy. So he noticed, but now one of the bills has what appears to be
Starting point is 00:15:23 a fresh blood stain on it. Oh. And he said he thought the attendant was acting like weird. Like he was acting like, don't go in there. Like he was acting real funny. Like, but he was like, I don't know, whatever. Maybe he's got some chicken there or something. Who knows? Covered in paint or blood. Or blood or something here.
Starting point is 00:15:39 Yeah. But he notices the the fresh blood stain on the on the bill, the students leave the gas station and they're like, that was fucking weird, right? Was that weird? Is that guy acting weird? Like, number one, that's a, well, first of all, it's a self-deprived? It's a self-service station. Uh-huh.
Starting point is 00:15:55 So how many self-service stations have you ever been to where somebody runs out of the store and pumps your gas for you? Insists. I've never had that happen once. Never. That ain't my job. Pump away, motherfucker. Like, that's, they don't care. If only had it happen in Jersey.
Starting point is 00:16:09 Yeah. It's the law. It's the law. And I think Oregon for a while, it was like, There was a couple other states like that. So anyway, they're disgusting. That was weird and they wouldn't let me go in the store. And I got this bill.
Starting point is 00:16:21 It's got, it looks like it has blood on it. So they take the $1 bill with blood on it and put it on the dashboard. Yeah. They keep that away from the rest of the bill fold. And the Basim guy or Bassam guy said, we thought something was going on. I put the bloody dollar bill on the dashboard to protect any fingerprints that may have been on it. Wow. Smart guys, actually.
Starting point is 00:16:44 In 84? Thinking about forensics in 84. But this is before, now that might be normal. He's watched a lot of law and order and forensic files and all this shit in the first 48. But in 84, none of that was on. So anyway, they were concerned about the encounter. So they decide this is a wild plan. They're like, okay, we should talk, we should get a hold of the police.
Starting point is 00:17:08 We're on a dark highway in the middle of nowhere. let's just put the pedal to the metal and speed. So we can get ourselves pulled over. And try to get pulled over. Yeah. Which when you're trying to, that'll never happen. Never. Ever, a million years.
Starting point is 00:17:22 So they gun it. They're, you know, weaving all over the road. They look like drunk maniacs. Nobody pulls them over. It doesn't happen. Because there's no cops out of 3 a.m. No. Well, I guess there's a lot of speed traps up there, and they know that.
Starting point is 00:17:35 That's why. So he said, we decided to go to a phone and go fast, hoping would someone would catch us on the way because we knew the area was a speed trap. Okay. This is the whole thing. It's like Texas, you know. So no one pulled them over, so they called a pay phone or they found a pay phone. They called the cops.
Starting point is 00:17:52 Detective Allen Beard arrives and takes them to the Brigham City Police Station. They tell him, this is what happened. A guy came out, and then he wouldn't let us in the store. We gave us these $4 bills. One of them has blood. Here it is. Gives it to this guy. He puts it as like in a bag and everything.
Starting point is 00:18:10 Sabah is he got the longest look at the guy while he was pumping gas so he said well you participate in a sketch for us and Ali said sure but Ali's also an artist that's like what he's in school for
Starting point is 00:18:25 oh he can I'll just draw it well at the police station he got really frustrated because the sketch artist couldn't get it the way he described it so he said I'll fucking draw him okay and he drew him there you go there's the sketch this is the guy that's my guy so he made two drawings apparently
Starting point is 00:18:40 Now, while this is going on, because they're listening to them for a while, but they don't know if these guys are out of their minds or high on drugs or they have no idea. So after a little while, at about 4.30 a.m., they send a patrol officer over to the gas station just to just check it out. Just go in and see. Give it a run. Yeah. Walk in, see if you think the guy's acting weird and then ask them a couple questions, maybe, whatever. Sure. So the sheriff and an officer enter the store through the public entrance.
Starting point is 00:19:08 first thing they see is a blood trail in the store. That's not good. It's leading to a storage room, but the door is closed and locked. So there's a blood trail going under the door that they can't get to. Now, they're thinking about kicking it open, but they're like, well, we don't know
Starting point is 00:19:24 what's going on in there. We don't know if there's so many people in there with guns. We're going to be somebody with a knife to somebody's throat. We have no idea. So they go outside, they walk around the back of the building and look through a window into the storage area where they see a man's, body lying on the ground and a lot of blood.
Starting point is 00:19:41 Yeah. So then they go back into the store and kick open the locked storage door. Uh-huh. And they determine that the man, the actual gas station attendant, is dead. Um, so this guy immediately calls for the investigation team. They cancel an ambulance and they call for basically a forensic unit instead. So the scene shows a lot of evidence of a struggle. Um, the body is covered in bruises and defense.
Starting point is 00:20:08 offensive wounds, hands are bound behind the back with electrical cord. This is brutal. This doesn't look like your average, I shot the clerk and took the, I shot the clerk. I shot the clerk. I shot the clerk. I shot the clerk. This doesn't look like your average sip and sack as well, sack as sods robbery. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:26 You know, where they shot the clerk. Yeah, I shot the clerk. So it doesn't look like that because this looks pretty fucking personal. This looks pretty neat. Yeah, this is robbery and, uh, humiliation, torture, murder. Yeah, this might be, yeah, this looks like somebody owed, you know, the Lucchese family money. This is crazy.
Starting point is 00:20:47 It's a big problem. Yeah. So the clerk is a young man named Bradley Newell Perry. And same as the town, Perry. Yeah. And Brad Perry is, wasn't that the weather guy in Phoenix? Brad Perry. Who tried to do comedy.
Starting point is 00:21:03 Oh, no. Brad Perry is the other effeminate. newsman, the black guy. Oh, he wasn't weather, but that's the guy I'm talking about, yeah. Oh, okay. He's on like the morning show. Did he try to do comedy too? Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Absolutely. I remember watching him. He did like some dance thing,
Starting point is 00:21:20 and I was like, well, this isn't good at all. Oh, no. I don't know what it is about people in, like, mediocre news jobs that think they need to do stand-up, but I've seen weathermen try to do it. It's not good. It's a taste. It's, I think it's a taste of that local celebrity where Corey McCloskey goes places and gets recognized, and he's like,
Starting point is 00:21:37 well, then I should just parlay this. and the other things. That's like saying stand-up is a craft. Like that's like going well I should just be a professional chef. I mean, people recognize me.
Starting point is 00:21:46 Like that's not, no, you don't know how to cook and you don't know how to fucking do comedy either. You're not funny. Was it Corey that did the that contest that we did?
Starting point is 00:21:54 Remember I made fun of him. The joke that was Nova literally in Spanish means no go. Oh, Christ. Is that Corey that did that? That's a Paul Rodriguez joke from like 1986. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:22:04 Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was. It means no go. It was funny. I don't want to put words in Corey's mouth. I just remember introducing him and going, he's very uncomfortable without clouds and shit behind him, so be nice to him. So, anyway, Brad Perry's great.
Starting point is 00:22:25 I don't know if he's funny, but I like that guy. Yeah, he's not funny at all, but he seems like a nice good. No, I can't believe that. So this Brad Perry, this poor kid, man, Jesus, he's the oldest child of Newell Perry and Claudia Perry. Claudia, these are nice people, by the way. Yeah. These are those religious people that actually like take. They practice what they preach.
Starting point is 00:22:47 They practice what they preach. And they're actually kind and forgiving and really, really good people. Wow. So he grew up, Brad did, with two brothers and two sisters. So he's five kids, which is a small Mormon family. He was active in the Brigham City sixth ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's a very active Mormon. He is, everyone says he's the most loved and easygoing and hardworking of all the siblings.
Starting point is 00:23:16 Brad is. Brad is. Yeah. Very gentle guy. He's a pretty big guy too, six two and change, not a small man at all. Really gentle. The Perry's love to hunt and fish. Brad doesn't hunt and fish.
Starting point is 00:23:30 What's what to do with it? They said he couldn't, he could never kill a mammal and he can't even kill a fish. He just feels bad. Doesn't want to do it. Just to kill a fish. Can't kill a fish. Can't take it out. Let it let it go.
Starting point is 00:23:42 So, yeah. So, yeah, it was weird. They said they would do that on Saturdays and they were hunting or fishing and he would just kind of, he'd hang out, but he just stand off to the side. He wouldn't do it. So he's got a sister here because he's got, his brother Lee was born after him. And we'll talk about him too. Then he has sisters, he has sisters, Nanette and Valerie.
Starting point is 00:24:02 Now, Nanette had polio as a child. Fuck. Yeah. and had a disability that was a lingering effect of the polio. That shit is wild, man. So kids being as lovely as they are would make fun of her a ton because she had a disability from polio because that's what kids do. And Brad said he put a stop to that shit.
Starting point is 00:24:24 He went and said, You pick them on my goddamn sister. You're going to have problems. And Nanette said, Brad was my protector. He'd walk me home from school and tell me how beautiful I was when I got teased. He's a sweet man. Nanette said he was her best friend. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:40 Always. She said he had a sense of humor and he could be mischievous but never in a mean way. Just wasn't in his spectrum. Hide or thicker shoes. That's pretty funny. Yeah, that's it. So his brother Lee called him a kind, gentle person and a peacemaker. He graduated from Box Elder High School and also from L.D.S.
Starting point is 00:25:05 Seminary School in 1980. He started college at Snow College in Ephraim and then left on a full-time church mission to Louisiana. Oh my. He's doing the whole thing. Now, in Louisiana, he was riding his bicycle, as they do,
Starting point is 00:25:22 and he got hit by a car. Fuck. And it was a bad one. He was in intensive care. He had serious facial injuries and had to go through a long string of surgeries to put his face back together afterwards, so he didn't look terrible.
Starting point is 00:25:35 And an 84 in Louisiana, that was a cutlass supreme. Oh, that's something big. Big and metal. A big old pickup truck with a shotgun rack and somebody. It was solid. Somebody drinking one of those yard long drinks while they're driving it and it's legal. A neck full of beads. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:25:52 Oh, for sure. Well, the chick next to him does. He's got bees to throw. He's got to throw more to see titties. So in the hospital, Brad kept a journal. And years later, his younger brother Lee would find the journals and actually really helped him a lot later on. I guess Brad had a, he had to figure out, he had to reconcile why, if he, he's a faithful guy, why would God let this happen to him, basically? I'm on the
Starting point is 00:26:20 road. Yeah, I'm on the road. Yeah. I'm spreading your word. I'm spreading your word. I've done nothing that deserves this. Why is this happening? So he said that he had to come to the conclusion that not everything's God's fault. This is from him. This is his, I think everything's God's fault. So, no, I'm just kidding. I don't believe in God at all. But, this is a, he says he believes everything's God's fault. Not everything that happens is God's fault. Sometimes bad things just happen and the challenge is getting through them. So he's taking the free will argument and moving it to random events too.
Starting point is 00:26:53 God presented you with this challenge so that you can find your way through it. And maybe that'll help others if you can maybe figure out a way. And that's how Brad's looking at it because he's got, he's trying to keep a positive outlook. So Lee would say that that passage, would help him repeatedly in his adult life get through things. So back home, Brad earned the Duty to God Award from the church, which is apparently like a Mormon Purple Heart. He got injured on the job there.
Starting point is 00:27:24 The injury, injured while preaching. Injured on the road. Like, injured in the battlefields, babe. Same thing, yeah. Really doing it. He's also an Eagle Scout. Yeah. He taught Sunday school and served as an assistant scoutmaster.
Starting point is 00:27:41 And all the kids liked him because they said he was willing to be silly. He was like a silly guy. He's a big guy, 6-2, 200 pounds. And everything about what that describes is either the nicest guy in the world or a pedophile, one of the two. And nobody's ever come forward saying anybody he ever diddled anybody. So I'm going to go with maybe the nicest guy in the world probably. Yeah. That's going to be one or the other.
Starting point is 00:28:05 of that is post the accident? Yes, he did all that pre-end post. He was always doing all this stuff because to be an Eagle Scout, you have to really go through it. That's a long process. Oh, God, that's a lifetime. Well, it's meant and structured to get you through high school so that when you graduated, you become an Eagle
Starting point is 00:28:21 Scout, and then you go on your way, and hopefully that model of how to be a good person has stocked, it'll carry you through life. So, spring of 84, right before this, Brad had transferred to Weber State, or Weber State, whatever it is. in Weber in Ogden.
Starting point is 00:28:38 He'd been accepted into the radiology program there. He wants to become a doctor. Oh, fuck. That's his goal. A cancer doc. He's a very smart kid, too. That's the other thing. So I think he's just a really nice person.
Starting point is 00:28:49 I really do. Like from all of... Nobody has a bad word to say. He's also engaged, of course. Young man is definitely a woman named Laura Boyd. They'd only been together about eight months, but they were already planning a wedding for the fall. Nice.
Starting point is 00:29:04 Gus started putting some kids out there. Now, Brad wanted the wedding to be done correctly, and to do that, he said they needed extra money. So for extra money, he picked up graveyard shifts at the Texaco shortstop on US 89, the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. That is the most humbling thing I could possibly think of. He is a, it seems like a wonderful young man, like just a great guy. Yeah, willing to do the worst thing to get his happiness. And it gets even more magnanimous here. That weekend, Memorial Day, the rest of his family, they had a trip plan for a long time.
Starting point is 00:29:44 Claudia. Yeah, Claudia, the mother was taking the younger brothers, including the 17-year-old and everybody else on a road trip to California to go to SeaWorld. And Brad was also invited, but he decided to stay at home at work because he said he couldn't miss all the shifts and extra money that weekend. And he also didn't believe in all the... Horrible shit they're doing. Yeah. I don't think anybody knew that in 1984 at all. No.
Starting point is 00:30:10 They were just like, wow, they look at them. They do backflips for smelt. That's amazing. They must be so happy to jump out of the water like that. So he said, his brother said, my brother stayed home to earn extra money. Wow. So now the autopsy report on Brad said he has various injuries. Almost everything used to kill Brad was already in the store.
Starting point is 00:30:33 Oh, they brought nothing? The phone he had picked up to call police had blood on it and he'd been beaten with it. Because we'll talk about it. But he went to call the cops and that's what went down here. Then he was stabbed with both a screwdriver and a knife. Oh, Christ. And also either a heavy cast iron bell or they think it's probably the metal Dr. Pepper syrup canister that feeds the fountain machine.
Starting point is 00:31:02 Holy fuck. described somewhere between 40 and 60 pounds it weighs. Yeah. Big. It's one of those little cylinders, the chrome ones. Yeah, it's horrible. So the detective here said the victim had been stabbed with a foot-long screwdriver that penetrated through his upper chest. There was a large cast iron bell, appeared to be hit in the side of the head with that and had a skull fracture from that.
Starting point is 00:31:27 The coup de gras was a large soda canister, probably weighing in the neighborhood of 40 to 60 pounds, used to crush his skull. Oh, my. He's been killed three times over. It's really unnecessary, especially if it's just a robbery. It makes no sense. Grimy to stab somebody with a screwdriver.
Starting point is 00:31:44 Now, the stab wounds, some press accounts counted 15 screwdriver wounds, but the chief medical examiner described six wounds from stabbing. So, we don't know. A partial dental bridge was found on the floor that belonged to Brad as well. Got knocked out of his head.
Starting point is 00:32:01 The cause of death was blunt force injury to the head and neck along with multiple stab wounds. And they did find that approximately $100 was missing from the cash register. All of that for $100. For Stevie's bail money. All of that for that. The store's safe was open, which is interesting because Brad does not have a key to that safe. How the hell do they do that? And the person who does have the key is the assistant manager.
Starting point is 00:32:30 So right away, they're like, let's go talk to the next guy who has a key. Because somebody got that safe open. So the next day, everything rips through the town, obviously. This is a big story. I mean, this is a nice kid that seemingly killed for no reason here. They located Newell Perry, the dad, and told him. But he said, Jesus, my wife is in a hotel somewhere in California. And, you know, it doesn't have a cell phone.
Starting point is 00:32:57 It's 1984. So when the police tracked down the hotel, Newell said that the family would talk, Newell said he didn't want his wife to hear it over the phone from a stranger. So that's bad. So he called a firefighter. He knew only loosely and asked him to go tell her in person. Wow. So I assume another probably from the church, I would think.
Starting point is 00:33:19 Now, the firefighter had no training and didn't know any of the answers to the questions. She just showed up and said, hi, I've been here to tell you your kid's dead. Oh, sorry. And Claudia said, somebody killed him. Just like that, I lost it. And Lee, the brother, the younger brother, said, back in 84, my mom and my little brother and myself all left on a trip to go to California. Brad stayed behind, but by dawn, he'll be brutally murdered. So Claudia loads up the kids and drives back to Utah, which has to be an excruciating ride.
Starting point is 00:33:52 It's the longest ride. And on the way, the car gets a flat tire. Okay, now I forget it. Now I'm going to be, if I was them, I would have gone into full blast for me at that point. I'm done with all this shit. You guys, no one is protecting me. She was so sick with stress of everything. She started throwing up on the side of the road.
Starting point is 00:34:13 This poor woman, I can't imagine. Imagine what she's going through. Her guts are getting ripped out. They finally get to the house. Reporters are waiting on their lawn shouting at her and her two young children. They are already, oh, my God. They're already there. Now, when neighbor keeps walking over to chew them off, like when you put extra seed down on your grass and you go out and clap your hands so the birds fly away, that's what he's doing.
Starting point is 00:34:36 That neighbor has a daughter who will be very important in this case later on named Amy Hugie. Yugi or U-G-U-G-I-E. Now, that night, not too far from the gas station, officers found a man walking along the road who looked a lot like the sketch that was being. Oh. He had blood on his hands and shirt, which is a good sign also. Generally, yeah, he's involved in something awful. So the police bring him in for a lineup. They bring in both the students, line them all up, and they look at him and go, not him.
Starting point is 00:35:10 No? Some other bloody guy who hangs out in this area. How do you have two bloody guys? No idea, but they said that is certainly not the guy we saw. Absolutely not. They both said it separately. He wasn't the guy. So he's not the guy.
Starting point is 00:35:22 We don't know who that guy was or why. he was covered in blood. That's his story. He ends there, and I'm real interested in that. Another report came in about two men in a truck matching one scene leaving the area and also cruising slowly past a different gas station
Starting point is 00:35:39 as if they were casing the joint. So police took that as a sign that we're probably looking for two people. And also, Brad is six to two, two hundred pounds and not a pushover. And they're like, it probably would have taken two people to overpower him unless. And there's two weapons, minimum.
Starting point is 00:35:56 That's the other thing. So they're like, this is, uh, there's at least three weapons screwdriver knife and canister and the bell and the canister. But this sorts of shit. Two stabbies. Somebody rarely grabs a screwdriver and a knife and is happening away with both of those. Odd thing is we'll find out. That's kind of what happened here, which is interesting.
Starting point is 00:36:15 Yeah. It's a wild thing. It's, I mean, this is a, this case. I'd be a terrible cop. It's like, well, that didn't happen. Shit. Well, there was four people here. Must have been four people.
Starting point is 00:36:24 three, four, five, six people here. Could have been a couple watching. We don't know. Somebody jerking off in a chair in the quarter. Who knows? A couple of gals back there kissing. You know how it is in a gas station robbery. So yeah, that's what they're doing.
Starting point is 00:36:38 Now, the sketches generate some leads because they run them in the papers. And so there's a lot of tips coming in because it's a sketch of a guy and a lot of people look like that. So basically they got 250 leads in the first few days. And now the FBI ends up being coming in too because investigators thought the killer might be a drifter that was just passing through on the highway. Right. So he could be in another state by now. At one point, investigators bring in a hypnotist to see if the witnesses, the two students, could put more detail, you know, out of their memories here.
Starting point is 00:37:13 And nothing. I mean, it was fresh in their mind when they talked to the cops. I mean, it was a half hour later. So I think that's as good a description as you're ever going to. get. Now, early June 1984, okay, so a couple weeks later, the Perrys, the family, are just having a horrible time. Because you have a good, yeah. People are on their lawn all the time and their kids' dad. It's horrible. So they went to stay with some friends of theirs in Montana, just to get away from everything and to get the, because they have younger kids, too, they're having to deal with
Starting point is 00:37:46 this. So they wanted to just get away. When they come back around, which is about the time of Brad's funeral, they found, and how shitty, my Christ, their house had been broken into. No way. They got robbed? Fucking people. Could it be worse? And what happened inside is horrible. It had been ransacked.
Starting point is 00:38:09 Cash was taken. Tapes, you know, at the time, music tapes, shit like that. The piggy banks were stolen. The kid's piggy banks. The whole, everything was violated. Especially Brad's things were the most damaged. including someone took a shit in his bedroom. Someone Amber heard at his room.
Starting point is 00:38:30 Like in the bit? Yeah, took a dump in his bedroom. Which is, what are you doing? You know what I mean? That's super disrespectful. His brother Lee said, whoever did it broke into our house, vandalized, it stole some stuff,
Starting point is 00:38:44 and even went so far as to defecate in Brad's bedroom. Why would somebody do something like that? Good question. Claudia, mom says, I think I know exactly who did something like that. Our next-door neighbor who's 15 years old named Craig Martinez. I think it was him. Why didn't she think that?
Starting point is 00:39:01 Well, because she went over there and Martinez's parents found items stolen from the Perry house in there. So she was right. That'll do it. Yeah. He ended up being convicted of the burglary. At the time, they were like, maybe it's unrelated to the murder. But the Perry said, we think he had something to do with this fucking murder, too. Really?
Starting point is 00:39:21 Why would he do both? The murder seems personal and then this too. It seems like he really edited for a rat. Knowing exactly what happened to our family. Why would he break in, steal things and shit on us? It's inexplicable. It's insane. So here are the suspects now that they've assembled.
Starting point is 00:39:39 Two names are really going to hang around for a long time. Okay. But there's others too. First is Thomas Nager. He's 21 years old at the time of 84. He's the assistant manager at the time. key to the safe. Okay.
Starting point is 00:39:54 So they look into him. He apparently was supposed to come into work that morning, the 7 o'clock, when Brad was supposed to get off, and never showed up. He didn't show up. And he's the lone cashier at the place. So basically, if he doesn't show up, who's going to run the joint? You know what I mean? When he did finally show up hours late, he walked into this big crowd of a crime scene,
Starting point is 00:40:18 and police pulled him away because they said, you're the exact guy we were looking for asshole. His explanation is I slept in. Brad calls me to wake me up. And that's how, that's my alarm. I never, he never called me. So I didn't make it on time. Part of Brad's responsibilities are make sure you call the next guy.
Starting point is 00:40:40 Call your manager. Make sure he's awake so he can come in. Wow. Now the officer said he seemed very nervous. And his boss, this, this nager guy's boss, told the cops that I don't trust him. Which, that's why I made him the assistant manager, gave him a key to my safe because I don't trust him. He called him later that same day to fire him because he found out that he was stealing money from him and failing to make deposits also. Okay.
Starting point is 00:41:07 Nager eventually would admit that he not only stole money from there, but also had sold drugs out of the store as well. Great, too. So, I mean, great if you're a teenager looking for shit. It's a good place to find it, but not a good guy. you want him to run your store. He also has... That's generally what I think all assistant managers
Starting point is 00:41:26 of the gas stations are doing. Definitely. Why else are they there? He also has long hair and a beard. Oh, oh. Yes. So they show Ali Sabah
Starting point is 00:41:38 a photo lineup and he picked Thomas Nagor's picture as someone, he doesn't say that's definitely him. He says, and he says it very legalese, too.
Starting point is 00:41:48 He's consistent with the man that I saw. Similar. characteristics. I can't rule him out. Yeah, but he said, I can't say it's him as well. So suspect too is Craig Martinez, the 15-year-old next door. He's known as a troublemaker, and even his friends and family have nicknamed him Monster because he has a violent temper.
Starting point is 00:42:12 And he and Nager, the assistant manager, are friends. Of course they are. Of course, because Nager, this piece of shit is friends with a 15-year-old, because that's normal. With a really active bowel. Yeah, and they were involved together in selling drugs out of the station. The rumor was, who knows. Okay, and it was more on him later. Suspect three, Michael Caldwell, was a friend of both of them.
Starting point is 00:42:35 Over the years, he told police, as this goes on, a story that put both Martinez and Nager in the store that night, but then he kept changing a story every time he told it. Okay. So that's not helpful. But this guy, around 11 p.m., according to what Michael Caldwell would say, say on and off. He drove his father's white 1970 pickup truck to the gas station with the two other guys in it and waited outside.
Starting point is 00:43:02 So that story puts Craig Martinez and Nager at the scene that night. At the scene. Yeah. Now, what they did say, the cop said that his story is inconsistent and changed during every conversation he had with the police, which rather than ruling anything out just includes him as a suspect now too. So now instead of ruling people out, now we have three suspects. Now, here comes other guys, a guy last name of Ritter, who were told, police were told, had been caught by Brad, burglarizing cars near the station with Martinez.
Starting point is 00:43:36 Oh, my God. So Brad had caught Craig and his friend, burglarizing cars and told on them. Another two guys named Delmont Gentry and Glenn Danzy, who were not Danzig, Glenn Danzy, who were said. to wear tennis shoes drive white pickup trucks and brag about murders. So they're in there because the guy was wearing tennis shoes driving a truck and having had murdering. Basically, there's hundreds of people they look into here. None of the suspects seem to really pan out, though. This Nager and Martinez are the two that really keep circle in the bowl, but everybody else is ruled out pretty quickly here.
Starting point is 00:44:16 Now, Nager ends up having several felony convictions for all the other shit he does. He's a drug dealer and a crook. And he also claims, though, Nager that he heard from other people he knows that Craig Martinez had bragged about killing Brad. Holy. Yeah. So with all that said, the case goes cold because they can't put it together. And there's no DNA or anything like that back then. So witnesses are important.
Starting point is 00:44:46 and they don't have anybody. Now, younger brother Lee has a hard time, real hard time with this. After this, yeah. He's 17 when his brother's killed, and his brother was like his idol and he, you know, his bud. And basically, he said he had no idea how to be the oldest son is what he said. He goes, I'm the younger brother. Like, I'm not, that's not my role. I don't know how to be the older brother, basically.
Starting point is 00:45:08 Like, we all look to Brad as being that guy. I need to be the, that's where I fit. I don't fit anywhere else. So he went through some real crisis here. He got himself a fake driver's license so he could buy booze when he's a teenager. And from rumors that I heard, he kind of got into some whatever smoking weed and hanging out. Just being not, not, he was questioning his faith. Yeah, not real LBS.
Starting point is 00:45:35 Bad behavior. But then he gets it together after he read Brad's journals from the hospital. That's what he said. And he's decided after that he decided he was going to try to get his life together. He took a part-time clerical job with the Highway Patrol, Utah Highway Patrol, because the hours fit his class schedule. And then he went on a ride along and he said, I kind of like this. This is cool. So he later said he becomes a police officer, Utah Highway Patrol and Department of Public Safety officer here.
Starting point is 00:46:07 How about that? And he said, we get to help people and we get to drive fast, which are. I mean, it sounds like what a 12-year-old would say when you ask him, why do you want to be a cop? Because he get to drive fast and help people. That's okay. If I turn my lights on, I can go as fast as I want. That's cool. He rose to the rank of lieutenant in the Box Elder County police force here too, or whatever that is, the sheriff's department.
Starting point is 00:46:31 As a trooper, he made a habit. Everybody said if there was a death notification, he volunteered to do it all the time. Oh, that's nice. Look, I know how this feels. This sucks a lot. And he said he knew how it felt to get it and not the best way, too. So he could be empathetic and knows how to do this. Nanette became a teacher and was a high school teacher later on.
Starting point is 00:46:55 So that's her job there. Now, for years, the case just goes cold. High school. 1997, the case goes to a new Box Elder County Sheriff's Detective named Scott Cosgrove. Yeah. And he said he prayed about it. And he said he put the Perry name in a Perry family's name in a prayer box. And then he said, I received an answer in my heart.
Starting point is 00:47:24 Same look I had that this was going to be solved. Mormons use that word heart a lot when they come to this shit. Yeah, but it's weird. Your heart doesn't stand up in court. So maybe let's just do some fucking police work. Yeah. And that's fine for everybody else, but not a homicide detective. You can do that shit at home, but on the job, none of that shit matters.
Starting point is 00:47:43 Evidence is the thing we need here, my friend. Now, he worked the case for nine years. He, you know, ran through everything. And by the year 2000, the Perrys are saying he's dragging his feet and not doing shit. No, he's got a heart, you guys. It's in my heart. So the Utah Attorney General's Office, a group of DNA and fingerprint experts gathered in Brigham City to go over the evidence. evidence. They had more than 150 fingerprints because it's a gas station and only circumstantial
Starting point is 00:48:16 cases against whoever. They don't have anything here. Now, they still have the two suspects they're really looking at, which was Nager and Martinez. In October 2000, Nager was served with some summons. And they also got a search warrant for Craig Martinez. In it, he told the court that Martinez had burglarized the Perry home on the day of Brad's funeral, destroyed some of Brad's things and stolen shit from his room. So that's pretty interesting. Now, so this is all a big deal. So the case here, they went public also attacking the family does, attacking the county
Starting point is 00:48:55 attorney John Bunderson accusing him of dragging his feet on charges and refusing to release evidence to them. Their lawyer was Amy Hugie, a young girl from next door that Brad used to babysit for. and whose father would shoe the fucking press off the lawn. Yeah. So she was a little girl at the time. Now she's grown up in a lawyer and she's representing the paris and pissed. Craig Martinez, by late 2000, is in the Utah State Prison, not shockingly.
Starting point is 00:49:23 Right. On drug and weapons charges. They have tons of his prison calls. Over a series of calls, Martinez told family members that a key witness was talking too much and needed to be quieted. His quote is, Kick his ass, stomp his neck. Wow. He also talked to his mother about the investigation,
Starting point is 00:49:47 and especially the detective who was currently running it, and he summed him up like this, quote, I'll fuck him up. So there's that. I bet you won't. So investigators, based on that and everything else, get a warrant for hair samples from Martinez. Because now we can run DNA in 2000.
Starting point is 00:50:06 So the hairs, they had the hairs vacuumed from the fight area, the hairs that they found there. And mitochondrial DNA testing had reached the point where you could compare. When it came time to collect, it took a team of guards to get Martinez into the prison nurse's office. Once he was there, they found out he had shaved his entire body. Oh, wow. He said, I guess you won't be getting any of my hair, will you? But he missed one thing. He forgot to shave his nipples.
Starting point is 00:50:37 The hair around his nipples was still there. He missed him. Missed his nipple hair. So they yanked all of his nipple hairs out. You didn't see that? And younger Brad's brother Lee said, why would you shave yourself from head to foot if you had nothing to do with the crime?
Starting point is 00:50:53 Which makes a lot of sense. Excellent point. Problem is the hairs don't match Martinez. It's not him. He's not the guy. It doesn't match Nager either. They're two big suspects. DNA has ruled the men.
Starting point is 00:51:05 out now. Why is he done this then? None of the fingerprints match him either. He's just an asshole. He's just an asshole. Which is crazy. Out of the hundreds of prints lifted from the store, none were nagers, which is crazy because he's the assistant manager of the fucking
Starting point is 00:51:21 store. So it's like he doesn't touch anything. He doesn't do shit. This motherfucker doesn't show up. Who's he think he is? Me? Right? Jesus. 2002 Yeah. And the new election for a Box Elder County
Starting point is 00:51:35 attorney, guess who's running against the current county attorney? Amy Hugie, the neighbor. Hughie, yeah. Yep, and she wins. Oh, fuck. So she is now the person in charge of finding who did this and prosecuting them. Oh, boy. What she was doing this whole time.
Starting point is 00:51:50 That's the whole point of her whole existence, pretty much, up to this point, is that. This is the only thing she gives a shit about. She's going to retire after this. This is it. Yep, that's it for me. By 2003, Claudia is looking very pissed because the case looked like it wasn't going anywhere. Stalling. February 2003, they're like, could it be Martinez, though? Could it be? He's in prison on four second-degree felony counts of obstruction of justice and four third-degree felony counts of witness tampering based on the recorded calls. These are new charges he's got on him. And Detective Cosgrove, who had been working this case for years, said he's our prime suspect at the time.
Starting point is 00:52:29 Martinez's lawyer, though, said he ended up getting him out of the Utah obstruction of justice charge because the statute had been changed for a short time and that was the time this all happened. So those charges are eventually dismissed. Now, September 2003, the detective here sent a letter to Amy Hugie and said that after six years and more than 300 suspects, basically, I'm got nothing else. I got nothing. We have exhausted every lead. We've run it to the ends of the earth. And basically, if someone's going to solve it, he said there's no more we can do. It now rests in the county attorney's hands. We've done everything. If you can get us more, you know, subpoenas or that's one thing. But they said, we believe we answered all the questions, except the only one that matters, which is who the fuck did this to this poor guy. Yeah. Claudia told the newspaper that she doesn't
Starting point is 00:53:25 expect anything I'll ever come out of this at all. She said, I doubt very much. that they will file charges. Without physical evidence, not much will get done. Unless something else happens, it's over. Thanks for watching, guys. Have a great day. That's it.
Starting point is 00:53:40 Claudia said, we know who the five are who did it. I guess we just have to have the knowledge of that and move on and live with it. Claudia thinks I did it. She named a bunch of people, Nager, Martinez, and their circle. By the way,
Starting point is 00:53:52 none of those people will ever be charged with anything. Claudia also said, we had put it to bed years ago. then you get excited again, you think you're going to get justice, but then it's dead again. In the same interview, she said that the Martinez family had lived next door for years. She says she has no ill will toward Martinez's mother who still lives there. It's not her fault. Just her kids.
Starting point is 00:54:16 Yeah. And Lee said, quote, we really thought it would have to be dealt with in the afterlife. I'm going to whip his ass in heaven, I guess. But until then, I got nothing. Or God's going to do it or whoever. early 2005 now the hair failed remember the hair they tried to they had to pick the hair yeah and it didn't work nipple hair and all that no nothing for prints the only thing here they have all the blood comes back as brad's blood that they've tested so far all over the place that's the thing they're thinking what do we do here the dollar bill has been stored separately and frozen since 1984 because they don't they didn't know they didn't know that they could do anything with it, but they said maybe someday. It's blood. We got
Starting point is 00:55:01 to hang on to it. So they've been freezing it since 1984. Now, they get a profile from the blood stain and it is not Brad. It's a different blood blood. It's got to be our guy that did it. So they put it into CODIS, the
Starting point is 00:55:17 National DNA database, which by then was including the DNA of federal prisoners, and they get a hit. No fucking way. They get a hit, so they do a second test because sometimes they're fucked up. That hits too. It's a match.
Starting point is 00:55:32 Full match. They said that the odds are that this blood came from someone else besides this one person are one and 1.7 trillion. Uh-oh. And Amy, the county attorney, said, we had a hit, but the name he gave was somebody we had never even heard of. Never even knew him. Never mentioned in the investigation in 30 years. or 20 years, sorry. The name is Glenn Howard Griffin, a 47-year-old who's serving federal time in California on weapons charges and was just about to get out of prison.
Starting point is 00:56:08 He was just about to walk. Oh, we better lock his ass up. So they said, we hit gold because of the technology. We solved who it was. Yeah. So this guy, Glenn Howard Griffin, born in 1957 or 58, they also had a fellow inmate of Griffins, a guy named Benjamin Britt. Interesting. Told police that Griffin made incriminating statements about the murder to him while they were in prison together.
Starting point is 00:56:33 Wow. A little bit about Glenn adopted it three months old by his foster mother, Arlene Pyle. He's worn glasses since childhood, which will come in handy. He's got a temper that his own family was scared of. They said that he was in trouble early, had problems in school, got expelled, was using drugs by junior high, dropped out of high school, tried to commit suicide by 17, full of petty crime,
Starting point is 00:57:00 used to hurt and kill animals all the time for no reason, not for hunting animal torture. The whole thing. It's everything. Now, Glenn's mom said that Glenn ran with a friend named Wade Mowgan and that whenever the two of them got together,
Starting point is 00:57:16 they got in trouble, and she said, my son was the ringleader, though, Arlene said. Glenn is the ringleader. Yeah, Wade Mowgan is the follower. Now, Mowgan's a couple years older than Wade, and he's been close with him since the early 80s, and that's how this goes. Now, Glenn, in his adult life, he's a sheet metal worker. And so that's what he was doing at the time of the murder as well.
Starting point is 00:57:40 He had a huge criminal record. He had 27 charges just in the town of Logan alone in years. Drugs, robbery, weapons, you name it. At one point, he was even operating a meth lab. So all class. All class, this guy. Now, a little tale about Glenn and tell you the kind of guy he is. His ex-wife, Jardine Roberts, told investigators one New Year's Eve that this asshole, Griffin here, got an invitation to a party that sounded better than staying home with his family.
Starting point is 00:58:14 So he told his 14-year-old daughter to babysit the younger kids. She said she didn't want to. I don't want to babysit them all night. So Griffin went in and destroyed her porcelain doll collection. Uh-huh. Then when she still wouldn't give in, he shoved her head through a wall. Nice. He broke a wall with a 14-year-old girl's head.
Starting point is 00:58:37 Stay here and watch your siblings. The ex-wife took the children and hid in the basement of a friend's house. But Griffin guessed where they had gone. So he showed up, kicked down the front door, and came in with a pistol drawn. Oh my. This is a crazy psychopath bad guy. It's a bad guy. This is the one if you get a restraining order, he's going to come shoot you quicker.
Starting point is 00:59:00 This is that guy. Restraining orders don't work. Not for this fucking asshole because he doesn't care about the law either. So police arrived. He was charged with burglary and intoxication and ordered a psychological evaluation, which found him unstable, which I could have told you that. So he was arrested in 2004 on the weapons charges and sent to federal prison. and it was at that time where they had just started collecting the DNA of all federal felons into the national database. As of 24, or as of 1884, he was 26 years old, six foot tall, lean with dark hair and a beard.
Starting point is 00:59:36 Uh-huh. Photos from the era showed him looking exactly like the drawing. 26 years old looks 30. Looks exactly, because he had a big beard. So the DNA charges, the match comes in, so they charge him, and that's it. That's the crime. We got you. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:59:51 So first degree murder and the state is seeking the death penalty as well. Yeah. Because this is a particularly brutal robbery homicide. It checks all the boxes for to seek it. So November 3rd, for them anyway, November 3rd, 2005, what about Wade, the guy that the mom mentioned? Was he involved? Because the cops think there was more than one person doing this. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:14 Now, Griffin won't talk here. And Lee, the brother, said, it would have taken more than one person to overpower Brad. It wasn't just this guy, because especially he was smaller than Brad. He's not going to happen. A couple inches, yeah. So detectives chase leads all around looking for the accomplice. They go through Arizona, Nevada, Detroit.
Starting point is 01:00:34 Finally, they end up in Spokane, Washington, and that's where they find Wade, who they found in their notes as somebody that Arlene Pyle, Griffin's mother had mentioned. Back then, yeah. Well, not back then, but now, after Wade, after Griffin came up. this whole thing. So they basically they told him he's a witness in an unrelated case and said we're bringing you in, they tell Wade. Then they show him crime scene photos and they said he averted his eyes
Starting point is 01:01:03 and said, oh my God. He first denied taking part in it and then they said, look, we knew Griffin didn't do it alone. And, you know, basically he's going to get out of prison if we can't build a case. So they also lie and tell him that Griffin had named him and he named you and you could be facing the death penalty too just like him, which is perfectly legal to do in an interrogation room. So he gave a statement.
Starting point is 01:01:29 He bought the bluff. He gave a written confession as a matter of fact. He wrote two written confessions here. He had, I guess, not long after the murder, he moved to Spokane. And that's where he had been forever. And there's a couple of friends of his, too, that we'll talk about and his girlfriend as well. Now, he, until all this happened, they had no connection with him in this. So he makes a statement.
Starting point is 01:01:54 He said, Glenn and I had been partying in Brigham City. And according to his statement, they stopped at the shortstop and bought beer. An argument started over the change Brad gave them. That fucking changed. Over coins. This is over, yep. They said that it was described as an argument over $10. This is.
Starting point is 01:02:15 So in this Mowgan's written account, he said that Brad, he said, quote, the attendant was going to call the police. He was reaching for the phone and Glenn hit him with the phone. I was so afraid of Glenn. I've never seen him so violent before. And he said that after he did that, he started hitting him. Glenn said, I'm going to kill you if you don't help me with this, which he believed before. Glenn was likely wrong. Well, yeah.
Starting point is 01:02:43 What was likely wrong? About the money, about how much he was supposed to get. Oh, yeah, he was all fucked up, too. He was drunk and fucked up. Yeah. He was probably fucking. He thought he gave him a 20. He probably gave him a 10.
Starting point is 01:02:54 Who knows? Yeah, I feel like Brad would be more on top of that shit than a drug addict. So anyway, he said Griffin grabbed the screwdriver and started stabbing Brad. Oh, my God's a big guy and he fought back. That's why this guy's got scratches and bruises all over him. And the evidence shows also that the struggle moved throughout the store. A potted plant was knocked over at the arm. arcade area, shelves had been torn down.
Starting point is 01:03:18 This was two grown men having a brawl. There's a large pool of blood near the front, shoe tracks in it, and a smeared trail leading toward the back, where Brad's hands were bound behind him with electrical cord. And Wade Mowgan said his part was holding Brad's legs. Oh, Jesus. Yep. And the sergeant here of the police force said he claimed he was there and blamed most of it on the other. guy and the other guy I'll probably do the same thing. So when the college students arrived in Mowgan's version, they saw headlights.
Starting point is 01:03:55 Brad was still alive at that point. He was bound by then, but badly hurt, but alive. So rather than just hiding in the store or running, Griffin went outside and pulled a Mitch Blood Green and was like, I work here now. Yeah, how you doing? We'll get rid of these people and whatever. He pumped the gas. He blocked the guy from coming in.
Starting point is 01:04:14 He gave him back the change. as we know. Wade Mowgan said that they had Brad in the back room and, you know, they started stabbing him and that's what it was. They said they hit him with the, the screwdriver was about a foot long and went through his upper chest. And there's also a knife as well that was stabbed, that he stabbed him with. So the base of his skull was fractured, which is horrifying. Now, the storage room door was locked from the outside. And then they just drove away. Now, they'll seek the death penalty against Wade, too, by the way.
Starting point is 01:04:53 And part of that is they also said that the same day that they've talked to Wade, they met with Wade's girlfriend and his friends as well, his roommates, I guess. And according to the state, they told them not to talk to anyone, including police. So basically, Wade had told them not to talk to anyone. So then they were going to charge them with other thing, witness tampering as well here. And they were also, I guess they told other people not to say anything. So then they get charged with witness tampering his friends. That ends up being dropped, though.
Starting point is 01:05:31 Now, they also have informants. They have a couple informants, too. They have Benjamin Britt who said what he heard Griffin say there. Now, the moms are the most remarkable part of this. Arlene Pyle, Griffin's mom, and Claudia Perry meet in person. Oh, boy. And they hugged and cried. Yeah, they both lost the kid.
Starting point is 01:05:56 Arlene told Claudia, she had also lost a son in a different way. On Mother's Day, Claudia went to Arlene's house and brought her a card. Oh, that's nice. Because she's a wonderful person. Glenn's trial, the parents talked before the trial, according to Brad's dad, Newell, Arlene, Griffin's mom, told the Perry family that she believed her son was guilty. He said, I'm sorry. She said, quote, I know he's guilty.
Starting point is 01:06:22 I know he's guilty. She knew from the very beginning. And the two mothers held hands through the trial. This is, yeah, they're good people. That's all you can say about. They're nice fucking people. So Griffin's explanation or his defense's explanation is, sure, there could be blood on stuff. He stops at gas stations and he's a sheet metal worker.
Starting point is 01:06:42 His hands bleed all the time. That is a fact. Yeah. Which is a decent argument. They said his blood could have been on to a dollar bill on any given day at any point in the ordinary course of handling money. He didn't even have to be at the gas station. He could have given it to somebody else to then money circulates. Could have gone through the bank.
Starting point is 01:07:00 We don't know. Problem is the two witnesses had watched their bill go from not having blood on it to having wet blood on it. And wet blood, not even dried blood. So Brad's fiancee testifies also, this poor woman, too, she said she couldn't have imagined any dating anyone after his death. She said Brad was the love of my life. It took her, she didn't remarry for 14 years or she didn't get married for 14 years after that. Which is crazy. Now, Wade Mowgan takes the stand and basically they thought he would plead the fifth that they made him go up there.
Starting point is 01:07:36 so they gave him immunity. But his lawyer argued that the Utah Immunity Act was unconstitutional and would not fully protect him. The judge overruled that and ordered him to testify, warning that if he refused, he could face extra charges. He takes the stand, including asking about the immunity that he'd been granted, and he answered every question with, I choose not to answer any questions at this time. Oh, my God. So, Benjamin Britt, by the way, they bring him in, and they're like, can you point out the guy, it was your cellmate or whatever, blah, blah, blah. He couldn't. He didn't know what Griffin looked like.
Starting point is 01:08:15 What? The problem is they all said Griffin looked much different when they were in prison together. Oh. So that's the problem. He looked much different. So they said, hey, can we use an older photo lineup and he can pick him out that way? And they did that and he picked him out that way. Okay.
Starting point is 01:08:31 So that's how that worked. But he went directly in front of the defense table and looked closely at him and couldn't pick him out. But he picked out an older picture. So he was allowed to testify. In the defense's closing, they said Griffin had poor eyesight and he wore glasses since childhood. That's why we mentioned that. And that neither student ever described the man at the pump as wearing glasses, which also if he was just in a physical fight with...
Starting point is 01:08:56 Maybe they're broke. They could be broke or he could be the type of guy who knows to take his glasses off when he's going to throw down. and they said you are going to have no other alternative than to find Mr. Griffin not guilty. Well, before the verdict, by the way, Arlene said that no matter how the trial turned out, neither of us are going to win this one to the mom, like to Claudia. The jury deliberates for 12 hours. It's pretty quick. 12 on this case with DNA?
Starting point is 01:09:26 That's not that bad. That's a long time. You think so? Fuck, yeah. Oh, it's two days, isn't it? A DNA case? What are we talking about? Are they really going over?
Starting point is 01:09:34 Maybe it was a sheet metal wound that got on the bill? Like what other things they didn't even talk about? Maybe they're going over. Nobody can identify him the way he sits. Possibly that. There could be a lot of things to talk about, I guess. Either way, he's found guilty here. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:09:49 Because the DNA is a problem. It's a problem. And also his background and everything else. And the identification from the two students and all that. So sentencing comes, death penalty on the table. Yeah. Two hours of deliberation from the jury on that one. You said, they fuck off life without parole.
Starting point is 01:10:08 Is that right? That's it. And the family's happy with that. Lee says this decision today is what Brad would have voted for, so it's really Brad's verdict. We're never talking to him ever again. Yeah, he's going forever. The dad Newell said it's done, but closure isn't a good word because that's not going to bring Brad back. It won't bring our boy back.
Starting point is 01:10:30 And Claudia said, his mom and family don't deserve this either, meaning Griffins. Yeah. And Arlene said, I appreciate the way the Perrys have treated us. The Perry family has been very good to us. Now, Wade Mowgan here, he's still hanging in there. So they're talking about him because he has written statements that he's recanted, but he has two written statements that are confessions. Yeah, what's the fuck?
Starting point is 01:10:58 His defense attorney said there's no physical evidence of. any of this stuff. So what are we talking about? Nothing, nobody putting him in there. So they put him on trial. And they said that also his, he's given, there's been a bunch of false confessions from other people in this case. In June 2010 is his trial after six hours of deliberation, a jury of eight women and one man, nine person jury, found him not guilty. So not enough proof he was there because there's no DNA. No DNA, right.
Starting point is 01:11:31 So that's that. And that's, yeah, the defense attorney said, we never thought Wade was guilty from the beginning and we're happy the jury returned their verdict. There is a whole bunch of things going with his obstruction cases and all that, but who gives a shit? That doesn't matter. Griffin appeals, nothing works.
Starting point is 01:11:49 He's still in prison. Brad's case was featured with on the case with Paula Zahn in 2015. Cold case files. All right. episode titled Night Shift in 2017. The family agreed to the Zahn program because it offered something that doesn't always come out of trial a chance to thank the people who made the conviction possible. Oh, wow. Brother Lee from 2011 to 2020, served in the Utah House of Representatives where he pushed to expand DNA testing.
Starting point is 01:12:19 Dear backlogs and improve mental health care for police officers, all good things. So, that Lee is a fucking gem, boy. He's a good guy. God. So there you go. Nice people. Bad things happen and nice people is what this episode should be called.
Starting point is 01:12:32 And that guy's in there forever. Yeah. He's in there forever. Never getting out. The Griffin guy, which is best for everybody, I think. And he's locked up, taking the rap for everybody if there was more than one person involved. Wade was there, allegedly, because he hasn't been convicted. But he admitted to it like three different times.
Starting point is 01:12:51 But this guy, it's just acceleratingly grabbed higher stakes weapons as he Yep. Screw driver not working. There's a knife. Here's a big thing. Here's a big fucking bell. I think Brad didn't want to go down. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:13:04 And so this is, he had to keep going at him. Brad was a tough kid. So there you go. Crazy case out of Utah this week. If you enjoyed the case or just had a good time watching or listening at all, definitely get on whatever app you listen to and give us five stars. It helps so much. If you're on Netflix, double thumbs up is the way to do that.
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