May 6, 2025 • 46 mins
Alexa Bartell, 20, is driving her car around 11pm when the driver of a truck coming towards her speeds up to 80 mph and hurls a 9 pound landscape boulder through her front windshield. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the criminal actions of Joseph Koenig, Zachary Kwak, and Nicholas Karol-Chik, that led to the instant death of Alexa Bartell.
Transcript Highlight
00:00.03 Introduction
04:59.70 Driver throws 9 pound rock at passing vehicle
09:30.91 Landscaping stone turned into a projectile
14:18.49 First Responder doesn't know what happened
19:59.48 The guys in the truck had been throwing rocks at other
25:10.65 Weaponizing a bolder
30:09.01 Victim was struck in head
35:28.16 Complex crime scene
40:07.07 This wasn't the first time this happened
45:02.34 People don't feel safe on the road
46:12.08 Conclusion road
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody dimes, but Joseph's gotten more. I hate being on
the highway. I've gotten now at this stage of my life.
I used to be able to ignore. I think while
I was going down the road, I would ignore bad
drivers and these sort of things. I just kind of
(00:22):
equated it to it's just a price you pay for
being on the interstate or driving in a big city somewhere.
But now I don't know if it's what I've done
for a living, or maybe it's my age. Life just
seems so much more precious to me. I guess the
less time you have, you know, you put more value
(00:44):
on it. I don't know, but who actually thinks that
you're going to get in your car, You're going to
go down the road and then suddenly a stone is
(01:04):
hoisted in your direction as you're riding alone, minding your
own business. It enters the car and it ends your life. Today,
own body Bags, we're going to have a discussion about
(01:25):
such case that brought about the death of a young
woman who was just minding her own business and didn't
know the death was waiting just around the corner. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body Bags has your
(01:49):
tolerance worn thin day relative to operation of a motor viwer.
I mean, it's an obviously, it's a it's a necessity
in life. We don't live in some tiny little farm community,
you know, and you know, make our own food and
subsistence farming and that sort of thing. We have to
(02:09):
go out and have contact with folks and drive along thoroughfares.
And it seems like the further I go in life,
the dumber people get on the road, and you just
you never know what you're going to see. I've seen
some of the most bizarre things, you know, as a
(02:30):
death investigator, and we really haven't talked about this at all.
I don't know why, because I'd say I've worked as
I've worked as many motor vehicle accidents in my career
as I have actually firearms related homicides. First off, not
everybody owns a gun. The line share of people do
(02:51):
have cars and car accidents in our country, you know,
they make up the long the line share of violent
related deaths. You know you're going to have any They're
not all homicides. Obviously, You've got a lot of mvas.
That's the term, the acronym that she used for motor
(03:12):
vehicle accidents.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, what we're talking about today goes way beyond a
couple of stupid drivers. This is like one person driving
and another person trying to hurt maime and kill people
by throwing things at night while you're driving down the road.
As a matter of fact, Joseph Kinnig, Zachary Quack, and
(03:35):
Nicholas Carol Chick we're all eighteen at the time. Joe
and they're riding around in a truck with Joseph Kinning
behind the wheel, and they've been driving around. This is
not the first time they've gone out doing this, but
on this particular night, on a beautiful April night in Colorado,
(03:56):
it's around eleven o'clock at night, and they're throwing rocks.
They're moving vehicle at other vehicles coming at them in
the opposite direction, and they were having fun. They were
actually cheering themselves on. Think about it, you're driving down
the road. You know, we get annoyed by people making
(04:16):
stupid decisions, leaving a blinker, on not breaking properly, cutting
in front of us, things like that. In this case,
you're driving down the road and there's somebody coming at
you and they take a rock and throw it at
you as you're driving, because that's what Konig did. He Actually,
(04:38):
it wasn't a pebble, It wasn't a rock the size
of a golf ball or a baseball. Joe. He got
a landscape boulder weighing nine pounds, and as he's driving
down the road towards a car coming at him, he
speeds up to eighty miles an hour and with it.
He's a lefty, he's driving. He uses a shot put
(04:58):
form to launch the nine pound bowlder and it goes
through the front windshield of the car coming at him
and goes right through the driver and out the back window.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I'm okay, let me just break this down. This is like,
this is like the ultimate, the ultimate demonstration of physics.
All right.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
This scared me to death, Joe, Yeah, read.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I know it's terrifying because it could literally happen to anybody.
Isaac Newton would have a field day with this. If
you're if you're thinking about because let's let's look at
this just from a baseline understanding, uh, just from the
dynamics of motion. If you've ever if anyone, if anyone
(05:48):
out there, has ever picked up a stone okay, and
you've stood beside a lake. I don't know about you day.
One of the things I used to love to do
is kids skip stone. You still love it. I even
that even carried over to you. Know, when Noah was little,
he and I would go up in the mountains and
(06:08):
there were a couple of lakes, mountain lakes, and we
would skip stones. He was learning how to throw a
baseball at that time, and we'd skip stones. We just
have the most fun. But you know, when you're skipping
a stone, all of that power is generated by you
and you alone. Okay, all of that energy, rather, let's
(06:29):
say energy is generated by you and you alone as
you propel that stone and it breaks the surface of
that water. Okay, what we're talking about here, So let's
just think about it this way. You're in a moving vehicle.
You're going I don't know, forty miles per hour. You
(06:52):
feed up to fifty a pickup truck, now sixty seventy eighty.
So the rock that you happen to have with you
in the front cab of your vehicle. Now, let's just
(07:13):
picture this just for a second. You got a landscaping
stone that I guess if you're driving the vehicle. This
is the craziest thing I've ever heard. You're driving a vehicle.
It's got to be resting in your lap. Now. I
don't know how many people out there have ever done
any landscaping. You're holding an eight to nine pound object
(07:34):
in your lap already while you're driving down the road.
You suddenly think that it's a good idea to take
this thing and heave it toward an oncoming vehicle. And
here's the piece that's really fascinating. That stone is not
traveling at with the same amount of energy as if
(07:57):
you were standing on the shores of that Placid lake
like I did with my son skipping stones. You're now
that stone along with you, and every item in that
vehicle is now traveling eighty miles per hour. When you
release it into that space, it's meeting another vehicle that
(08:18):
we can only assume that is traveling I don't know,
let's just say it's fifty miles per hour. Those two
energies meet at that moment in time. The same crashes
through the cab of the oncoming vehicle and has still
enough energy Dave that it travels out of the back
(08:41):
of the vehicle that's an incredible amount of force that
you're talking about. That thing is literally the same mass
as a Civil war cannonball. Think about that just for
a second. Only it doesn't have the smooth edges now,
does it. It's rough stone, and anything that it hits
(09:03):
it's going to completely tear up because of those edges,
and going through glass as well, it creates other bits
of shrapnel, any kind of bits of the stone that
come off upon impact. Anything that is within the cabin
of that vehicle, whether it be a piece of metal
(09:27):
off the framework or the glass, is now traveling at
a very high rate of speed, and it's going to
target whatever's lying in its path, and unfortunately, in this case, Dave,
it was this young woman.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
It's shocking beyond anything, Joe that when I read it
several times from different reports, different angles, different court things,
because I was trying to figure out how this could
happen while you're driving, to be able to launch something
like that, you know, I mean, just the mechanics of everything.
Then I find out that these guys had a already
(10:05):
been doing it throughout the course of that evening. This
wasn't the first and only time they did that. There
are three people in the car, and they all three
took turns throwing things at moving vehicles. Okay, Now at trial, Joe,
we got different stories from all of them. I mean
all of them. One of the guys says, I didn't
throw nothing, but they all rolled over on one. Well, no,
(10:27):
two of them rolled over on Koenig, who was driving.
I don't know what actually took place, except that all
three were throwing rocks from a moving vehicle at oncoming traffic.
Who threw the rock that killed a twenty year old
woman named Alexa Bartel? Who did that? Is? It's not germane.
They should all go to jail for the rest of
(10:47):
their lives for this. In my book, just Dave's book, okay,
the Dave Book of Justice, all right, which means nothing.
But I was shocked at a rock boulder nine pounds
coming through a windshield. Knowing that we do have glass
that has safety in it and things like that, so
I would think it would slow down some, but that
this was traveling at such velocity that it went right through.
(11:08):
It killed her instantly. It killed her instantly. Oh and
by the way, Joe, just to add to this, because well,
her car went off the road. She was killed instantly,
her car goes off the road, and these three people
are watching. They turn around and come back and go
buy her car a couple of times and take pictures
(11:32):
as a memento for what they had done. The thing
that I wanted to ask you, Joe, because it actually
comes up in this story, and it was shocking to me.
I don't want to know your worst take. I know
that's one of the things people ask you. This story
became this scene that the EMS crew showed up on.
(11:57):
It became the last acting I've seen one of the
workers could ever go to again. It stayed with her
to the point because she didn't know what happened, and
she talked about how when she got to the scene
because the car. Think about it, it's eleven o'clock at night, yea,
a rock goes through the car and the car goes
(12:18):
off the road into a field. Nobody sees it except
these idiots who'd turn around to take pictures. But it
was a friend of hers that she was on the
phone with. Oh I should have added that she was
on the phone talking to her girlfriend when the rock
came through and killed her. So the phone ended. The
phone stopped right then her friend's like, where'd she go,
(12:38):
and actually tracks her phone to that location. That's how
they found her because there weren't any police or anything
on the scene. You got again, it's at night, a
car goes off into a field, nobody notices, and so
when they finally called her help, EMS shows up. They
don't know if it's been a heart attack, they don't
know if the person had a medical thing. They don't
know what has happened until they get there. And still
(13:02):
think about it. This woman's body is so destroyed. The
rock went through her, killed her and went out the
back window of her car. Imagine the site, Joe. I'm
trying to figure out what happened. But it was so
horrific that a person whose career has been spent out
(13:23):
in the field doing this couldn't could not let it go.
I know you understand that.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, I do. And you see things like this that
I'm reflecting back to many years ago with a case
that wasn't exactly like this, but it involved scientifically, you know,
it involved an object flying through the air and striking
a car. And I'm reminded of a mother and a
(13:50):
daughter that were on the way to go to go
do Christmas shopping and tandem wheel and tire still intact
on the wheel came off of the back of an
eighteen wheeler going down I ten and jumped the center
(14:11):
wall on iten went over the wall and struck a
vehicle right in dead center in the windshield and killed
a mom and daughter in that vehicle. And I remember
being at the scene after that, and it was at
Christmas time. I remember being at the scene at that
(14:34):
thing when it happened, and after I had worked the case.
Because you know, when you're at the scene, it's very
you try to be as very clinical. You might have
like one of those oh my lord, I can't believe
this happened for a second, But then you get into
what you're doing and you're trying to process a scene. Now,
(14:56):
I would never presume to put myself in the position
of life saver, because I was or a lifesaver. Okay,
I was a last responder. These are first responders. They're
trying to save somebody's life. But I do know this.
I know that after that happened and I was there,
it wasn't like a shooting, It wasn't like a strangulation.
(15:18):
It was almost like this just happened and it could
happen to anybody. And I remember thinking for a long
time afterwards, every time I would go over that stretch
of it, in which I had to do regularly, thinking
is that going to happen again? Hopefully in this case
(15:38):
this never will, Brother Dave. You know one of the
most difficult things that you and work as an investigator
(16:05):
our motor vehicle accidents that are single car and they're
in the middle of the night, they're out on a
dark stretch of road, and you have no explanation. I
was recalling what you just said about you know that
you've got somebody deceased the cars off the road was
just a heart attack, and you have to factor in
everything because you have no idea. You have no idea.
(16:29):
I had a friend of mine that is a forensics
a forensic scientist, and he's a crime scene investigator, and
he was he worked a case not too far away
from where we are here of a guy that ran
off the road and he had the victim in the car.
(16:53):
He had a went over the side of a ridge
and he had a a semi automatic handgun with a
hammerback on it in the car. And you know that
round that that weapon discharged and struck the driver in
the chest. And it turned out it was just a
(17:14):
freak accident where the weapon discharge struck the guy in
the chest. And oh, by the guy, by the way,
the guy went over a cliff and hit a tree
at the bottom. And so you've got these these two
events that occur where you've got a car, which is
one of the most violent things you can be involved
in relative to blunt force trauma. As a matter of fact,
(17:37):
blunt force trauma is generally the leading cause of death
in any kind of motor vehicle accident because if you're
not belted, or even if you are belted, you know,
seat belts and airbags are all fine and good, but
they're not fool proof. You know, they're they're still going
to get you and to boot when they can. You
imagine their shock, you know, when they find a spent round,
(18:00):
you know that has passed through this guy's body. It
was quite shocking. You never know what you're going to get.
And the thing about it is, most of the time
it happens, particularly in rural areas where you're kind of
in an outlying area, no light. It's dark, you don't
see any skid marks. Perhaps it just happens and the
(18:23):
car is resting there and you don't know what secrets
rest within the cabin of that vehicle.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Dave, That's what I was thinking. When I was I
was having a lot of trouble with the story, trying
to figure out what actually went on, you know, because
I'm I'm a visual person, So when I hear a story,
I'm visualizing. I'm picturing what's going on. And in this
I'm reading testimony and I'm reading police reports, and I'm thinking,
(18:49):
how in the world because nobody knew. It took time
to figure this out. Nobody knew what actually happened, and
it was some incredible investigation, Joe that the other people
were injured. Just to back up a little bit, during
the course of the evening, when these three guys go out,
they were out there throwing rocks and boulders at other vehicles,
(19:10):
doing damage, hurting people. And so there were witnesses not
to this particular death, not to this I'm not going
to it wasn't an accident. It was a murder, But
there were not witnesses of that particular thing. But there
were witnesses to other events that took place that night,
Rocks being thrown at cars, and people got description of
the vehicle license plate, things like that. By the way,
(19:33):
in this day and age, if you think for a
minute that they can't pinpoint every place you've been, every
place you've gone, and probably predict where you're going next
with our digital footprint, you're wrong. Those devices we carry
with us so cavalierly have a recorder on them everything
you say. Otherwise, why do you think it's possible that
(19:53):
Joseph Scott Morgan and I start talking about fly fishing,
and tomorrow on Facebook we both have billions of things
about fly fishing. Even though it was just a joke
I just made.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Okay, you just creeped me out. Again, I'd forgotten all
about that. But yeah, it happens on a regular basis.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, and so now that's how they track these cats down,
and then they find other victims, you know. And again
I go back to this scene, and I'm thinking about
her family, and I'm thinking about everybody else who drives
down the road. You know, we had an accident in Alabama,
Joe and not Actually it's a place you and I
have both driven a lot I twenty I twenty east
(20:31):
and west, but heading eastbound towards Atlanta. There was a
section of road and a couple was on their way
home to South Carolina and they're driving behind an eighteen
wheeler on I twenty and the eighteen wheel hit a pothole.
It caused a rock from the road to come up
out of the roadway and it smashed into a pickup
(20:52):
truck that was driving home to South Carolina, and a
woman was killed in the bed of the It was
an accident. Now this was a total accident, but it
caused the governor the state of Alabama to slow a
put up new signs for They slowed it down till
they could fix everything. His apoles are a disaster. And
so that was an accident. That's something that happened out
of the blue. You know, nobody could predict it what
(21:13):
was going to happen when it did. This is a
very similar outcome in that a rock went through a window,
but it was caused by a guy driving down the
road trying to cause damage, trying to hurt someone. Yeah,
I dare say trying to kill him, because I mean,
at eighteen years old, you have to know the effect
(21:33):
of a rock, a nine pound rock, which, hey, go
lift up a gallon of milk? Ways, what seven pounds? Yeah,
see how far you can throw that? Add two pounds
to it. See how far you can throw it? He
sped up, He sped up to eighty miles an hour,
so it'd caused more damage. Joe, I mean, what wow.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Well when you okay, let's stop right there just for
a second, because this is a fascinating case. In these terms,
it comes down to whate refer to as the eye
word intent. And again, you know you're getting over I am,
at least right now making that statement, getting over into
(22:10):
the area of lawyering. Lawyering you began to think about, well,
was their intent? Was its specific intent? Well, Dave. They
they wound up charging the guy that hurled rock with
not third, not second, but first degree homicide, Dave, first
(22:34):
degree homicide, And that goes I think that probably the
way they're looking at it at least is that it
would have been one thing, perhaps perhaps as horrible as
it still would be, if he happened to be driving
down the road and he tossed the stone out of
(22:54):
the vehicle and it was a one off event, but Dave,
Like you said, these three idiots had been doing this
all night long, and I would imagine they had been
they'd done it before for some reason.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
They had on three different occasions, Yeah, on three on three,
these guys, well two of the three had done it
three times before, and they each, according to one of them,
said they had each thrown ten rocks that night. And
by the way, Joe, if you actually dig a little deeper,
you find out that one of these guys in the car.
(23:33):
We don't know who, because we can't believe anybody. The
only thing we do know is that somebody and there's
been a conviction. But they all three were charged with
throwing rocks out of the car that night. But one
of them actually took this nine pound rock boulder from Walmart.
It was a landscape boulder from Walmart, and they actually
(23:55):
moved it to where he could grab it. They had
to move it because he's driving the car, Joe, he
can't pick and choose what he's going to throw. Somebody
has to provide it. So just like if you were
driving and I handed you a gun and I loaded
the round in it and make sure here you go, Joe,
it's already and that's what they did. They actually had
to position the rock where he could grab it, where
he could grab it with his right hand, position it
(24:17):
on his lap to his left hand, switch hands, grab
the wheel at the right hand, and now steady it.
Because remember it's not a round cannonball, as you mentioned,
it's a rock. It's got different weight distribution and everything else,
different edges, and then you're going to have to go
out the window a little bit and then you're gonna
shot put it. There's a lot of activity in the
car helping him get that rock, getting a nine pound
(24:40):
bowlder in the cab of that truck to you get
in a position where he could throw it. They were
all involved all night. They could have hurt thirty people
that night. Joe.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah, And I'm wondering the the and I'll call it
this the weapon of choice here, the projectile of choice,
which is actually weaponized, and you get weaponized just out anything,
all right, but it scientifically, it would require a kind
of understanding of the weight of the thing and how
(25:12):
it because the scene is not going to be perfectly balanced.
I actually, for a very short period of time I
played football in high school, but for a very short
period of time I had. We were required to be
on the track team. Well you take a one look
at me until don't. I didn't run the forty, all right,
that was not my back. So I threw a shot
put in discus and by the way, two of the
(25:33):
most difficult things to master. You think that it's simple.
Discus in particularly very difficult, but shotput there's so there's
so many tiny little things that you have to do
just right. The reason I'm saying this is that if
you're throwing a shot put, you're you're in a very
(25:53):
static kind of environment. That's not what we're talking about here.
This is something and it took a lot of practice
just for me to heave that thing down the down range.
You know, at an event with a car, you've got
the movement of the car, you have got the uneven
(26:13):
nature of roads, you've got wind to factor in, and
you've got this weird weight distribution that's going on with
this this you know, paver or not paver, but landscaping stone.
You have to try to understand how.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
To hold it well.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
That goes to practice, doesn't it. And I find it
fascinating what you had said that each one of these
individuals had actually cast at least ten during this session,
during this period of time while going down the road.
(26:50):
It almost it does seem practiced. And again we go
back to this idea in the law of intent. Now,
there's some places that don't necessarily require intent, but sometimes
to have a first degree murder charge with somebody, you
have to have some kind of intention to do harm
to another human being or this thing's not going to
(27:11):
pass the smell test when it comes to courts. And
the DA felt strong enough about this so that they
could in fact charge the person that was throwing the
stone with first degree. So it really paints a very
dark and sinister, sinister picture. And here's another thing, and
(27:33):
I hate the why question. I think what is more
effective here? What was What is it that compelled you
to think that this was a great idea that I
was going to go to the trouble of finding stones
(27:56):
that I could create projectiles out of. And I think
that it is a great idea that we cast them
at other people as they're driving down the road. Now
you can call it, you know, I don't know, the
foolishness of youth. You can call it careless disregard. But
(28:16):
the da in Colorado called it first degree homicide. The
big question is how do you go about putting that
(28:40):
stone into the hand of a driver if you're an investigator,
and how do you take that stone and put it
in contact with the victim? Now I can tell you
this kind of harkens back to what we had mentioned
(29:02):
about the EMT. God bless her by the way, what
she bore witness to. Yeah, it's horrible. I think her
name's miss Bergeron, what missus Bergeron saw and trust me,
she's She's an empty firefighter. She's seen some things, all right,
I mean she has and and unlike me, I wasn't
(29:23):
present for the screams firefighters however are Can you imagine
using the jaws of life or using that big saw
to cut somebody out as they're penned in a car
in their conscience and they've got horrific industry injuries. She
had to do that, and this set her so back
on her heels with what she bore witness to. But
when we would have gotten a case like this like
(29:47):
Alexa Bartel and removed her from the scene and gotten
her back to the morgue, this this autopsy, this this
morning examination, you kind of have an expectation of what
you're going to because she was struck in the head
by the way, you are going to have an expectation
(30:09):
of of what you're going to see inside, But it's
what's outside that you really kind of have to assess
very very carefully. And this injury Dave is going to
be so grotesque and over the top and so massive
that it it's going to take some time to try
(30:29):
to put this together. And one of things you're looking for,
particularly when it comes to an object, we're always we're
we're one of our great skills in the Morgue is
trying to match up patterns. That's that's one of the
things that we do. So, like if you're looking at
at this landscaping thing that has been created and sold
(30:53):
by Walmart, you're going to look for like the leading
edges of it, like is it rough or is it smooth?
And when you look at what she would have had
is a massive, probably gaping, blunt force trauma with last
multiple lacerations. So you're going to have a central point
of impact where the stone would have hit her directly
(31:15):
in the head.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
And then if.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
You'll when we talk about bullet wounds to the head.
One of the things that we'll talk about are stell
eight wounds and stell eight means are star shaped. The
skin has a funny way of doing things when it's struck,
particularly along the smooth surfaces of the skull in the face,
you'll get these kind of tearing lacerations that radiate out
(31:38):
from a central point where they take on almost star
like patterns. And when I say starlight, think at Christmas
time when you see images that people create of the
Star of Bethlehem. You know where it's radiating out, You've
got like it almost looks like a cross sometimes, but
it'll have other little beams that kind of come out
(32:00):
of it. That's what these injuries actually look like. And
the skin is actually torn, it's not going to have
smooth edges it. The skin will actually be pulled apart
and ripped where the skin is torn away or torn
and ripped away, and you'll see these little tears along
the skin, and that's what they would have been trying
(32:24):
to match up. Also, any kind of debris that was
generated by this object flying through the air. Did you know, Dave,
that when things pass through glass like that you had
mentioned safety glass when safety glass breaks, it cubes, it
turns into little cubes and you get these really weird
(32:48):
ninety degree angle little lacerations, and we actually call these
dicing injuries. So you will have those to contend with
because that glass that breaks on that window will be
traveling roughly the same velocity as the stone would be.
So that's what I meant by the kind of fragmenting,
shrapnel like event that takes place. So when she's hit,
(33:10):
when she's hit, this thing would have driven that glass
into her face in addition to the leading edge of
this rock. But here's the really chilling thing about this,
Dave that we've kind of I'm not going to say
gloss or we just hadn't talked about it yet, Dave,
this thing had so much energy that after it struck this,
after it passed through the window, after it struck her,
(33:34):
it still had enough energy on it, Dave, to pass
out of the rear window of this thing. That's what's
so amazing about this and what.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
I'm looking at too, and that's what got me, Joe,
is that realizing that she was killed instantly, Okay, the
minute to hit it was over. Where would that rock
have ended if it went through, it would be back
there or towards the road, I'm guessing. But one thing
that came up, because Joe, there was no DNA on
(34:06):
that raw on that boulder. When they got the boulder,
I would have expected there to be DNA something left
behind by any one of the three guys in that truck.
I'm figuring they're holding it when they pick it up,
they're holding it in the truck. But you know what
investigators found. The only DNA on that boulder was from
the victim, from Alexa. But I'm guessing when the rock
(34:26):
goes through the window, because again it's it's so fast
this whole you know, it's not a long, slow motion,
drawn out, minute long event. This had to have been
in a matter of less than a second. Yeah, And
it went from his hand shot put style, through the
window the front windshield, through Alexa Bartel and out the
(34:49):
back window of her vehicle. So based on that happening,
that rock's going to have to be somewhere along the
interstate or along the road or in the shoulder slightly.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah. And this is what makes this so very difficult, Dave,
When when you're in an area that is less than
an ideal. You're thinking about shoulders of roads, you're thinking
about dark nighttime, and you're looking at this. This is
the bizarre thing. Again. It adds to the complexity of this.
She's off of the road. This is not like a
(35:24):
real linear kind of thing that happens where rock passes
through window, strikes young lady, goes out the back of
the window, and it's found resting in the center of
the road. Okay, first off, she wasn't found immediately, all right,
Well except by these morons.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, by the guys that through the rock, acting acting
like vultures by the way, going back and circling back
and taking pictures.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
What lovely young men. It's not linear like that because
she drives off the road. So you can't just randomly
say if you find a you know, for all we know,
a landscaping stone might have fallen off off of a truck,
you know, a home depot and Walmart and Loew's they
(36:12):
delivered to people's homes. Particularly when you're talking about heavy objects,
who's to say that it just didn't fall off. But
the key to this is the fact that they found
Alexis DNA on this rock. So that gives you an indication.
You can't you know, you just can't dismiss that if
you're a defense attorney very easily and say, well, you know,
(36:34):
it just happened to be there. No, it happened to
be in proximity to a young woman who has sustained
massive blunt forestram to her head. Her head is open,
by the way, which would facilitate inoculating the surface of
that object with blood, hair, skin, whatever it was, and
then coming to rest. The trick is when you go
(36:54):
out to work these scenes, what are you going to
do to find it? I'd be fascinated relative to the
distribution of any glass that was at the scene, that
safety glass that I was referring to, that's kind of
cubed up laying along the road. Does it match up
where she's left, she's lost consciousness, Well, she's dead and
(37:17):
the car just kind of goes off on its own.
Was the glass? How far down the road from the
point of impact did the car travel before it creamed
off the road into the field. So you have to
rely on that. And then where was this and it
is a projectile? Where was this projectile in relation to
(37:37):
the vehicle? Okay, it boggles the mind that they were
able to narrow this thing down to the point where
they were able to get three suspects out of this day.
And I think a lot of it goes back to
this idea of electronic documentation, and I'm thinking, how difficult
(38:07):
was it for the DA to marry all this up
to put together this this packet, you know, essentially for
an indictment subsequent to conviction on these individuals.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
We're not reading everything going because I was after that
same angle. I was like, in my head, I'm going,
I know DNA doesn't exist everywhere all the time, but surely,
you know, in my head, I'm thinking they had to
have a way to track it back to them, because
just looking at what we're told happened, you're thinking there
has to be some type of evidence that's going to
(38:40):
directly tie them to the victim. And there really isn't,
because again, like I said, that Rock didn't. But what
they did have is they had twenty plus other people
that night who came in contact with these fellas driving
this truck throwing stuff. So imagine the witnesses you did
(39:01):
have that you and I might have been driving down
the road good to go watch a ball game earlier
coming home from that right and we're just driving down
the road. All of a sudden a truck passes us
and a rock hits the car. You're like, what was that? No,
we're not hurt, and we think, well, maybe it came
up from the road. You know, we start thinking what
could have happened, But that's what happened. They had thrown
at least ten rocks of peach that night. So over
(39:23):
a period of two or three hours, thirty people have
had rocks thrown at them on the road. And you know,
there's going to be a couple of those reports that
get back to police. There's going to be a couple
of them say there was a truck involved in each
one of these. So they started piecing it together the
old school. But then of course you have the electronic stuff,
the digital footprint that ties them to the different places
(39:45):
involved here, because as you said, they went with first murder. Now,
the first murder charge that on conviction is life without parole.
That's a serious as Colorado lag gets what they were
able to do. Again, these guys are eighteen. They were
able to find out that this wasn't the first time
(40:05):
where the suburban Colorado area DIN for Colorado Area have
been impacted by somebody driving around a truck throwing rocks
at people. It had happened three or four times before
in the recent past, and they started tying it together.
And once they had these three gentlemen eighteen years old each,
(40:26):
they were able to talk to them, and they went
to one and said, well, you know, they're all playing
the finger at you. You're the new kid, Quack, You're
the new guy in the group. These other two guys
are best buds. They're saying you were you were the
guy who tossed the rock, Quack, and he's like, no,
I didn't throw anything. It was those two. And that's
how they broke them. They just got them all separated
(40:47):
once they were able to. Eighteen year olds are not
known for intellectual creativity for the most part, especially the
kind of guys who go driving around at night throwing
rocks at cars. You know they're going to leave breadcrumbs everywhere,
and they did.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Go I gotta tell you, I am shocked first off
by the intestinal fortitude of the prosecutor here. Oh yeah,
because and I think I can speak for you on
this and our experience when we cover cases. No matter
what platform we're on, the stuff that you and I
see together, we're always, i think, kind of shocked by
(41:24):
the fact that more time was not given or they
weren't charged. This is one of those cases, Dave, where
the prosecutor actually had the intestinal fortitude to move forward
and I think hopefully send a message relative to what
happened and can you can you kind of break down
(41:48):
the sentences that were handed out in this case, Dave.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
The reason we actually have this case right now is
because this thing is just now being adjudicated. Okay, the
conviction of Joseph Kinn. His case went to trial, his
two cohorts and crime that night, Zachary Quack and Nicholas
Carrol Chick. To give you an idea here, Nicholas Carol
(42:11):
Chick and Joseph Kunning were buddies. They've been together for
a while. Zachary Quack was the third wheel. He had
recently joined the pair and this was I think his
first night out with them doing this type of damage.
But prosecutor came after it, as you mentioned, the first
degree murder charge. They were able to get Quack and
(42:31):
Carol Chick to take a deal they wanted. They wanted
to put the thrower of the rock away. They wanted
first degree murder. And so once they got these guys
all separated, they were able to strike a deal with
Zachary Quack and with Nicholas Carroll Chick to testify against
Joseph Cunning in court. And that's what happened. Joseph Cunning
(42:55):
was convicted a first gree murder. He will be saying,
by the way, first degree murder, attempted murder, and other
lesser serious crimes for other rocks thrown that night at
other vehicles. They were able to charge all these guys
with these other crimes. Now in Colorado, convicted of first
(43:16):
degree murder, it's automatic life without parole. So on June third,
that's what he's going to be sentenced to. Joseph Cunning
will go to prison for the rest of his life
without parole. But the two guys who turned on him,
Carol Zachary Quack and Nicholas Carroll Chick, well, they thought
they were going to get off light. They thought they
were going to get off light. Nicholas Carrol Chick was
(43:40):
sentenced to forty five years in prison. There were other charges. Again,
as I mentioned, you know, they got them for the
attempted murder. They also got them for the other charges,
but he sent us to forty five years in prison.
Quack who was the first to roll, he was sentenced
to thirty two years in prison. Each one of these
(44:01):
guys is now twenty years old, so that means Joseph
Cunning is not getting out. They will automatically appeal. You
know that this will be automatically appealed. But that's what
they're sending us to right now. You're right. The prosecutor
went after this, he said, first agree murder, were going
after it, and they did.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Well, you know, Dave, I got to tell you, this
is not something that occurred in a vacuum. And I
know that they're not necessarily charged with this, but you know,
as a public servant, this da I think at least
he's sending a message because for me, based upon what
(44:40):
I've discussed with you, relative to going down the road
and not expecting things to occur like this, this equates
on one level to terrorism, where you're driving people to
the point where they don't feel safe on the roads.
And we know that if people don't feel safe on
(45:01):
the roads, everything stops. Commerce star stops, a regular lifestyle stops.
People sit at home, they're afraid. I harkened back to
you know, when the DC sniper happened, people were terrified. Remember,
people wouldn't even go pump gas, and rightly so, because
(45:21):
you know, you have people that were being shot at
the pump, you know, and as you know, Mohammed in
that case wound up getting the death penalty in that case.
This is something that's taken very, very seriously, and I
hope that a message rings out loud and true from
here on out relative to this particular instance, and more
(45:43):
importantly about the life of Alexa Bartel. Her life is
not defined by three idiots that were driving down the
road and cast a landscaping block at her, but unfortunately
it ended her life and everything that was on the
horizon for her. You can never get her back. I'm
(46:06):
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs.
Quody dimes, but Joseph's gotten more. I hate being on
the highway. I've gotten now at this stage of my life.
I used to be able to ignore. I think while
I was going down the road, I would ignore bad
drivers and these sort of things. I just kind of
(00:22):
equated it to it's just a price you pay for
being on the interstate or driving in a big city somewhere.
But now I don't know if it's what I've done
for a living, or maybe it's my age. Life just
seems so much more precious to me. I guess the
less time you have, you know, you put more value
(00:44):
on it. I don't know, but who actually thinks that
you're going to get in your car, You're going to
go down the road and then suddenly a stone is
(01:04):
hoisted in your direction as you're riding alone, minding your
own business. It enters the car and it ends your life. Today,
own body Bags, we're going to have a discussion about
(01:25):
such case that brought about the death of a young
woman who was just minding her own business and didn't
know the death was waiting just around the corner. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body Bags has your
(01:49):
tolerance worn thin day relative to operation of a motor viwer.
I mean, it's an obviously, it's a it's a necessity
in life. We don't live in some tiny little farm community,
you know, and you know, make our own food and
subsistence farming and that sort of thing. We have to
(02:09):
go out and have contact with folks and drive along thoroughfares.
And it seems like the further I go in life,
the dumber people get on the road, and you just
you never know what you're going to see. I've seen
some of the most bizarre things, you know, as a
(02:30):
death investigator, and we really haven't talked about this at all.
I don't know why, because I'd say I've worked as
I've worked as many motor vehicle accidents in my career
as I have actually firearms related homicides. First off, not
everybody owns a gun. The line share of people do
(02:51):
have cars and car accidents in our country, you know,
they make up the long the line share of violent
related deaths. You know you're going to have any They're
not all homicides. Obviously, You've got a lot of mvas.
That's the term, the acronym that she used for motor
(03:12):
vehicle accidents.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, what we're talking about today goes way beyond a
couple of stupid drivers. This is like one person driving
and another person trying to hurt maime and kill people
by throwing things at night while you're driving down the road.
As a matter of fact, Joseph Kinnig, Zachary Quack, and
(03:35):
Nicholas Carol Chick we're all eighteen at the time. Joe
and they're riding around in a truck with Joseph Kinning
behind the wheel, and they've been driving around. This is
not the first time they've gone out doing this, but
on this particular night, on a beautiful April night in Colorado,
(03:56):
it's around eleven o'clock at night, and they're throwing rocks.
They're moving vehicle at other vehicles coming at them in
the opposite direction, and they were having fun. They were
actually cheering themselves on. Think about it, you're driving down
the road. You know, we get annoyed by people making
(04:16):
stupid decisions, leaving a blinker, on not breaking properly, cutting
in front of us, things like that. In this case,
you're driving down the road and there's somebody coming at
you and they take a rock and throw it at
you as you're driving, because that's what Konig did. He Actually,
(04:38):
it wasn't a pebble, It wasn't a rock the size
of a golf ball or a baseball. Joe. He got
a landscape boulder weighing nine pounds, and as he's driving
down the road towards a car coming at him, he
speeds up to eighty miles an hour and with it.
He's a lefty, he's driving. He uses a shot put
(04:58):
form to launch the nine pound bowlder and it goes
through the front windshield of the car coming at him
and goes right through the driver and out the back window.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I'm okay, let me just break this down. This is like,
this is like the ultimate, the ultimate demonstration of physics.
All right.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
This scared me to death, Joe, Yeah, read.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I know it's terrifying because it could literally happen to anybody.
Isaac Newton would have a field day with this. If
you're if you're thinking about because let's let's look at
this just from a baseline understanding, uh, just from the
dynamics of motion. If you've ever if anyone, if anyone
(05:48):
out there, has ever picked up a stone okay, and
you've stood beside a lake. I don't know about you day.
One of the things I used to love to do
is kids skip stone. You still love it. I even
that even carried over to you. Know, when Noah was little,
he and I would go up in the mountains and
(06:08):
there were a couple of lakes, mountain lakes, and we
would skip stones. He was learning how to throw a
baseball at that time, and we'd skip stones. We just
have the most fun. But you know, when you're skipping
a stone, all of that power is generated by you
and you alone. Okay, all of that energy, rather, let's
(06:29):
say energy is generated by you and you alone as
you propel that stone and it breaks the surface of
that water. Okay, what we're talking about here, So let's
just think about it this way. You're in a moving vehicle.
You're going I don't know, forty miles per hour. You
(06:52):
feed up to fifty a pickup truck, now sixty seventy eighty.
So the rock that you happen to have with you
in the front cab of your vehicle. Now, let's just
(07:13):
picture this just for a second. You got a landscaping
stone that I guess if you're driving the vehicle. This
is the craziest thing I've ever heard. You're driving a vehicle.
It's got to be resting in your lap. Now. I
don't know how many people out there have ever done
any landscaping. You're holding an eight to nine pound object
(07:34):
in your lap already while you're driving down the road.
You suddenly think that it's a good idea to take
this thing and heave it toward an oncoming vehicle. And
here's the piece that's really fascinating. That stone is not
traveling at with the same amount of energy as if
(07:57):
you were standing on the shores of that Placid lake
like I did with my son skipping stones. You're now
that stone along with you, and every item in that
vehicle is now traveling eighty miles per hour. When you
release it into that space, it's meeting another vehicle that
(08:18):
we can only assume that is traveling I don't know,
let's just say it's fifty miles per hour. Those two
energies meet at that moment in time. The same crashes
through the cab of the oncoming vehicle and has still
enough energy Dave that it travels out of the back
(08:41):
of the vehicle that's an incredible amount of force that
you're talking about. That thing is literally the same mass
as a Civil war cannonball. Think about that just for
a second. Only it doesn't have the smooth edges now,
does it. It's rough stone, and anything that it hits
(09:03):
it's going to completely tear up because of those edges,
and going through glass as well, it creates other bits
of shrapnel, any kind of bits of the stone that
come off upon impact. Anything that is within the cabin
of that vehicle, whether it be a piece of metal
(09:27):
off the framework or the glass, is now traveling at
a very high rate of speed, and it's going to
target whatever's lying in its path, and unfortunately, in this case, Dave,
it was this young woman.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
It's shocking beyond anything, Joe that when I read it
several times from different reports, different angles, different court things,
because I was trying to figure out how this could
happen while you're driving, to be able to launch something
like that, you know, I mean, just the mechanics of everything.
Then I find out that these guys had a already
(10:05):
been doing it throughout the course of that evening. This
wasn't the first and only time they did that. There
are three people in the car, and they all three
took turns throwing things at moving vehicles. Okay, Now at trial, Joe,
we got different stories from all of them. I mean
all of them. One of the guys says, I didn't
throw nothing, but they all rolled over on one. Well, no,
(10:27):
two of them rolled over on Koenig, who was driving.
I don't know what actually took place, except that all
three were throwing rocks from a moving vehicle at oncoming traffic.
Who threw the rock that killed a twenty year old
woman named Alexa Bartel? Who did that? Is? It's not germane.
They should all go to jail for the rest of
(10:47):
their lives for this. In my book, just Dave's book, okay,
the Dave Book of Justice, all right, which means nothing.
But I was shocked at a rock boulder nine pounds
coming through a windshield. Knowing that we do have glass
that has safety in it and things like that, so
I would think it would slow down some, but that
this was traveling at such velocity that it went right through.
(11:08):
It killed her instantly. It killed her instantly. Oh and
by the way, Joe, just to add to this, because well,
her car went off the road. She was killed instantly,
her car goes off the road, and these three people
are watching. They turn around and come back and go
buy her car a couple of times and take pictures
(11:32):
as a memento for what they had done. The thing
that I wanted to ask you, Joe, because it actually
comes up in this story, and it was shocking to me.
I don't want to know your worst take. I know
that's one of the things people ask you. This story
became this scene that the EMS crew showed up on.
(11:57):
It became the last acting I've seen one of the
workers could ever go to again. It stayed with her
to the point because she didn't know what happened, and
she talked about how when she got to the scene
because the car. Think about it, it's eleven o'clock at night, yea,
a rock goes through the car and the car goes
(12:18):
off the road into a field. Nobody sees it except
these idiots who'd turn around to take pictures. But it
was a friend of hers that she was on the
phone with. Oh I should have added that she was
on the phone talking to her girlfriend when the rock
came through and killed her. So the phone ended. The
phone stopped right then her friend's like, where'd she go,
(12:38):
and actually tracks her phone to that location. That's how
they found her because there weren't any police or anything
on the scene. You got again, it's at night, a
car goes off into a field, nobody notices, and so
when they finally called her help, EMS shows up. They
don't know if it's been a heart attack, they don't
know if the person had a medical thing. They don't
know what has happened until they get there. And still
(13:02):
think about it. This woman's body is so destroyed. The
rock went through her, killed her and went out the
back window of her car. Imagine the site, Joe. I'm
trying to figure out what happened. But it was so
horrific that a person whose career has been spent out
(13:23):
in the field doing this couldn't could not let it go.
I know you understand that.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, I do. And you see things like this that
I'm reflecting back to many years ago with a case
that wasn't exactly like this, but it involved scientifically, you know,
it involved an object flying through the air and striking
a car. And I'm reminded of a mother and a
(13:50):
daughter that were on the way to go to go
do Christmas shopping and tandem wheel and tire still intact
on the wheel came off of the back of an
eighteen wheeler going down I ten and jumped the center
(14:11):
wall on iten went over the wall and struck a
vehicle right in dead center in the windshield and killed
a mom and daughter in that vehicle. And I remember
being at the scene after that, and it was at
Christmas time. I remember being at the scene at that
(14:34):
thing when it happened, and after I had worked the case.
Because you know, when you're at the scene, it's very
you try to be as very clinical. You might have
like one of those oh my lord, I can't believe
this happened for a second, But then you get into
what you're doing and you're trying to process a scene. Now,
(14:56):
I would never presume to put myself in the position
of life saver, because I was or a lifesaver. Okay,
I was a last responder. These are first responders. They're
trying to save somebody's life. But I do know this.
I know that after that happened and I was there,
it wasn't like a shooting, It wasn't like a strangulation.
(15:18):
It was almost like this just happened and it could
happen to anybody. And I remember thinking for a long
time afterwards, every time I would go over that stretch
of it, in which I had to do regularly, thinking
is that going to happen again? Hopefully in this case
(15:38):
this never will, Brother Dave. You know one of the
most difficult things that you and work as an investigator
(16:05):
our motor vehicle accidents that are single car and they're
in the middle of the night, they're out on a
dark stretch of road, and you have no explanation. I
was recalling what you just said about you know that
you've got somebody deceased the cars off the road was
just a heart attack, and you have to factor in
everything because you have no idea. You have no idea.
(16:29):
I had a friend of mine that is a forensics
a forensic scientist, and he's a crime scene investigator, and
he was he worked a case not too far away
from where we are here of a guy that ran
off the road and he had the victim in the car.
(16:53):
He had a went over the side of a ridge
and he had a a semi automatic handgun with a
hammerback on it in the car. And you know that
round that that weapon discharged and struck the driver in
the chest. And it turned out it was just a
(17:14):
freak accident where the weapon discharge struck the guy in
the chest. And oh, by the guy, by the way,
the guy went over a cliff and hit a tree
at the bottom. And so you've got these these two
events that occur where you've got a car, which is
one of the most violent things you can be involved
in relative to blunt force trauma. As a matter of fact,
(17:37):
blunt force trauma is generally the leading cause of death
in any kind of motor vehicle accident because if you're
not belted, or even if you are belted, you know,
seat belts and airbags are all fine and good, but
they're not fool proof. You know, they're they're still going
to get you and to boot when they can. You
imagine their shock, you know, when they find a spent round,
(18:00):
you know that has passed through this guy's body. It
was quite shocking. You never know what you're going to get.
And the thing about it is, most of the time
it happens, particularly in rural areas where you're kind of
in an outlying area, no light. It's dark, you don't
see any skid marks. Perhaps it just happens and the
(18:23):
car is resting there and you don't know what secrets
rest within the cabin of that vehicle.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Dave, That's what I was thinking. When I was I
was having a lot of trouble with the story, trying
to figure out what actually went on, you know, because
I'm I'm a visual person, So when I hear a story,
I'm visualizing. I'm picturing what's going on. And in this
I'm reading testimony and I'm reading police reports, and I'm thinking,
(18:49):
how in the world because nobody knew. It took time
to figure this out. Nobody knew what actually happened, and
it was some incredible investigation, Joe that the other people
were injured. Just to back up a little bit, during
the course of the evening, when these three guys go out,
they were out there throwing rocks and boulders at other vehicles,
(19:10):
doing damage, hurting people. And so there were witnesses not
to this particular death, not to this I'm not going
to it wasn't an accident. It was a murder, But
there were not witnesses of that particular thing. But there
were witnesses to other events that took place that night,
Rocks being thrown at cars, and people got description of
the vehicle license plate, things like that. By the way,
(19:33):
in this day and age, if you think for a
minute that they can't pinpoint every place you've been, every
place you've gone, and probably predict where you're going next
with our digital footprint, you're wrong. Those devices we carry
with us so cavalierly have a recorder on them everything
you say. Otherwise, why do you think it's possible that
(19:53):
Joseph Scott Morgan and I start talking about fly fishing,
and tomorrow on Facebook we both have billions of things
about fly fishing. Even though it was just a joke
I just made.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Okay, you just creeped me out. Again, I'd forgotten all
about that. But yeah, it happens on a regular basis.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, and so now that's how they track these cats down,
and then they find other victims, you know. And again
I go back to this scene, and I'm thinking about
her family, and I'm thinking about everybody else who drives
down the road. You know, we had an accident in Alabama,
Joe and not Actually it's a place you and I
have both driven a lot I twenty I twenty east
(20:31):
and west, but heading eastbound towards Atlanta. There was a
section of road and a couple was on their way
home to South Carolina and they're driving behind an eighteen
wheeler on I twenty and the eighteen wheel hit a pothole.
It caused a rock from the road to come up
out of the roadway and it smashed into a pickup
(20:52):
truck that was driving home to South Carolina, and a
woman was killed in the bed of the It was
an accident. Now this was a total accident, but it
caused the governor the state of Alabama to slow a
put up new signs for They slowed it down till
they could fix everything. His apoles are a disaster. And
so that was an accident. That's something that happened out
of the blue. You know, nobody could predict it what
(21:13):
was going to happen when it did. This is a
very similar outcome in that a rock went through a window,
but it was caused by a guy driving down the
road trying to cause damage, trying to hurt someone. Yeah,
I dare say trying to kill him, because I mean,
at eighteen years old, you have to know the effect
(21:33):
of a rock, a nine pound rock, which, hey, go
lift up a gallon of milk? Ways, what seven pounds? Yeah,
see how far you can throw that? Add two pounds
to it. See how far you can throw it? He
sped up, He sped up to eighty miles an hour,
so it'd caused more damage. Joe, I mean, what wow.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Well when you okay, let's stop right there just for
a second, because this is a fascinating case. In these terms,
it comes down to whate refer to as the eye
word intent. And again, you know you're getting over I am,
at least right now making that statement, getting over into
(22:10):
the area of lawyering. Lawyering you began to think about, well,
was their intent? Was its specific intent? Well, Dave. They
they wound up charging the guy that hurled rock with
not third, not second, but first degree homicide, Dave, first
(22:34):
degree homicide, And that goes I think that probably the
way they're looking at it at least is that it
would have been one thing, perhaps perhaps as horrible as
it still would be, if he happened to be driving
down the road and he tossed the stone out of
(22:54):
the vehicle and it was a one off event, but Dave,
Like you said, these three idiots had been doing this
all night long, and I would imagine they had been
they'd done it before for some reason.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
They had on three different occasions, Yeah, on three on three,
these guys, well two of the three had done it
three times before, and they each, according to one of them,
said they had each thrown ten rocks that night. And
by the way, Joe, if you actually dig a little deeper,
you find out that one of these guys in the car.
(23:33):
We don't know who, because we can't believe anybody. The
only thing we do know is that somebody and there's
been a conviction. But they all three were charged with
throwing rocks out of the car that night. But one
of them actually took this nine pound rock boulder from Walmart.
It was a landscape boulder from Walmart, and they actually
(23:55):
moved it to where he could grab it. They had
to move it because he's driving the car, Joe, he
can't pick and choose what he's going to throw. Somebody
has to provide it. So just like if you were
driving and I handed you a gun and I loaded
the round in it and make sure here you go, Joe,
it's already and that's what they did. They actually had
to position the rock where he could grab it, where
he could grab it with his right hand, position it
(24:17):
on his lap to his left hand, switch hands, grab
the wheel at the right hand, and now steady it.
Because remember it's not a round cannonball, as you mentioned,
it's a rock. It's got different weight distribution and everything else,
different edges, and then you're going to have to go
out the window a little bit and then you're gonna
shot put it. There's a lot of activity in the
car helping him get that rock, getting a nine pound
(24:40):
bowlder in the cab of that truck to you get
in a position where he could throw it. They were
all involved all night. They could have hurt thirty people
that night. Joe.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah, And I'm wondering the the and I'll call it
this the weapon of choice here, the projectile of choice,
which is actually weaponized, and you get weaponized just out anything,
all right, but it scientifically, it would require a kind
of understanding of the weight of the thing and how
(25:12):
it because the scene is not going to be perfectly balanced.
I actually, for a very short period of time I
played football in high school, but for a very short
period of time I had. We were required to be
on the track team. Well you take a one look
at me until don't. I didn't run the forty, all right,
that was not my back. So I threw a shot
put in discus and by the way, two of the
(25:33):
most difficult things to master. You think that it's simple.
Discus in particularly very difficult, but shotput there's so there's
so many tiny little things that you have to do
just right. The reason I'm saying this is that if
you're throwing a shot put, you're you're in a very
(25:53):
static kind of environment. That's not what we're talking about here.
This is something and it took a lot of practice
just for me to heave that thing down the down range.
You know, at an event with a car, you've got
the movement of the car, you have got the uneven
(26:13):
nature of roads, you've got wind to factor in, and
you've got this weird weight distribution that's going on with
this this you know, paver or not paver, but landscaping stone.
You have to try to understand how.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
To hold it well.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
That goes to practice, doesn't it. And I find it
fascinating what you had said that each one of these
individuals had actually cast at least ten during this session,
during this period of time while going down the road.
(26:50):
It almost it does seem practiced. And again we go
back to this idea in the law of intent. Now,
there's some places that don't necessarily require intent, but sometimes
to have a first degree murder charge with somebody, you
have to have some kind of intention to do harm
to another human being or this thing's not going to
(27:11):
pass the smell test when it comes to courts. And
the DA felt strong enough about this so that they
could in fact charge the person that was throwing the
stone with first degree. So it really paints a very
dark and sinister, sinister picture. And here's another thing, and
(27:33):
I hate the why question. I think what is more
effective here? What was What is it that compelled you
to think that this was a great idea that I
was going to go to the trouble of finding stones
(27:56):
that I could create projectiles out of. And I think
that it is a great idea that we cast them
at other people as they're driving down the road. Now
you can call it, you know, I don't know, the
foolishness of youth. You can call it careless disregard. But
(28:16):
the da in Colorado called it first degree homicide. The
big question is how do you go about putting that
(28:40):
stone into the hand of a driver if you're an investigator,
and how do you take that stone and put it
in contact with the victim? Now I can tell you
this kind of harkens back to what we had mentioned
(29:02):
about the EMT. God bless her by the way, what
she bore witness to. Yeah, it's horrible. I think her
name's miss Bergeron, what missus Bergeron saw and trust me,
she's She's an empty firefighter. She's seen some things, all right,
I mean she has and and unlike me, I wasn't
(29:23):
present for the screams firefighters however are Can you imagine
using the jaws of life or using that big saw
to cut somebody out as they're penned in a car
in their conscience and they've got horrific industry injuries. She
had to do that, and this set her so back
on her heels with what she bore witness to. But
when we would have gotten a case like this like
(29:47):
Alexa Bartel and removed her from the scene and gotten
her back to the morgue, this this autopsy, this this
morning examination, you kind of have an expectation of what
you're going to because she was struck in the head
by the way, you are going to have an expectation
(30:09):
of of what you're going to see inside, But it's
what's outside that you really kind of have to assess
very very carefully. And this injury Dave is going to
be so grotesque and over the top and so massive
that it it's going to take some time to try
(30:29):
to put this together. And one of things you're looking for,
particularly when it comes to an object, we're always we're
we're one of our great skills in the Morgue is
trying to match up patterns. That's that's one of the
things that we do. So, like if you're looking at
at this landscaping thing that has been created and sold
(30:53):
by Walmart, you're going to look for like the leading
edges of it, like is it rough or is it smooth?
And when you look at what she would have had
is a massive, probably gaping, blunt force trauma with last
multiple lacerations. So you're going to have a central point
of impact where the stone would have hit her directly
(31:15):
in the head.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
And then if.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
You'll when we talk about bullet wounds to the head.
One of the things that we'll talk about are stell
eight wounds and stell eight means are star shaped. The
skin has a funny way of doing things when it's struck,
particularly along the smooth surfaces of the skull in the face,
you'll get these kind of tearing lacerations that radiate out
(31:38):
from a central point where they take on almost star
like patterns. And when I say starlight, think at Christmas
time when you see images that people create of the
Star of Bethlehem. You know where it's radiating out, You've
got like it almost looks like a cross sometimes, but
it'll have other little beams that kind of come out
(32:00):
of it. That's what these injuries actually look like. And
the skin is actually torn, it's not going to have
smooth edges it. The skin will actually be pulled apart
and ripped where the skin is torn away or torn
and ripped away, and you'll see these little tears along
the skin, and that's what they would have been trying
(32:24):
to match up. Also, any kind of debris that was
generated by this object flying through the air. Did you know, Dave,
that when things pass through glass like that you had
mentioned safety glass when safety glass breaks, it cubes, it
turns into little cubes and you get these really weird
(32:48):
ninety degree angle little lacerations, and we actually call these
dicing injuries. So you will have those to contend with
because that glass that breaks on that window will be
traveling roughly the same velocity as the stone would be.
So that's what I meant by the kind of fragmenting,
shrapnel like event that takes place. So when she's hit,
(33:10):
when she's hit, this thing would have driven that glass
into her face in addition to the leading edge of
this rock. But here's the really chilling thing about this,
Dave that we've kind of I'm not going to say
gloss or we just hadn't talked about it yet, Dave,
this thing had so much energy that after it struck this,
after it passed through the window, after it struck her,
(33:34):
it still had enough energy on it, Dave, to pass
out of the rear window of this thing. That's what's
so amazing about this and what.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
I'm looking at too, and that's what got me, Joe,
is that realizing that she was killed instantly, Okay, the
minute to hit it was over. Where would that rock
have ended if it went through, it would be back
there or towards the road, I'm guessing. But one thing
that came up, because Joe, there was no DNA on
(34:06):
that raw on that boulder. When they got the boulder,
I would have expected there to be DNA something left
behind by any one of the three guys in that truck.
I'm figuring they're holding it when they pick it up,
they're holding it in the truck. But you know what
investigators found. The only DNA on that boulder was from
the victim, from Alexa. But I'm guessing when the rock
(34:26):
goes through the window, because again it's it's so fast
this whole you know, it's not a long, slow motion,
drawn out, minute long event. This had to have been
in a matter of less than a second. Yeah, And
it went from his hand shot put style, through the
window the front windshield, through Alexa Bartel and out the
(34:49):
back window of her vehicle. So based on that happening,
that rock's going to have to be somewhere along the
interstate or along the road or in the shoulder slightly.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah. And this is what makes this so very difficult, Dave,
When when you're in an area that is less than
an ideal. You're thinking about shoulders of roads, you're thinking
about dark nighttime, and you're looking at this. This is
the bizarre thing. Again. It adds to the complexity of this.
She's off of the road. This is not like a
(35:24):
real linear kind of thing that happens where rock passes
through window, strikes young lady, goes out the back of
the window, and it's found resting in the center of
the road. Okay, first off, she wasn't found immediately, all right,
Well except by these morons.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, by the guys that through the rock, acting acting
like vultures by the way, going back and circling back
and taking pictures.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
What lovely young men. It's not linear like that because
she drives off the road. So you can't just randomly
say if you find a you know, for all we know,
a landscaping stone might have fallen off off of a truck,
you know, a home depot and Walmart and Loew's they
(36:12):
delivered to people's homes. Particularly when you're talking about heavy objects,
who's to say that it just didn't fall off. But
the key to this is the fact that they found
Alexis DNA on this rock. So that gives you an indication.
You can't you know, you just can't dismiss that if
you're a defense attorney very easily and say, well, you know,
(36:34):
it just happened to be there. No, it happened to
be in proximity to a young woman who has sustained
massive blunt forestram to her head. Her head is open,
by the way, which would facilitate inoculating the surface of
that object with blood, hair, skin, whatever it was, and
then coming to rest. The trick is when you go
(36:54):
out to work these scenes, what are you going to
do to find it? I'd be fascinated relative to the
distribution of any glass that was at the scene, that
safety glass that I was referring to, that's kind of
cubed up laying along the road. Does it match up
where she's left, she's lost consciousness, Well, she's dead and
(37:17):
the car just kind of goes off on its own.
Was the glass? How far down the road from the
point of impact did the car travel before it creamed
off the road into the field. So you have to
rely on that. And then where was this and it
is a projectile? Where was this projectile in relation to
(37:37):
the vehicle? Okay, it boggles the mind that they were
able to narrow this thing down to the point where
they were able to get three suspects out of this day.
And I think a lot of it goes back to
this idea of electronic documentation, and I'm thinking, how difficult
(38:07):
was it for the DA to marry all this up
to put together this this packet, you know, essentially for
an indictment subsequent to conviction on these individuals.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
We're not reading everything going because I was after that
same angle. I was like, in my head, I'm going,
I know DNA doesn't exist everywhere all the time, but surely,
you know, in my head, I'm thinking they had to
have a way to track it back to them, because
just looking at what we're told happened, you're thinking there
has to be some type of evidence that's going to
(38:40):
directly tie them to the victim. And there really isn't,
because again, like I said, that Rock didn't. But what
they did have is they had twenty plus other people
that night who came in contact with these fellas driving
this truck throwing stuff. So imagine the witnesses you did
(39:01):
have that you and I might have been driving down
the road good to go watch a ball game earlier
coming home from that right and we're just driving down
the road. All of a sudden a truck passes us
and a rock hits the car. You're like, what was that? No,
we're not hurt, and we think, well, maybe it came
up from the road. You know, we start thinking what
could have happened, But that's what happened. They had thrown
at least ten rocks of peach that night. So over
(39:23):
a period of two or three hours, thirty people have
had rocks thrown at them on the road. And you know,
there's going to be a couple of those reports that
get back to police. There's going to be a couple
of them say there was a truck involved in each
one of these. So they started piecing it together the
old school. But then of course you have the electronic stuff,
the digital footprint that ties them to the different places
(39:45):
involved here, because as you said, they went with first murder. Now,
the first murder charge that on conviction is life without parole.
That's a serious as Colorado lag gets what they were
able to do. Again, these guys are eighteen. They were
able to find out that this wasn't the first time
(40:05):
where the suburban Colorado area DIN for Colorado Area have
been impacted by somebody driving around a truck throwing rocks
at people. It had happened three or four times before
in the recent past, and they started tying it together.
And once they had these three gentlemen eighteen years old each,
(40:26):
they were able to talk to them, and they went
to one and said, well, you know, they're all playing
the finger at you. You're the new kid, Quack, You're
the new guy in the group. These other two guys
are best buds. They're saying you were you were the
guy who tossed the rock, Quack, and he's like, no,
I didn't throw anything. It was those two. And that's
how they broke them. They just got them all separated
(40:47):
once they were able to. Eighteen year olds are not
known for intellectual creativity for the most part, especially the
kind of guys who go driving around at night throwing
rocks at cars. You know they're going to leave breadcrumbs everywhere,
and they did.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Go I gotta tell you, I am shocked first off
by the intestinal fortitude of the prosecutor here. Oh yeah,
because and I think I can speak for you on
this and our experience when we cover cases. No matter
what platform we're on, the stuff that you and I
see together, we're always, i think, kind of shocked by
(41:24):
the fact that more time was not given or they
weren't charged. This is one of those cases, Dave, where
the prosecutor actually had the intestinal fortitude to move forward
and I think hopefully send a message relative to what
happened and can you can you kind of break down
(41:48):
the sentences that were handed out in this case, Dave.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
The reason we actually have this case right now is
because this thing is just now being adjudicated. Okay, the
conviction of Joseph Kinn. His case went to trial, his
two cohorts and crime that night, Zachary Quack and Nicholas
Carrol Chick. To give you an idea here, Nicholas Carol
(42:11):
Chick and Joseph Kunning were buddies. They've been together for
a while. Zachary Quack was the third wheel. He had
recently joined the pair and this was I think his
first night out with them doing this type of damage.
But prosecutor came after it, as you mentioned, the first
degree murder charge. They were able to get Quack and
(42:31):
Carol Chick to take a deal they wanted. They wanted
to put the thrower of the rock away. They wanted
first degree murder. And so once they got these guys
all separated, they were able to strike a deal with
Zachary Quack and with Nicholas Carroll Chick to testify against
Joseph Cunning in court. And that's what happened. Joseph Cunning
(42:55):
was convicted a first gree murder. He will be saying,
by the way, first degree murder, attempted murder, and other
lesser serious crimes for other rocks thrown that night at
other vehicles. They were able to charge all these guys
with these other crimes. Now in Colorado, convicted of first
(43:16):
degree murder, it's automatic life without parole. So on June third,
that's what he's going to be sentenced to. Joseph Cunning
will go to prison for the rest of his life
without parole. But the two guys who turned on him,
Carol Zachary Quack and Nicholas Carroll Chick, well, they thought
they were going to get off light. They thought they
were going to get off light. Nicholas Carrol Chick was
(43:40):
sentenced to forty five years in prison. There were other charges. Again,
as I mentioned, you know, they got them for the
attempted murder. They also got them for the other charges,
but he sent us to forty five years in prison.
Quack who was the first to roll, he was sentenced
to thirty two years in prison. Each one of these
(44:01):
guys is now twenty years old, so that means Joseph
Cunning is not getting out. They will automatically appeal. You
know that this will be automatically appealed. But that's what
they're sending us to right now. You're right. The prosecutor
went after this, he said, first agree murder, were going
after it, and they did.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Well, you know, Dave, I got to tell you, this
is not something that occurred in a vacuum. And I
know that they're not necessarily charged with this, but you know,
as a public servant, this da I think at least
he's sending a message because for me, based upon what
(44:40):
I've discussed with you, relative to going down the road
and not expecting things to occur like this, this equates
on one level to terrorism, where you're driving people to
the point where they don't feel safe on the roads.
And we know that if people don't feel safe on
(45:01):
the roads, everything stops. Commerce star stops, a regular lifestyle stops.
People sit at home, they're afraid. I harkened back to
you know, when the DC sniper happened, people were terrified. Remember,
people wouldn't even go pump gas, and rightly so, because
(45:21):
you know, you have people that were being shot at
the pump, you know, and as you know, Mohammed in
that case wound up getting the death penalty in that case.
This is something that's taken very, very seriously, and I
hope that a message rings out loud and true from
here on out relative to this particular instance, and more
(45:43):
importantly about the life of Alexa Bartel. Her life is
not defined by three idiots that were driving down the
road and cast a landscaping block at her, but unfortunately
it ended her life and everything that was on the
horizon for her. You can never get her back. I'm
(46:06):
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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