April 2, 2025 • 46 mins
Brandon Braxton played football for Duke University, is twice an Academic All-American, but after his playing career is over, he finds himself back where he went to High School, hanging out with a friend, Whitney Hurd. Hurd is a realtor and enjoys catching up with her old friend, at first, but when he starts hanging around her house and passing out drunk in her driveway, she calls police. When Whitney Hurd is reported missing, one of the only clues is her car. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack look behind the front door of a high school friendship that turned deadly. Whitney Hurd actually helps provide a key clue as to what happened to her and who did it. Joseph Scott Morgan explains fingerprints and how they are everywhere, and in this case, put the suspect in the front seat of the victim's vehicle, a place Whitney Hurd never allowed anyone.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.00 Introduction
01:21.76 Fingerprints found everywhere
04:52.11 Brandon Braxton, Academic All-American at Duke
10:13.35 Whitney Hurd is found by a Private Detective
15:27.08 Whitney Hurd, 32, realtor, well-off, reported missing
20:02.86 Describing friction ridges on finger prints
25:03.46 Playing football at Duke, academic all-American, good start in life
30:35.38 Whitney Hurd found INSIDE HER HOME
35:18.44 Face covering of murder victim, sign of remorse
39:51.96 Whitney did not let anyone drive her car
44:20.92 Braxton tells police he has never been in Whitney's car
46:06.88 Conclusion
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body dias but Joseph's gotten more and don't touch that
or you'll leave your greasy fingerprints behind. That's something that
you hear regularly, but it's something that people experience daily.
All you got to do, if you have a smartphone
(00:22):
is simply look at the glass. You know, the cover
of your smartphone. It's a non poor surface, and if
you look at it at the side, okay, or from
the side and kind of have it obliquely lit, you'll
(00:42):
be able to see your prints all over the phone.
And you know, that's kind of a saying, isn't it.
In life your prints were all over this. It doesn't
necessarily mean criminal activity. It implies that you've been intimately
involved in something, and sometimes that's a good thing, particularly
(01:04):
if you're an individual. It's a detailed person and you're
a planner. Unlike me, I'm more of a big idea
kind of guy, which is kind of weird in forensics,
by the way. But today we're going to talk about
something involving a case of a lady who was very successful.
(01:28):
She lived up in North Carolina and she was a
realtor and she was kind. But kindness is not going
to be in this narrative because she died in a
most brutal way. And guess what, the perpetrator's fingerprints.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
We're all over it.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybacks, Dave. You
know when you have little kids and you've got them
in their car seat, you know, and they go through
the various stages with the car seats. Obviously the parents
(02:17):
and grandparents out there will know precisely what we're talking
about here. All you have to do is look at
the window that they're seated against, and they'll be smudges
and smears and everything on the inside. And can I
just say something real quick? I miss those smudges and smears,
(02:39):
I really do. You know. I've got my grandkids now,
but you know, I think back to my kids, you know,
touching things and we would get on to them about it.
I miss that. I miss seeing now now I'm riding
around in a pristine vehicle.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
The smudges like they're claim might always had Cheetos or
something on them. There was never just a pristine anger
nail of a child. Hey, Joe, on this particular story,
this is one of those things that you played football
in high school, did you play in college.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
No, I broke my neck. Well, yeah, and I lost
several I don't know. I had four offers I think
back then they were all Service Academy or VAMA, the Citadel,
So I was going to be in the military. But yeah,
that's yeah. Sorry, I didn't want to go down that
road with you. But yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Just the reason I say it is because David Braxton,
he was a football player, and I remember when he
played at wake Forest. David Braxton played at wake Forest
in the late eighties and then ended up playing for
the Vikings and and the Bengals in the NFL career
in the NFL, And the reason he caught my attention
(03:51):
is because the only other real wake Forest graduate that
I remember making a name in the NFL was Brian
Piccolow with the Parrish I forgot all.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
I forgot that he was from wake Forest.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Right, So anyway, that was good kind of caught my attention.
So when we started with this story and I went
by David Braxton, sounds familiar. So I get a little
look at him, like, oh, there he is, sure enough,
it was that's his that is his dad. We're talking
about David Braxton's son here in this particular story. And
he was also, by the way, Wake Forest one of
those really strong academic schools. Oh yeah, academically, you've got
(04:25):
to be a you got to be a mental giant
to go to a wake Forest or a Duke. And
so when David Braxton goes to wake Forest, his son
goes to Duke, and Brandon Braxton branded David Braxton plays
at Duke for a couple of years. Is uh, he's
actually one of these all he's an All American academically. Okay,
(04:48):
he was a good football player. He's a wide receiver,
but he was an academic All American two different years.
That's pretty strong. When you're playing at a D one college.
You know, you've got to.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Have that college is Duke. Yeah, it's it's hey, you
know what else? He was very versatile too, I think yeah,
the year before he started playing as a receiver, he
had like a really high number of tackles the prior year,
which means that he was playing defense as well. So
(05:18):
he's kind of multi fasted.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
And you know, it's always tough when you're the kid
of a ballplayer, you know that made it in the NFL.
That's a that's a big trail to and he did.
Brandon did a good job in high school and college.
And the problem is, the story today is not about
what Brandon Braxton did on the football field. It's what
(05:40):
Brandon Braxton did with and two a friend from high school. Yeah,
her name is Whitney Heard. And Whitney Heard was reported
missing on July eleventh. Now, when they reported her missing,
that's when you know, family and friends are saying, we
can't get in touch with her, and nobody really realizes
(06:01):
what day they last talked to her. And when they
started thinking about it, Joe, nobody had heard from her
since the fourth of July. So by the time she
was reported missing, it was already a week. Yeah, and
she was found on July fourteenth. And what got my
attention on this was Whitney Hurd was found in her
(06:23):
own condominium, in her own town home by a private investigator.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, that's Isn't that fascinating because that's not something that
we hear, you know, you and I Yeah, you and
I being kids of the sixties, we grew up on Mannix,
Yeah and Barnaby Jones and you know, oh my favorite
was yeah a rock for trial les, you know, and
(06:52):
you see those private investigators in those television shows, and
they're always involved in murder cases, you know, and it's like, yeah,
they do get involved. I've been consulted by them before
as an expert. I've given speeches at state private investigator
meetings and they're always a lot of fun to be around.
But the line share of private investigators are not going
(07:17):
to go out and discover a body. And that's what
really I'm thinking. So the private investigator found the body.
This is not like, you know, the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's
office or Charlotte Police Department up in North Carolina. It's
a private investigator, which was really odd.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And he finds her on July fourteenth. She's reported missing
July eleventh. Now I'm gonna just I'm going to throw
something out there, and yeah, because I thought this was
kind of obvious, but obviously not. If I go missing, Joe,
you don't hear from me, and you report me missing,
would you please come to my house and check it
(07:57):
and if you can't get in, go ahead and break in.
You have my permission to break in and find my boss.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Okay, everybody, here's that. Now I'm having it on the
right now, I have your permission, Okay, all right, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Before you're going to report me missing or report me missing,
but come to my house. At least somebody come to
my house if you're going to report me missing, because
that's where she was found by the private detective. Now,
if you're a loved one and you're reporting somebody missing
and you haven't gone to their house, what are you
(08:26):
doing for looking?
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, I know, I don't understand it. You know what
this reminds me of kind of and we just covered
these cases. I said it, right, It kind of reminds
me of the Casey case with the people, the guys
in the backyard, you know where they had to you know,
you had people other than the police that had to
go there and try to, you know, search them out.
(08:50):
It's not uncommon for and we've used this term before, Dave,
you and I have identifying finders. Finders are some of
them fascinating people you'll ever talk to in any investigations,
and it can be in God, this sounds horribly morbid,
and I'm not. It's not my intention to be disrespectful,
(09:11):
but you get the greatest stories because it's it's people
that randomly find a body and just think about it.
You know how you would react if it were you
and you walk up on a deceased person or you
gain entry. And I got to tell you for you
(09:31):
know we're talking. Let's see you had said, now this
is back in twenty twenty twenty four, it's in July,
the last time she was known to be in the
Land of the Living. I think you had said the fourth.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Right, and so I tracked it back.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
It wasn't you know, because I was trying to figure
out again you have me now looking at the finder,
and I got to thank you for that. I never
did it until you were talking about it a couple
of shows ago and you mentioned the finder, and I
started thinking of how important the finder is to the
story when it's somebody who's not a cop.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You know it really is, because I've got to tell you,
and I think that to a person most investigators, if
you're dealing with the finder, and sometimes the finder is hard,
it's hard to peg down. I hate to keep using
(10:28):
this kind of I don't know, this kind of odd
term for an individual, because you can get you can
get phone calls, or you can get flagged downs what
cops call flag downs where somebody steps into the road
and they're like waving their hand at a cop that's
just on their beat patrol. And then the cop gets
out and they'll say, person's dead in the house, and
(10:51):
the next thing you know, the person that flagged them
down is gone. I mean, they don't hang around. And
it used to be where we had if you were
if you had payphones, you would you would get a
hang up. There would be hang ups on the payphones
where people would call walk up and you know, because
you could punch in nine to one one, you don't
(11:11):
need any money for that, and then they would either
drop the phone or they would hang up, and then
the cops would roll in and you're never going to
know who that person is. And the fact that you
do have them always as an investigator, if I have
a finder, I'm gonna look at them long and hard
(11:33):
because I had The question I have is what is
it in this universe that puts you in the same
location with not just a deceased person, but also a
homicide victim. You know, and listen if you if you're
not suspicious of that, there's good, healthy suspicion. Okay, it's
(11:56):
not wrong to be suspicious of people. I want to
abuse any of you out there that hear this and
think that it's something negative. It's not. It's called it's
actually called discernment, you know. And so you plug that
in there and you want to, you know, take a long,
hard look. But when you're talking about a p I,
(12:17):
a private investigator, Dave, they don't work for free, brother,
they don't work for free.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
And that's why I'm saying, before you hire, you know,
before you do anything. I mean, would you not just
go to the house. I guess That's what I'm a
little bit perturbed with, is that nobody. You know, Look,
I don't know their family history, I don't know anything.
Maybe they didn't live nearby, you know, and call a
(12:45):
fare check. I would get that. I mean, we do
have a lot of welfare checks. But they reported her missing,
and that's different than calling and asking for a welfare check.
Maybe they did and the police said, hey, we can't
even get it. And the police are not going to
barge into your door, you know, they can't do that.
They have probable cause to believe, like if they poke
their head in and they see a body laying on
the ground and they're there to check on that person.
(13:07):
They could go in on that.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
But that does not But that does not apply to
a private investigator. If you're working for the family, now
you can get I think I would imagine, I guess
if the cops really wanted to be, you know, disagreeable,
that's a con word I'll use, they could charge you
with breaking and entering, maybe burglary or certainly trespass. But
(13:31):
if you've got if you've got a family. But she said,
you know, she's a thirties, she's in her mid thirties,
assuming she does in fact live there alone. She doesn't
have someone that is, you know, sharing that space with her.
She's a grown woman. So from a legal standpoint, any
(13:52):
kind of extended family or her immediate family, if it's
a mom or dad or brother, sister, they actually don't
have any kind of legal right, you know, to barge
into their relatives home. Now, if they have a key,
and maybe this person said, you know, come by and
check on the house periodically, you know they can do that.
(14:14):
But when you think about that, they've gone to the
trouble of hiring a private investigator. It speaks volumes and
I'm thinking about what you said about the distance, because
there are sometimes you know, where folks are separated. You know,
my wife talks to her mother every day, and you know,
(14:34):
my mother, my mother in law, doesn't live here in
the state. My mother doesn't live here in the state.
I don't have any relatives other than my son and
my wife that live here in this state. And so
you know, if you but if you talk to them regularly,
then that's going to rouse your suspicions.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
With Whitney Hurt, she was a real estate person and
professionally at thirty two years old, she was well thought of,
She was well off. This is an upscale neighborhood. Okay,
this is not a person who lived on that edge
of society, Joe. She's living mainstream, well off, thirty two,
(15:15):
got her own life, doesn't need anything. I mean, this
is a successful woman, intelligent. I mean, there's a lot
going on here that I still cannot get to the
point of. Okay, if police get a missing person's I
would think that. And I'm not knocking the police or
anybody else. I'm just asking you, Joe, isn't the first
thing they're going to do. We have a family who
(15:35):
has not been able to get in touch with their
loved one. This thirty two year old realtor has been
reported missing. Now maybe and I'm just spitballing here, but
the captain says, Hey, Joe, why aren't you and Dave
in your patrol today. Why don't you guys run on
over to miss Hurd's house and just knock on the door.
Ceef see anything? That just seems like the first start
(15:57):
and that you would call the family eight? Anybody let
us in? Can we go inside? I mean, I don't
know what the rules are here, but I'm just thinking,
if you're going to go to the trouble of reporting
somebody missing, the first thing you would do is check
out their home, home, car.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Those are the two things I'm looking for.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
And by the way, yeah, when they went looking for her, Joe, yeah,
the car was gone.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah. And that's a big piece to this. Let's just
say you have neighbors, all right, that you deal with
day in and day out. You see them regularly. The
one way that you might know that your neighbor is
home is not that you physically see them. It's that
you see their vehicle. And it is that vehicle, a
(16:42):
twenty fourteen white BMW X three a little suv that
winds up being a big piece to this puzzle. My
(17:07):
first my favorite Spider Man that came out was the
one with Toby McGuire. I think it was Sam Raimi
that directed it. I love that. I love that Spider
Man because it just seemed and it it of course
had Willem Dafoe in it, who played one of the
(17:29):
best bad guys ever in The Green Goblin. And I
love the attention that they paid a pay to the
detail in that movie. And one of the things that
really stands out for me is there is that one
scene where Toby McGuire Spider Man, or before he's actually
Spider Man. After his bit, he suddenly realizes that he
(17:52):
can climb a wall, and they do a close up.
It's like a micro shot of his finger pas and
you can see the little I don't know, the little
hairs that pop out of the fingerpad, and all of
a sudden it facilitates them climbing up a wall. You know.
I know that's a cartoon or you know it's a comic,
(18:16):
you know, or whatever. I don't watch those kinds of
movies anymore, but that particular demonstration in that movie says
a lot about fingerprints and how they work, because you know,
and I've mentioned this before in the distant past in
other cases, but just as kind of a quick primer,
(18:37):
fingerprints are not something that you have on the ends
of your fingers. Fingerprints are something that you leave behind.
And that's one of the statements that I make to
my students all the time at jack State when we're
talking about when I'm teaching my intro to Forensics class. So,
what do you have on the tips of your fingers, Well,
(19:00):
you have a finger pad, okay, and you have what
are referred to as friction ridges, and you have fatty
lipid oils that come out of those pads. There's pores
that you can actually see. Do you know that you
can actually see when you lift a fingerprint when you're
(19:21):
looking at what's referred to as the minutia, which they are,
these all these different types of little features that we
look for in a very specific way regarding fingerprints. That
one of the features that we look look at and
the positioning of that feature relative to the rest of
(19:44):
the print are pores. And when you see a poor
that space shows up in a very symmetrical appearance on
the actual lifted print and it's unique, okay, And so
contained on the surface of these friction ridges are all
(20:06):
these bits of minutia. Going back to Spider Man, one
of the things that one of the ways the fingers
function when we're picking things up is that you have
these lines and curves and hills and valleys and all
these things on the tips of your fingers and the
(20:27):
friction ridges. So you can pick things up and you
leave a print behind as a result of touching a surface,
and in this case there were prints in addition to DNA.
You know, we've kind of robbed traditional fingerprinting now and
DNA uses our people in a vernacular common vernacular will
(20:48):
say DNA fingerprints. But the origin of the term fingerprint
goes back hundreds of years, even back to ancient China,
where they would use a fingerprint as an identifier in
a clay mold for currency, exchange for exchange for good.
So you would carry around proof of your fingerprint, and
(21:11):
if you're dealing with somebody regularly, they would have your
fingerprint on file that had been mashed down into soft clay.
And it was one of the ways back then, all
those years ago, you know, probably when my ancestors were
still living in thatched, you know, roof huts or wherever
it was, and you know they had no higher learning
(21:32):
or perception at that point in time. The Chinese were
doing this long in advance of what was going on
in Europe. But here's here's an interesting little factoid. Because
we hear about fingerprints quite a bit as that they
are unique to each and every one of us. Dave,
did you know that there has never been an empirical
scientific study that validates that assertion. So how do they
(21:58):
say that because they've never found to or they that
are alike. However, if you go back and you look
at the Madrid train bombing, they had a guy where
they found a latent print on a plastic bag, and
five independent fingerprint examiners looked at that print and said
(22:20):
it all belonged to this guy who happened to have
recently converted to Islam and was an attorney like in
the Pacific Northwest. They hooked him up and kept him
in jail, and he had not been in Spain where
this train blew up. And as it turned out, it
turned out to be a guy that was a Moroccan
(22:41):
and that Layton print matched that guy's friction ridges in Morocco,
and so they had tied it back to that. So
there's never been like an empirical scientific study, you know,
to say, to validate that scientific statement or that assertion.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Rather, but I pulled off that train.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Thing, Yeah, I know, And you really wonder when, because
when they lifted the latent prints in that case, particularly
off of a plastic you know, just think about it.
If you go to wal Mart or any grocery store
and they bag it up and miss paper bags and
they bag it up in you know, in these plastic bags,
(23:23):
it's kind of a non poor surface by a smooth
surface where you can transfer that oil onto that surface
and they can lift the print from there. But yeah,
and so it's just an assertion that that for years
and years people have held onto. But I think I
truly do dave that that as time goes by and
(23:44):
we're using AI a lot more for scientific purposes, there
might be some things that develop over the years that
are going to point to say, well, maybe fingerprints are
not necessarily fool proof.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Or how about this, Go and watch the Nickless Cage
film from what nineteen ninety nine, two thousand gone in
sixty seconds where the really smart kid he glued on
other fingerprints on their fingers.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I mean, there you go all of a sudden.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, So let me back up for a minute, because
the fingerprints are a huge part of this. But what
we had here was not a lack of communication. It
was David Braxton or Brandon Braxton. Rather Brandon Braxton after
(24:31):
he goes to the Duke and all that, and he
comes back home and he decides, and I'm looking for
any kind of career thing that he did. I really
can't find out much about.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
There's nothing I can find.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah No, And so I'm guessing like many young people
who leave with big dreams of you know, you're playing
for a d one school. Duke is one. You're academically
very strong that you're going to have a pretty good future.
You know, you're laying out you're getting a good head
start on life, as in a if you're a ballplayer
at Duke and you're an academic All American, those are
(25:04):
some big things, okay. And you're coming from an academically
strong family with your dad, and here you go. Now
you don't accomplish anything after you got it, and you
come back home and the first thing you think to
do is to look up a girl that you knew
were not romantically involved with. You were just friends, acquaintances,
You had friendships in high school with a number of
different people that you hung out with. And apparently she
(25:28):
saw him as a platonic friend. We're just friends, that's it.
He saw her as much much more. Because what we
have been able to figure out is that Brandon Braxton,
after reconnecting as a friend, he decided or he began
(25:48):
doing more than she wanted him to do. Meaning yes,
they hung out at first. Yes when they reconnected they
were friends, but.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
That was it.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
She had a brick wall waterfall right there, saying it
ain't going any further than this, and it got to
the point where he started, for want of a better word, stalking.
Now I'm not saying he was doing anything stalker ish,
I just don't know another term. When somebody is hanging
out that you don't want to hang out or is
that a definition of a stalker? Because this guy actually
(26:21):
got drunk, went to her house, tried to get in,
she wouldn't let him in, and he fell asleep in
his car in her driveway or passed out, depending on
how you look at it. He also she called the
police on him when he broke into her home when
she wasn't home, So there are some issues here. They
started off as friends in high school. They rekindle their
friendship not romantic, and he wants more and she doesn't
(26:43):
want it. He won't leave her alone. That's what I'm seeing,
is that. Do you think that's correct?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I think it is correct. And you know, I like
to think, you know, my you know, and I'll defer
to my colleagues and criminology criminal behavior with degrees of stalking,
you know, I think that there are things that go
on and it's snowballs, particularly if somebody has some kind
(27:10):
of mental imbalance or emotional imbalance and their perception, you know.
And I mean we've all been there, you know. We
we perceive things about other people, maybe a relationship that
we long for, and it turns out that this isn't
going to go anywhere. And some people have a hard
time just saying, oh, okay, well it's not going to
(27:31):
go anywhere next, you know. But you know, with someone
like this young woman who's thirty two years old, quite
lovely and very successful. Women have a keen sense of
they have a creep meter, okay, And I think that
(27:53):
that's that's just there's an accuracy to that because I
think that just naturally, you know, they view themselves as
being threatened by somebody that's given off.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
This really.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
You know, weird vibe perhaps, and we've heard that over
and over again. I'm not going to mention any names,
but you know we've heard that over and over again
about I don't know certain cases that may be on
the radar in Idaho right now, and we've heard it
time and time again with people that have in fact
(28:27):
been stalked and they you know, are shot or stabbed
or raped, are just assaulted because they're not giving the
attention to the individual because you know the reality of
that the person that's the object of the desire here,
(28:48):
their reality is, Look, I'm I'm working, I'm just trying
to live my life. Y'ah'll be kind to you, and
by all indications, she's a very kind person. But fortunately
she entered onto the radar of Braxton and what happened
next it is pure horror. I go to teaching, I
(29:26):
can't shut my mouth up, start going on about fingerprints
and whatnot, and you know, here I am. I'm going
to give you a lecture on it, Dave, and I
want to come back to this physical designator, if you will,
that was found at the scene. But we had mentioned
(29:48):
something a few moments ago. There's something that was not
at the scene that played a big role in this,
and that was her car, was it not, Dave? Her
car could not be found at the home.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Her people in her neighborhood knew that she was very
proud of her car. Relation people that knew her knew
that her car was something she was proud of, she
liked and by the way, she didn't let anybody else
drive her car. You know, a lot of us have
a kind of peculiar thing about it. Something it can
be something small. With her, it was her car. No,
you're not driving my car. This is mine.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
You can't drive it.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I've been that way about certain cars I've had just
the way I yeah, and so I understand that. But
this was something people knew, and her phone was also missing.
So they find her at her home and again foggles
my mind that she's last seen July fourth, that's the
time when they tracked it back. July eleventh, they report
(30:45):
her missing. They being the family, and on July fourteenth,
a private investigator finds her where in her own home.
Now she has found where her car is gone. Phone's gone.
And a neighbor actually saw her car being driven down
the road, not by by Whitney. It was being driven
(31:09):
by a man. There was nobody in the passenger seat
that she could see. And so I say, she the neighbor,
so we know that the car has gone, and that
it was driven away by a man, and that, as
a matter of fact, Whitney did not allow anybody to
drive her car.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
So yeah, boy, that would be a huge tell for
people that see her daily, you know how many. Well,
I'll just I'll think about it for myself as well.
But you know, both of us, we kind of live,
you know, we live in neighborhoods and whatnot like so
many other people do. And you're standing out in your
yard and you happen to raise your hand as the
(31:46):
guy that lives on the corner comes home from work
or if they're out and there, you know, out walking
their dog or whatever it is. There's a familiarity that
comes about as a result of living around people. Can
you imagine this guy is a key witness in this
particular case, Dave that notices that her car, who he's
never seen, boils driving. Maybe he has personal knowledge of
(32:10):
her and knows that no one touches this car.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Actually, it's important to note it was a female.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah, I'm sorry. The female that bears witness to this
looks and sees a grown man driving her car and
she's not in it. Well, that's a big tail from
an investigative standpoint. But here's the thing about it. They
did not find the car at the scene, but unfortunately
they found her when the PI entered the home. He
(32:41):
actually discovered her remains. And I'll go ahead and tell you, man,
this is Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. We're right in the
dead of summer. At this point in time, it's going
to be hot, and not just hot, but there's no
(33:02):
air moving. Her body is found wrapped in a blanket.
But I can tell you when this guy walked in
the door, he didn't have to go very far before
he realized there was something in the house that was decomposing.
By this time, you know, we're talking the fourth and
give me that date one more time. She's actually found
on the fourteenth. Yeah, ten days later, she's found, she's
(33:28):
going to be in at least a moderate state of
decomposition by this point time. But here's the thing about it.
Whoever had done what we're about to reveal to her
had wrapped her in a blanket, okay, and left her
there in her home. Now, when they were able to
(33:49):
remove the blanket, which probably would have been super saturated
with not just blood but also what we refer to
as decomposition fluid as well, well, they discovered she had
been stabbed over and over and over and over again.
So back, you know, back to what you and I
(34:11):
have discussed many times, Dave. I think that you know
you can agree at this point that stabbing is so intimate.
It's a very up close and personal kind of event. Uh,
there's generally an effort to destroy the subject. And just think,
if you're being rejected by somebody and you have this
(34:32):
fixation on her, what better to end somebody's life with
than an edged weapon where you're intimately on top of
her driving this knife over and over and over into
her body. But then you have this kind of I
don't know, lucid moment, moment of lucidity, and you realize
(34:55):
that I've just committed a homicide here with a knife
on a woman that the police have been called. They've
been called to this residence before, and there's connectivity between
her and me. What are you going to do? Well,
I'm going to wrap the body in a blanket. Well,
why did you do that? Well, probably there's face covering
(35:17):
involved as well. We know from many, many years of
studying these things that if the face is covered on
a homicide victim, that gives you an indication that the
subject that did the killing was experiencing extreme guilt. There's
a high probability that they knew one another, because contrary
(35:40):
to what people think, the dead do not close their eyes.
Most of the time. When eyes are closed, it's at
the hand of another. You can see eyes that are
kind of slit like, you know when you get there.
And I've had bodies whose eyes are closed, but it
is the exception as opposed to the norm. He's looking
at her, Dave desire to cover her body and brother
(36:04):
did he ever? And he's got to jump on him.
Now you know this, this is this has probably happened
well in advance of when she was reported missing, which
would have been July the eleventh. I believe according to you, right,
so she could have this event could have a curve
back on July the fifth, for all we know. I
was looking for.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, that's what I was looking I was trying to,
you know, build a timeline, because I always try to
build a timeline for myself. That's I'm That's how I think,
and that's why I was kind of I always trying
to make it personal, like if like I did at
the very beginning. But if you're going to report me missing,
please check my house, Okay before you before you get
police involved, just come and see if. Then when you
(36:45):
call and say, hey, I came to his house, he's
not coming to the door in this particular case though,
And maybe this is why they didn't purge the door,
maybe because her car was missing. Her car wasn't in
the driveway, but a quick canvas of the neighborhood Joe
police would have found out that, yeah, her car is missing,
and her neighbor saw the car leaving the neighborhood with
(37:06):
a man driving it by himself. That would be kind
of indicative of a problem. Now, they did find the
car about a week later. Police still have not said
where they found the vehicle. But they did not immediately
find her phone with the vehicle. They did bring in
(37:27):
Brandon Braxton to have a chat early on this investigation.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, they did, and lo and behold Dave. When they
did find her car. One of the things that you
know was obviously done, particularly nowadays, is you're going to
swab the area for DNA, you know, see if you
recover any kind of foreign DNA. And isn't it kind
of an interesting thought here that she doesn't allow anybody
(37:57):
else to drive that car. So let's just say that
you're touching the gear lever, you're touching the steering wheel,
the blinker, the door handle, you're leaving behind little bits
of you. Okay, you can leave behind DNA perhaps touch
(38:21):
DNA or trace DNA as they prefer to be called
in Idaho.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Really when touch DNA, wait a minute, I've heard it
called touch DNA, but now they wanted to be called
trace DNA.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Well, yeah, and that's that's truly the clinical term with
with trace trace DNA. UH is generally what you hear.
It's just interesting now with it. And I can't get
this out of my mind because it keeps going back
and forth with a coburger case, his defense counsel has
asked that they not use touch the term touch DNA
(38:55):
because it implies an intimacy where you're literally touching somebody.
They want they want the court to adjust the language.
So and this has been like a big with a case.
It's been like an English and English class. I was
waiting for her to start talking about Jarn's and subjects
and predicates and everything else. But yeah, they want to
(39:16):
use the term trace DNA. But trace DNA is still
that particular bit of DNA that is left behind in
a case generally comes from skin cells, and it's an
incomplete strand. And so there are certain methodologies that you
have to go through in order to you know, kind
of tie this back. But they did find fingerprints within
(39:37):
the car and lo and behold they actually tie back
to Braxton Dave and he had abandoned the car. I
guess again, we go back to this term of lucidity.
You know, he's driving around in a dead woman's car
who he probably knows she's going to be found. I
don't care how insane you might appear to other people.
(39:58):
He had this this element of self preservation, didn't and
he wanted to put as much distance as he could
between himself and the car. But Dave, we had something
interesting happen in this particular case with with Braxton, and
I don't know that we've we've had it before, but
(40:20):
it involves a message that was sent out from the jailhouse.
Now he was was he or was he not arrested
for something that was unrelated to a homicide? It was
something else that had brought him there.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Well, you know, this has been a weird case to
follow because of how limiting they are in terms of
what they're releasing in information, like not telling us where
the car was found. This only happened last July. We're
not looking at five years ago. We're not looking at
authoram having to help us solve this. We're looking at
(40:53):
a case that is fairly new, and it just took
eight months between her death and then making the arrest
of Branxton. But we know that we don't know where
they found the car. We do know that he was arrested.
Braxton was Brandon Braxton was in the Mecklenburg County jail
(41:14):
on an unrelated charge, meaning unrelated to the homicide. But
we don't know exactly why he was in there. But
I'm guessing. No, I'm not going to guess. I'm not
going to say that they got in for the stolen
car or anything else. Because her car was reported stolen
when her body was found inside her town home. The
car was missing. So she's here, she doesn't let anybody
(41:36):
drive it. It's stolen. And when they recovered the vehicle,
you know, that's where they found the DNA of that's
where they tracked it back with fingerprints and DNA. It
went to Braxton and he was in meckle the Mecklenburg
County jail. Now, he was complaining about a number of
things in the jail, and apparently in this jail they
(41:58):
have a kiosk where you can act success and leave
notes and things, whether it's a complaint about the food
or the showers or whatever, and that's what they had. They,
being the officers at the jail, got a complaint note,
and in that complaint note, they got an admission of
guilt on this murder. Now it wasn't signed, it wasn't
(42:22):
an actual confession with my name on it and my
thumbprint and all that. It was an admission of guilt
apparently with information not known to anybody but the killer.
And when they got this, as they're trying to figure out, well,
who wrote the note, all they did Joe. They went
back and looked at the Let's see, you're in jail.
(42:43):
What are a couple of things we know about jail.
They're watching inmates all the time. There's cameras everywhere, and
if you're going to use a kiosk, you have to
log in, you have to it's time stamped. And if
they match up, if this time stamp note was at
eight fifty four pm and Dave Mac is standing at
the kiosk at eight fifty four pm, and nobody else
(43:05):
is standing at the kiosk at eight fifty four pm,
and the note is timestamped eight fifty four pm, it's
kind of obvious and clear to all that Dave Mac
wrote the note, which is exactly what happened with Brandon Braxton.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Yeah, and he actually stated, Dave, and it's been tied
or are credited to him, that he states on this
note that he killed Whitney Hurt. I don't know, you know,
if you're some criminal mastermind, you know you're not necessarily
going to go around running your mouth about that sort
(43:42):
of thing, but the fact that he did, and he
should know better by that point in time, that he
is being watched. Everything that he does is being watched.
It brings me to the idea, do you think he
wanted to be caught? Caught Dave? Was he unburdening himself
some way?
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Do you think there are a couple of things that
are said Joe in particular, when they were they being investigators,
they brought him in and they were talking because you
got to remember, they have the incident where Whitney heard
called police to report a break in by Braxton, by
Brandon Braxton. They'd had other things involving Braxton at that address,
(44:24):
so he was the guy they went to and interviewed him.
They interviewed him on July twenty fourth. You know, we're
talking what ten days after finding the body. Yeah, and
he was a person of interest. But they in their
interview with him, he said, yes, I've been inside Whitney's home. No,
(44:46):
I have not been in her car. So when he
says I'm making I make notes of this, Okay, he
tells police he has been inside her home, but never
in her car. They find his fingerprints inside Whitney's vehicle,
phone records from the time in question reveal that Braxton
was in the area at the suspected time of the murder,
(45:09):
and they're holding that information back to Again, I pointed
out last time anybody saw her July fourth, she's reported
missing July eleventh. The private eye finds her on July fourteenth,
that's our timetable. And somewhere in there.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, and to you know, kind of pair what we
had said earlier about fingerprints in this particular case, we
don't just physically have prints left behind by friction ridges
on fingers, and now we have a DNA fingerprint. Oh
(45:43):
and by the bye, also a digital fingerprint. Either way
you look at it, the physical evidence and the digital evidence.
And oh, by the way, the note that was written
by Braxton on March third, twenty twenty five, simply said
(46:03):
I killed Whitney heard. There will be more on this case.
We'll find out where the road leads and perhaps, just perhaps,
investigators will reveal more data in this ongoing investigation. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body by
Body dias but Joseph's gotten more and don't touch that
or you'll leave your greasy fingerprints behind. That's something that
you hear regularly, but it's something that people experience daily.
All you got to do, if you have a smartphone
(00:22):
is simply look at the glass. You know, the cover
of your smartphone. It's a non poor surface, and if
you look at it at the side, okay, or from
the side and kind of have it obliquely lit, you'll
(00:42):
be able to see your prints all over the phone.
And you know, that's kind of a saying, isn't it.
In life your prints were all over this. It doesn't
necessarily mean criminal activity. It implies that you've been intimately
involved in something, and sometimes that's a good thing, particularly
(01:04):
if you're an individual. It's a detailed person and you're
a planner. Unlike me, I'm more of a big idea
kind of guy, which is kind of weird in forensics,
by the way. But today we're going to talk about
something involving a case of a lady who was very successful.
(01:28):
She lived up in North Carolina and she was a
realtor and she was kind. But kindness is not going
to be in this narrative because she died in a
most brutal way. And guess what, the perpetrator's fingerprints.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
We're all over it.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybacks, Dave. You
know when you have little kids and you've got them
in their car seat, you know, and they go through
the various stages with the car seats. Obviously the parents
(02:17):
and grandparents out there will know precisely what we're talking
about here. All you have to do is look at
the window that they're seated against, and they'll be smudges
and smears and everything on the inside. And can I
just say something real quick? I miss those smudges and smears,
(02:39):
I really do. You know. I've got my grandkids now,
but you know, I think back to my kids, you know,
touching things and we would get on to them about it.
I miss that. I miss seeing now now I'm riding
around in a pristine vehicle.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
The smudges like they're claim might always had Cheetos or
something on them. There was never just a pristine anger
nail of a child. Hey, Joe, on this particular story,
this is one of those things that you played football
in high school, did you play in college.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
No, I broke my neck. Well, yeah, and I lost
several I don't know. I had four offers I think
back then they were all Service Academy or VAMA, the Citadel,
So I was going to be in the military. But yeah,
that's yeah. Sorry, I didn't want to go down that
road with you. But yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Just the reason I say it is because David Braxton,
he was a football player, and I remember when he
played at wake Forest. David Braxton played at wake Forest
in the late eighties and then ended up playing for
the Vikings and and the Bengals in the NFL career
in the NFL, And the reason he caught my attention
(03:51):
is because the only other real wake Forest graduate that
I remember making a name in the NFL was Brian
Piccolow with the Parrish I forgot all.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
I forgot that he was from wake Forest.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Right, So anyway, that was good kind of caught my attention.
So when we started with this story and I went
by David Braxton, sounds familiar. So I get a little
look at him, like, oh, there he is, sure enough,
it was that's his that is his dad. We're talking
about David Braxton's son here in this particular story. And
he was also, by the way, Wake Forest one of
those really strong academic schools. Oh yeah, academically, you've got
(04:25):
to be a you got to be a mental giant
to go to a wake Forest or a Duke. And
so when David Braxton goes to wake Forest, his son
goes to Duke, and Brandon Braxton branded David Braxton plays
at Duke for a couple of years. Is uh, he's
actually one of these all he's an All American academically. Okay,
(04:48):
he was a good football player. He's a wide receiver,
but he was an academic All American two different years.
That's pretty strong. When you're playing at a D one college.
You know, you've got to.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Have that college is Duke. Yeah, it's it's hey, you
know what else? He was very versatile too, I think yeah,
the year before he started playing as a receiver, he
had like a really high number of tackles the prior year,
which means that he was playing defense as well. So
(05:18):
he's kind of multi fasted.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
And you know, it's always tough when you're the kid
of a ballplayer, you know that made it in the NFL.
That's a that's a big trail to and he did.
Brandon did a good job in high school and college.
And the problem is, the story today is not about
what Brandon Braxton did on the football field. It's what
(05:40):
Brandon Braxton did with and two a friend from high school. Yeah,
her name is Whitney Heard. And Whitney Heard was reported
missing on July eleventh. Now, when they reported her missing,
that's when you know, family and friends are saying, we
can't get in touch with her, and nobody really realizes
(06:01):
what day they last talked to her. And when they
started thinking about it, Joe, nobody had heard from her
since the fourth of July. So by the time she
was reported missing, it was already a week. Yeah, and
she was found on July fourteenth. And what got my
attention on this was Whitney Hurd was found in her
(06:23):
own condominium, in her own town home by a private investigator.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, that's Isn't that fascinating because that's not something that
we hear, you know, you and I Yeah, you and
I being kids of the sixties, we grew up on Mannix,
Yeah and Barnaby Jones and you know, oh my favorite
was yeah a rock for trial les, you know, and
(06:52):
you see those private investigators in those television shows, and
they're always involved in murder cases, you know, and it's like, yeah,
they do get involved. I've been consulted by them before
as an expert. I've given speeches at state private investigator
meetings and they're always a lot of fun to be around.
But the line share of private investigators are not going
(07:17):
to go out and discover a body. And that's what
really I'm thinking. So the private investigator found the body.
This is not like, you know, the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's
office or Charlotte Police Department up in North Carolina. It's
a private investigator, which was really odd.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And he finds her on July fourteenth. She's reported missing
July eleventh. Now I'm gonna just I'm going to throw
something out there, and yeah, because I thought this was
kind of obvious, but obviously not. If I go missing, Joe,
you don't hear from me, and you report me missing,
would you please come to my house and check it
(07:57):
and if you can't get in, go ahead and break in.
You have my permission to break in and find my boss.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Okay, everybody, here's that. Now I'm having it on the
right now, I have your permission, Okay, all right, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Before you're going to report me missing or report me missing,
but come to my house. At least somebody come to
my house if you're going to report me missing, because
that's where she was found by the private detective. Now,
if you're a loved one and you're reporting somebody missing
and you haven't gone to their house, what are you
(08:26):
doing for looking?
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, I know, I don't understand it. You know what
this reminds me of kind of and we just covered
these cases. I said it, right, It kind of reminds
me of the Casey case with the people, the guys
in the backyard, you know where they had to you know,
you had people other than the police that had to
go there and try to, you know, search them out.
(08:50):
It's not uncommon for and we've used this term before, Dave,
you and I have identifying finders. Finders are some of
them fascinating people you'll ever talk to in any investigations,
and it can be in God, this sounds horribly morbid,
and I'm not. It's not my intention to be disrespectful,
(09:11):
but you get the greatest stories because it's it's people
that randomly find a body and just think about it.
You know how you would react if it were you
and you walk up on a deceased person or you
gain entry. And I got to tell you for you
(09:31):
know we're talking. Let's see you had said, now this
is back in twenty twenty twenty four, it's in July,
the last time she was known to be in the
Land of the Living. I think you had said the fourth.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Right, and so I tracked it back.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
It wasn't you know, because I was trying to figure
out again you have me now looking at the finder,
and I got to thank you for that. I never
did it until you were talking about it a couple
of shows ago and you mentioned the finder, and I
started thinking of how important the finder is to the
story when it's somebody who's not a cop.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You know it really is, because I've got to tell you,
and I think that to a person most investigators, if
you're dealing with the finder, and sometimes the finder is hard,
it's hard to peg down. I hate to keep using
(10:28):
this kind of I don't know, this kind of odd
term for an individual, because you can get you can
get phone calls, or you can get flagged downs what
cops call flag downs where somebody steps into the road
and they're like waving their hand at a cop that's
just on their beat patrol. And then the cop gets
out and they'll say, person's dead in the house, and
(10:51):
the next thing you know, the person that flagged them
down is gone. I mean, they don't hang around. And
it used to be where we had if you were
if you had payphones, you would you would get a
hang up. There would be hang ups on the payphones
where people would call walk up and you know, because
you could punch in nine to one one, you don't
(11:11):
need any money for that, and then they would either
drop the phone or they would hang up, and then
the cops would roll in and you're never going to
know who that person is. And the fact that you
do have them always as an investigator, if I have
a finder, I'm gonna look at them long and hard
(11:33):
because I had The question I have is what is
it in this universe that puts you in the same
location with not just a deceased person, but also a
homicide victim. You know, and listen if you if you're
not suspicious of that, there's good, healthy suspicion. Okay, it's
(11:56):
not wrong to be suspicious of people. I want to
abuse any of you out there that hear this and
think that it's something negative. It's not. It's called it's
actually called discernment, you know. And so you plug that
in there and you want to, you know, take a long,
hard look. But when you're talking about a p I,
(12:17):
a private investigator, Dave, they don't work for free, brother,
they don't work for free.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
And that's why I'm saying, before you hire, you know,
before you do anything. I mean, would you not just
go to the house. I guess That's what I'm a
little bit perturbed with, is that nobody. You know, Look,
I don't know their family history, I don't know anything.
Maybe they didn't live nearby, you know, and call a
(12:45):
fare check. I would get that. I mean, we do
have a lot of welfare checks. But they reported her missing,
and that's different than calling and asking for a welfare check.
Maybe they did and the police said, hey, we can't
even get it. And the police are not going to
barge into your door, you know, they can't do that.
They have probable cause to believe, like if they poke
their head in and they see a body laying on
the ground and they're there to check on that person.
(13:07):
They could go in on that.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
But that does not But that does not apply to
a private investigator. If you're working for the family, now
you can get I think I would imagine, I guess
if the cops really wanted to be, you know, disagreeable,
that's a con word I'll use, they could charge you
with breaking and entering, maybe burglary or certainly trespass. But
(13:31):
if you've got if you've got a family. But she said,
you know, she's a thirties, she's in her mid thirties,
assuming she does in fact live there alone. She doesn't
have someone that is, you know, sharing that space with her.
She's a grown woman. So from a legal standpoint, any
(13:52):
kind of extended family or her immediate family, if it's
a mom or dad or brother, sister, they actually don't
have any kind of legal right, you know, to barge
into their relatives home. Now, if they have a key,
and maybe this person said, you know, come by and
check on the house periodically, you know they can do that.
(14:14):
But when you think about that, they've gone to the
trouble of hiring a private investigator. It speaks volumes and
I'm thinking about what you said about the distance, because
there are sometimes you know, where folks are separated. You know,
my wife talks to her mother every day, and you know,
(14:34):
my mother, my mother in law, doesn't live here in
the state. My mother doesn't live here in the state.
I don't have any relatives other than my son and
my wife that live here in this state. And so
you know, if you but if you talk to them regularly,
then that's going to rouse your suspicions.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
With Whitney Hurt, she was a real estate person and
professionally at thirty two years old, she was well thought of,
She was well off. This is an upscale neighborhood. Okay,
this is not a person who lived on that edge
of society, Joe. She's living mainstream, well off, thirty two,
(15:15):
got her own life, doesn't need anything. I mean, this
is a successful woman, intelligent. I mean, there's a lot
going on here that I still cannot get to the
point of. Okay, if police get a missing person's I
would think that. And I'm not knocking the police or
anybody else. I'm just asking you, Joe, isn't the first
thing they're going to do. We have a family who
(15:35):
has not been able to get in touch with their
loved one. This thirty two year old realtor has been
reported missing. Now maybe and I'm just spitballing here, but
the captain says, Hey, Joe, why aren't you and Dave
in your patrol today. Why don't you guys run on
over to miss Hurd's house and just knock on the door.
Ceef see anything? That just seems like the first start
(15:57):
and that you would call the family eight? Anybody let
us in? Can we go inside? I mean, I don't
know what the rules are here, but I'm just thinking,
if you're going to go to the trouble of reporting
somebody missing, the first thing you would do is check
out their home, home, car.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Those are the two things I'm looking for.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
And by the way, yeah, when they went looking for her, Joe, yeah,
the car was gone.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah. And that's a big piece to this. Let's just
say you have neighbors, all right, that you deal with
day in and day out. You see them regularly. The
one way that you might know that your neighbor is
home is not that you physically see them. It's that
you see their vehicle. And it is that vehicle, a
(16:42):
twenty fourteen white BMW X three a little suv that
winds up being a big piece to this puzzle. My
(17:07):
first my favorite Spider Man that came out was the
one with Toby McGuire. I think it was Sam Raimi
that directed it. I love that. I love that Spider
Man because it just seemed and it it of course
had Willem Dafoe in it, who played one of the
(17:29):
best bad guys ever in The Green Goblin. And I
love the attention that they paid a pay to the
detail in that movie. And one of the things that
really stands out for me is there is that one
scene where Toby McGuire Spider Man, or before he's actually
Spider Man. After his bit, he suddenly realizes that he
(17:52):
can climb a wall, and they do a close up.
It's like a micro shot of his finger pas and
you can see the little I don't know, the little
hairs that pop out of the fingerpad, and all of
a sudden it facilitates them climbing up a wall. You know.
I know that's a cartoon or you know it's a comic,
(18:16):
you know, or whatever. I don't watch those kinds of
movies anymore, but that particular demonstration in that movie says
a lot about fingerprints and how they work, because you know,
and I've mentioned this before in the distant past in
other cases, but just as kind of a quick primer,
(18:37):
fingerprints are not something that you have on the ends
of your fingers. Fingerprints are something that you leave behind.
And that's one of the statements that I make to
my students all the time at jack State when we're
talking about when I'm teaching my intro to Forensics class. So,
what do you have on the tips of your fingers, Well,
(19:00):
you have a finger pad, okay, and you have what
are referred to as friction ridges, and you have fatty
lipid oils that come out of those pads. There's pores
that you can actually see. Do you know that you
can actually see when you lift a fingerprint when you're
(19:21):
looking at what's referred to as the minutia, which they are,
these all these different types of little features that we
look for in a very specific way regarding fingerprints. That
one of the features that we look look at and
the positioning of that feature relative to the rest of
(19:44):
the print are pores. And when you see a poor
that space shows up in a very symmetrical appearance on
the actual lifted print and it's unique, okay, And so
contained on the surface of these friction ridges are all
(20:06):
these bits of minutia. Going back to Spider Man, one
of the things that one of the ways the fingers
function when we're picking things up is that you have
these lines and curves and hills and valleys and all
these things on the tips of your fingers and the
(20:27):
friction ridges. So you can pick things up and you
leave a print behind as a result of touching a surface,
and in this case there were prints in addition to DNA.
You know, we've kind of robbed traditional fingerprinting now and
DNA uses our people in a vernacular common vernacular will
(20:48):
say DNA fingerprints. But the origin of the term fingerprint
goes back hundreds of years, even back to ancient China,
where they would use a fingerprint as an identifier in
a clay mold for currency, exchange for exchange for good.
So you would carry around proof of your fingerprint, and
(21:11):
if you're dealing with somebody regularly, they would have your
fingerprint on file that had been mashed down into soft clay.
And it was one of the ways back then, all
those years ago, you know, probably when my ancestors were
still living in thatched, you know, roof huts or wherever
it was, and you know they had no higher learning
(21:32):
or perception at that point in time. The Chinese were
doing this long in advance of what was going on
in Europe. But here's here's an interesting little factoid. Because
we hear about fingerprints quite a bit as that they
are unique to each and every one of us. Dave,
did you know that there has never been an empirical
scientific study that validates that assertion. So how do they
(21:58):
say that because they've never found to or they that
are alike. However, if you go back and you look
at the Madrid train bombing, they had a guy where
they found a latent print on a plastic bag, and
five independent fingerprint examiners looked at that print and said
(22:20):
it all belonged to this guy who happened to have
recently converted to Islam and was an attorney like in
the Pacific Northwest. They hooked him up and kept him
in jail, and he had not been in Spain where
this train blew up. And as it turned out, it
turned out to be a guy that was a Moroccan
(22:41):
and that Layton print matched that guy's friction ridges in Morocco,
and so they had tied it back to that. So
there's never been like an empirical scientific study, you know,
to say, to validate that scientific statement or that assertion.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Rather, but I pulled off that train.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Thing, Yeah, I know, And you really wonder when, because
when they lifted the latent prints in that case, particularly
off of a plastic you know, just think about it.
If you go to wal Mart or any grocery store
and they bag it up and miss paper bags and
they bag it up in you know, in these plastic bags,
(23:23):
it's kind of a non poor surface by a smooth
surface where you can transfer that oil onto that surface
and they can lift the print from there. But yeah,
and so it's just an assertion that that for years
and years people have held onto. But I think I
truly do dave that that as time goes by and
(23:44):
we're using AI a lot more for scientific purposes, there
might be some things that develop over the years that
are going to point to say, well, maybe fingerprints are
not necessarily fool proof.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Or how about this, Go and watch the Nickless Cage
film from what nineteen ninety nine, two thousand gone in
sixty seconds where the really smart kid he glued on
other fingerprints on their fingers.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I mean, there you go all of a sudden.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, So let me back up for a minute, because
the fingerprints are a huge part of this. But what
we had here was not a lack of communication. It
was David Braxton or Brandon Braxton. Rather Brandon Braxton after
(24:31):
he goes to the Duke and all that, and he
comes back home and he decides, and I'm looking for
any kind of career thing that he did. I really
can't find out much about.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
There's nothing I can find.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah No, And so I'm guessing like many young people
who leave with big dreams of you know, you're playing
for a d one school. Duke is one. You're academically
very strong that you're going to have a pretty good future.
You know, you're laying out you're getting a good head
start on life, as in a if you're a ballplayer
at Duke and you're an academic All American, those are
(25:04):
some big things, okay. And you're coming from an academically
strong family with your dad, and here you go. Now
you don't accomplish anything after you got it, and you
come back home and the first thing you think to
do is to look up a girl that you knew
were not romantically involved with. You were just friends, acquaintances,
You had friendships in high school with a number of
different people that you hung out with. And apparently she
(25:28):
saw him as a platonic friend. We're just friends, that's it.
He saw her as much much more. Because what we
have been able to figure out is that Brandon Braxton,
after reconnecting as a friend, he decided or he began
(25:48):
doing more than she wanted him to do. Meaning yes,
they hung out at first. Yes when they reconnected they
were friends, but.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
That was it.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
She had a brick wall waterfall right there, saying it
ain't going any further than this, and it got to
the point where he started, for want of a better word, stalking.
Now I'm not saying he was doing anything stalker ish,
I just don't know another term. When somebody is hanging
out that you don't want to hang out or is
that a definition of a stalker? Because this guy actually
(26:21):
got drunk, went to her house, tried to get in,
she wouldn't let him in, and he fell asleep in
his car in her driveway or passed out, depending on
how you look at it. He also she called the
police on him when he broke into her home when
she wasn't home, So there are some issues here. They
started off as friends in high school. They rekindle their
friendship not romantic, and he wants more and she doesn't
(26:43):
want it. He won't leave her alone. That's what I'm seeing,
is that. Do you think that's correct?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I think it is correct. And you know, I like
to think, you know, my you know, and I'll defer
to my colleagues and criminology criminal behavior with degrees of stalking,
you know, I think that there are things that go
on and it's snowballs, particularly if somebody has some kind
(27:10):
of mental imbalance or emotional imbalance and their perception, you know.
And I mean we've all been there, you know. We
we perceive things about other people, maybe a relationship that
we long for, and it turns out that this isn't
going to go anywhere. And some people have a hard
time just saying, oh, okay, well it's not going to
(27:31):
go anywhere next, you know. But you know, with someone
like this young woman who's thirty two years old, quite
lovely and very successful. Women have a keen sense of
they have a creep meter, okay, And I think that
(27:53):
that's that's just there's an accuracy to that because I
think that just naturally, you know, they view themselves as
being threatened by somebody that's given off.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
This really.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
You know, weird vibe perhaps, and we've heard that over
and over again. I'm not going to mention any names,
but you know we've heard that over and over again
about I don't know certain cases that may be on
the radar in Idaho right now, and we've heard it
time and time again with people that have in fact
(28:27):
been stalked and they you know, are shot or stabbed
or raped, are just assaulted because they're not giving the
attention to the individual because you know the reality of
that the person that's the object of the desire here,
(28:48):
their reality is, Look, I'm I'm working, I'm just trying
to live my life. Y'ah'll be kind to you, and
by all indications, she's a very kind person. But fortunately
she entered onto the radar of Braxton and what happened
next it is pure horror. I go to teaching, I
(29:26):
can't shut my mouth up, start going on about fingerprints
and whatnot, and you know, here I am. I'm going
to give you a lecture on it, Dave, and I
want to come back to this physical designator, if you will,
that was found at the scene. But we had mentioned
(29:48):
something a few moments ago. There's something that was not
at the scene that played a big role in this,
and that was her car, was it not, Dave? Her
car could not be found at the home.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Her people in her neighborhood knew that she was very
proud of her car. Relation people that knew her knew
that her car was something she was proud of, she
liked and by the way, she didn't let anybody else
drive her car. You know, a lot of us have
a kind of peculiar thing about it. Something it can
be something small. With her, it was her car. No,
you're not driving my car. This is mine.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
You can't drive it.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I've been that way about certain cars I've had just
the way I yeah, and so I understand that. But
this was something people knew, and her phone was also missing.
So they find her at her home and again foggles
my mind that she's last seen July fourth, that's the
time when they tracked it back. July eleventh, they report
(30:45):
her missing. They being the family, and on July fourteenth,
a private investigator finds her where in her own home.
Now she has found where her car is gone. Phone's gone.
And a neighbor actually saw her car being driven down
the road, not by by Whitney. It was being driven
(31:09):
by a man. There was nobody in the passenger seat
that she could see. And so I say, she the neighbor,
so we know that the car has gone, and that
it was driven away by a man, and that, as
a matter of fact, Whitney did not allow anybody to
drive her car.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
So yeah, boy, that would be a huge tell for
people that see her daily, you know how many. Well,
I'll just I'll think about it for myself as well.
But you know, both of us, we kind of live,
you know, we live in neighborhoods and whatnot like so
many other people do. And you're standing out in your
yard and you happen to raise your hand as the
(31:46):
guy that lives on the corner comes home from work
or if they're out and there, you know, out walking
their dog or whatever it is. There's a familiarity that
comes about as a result of living around people. Can
you imagine this guy is a key witness in this
particular case, Dave that notices that her car, who he's
never seen, boils driving. Maybe he has personal knowledge of
(32:10):
her and knows that no one touches this car.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Actually, it's important to note it was a female.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah, I'm sorry. The female that bears witness to this
looks and sees a grown man driving her car and
she's not in it. Well, that's a big tail from
an investigative standpoint. But here's the thing about it. They
did not find the car at the scene, but unfortunately
they found her when the PI entered the home. He
(32:41):
actually discovered her remains. And I'll go ahead and tell you, man,
this is Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. We're right in the
dead of summer. At this point in time, it's going
to be hot, and not just hot, but there's no
(33:02):
air moving. Her body is found wrapped in a blanket.
But I can tell you when this guy walked in
the door, he didn't have to go very far before
he realized there was something in the house that was decomposing.
By this time, you know, we're talking the fourth and
give me that date one more time. She's actually found
on the fourteenth. Yeah, ten days later, she's found, she's
(33:28):
going to be in at least a moderate state of
decomposition by this point time. But here's the thing about it.
Whoever had done what we're about to reveal to her
had wrapped her in a blanket, okay, and left her
there in her home. Now, when they were able to
(33:49):
remove the blanket, which probably would have been super saturated
with not just blood but also what we refer to
as decomposition fluid as well, well, they discovered she had
been stabbed over and over and over and over again.
So back, you know, back to what you and I
(34:11):
have discussed many times, Dave. I think that you know
you can agree at this point that stabbing is so intimate.
It's a very up close and personal kind of event. Uh,
there's generally an effort to destroy the subject. And just think,
if you're being rejected by somebody and you have this
(34:32):
fixation on her, what better to end somebody's life with
than an edged weapon where you're intimately on top of
her driving this knife over and over and over into
her body. But then you have this kind of I
don't know, lucid moment, moment of lucidity, and you realize
(34:55):
that I've just committed a homicide here with a knife
on a woman that the police have been called. They've
been called to this residence before, and there's connectivity between
her and me. What are you going to do? Well,
I'm going to wrap the body in a blanket. Well,
why did you do that? Well, probably there's face covering
(35:17):
involved as well. We know from many, many years of
studying these things that if the face is covered on
a homicide victim, that gives you an indication that the
subject that did the killing was experiencing extreme guilt. There's
a high probability that they knew one another, because contrary
(35:40):
to what people think, the dead do not close their eyes.
Most of the time. When eyes are closed, it's at
the hand of another. You can see eyes that are
kind of slit like, you know when you get there.
And I've had bodies whose eyes are closed, but it
is the exception as opposed to the norm. He's looking
at her, Dave desire to cover her body and brother
(36:04):
did he ever? And he's got to jump on him.
Now you know this, this is this has probably happened
well in advance of when she was reported missing, which
would have been July the eleventh. I believe according to you, right,
so she could have this event could have a curve
back on July the fifth, for all we know. I
was looking for.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, that's what I was looking I was trying to,
you know, build a timeline, because I always try to
build a timeline for myself. That's I'm That's how I think,
and that's why I was kind of I always trying
to make it personal, like if like I did at
the very beginning. But if you're going to report me missing,
please check my house, Okay before you before you get
police involved, just come and see if. Then when you
(36:45):
call and say, hey, I came to his house, he's
not coming to the door in this particular case though,
And maybe this is why they didn't purge the door,
maybe because her car was missing. Her car wasn't in
the driveway, but a quick canvas of the neighborhood Joe
police would have found out that, yeah, her car is missing,
and her neighbor saw the car leaving the neighborhood with
(37:06):
a man driving it by himself. That would be kind
of indicative of a problem. Now, they did find the
car about a week later. Police still have not said
where they found the vehicle. But they did not immediately
find her phone with the vehicle. They did bring in
(37:27):
Brandon Braxton to have a chat early on this investigation.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, they did, and lo and behold Dave. When they
did find her car. One of the things that you
know was obviously done, particularly nowadays, is you're going to
swab the area for DNA, you know, see if you
recover any kind of foreign DNA. And isn't it kind
of an interesting thought here that she doesn't allow anybody
(37:57):
else to drive that car. So let's just say that
you're touching the gear lever, you're touching the steering wheel,
the blinker, the door handle, you're leaving behind little bits
of you. Okay, you can leave behind DNA perhaps touch
(38:21):
DNA or trace DNA as they prefer to be called
in Idaho.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Really when touch DNA, wait a minute, I've heard it
called touch DNA, but now they wanted to be called
trace DNA.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Well, yeah, and that's that's truly the clinical term with
with trace trace DNA. UH is generally what you hear.
It's just interesting now with it. And I can't get
this out of my mind because it keeps going back
and forth with a coburger case, his defense counsel has
asked that they not use touch the term touch DNA
(38:55):
because it implies an intimacy where you're literally touching somebody.
They want they want the court to adjust the language.
So and this has been like a big with a case.
It's been like an English and English class. I was
waiting for her to start talking about Jarn's and subjects
and predicates and everything else. But yeah, they want to
(39:16):
use the term trace DNA. But trace DNA is still
that particular bit of DNA that is left behind in
a case generally comes from skin cells, and it's an
incomplete strand. And so there are certain methodologies that you
have to go through in order to you know, kind
of tie this back. But they did find fingerprints within
(39:37):
the car and lo and behold they actually tie back
to Braxton Dave and he had abandoned the car. I
guess again, we go back to this term of lucidity.
You know, he's driving around in a dead woman's car
who he probably knows she's going to be found. I
don't care how insane you might appear to other people.
(39:58):
He had this this element of self preservation, didn't and
he wanted to put as much distance as he could
between himself and the car. But Dave, we had something
interesting happen in this particular case with with Braxton, and
I don't know that we've we've had it before, but
(40:20):
it involves a message that was sent out from the jailhouse.
Now he was was he or was he not arrested
for something that was unrelated to a homicide? It was
something else that had brought him there.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Well, you know, this has been a weird case to
follow because of how limiting they are in terms of
what they're releasing in information, like not telling us where
the car was found. This only happened last July. We're
not looking at five years ago. We're not looking at
authoram having to help us solve this. We're looking at
(40:53):
a case that is fairly new, and it just took
eight months between her death and then making the arrest
of Branxton. But we know that we don't know where
they found the car. We do know that he was arrested.
Braxton was Brandon Braxton was in the Mecklenburg County jail
(41:14):
on an unrelated charge, meaning unrelated to the homicide. But
we don't know exactly why he was in there. But
I'm guessing. No, I'm not going to guess. I'm not
going to say that they got in for the stolen
car or anything else. Because her car was reported stolen
when her body was found inside her town home. The
car was missing. So she's here, she doesn't let anybody
(41:36):
drive it. It's stolen. And when they recovered the vehicle,
you know, that's where they found the DNA of that's
where they tracked it back with fingerprints and DNA. It
went to Braxton and he was in meckle the Mecklenburg
County jail. Now, he was complaining about a number of
things in the jail, and apparently in this jail they
(41:58):
have a kiosk where you can act success and leave
notes and things, whether it's a complaint about the food
or the showers or whatever, and that's what they had. They,
being the officers at the jail, got a complaint note,
and in that complaint note, they got an admission of
guilt on this murder. Now it wasn't signed, it wasn't
(42:22):
an actual confession with my name on it and my
thumbprint and all that. It was an admission of guilt
apparently with information not known to anybody but the killer.
And when they got this, as they're trying to figure out, well,
who wrote the note, all they did Joe. They went
back and looked at the Let's see, you're in jail.
(42:43):
What are a couple of things we know about jail.
They're watching inmates all the time. There's cameras everywhere, and
if you're going to use a kiosk, you have to
log in, you have to it's time stamped. And if
they match up, if this time stamp note was at
eight fifty four pm and Dave Mac is standing at
the kiosk at eight fifty four pm, and nobody else
(43:05):
is standing at the kiosk at eight fifty four pm,
and the note is timestamped eight fifty four pm, it's
kind of obvious and clear to all that Dave Mac
wrote the note, which is exactly what happened with Brandon Braxton.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Yeah, and he actually stated, Dave, and it's been tied
or are credited to him, that he states on this
note that he killed Whitney Hurt. I don't know, you know,
if you're some criminal mastermind, you know you're not necessarily
going to go around running your mouth about that sort
(43:42):
of thing, but the fact that he did, and he
should know better by that point in time, that he
is being watched. Everything that he does is being watched.
It brings me to the idea, do you think he
wanted to be caught? Caught Dave? Was he unburdening himself
some way?
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Do you think there are a couple of things that
are said Joe in particular, when they were they being investigators,
they brought him in and they were talking because you
got to remember, they have the incident where Whitney heard
called police to report a break in by Braxton, by
Brandon Braxton. They'd had other things involving Braxton at that address,
(44:24):
so he was the guy they went to and interviewed him.
They interviewed him on July twenty fourth. You know, we're
talking what ten days after finding the body. Yeah, and
he was a person of interest. But they in their
interview with him, he said, yes, I've been inside Whitney's home. No,
(44:46):
I have not been in her car. So when he
says I'm making I make notes of this, Okay, he
tells police he has been inside her home, but never
in her car. They find his fingerprints inside Whitney's vehicle,
phone records from the time in question reveal that Braxton
was in the area at the suspected time of the murder,
(45:09):
and they're holding that information back to Again, I pointed
out last time anybody saw her July fourth, she's reported
missing July eleventh. The private eye finds her on July fourteenth,
that's our timetable. And somewhere in there.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, and to you know, kind of pair what we
had said earlier about fingerprints in this particular case, we
don't just physically have prints left behind by friction ridges
on fingers, and now we have a DNA fingerprint. Oh
(45:43):
and by the bye, also a digital fingerprint. Either way
you look at it, the physical evidence and the digital evidence.
And oh, by the way, the note that was written
by Braxton on March third, twenty twenty five, simply said
(46:03):
I killed Whitney heard. There will be more on this case.
We'll find out where the road leads and perhaps, just perhaps,
investigators will reveal more data in this ongoing investigation. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body by
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!