September 27, 2022 • 37 mins
It’s the morning of March 31st, 2020 a jogger finds Dr. Beth Potter and her husband Robin Carre shot in the head execution-style in University of Wisconsin Arboretum. Carre is pronounced dead on the scene by police while his wife, who was still alive, was rushed to the hospital where she also dies. Initially the police believed this to be a random homicide, but after reviewing video surveillance and GPS data, they redirect their sights on a potential suspect: Khari Sanford - the boyfriend of the victim’s adopted daughter Mimi.
In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard discuss the gruesome nature of this case, how the cooler temperature affected the crime scene (specifically, the blood), how conscious Dr. Potter was for the hours that she was alive after the attack and the motive of the suspect.
Show Notes:
0:00 - Intro
1:32 - Background and overview of the case
5:21 - Did Robin Carre die from his gunshot wound/was it exacerbated from the cold temperature?
7:23 - Was Dr. Potter really still breathing when they found her?
9:34 - The significance of the area where you’re shot
12:01 - How do we know the victims were killed on the pathway where they were found?
16:15 - Would the cooler temperatures affect the state of the blood found at the crime scene?
18:26 - Shell casings
21:10 - Was Dr. Potter in and out of consciousness the whole night before she was found?
25:14 - Finding the suspect, Khari Sanford (the boyfriend of the victim’s daughter)
29:41 - Hearsay and the weight is has in a court of law
33:20 - Sanford and Mimi (the victim’s daughter) reportedly spoke of the parents having “bands of money” and that they were “rich”
36:35 - Wrap up and final details
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. You look back on it,
and after you've been to college, you realize that probably
wasn't really the most stressful thing that happened in your life.
(00:29):
But for many kids that come into college, they realize
their life is full of stress. At that moment, it
might be the most they've ever experienced. And how do
you relieve yourself from that stress? I don't know there's
any number of ways that college kids go about that.
But at the University of Wisconsin, they've kind of got
a unique area there and it's a place of beauty.
(00:53):
It's actually a a nature walk. It's called an arboretum,
and you can walk through and see all the native
species of plants. The walkaway kind of curves through this
forested area. Of course, all the plants are labeled and
that sort of thing, and it's beautiful, as they say,
no matter what time of year you're there. But one morning,
(01:17):
the jogger was going through this beautiful nature area at
about six thirty in the morning, and if you can
imagine this, this individual looked over along the side of
this beautiful nature trail he saw two individuals, both with
(01:40):
gunshot wants to their heads. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is Body Bags. Joining me today is Jackie Howard,
executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackieget I
gotta tell you, I don't know that I've ever been
(02:02):
on a walk and have discovered something of this nature.
And you know, I've been on a lot of walks
as a death investigator, going through the woods and this
sort of thing, But just as a random person. Can
you imagine the shock and the horror. You're out there
to start your day off with a a jog and
you know, just at the crack of dawn and you
look down and you see two fellow human beings laying
(02:23):
alongside the road, apparently slaughtered. It certainly would be a
surprise at any time, let alone first thing in the morning,
where you think you're setting yourself up for the day.
A lot of people use that time as they walked,
to meditate and plan their day. But around six thirty
in the morning, Dr Beth Potter and her husband, Robin Carry,
(02:44):
were discovered laying on the pathway to the Arboretum. Dr
Beth worked at the University Health Family Center. She was
working on COVID her husband, Robin, was involved in a
lot of physical fitness. They had three children, and the
morning that they were found, Robin was dead on the scene.
(03:06):
Dr Potter was transported to a local hospital and she
died there. Dr Potter was in her pajamas, her husband
was only in his underwear. So given that nature, it
would seem they were forced to leave their home. You bet,
I don't know if I mentioned this, but the date
(03:27):
was March thirtie, Jackie, let me ask you a question.
You ever been to Wisconsin and March. I've never been
to Wisconsin. Well, you're missing a tree, because I got
to tell you, Wisconsin is one of my favorite states.
It's absolutely gorgeous. But let me tell you something else
about March and Wisconsin. It can be brutal. And the
particular morning when they were found, the overnight temps had
(03:47):
been in the thirties, which I guess by Wisconsin standards
at that time of year. Even though you're you know,
you're in the first part of spring, that's still that
that's that's kind of warmer than normal. But it's not
a location you know, you and be out in the
elements like this of your own volition. Robin he was
he was only dressed in underwear and can you imagine
(04:08):
that that? And that's a good investigative pick up on
your part, Jackie, because when you, you you know, you think
about contextually, when you look at a body at a scene,
particularly the outdoor scene, you think, well, are they closed appropriately,
you know, to the circumstances, and of course in this case,
they weren't. He's in his underwear. I can't imagine any
(04:29):
circumstance under which I would leave my home dressed like
that or absent other clothing at that time of year
and those kind of temperatures. And then you think about
his wife. She was found there in just for Pj's,
alongside that pathway, and the way they've kind of described
the area where they were found, it's kind of a
(04:49):
a ditch. It doesn't sound like a real deep ditch.
It just sounds like a little kind of a wash,
if you will, where where water just kind of gently
drains away through this area. And you begin to think,
as an investigator, what would bring two people to this
location almost two miles away from their home, which is
you know, driven by car, it's not that far, but
(05:10):
you know that they probably didn't walk and their car
is nowhere to be seen. How did in fact they
wind up there? And that probably initially, you know, when
you're coming into cold as an investgator, that's gonna be
the biggest question, I think, and you have to ask
that question and really seek that answer out because I
think they're in is. You know, it's going to rest
(05:32):
the genesis for the rest of this case. Robin Carry
was dead on the scene, but again Beth Potter was
taken to a local hospital. Do we know if Carry
died because of the gunshot wound or was it exacerbated
from the cold temperatures and hypothermia. Again, he was only
dressed in underwear. Yeah, well, cold temperatures didn't help. But
(05:54):
let me tell you this injury that Robin Carry sustained
is absolutely lethal. There were a lot of clues at
the scene relative to that that the police really, you know,
gave a lot of thought to. In addition to the
absence of warm clothing. He was essentially shot in the
back of the head, but just off to the left
(06:16):
right behind his left ear, if you will, And when
that projectile tracked across the interior of his skull, it
would leave a path that would essentially go from back
to front and from left to right, and so you're
essentially cutting across diagonally across the brain, and you have
to think that it would track across both hemispheres, both
(06:39):
left and the right hemispheres of the brain. And so
this is an unsurvivable injury that that he sustained. However,
you know his wife that that's a completely separate set
to her injuries, because amazingly, and I mean amazingly, she
was discovered when they were both discovered, but particularly her,
(07:01):
when she was discovered, she still had agonal respirations. That
means that she still had a heartbeat, she was taking
up oxygen now limited. I can only imagine they're probably
very shallow respirations. But they did transport her from the
scene and take her into the hospital, and probably what
was mentioned earlier about the temp sometimes sometimes there's a
(07:23):
level of preservation that goes on the colder it is,
and maybe for that moment time she lived simply because
it was a bit cooler outside than normal. I have
two questions, shop. You said Dr Potter still had agonal respirations,
So was that truly given that she was shot in
the head. Wasn't she still breathing or is that more
(07:46):
of an autonomic response where the body is continuing its
normal functions. That's an excellent question, and you know, you
can really only get into that once you get actually
into the autopsy to determine the extent of the damage.
My suspicion is that in Robin's case, the trauma was
(08:07):
so extensive and he was just in an unrecoverable flat
span at that point, you know, and it was probably
relatively instantaneous, I would imagine, for him, but for her. Interestingly,
he was shot on the left side, and if I
remember correctly, her gunshot wound was more on the right
side of her head, and I don't know that the
(08:29):
trajectory was the same. And you know, people would say, well,
what do you mean by that, Well, depended upon the
direction of the travel of the bullet itself. You have
to begin at autopsy, and particularly you have to begin
to try to appreciate what vital areas of the brain.
Now that there are certain traumas that your brain you know,
can sustain and they are completely survivable. And there's any
(08:53):
number of stories you know that are out there in literature.
I think probably famously is this kind of anecdotal story
about how the idea of a lobotomy came about. And
you know this, this fellow back in the eighteen mid
eighteen hundreds was standing in adjacent to a mining area
in a big metal bar was sent skyward as a
(09:15):
result of an explosion and when it came down, it
actually pierced the frontal area of his brain and they
had to extract this thing, but it only involved his
frontal lobes and after that he became very docile. Well
that's a traumatic brain injury back then, and he survived that.
You can survive a brain injury, but a lot of
it is going to be depended upon what areas of
(09:38):
the brain are penetrated. That's just exactly what I was
going to ask you. It's like, once again like you're
reading my mind, because I was going to ask does
it make a difference because you said he was shot
behind his ear, So does it make a difference where
you're shot depending up on your survivability? Oh? Yeah, most definitely.
(10:00):
Love to you know, give this kind of tactile demonstration
to folks in class. I tell my students to take
their index finger essentially and find the you know, find
the big Knight on the back of their skull and
run inferior to that big knot, you know, the anatomus
called the occipital protuberance. You go below that and you
start to get into that area that does control the
(10:23):
autonomic nervous system down towards the brain stem. And when
that area is traumatized, you know, you can almost bet
your bottom dollar that you're gonna shut down everything from
heart function to lung function and all those sorts of things,
getting into that kind of primal brain area that controls
those things that we don't normally think about having, you know,
you think about having to breathe. You don't think about
(10:44):
your heart beating, you know. And then you have higher
functions that are involved in either the lobes kind of
higher up and forward and that sort of things. And
sometimes depended upon what kind of treatment you get, those
events are survivable. And it would appear or that the
doctor survived for some time out there now precisely when
(11:05):
it's you know, I can't give you an exact time,
but she lived long enough that they did what's called
running a code, that ran a code on her from
the scene where she was extricated from uh there in
the nature area to the local hospital, and of course
it was awful, not because she died in the emergency.
(11:44):
You begin to think about your you know, you want
this place a piece that you can go to and
and probably walked around, uh, the entire time you've been
living in a location, it's probably a place that you
have fond memories of. I can't imagine that either one
of these two victims could, in their wildest, wildest dreams
ever imagined that their lives were essentially going to end
(12:06):
there in that beautiful nature preserve. Well, that sets me
up for a great question. You said their lives are
going to end there. We suppose that they were forced
from their home at gunpoint because they were shot. How
do we know that they were killed on the pathway.
When the investigators were processing the scene, one of the
(12:30):
things that kind of really stood out to them, other
than the fact that you've got people that are very
poorly clothed for this time of the year, one of
the things that really stood out to them was what
appeared to be the underlying volume of blood that had
pooled beneath the bodies. First, you know, Robin remained there
(12:55):
and he's kind of the benchmark because his body was
not removed from that location. Out with Beth Potter, she
was removed, so anything that had any blood that had
issued for them from her body was just essentially there
as a pool that was without her body to be
observed in context with it. But when they began to
(13:16):
look at Robin's body, they began to appreciate the blood
spatter patterns that were on him and adjacent to the
area around his body, in addition to the blood that
had pulled. And I don't know that folks really think
(13:36):
about this very often, but just in your life, just
think about any time you've sustained some kind of open
head injury, and it can not just be your scalp,
but even your nose. If you if you catch a
bloody nose or maybe perhaps have sustained some kind of
blunt force trauma to the scalp where you've you know,
you've nicked your scalp in some way, you bleed profusely.
(14:00):
And one of the reasons is is that your head
is arguably one of the most vascular areas of your body.
So when trauma is sustained there, you're going to have
a huge volume, huge volume of blood that will issue
forth from any kind of injury, and sometimes when you
see those the amount of blood comes out, you automatically
think that it's a very nasty injury, and that's not
(14:22):
always the case. It's just that there's so much blood
that's constantly circulating through that area that the slightest little
nick can turn into something major as far as a
you know, an issue of blood. But in this case,
what they surmised was this they knew because they were
not bearing witness to any kind of drag marks, they
(14:43):
didn't see any kind of blood staining that had criss
crossed over that pathway leading up to where their bodies
were found, that everything relative to blood evidence was contained
in that specific area. And when you take that, you
look at that, you think of that snapshot in your mind,
you have to come to the conclusion, well, they were
(15:04):
traumatized specifically in that location, that it wasn't something that
perhaps happened in their home, that it happened up the
path some distance or in the parking lot to get
access to the nature area, that it had actually happened there.
Because it's not just the pooling of blood. We think
about these dynamic patterns and when you think about gunshot wounds.
(15:29):
We get into this area of velocity, you know, the
velocity that that round comes out at the end of
that muzzle, and it generates a high velocity pattern when
it comes out, and that means that the tiniest of
droplets that can essentially be created are created because of
the high velocity of the round that you're struck with,
(15:51):
and then concurrently, the blood that comes out of that
the droplets are tinier. Say, for instance, if someone we're
struck with a blunt object like a baseball, bat or
hammer or whatever the case might be, you might think
that you're hitting them hard. But you cannot strike an
individual and generate the same velocity with a bad or
(16:11):
a hammer or you know whatever, a lead pipe as
you can when that lead core projectile strikes that skull
and this explosion occurs, and these tiny, tiny little troplets
of blood issue forth from there. Given the cooler temperatures,
as you pointed out it was early morning March Wisconsin,
(16:33):
would the cooler temperatures affect how much blood pulled out
of the body, or the texture and the thickness of
the blood as it pulled, and the shape and the
way that it would flow out of the body. Yeah,
I suppose that it could. Now in the short term. Obviously,
when you're thinking about the immediate event, that immediate traumatic event,
(16:57):
it's the blood is going to issue forth at the
same rate as it would in any other circumstances, and
you know the first few minutes, okay, particularly at the
initial impact. But I suppose, I suppose that it's within
the realm of possibility that things would begin to slow down.
And you have to keep in mind that though it
is a liquid, it is the component liquid. It's a
(17:20):
liquid that's composed of many parts. And you know, everybody's
handled their own blood at some point in time, and
you know that that there is attackinus to it. That
it doesn't feel like water, you know. And again, you know,
our ancestors had it right, you know when they said
blood is thicker than water, and there's there's truth in that,
and that thickness is actually something that you refer to
as a viscosity. You hear this many times in association
(17:43):
with motor oil. You know, they talk about the viscosity
of oil and that goes to the thickness of the substance.
And so, yeah, blood has got a viscosity that's certainly
different than say, for instance, of water. But you know,
you begin to think about it, does it have a
consistency that say, comparatable to maybe a syrup, like a
clear corn syrup. Yeah. Perhaps a matter of fact, you know,
(18:06):
there's several recipes out there for making fake blood where
they're using a corn syrup in order as an initiator,
in order to create those patterns you know that we
work with in the lab and teach students with that
sort of thing. Cool weather could slow it down to
a certain degree. And it's certainly I think at least
combined with the location of the gunshot relative to Doc
Potter's injuries and maybe a relative to the ambient environmental temperature,
(18:31):
that contributed to the fact that she survived certainly survived
longer than Robin. Robin probably died pretty much instantaneously. Also
at the scene there were shell casings found. What did
that tell us? Yeah, I was really surprised when I
found out what type of ammunition was used, you know,
And this kind of came out in the news following
(18:52):
the investigation of the scene and the police work in
this case. There had been some thought given some social
media history that was out there that perhaps a clock
firearm was used in this case. And what was what
came into focus here was that the ammunition that was
(19:14):
found out there is not something that's quite typical. You know,
you think about things like nine millimeter, forty caliber, forty
five caliber, even maybe for some people ten millimeter. They
actually found sig sour three fifty seven rounds spent casings
out there. And you may have heard of a three
fifty seven before, you know, for those that they're listening,
(19:36):
A three fifty seven traditionally has always been associated with
the revolver, very powerful revolver that was popular with police officers.
Certainly back in the seventies and into the eighties when
police were still carrying revolvers, three seven was very common.
But that's a bit of ammo that's used for revolvers. However,
in this case, they recovered SIG three fifty seven munition
(20:00):
that is made for a semi auto. And I'm not
saying that it's it's exotic, Okay, This is not something
that somebody's cooked up in their basement or something that
you know, you had to order and you know, we
take forever and ever to get in and you can
buy it through retailers. It's just that it's it's not
your standard fare. You know, when you begin to think
about what somebody's weapon and ammo choice might be. So
(20:22):
what does that mean for the investigators? Well, you know,
for them, this begins to really narrow down the field
because you know, you begin to think about, well, how
many nine millimeter pistols you know are out there? How
many forty caliber pistols are out there? Well, there's there's
a lot. I mean they're everywhere, you know, they're all
over the place. Our military has carried nine millimeter side
(20:45):
arms forever and ever so of our police officers. So
it's it's not an uncommon round for an investigator. When
you get a piece of evidence like a three fifty
seven sick, well, that narrows the focus now and you
can again to kind of look at things like, well,
who may have purchased three seven a weapon that's chambered
(21:06):
for three seven, and who may have purchased ammunition that
would marry up with that particular weapon, And suddenly your
choices become very slim at that point. And that's from
an investigative standpoint. That's a home run three or four
shell casings were found by police nearby, and the individuals
(21:30):
the runners who discovered the body talk about there being
a large amount of blood covering Potter's pajamas, that her
breath was faint and her pulse was fragile, and as
the person who found them stepped away to be able
to call nine one one to get help, Potter raised
(21:50):
her arm. So what's the possibility would she have been
in and out of consciousness all night long? Or do
we think that she probably late there figuring out how
are we going to get help? Wow? What a horrible
thought that is. You know that that you would consider
that that this poor woman who has been gunned down
(22:13):
is immobile, She's incapable of moving. I don't even know
that she would have had the ability to even understand
at that point that her husband was lying there not
too far away from her deceased. You know, you start
to think about higher brain function at that time, what's
the level of awareness that sort of thing is. Obviously
she had enough brain activity so that she, as I
(22:34):
said earlier, you know, she had these kind of agonal respirations,
shallow breathing that's sort of thing, faint heartbeat, and you
know her respirations, and that means that there's a lot
of effort probably being put in relative to her body
in order to uptake oxygen. It's really difficult to say
if if she had that kind of awareness at that level,
(22:58):
you know, being able to think these things through. One
of the things that you look for, had a scene
relative to the disease. You know, we talked about some
of the blood evidence, and I think that one of
the other things that comes along. It's a horrible thing
to think about it, but it is something that we consider.
Is there evidence that of their own volition, perhaps that
the victim had moved about in the throes of death
(23:23):
if you will, where they're kind of thrashing about. Sometimes
you'll see this where their hands will scrape dirt or
their arms will scrape back and forth. Famously, you know,
people will claw the earth when they're in excruciating pain
or they're trying to become mobile again. If you will,
you'll get dirt beneath the fingernails. And it's not always
associated with a struggle. It's like a one on one
(23:44):
person to person struggle. Sometimes it's associated with just this
will to want to live, and some of those findings
can be quite horrific. I've been on scenes before where
individuals have kind of clawed at the walls while they're
covered in blood after they've been attacked, and has had
nothing to do with the attack itself. In the throes
(24:04):
of the attack when they were say they're knives or shot,
It had to do with them just trying to survive,
and that would be something that the investigators would have
to surmise. Now, obviously, in in Robin's case, it appears
that he died rather suddenly. You know that he died there,
(24:24):
But it would be very interesting to go back and
look at those areas where as the doctor lay and
if you have these kind of scrubbed out areas where
her arms had moved back and forth, legs maybe thrashing
about and this with a lot of disruption of that
kind of the earth beneath her, and that that would
(24:45):
take time for that to occur. Was there evidence of that?
And again, you know, you say, well, what does that
mean for us as investigators? That does that bear any significance? Yeah, yeah,
of course it does, because when you take a case
like this to trial, it shows how brutal this event
was and how cold hearted it was that you would
(25:05):
not only take this poor woman out there in her
pajamas in the middle of a cold, cold night and
then desperately injure her like this and leave her there
to suffer all night long. Again, that goes to a
very callousness I think on the part of Tray, Dr
(25:42):
Beth Potter and Robin Carey, who would want to end
their lives? I don't understand that, And I think that
was a big question because both of these people you're
talking about giving back to a community, to this place
that they lived in. These two were famous locally for
(26:03):
helping and having big hearts, and I think that sometimes
the people that are the kindest attract some of the
must wicked people out there. The search turned to a suspect.
Police began to do the recond order as they normally do,
checking close to the family first. They began to check
(26:25):
video in and around the home. They began to check
cell phone records. So as the search began, Joe, what
did we see happening? Most homicides, when they occur, they
don't they don't occur in some kind of vacuum. You know,
everybody's afraid of strangers. Stranger on stranger crime they talked about,
(26:46):
and it does happen, Don't get me wrong, it happens
every day. But the lines fare of these cases for
investigators are going to come back to that small, tiny
circle that you've created, and I think probably for the police,
you know, when they began to look into this, they
(27:06):
want to know who occupies the same space with the
two victims. And number one at the top of the
list was going to be their daughter, who went by
the name Miriam. That's her given name, but they called her.
Everybody called her Mimi. And she's rather young, she's teen,
and she was living in their home along with their boyfriend.
(27:32):
And this young man had been taken in kindly by
her parents, allowed to stay there. And this young man,
who went by the name Cary Sandford, was classmates with
their daughter. But we have to put this in context,
all right. When this case Kurt, which was in we
(27:54):
were creeping as a nation up into you know, those
we were passing through that very scary time in the
country where people were social distancing, people were being told
to stay apart. Where you didn't know anything about this virus,
this coronavirus. You had no idea how it was going
(28:14):
to impact anybody. And Dr Potter herself had health issues.
Now keep in mind, she's a health care provider, so
she's gonna be hyper sensitive to this. She was seeing
people in her clinic that she was treating, and I'm
sure that many people were coming in there were, you know,
presenting with COVID symptomology. And she's on medication that personally
(28:36):
put her at risk for not just contracting the virus,
but if she did contract it a weakened immune system,
it could really cause her to go downhill fast. And
so when you're living in close quarters to somebody, you
have a perceived danger of what could be going on
around you. And so with her, her and her husband
were practicing social distancing within their home. I think they
(28:57):
were probably staying away from people as much as they could.
But her daughter and her boyfriend, who again had been
allowed to live in their home, refused to comply. They
absolutely refused to comply with the rules of the house.
And there was a lot of tension in this home.
(29:19):
There was angry fights over it, refusal to comply, and
you know, Dr Potter was no fool, you know, she
knew what kind of risk existed out there. If you're
going outside the home, you could bring something back in
and then all of a sudden, you know, she's looking
at being deathly ill, and perhaps her husband as well,
and I guess the rest of their family could be too,
(29:42):
But these two would not comply. But going back to
this idea of how kind hearted they were, they actually
arranged to have their daughter and her boyfriend live in
an Airbnb for which they were going to pay for.
They were just kind to fault in essence. That may
(30:06):
have been part of the problem. Besides the physical evidence
that was found at the scene. One of the things
that we talked about a lot is the fact that
people who tend to be criminal or take part in
criminal behavior cannot keep their mouth shut. Sanford began talking
(30:27):
with friends. Sanford is quoted as saying, once he found
out that one of the victims was at the hospital
and still alive, he reportedly said, I shot them. I know,
I know, I shot them. So how much does here
say play and how much weight does it have in
(30:48):
a court of law? Well, first off, let's look at
it from an investigative standpoint. You know, being now on
the street as an investigator, that ain't a court all right,
because you're always looking for leads and so and leads
that you pick up on. Would you know those beautiful
oaken walls that we see, Uh, you know it's played
on television and courtrooms. You know that idea of hearsay
(31:09):
is real and you have to play by those rules.
But on the street, you look for leads, and you know,
as an investigator, when you're part of that community and
you've got two of the most upstanding citizens around that
are found both shot in the head and left like
animals dead, are four dead essentially out in the wilds
(31:31):
during this cold early spring, You've got a lot of
scared people on your ends. And so there's an urgency
to this to try to get this solved because you're
thinking about, you know, what in the world is going
on here? Why would somebody just target people? And then
so when you begin to hear these conversations that are
popping up, because you know, you have to keep in
mind that it's not just about the investigators going to
(31:54):
one individual in questioning them and then they're calling it
done that it's not the way it happens. Remember how
I talked about that kind of circle, that intimate circle
that people have. Everybody that the police can track down
within that intimate circle are going to be asked questions.
And if somebody has loose lips that has direct knowledge
(32:15):
that a crime has been committed, I can guarantee you,
even if it comes from a second or third party,
those individuals are going to be pressed. They're going to
be pressed hard by investigators, you know. And of course
they can invoke their Fifth Amendment rights if they so
choose to. And interestingly enough, now that I've mentioned Fifth
(32:35):
Amendment rights, their daughter, their own very daughter, their precious Mimi,
during the course of this actually invoked her Fifth Amendment rights.
And so anytime you hear that when you're conducting an investigation,
it's going to make you might not compress that individual
any further because they have said, look, I don't want
to say anything else without the presence of an attorney. Okay,
(32:58):
that's fine. You know, you allow them to get their attorney,
and they can talk to their attorney until they're blew
in the face and all that sort of thing. You're
not going to talk to them directly any longer. But
at that point in time, you now are armed with
the information that for some reason, this person feels very
uncomfortable talking about these homicides, the death of her parents.
You start pressing on the periphery, and when you do that,
(33:18):
other information pops up. That relationship that Cary Sandford had
with Mimi. One of the comments that repeatedly has been
said by people who knew Cary Sanford classmates is that
he was excited and talked about bands of money. That
reportedly Beth Potter and Robin carry had classmates told investigators
(33:45):
that a discussion was overheard between the victim's daughter and
Sandford in a class that her parents had quote bands
of money and that they were rich. The root of
all evil here, you know, you begin to think about
that and the fact that I think that one of
the things that resonated with me was that witnesses had
(34:06):
actually witnessed this young man become excited, you know, and
and some of the descriptions I've read it, it almost
seems like he was vibrating, you know, with joy over
the fact that his girlfriend, and of course it their daughter,
had spoke to him about their wealth and she described
(34:27):
their wealth in terms of bands of cash. And I
can only imagine that what she was referring to or
stacks of cash maybe that they had on hand that
were wrapped in paper wrappers, you know, much like you
get denominational rappers that you get from from the bank,
and they had those on hand. Now, there's certainly no
evidence I don't think at least that has really come
(34:50):
out that that this was taken. And we do know
that they went back to the scene after this had occurred,
you know, when they were removed from their home um
And it's chilling when you begin to think about it
that this may have been of motivation. And I think
the greater part of this is that you've got a
young man who, according to everyone around, was involved in
(35:13):
all this, you know, kind of civic service around, involved
in various groups and organizing basketball games for charity. He
had his picture made with the city's mayor, and you know,
all of this stuff that had kind of come to
the surface about him. But then you begin to see
(35:34):
kind of the evil that dwelled him. There are screenshots
from social media accounts with him holding what appears to
be a semi automatic handgun and pointing it directly at
a camera and him looking over the rear sights of
the thing and kind of gazing into the cameras you stare,
you know, if you're the viewer of this thing, you're
staring right now the muzzle of the weapon. So you
(35:57):
get an idea that there's something deeper than what was
being presented, you know, to the public, and that he
had fooled. He had fooled this poor couple that had
literally taken him in, had taken him in under their wing,
had given him shelter, had given him food, place to live,
allowed him to live with their daughter in their own
(36:19):
area of the home, and then when Tom's got tough,
actually provided a location that they could go to an
airbnb that they were going to set them up with,
and then allow them to use their own vehicle to
drive about in for a time. Again, it just absolutely
breaks the heart. This is such a senseless, senseless killing.
Cory Sandford was convicted in the kidnapping and killing of
(36:42):
Dr Beth Potter and her husband, Robin Cary. He was
sentenced to mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this his body bags
Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. You look back on it,
and after you've been to college, you realize that probably
wasn't really the most stressful thing that happened in your life.
(00:29):
But for many kids that come into college, they realize
their life is full of stress. At that moment, it
might be the most they've ever experienced. And how do
you relieve yourself from that stress? I don't know there's
any number of ways that college kids go about that.
But at the University of Wisconsin, they've kind of got
a unique area there and it's a place of beauty.
(00:53):
It's actually a a nature walk. It's called an arboretum,
and you can walk through and see all the native
species of plants. The walkaway kind of curves through this
forested area. Of course, all the plants are labeled and
that sort of thing, and it's beautiful, as they say,
no matter what time of year you're there. But one morning,
(01:17):
the jogger was going through this beautiful nature area at
about six thirty in the morning, and if you can
imagine this, this individual looked over along the side of
this beautiful nature trail he saw two individuals, both with
(01:40):
gunshot wants to their heads. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is Body Bags. Joining me today is Jackie Howard,
executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackieget I
gotta tell you, I don't know that I've ever been
(02:02):
on a walk and have discovered something of this nature.
And you know, I've been on a lot of walks
as a death investigator, going through the woods and this
sort of thing, But just as a random person. Can
you imagine the shock and the horror. You're out there
to start your day off with a a jog and
you know, just at the crack of dawn and you
look down and you see two fellow human beings laying
(02:23):
alongside the road, apparently slaughtered. It certainly would be a
surprise at any time, let alone first thing in the morning,
where you think you're setting yourself up for the day.
A lot of people use that time as they walked,
to meditate and plan their day. But around six thirty
in the morning, Dr Beth Potter and her husband, Robin Carry,
(02:44):
were discovered laying on the pathway to the Arboretum. Dr
Beth worked at the University Health Family Center. She was
working on COVID her husband, Robin, was involved in a
lot of physical fitness. They had three children, and the
morning that they were found, Robin was dead on the scene.
(03:06):
Dr Potter was transported to a local hospital and she
died there. Dr Potter was in her pajamas, her husband
was only in his underwear. So given that nature, it
would seem they were forced to leave their home. You bet,
I don't know if I mentioned this, but the date
(03:27):
was March thirtie, Jackie, let me ask you a question.
You ever been to Wisconsin and March. I've never been
to Wisconsin. Well, you're missing a tree, because I got
to tell you, Wisconsin is one of my favorite states.
It's absolutely gorgeous. But let me tell you something else
about March and Wisconsin. It can be brutal. And the
particular morning when they were found, the overnight temps had
(03:47):
been in the thirties, which I guess by Wisconsin standards
at that time of year. Even though you're you know,
you're in the first part of spring, that's still that
that's that's kind of warmer than normal. But it's not
a location you know, you and be out in the
elements like this of your own volition. Robin he was
he was only dressed in underwear and can you imagine
(04:08):
that that? And that's a good investigative pick up on
your part, Jackie, because when you, you you know, you think
about contextually, when you look at a body at a scene,
particularly the outdoor scene, you think, well, are they closed appropriately,
you know, to the circumstances, and of course in this case,
they weren't. He's in his underwear. I can't imagine any
(04:29):
circumstance under which I would leave my home dressed like
that or absent other clothing at that time of year
and those kind of temperatures. And then you think about
his wife. She was found there in just for Pj's,
alongside that pathway, and the way they've kind of described
the area where they were found, it's kind of a
(04:49):
a ditch. It doesn't sound like a real deep ditch.
It just sounds like a little kind of a wash,
if you will, where where water just kind of gently
drains away through this area. And you begin to think,
as an investigator, what would bring two people to this
location almost two miles away from their home, which is
you know, driven by car, it's not that far, but
(05:10):
you know that they probably didn't walk and their car
is nowhere to be seen. How did in fact they
wind up there? And that probably initially, you know, when
you're coming into cold as an investgator, that's gonna be
the biggest question, I think, and you have to ask
that question and really seek that answer out because I
think they're in is. You know, it's going to rest
(05:32):
the genesis for the rest of this case. Robin Carry
was dead on the scene, but again Beth Potter was
taken to a local hospital. Do we know if Carry
died because of the gunshot wound or was it exacerbated
from the cold temperatures and hypothermia. Again, he was only
dressed in underwear. Yeah, well, cold temperatures didn't help. But
(05:54):
let me tell you this injury that Robin Carry sustained
is absolutely lethal. There were a lot of clues at
the scene relative to that that the police really, you know,
gave a lot of thought to. In addition to the
absence of warm clothing. He was essentially shot in the
back of the head, but just off to the left
(06:16):
right behind his left ear, if you will, And when
that projectile tracked across the interior of his skull, it
would leave a path that would essentially go from back
to front and from left to right, and so you're
essentially cutting across diagonally across the brain, and you have
to think that it would track across both hemispheres, both
(06:39):
left and the right hemispheres of the brain. And so
this is an unsurvivable injury that that he sustained. However,
you know his wife that that's a completely separate set
to her injuries, because amazingly, and I mean amazingly, she
was discovered when they were both discovered, but particularly her,
(07:01):
when she was discovered, she still had agonal respirations. That
means that she still had a heartbeat, she was taking
up oxygen now limited. I can only imagine they're probably
very shallow respirations. But they did transport her from the
scene and take her into the hospital, and probably what
was mentioned earlier about the temp sometimes sometimes there's a
(07:23):
level of preservation that goes on the colder it is,
and maybe for that moment time she lived simply because
it was a bit cooler outside than normal. I have
two questions, shop. You said Dr Potter still had agonal respirations,
So was that truly given that she was shot in
the head. Wasn't she still breathing or is that more
(07:46):
of an autonomic response where the body is continuing its
normal functions. That's an excellent question, and you know, you
can really only get into that once you get actually
into the autopsy to determine the extent of the damage.
My suspicion is that in Robin's case, the trauma was
(08:07):
so extensive and he was just in an unrecoverable flat
span at that point, you know, and it was probably
relatively instantaneous, I would imagine, for him, but for her. Interestingly,
he was shot on the left side, and if I
remember correctly, her gunshot wound was more on the right
side of her head, and I don't know that the
(08:29):
trajectory was the same. And you know, people would say, well,
what do you mean by that, Well, depended upon the
direction of the travel of the bullet itself. You have
to begin at autopsy, and particularly you have to begin
to try to appreciate what vital areas of the brain.
Now that there are certain traumas that your brain you know,
can sustain and they are completely survivable. And there's any
(08:53):
number of stories you know that are out there in literature.
I think probably famously is this kind of anecdotal story
about how the idea of a lobotomy came about. And
you know this, this fellow back in the eighteen mid
eighteen hundreds was standing in adjacent to a mining area
in a big metal bar was sent skyward as a
(09:15):
result of an explosion and when it came down, it
actually pierced the frontal area of his brain and they
had to extract this thing, but it only involved his
frontal lobes and after that he became very docile. Well
that's a traumatic brain injury back then, and he survived that.
You can survive a brain injury, but a lot of
it is going to be depended upon what areas of
(09:38):
the brain are penetrated. That's just exactly what I was
going to ask you. It's like, once again like you're
reading my mind, because I was going to ask does
it make a difference because you said he was shot
behind his ear, So does it make a difference where
you're shot depending up on your survivability? Oh? Yeah, most definitely.
(10:00):
Love to you know, give this kind of tactile demonstration
to folks in class. I tell my students to take
their index finger essentially and find the you know, find
the big Knight on the back of their skull and
run inferior to that big knot, you know, the anatomus
called the occipital protuberance. You go below that and you
start to get into that area that does control the
(10:23):
autonomic nervous system down towards the brain stem. And when
that area is traumatized, you know, you can almost bet
your bottom dollar that you're gonna shut down everything from
heart function to lung function and all those sorts of things,
getting into that kind of primal brain area that controls
those things that we don't normally think about having, you know,
you think about having to breathe. You don't think about
(10:44):
your heart beating, you know. And then you have higher
functions that are involved in either the lobes kind of
higher up and forward and that sort of things. And
sometimes depended upon what kind of treatment you get, those
events are survivable. And it would appear or that the
doctor survived for some time out there now precisely when
(11:05):
it's you know, I can't give you an exact time,
but she lived long enough that they did what's called
running a code, that ran a code on her from
the scene where she was extricated from uh there in
the nature area to the local hospital, and of course
it was awful, not because she died in the emergency.
(11:44):
You begin to think about your you know, you want
this place a piece that you can go to and
and probably walked around, uh, the entire time you've been
living in a location, it's probably a place that you
have fond memories of. I can't imagine that either one
of these two victims could, in their wildest, wildest dreams
ever imagined that their lives were essentially going to end
(12:06):
there in that beautiful nature preserve. Well, that sets me
up for a great question. You said their lives are
going to end there. We suppose that they were forced
from their home at gunpoint because they were shot. How
do we know that they were killed on the pathway.
When the investigators were processing the scene, one of the
(12:30):
things that kind of really stood out to them, other
than the fact that you've got people that are very
poorly clothed for this time of the year, one of
the things that really stood out to them was what
appeared to be the underlying volume of blood that had
pooled beneath the bodies. First, you know, Robin remained there
(12:55):
and he's kind of the benchmark because his body was
not removed from that location. Out with Beth Potter, she
was removed, so anything that had any blood that had
issued for them from her body was just essentially there
as a pool that was without her body to be
observed in context with it. But when they began to
(13:16):
look at Robin's body, they began to appreciate the blood
spatter patterns that were on him and adjacent to the
area around his body, in addition to the blood that
had pulled. And I don't know that folks really think
(13:36):
about this very often, but just in your life, just
think about any time you've sustained some kind of open
head injury, and it can not just be your scalp,
but even your nose. If you if you catch a
bloody nose or maybe perhaps have sustained some kind of
blunt force trauma to the scalp where you've you know,
you've nicked your scalp in some way, you bleed profusely.
(14:00):
And one of the reasons is is that your head
is arguably one of the most vascular areas of your body.
So when trauma is sustained there, you're going to have
a huge volume, huge volume of blood that will issue
forth from any kind of injury, and sometimes when you
see those the amount of blood comes out, you automatically
think that it's a very nasty injury, and that's not
(14:22):
always the case. It's just that there's so much blood
that's constantly circulating through that area that the slightest little
nick can turn into something major as far as a
you know, an issue of blood. But in this case,
what they surmised was this they knew because they were
not bearing witness to any kind of drag marks, they
(14:43):
didn't see any kind of blood staining that had criss
crossed over that pathway leading up to where their bodies
were found, that everything relative to blood evidence was contained
in that specific area. And when you take that, you
look at that, you think of that snapshot in your mind,
you have to come to the conclusion, well, they were
(15:04):
traumatized specifically in that location, that it wasn't something that
perhaps happened in their home, that it happened up the
path some distance or in the parking lot to get
access to the nature area, that it had actually happened there.
Because it's not just the pooling of blood. We think
about these dynamic patterns and when you think about gunshot wounds.
(15:29):
We get into this area of velocity, you know, the
velocity that that round comes out at the end of
that muzzle, and it generates a high velocity pattern when
it comes out, and that means that the tiniest of
droplets that can essentially be created are created because of
the high velocity of the round that you're struck with,
(15:51):
and then concurrently, the blood that comes out of that
the droplets are tinier. Say, for instance, if someone we're
struck with a blunt object like a baseball, bat or
hammer or whatever the case might be, you might think
that you're hitting them hard. But you cannot strike an
individual and generate the same velocity with a bad or
(16:11):
a hammer or you know whatever, a lead pipe as
you can when that lead core projectile strikes that skull
and this explosion occurs, and these tiny, tiny little troplets
of blood issue forth from there. Given the cooler temperatures,
as you pointed out it was early morning March Wisconsin,
(16:33):
would the cooler temperatures affect how much blood pulled out
of the body, or the texture and the thickness of
the blood as it pulled, and the shape and the
way that it would flow out of the body. Yeah,
I suppose that it could. Now in the short term. Obviously,
when you're thinking about the immediate event, that immediate traumatic event,
(16:57):
it's the blood is going to issue forth at the
same rate as it would in any other circumstances, and
you know the first few minutes, okay, particularly at the
initial impact. But I suppose, I suppose that it's within
the realm of possibility that things would begin to slow down.
And you have to keep in mind that though it
is a liquid, it is the component liquid. It's a
(17:20):
liquid that's composed of many parts. And you know, everybody's
handled their own blood at some point in time, and
you know that that there is attackinus to it. That
it doesn't feel like water, you know. And again, you know,
our ancestors had it right, you know when they said
blood is thicker than water, and there's there's truth in that,
and that thickness is actually something that you refer to
as a viscosity. You hear this many times in association
(17:43):
with motor oil. You know, they talk about the viscosity
of oil and that goes to the thickness of the substance.
And so, yeah, blood has got a viscosity that's certainly
different than say, for instance, of water. But you know,
you begin to think about it, does it have a
consistency that say, comparatable to maybe a syrup, like a
clear corn syrup. Yeah. Perhaps a matter of fact, you know,
(18:06):
there's several recipes out there for making fake blood where
they're using a corn syrup in order as an initiator,
in order to create those patterns you know that we
work with in the lab and teach students with that
sort of thing. Cool weather could slow it down to
a certain degree. And it's certainly I think at least
combined with the location of the gunshot relative to Doc
Potter's injuries and maybe a relative to the ambient environmental temperature,
(18:31):
that contributed to the fact that she survived certainly survived
longer than Robin. Robin probably died pretty much instantaneously. Also
at the scene there were shell casings found. What did
that tell us? Yeah, I was really surprised when I
found out what type of ammunition was used, you know,
And this kind of came out in the news following
(18:52):
the investigation of the scene and the police work in
this case. There had been some thought given some social
media history that was out there that perhaps a clock
firearm was used in this case. And what was what
came into focus here was that the ammunition that was
(19:14):
found out there is not something that's quite typical. You know,
you think about things like nine millimeter, forty caliber, forty
five caliber, even maybe for some people ten millimeter. They
actually found sig sour three fifty seven rounds spent casings
out there. And you may have heard of a three
fifty seven before, you know, for those that they're listening,
(19:36):
A three fifty seven traditionally has always been associated with
the revolver, very powerful revolver that was popular with police officers.
Certainly back in the seventies and into the eighties when
police were still carrying revolvers, three seven was very common.
But that's a bit of ammo that's used for revolvers. However,
in this case, they recovered SIG three fifty seven munition
(20:00):
that is made for a semi auto. And I'm not
saying that it's it's exotic, Okay, This is not something
that somebody's cooked up in their basement or something that
you know, you had to order and you know, we
take forever and ever to get in and you can
buy it through retailers. It's just that it's it's not
your standard fare. You know, when you begin to think
about what somebody's weapon and ammo choice might be. So
(20:22):
what does that mean for the investigators? Well, you know,
for them, this begins to really narrow down the field
because you know, you begin to think about, well, how
many nine millimeter pistols you know are out there? How
many forty caliber pistols are out there? Well, there's there's
a lot. I mean they're everywhere, you know, they're all
over the place. Our military has carried nine millimeter side
(20:45):
arms forever and ever so of our police officers. So
it's it's not an uncommon round for an investigator. When
you get a piece of evidence like a three fifty
seven sick, well, that narrows the focus now and you
can again to kind of look at things like, well,
who may have purchased three seven a weapon that's chambered
(21:06):
for three seven, and who may have purchased ammunition that
would marry up with that particular weapon, And suddenly your
choices become very slim at that point. And that's from
an investigative standpoint. That's a home run three or four
shell casings were found by police nearby, and the individuals
(21:30):
the runners who discovered the body talk about there being
a large amount of blood covering Potter's pajamas, that her
breath was faint and her pulse was fragile, and as
the person who found them stepped away to be able
to call nine one one to get help, Potter raised
(21:50):
her arm. So what's the possibility would she have been
in and out of consciousness all night long? Or do
we think that she probably late there figuring out how
are we going to get help? Wow? What a horrible
thought that is. You know that that you would consider
that that this poor woman who has been gunned down
(22:13):
is immobile, She's incapable of moving. I don't even know
that she would have had the ability to even understand
at that point that her husband was lying there not
too far away from her deceased. You know, you start
to think about higher brain function at that time, what's
the level of awareness that sort of thing is. Obviously
she had enough brain activity so that she, as I
(22:34):
said earlier, you know, she had these kind of agonal respirations,
shallow breathing that's sort of thing, faint heartbeat, and you
know her respirations, and that means that there's a lot
of effort probably being put in relative to her body
in order to uptake oxygen. It's really difficult to say
if if she had that kind of awareness at that level,
(22:58):
you know, being able to think these things through. One
of the things that you look for, had a scene
relative to the disease. You know, we talked about some
of the blood evidence, and I think that one of
the other things that comes along. It's a horrible thing
to think about it, but it is something that we consider.
Is there evidence that of their own volition, perhaps that
the victim had moved about in the throes of death
(23:23):
if you will, where they're kind of thrashing about. Sometimes
you'll see this where their hands will scrape dirt or
their arms will scrape back and forth. Famously, you know,
people will claw the earth when they're in excruciating pain
or they're trying to become mobile again. If you will,
you'll get dirt beneath the fingernails. And it's not always
associated with a struggle. It's like a one on one
(23:44):
person to person struggle. Sometimes it's associated with just this
will to want to live, and some of those findings
can be quite horrific. I've been on scenes before where
individuals have kind of clawed at the walls while they're
covered in blood after they've been attacked, and has had
nothing to do with the attack itself. In the throes
(24:04):
of the attack when they were say they're knives or shot,
It had to do with them just trying to survive,
and that would be something that the investigators would have
to surmise. Now, obviously, in in Robin's case, it appears
that he died rather suddenly. You know that he died there,
(24:24):
But it would be very interesting to go back and
look at those areas where as the doctor lay and
if you have these kind of scrubbed out areas where
her arms had moved back and forth, legs maybe thrashing
about and this with a lot of disruption of that
kind of the earth beneath her, and that that would
(24:45):
take time for that to occur. Was there evidence of that?
And again, you know, you say, well, what does that
mean for us as investigators? That does that bear any significance? Yeah, yeah,
of course it does, because when you take a case
like this to trial, it shows how brutal this event
was and how cold hearted it was that you would
(25:05):
not only take this poor woman out there in her
pajamas in the middle of a cold, cold night and
then desperately injure her like this and leave her there
to suffer all night long. Again, that goes to a
very callousness I think on the part of Tray, Dr
(25:42):
Beth Potter and Robin Carey, who would want to end
their lives? I don't understand that, And I think that
was a big question because both of these people you're
talking about giving back to a community, to this place
that they lived in. These two were famous locally for
(26:03):
helping and having big hearts, and I think that sometimes
the people that are the kindest attract some of the
must wicked people out there. The search turned to a suspect.
Police began to do the recond order as they normally do,
checking close to the family first. They began to check
(26:25):
video in and around the home. They began to check
cell phone records. So as the search began, Joe, what
did we see happening? Most homicides, when they occur, they
don't they don't occur in some kind of vacuum. You know,
everybody's afraid of strangers. Stranger on stranger crime they talked about,
(26:46):
and it does happen, Don't get me wrong, it happens
every day. But the lines fare of these cases for
investigators are going to come back to that small, tiny
circle that you've created, and I think probably for the police,
you know, when they began to look into this, they
(27:06):
want to know who occupies the same space with the
two victims. And number one at the top of the
list was going to be their daughter, who went by
the name Miriam. That's her given name, but they called her.
Everybody called her Mimi. And she's rather young, she's teen,
and she was living in their home along with their boyfriend.
(27:32):
And this young man had been taken in kindly by
her parents, allowed to stay there. And this young man,
who went by the name Cary Sandford, was classmates with
their daughter. But we have to put this in context,
all right. When this case Kurt, which was in we
(27:54):
were creeping as a nation up into you know, those
we were passing through that very scary time in the
country where people were social distancing, people were being told
to stay apart. Where you didn't know anything about this virus,
this coronavirus. You had no idea how it was going
(28:14):
to impact anybody. And Dr Potter herself had health issues.
Now keep in mind, she's a health care provider, so
she's gonna be hyper sensitive to this. She was seeing
people in her clinic that she was treating, and I'm
sure that many people were coming in there were, you know,
presenting with COVID symptomology. And she's on medication that personally
(28:36):
put her at risk for not just contracting the virus,
but if she did contract it a weakened immune system,
it could really cause her to go downhill fast. And
so when you're living in close quarters to somebody, you
have a perceived danger of what could be going on
around you. And so with her, her and her husband
were practicing social distancing within their home. I think they
(28:57):
were probably staying away from people as much as they could.
But her daughter and her boyfriend, who again had been
allowed to live in their home, refused to comply. They
absolutely refused to comply with the rules of the house.
And there was a lot of tension in this home.
(29:19):
There was angry fights over it, refusal to comply, and
you know, Dr Potter was no fool, you know, she
knew what kind of risk existed out there. If you're
going outside the home, you could bring something back in
and then all of a sudden, you know, she's looking
at being deathly ill, and perhaps her husband as well,
and I guess the rest of their family could be too,
(29:42):
But these two would not comply. But going back to
this idea of how kind hearted they were, they actually
arranged to have their daughter and her boyfriend live in
an Airbnb for which they were going to pay for.
They were just kind to fault in essence. That may
(30:06):
have been part of the problem. Besides the physical evidence
that was found at the scene. One of the things
that we talked about a lot is the fact that
people who tend to be criminal or take part in
criminal behavior cannot keep their mouth shut. Sanford began talking
(30:27):
with friends. Sanford is quoted as saying, once he found
out that one of the victims was at the hospital
and still alive, he reportedly said, I shot them. I know,
I know, I shot them. So how much does here
say play and how much weight does it have in
(30:48):
a court of law? Well, first off, let's look at
it from an investigative standpoint. You know, being now on
the street as an investigator, that ain't a court all right,
because you're always looking for leads and so and leads
that you pick up on. Would you know those beautiful
oaken walls that we see, Uh, you know it's played
on television and courtrooms. You know that idea of hearsay
(31:09):
is real and you have to play by those rules.
But on the street, you look for leads, and you know,
as an investigator, when you're part of that community and
you've got two of the most upstanding citizens around that
are found both shot in the head and left like
animals dead, are four dead essentially out in the wilds
(31:31):
during this cold early spring, You've got a lot of
scared people on your ends. And so there's an urgency
to this to try to get this solved because you're
thinking about, you know, what in the world is going
on here? Why would somebody just target people? And then
so when you begin to hear these conversations that are
popping up, because you know, you have to keep in
mind that it's not just about the investigators going to
(31:54):
one individual in questioning them and then they're calling it
done that it's not the way it happens. Remember how
I talked about that kind of circle, that intimate circle
that people have. Everybody that the police can track down
within that intimate circle are going to be asked questions.
And if somebody has loose lips that has direct knowledge
(32:15):
that a crime has been committed, I can guarantee you,
even if it comes from a second or third party,
those individuals are going to be pressed. They're going to
be pressed hard by investigators, you know. And of course
they can invoke their Fifth Amendment rights if they so
choose to. And interestingly enough, now that I've mentioned Fifth
(32:35):
Amendment rights, their daughter, their own very daughter, their precious Mimi,
during the course of this actually invoked her Fifth Amendment rights.
And so anytime you hear that when you're conducting an investigation,
it's going to make you might not compress that individual
any further because they have said, look, I don't want
to say anything else without the presence of an attorney. Okay,
(32:58):
that's fine. You know, you allow them to get their attorney,
and they can talk to their attorney until they're blew
in the face and all that sort of thing. You're
not going to talk to them directly any longer. But
at that point in time, you now are armed with
the information that for some reason, this person feels very
uncomfortable talking about these homicides, the death of her parents.
You start pressing on the periphery, and when you do that,
(33:18):
other information pops up. That relationship that Cary Sandford had
with Mimi. One of the comments that repeatedly has been
said by people who knew Cary Sanford classmates is that
he was excited and talked about bands of money. That
reportedly Beth Potter and Robin carry had classmates told investigators
(33:45):
that a discussion was overheard between the victim's daughter and
Sandford in a class that her parents had quote bands
of money and that they were rich. The root of
all evil here, you know, you begin to think about
that and the fact that I think that one of
the things that resonated with me was that witnesses had
(34:06):
actually witnessed this young man become excited, you know, and
and some of the descriptions I've read it, it almost
seems like he was vibrating, you know, with joy over
the fact that his girlfriend, and of course it their daughter,
had spoke to him about their wealth and she described
(34:27):
their wealth in terms of bands of cash. And I
can only imagine that what she was referring to or
stacks of cash maybe that they had on hand that
were wrapped in paper wrappers, you know, much like you
get denominational rappers that you get from from the bank,
and they had those on hand. Now, there's certainly no
evidence I don't think at least that has really come
(34:50):
out that that this was taken. And we do know
that they went back to the scene after this had occurred,
you know, when they were removed from their home um
And it's chilling when you begin to think about it
that this may have been of motivation. And I think
the greater part of this is that you've got a
young man who, according to everyone around, was involved in
(35:13):
all this, you know, kind of civic service around, involved
in various groups and organizing basketball games for charity. He
had his picture made with the city's mayor, and you know,
all of this stuff that had kind of come to
the surface about him. But then you begin to see
(35:34):
kind of the evil that dwelled him. There are screenshots
from social media accounts with him holding what appears to
be a semi automatic handgun and pointing it directly at
a camera and him looking over the rear sights of
the thing and kind of gazing into the cameras you stare,
you know, if you're the viewer of this thing, you're
staring right now the muzzle of the weapon. So you
(35:57):
get an idea that there's something deeper than what was
being presented, you know, to the public, and that he
had fooled. He had fooled this poor couple that had
literally taken him in, had taken him in under their wing,
had given him shelter, had given him food, place to live,
allowed him to live with their daughter in their own
(36:19):
area of the home, and then when Tom's got tough,
actually provided a location that they could go to an
airbnb that they were going to set them up with,
and then allow them to use their own vehicle to
drive about in for a time. Again, it just absolutely
breaks the heart. This is such a senseless, senseless killing.
Cory Sandford was convicted in the kidnapping and killing of
(36:42):
Dr Beth Potter and her husband, Robin Cary. He was
sentenced to mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this his body bags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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