The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling - Spiral | 3. Motive and Opportunity

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Samantha Woll’s ex-boyfriend calls 911 in a panic. He tells the police he thinks he might have killed her. When they bring him in for questioning, he explains he was having a drug-induced temporary break. --- Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press to binge the full series today, and with reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. ---- Host: Frannie Block Producer: Poppy Damon Executive Editor: Emily Yoffe --- Contact us at: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previously on Spiral. The accused in this case is Michael Manuel Jackson Bolanos. That announcement coming less than 15 minutes ago, wrapping up a 53-day investigation into her murder. No hate crime whatsoever, according to investigators, there's been a lot of pressure on police to bring forward what they had on this case to put the bed any situation. It would have been a hate crime because of Ms. Wall's position

as a prominent Jewish leader in our community. I also think that her notoriety, Her role in the community brought a lot of different agencies in, and they kind of rushed it versus, you know, taking a step back and just really, really diving deep into what really happened. Mr. Brown's client had a coat, and that coat had her blood on it. And I think that is something that we should all focus on. I guess I can't say for sure who did it,

but I can for sure tell you who didn't do it. It's November 7, 23, in a parking lot in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Jeffrey Herbsman is laying on the ground next to his car. It's nighttime, completely dark outside. The police have just arrived, and he's telling the cops, he thinks he might have killed his ex-girlfriend, Samantha Wall, but he can't remember. Do you have any weapons or anything on you? No.

Okay, there's a knife in the car. Okay. Like a pocket knife for it? What's your life? The cop asks if he has any weapons on him. And yeah, there was a knife in his car. Do you have any electric staff? No, he doesn't have her.

She didn't have me in the car. Is that the knife of the car, which used to stab her? I don't go down there anything. Was that the knife he used to stab her? The cop asks. He still can't. remember anything, he responds. As you can hear, he's in major distress. The police take him to

the station. I knew that I was going to get arrested. I was calling the police and I was going to tell them that I was afraid that I had killed somebody. When he gets there, he talks to his parents on the phone and asks for a lawyer, one he's already been in touch with. Please contact that attorney for me. Okay, we'll call her right now. Are they holding you? Yeah. We'll call the attorney.

I needed a lawyer there, and so I asked for my lawyer, and I asked for her by name. He knows he's just called the police and told them he thinks he may have murdered his ex-girlfriend, but he also doubts his own mind. That night, Jeff was in Kalamazoo, away from his home in Detroit on an important work trip, and he was really anxious. So he mixed prescription medication, antidepressants, with marijuana that night. When he made that call, could he have been in a delusional state, convincing himself he'd done something he hadn't?

It was four hits of not super potent weed. It's just like just something to take the edge off. Had been prescribed a higher dose than previous of the medication that I was. on. And so I took that dosage and I had asked my psychiatrist if it was okay if I smoked marijuana because it relaxed me. And in this case, it didn't relax. I don't know if it was the marijuana, but I was not relaxed. It didn't help. It was one of the most terrifying things that I've ever experienced, thinking that I had done something that's so counter to everything that I stand for and believe in

and whatever want to do. And, yeah, the idea that I was responsible was just absolutely terrifying. That confession, or whether you even think it is a confession, is something that changed this case forever. It's been two years since Sam's death. And since Jeff's 911 called to police, he's never spoken publicly about it

until now when he spoke to me and my producer Poppy Damon from his home in Detroit. Did you have anything to do with Sam's murder? No. The thing is,

not everyone believes him. So who do you think did it? I think Jeffrey Herbsman did it. I used to smoke weed. I've never smoked weed in my life that's made me want to admit to a murder that I did not commit. That's crazy.

That's crazy. I'm Franny Block. And from the free press, this is Spiral. Murder in Detroit. Episode 3. Motive and Opportunity. Back in October 2023, the day after Sam was killed, you'll remember that a thousand people line the pews for her funeral.

And one of the mourners there was Jeffrey Herbsman. Everybody was confused and in despair. and, yeah, it's just hard to understand. During the funeral service, Jeff missed a phone call from the police. So they called me during the funeral, and I wasn't able to call them back. And then when I drove back here to my house, they met me in my driveway and wanted to interview me

at the station downtown and so I needed five minutes to let the dog out and eat something because I hadn't eaten anything all day. I went downtown and, yeah, spent several hours talking to them about what I knew of Sam and our relationship and the details of where I was. Did you think at that point, oh gosh, I'm the ex-boyfriend, like maybe they're looking into me as a suspect? Yeah, absolutely. I was surprised that they hadn't called earlier and was expecting to hear from them. More than three quarters of the women who are murdered in this country are killed by someone they know. Like a partner, ex-partner, or a family member.

In a way, it's strange that we as women are constantly. constantly told to be careful of the unknown assailant on the street. When the sad reality is, we are far more likely to be killed by someone we know. It was entirely reasonable for them to reach out to me and want to interview me. Jeff's parents became concerned that their son might soon become a suspect in a murder investigation because of his relationship to Sam. Talk to my folks who were very worried and wanted to me to get a lawyer and I was like I didn't do anything. I don't need a lawyer and they were

pretty insistent and found me an attorney. I reached out, I called the attorney. We had a brief conversation and she was like, it sounds like there's not much there and if you need me in the future, reach out. And he says that's why, by the time he was arrested, he had already spoken to a lawyer. I was a little worried that I didn't have an alibi. I had one for earlier that night, but then nothing, you know, I, yeah, I came home and was alone. And, yeah, it was definitely on my mind.

That was a possibility that I didn't have anything to show. and I think that that was part of my anxiety that kind of surfaced later. So he's the ex-boyfriend, and he didn't have an alibi. Poppy and I visited Jeff a few months ago at his house in Detroit. It's a Victorian-style house near downtown,

and it's a bit run down. The white paint on the outside is chipping, exposing the wood underneath. Inside, the house is also a bit unkempt. dog hair lines the corners where the walls meet the floor, and his kitchen counter is full of random food items and utensils. But Jeff himself looked pretty put together. He was wearing a knit sweater and a blue and white striped t-shirt and jeans,

an outfit that looks straight out of a gap catalog. He speaks pretty slowly, and he pauses a lot, struggling to remember things. And throughout almost our entire conversation, he didn't really make eye contact. He stared mostly at the floor, or the cup of coffee he brewed for himself sitting on the table in front of us.

This is how Jeff tells the story of what he was doing the night Sam was killed. I went to synagogue, and then I went home, and, yeah, spent the evening listening to music, drinking whiskey, and then I went to bed. Jeff assumed he was already a suspect,

but after he called the police that night in Kalamazoo, he seemed to be doing all the police's investigative work for them. Any idea why you might have killed her, the cop asked? Yo, it's motive and opportunity, and I don't know what the third one is, but I probably had that one, too. He says, I had the motive and the opportunity, and I don't know what the third one is, but I probably had that too. What do you think the motive would have been? because I was upset with her for breaking up with me. When she asks what the motive might be, he provides it.

He says I was upset with her for breaking up with me. Jeff was in custody for three days. Meanwhile, the police were looking for anything else that tied him to Sam's murder. I spent the next several days in jail, but, yeah, they searched my car, and they searched my house. And they found nothing that tied me to anything that happened.

There's no evidence that I was ever anywhere. But, I mean, they, yeah, they didn't really share a lot with me. When you finally got home, was your place like ransacked? What does it look like when police go through your house? Yeah, it was a, it needed some putting back together. As I said, Jeff's never spoken publicly before. Considering how the haters online view him, that's not surprising. I wasn't even sure he'd speak to us.

And why did you agree to speak to us? Why did you sit down with us today? I feel like unfortunately my story has been caught up in all of this, and I am now part of the trial and, yeah, have made this more complicated. than it needs to be. And I'm hoping that I can explain a little bit and, yeah, make things a little bit clearer as to what went on.

More than two weeks after her death, Sam's family was still plagued with questions. So when the police called and said they had someone in custody, the Wall family hoped it might finally be time for some answers. Remember, this is before Michael Jackson Bolanos has been arrested. Jeff was actually the first person that the police flagged to Sam's parents, Margot and Doug. They had a potential suspect who had made some damning comments, and they wanted us to come down to the police headquarters. And this was at night now. In Detroit. In Detroit. Yeah. So we drove down

there, Monica and Ben, our son-in-law and daughter, came down. And it turned out. And it turned out. Samantha's on and off again boyfriend had said some things that maybe he could have hurt her, maybe he could have done something. They were damaging. They were damaging. And he had been arrested in Kalamazoo, which is where the company he worked for is had to order. And they wanted us to know that he had been arrested and was being brought back to Detroit. But that feeling was short-lived.

Those comments he made, the family learned. seemed almost like a confession, but not quite. Here's Sam's sister Monica and her husband, Ben. The only thing they had was not even a full confession, but a state of panic. Not a confession at all, just like phone call to 911. Say he thinks he might have done something. Still, some in the family, like Monica's husband, Ben,

understandably started thinking maybe the police had their guy. I was under the impression that people don't just say that. So for those three days, I was trying to wrap my head around how somebody who loved somebody else like they did could kill somebody like that. I mean, and I said, like, I don't, you know, I think that they'll find something that will tie him there. Others in the family never got their hopes up. And we immediately said that was bogus. We knew Jeff. That was totally bogus.

He basically had a mental breakdown. which came out at the trial. That was your gut feeling you knew. Oh, yeah. We knew right away. I knew right away. We got the wrong guy. Sam's parents were convinced the police had the wrong guy.

They'd known Jeff while he and Sam dated. On paper, the two looked like a good match. They were around the same age. Jeff grew up outside of Chicago. He graduated from Vanderbilt with degrees in engineering and physics. Then he went on to get a Ph.D. in applied physics from Sam's alma mater, the University of Michigan.

Since getting his doctorate, he worked mostly as a data scientist. He is slender and good-looking. And during the year he and Sam dated, they met at the downtown synagogue. Jeff often joined Sam for family dinners, even going over to Monica and Ben's house during Shabbat. Doug said Jeff struggled with some mental health issues,

but he said Jeff was gentle and couldn't have done it. Ultimately, after inventing, investigating Jeff, the police came to the same conclusion as Sam's parents, that he hadn't killed Sam. Aside from the hysterical 911 call, there was no evidence tying Jeff to the scene of the crime. Here's Detroit Police Captain Matthew Bray. This team thoroughly investigated Mr. Hurstman. When Mr. Herbsman had his incident, that was several hours from Detroit.

This team got up in the middle of the night, drove several hours across the state, to go have a conversation with him. Unless this is some, like, mastermind, there's nobody else walking around there. The police completely wrecked his house. They turned over tables. They tore it the whole house out. They tore it up to look for anything

that they could find that would connect him. And they found absolutely nothing. That's Monica, Sam's sister, and Monica's husband, Ben. My parents never thought for a minute it could be him. And my dad was very familiar. familiar with the mental concept of you feel so guilty that this happened. I wasn't familiar with that.

That maybe you say things like, what if I did it? And I think speaking with some of her friends after, a lot of people felt like that. You feel so guilty. Could it have been me? How did this happen? Who could have done this? Wasn't me? Did I become delirious and do this?

Unfortunately, he appropriately called 911 in his state of panic and said these things, just like when we said these things to the police, when we were being interviewed, but it meant nothing at all. In a way, you could listen to his 911 call, and it's a cry for help. Like, he was... 100%. This might sound crazy if you've never been in this situation before. But we actually heard this from a couple of Sam's friends.

Eva, Sam's friend, who didn't want me to share her last name, told me she had a panic attack similar to Jeff's in the wake of Sam's death. And I'll say up front, Eva is a professional, a mom of four, and a pretty sensible, grounded person. But on New Year's Eve, 24, with her husband and a couple of friends, she took an edible, a gummy with marijuana baked into it. Now, that's not something she does very often, but in the wake of Sam's death, it took her to a very dark place. I convinced myself that anybody could have, I was, I started freaking out. I started freaking out because I, I think what was happening was I was hallucinating. And I think that's when I started saying, why did this happen?

How could this happen? And I think I said, did I do it? Hearing Eva's story, it really struck me that murder, any act of, of violence doesn't end in a single moment. It spirals outward, touching everyone nearby in quiet, lasting ways. Even when our conscious self thinks it has found peace, our subconscious can reveal our true torment and our worst fears. I wondered if this was normal, likely even,

that regular people find themselves convinced they'd done something unimaginably terrible, like killing their friend when they didn't. So I called up an expert. Can people confess to murders that they didn't actually commit? Absolutely. That happens with shocking frequency.

This is Alan Hirsch, a former professor at Williams College and a lawyer who built his career as an authority on false confessions. He's worked on over 400 cases, revealing what could lead someone to admit to a crime they didn't commit. And he's right. It is shockingly common. On verdicts reversed based on new DNA evidence, nearly a third of them were convictions based on false confessions. It's maybe easier

to get your head around the idea that in an interrogation setting, the cop with the badge and the gun telling you they've got something on you, that maybe then you'd confess to a crime you didn't commit. But that's not what happened with Jeff. He called the cops of his own accord. It's more rare, but Alan says it still happens that someone can even convince themselves they'd done something they hadn't unprompted. It's called an internalized false confession. This is someone who actually comes to believe that they committed the crime or may have. And it's not that unusual in internalized false confessions, but the confessor to say, I may have. I think I did it. We tend to believe.

a confession is automatically true. It's so hard to convince a judge or jury or prosecutor or pretty much anyone else that someone confessed to a crime they didn't commit, even though we know it happens all the time. So in this case, the very fact that they did not prosecute this gentleman is extremely revealing. And as I understand it, there is every reason to believe that his confession was in fact false. And if you look in the medical literature, there are quite a few studies showing how cannabis can produce temporary paranoia, even psychosis. Early on, the Wall family was confident that Jeffrey Herbsman had nothing to do with Sam's murder. The police ultimately agreed with them, letting him go without any charges after three

days in jail. I don't know that I was ever informed that I was cleared. So, all we could do was assume that they didn't find anything because they didn't charge me. Yeah, that... Were you relieved? Or what were you feeling? Yeah, very relieved. Yeah, getting out of jail was, yeah, an extreme relief. It was great to be able to see my family and be out and, yeah.

come home. Even though Jeff was never charged, there were still parts of his story that left lingering questions. There were some small things, like the fact that the security cameras at his home were turned off the night of Sam's murder. But Jeff had a response to that.

Here he is testifying about this at Michael Jackson Bolanos's trial. I had a camera system that was non-operational. I believe that I stopped using it In 2022 or 2021, they began to charge a service fee for monthly detection of people, and that was really what I was using it for to detect if somebody was on the front porch and was ringing the doorbell or something like that. In fact, those cameras were still not connected when we came to visit.

Poppy and I stood out front for almost 10 minutes before Jeff realized we were there. But there were other things Jeff couldn't provide answers to because he couldn't remember what actually happened. One of Jeff's paranoia is the night he called the police is that he might have taken a sleeping pill the night of Sam's murder on October 21st. There's a sleeping medication that you can take and not remember what you did.

And I was afraid that one of the medications that I had taken was like that and I had done something after taking a medication and I couldn't remember it. Yeah. Though it's a controversial area of law and medicine, use of the

sleeping pill Ambien has been offered before as a defense for murder. Perna and her partner Brian Brown raise even more questions about the police's investigation into Jeff. See, after Sam's death, Jeff had a bonfire in his backyard But Jeff says it was a bonfire where he invited people over, a social gathering, with some of Sam's friends.

But people like Perna and Brian, they see it very differently. This guy had a fire pit in his backyard, and there was evidence that they had. He had a bonfire shortly right after the murder. The police never checked this fire pit to see if it's any remains of burnt clothes in there, any accelerants in there. They didn't check his bike to see if it had any recent dirt on there. He was the avid bicyclists. He's the avid runner. The police, again, say they did do a thorough investigation.

Even testing a dog leash they found in Jeff's car that had blood on it. Turns out that blood wasn't human. Likely, it belonged to his dog. They didn't take his clothes. He was at the synagogue earlier. They didn't go there and interview individuals to see what type of clothes he was wearing on the day of the murder. So they wouldn't know to get certain clothes from his house to analyze it. I asked the officer in charge, had he known what he was wearing?

Would you have seized those clothes? He said, yes. So it was just a lot of stones that were left unturned in this particular investigation that they just didn't have the answer to. Now they tried to investigate a lot of that evidence, I'm sure, is gone. One of those unturned stones, according to Brian, was the question of what the nature of Sam and Jeff's relationship was really like when they were together.

And what made them break up? where there was no clear motive for Michael to kill Sam. Was there one for Jeff? At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear-off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do.

Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business. True crime cases are all about stories, how a story is told. And in one version of this story, Jeff and Sam had a real connection. and while Sam ultimately ended their relationship, Jeff was understanding. While they were together, Jeff and Sam actually had a lot in common. They both enjoyed going to the opera, something not everyone their age was really into. They enjoyed going to Shabbat services, and they both seemed to really prioritize family,

including spending time with their nieces and nephews. They even met each other's families, and according to Jeff, they got along really well. They shared the same politics, too. They were both really liberal, and they had a shared sense of investment in the city of Detroit, wanting to build it back up. They dated for around a year, though Jeff told me he couldn't remember exactly how long they dated. But eventually, the relationship hit some bumps. We'll say that she was vibrant. She brought the community in and made the atmosphere exciting to be there and kind.

And when we really connected was when she became the president of the synagogue was that she just was naturally leading the community there and would bring in people and make sure that they felt welcome and was just a natural leader in her responsibility and just taking care of. what needed to be done and that was what drew me to her what ultimately led to you guys breaking up yeah so it was hard i so i so i have i have difficulty with depression pretty bad depression and it was getting worse and i i just wasn't happy doing things and I could see that she was frustrated that I wasn't yeah I wasn't I wasn't like happy participating in things with her and that is reasonably a problem I wouldn't I'm not sure I I really wanted to spend time with me either I was, yeah, pretty depressed and sad and not that much fun to be around.

We went on a trip, an amazing trip to the south to see, it was a civil rights tour. Yeah, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to go, but I said, sure, and it was an amazing trip, but at the same time, like, I was not as enthusiastic as I, could have been and it yeah, it showed and yeah. But then there's the other story that's told about Jeff.

The story you can find among commentators who watch testimony from the trial on YouTube. In this story, Jeff is cast as the jealous boyfriend, bitter that Sam had broken his heart. Jeff even told police himself. He was upset that Sam

had broken up with him. And that's the story the defense ran with. This is Jeff on the stand being questioned by Michael's defense attorney, Brian Brown. And you weren't happy that she added to your depression. You weren't happy, were you? I'm not sure how to answer that question. Were you happy? You know, I added to your depression. I was unhappy that she broke up with me. And you, you blame her for the breakup, right? It wasn't your decision, right? Um, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you try to, you try to, you try to convince her that you guys should be together after you broke up, right?

That's correct. Now, did you and Samantha ride bikes together? Uh, no, I believe we never got the chance to ride bikes together. You never got the chance, and how long were you together for? For a year. Four years. You're an avid bike rider, aren't you? Yes.

Okay. And Samantha's a bike rider herself, right? Yes. And sometimes she rides bikes to bail out, right? That's correct. Sometimes she rides bikes to bail out with other guys, right? Yes. Okay.

And not you, right? Yes. Okay. That didn't make you happy knowing that, did it? Now, Samantha wasn't a person who would share emojis with you. I don't recall if she shared emojis with me. My producer Poppy asked Jeff about this when we sat down with him. Were you jealous as that part of your personality?

Is that any part of your relationship with Sam? No. So I didn't even know that she had seen, had been seeing anybody until the trial. That was the first time that I learned that, yeah, that she had seen anybody else. So it's like you're, were you like angry about some of that too? No, wasn't angry. I was just, it was just hard to hear. And then there's the not sure what to think version of the story.

Like when I asked Jeff if he loved Sam, a woman he dated for almost a year, who he'd introduced to his entire family. He struggled to just give us a simple yes in response. I felt more for her than I had ever felt for anybody and, like, we got along very well, and, yeah, I'm not sure I expressed that well to her and that I know that was also an issue that she wanted more of that expression out of me. And, yeah, I'm willing to admit that I'm not great. at emotional expression and emotional stuff

and knowing how to express myself well. And I know that she wanted more of that and I didn't quite know how to give it to her. So all to say, as we've heard, Jeff's phone call made him a suspect. But it also opened the door to another type of inquiry about Sam, her romantic life.

Not just Jeff, but other men, she knew were questioned about the murder. Like there was a guy closer to Sam's parents' age. She dated him, but she didn't tell that many people about him. During her first interview with police on the day Sam was killed, Monica had called him a stalker.

It was something she later regretted and recanted. It was incredibly painful. It was torture. She was the kindest, nicest person in the world, literally. Care deeply about everybody and everything, and all they talk about is these things that tried to make her look bad. And she did not have many boyfriends. She had a lot of boys who were friends, just as everybody does. And they really tried to spin things in a way that were completely not true.

Sam's friend, Andy Einhorn, remains angry about aspects of the portrait of Sam that emerged in the trial. what he saw was a twisting of the facts, the defense bringing up Sam's dating life and her sometime use of marijuana to paint her in a negative light and imply that she was putting herself in danger. Disappointing because, again, to me, it was a deflection tactic.

It's let's tear down her reputation. Let's paint this person who everybody's saying is a saint as a complete devil and that one of these vicious ex-boyfriends or random guys that she would sleep with her, She's a drug addict and therefore vagrants are walking into her house. It really makes you wonder, how would we all be remembered if we died, especially in a violent way?

Would our reputations be tarnished, our lives picked apart and judged in the name of seeking justice? Is that even justice at all? Here's the problem so often in criminal cases. The victim, the actual person, becomes distorted in the retelling. The family and friends are forced to be like, hey, that's not who she was. Their private tragedy becomes a public spectacle. Remember I said true crime was all about telling stories?

Well, the most important one of all is the story of Sam. And yet, as we've heard, at Michael's trial, of course it wasn't Sam the victim's story that got told. The focus was all on the person, or persons, accused of killing her. Well, the jury is now seated, and both sides have presented opening statements in the trial of Michael Jackson Bolano, a Detroit man, accused of killing Samantha Wool, a well-known Jewish community leader. Even though it was Michael on trial, Perna and Brian wanted to point to Jeff as the culprit. And to do that, they made a big deal of the bombshell revolution in the courtroom of Jeff's 911 call, an apparent body camp confession. until the trial, this aspect, his name, had not been reported in the press.

Michael's defense team would return to Jeff's words over and over. The body cam confession of Samantha Wool's murder by her ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey Herbstman. In the days after Wolle's murder, he told police he thought he did it and had the motive and opportunity to do so. Jeff would end up testifying on the stand. Only he was granted immunity, meaning his testimony couldn't be used against him at a later date. The fact that you said that you did and had to go through this entire thing and you were granted immunity for your testimony against my client, I find that very disrespectful. I find that lacking all integrity for you to sit in this courtroom, put your head down, and listen to something that you should have been charged with. You should have went through this five-week trial and you should have been sentenced for.

I have no respect for that. And an even bigger explosion was to come. In most trials, lawyers recommend that the defendant not take the stand. The risk of the accused harming his own case is normally considered too great. But Michael Jackson Bolanos did. And he told a story that changed everything, a new version of the events of October 21st. That was when I saw a dark figure outside. Okay.

and what, if anything, was this dark figure doing? It looked like it was ducked down. He said it looked like it was ducked down. Did this dark figure ever make any movement towards you? Not at all. That's next time on Spiral. Murder in Detroit. By the Free Press.

If you can't wait until next week to listen, you might want to subscribe to the Free Press, which will enable you to listen. to this whole series right now and with reduced ads. Go to thefp.com today. And if you enjoy this reporting, please leave us a nice review and help spread the word about this show.

You'll also find more photos of Sam and bonus material on our website, so go to thefp.com for more. And if you have any questions or any information about Sam's murder, you can email us at Spiral at thefp.com. Thank you.