October 30, 2025 • 48 mins
A resident at Grant Luxury Condos heads downstairs, but stops short when they see a severed human foot at the bottom of the second-floor stairwell that looks too real to be a Halloween decoration. The resident reports it to a doorman, who calls 911 in a panic, after discovering the rest of a woman’s body three floors up. Investigators swarm the high-rise and determine the victim fell at least 20 stories.
When the fall victim is identified as Caitlin Tracey, her husband, Adam Beckerink is arrested. Beckerink reported Caitlin missing just the day before she was discovered dead on the second floor of their building. Beckerink claimed he hadn’t seen Caitlin in months, but surveillance footage shows them at the Grant together, just three days prior to Caitlin’s death. With no real proof Beckerink committed a crime, Chicago Police are forced to release Beckerink 48 hours later.
The Medical Examiner finds Caitlin’s body “pulverized,” suffering multiple injuries while falling 24 floors. The report notes multiple skull fractures, a deep gaping laceration on the back of her head exposing cranial content, cuts and bruises to her face and neck, a badly broken nose, internal organs sliced, and a severed foot. Caitlyn also suffered an 11-inch laceration on her torso and the coroner made note of a 12-by-10-inch area of intense Black and Brown abrasions on her back. Raising even more questions, cocaine and an erectile dysfunction drug, tadalafil are found in Caitlin's system.
Joining Nancy Grace today:
- Philip Dubé - Former Court-Appointed Counsel, Los Angeles County Public Defenders: Criminal & Constitutional Law, Forensics & Mental Health Advocacy; X: PhilipCDube, IG: PhilipDube, YouTube: PhilipDube3922
- Dr. Cheryl Arutt - Licensed Clinical and Forensic Psychologist Specializing in Trauma Recovery, PTSD and EMDR; IG: @askdrcheryl
- Jon Buehler - Former Detective for Modesto Police Department, California; Detective in Scott Peterson Investigation
- Dr. Thomas Coyne - Chief Medical Examiner, District 2 Medical Examiner's Office, State of Florida; Forensic Pathologist, Neuropathologist, Toxicologist; X: @DrTMCoyne
- Harriet Alexander - Senior Features Writer at DailyMail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
A neighbor finds a gorgeous young wife, Caitlin, just thirty six, pulverized.
That's the medical examiner's words.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Not mine.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Pulverized in the stairwell of a tax lawyer. Her foot
gone missing. Now, how do you lose your foot in
a fall down the stairs? I'm curious. I'm Nancy Grace,
and this is Crime Stories. I want to thank you
for being with us.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
From the outside, Caitlyn Tracy and Adam Beckering appeared to
be a typical couple from Chicago, navigating the ups and
downs of dating before eventually tying the knot. But beneath
the surface, a dark and troubling reality was unfolding.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
It is excruciating hearing her nine to one one call.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
What is the truth?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
How did Caitlin sustain so many injuries going.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Down that stairwell?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
And how did she lose a foot in the process.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I want you to hear this. Just talk, please, please,
we just talk before you we are Can.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
We just talk right here?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Just talk right here.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
Hold on, people, seriously, hold on.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Wait that is from a prior incident.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
They just love how police and yeah, I'm talking about
you John Bueler, former Detective Modesto, PD refer to an
outright attack as an incident that was a prior incident.
And you saw that body cam footage from our friends
ABC seven Chicago.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
You know, Bueller.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Interesting did you hear him as they've got him down
on the ground saying get out of my house?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
You know what?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I'm surprised the cops didn't give him a little spanking
for that.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
And then he goes on and he.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Says, baby, baby, help me to Caitlin like she's gonna
call the whole thing off, and this, can't we just talk?
Can't we talk about this? The time for talking was past, Bueller.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And I'm leading to if he would carry on like.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
That with the police, what would he do behind closed
doors with Caitlin.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
Well, there's many things that he probably did but between
or behind closed doors that will never know about because
the incidents that they do have recorded and that they
have documented in police reports are probably the tip of
the iceberg. There are many calls that probably were never made.
There were excuses that she made for things that happened,
and maybe bruises that people saw and she didn't want
to reveal anything, but He's a typical narcissistic, violent guy
(03:21):
that cops to deal with all the time. He's probably
a smooth talker at a point. He might have been
under the influence at this time. But this is where
the body cameras are really great because it does keep
the cops in line because guys like this are frustrating.
You certainly want to give some extra tune up, but
you can't legally and ethically. So it worked out good
that they took him in custody, but unfortunately she was
(03:41):
willing to go.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Back to him.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
She went back to him, and I'm sad to say
that there were greatly, greatly reduced charges, which seems to
be the way doctor Cheryl Eric joining usnowned clinical forensic
psychologists specializing in traumat recovery. You just heard former detective
(04:03):
soopd say that he the tax lawyer in a very
prominent law firm in Chicago. How they couldn't see behind
his facade, I don't know. But you heard Bueller state
he was a smooth talker, and Bueller is right. Did
(04:25):
you hear him trying to make hail Mary say there
at the end.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Hey baby baby, can we just talk about this? Did
you hear that.
Speaker 7 (04:33):
I did hear that, And it is not uncommon for
abusers to have a false self that they show to
everybody else. And then as you're saying, behind closed doors,
everything all bets are off. This is about a cycle
that is designed to have coercive control over her, and
(04:54):
so he will do things to get his way into
control her. And this is really an example of of
how domestic violence can happen even to beautiful, successful.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Smart women.
Speaker 7 (05:06):
And you know, some people may wonder why does somebody stay,
But I think it's really important to understand she did
do the right thing. She reported, She called the police,
She told people what was happening. And the most dangerous
time in domestic violence is when the victim tries to
leave the abuser, because that is the moment when he
(05:27):
feels he's losing control of her. And so you know,
this is this is something that it often takes multiple
times to get out of a situation, but the most
lethal time is when she tries to leave. And there's
also a really big red flag in this case that
I wish more people were aware of when it comes
to domestic violence, and that is past incidents of non
(05:49):
lethal strangulation. When an abuser has grabbed a woman by
the neck during a past attack, he is seven hundred
and fifty times more likely to kill her in the
next year.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Repay that police. That's a new statistic to me.
Speaker 7 (06:05):
If an abuser has ever grabbed his victim by the
neck and used strangulation, which is empower and control tactic
to control her breathing, he is seven hundred and fifty
times more likely to commit homicide against that woman within
the year. And actually, if he has access to firearms firearms,
(06:26):
that's justistic goes to above one thousand percent.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Joining us is doctor Cheryl Eric Guys, I want you
to imagine. Look, I'm going to show you some more bodycam,
but I want you to imagine if he will do
this in front of police and talk to them this way,
what will he do with Caitlin behind closed doors for twenty.
Speaker 8 (06:53):
Five Wait a wauite wait wait wait wait wait wait
wait before wait course, seriously, you can't search me?
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Do you get our search me?
Speaker 9 (07:09):
That's illegal.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
That's a.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
That's an illegal search. You know what is that's an
legal search?
Speaker 10 (07:16):
Get off me?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Get off me?
Speaker 8 (07:20):
You know that's illegal.
Speaker 11 (07:22):
Let go my hands for what.
Speaker 8 (07:30):
Please let me talk to you over your pocket.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Oh the yelling, screaming, the snotting, and in that vein.
Let me go straight out to veteran trial lawyer joining us,
Philip Debay, l a County Public Defender's office with an
extensive history of trying cases.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Debay, thank you for being with us. Now.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Hobby that we're seeing is a lawyer and he is
a very well respected lawyer and a big law firm.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I believe he was a partner in the law firm.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
They can see through his facade and apparently he needs
to go back to researching tax documents because that's not
the law. You can absolutely search someone pursue it to
a lawful arrest.
Speaker 12 (08:24):
Yeah, of course you can.
Speaker 13 (08:26):
And he was under arrest or a domestic violence and
you don't even need a warrant for it. If there
is a call for help in a domestic violence situation,
they can just take you in and search you an
incident to that arrest. That includes your pockets, your hands.
They can patch you down. If you have any containers
like a briefcase or a tope bag, yes, they can
(08:47):
sort of rifle through that as well, just to make
sure you're not packing any weapons or have any sharp objects.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Hey, dB, check out those biceps.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I wonder what a right hook would feel like one
from one of those guns. Check out those biceps on
this guy. He's no stranger to the gym. Oh my goodness,
he's still slinging his body around in the back seat. Hey, debate,
you ever been in the back seat of a cruiser.
They're disgusting because people like this POC technical legal term.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
They vomit back there. They defecate on purpose.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
They urinate, they spit, They do it all in the
back seat of these guys cruiser. I mean, at APD
you just pull up behind the station and there were
hoses back there. Just open the cruiser door and start
hosing out. I mean, can you imagine hosing out in
(09:47):
the back seat of what your Porsche or Mercedes, I
don't know, hose out the cruiser like it was a
garage because the people like Kim Can I see that again,
him twisting himself around, throwing himself, spitting, snotting, screaming, Yeah,
good times.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
What about that debate?
Speaker 13 (10:08):
Well, the main reason why they hose it down is
to make sure that suspects from subsequent arrests are not
tied to any DNA or any other trace evidence from
a prior suspect. So you want to make sure that
the car is completely antiseptic and you're not bought up.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Namely one time, one one case where DNA was taken
out of the back seat of a police cruiser and
used in court.
Speaker 13 (10:42):
Not DNA, but dope. Dope was found between the seats,
and he just said DNA.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Did he not just say DNA? He said DNA?
Speaker 10 (10:50):
All right?
Speaker 12 (10:50):
Any evidence used against a client.
Speaker 13 (10:53):
They found METS stuff between the cushions in the back
of a squad car. They tried to introduce it against
a client of mine, but I was able to get
all the call logs from the previous arrest in that
car and show that.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Right, Hey, what is Mike? Go is Mike?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
This is not a debate infomercial, Okay about how you
saved You're math client. So never has anyone you know,
I'm going a bueler on that. Did you see the
way this guy is carrying on belligerate aggressive, kicking out
at the police, struggling with them, threatening them, and then
he gets in the backseat of the cruiser and almost
(11:31):
cannot be contained. Now, can you school debate of why
you have to hose out in the back of your
cruiser after.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Putting this tax lawyer back there.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
Well, we did that because guys would vomit in there.
Maybe they were defecating or they urinated back there, and
you don't want to introduce somebody that maybe doesn't need
to belong in that situation that you know, maybe a
drunk driver that's a regular member of the society. You
don't want to expose them to that stuff. So we'd
post things out like that. Now, he does have a
little bit of a point on cross contamination and if it.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Was nice, criminal defendants should not have to sit in
a pile of this guy's poop. Hey, speaking of poop,
that reminds me, isn't it true? And I hate this
to be your very first question straight out to Harriet Alexander,
the senior features writer Dailymail dot Com.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Which is awesome, Harriet.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Isn't it true that on one occasion, this guy, this
tax lawyer, had to go I guess and give blood.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Samples or check in as part of being out on bond.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
There he is in his suit and tie at some
clinic and he there's no nice way to say it
he crapped the floor on purpose. This is true. It
has This is absolutely true.
Speaker 9 (12:49):
It happened. It happened.
Speaker 14 (12:51):
So this was when he was he was facing charges
for domestic violence and he was a he was required
to appear multiple times for bond hearings, and he had
quite a long track.
Speaker 9 (13:06):
Record of misbehaving. We could say in.
Speaker 14 (13:09):
Those in those incidences, one of those, as you say,
one of those, as you.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Say, was misbehaving my objection, my rear end, misbehaving the
woman she's found at the foot of him, his the
law partner in the tax division stairwell without a foot.
All of these incidents are not misbehaving. You're pushing me
(13:39):
right over the edge, Harriot.
Speaker 15 (13:43):
And interestingly, you were, you know, you were talking about
his his arrogance and in that arrest right in that
that video and the fact that he has away with
words that he's he's trying to convince the officers saying
you can't do.
Speaker 9 (13:57):
This to me.
Speaker 14 (13:58):
Well, it's interesting because actually he has four with that too. Previously,
she tried to get a restraining order against him.
Speaker 16 (14:07):
She went through all of the documentation, but he pushed
back on it.
Speaker 9 (14:11):
He threatened her with defamation and so she dropped it.
So actually there was never a restraining order taken out
against him.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Did you say he had form?
Speaker 14 (14:22):
Yes, yes, absolutely absolutely in terms of four the Brits
car at form.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Did the Brits carl having a rap sheet? That's what
we say here? Do they call that form?
Speaker 14 (14:35):
Well, I wouldn't know what the technical term is for
weaseling your way out of a charge, for pressuring someone
to drop the charges, but certainly he's he's got previous
on this.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Guys, I want to look back one more time at
the video we just showed you where he tries to
throw around legal.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Theories this is an illeg arrest, and then when.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
That doesn't work, he tries to get his wife back.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Please let me talk to you. Let me talk to you.
Maybe maybe listen what you're talking about it plea.
Speaker 8 (15:13):
Wait wait wait wait wait wait, seriously, I listen to me.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
You can't search me? Do you get our search me?
Speaker 5 (15:28):
That's illegal, that's all search. That's an illegal search. You
know what this is, that's an legal search. Get off me,
tell me, get off me.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
You know that's illegal.
Speaker 11 (15:41):
Let go my hands for what.
Speaker 16 (15:48):
You?
Speaker 5 (15:49):
Please let me talk to you over.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Your podcast I guess legal arrests and illegal arrests are
not covered in the tax code. Guys, there's more. There's more,
and I haven't even gotten to the state of Taitlin's body.
I'm gonna have to bring in a medical examiner, doctor
coin for that.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Listen to this.
Speaker 5 (16:06):
Yeah, we just.
Speaker 11 (16:09):
No, Adam, you're under arrest, Okay, like I told you,
you have a felony warrant already from a previous incident here. Okay,
there's not there is and I know about it. I
don't know why I just hold her?
Speaker 4 (16:21):
No?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Why does she not like him?
Speaker 16 (16:22):
Out?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You're under arrest in the vae.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Right, But I'm not sure if the control room misplayed something.
But back to Harriet Alexander, senior features writer, dailymail dot Com.
Did I just hear him say, can I just hold her?
I want to give her a r egg?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
What right?
Speaker 9 (16:42):
Right?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
I mean again?
Speaker 14 (16:44):
I think it just shows that the brazen arrogance of
this man, that he thinks that she would.
Speaker 9 (16:49):
Want to be held by him after.
Speaker 14 (16:52):
The police are called for the domestic violence. It shows
that he thinks that he is above the law, that
he's very confident, and that he feels that he can
work his way around this.
Speaker 9 (17:03):
I mean, as he has done in the past.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace, doctor Cheryl Eric with us.
I want to hold her. I just want to give
her a hug. I'm starting to think No, no, I almost.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Said he's bipolar.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
He's not by polar This is just another one of
his tactics, because abusers have so many tactics to keep
getting away with it. I'm sure his a law for
law firm, huge firm. Dwayne Morris is so proud tonight.
So I don't think he's bipolar, because how could he
(17:53):
pull off being a veteran tax attorney and fighting his
way out major is that fighting his way up to being.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
A partner in a huge law firm.
Speaker 7 (18:07):
He likes to be in control. He cannot handle it
when he doesn't have the upper hand. And what you're
seeing with a fighting with the police officers and with
everything else and him trying to give them orders, is
him needing to try to maintain this sense of having
the upper hand. As far as wanting to hold her,
She's not human to him. He's not thinking about her feelings.
(18:30):
She's an object for him to control and possess. This
is my wife, I want to hug from her. I
want to act like everything is fine, you will do
what I say. That's where he's coming from. All of
this is about power and control.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's all about vs D. Doctor Gerrett. Can I tell
you where Dwayne Mars has offices? Wait for Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore,
Boca Ratone, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Hanoi, she Men City, Houston, Vegas, London,
Los Angeles, Miami, memr New York, Jersey, Philly, Pittsburgh, San Diego,
(19:10):
San Francisco, Shanghai, Silicon Valley, South Jersey, Sydney, Singapore.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
DC, and Wilmington. And he's a partner.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So what I'm saying the reason I told you that,
doctor Cheryl is because he had a facade like no other.
That from redfin is their half a million dollar penthouse,
a luxury apartment. They also had a beautiful home on
(19:39):
Lake Michigan, and there they built this seemingly perfect life together.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
So I don't.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Understand why rich people can't be happy their rent is paid.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Look at the sports cars, the luxury cars.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Here is the one home. I guess that's the one
on Lake Michigan. Beautiful and they're dragging it kind of
mars the picture of him being dragged out by the
cops on the right. But I don't get why rich
people with all their sports cars and their luxury high
rise looking out, you know, on the lake, and why
(20:17):
can't they be happy? And how did he fool so
many people? Hey, doctor Cheryl. When I volunteered for nine
years at the Better Women's Center on the hotline, there
was a mayor's wife that called in routinely after abuse.
(20:38):
She never went public, she never reported it. But it
reminds me of this because he had to fool all
those law partners in all of those offices all around
the world.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
How do you do it?
Speaker 7 (20:52):
It's such a waste, isn't it, Because it could be
such a beautiful life success and you know, power and
luxury and all of these things. But mental health and
wealth are not necessarily correlated. And unfortunately we can see
this kind of violence and abuse and splitting an inability
(21:12):
to be able to enjoy and have a productive life
even when you have all these other strengths. We see
this in all communities, including the very wealthy, and including
people who seem to have it all.
Speaker 11 (21:23):
Yeah, wese, just go on hold lesage. No, Adam, you're
under arrest. Okay, like I told you, you have a
felony warrant already from a previous incident here. Okay, there's
not there is I know about it. I don't know
why I just hold her to before? Why does she
not like them?
Speaker 17 (21:39):
Out?
Speaker 11 (21:40):
You're arrest in the vaca of ours no Haylen.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Tracy believed she had found her soulmate, but their marriage
soon turned into a nightmare. As domestic violence shattered their relationship.
Kaitlyn filed for a protection order.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Caitlin found quote pulverized at the bottom stairwell of a
prominent tax attorney in a world wide law firm. How
he fooled them for all those years? I don't know,
I mean, Debay, I know that you like I was,
(22:15):
as a prosecutor more of a freelance gunslinger. You know,
you take on a case, you give it all you've got,
and then you move on to the next case. Unlike
working at a law firm, which I would find excruciating,
the billable hours, the sucking up. Uh could you explain
to viewers or listeners that don't know how hard it
(22:38):
is to make partner at one of these giant firms.
I mean they're working literally one hundred hour weeks sometimes
to get all the way up to partner. When they
get there, it's a lot of handshaking, smiling and socializing.
But that said, you know, rain making, but getting there
is really hard to bey.
Speaker 13 (22:58):
And as competitive as the problem because all the associate
attorneys all aspire to partnership, and the partner track is very,
very difficult to achieve. First of all, you are required,
usually not always, to build a minimum of nineteen hundred
or two thousand working hours per year, and when you
do the match sometimes it could come out to between
(23:21):
forty five and fifty hours a week just to keep
your job. And if you want to make a little more,
you have to build above and beyond that. And certainly
if you want to get on the partner track, you're
going to have to build maybe one and a half
times that amount. And by the time you get all
that in and the client has been built all that money,
you're so physically exhausted you don't even want partnership anymore.
Speaker 12 (23:43):
You just want a vacation. It's a very tough gig, and.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Frankly, well, I think you're speaking for yourself. I would
never have liked that, because I like going out on
the street. I liked investigating. I did not want to
be in office for all those hours for the rest
of my life life. But some people love it, and
thank Heaven, they do because they find their niche. I
(24:08):
just don't understand how he can fake out so many people.
It's hard to reconcile the guy in the law firm
photos with the designer suit and silk tie compared to
all the mugshots. And he may wonder where did all
those mugshots come from.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Well, listen, they.
Speaker 17 (24:26):
Were down our small little grocery store down the street,
and she said, I have no idea what I said,
but I must have said something that upset him.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
They got home and.
Speaker 17 (24:37):
He was mad, and he was angry, and she said,
I let him know that I'm walking the doors and
I'm not letting you in until you can take a
deep breath.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Straight out to former homicide detective who shot to the
consciousness of the public during the Scott Peterson case, Jean Buehler,
By the way, that sound you just hears from our
friends at Fox thirty to Chicago, was it you that
told me that right after Peterson found out that Lacy's
(25:11):
DNA matched the body when it washed up on San
Francisco Bay Beach. That that DNA in the DNA of
a little baby was absolutely Lacey and Connor. And within
a few moments he said he wanted an in and out?
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Was it in and out?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
And he wanted a double double with cheese, fries and
some special drink.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Did you tell me that?
Speaker 6 (25:36):
Yeah, that was a while back, and told it a
few times. Ten minutes later maybe, I don't know, maybe
fifteen minutes later. Then the control that he had a
lot of similarities between this attorney from Chicago, very controlled.
Used to get in his own way, Scott hit it
a lot better than this guy did.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
But yeah, he brushed off.
Speaker 6 (25:54):
The confirmation that his wife and his child were dead,
and then he was ready to eat a burger and
a fry and nilla shake. So it kind of shows
with this guy from Chicago. It kind of falls in
line with what Shakespeare wrote Macbeth for this kind of attorney.
The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
This is what he was writing about.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
You know another fast of that. And of course, Buehler,
I know that you're not a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Neither am I.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
But Peterson just got told a few moments before.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Ten minutes or less, we.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Got to break it to Peterson that the body that
was to shore, the two bodies are definitively your wife
Lacey and your son Connor.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Within ten minutes, he had his order up here. He
wanted a double double cheese, a fry, and of a
Neil mil shake. He just blurted it out like nothing
had just happened.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
Yeah, it was one of those things where we were
obviously convinced well before that day that he had killed
Lacy and Connor, and so we weren't really expecting much.
We wanted to analyze his reaction, but really confirmed for
us what he was all about, because when you can
contrast his reaction to that with the interviews that he
had done and he was faking the tears that he
(27:09):
was waiting for the child to come home. He kept
the nursery in good shape, but of course he had
the porn channel going at the house, and he sold
Lacey's car, and he was talking about selling the house,
and it fit in line with what he was really
all about. And I think that's what's the same thing
you have with this guy. This guy, this attorney from Chicago.
I don't even want to mention his name. He just
wasn't as controlled as Scott was probably equally as charming
(27:30):
in the right circumstance. But he can see in the
videos that you're showing and all the stuff that he
was doing when he loses control, when he doesn't have
control over the situation, he pretty much freaks out in
this and that's where the problem came in for our
victim on this. It just was terrible for her to
put up with this. But nice people mixing up with evil.
(27:52):
Nice people make excuses for evil, and sometimes it ends poorly,
like I did hear.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
You Know what I noticed, doctor Sheryl Eric, doctor Eric,
clinical forensic psychologist specializing in trauma recovery, is when the neighbor,
her name is Joyce Lance, that's the Michigan neighbor, stated
that she heard the victim state I must have said
(28:17):
something that upset him. And I found that to be universe,
almost universal, that the female victim always thinks she did
something to cause the beating, which is entirely bad backwards.
Speaker 7 (28:35):
Exactly exactly, and she says this because the abusers over
and over again, say you made me do this, You
made me mad. If you hadn't done this, if you
had only done that, And a lot of the time,
these nice people who mix with evil, as your previous
guest was saying, stay a long time because they overestimate
(28:58):
how much they can be helpful and make everything nice.
They believe that somehow, if they can be different or
not upset the batterer or do everything exactly right, that
they can make things be peaceful, and they can make
the guy be the sweet, charming guy that they initially met,
who they thought he really was, And so they take
(29:19):
on responsibility. When they're not responsible for any of the
violence that the batterer does, that's on them.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
We are hearing the neighbor describe how the couple was
at a little grocery store down the street and the victim, Caitlin,
was saying, I don't know what I did to upset him,
and she said that I let him know I'm locking
the doors and not letting him in until he can
take a deep breath.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
She locked the doors that day, but it didn't work.
Speaker 17 (29:50):
Apparently, then he went around to the sunroom in the
back of the house, and came in. She tried to
run and get away from him, and she describes hiding
underneath the dining room table. She described him pulling her
out by her hair. She described at some point during
all of this, grabbing her phone and calling nine to
(30:11):
one one.
Speaker 18 (30:12):
She said, I don't know if there's anything here because
he's a strain one.
Speaker 15 (30:17):
That's what he does.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
From our friends Fox thirty to Chicago, Debay, a beautiful
woman who vaulted to the top of her field, has
to hide under the dining room table after she thinks
she locked.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
All the doors. She gets through the sunroom.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
And this is not even the incident where she's thrown
for she's found at the bottom of a stairwheel, missing
a foot and pulverized.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
This is a prior incident. How is there any way?
Speaker 2 (30:46):
And I believe that there is if this case ever
goes to trial, that these prior incidents can come into
evans because this neighbor is recounting what Caitlin told her.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Kate Ln is dead now, Yeah.
Speaker 13 (31:02):
The judge can let it in to prove something other
than his bad character. So for example, the intent to
do evil, the intent to harm, to show that he
has an excuse for everything. You just offer it for
some non character purpose, and it's all going to come in.
Not to mention that most states, including California, and I'm
sure that Illinois is in accord, they have a special
(31:25):
statute in their rules of evidence that specifically allow for
prior incidents of domestic violence to come in, not so
much to show propensity, but to show a pattern of
behavior in the abuser. So the law allows for them
the real task.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Of course, dubay Is does a similar transaction. It doesn't
necessarily have to be a fingerprint crime, but does it
tend to prove the case in chief, whether showing course
of conduct, motive, frame of mind, scheme plan, And in this.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Case it did.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
And it breaks my heart to think she was running
around locking all the doors and he's snuck.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
In through the sunroom.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
And you know, doctor Cheryl, you mentioned some stats on
when strangulation was used as a method to method to
some do the female victim that it's seven hundred and
fifty times more likely that a homicide will occur.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Well, you just.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Heard another neighbor, Bunny Coiner, state that she Caitlin, the victim,
said he's a strangler that's what he does. And the
neighbor gestured to her neck.
Speaker 7 (32:35):
Yeah, it's tragic, and the correlation is so high. I mean,
in the continuum of domestic violence risk, when somebody stops
you from breathing and stops the blood float to your brain,
you can lose consciousness within ten seconds and you can
die within a few minutes. And the unconsciousness to deathline
(32:56):
is so small, that is that it is the most
dangerous thing before death and a homicide in terms of
this risk. And the stats really are mind blowing, they
really are. And I just hope that people who know
of anyone who is in this situation, if there has
been even non lethal strangulation, which doesn't even necessarily show
(33:17):
a mark. Sometimes you'll see marks on the perpetrator because
someone's fighting, like hell, they get their hands off their
own neck. But if that has happened, the risk of
homicide following that is so high that it's very important
that people know how very dangerous this is.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
She said, I don't know.
Speaker 18 (33:35):
If there's anything here, because he's a strong way, that's
what he.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Does, Fox serty to say Chicaga under duress.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Caitlin dropped the protection order after being threatened months later,
as she made a desperate nine one one call accusing
her husband of assault and theft. Police arrived to find
a visible injuries on Caitlyn, leading to Beckering's arrest, but
then Gitlin mysteriously vanish.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Many of the couple's neighbors knew.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Has this been in articles? There was trouble in Paradise. Boy,
that's putting it mildly. It's been called incidents, has been
called misunderstandings. It's called a domestic which brings up warm,
fuzzy I you know images, you know Christmas card with
the family all around the fireplace. Domestic It is anything,
(34:27):
but it is bloody and brutal, and this is where
it's landed us.
Speaker 19 (34:33):
A resident at Grant luxury condos stop short when they
see a severed human foot at the bottom of the
second floor stairwell that looks too real to be a
Halloween decoration. Their doorman calls nine to one one in
a panic after discovering the rest of a woman's body
three floors up. Investigators swarmed the high rise and determine
the victim fell at least twenty stories.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Harry and Alexander, we'd been told twenty four stories. How
do you fall down twenty four stories?
Speaker 1 (35:05):
And what about her foot?
Speaker 9 (35:08):
Gone, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 14 (35:11):
So prosecutors are saying that she was actually pushed or thrown.
Speaker 9 (35:16):
Twenty four stories from his apartment.
Speaker 14 (35:20):
The body, as you said, was described as being pulverized,
so it took some time for the autopsy to be done,
and given the height of the fall, that would be
how the foot would be severed.
Speaker 9 (35:33):
But you're right it it's pretty grim.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Indeed, Well, I'm still confused about how your foot is
severed during a fall downstairs. So I guess we're going
to have to go to our medical examiner. But first
I want doctor Coyne to hear this.
Speaker 10 (35:47):
Caitlin's body pulverized while falling twenty four floors, multiple skull fractures,
a deep gaping laceration on the back of her head
exposing cranial content, cuts and bruises to her face and neck,
badly broken nose, internal organ sliced, and a severed foot.
Caitlin also suffered an eleven inch laceration on her torso
(36:08):
and the corner made note of a twelve x ten
inch area of intense black and brown abrasions on her back, I.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Don't understand the layout of how she could fall twenty
four flies. That said straight out to a renowned medical examiner,
Doctor Thomas Coin is joining US Chief Medical Examiner District
of the Medical Examiner's Office in Florida. Forensic pathologist, toxicologist,
and neuro pathologist Dodger Coin, thank you for being with us.
(36:38):
Can you make headge of tails out of what we're learning?
The medical examiner there said, yeah, sure.
Speaker 20 (36:44):
We often think when we think of a person who
falls from a building or a high height, we think
we'll be seeing a movie right where a body lands,
maybe crashing on the roof of a car or on
a sidewalk. The body is intact, with the blood slowly
trickling out of the head air. But in reality, when
a body strikes a ground from a high rise fall
(37:04):
let's say twenty plus stories, the impact is so forceful
due to the sudden infantaneous deceleration that it tears the
body apart. So you will have tearing of the skin,
fracturing of the bone. As a bone fracture, they can
further tear through skin, and so more often than not,
the body will not be intact. You'll have appendages, or
(37:28):
even internal organs that have been thrown from the body
and are found yards away. I've had whole brains that
have completely come out of the head and have been
found more than ten yards away from the body after impact.
So it's very common, more common to actually have a
body not be intact after an impact of that height.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Gotch a coin. I want to understand something.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
We have been told she was found at the bottom
of a stairwell. We've also been told she fell twenty
four stories. When you think of someone at the bottom
of a stairwell, you think they've come down the stairs.
So she would have had to go down one set
(38:13):
of stairs, then a landing, then another set of stairs,
then a landing. Under the building code, you cannot have
twenty four stories of steps going straight down. There has
to be a landing every twenty thirty steps.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
There has to be under the wall fell down, So yeah, okay,
what's your serious?
Speaker 20 (38:35):
When you walk down the stairwells of a large building,
you can peer over the railing and you see that
there's that drop all the way down in between the
stairs as the stairs are winding around going downward. My
assumption is that she was pushed over the railing and
then fell down in between those stairs all the way
down those twenty four flights, because that's the only way
(38:56):
it can describe injuries that are catastrophic such that they
could be just that's pulverized as she fell down each
individual stairwell. She wouldn't have such severe injuries. She would
have injuries, of course, but not that severe.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Harriet Alexander, senior features writer delimail dot Com. Does that
make sense coins analysis?
Speaker 9 (39:31):
Yeah, absolutely, in that you know, if she's.
Speaker 14 (39:33):
Falling staircase by staircase by staircase, her fall is being slowed,
so it's not going to be catastrophic, and then you'd
have someone presumably pushing her rolling her down the stairs.
Speaker 16 (39:46):
Whereas, if you think about it, if she is pushed
tipped over the gap essentially the hole that is in
this in the middle of the stairwell, then she could
plummet straight down.
Speaker 9 (39:59):
So it's the same as if you topple over.
Speaker 14 (40:01):
A balcony and you land on the ground beneath on
the building.
Speaker 9 (40:06):
You are going pretty much straight down. But back to your.
Speaker 14 (40:09):
Point as to how the foot could have been severed,
You know the body doesn't necessarily drop exactly like a stone.
Speaker 9 (40:16):
It could be zig.
Speaker 14 (40:17):
Zagging around somewhat in this free fall, and that could
certainly contribute to the injuries, because if you're falling at speed,
you could be bashing into the metal, into the stairway,
into the concrete, into the railings of the stairs, and
that could have caused some.
Speaker 9 (40:32):
Of the injuries as well as she.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Fell two from a homicide Detective John Buehler.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
In big high rises like that, you.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Have a trash shoot, and you don't go down to
the bottom floor to leave your trash on the curb.
You put it down a shoot and goes all the
way down. You can hear it going all the way down.
It's as if, allegedly he pushed her over the edge,
like you would just throw trash on the trash sheet
(41:02):
and that's it.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
She's gone. Yeah, that's kind of the way I read it.
Speaker 6 (41:06):
You know, the forensic pathologists, I think nailed it pretty
good architecturally that you got the stairs going around what
essentially would be almost like an elevator shaft, and so
it seems like he might have pushed her over the
railing and she went down in between the stairs all
the way down, possibly bouncing off a couple of them
on the way down, counting for the injuries. But when
you describe the injuries, Nancy, I'm wondering how many of
those that this piece of crap gave her before he
(41:30):
tossed her over the railing. It seems to me that
might be something of interest. The forensic pathologists may be
able to determine that, possibly, but it just goes along
with the whole thing. The circumstantial evidence on this case
points directly at this guy and no place else. No
indication of attempted suicide or anything like that from Caitlin
before this came about. It just shows that she was
(41:54):
willing to forgive some of the things that he was doing.
And it all fits with doctor Cheryl's take on the
power control old domestic violence wheel. Everything fits into place
on that when it comes to Caitlin and this attorney.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Sidney Sumner with US investigative reporter with Crime Stories, Sydney
was her foot sound that.
Speaker 4 (42:14):
Was actually what was found. First, a resident stumbled across
a foot on the second floor, reported it to a doorman,
who then searched the starewell and stumbled on Caitlin's body
three floors up, so the foot continued to fall after
Caitlyn's body stopped.
Speaker 10 (42:33):
In September twenty twenty three, Caitlin breaks up with becker
Ink after a confrontation at the Ritz Carlton Chicago, when
Beckerink enters Kaitlin's hotel room while she sleeps and assaults her.
But Beckerin continues to call and harassed Kaitlin until she
files in order of protection eight weeks after the breakup,
stating Beckering calls her twenty times a day, calls her
a liar, cheater, whoor piece of excrement. She also documents
(42:56):
repeated assaults, including an attack in August where Beckering quote
lam my head against a cabinet, slap me, punched me,
put my head in a headlock, and dragged me away
from the door, and attempted to sexually abuse me. Caitlin
filed for an emergency protection order against becker Ring just
two months before the first attack.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Crime Stories investigative reporter Sydney s owner with us and
in that attack, not the alleged murder, but in that attack,
isn't it true the defendant tax attorney Beckering got a
sweetheart deal.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
He didn't even plead guilty.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
He pled no lo contender, I don't contest it to
reduce charges of domestic violence.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
And interfering with a nine to one one call. A
lot of other charges were dropped.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
He got ninety three days for that, on which you
probably do maybe twenty.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
Right, he pled no contest, dropping almost all of the
charges against him. So what he pled to was the
January thirteenth attack before their marriage. So where we saw
the body, can he's begging, pleading, don't arrest me, the
cost telling you already have a felony warn out. Why
(44:10):
are you surprised at what's happening right now? That is
the case that he pled guilty to. He did not
or pled no contest to. He did not even cop
to what happened on August sixteenth that we witnessed in
that body.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Can okay, Philip do that you're the veteran defense attorney.
What's your argument if you take this to trial? What
do you do?
Speaker 1 (44:32):
What climate was just a big accident?
Speaker 13 (44:34):
Is causation And this is what I would present to
the jury. First of all, you have a coroner who's
saying that.
Speaker 12 (44:41):
The manner of death is.
Speaker 13 (44:42):
Undetermined, cause of death obviously is traumatic injury to the body.
What I would present is that, in all their emotionality,
exasperation and hysteria, she made a run for it, and
she took to the stairs, and while running down those stairs,
she lost her footing. She fell over the railing into
the well hole to her death. That is a causation argument.
(45:05):
You cannot ascribe her death to being chased by a defendant.
The death has to be at the hands of another
and not due to her losing her footing. That would
be the argument that is called causey.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Did you say losing her footing or losing her foot debay?
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Do you say anybody's really gonna.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Believe she would committed suicide by jumping over a rail
or fail down twenty four flights of steps?
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Are you serious?
Speaker 12 (45:35):
That's serious?
Speaker 13 (45:36):
Because murder is not his mo He doesn't have murder
on his rap sheet. And I'll give you he is
not husband of the year, he's not boyfriend of the year.
Speaker 12 (45:47):
But he did not cause the death.
Speaker 13 (45:49):
And I think they're going to have a hard time
proving that this was in fact a homicide, particularly.
Speaker 12 (45:55):
When the coroner has already found it undetermined.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Well, what about the fact Harry Alexander that he then
reports that she's been missing for a substantial period of
time and police find video of them together, like seventy
two hours before he reports her missing, saying, what, she's
been gone for months or weeks, So why lie about
it if there's nothing the furious going on?
Speaker 16 (46:20):
Right?
Speaker 14 (46:20):
I mean, that's true, Nancy, And I think it goes
to the point that you can have somebody who is
objectively smart. I mean, you don't get to be a
partner in a top law firm without being intelligent.
Speaker 21 (46:32):
And yet on the other hand, you know, we do
things that are really very stupid, like the fact that
he claimed that he hadn't seen her for a while,
that she had been missing for months, and yet there's
surveillance footage of them together.
Speaker 9 (46:46):
In that actual apartment three days before.
Speaker 14 (46:49):
So you know, that rapidly unravels, and it really doesn't
help his case because a jury is going to look
at that and think you can't be trusted.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
And even to the her and he flies with her
family over what's left her remains.
Speaker 22 (47:06):
We can't imagine why he would want to keep Caitlin
away from her family. Even now, we will continue to
fight until Caitlin is laid to rest, surrounded by family
who loved and supported her.
Speaker 19 (47:18):
Without proof of involvement in Caitlyn's death, Beckerink is released
and wants custody of her remains, but her parents file
a motion to prevent their daughter from again coming under
her accused abuser's control. Doctor Monica and Andrew Tracy cite
the accusations in Caitlin's order of protection.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
And the domestic violence case against.
Speaker 19 (47:37):
Beckerink as reasons her remain should be released to them,
not her husband of just six months. After a heated
legal battle, a judge agrees with the Tracys, allowing them
to lay Caitlin to rest.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
From ABC seven Chicago as we go to air tonight,
the husband in this case, Adam Beckernk, is presumed innocent.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
In the death of his young wife, Caitlin.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
If you know or think you know anything about this case,
even if you think it's inconsequential, please dial three one
two seven four six six thousand, repeat three one two
seven four six six thousand.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
And if you or someone you know is.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
A victim of domestic violence, please dial toll free eight
hundred seven ninety nine, Safe Safe eight hundred seven nine
nine seven two three three Nancy Gray signing off Goodbye Friend,
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
A neighbor finds a gorgeous young wife, Caitlin, just thirty six, pulverized.
That's the medical examiner's words.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Not mine.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Pulverized in the stairwell of a tax lawyer. Her foot
gone missing. Now, how do you lose your foot in
a fall down the stairs? I'm curious. I'm Nancy Grace,
and this is Crime Stories. I want to thank you
for being with us.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
From the outside, Caitlyn Tracy and Adam Beckering appeared to
be a typical couple from Chicago, navigating the ups and
downs of dating before eventually tying the knot. But beneath
the surface, a dark and troubling reality was unfolding.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
It is excruciating hearing her nine to one one call.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
What is the truth?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
How did Caitlin sustain so many injuries going.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Down that stairwell?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
And how did she lose a foot in the process.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I want you to hear this. Just talk, please, please,
we just talk before you we are Can.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
We just talk right here?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Just talk right here.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
Hold on, people, seriously, hold on.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Wait that is from a prior incident.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
They just love how police and yeah, I'm talking about
you John Bueler, former Detective Modesto, PD refer to an
outright attack as an incident that was a prior incident.
And you saw that body cam footage from our friends
ABC seven Chicago.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
You know, Bueller.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Interesting did you hear him as they've got him down
on the ground saying get out of my house?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
You know what?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I'm surprised the cops didn't give him a little spanking
for that.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
And then he goes on and he.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Says, baby, baby, help me to Caitlin like she's gonna
call the whole thing off, and this, can't we just talk?
Can't we talk about this? The time for talking was past, Bueller.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And I'm leading to if he would carry on like.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
That with the police, what would he do behind closed
doors with Caitlin.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
Well, there's many things that he probably did but between
or behind closed doors that will never know about because
the incidents that they do have recorded and that they
have documented in police reports are probably the tip of
the iceberg. There are many calls that probably were never made.
There were excuses that she made for things that happened,
and maybe bruises that people saw and she didn't want
to reveal anything, but He's a typical narcissistic, violent guy
(03:21):
that cops to deal with all the time. He's probably
a smooth talker at a point. He might have been
under the influence at this time. But this is where
the body cameras are really great because it does keep
the cops in line because guys like this are frustrating.
You certainly want to give some extra tune up, but
you can't legally and ethically. So it worked out good
that they took him in custody, but unfortunately she was
(03:41):
willing to go.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Back to him.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
She went back to him, and I'm sad to say
that there were greatly, greatly reduced charges, which seems to
be the way doctor Cheryl Eric joining usnowned clinical forensic
psychologists specializing in traumat recovery. You just heard former detective
(04:03):
soopd say that he the tax lawyer in a very
prominent law firm in Chicago. How they couldn't see behind
his facade, I don't know. But you heard Bueller state
he was a smooth talker, and Bueller is right. Did
(04:25):
you hear him trying to make hail Mary say there
at the end.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Hey baby baby, can we just talk about this? Did
you hear that.
Speaker 7 (04:33):
I did hear that, And it is not uncommon for
abusers to have a false self that they show to
everybody else. And then as you're saying, behind closed doors,
everything all bets are off. This is about a cycle
that is designed to have coercive control over her, and
(04:54):
so he will do things to get his way into
control her. And this is really an example of of
how domestic violence can happen even to beautiful, successful.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Smart women.
Speaker 7 (05:06):
And you know, some people may wonder why does somebody stay,
But I think it's really important to understand she did
do the right thing. She reported, She called the police,
She told people what was happening. And the most dangerous
time in domestic violence is when the victim tries to
leave the abuser, because that is the moment when he
(05:27):
feels he's losing control of her. And so you know,
this is this is something that it often takes multiple
times to get out of a situation, but the most
lethal time is when she tries to leave. And there's
also a really big red flag in this case that
I wish more people were aware of when it comes
to domestic violence, and that is past incidents of non
(05:49):
lethal strangulation. When an abuser has grabbed a woman by
the neck during a past attack, he is seven hundred
and fifty times more likely to kill her in the
next year.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Repay that police. That's a new statistic to me.
Speaker 7 (06:05):
If an abuser has ever grabbed his victim by the
neck and used strangulation, which is empower and control tactic
to control her breathing, he is seven hundred and fifty
times more likely to commit homicide against that woman within
the year. And actually, if he has access to firearms firearms,
(06:26):
that's justistic goes to above one thousand percent.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Joining us is doctor Cheryl Eric Guys, I want you
to imagine. Look, I'm going to show you some more bodycam,
but I want you to imagine if he will do
this in front of police and talk to them this way,
what will he do with Caitlin behind closed doors for twenty.
Speaker 8 (06:53):
Five Wait a wauite wait wait wait wait wait wait
wait before wait course, seriously, you can't search me?
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Do you get our search me?
Speaker 9 (07:09):
That's illegal.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
That's a.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
That's an illegal search. You know what is that's an
legal search?
Speaker 10 (07:16):
Get off me?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Get off me?
Speaker 8 (07:20):
You know that's illegal.
Speaker 11 (07:22):
Let go my hands for what.
Speaker 8 (07:30):
Please let me talk to you over your pocket.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Oh the yelling, screaming, the snotting, and in that vein.
Let me go straight out to veteran trial lawyer joining us,
Philip Debay, l a County Public Defender's office with an
extensive history of trying cases.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Debay, thank you for being with us. Now.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Hobby that we're seeing is a lawyer and he is
a very well respected lawyer and a big law firm.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I believe he was a partner in the law firm.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
They can see through his facade and apparently he needs
to go back to researching tax documents because that's not
the law. You can absolutely search someone pursue it to
a lawful arrest.
Speaker 12 (08:24):
Yeah, of course you can.
Speaker 13 (08:26):
And he was under arrest or a domestic violence and
you don't even need a warrant for it. If there
is a call for help in a domestic violence situation,
they can just take you in and search you an
incident to that arrest. That includes your pockets, your hands.
They can patch you down. If you have any containers
like a briefcase or a tope bag, yes, they can
(08:47):
sort of rifle through that as well, just to make
sure you're not packing any weapons or have any sharp objects.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Hey, dB, check out those biceps.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I wonder what a right hook would feel like one
from one of those guns. Check out those biceps on
this guy. He's no stranger to the gym. Oh my goodness,
he's still slinging his body around in the back seat. Hey, debate,
you ever been in the back seat of a cruiser.
They're disgusting because people like this POC technical legal term.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
They vomit back there. They defecate on purpose.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
They urinate, they spit, They do it all in the
back seat of these guys cruiser. I mean, at APD
you just pull up behind the station and there were
hoses back there. Just open the cruiser door and start
hosing out. I mean, can you imagine hosing out in
(09:47):
the back seat of what your Porsche or Mercedes, I
don't know, hose out the cruiser like it was a
garage because the people like Kim Can I see that again,
him twisting himself around, throwing himself, spitting, snotting, screaming, Yeah,
good times.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
What about that debate?
Speaker 13 (10:08):
Well, the main reason why they hose it down is
to make sure that suspects from subsequent arrests are not
tied to any DNA or any other trace evidence from
a prior suspect. So you want to make sure that
the car is completely antiseptic and you're not bought up.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Namely one time, one one case where DNA was taken
out of the back seat of a police cruiser and
used in court.
Speaker 13 (10:42):
Not DNA, but dope. Dope was found between the seats,
and he just said DNA.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Did he not just say DNA? He said DNA?
Speaker 10 (10:50):
All right?
Speaker 12 (10:50):
Any evidence used against a client.
Speaker 13 (10:53):
They found METS stuff between the cushions in the back
of a squad car. They tried to introduce it against
a client of mine, but I was able to get
all the call logs from the previous arrest in that
car and show that.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Right, Hey, what is Mike? Go is Mike?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
This is not a debate infomercial, Okay about how you
saved You're math client. So never has anyone you know,
I'm going a bueler on that. Did you see the
way this guy is carrying on belligerate aggressive, kicking out
at the police, struggling with them, threatening them, and then
he gets in the backseat of the cruiser and almost
(11:31):
cannot be contained. Now, can you school debate of why
you have to hose out in the back of your
cruiser after.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Putting this tax lawyer back there.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
Well, we did that because guys would vomit in there.
Maybe they were defecating or they urinated back there, and
you don't want to introduce somebody that maybe doesn't need
to belong in that situation that you know, maybe a
drunk driver that's a regular member of the society. You
don't want to expose them to that stuff. So we'd
post things out like that. Now, he does have a
little bit of a point on cross contamination and if it.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Was nice, criminal defendants should not have to sit in
a pile of this guy's poop. Hey, speaking of poop,
that reminds me, isn't it true? And I hate this
to be your very first question straight out to Harriet Alexander,
the senior features writer Dailymail dot Com.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Which is awesome, Harriet.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Isn't it true that on one occasion, this guy, this
tax lawyer, had to go I guess and give blood.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Samples or check in as part of being out on bond.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
There he is in his suit and tie at some
clinic and he there's no nice way to say it
he crapped the floor on purpose. This is true. It
has This is absolutely true.
Speaker 9 (12:49):
It happened. It happened.
Speaker 14 (12:51):
So this was when he was he was facing charges
for domestic violence and he was a he was required
to appear multiple times for bond hearings, and he had
quite a long track.
Speaker 9 (13:06):
Record of misbehaving. We could say in.
Speaker 14 (13:09):
Those in those incidences, one of those, as you say,
one of those, as you.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Say, was misbehaving my objection, my rear end, misbehaving the
woman she's found at the foot of him, his the
law partner in the tax division stairwell without a foot.
All of these incidents are not misbehaving. You're pushing me
(13:39):
right over the edge, Harriot.
Speaker 15 (13:43):
And interestingly, you were, you know, you were talking about
his his arrogance and in that arrest right in that
that video and the fact that he has away with
words that he's he's trying to convince the officers saying
you can't do.
Speaker 9 (13:57):
This to me.
Speaker 14 (13:58):
Well, it's interesting because actually he has four with that too. Previously,
she tried to get a restraining order against him.
Speaker 16 (14:07):
She went through all of the documentation, but he pushed
back on it.
Speaker 9 (14:11):
He threatened her with defamation and so she dropped it.
So actually there was never a restraining order taken out
against him.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Did you say he had form?
Speaker 14 (14:22):
Yes, yes, absolutely absolutely in terms of four the Brits
car at form.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Did the Brits carl having a rap sheet? That's what
we say here? Do they call that form?
Speaker 14 (14:35):
Well, I wouldn't know what the technical term is for
weaseling your way out of a charge, for pressuring someone
to drop the charges, but certainly he's he's got previous
on this.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Guys, I want to look back one more time at
the video we just showed you where he tries to
throw around legal.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Theories this is an illeg arrest, and then when.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
That doesn't work, he tries to get his wife back.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Please let me talk to you. Let me talk to you.
Maybe maybe listen what you're talking about it plea.
Speaker 8 (15:13):
Wait wait wait wait wait wait, seriously, I listen to me.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
You can't search me? Do you get our search me?
Speaker 5 (15:28):
That's illegal, that's all search. That's an illegal search. You
know what this is, that's an legal search. Get off me,
tell me, get off me.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
You know that's illegal.
Speaker 11 (15:41):
Let go my hands for what.
Speaker 16 (15:48):
You?
Speaker 5 (15:49):
Please let me talk to you over.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Your podcast I guess legal arrests and illegal arrests are
not covered in the tax code. Guys, there's more. There's more,
and I haven't even gotten to the state of Taitlin's body.
I'm gonna have to bring in a medical examiner, doctor
coin for that.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Listen to this.
Speaker 5 (16:06):
Yeah, we just.
Speaker 11 (16:09):
No, Adam, you're under arrest, Okay, like I told you,
you have a felony warrant already from a previous incident here. Okay,
there's not there is and I know about it. I
don't know why I just hold her?
Speaker 4 (16:21):
No?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Why does she not like him?
Speaker 16 (16:22):
Out?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You're under arrest in the vae.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Right, But I'm not sure if the control room misplayed something.
But back to Harriet Alexander, senior features writer, dailymail dot Com.
Did I just hear him say, can I just hold her?
I want to give her a r egg?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
What right?
Speaker 9 (16:42):
Right?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
I mean again?
Speaker 14 (16:44):
I think it just shows that the brazen arrogance of
this man, that he thinks that she would.
Speaker 9 (16:49):
Want to be held by him after.
Speaker 14 (16:52):
The police are called for the domestic violence. It shows
that he thinks that he is above the law, that
he's very confident, and that he feels that he can
work his way around this.
Speaker 9 (17:03):
I mean, as he has done in the past.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace, doctor Cheryl Eric with us.
I want to hold her. I just want to give
her a hug. I'm starting to think No, no, I almost.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Said he's bipolar.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
He's not by polar This is just another one of
his tactics, because abusers have so many tactics to keep
getting away with it. I'm sure his a law for
law firm, huge firm. Dwayne Morris is so proud tonight.
So I don't think he's bipolar, because how could he
(17:53):
pull off being a veteran tax attorney and fighting his
way out major is that fighting his way up to being.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
A partner in a huge law firm.
Speaker 7 (18:07):
He likes to be in control. He cannot handle it
when he doesn't have the upper hand. And what you're
seeing with a fighting with the police officers and with
everything else and him trying to give them orders, is
him needing to try to maintain this sense of having
the upper hand. As far as wanting to hold her,
She's not human to him. He's not thinking about her feelings.
(18:30):
She's an object for him to control and possess. This
is my wife, I want to hug from her. I
want to act like everything is fine, you will do
what I say. That's where he's coming from. All of
this is about power and control.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's all about vs D. Doctor Gerrett. Can I tell
you where Dwayne Mars has offices? Wait for Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore,
Boca Ratone, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Hanoi, she Men City, Houston, Vegas, London,
Los Angeles, Miami, memr New York, Jersey, Philly, Pittsburgh, San Diego,
(19:10):
San Francisco, Shanghai, Silicon Valley, South Jersey, Sydney, Singapore.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
DC, and Wilmington. And he's a partner.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So what I'm saying the reason I told you that,
doctor Cheryl is because he had a facade like no other.
That from redfin is their half a million dollar penthouse,
a luxury apartment. They also had a beautiful home on
(19:39):
Lake Michigan, and there they built this seemingly perfect life together.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
So I don't.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Understand why rich people can't be happy their rent is paid.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Look at the sports cars, the luxury cars.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Here is the one home. I guess that's the one
on Lake Michigan. Beautiful and they're dragging it kind of
mars the picture of him being dragged out by the
cops on the right. But I don't get why rich
people with all their sports cars and their luxury high
rise looking out, you know, on the lake, and why
(20:17):
can't they be happy? And how did he fool so
many people? Hey, doctor Cheryl. When I volunteered for nine
years at the Better Women's Center on the hotline, there
was a mayor's wife that called in routinely after abuse.
(20:38):
She never went public, she never reported it. But it
reminds me of this because he had to fool all
those law partners in all of those offices all around
the world.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
How do you do it?
Speaker 7 (20:52):
It's such a waste, isn't it, Because it could be
such a beautiful life success and you know, power and
luxury and all of these things. But mental health and
wealth are not necessarily correlated. And unfortunately we can see
this kind of violence and abuse and splitting an inability
(21:12):
to be able to enjoy and have a productive life
even when you have all these other strengths. We see
this in all communities, including the very wealthy, and including
people who seem to have it all.
Speaker 11 (21:23):
Yeah, wese, just go on hold lesage. No, Adam, you're
under arrest. Okay, like I told you, you have a
felony warrant already from a previous incident here. Okay, there's
not there is I know about it. I don't know
why I just hold her to before? Why does she
not like them?
Speaker 17 (21:39):
Out?
Speaker 11 (21:40):
You're arrest in the vaca of ours no Haylen.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Tracy believed she had found her soulmate, but their marriage
soon turned into a nightmare. As domestic violence shattered their relationship.
Kaitlyn filed for a protection order.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Caitlin found quote pulverized at the bottom stairwell of a
prominent tax attorney in a world wide law firm. How
he fooled them for all those years? I don't know,
I mean, Debay, I know that you like I was,
(22:15):
as a prosecutor more of a freelance gunslinger. You know,
you take on a case, you give it all you've got,
and then you move on to the next case. Unlike
working at a law firm, which I would find excruciating,
the billable hours, the sucking up. Uh could you explain
to viewers or listeners that don't know how hard it
(22:38):
is to make partner at one of these giant firms.
I mean they're working literally one hundred hour weeks sometimes
to get all the way up to partner. When they
get there, it's a lot of handshaking, smiling and socializing.
But that said, you know, rain making, but getting there
is really hard to bey.
Speaker 13 (22:58):
And as competitive as the problem because all the associate
attorneys all aspire to partnership, and the partner track is very,
very difficult to achieve. First of all, you are required,
usually not always, to build a minimum of nineteen hundred
or two thousand working hours per year, and when you
do the match sometimes it could come out to between
(23:21):
forty five and fifty hours a week just to keep
your job. And if you want to make a little more,
you have to build above and beyond that. And certainly
if you want to get on the partner track, you're
going to have to build maybe one and a half
times that amount. And by the time you get all
that in and the client has been built all that money,
you're so physically exhausted you don't even want partnership anymore.
Speaker 12 (23:43):
You just want a vacation. It's a very tough gig, and.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Frankly, well, I think you're speaking for yourself. I would
never have liked that, because I like going out on
the street. I liked investigating. I did not want to
be in office for all those hours for the rest
of my life life. But some people love it, and
thank Heaven, they do because they find their niche. I
(24:08):
just don't understand how he can fake out so many people.
It's hard to reconcile the guy in the law firm
photos with the designer suit and silk tie compared to
all the mugshots. And he may wonder where did all
those mugshots come from.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Well, listen, they.
Speaker 17 (24:26):
Were down our small little grocery store down the street,
and she said, I have no idea what I said,
but I must have said something that upset him.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
They got home and.
Speaker 17 (24:37):
He was mad, and he was angry, and she said,
I let him know that I'm walking the doors and
I'm not letting you in until you can take a
deep breath.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Straight out to former homicide detective who shot to the
consciousness of the public during the Scott Peterson case, Jean Buehler,
By the way, that sound you just hears from our
friends at Fox thirty to Chicago, was it you that
told me that right after Peterson found out that Lacy's
(25:11):
DNA matched the body when it washed up on San
Francisco Bay Beach. That that DNA in the DNA of
a little baby was absolutely Lacey and Connor. And within
a few moments he said he wanted an in and out?
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Was it in and out?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
And he wanted a double double with cheese, fries and
some special drink.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Did you tell me that?
Speaker 6 (25:36):
Yeah, that was a while back, and told it a
few times. Ten minutes later maybe, I don't know, maybe
fifteen minutes later. Then the control that he had a
lot of similarities between this attorney from Chicago, very controlled.
Used to get in his own way, Scott hit it
a lot better than this guy did.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
But yeah, he brushed off.
Speaker 6 (25:54):
The confirmation that his wife and his child were dead,
and then he was ready to eat a burger and
a fry and nilla shake. So it kind of shows
with this guy from Chicago. It kind of falls in
line with what Shakespeare wrote Macbeth for this kind of attorney.
The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
This is what he was writing about.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
You know another fast of that. And of course, Buehler,
I know that you're not a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Neither am I.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
But Peterson just got told a few moments before.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Ten minutes or less, we.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Got to break it to Peterson that the body that
was to shore, the two bodies are definitively your wife
Lacey and your son Connor.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Within ten minutes, he had his order up here. He
wanted a double double cheese, a fry, and of a
Neil mil shake. He just blurted it out like nothing
had just happened.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
Yeah, it was one of those things where we were
obviously convinced well before that day that he had killed
Lacy and Connor, and so we weren't really expecting much.
We wanted to analyze his reaction, but really confirmed for
us what he was all about, because when you can
contrast his reaction to that with the interviews that he
had done and he was faking the tears that he
(27:09):
was waiting for the child to come home. He kept
the nursery in good shape, but of course he had
the porn channel going at the house, and he sold
Lacey's car, and he was talking about selling the house,
and it fit in line with what he was really
all about. And I think that's what's the same thing
you have with this guy. This guy, this attorney from Chicago.
I don't even want to mention his name. He just
wasn't as controlled as Scott was probably equally as charming
(27:30):
in the right circumstance. But he can see in the
videos that you're showing and all the stuff that he
was doing when he loses control, when he doesn't have
control over the situation, he pretty much freaks out in
this and that's where the problem came in for our
victim on this. It just was terrible for her to
put up with this. But nice people mixing up with evil.
(27:52):
Nice people make excuses for evil, and sometimes it ends poorly,
like I did hear.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
You Know what I noticed, doctor Sheryl Eric, doctor Eric,
clinical forensic psychologist specializing in trauma recovery, is when the neighbor,
her name is Joyce Lance, that's the Michigan neighbor, stated
that she heard the victim state I must have said
(28:17):
something that upset him. And I found that to be universe,
almost universal, that the female victim always thinks she did
something to cause the beating, which is entirely bad backwards.
Speaker 7 (28:35):
Exactly exactly, and she says this because the abusers over
and over again, say you made me do this, You
made me mad. If you hadn't done this, if you
had only done that, And a lot of the time,
these nice people who mix with evil, as your previous
guest was saying, stay a long time because they overestimate
(28:58):
how much they can be helpful and make everything nice.
They believe that somehow, if they can be different or
not upset the batterer or do everything exactly right, that
they can make things be peaceful, and they can make
the guy be the sweet, charming guy that they initially met,
who they thought he really was, And so they take
(29:19):
on responsibility. When they're not responsible for any of the
violence that the batterer does, that's on them.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
We are hearing the neighbor describe how the couple was
at a little grocery store down the street and the victim, Caitlin,
was saying, I don't know what I did to upset him,
and she said that I let him know I'm locking
the doors and not letting him in until he can
take a deep breath.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
She locked the doors that day, but it didn't work.
Speaker 17 (29:50):
Apparently, then he went around to the sunroom in the
back of the house, and came in. She tried to
run and get away from him, and she describes hiding
underneath the dining room table. She described him pulling her
out by her hair. She described at some point during
all of this, grabbing her phone and calling nine to
(30:11):
one one.
Speaker 18 (30:12):
She said, I don't know if there's anything here because
he's a strain one.
Speaker 15 (30:17):
That's what he does.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
From our friends Fox thirty to Chicago, Debay, a beautiful
woman who vaulted to the top of her field, has
to hide under the dining room table after she thinks
she locked.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
All the doors. She gets through the sunroom.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
And this is not even the incident where she's thrown
for she's found at the bottom of a stairwheel, missing
a foot and pulverized.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
This is a prior incident. How is there any way?
Speaker 2 (30:46):
And I believe that there is if this case ever
goes to trial, that these prior incidents can come into
evans because this neighbor is recounting what Caitlin told her.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Kate Ln is dead now, Yeah.
Speaker 13 (31:02):
The judge can let it in to prove something other
than his bad character. So for example, the intent to
do evil, the intent to harm, to show that he
has an excuse for everything. You just offer it for
some non character purpose, and it's all going to come in.
Not to mention that most states, including California, and I'm
sure that Illinois is in accord, they have a special
(31:25):
statute in their rules of evidence that specifically allow for
prior incidents of domestic violence to come in, not so
much to show propensity, but to show a pattern of
behavior in the abuser. So the law allows for them
the real task.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Of course, dubay Is does a similar transaction. It doesn't
necessarily have to be a fingerprint crime, but does it
tend to prove the case in chief, whether showing course
of conduct, motive, frame of mind, scheme plan, And in this.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Case it did.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
And it breaks my heart to think she was running
around locking all the doors and he's snuck.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
In through the sunroom.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
And you know, doctor Cheryl, you mentioned some stats on
when strangulation was used as a method to method to
some do the female victim that it's seven hundred and
fifty times more likely that a homicide will occur.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Well, you just.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Heard another neighbor, Bunny Coiner, state that she Caitlin, the victim,
said he's a strangler that's what he does. And the
neighbor gestured to her neck.
Speaker 7 (32:35):
Yeah, it's tragic, and the correlation is so high. I mean,
in the continuum of domestic violence risk, when somebody stops
you from breathing and stops the blood float to your brain,
you can lose consciousness within ten seconds and you can
die within a few minutes. And the unconsciousness to deathline
(32:56):
is so small, that is that it is the most
dangerous thing before death and a homicide in terms of
this risk. And the stats really are mind blowing, they
really are. And I just hope that people who know
of anyone who is in this situation, if there has
been even non lethal strangulation, which doesn't even necessarily show
(33:17):
a mark. Sometimes you'll see marks on the perpetrator because
someone's fighting, like hell, they get their hands off their
own neck. But if that has happened, the risk of
homicide following that is so high that it's very important
that people know how very dangerous this is.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
She said, I don't know.
Speaker 18 (33:35):
If there's anything here, because he's a strong way, that's
what he.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Does, Fox serty to say Chicaga under duress.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Caitlin dropped the protection order after being threatened months later,
as she made a desperate nine one one call accusing
her husband of assault and theft. Police arrived to find
a visible injuries on Caitlyn, leading to Beckering's arrest, but
then Gitlin mysteriously vanish.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Many of the couple's neighbors knew.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Has this been in articles? There was trouble in Paradise. Boy,
that's putting it mildly. It's been called incidents, has been
called misunderstandings. It's called a domestic which brings up warm,
fuzzy I you know images, you know Christmas card with
the family all around the fireplace. Domestic It is anything,
(34:27):
but it is bloody and brutal, and this is where
it's landed us.
Speaker 19 (34:33):
A resident at Grant luxury condos stop short when they
see a severed human foot at the bottom of the
second floor stairwell that looks too real to be a
Halloween decoration. Their doorman calls nine to one one in
a panic after discovering the rest of a woman's body
three floors up. Investigators swarmed the high rise and determine
the victim fell at least twenty stories.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Harry and Alexander, we'd been told twenty four stories. How
do you fall down twenty four stories?
Speaker 1 (35:05):
And what about her foot?
Speaker 9 (35:08):
Gone, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 14 (35:11):
So prosecutors are saying that she was actually pushed or thrown.
Speaker 9 (35:16):
Twenty four stories from his apartment.
Speaker 14 (35:20):
The body, as you said, was described as being pulverized,
so it took some time for the autopsy to be done,
and given the height of the fall, that would be
how the foot would be severed.
Speaker 9 (35:33):
But you're right it it's pretty grim.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Indeed, Well, I'm still confused about how your foot is
severed during a fall downstairs. So I guess we're going
to have to go to our medical examiner. But first
I want doctor Coyne to hear this.
Speaker 10 (35:47):
Caitlin's body pulverized while falling twenty four floors, multiple skull fractures,
a deep gaping laceration on the back of her head
exposing cranial content, cuts and bruises to her face and neck,
badly broken nose, internal organ sliced, and a severed foot.
Caitlin also suffered an eleven inch laceration on her torso
(36:08):
and the corner made note of a twelve x ten
inch area of intense black and brown abrasions on her back, I.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Don't understand the layout of how she could fall twenty
four flies. That said straight out to a renowned medical examiner,
Doctor Thomas Coin is joining US Chief Medical Examiner District
of the Medical Examiner's Office in Florida. Forensic pathologist, toxicologist,
and neuro pathologist Dodger Coin, thank you for being with us.
(36:38):
Can you make headge of tails out of what we're learning?
The medical examiner there said, yeah, sure.
Speaker 20 (36:44):
We often think when we think of a person who
falls from a building or a high height, we think
we'll be seeing a movie right where a body lands,
maybe crashing on the roof of a car or on
a sidewalk. The body is intact, with the blood slowly
trickling out of the head air. But in reality, when
a body strikes a ground from a high rise fall
(37:04):
let's say twenty plus stories, the impact is so forceful
due to the sudden infantaneous deceleration that it tears the
body apart. So you will have tearing of the skin,
fracturing of the bone. As a bone fracture, they can
further tear through skin, and so more often than not,
the body will not be intact. You'll have appendages, or
(37:28):
even internal organs that have been thrown from the body
and are found yards away. I've had whole brains that
have completely come out of the head and have been
found more than ten yards away from the body after impact.
So it's very common, more common to actually have a
body not be intact after an impact of that height.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Gotch a coin. I want to understand something.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
We have been told she was found at the bottom
of a stairwell. We've also been told she fell twenty
four stories. When you think of someone at the bottom
of a stairwell, you think they've come down the stairs.
So she would have had to go down one set
(38:13):
of stairs, then a landing, then another set of stairs,
then a landing. Under the building code, you cannot have
twenty four stories of steps going straight down. There has
to be a landing every twenty thirty steps.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
There has to be under the wall fell down, So yeah, okay,
what's your serious?
Speaker 20 (38:35):
When you walk down the stairwells of a large building,
you can peer over the railing and you see that
there's that drop all the way down in between the
stairs as the stairs are winding around going downward. My
assumption is that she was pushed over the railing and
then fell down in between those stairs all the way
down those twenty four flights, because that's the only way
(38:56):
it can describe injuries that are catastrophic such that they
could be just that's pulverized as she fell down each
individual stairwell. She wouldn't have such severe injuries. She would
have injuries, of course, but not that severe.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Harriet Alexander, senior features writer delimail dot Com. Does that
make sense coins analysis?
Speaker 9 (39:31):
Yeah, absolutely, in that you know, if she's.
Speaker 14 (39:33):
Falling staircase by staircase by staircase, her fall is being slowed,
so it's not going to be catastrophic, and then you'd
have someone presumably pushing her rolling her down the stairs.
Speaker 16 (39:46):
Whereas, if you think about it, if she is pushed
tipped over the gap essentially the hole that is in
this in the middle of the stairwell, then she could
plummet straight down.
Speaker 9 (39:59):
So it's the same as if you topple over.
Speaker 14 (40:01):
A balcony and you land on the ground beneath on
the building.
Speaker 9 (40:06):
You are going pretty much straight down. But back to your.
Speaker 14 (40:09):
Point as to how the foot could have been severed,
You know the body doesn't necessarily drop exactly like a stone.
Speaker 9 (40:16):
It could be zig.
Speaker 14 (40:17):
Zagging around somewhat in this free fall, and that could
certainly contribute to the injuries, because if you're falling at speed,
you could be bashing into the metal, into the stairway,
into the concrete, into the railings of the stairs, and
that could have caused some.
Speaker 9 (40:32):
Of the injuries as well as she.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Fell two from a homicide Detective John Buehler.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
In big high rises like that, you.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Have a trash shoot, and you don't go down to
the bottom floor to leave your trash on the curb.
You put it down a shoot and goes all the
way down. You can hear it going all the way down.
It's as if, allegedly he pushed her over the edge,
like you would just throw trash on the trash sheet
(41:02):
and that's it.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
She's gone. Yeah, that's kind of the way I read it.
Speaker 6 (41:06):
You know, the forensic pathologists, I think nailed it pretty
good architecturally that you got the stairs going around what
essentially would be almost like an elevator shaft, and so
it seems like he might have pushed her over the
railing and she went down in between the stairs all
the way down, possibly bouncing off a couple of them
on the way down, counting for the injuries. But when
you describe the injuries, Nancy, I'm wondering how many of
those that this piece of crap gave her before he
(41:30):
tossed her over the railing. It seems to me that
might be something of interest. The forensic pathologists may be
able to determine that, possibly, but it just goes along
with the whole thing. The circumstantial evidence on this case
points directly at this guy and no place else. No
indication of attempted suicide or anything like that from Caitlin
before this came about. It just shows that she was
(41:54):
willing to forgive some of the things that he was doing.
And it all fits with doctor Cheryl's take on the
power control old domestic violence wheel. Everything fits into place
on that when it comes to Caitlin and this attorney.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Sidney Sumner with US investigative reporter with Crime Stories, Sydney
was her foot sound that.
Speaker 4 (42:14):
Was actually what was found. First, a resident stumbled across
a foot on the second floor, reported it to a doorman,
who then searched the starewell and stumbled on Caitlin's body
three floors up, so the foot continued to fall after
Caitlyn's body stopped.
Speaker 10 (42:33):
In September twenty twenty three, Caitlin breaks up with becker
Ink after a confrontation at the Ritz Carlton Chicago, when
Beckerink enters Kaitlin's hotel room while she sleeps and assaults her.
But Beckerin continues to call and harassed Kaitlin until she
files in order of protection eight weeks after the breakup,
stating Beckering calls her twenty times a day, calls her
a liar, cheater, whoor piece of excrement. She also documents
(42:56):
repeated assaults, including an attack in August where Beckering quote
lam my head against a cabinet, slap me, punched me,
put my head in a headlock, and dragged me away
from the door, and attempted to sexually abuse me. Caitlin
filed for an emergency protection order against becker Ring just
two months before the first attack.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Crime Stories investigative reporter Sydney s owner with us and
in that attack, not the alleged murder, but in that attack,
isn't it true the defendant tax attorney Beckering got a
sweetheart deal.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
He didn't even plead guilty.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
He pled no lo contender, I don't contest it to
reduce charges of domestic violence.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
And interfering with a nine to one one call. A
lot of other charges were dropped.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
He got ninety three days for that, on which you
probably do maybe twenty.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
Right, he pled no contest, dropping almost all of the
charges against him. So what he pled to was the
January thirteenth attack before their marriage. So where we saw
the body, can he's begging, pleading, don't arrest me, the
cost telling you already have a felony warn out. Why
(44:10):
are you surprised at what's happening right now? That is
the case that he pled guilty to. He did not
or pled no contest to. He did not even cop
to what happened on August sixteenth that we witnessed in
that body.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Can okay, Philip do that you're the veteran defense attorney.
What's your argument if you take this to trial? What
do you do?
Speaker 1 (44:32):
What climate was just a big accident?
Speaker 13 (44:34):
Is causation And this is what I would present to
the jury. First of all, you have a coroner who's
saying that.
Speaker 12 (44:41):
The manner of death is.
Speaker 13 (44:42):
Undetermined, cause of death obviously is traumatic injury to the body.
What I would present is that, in all their emotionality,
exasperation and hysteria, she made a run for it, and
she took to the stairs, and while running down those stairs,
she lost her footing. She fell over the railing into
the well hole to her death. That is a causation argument.
(45:05):
You cannot ascribe her death to being chased by a defendant.
The death has to be at the hands of another
and not due to her losing her footing. That would
be the argument that is called causey.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Did you say losing her footing or losing her foot debay?
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Do you say anybody's really gonna.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Believe she would committed suicide by jumping over a rail
or fail down twenty four flights of steps?
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Are you serious?
Speaker 12 (45:35):
That's serious?
Speaker 13 (45:36):
Because murder is not his mo He doesn't have murder
on his rap sheet. And I'll give you he is
not husband of the year, he's not boyfriend of the year.
Speaker 12 (45:47):
But he did not cause the death.
Speaker 13 (45:49):
And I think they're going to have a hard time
proving that this was in fact a homicide, particularly.
Speaker 12 (45:55):
When the coroner has already found it undetermined.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Well, what about the fact Harry Alexander that he then
reports that she's been missing for a substantial period of
time and police find video of them together, like seventy
two hours before he reports her missing, saying, what, she's
been gone for months or weeks, So why lie about
it if there's nothing the furious going on?
Speaker 16 (46:20):
Right?
Speaker 14 (46:20):
I mean, that's true, Nancy, And I think it goes
to the point that you can have somebody who is
objectively smart. I mean, you don't get to be a
partner in a top law firm without being intelligent.
Speaker 21 (46:32):
And yet on the other hand, you know, we do
things that are really very stupid, like the fact that
he claimed that he hadn't seen her for a while,
that she had been missing for months, and yet there's
surveillance footage of them together.
Speaker 9 (46:46):
In that actual apartment three days before.
Speaker 14 (46:49):
So you know, that rapidly unravels, and it really doesn't
help his case because a jury is going to look
at that and think you can't be trusted.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
And even to the her and he flies with her
family over what's left her remains.
Speaker 22 (47:06):
We can't imagine why he would want to keep Caitlin
away from her family. Even now, we will continue to
fight until Caitlin is laid to rest, surrounded by family
who loved and supported her.
Speaker 19 (47:18):
Without proof of involvement in Caitlyn's death, Beckerink is released
and wants custody of her remains, but her parents file
a motion to prevent their daughter from again coming under
her accused abuser's control. Doctor Monica and Andrew Tracy cite
the accusations in Caitlin's order of protection.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
And the domestic violence case against.
Speaker 19 (47:37):
Beckerink as reasons her remain should be released to them,
not her husband of just six months. After a heated
legal battle, a judge agrees with the Tracys, allowing them
to lay Caitlin to rest.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
From ABC seven Chicago as we go to air tonight,
the husband in this case, Adam Beckernk, is presumed innocent.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
In the death of his young wife, Caitlin.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
If you know or think you know anything about this case,
even if you think it's inconsequential, please dial three one
two seven four six six thousand, repeat three one two
seven four six six thousand.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
And if you or someone you know is.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
A victim of domestic violence, please dial toll free eight
hundred seven ninety nine, Safe Safe eight hundred seven nine
nine seven two three three Nancy Gray signing off Goodbye Friend,
Host
Nancy Grace
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