December 19, 2023 • 37 mins
We’re wrapping up Brandon Woodruff’s case - Hilarie, Dan, Po, and Andrew will discuss where Brandon’s case is now as well as the details of the case that still keep them up at night.
For more information, you can visit freebrandon.org, or you can go to the Free Brandon Facebook Page @ www.facebook.com/freebrandon.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi guys, it's Hillary here. Just a quick note. This
series does deal with a lot of tough subject matter
that may be difficult for some listeners, so please keep
this in mind when and where you choose to listen
to these episodes. Last episode, we had a candid conversation
(00:21):
regarding the challenges the people in the LGBTQIA plus community
face across our country, and specifically how those prejudices affected
Brandon himself. Additionally, we featured interview clips from our chat
with Scott Pogancy, who grew up as a gay man
in Texas and became impassioned to find justice in this case.
(00:43):
On this episode, we're going to wrap up our look
at Brandon Woodruff's case and explore possible alternative suspects to
where Brandon's case is now. But before we do that,
I just want to be very clear why I picked
Brandon's case. When we learn that someone was convicted most
likely because of their sexuality, I was deeply affected by that.
(01:06):
I mean, it was two thousand and five, fine, a
long time ago, but this shit is still relevant in
our news cycle now. It feels like it could have
happened yesterday. All the prejudices I had hoped that we
could get passed in the early two thousands. It is
all still ripe in our modern day environment, and so
this case is very near to mean Because I am
(01:26):
an LGBTQIA plus advocate and I'm an ally and if
we don't raise our voices against these injustices and systemic issues,
people will continue to be prosecuted unfairly. And I don't
think anyone should have to live in a place where
they have to hide who they are or be scared
that because of who they are, they won't get what
(01:47):
our Constitution's supposed to guarantee, the right to a fair trial.
As we wrap up Brandon's case, my sincere hope is
that we all continue to challenge our judicial system and
ask questions and rise up when we have something to say,
because the real question isn't whether Brandon is innocent or guilty.
(02:11):
The question is was he given a fair trial? That
should concern all of us. I'm Hillary Burton Morgan, and
this is true crime story. It couldn't happen here? All right,
(02:34):
you guys, welcome to another episode of It couldn't happen here.
I'm Hillary Burton Morgan, and you know our team. We
have Andrew Dunn, Poecutcheons, Dan Flaherty. Thank you guys for
joining us. Before we really get into things this week,
I just wanted to ask you kind of a blanket
question because I know I get feedback. I wanted to
know if people reach out to you and give you feedback.
(02:56):
You know, your friends, your family, just people who watch
these kinds of shows. What do you hear from them?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Oh? Yeah, we get strangers who call, We get people
who are involved who call. We get friends and family
who talk to us. You know. I mean I always post,
and most of us post on the socials when these
things come out and people comment, and certainly there's some
shows I've done that have gotten a huge amount of
public reactions, sometimes changing people's minds and other times vitriol.
(03:25):
I think that what we all want here is not
to change people's minds, not to change anyone's minds. What
we want to do is open people's minds to looking
at things, maybe a little differently, and to not be
afraid to challenge certain narratives, and to encourage and help
them think critically about what they're seeing.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
And leaving it open ended allows for the intelligence of
the viewer. I just I don't know. I get bothered
when people coddle viewers and treat them like they're stupid,
because I know my fan base is bright. They are problems.
So they are thinkers, they are people who engage with
one another, and they're involved in advocacy. And so if
(04:06):
we were to spoon feed them a narrative, I just,
I don't know. I think it's condescending. So when we
leave it open ended, they're bright enough to come to
their own conclusion.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, we never want to tell somebody what to think,
you know, it's just encouraging them to think just.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
That about it. Yeah, all we want to do is
put it on your radar.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And for us, I mean for a lot of the
stories that we tell, we don't know what happened. I
mean I don't know, you know, I wasn't there, and
so all I could do is raise questions. We tell
stories where there is a question of whether justice has
been served, or questions about how it was handled, or
questions about the system.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
I think it's only fair to leave it open or
not a jury. We're journalists and we can only present
what we're given. And in the end, if it's overwhelmingly
feels like someone is innocent or should not be in jail,
then that is a parent. That's a parent in what
we present. And if somebody in a more complicated case
(05:04):
feels conflicted about it, and it's reflected in that in
the ending, probably we feel conflict too on some ways.
Because we can't advocate specifically for something that we don't
know the absolute truth about.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
We can advocate for the system, yes, to better itself
at every turn. So when we make a complaint, it
is not this person's innocent or this person is guilty.
When we make a complaint, it is that we are
operating within a system that is hesitant to self correct.
We are operating within a system that does not want
(05:40):
to reflect on their own.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Errors or correct their own errors.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And that is what we have a problem with.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
And I do want to say something really quickly. You said,
we can only present what we're given, and that's not
what we do. We can absolutely curate for an opinion.
What we try really hard to do is gather as
much evidence and as much information and as much very
worrying opinions about somebody about the case from people that
are involved in it, and then present them in a
balanced way, and that's what we do. And I don't
(06:08):
think that we're leading somebody in one way or the other.
I think we're very balanced about how we go about it,
and we try really hard, and we point out the
problems that we see, and we are conflicted about some
of them because we don't know some of them. We
have better ideas of what we think, but we still
never say unequivocally what happened, because how could we?
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And so, in your opinion, if Brandon Woodruff's trial happened
today in twenty twenty three, with the advances we have
in DNA, with a different understanding of what it is
to be gay in a small town, or maybe not
a difference given current legislation, But do you believe he
would be convicted in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Possibly, it's up to the jurisdiction and the jury. You
can certainly, I mean, right today, we have plenty of
cases that are happening right now. I mean, I think
that some of the things that we're done in assumptions
that were made would be quite I think some of
the DNA and things like that would potentially be clarifying.
I think the way they dealt with this crime scene
would probably be very different. So there could be ways
(07:10):
that the investigation in the trial went differently. But I
could not say in this day and age whether he
would or wouldn't be convicted. I mean, I've seen stuff happening.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Brandon was convicted on circumstantial evidence, but people get convicted
on circumstantial evidence all the time.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I think what really hits for me is that when
we walked away from this shoot, which we did well
over a year ago, I walked away thinking there's no
way Brandon would be convicted in this day and age.
And then this landslide of legislation happened in the South,
in rural communities, specifically in Texas, and I can't say
(07:44):
that anymore. And it's terrifying, you know, we have backslid.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Can I just say one thing is to separate what
bothers me the most about Brandon being the suspect is
there's actually no illustration of anything in his life where
he is murderously angry at both of his parents. I mean,
there's nothing. There's also nothing that points him out in
(08:10):
any of his life or from any of the things
that we've heard about him, and in our interview that
he's a bizarre psychopath who snapped one day.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, I mean the Estheringtons were talking about him killing
baby kittens, So there was stuff that was pointed out
of him being a violent person. But there's no evidence
of any of that.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
But it's not just evidence. There's no other sources other
than the Etherrington's.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I think what you're saying, Andrews, that there's nothing that
shows that kind of animosity towards his parents. I mean,
I think I haven't heard anybody say that he had
a contentious relationship in any way with his parents.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Right, except for the arrest warrant that he had been
saying he hated them online and he hadn't.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Right, which was pretty quickly keeping showing de bunk.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Right, except that he was in jail.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Motive, Yeah, there's no motive.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
There's no DNA and there's no motive, or there's no
forensic evidence and there's no motive.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Right, So we have no motive, no forensic evidence, and
these are the conclusions we're coming to. There's something I
want to ask each of you, after all of these
months of us working on this case, do you have
(09:25):
any working theories on what you think happened here.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I mean, this one's a hard one. What's fair And
what I like to do is say on every case
is also say, Okay, this person is claiming they're innocent.
We're looking into the possibility of them being innocent. Let's
think about it as if they did it. I think
it's really important and Dan and I do this, and
I do this a lot, is say okay, if they
did do it, you know, when we don't have actual
physical evidence proving that somebody else did it. If they
(09:49):
did do it, let's piece it together. We've pieced together
a lot of it, and a lot of it looks hard,
but it doesn't look impossible.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
The question is working theory. Po I think you're about
to get a lot of dodges here, Hillary, Well, I mean.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Because you guys committed from a different place. I've always
said I'm not a journalist, and i am not a lawyer,
and I'm not law enforcement. I'm a lady from a
town that's small that wants to go to other small
towns and cover these stories. And for me, from the
very beginning of this entire case, the thing that bothered
me so much was that Dennis and Norma were seated
(10:24):
so close together on that couch, it was the most
unnatural positioning for a long time married couple to be in.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
The whole crime scene is really weird and it felt
hostagy to me. And the fact that they walked through
it in the dark freaked the heck out of me.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Right, they videotaped that crime scene in the dark, so
I mean they could have knocked things over, they could
have missed things, they could have messed up key evidence anything.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
And like just Nole's storytelling about what happened there didn't
feel true to me.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
The idea that this couple that's been married for like
twenty years is seated right on top of each other
and that they were somehow caught off guard by their
son who showed up with a gun and a dagger.
That does not ring true. Think about how you sit
with your spouse in your house when you're settling in
for the night, and those are the tiny things that
it becomes very important to put yourself in the shoes
(11:19):
of the victims of the people who are being talked
about and theorized about. I don't know any married couple
that sits that way.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Well, I mean, let's be fair, I know, married couples
that drape all over each other. They weren't draped all
over each other. It was more proper. That's what was
weird about it. It was more city ap proper feeling.
I mean from bodies that are strewed about.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I think these are. I mean, the fact that they
were sitting next to each other is a fact, right,
But you could read into it two different ways. Right
to look at it as the way you're looking at it,
which it seems unnatural for them to be sitting that
close to each other. Somebody else looks at it saying,
they look like they're very comfortable sitting there. And I
think the spit cup in Dennis's hand supports that in
(12:01):
some way that it wasn't just you know, you stand
over there. He was sitting in there with his spit
cup in his hand, you know, not like, oh my god,
I'm a hostage. It's somebody. I'm just sitting here casually
chewing tobacco watching TV. You know. So I think you
can look at the same facts and interpret them two
different ways. But I think that's sort of why there
are so many questions with this. I mean, I think
that it makes sense that if you look at the
(12:23):
evidence and you read the circumstantial evidence a certain way.
Brandon is the most likely suspect, and it makes sense
that they would go to that direction, But that doesn't
mean that that's the only interpretation of that evidence.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, but there's also evidence that we haven't even touched yet,
and honestly, it's always really bothered me. So there were
some other materials that were discovered at the crime scene, Dan,
can you tell us about this?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Well, this is interesting, you know, digging into the case
materials and looking to see what evidence was collected. There's
not necessarily a record of all the things that were collected.
The investigators ask Charla about things that they found at
the house, but I don't see that collected as evidence.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
So you've got a discrepancy discrepancy.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Already, Like I don't like we were looking for, like
what did they find? And so they were asking Charla
about her parents' lifestyle. The things that they asked Charla
about were pornographic videos that were in plain sight, flavored
condoms that were out in the open. I don't see
that coming up too many other.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Places, right, Okay, So this is Charla's first interview with
law enforcement. And as a reminder for you guys at home,
Charla is Brandon's older sister. So let's listen to that clip.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Now we've talked about your relationship to your parents and
your and your relationship to your brother, let's talk about
your parents' relationship with one another. Do you think that
there's a possibility again, you might not know, and you
may be able to tell me no right off the bat.
Is there a possibility that either won of your mother
(14:01):
or your dad could have been having an affair or
something like that with the you know, or swinging or ya.
I know that that's kind of a you know, the
g uh a weird deal, But could they have been
involved in something of that nature to where they had
you know.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
I'm not gonna lie. There was one time in life
that I can friend in my parents and I asked
them straightforward and I said, are you I asked them both,
are you having an affair? And they both straight up
looked me downe the eye and they said nope.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
Now, w what made you think that they were having
an affair?
Speaker 6 (14:40):
Because my mom would stay at work for ever and
ever and ever and ever and never mom uh.
Speaker 7 (14:48):
And that was back in the fourteen to sixteen.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
Year here where when you didn't wanna be at home either, right, okay?
Speaker 6 (14:55):
And so so she would never I mean, and she's
always gone, always gone. And my dad I all even
talk about was just different girls and his offens se
the flirt, okay, And so I was ask them both
stead on, you know, and all they did is they
(15:16):
turned around and asked me if I was having an
affair with my teachers at school, why did ask that.
Speaker 8 (15:24):
I have annoida?
Speaker 6 (15:25):
I think they just thought that it was the most
stupidest thing that I could have ever asked them. And
they just thought of like the most stupidest thing they
could ever ask me.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 5 (15:35):
Yeah, I how I guess.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
So, you know, it's a cause I asked them. They
look if we didn't die and said no, and then
they're like, in this sarcastic, stupid way, They're like, well
are you?
Speaker 5 (15:47):
And I was like told, you know, like okay, what
about as couples though, was swinging or doing something like that?
Because there was there was stuff found at the residents,
some pornography and some things like that that were that
was found there. Well, exactly, I've got a flavored or
something like that, you know, just strange.
Speaker 6 (16:10):
I've never seen that at the health ever.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I don't know, man, this is something that has always
kind of stood out to me because it's weird and
it's uncomfortable, and law enforcements trying to do their job
and figure out motive, but they're having to ask some
very awkward questions, and they're asking the daughter of the
victims about this swinging lifestyle. So it's not just brandon
sexuality that becomes a topic in this case, but also
(16:38):
the sexuality of his parents. What would lead them to
think that the materials there were used with other people
as opposed to just with each other.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I don't know, it's interesting, right, I've seen this in
a couple of different criminal investigations where they find a
condom at the crime scene and the investigators were like,
there's a condom here, so there must have been an affair.
As if married people don't use condoms.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah, I mean, we know what early forties, you know,
they're young.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
They don't want to have kids again, they watch porn.
Lots of couples watch porn. I think it was less
accepted back then.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Well, the difference is you can get it on your
phone now, and before you used to have to go
and have a physical copy.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
You had to buy I had to go into it
was the walk of shame. You had to go into
a porn store. It was a very seedy place.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And so for them to have this collection is not
a big deal. I think the point that was being
made was that this collection was out in the open,
knowing that their son had just been in their house
hours before, right, and that along with the condoms being
out in the open, was weird.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
It is weird. I mean, if Brandon was walking through
their house, you know, that would be a real interesting
family where their parents are just leaving porn and condoms
rolling around the house for the kid to see.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And they asked Charlie about it. They asked if that
was something that was often out in the open, and
she says no, she had never seen.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
That, so it was something unusual. They do ask about it,
So it's weird if they'd ask about it if it
wasn't there. But we don't have evidence it was there
because it's not in any of the photographs that we
got from the police files.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That's so weird.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
And this is the frustrating aspect for us. These other
items that are being found, yet we have no crime
scene photos of them.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I mean maybe photos were taken of them and that
we didn't receive them. Somewhere along the way they got
taken out of the case files. I don't know. We
just don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
To Brandon, probably would have been kept.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Maybe they weren't pertinent so they weren't part of discovery
and they were Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, think they could have been destroyed or deleted. I
mean maybe they I don't know, but this is the frustration.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Have been there and they were taken out of the
case file because they weren't pertinent to the person they
thought who they were going to prosecute.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So Andrew, what should law enforcement do?
Speaker 4 (18:42):
I mean we only get a partial picture, and the
partial picture from law enforcement is angled at the person
that is their suspect. But do they make available these
other omitted items.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Usually when you have crime scene photos, all of the
crime scene photos are there. They don't usually give you
a select number unless there's reasons for later. What they
put in trial. What they show is exhibitions, aren't every
single photo they took. But when they take crime scene photos,
they take pictures of everything they think is pertinent at
the crime scene when they're doing their job, right.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
So generally, when I get a package of crime scene
photos to sort of process through for the show, that's
what we've selected producorially, right, But generally, if I go
back to the original source files, that's right. There's lots
of irrelevant photos of things we don't even here's a.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Coffee cup, here's a coaster, here's some shirts, And it
doesn't make sense until you've conducted the investigation on day one,
day two, day three. When you're photographing everything at the
crime scene, you don't know what's going to be important later,
so you have to shoot everything right. So we don't
have the photos, but we know they ask Charla about
(19:50):
her parents' relationship to one another and the possibility of
an affair. Do we know if they ever questioned anyone
directly about an affair.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Not that we know of. That doesn't mean that they didn't,
but we don't see any record of them talking to
anyone that they might have possibly had an affair with.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Well, did they explore any other possibilities, like literally anyone
else that could be responsible for this?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
You know, they did explore possibilities of could this be
some other person, not a family member, you know, someone
connected to the family in some other way that they
had problems with. But I don't think anything ever came
of that.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
I think that once you go beyond the small circle
of people who may have known them and the people
who everybody knows knows them and their interactions, you know,
how do you investigate that? How do you look like anybody?
Speaker 9 (20:35):
Does?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
You go find out, you fingerprint, you look at their
phone records, you do all the normal policing. But I mean, yes,
but I think that look, Noel said when he walked
in there the next day, he paints a picture that
he said, they figured out right away it was a
crime of passion. It was somebody who knew them and
who was angry that somebody had to know their way
around the house the picture painted. I mean, yes, it's
(20:57):
now him talking about it. But it seems like it
was very clear on the first day that they decided
that that was the likely scenario.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Right when Norma called the investigators even before these autopsies
were complete, she told them they should look at Brandon exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
And so the big clues are that stabbing. Yeah, the overkill, right,
I mean, they could have whoever killed them could have
just shot them both and be done with it.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And no sign of breaking in it.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Okay, repeated stabbing makes it seem personal.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And to that point, if they're swinging with someone and
it goes wrong, is that a potential situation for overkill,
for a strong connection.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Or if it doesn't go wrong with somebody's a psycho
and that's part of their kink.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
I think these are all plausible possibilities. But if everybody
is saying it's somebody who is known to them.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, but no breaking in enry, there's an overkilled crazy
stab stab stab, and that it looks like somebody washed up.
They must have known their way around the house. Those
are three big things, right.
Speaker 4 (21:59):
But if it's somebody they just met outside of their
circle of friends, if it's a totally random person who
comes into their life, it's very difficult for law enforcement
to actually solve those particular crimes. We have seen this
time and time again, and you can read about in
plenty of cases where if the killer is not known
(22:22):
to the family or any of the friends, they're going
to go on for years without even being detected. And
in this case, you know that's a hard thing to solve.
It's actually almost impossible.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
A random home invasion is a tough case to solve.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
But he's talking more about you know, if there was
some a new body man, if there was some swinging
going on and it was some sexual thing, that they
would come in, I mean, or if it was somebody
who mistook the house and came in. But then there
would be more breaking an entry. I mean, yeah, there are.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
But you know what if somebody knocked on my door
and I felt safe in my neighborhood and said, I
have a flat tire, can you help me out? I
might let them into the house. I'll let them, you know,
let them use the phone. You know, people are the.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Boston Strangler pretended to be a handymancher, you know what
I mean. Like, there's a reason people put their guard
down and say, oh, yeah, come in, no big deal.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
But they choose not to.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
I mean, maybe they choose not to really look at
that that well or that closely. Because of all this.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
You know, it's easier to look at Brandon.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Sure well, people are accusing him right away.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
So in this case, we do have the possibility to
look at other people because we have these like clues.
We have these items like the porn and the condoms
that I don't feel like they were thoroughly investigated. You know,
we have this suggestion of a possible affair or swinging.
But what else in this case can we look at
(24:01):
and draw conclusions from in terms of potential other suspects.
What about the history of this house that they just
moved into. What do we know? I mean, Brandon mentioned
something about workers at the house.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
What Brandon was saying which is pretty valid, which is
that there were workers and builders, They were getting ready
to build stuff, They had built some things to move
their horses over. There were a lot of strangers coming
in and out of and around that property. That said
it wasn't a robbery.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
It's hard to know what was missing.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Your point about the workers in and out is important.
You know, when you're making a move, you're trusting so
many strangers in your personal space.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
We know somebody whose loved one was murdered because the
construction person downstairs was making noise, yes, and there was
a confrontation and she ended up dead. Yeah, so it
is not something It's not a leap outlandish to think, hey,
we should look at all these strangers wandering around that said,
(24:58):
the overkill, the lack of breaking an entry, the lack
of robbery.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Can I just say that I think that this kind
of discussion is very behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, well it is because if we only get forty
two minutes, it's how much do we speculate in that
forty two minutes?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Right?
Speaker 4 (25:14):
And it can seem wildly insensitive, sometimes callous, But the
intention is not necessarily to criticize people.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Well, I know what you're saying, because if we are
frustrated that Norama and Dennis were characterized as being unaccepting
of a gay lifestyle, if we're upset that law enforcement
and the community just assumed that they would be upset
with their son being gay, it is also hard for
us to say, like, maybe they were swingers. Maybe, you know,
(25:44):
we're still making characterizations about victims who aren't here to
speak for themselves, and so when we hypothesize stuff like that,
it's not coming from a place of judgment. I don't
care if someone's a swinger. I don't care if they
look at porn. What I care about is getting to
the truth. And if information and evidence could point to
(26:05):
another person being involved, why does Brandon become the only
person that, as far as we can tell, becomes a suspect.
It's a question that still bugs me. Why just Brandon.
But we can't go back in time. Right, Brandon is
in jail. He's been there since two thousand and five,
where he has lost his chance at adulthood from behind
(26:25):
bars and he's all alone. And you know, when I
met Scott Pogancy, the podcaster that you guys heard from
in the last episode, I was really concerned to hear
what Brandon's life in prison is like.
Speaker 10 (26:35):
Now.
Speaker 11 (26:36):
He tries to keep busy, like he's allowed in the
craft shop, so he is able to do like leather work,
and you know, he made me like a gun case
to you know, put my gun in.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
He made me a little.
Speaker 11 (26:48):
Key chain, says Scott on it, you know, leather. So
he tries to, like I said, he tries to keep
out of prison. He tries to keep his mind out
of prison, so as often as he can, and.
Speaker 12 (27:00):
He'll go in and work in the in the craft
shop or you know, he pretty much just keeps to himself.
And that's the That's one of the saddest things to
me when I think about it, is you know, he'd yeah,
and he's in a place where he's surrounded by three
thousand people, but he's alone.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Brandon has a life sentence, which means he could be
stuck in prison forever, but there are people who are
trying to help him. Let's talk a little bit about
the Innocence Project of Texas. How did they first get involved?
Speaker 3 (27:34):
It was actually, Scott, tell you about the work that
you've done. How long have you been working on this case,
and how has that affected his case.
Speaker 13 (27:42):
It wasn't until twenty seventeen that I really decided we
really need to put this into kind of a video
documentary format. That's when I really started investigating the case,
looking over all the documents with a fine tooth comb
and really starting to put together timelines and witness statements
(28:02):
and things like that. So in early twenty twenty one,
I was actually I was going to be filming a
reenactment for part of the film, and I put a
mass call casting call, and Richard Ray, who was a
reporter here in Dallas Fort Worth for almost forty years,
(28:25):
he responded to it and said, you know, thanks for
the invite, but I really don't think that this is
something that I want to do. And I've lived in
Dallas Fort Worth a long time, so I immediately recognized
him and I was like, oh, wait a second, I
didn't know that this was that Richard Ray. And so
we started talking back and forth and he asked me
about the project. So being in the media for a
(28:45):
long time, he knew some people and he started making
some calls and we were finally able to connect with
Mike Ware of the Texas Innocence Project to talk about
the case. The way that the Innocence Project of Texas
worked is the case is that they take on they
assigned to certain law students as part of their graduating
(29:09):
and so Mike said, yeah, let's take a look at
this and see if there's anything to it. So he
assigned the case to one of the law students and
she was blown away by everything that happened in this
case and she said, absolutely, we need to take on
this case one hundred percent. Mike called us back and said, hey, guys,
we're all in on this case. And I got to
tell you that was one of the happiest days of
(29:30):
my life.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
So that's big. I mean, what was it specifically about
this case that the Innocence Project of Texas thought they
could help with do we know.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
I don't know if it was one thing specifically, but
I do know the big thing is getting the hairs
tested that were enormous hand.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
They can't take on every case. What they try to
do is take on a case that has untested DNA
that they can then go back into and test. And
in this case, there is this DNA. There was a
bunch of hair in one of her hands that they
believe is hers. But there's this one hair and you
can see it in the crime scene photographs that is different.
And what we've heard is that they combined them all,
(30:07):
which is a kind of a crazy red flag for
US as far as evidence gathering. But that one single
hair is very, very different. And what we've been told
is that they can't go test all the hairs. It's
very very expensive, so they have to figure out what
that one hair is since it's supposedly combined. But that
one hair is a thing.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I don't know why they haven't tested all of those hairs.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Test all the hairs, no, but it costs like thousands
and thousands per hair, I know, but people fight twenty
years to get one batch of DNA, it's just backloads,
it's expensive. Every state has different protocol.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
Aren't all the hairs now mixed up?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
That's what we've been told. What we've been told is
that they just bagged all the hair together in one
and so they wouldn't be able to find that one hair.
That's the story that we've been told as to why
it hasn't been tested.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
But if you tested every single hair in that bag
and ninety nine point nine percent it came back as Norma's,
and there was one hair mixed in with the blood
on her hand that came back not belonging to Norma,
it would lead one to believe that whoever had that
hair was the person who committed this crime.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I mean, that's like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth
of testing. Who's going to test one hundred thousand on
a convicted guy that has a very circumstantial claim to
innocence as much as they have a circumstantial claim to guild.
You know, once somebody's convicted, post conviction law is incredible.
You have people where there's confessed killers, where there's DNA
that's clear and bright, they'll just say, oh, well, they
(31:35):
were not the only one there at the crime. You
have so many cases where getting a person out is insane.
It takes forever. They block it and block it. And
the way that you address it in post conviction crime,
it's not a pile of things. Circumstantial doesn't work in
post conviction. It has to be one unequivocable thing or
three unequivocable things that show unequivocably that they didn't do it.
(31:57):
So a confession from somebody else who had the time, time, motive,
and opportunity DNA that proves that that other person did it.
I mean, you need a whole plethora of stuff to
get the guy out that got convicted. Who's going to
put up two hundred thousand dollars to test all that?
It costs so much money, Like who pays for that right?
Speaker 1 (32:16):
So that's the fight. The Innocence Project of Texas wants
to get that hair tested because that hair could change
things for Brandon. If that hair belongs to someone who
is not Norma and who is not Brandon, they might
just know who Norma was defending herself from. And so
all of these people helping Brandon Scott, the Innocence Project
(32:39):
of Texas, his grandmother Bonnie. They have hope. We hear
hope from Catherine, Brandon's lawyer.
Speaker 8 (32:47):
I wouldn't give up hope completely. There's always hope. I'm
grateful that the Innocence Project of Texas has has gotten
involved in it, because if anyone can get some traction
on this for Brandon, it would be them. They've done
some amazing work in other cases in similar scenarios where
(33:08):
there was a rough to judgment.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
And we also hear hope from Bonnie.
Speaker 9 (33:14):
I've always had hope that they're going to take a
closer look. And I've always had hope and I still
have hope.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
It's hard.
Speaker 5 (33:22):
You are.
Speaker 7 (33:25):
You are a strong person, but it's it's really hard.
It's hard, and I feel like you have to put
on a good front for everybody. Do you feel like
you can't let him see you cry.
Speaker 9 (33:44):
I don't guess he's seen me cry. Yeah, you know,
he might have seen me cry in court. I don't know.
He probably did then, but I haven't. When I go
to visit him, I don't cry. You know, got to
be strong for him.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
I also have hope for Brandon. I have to because
that means I have hope for a judicial system, Explain
to me what does at stake for you? You know,
you've got what for me.
Speaker 10 (34:17):
In my life, but more certainly, I mean my life
is you know, is here on earth. But at the
same time, my parents there's judged. When we say that
judge has not been heard of course, that I haven't
occurred for me, that I haven't deserved, for my grandmother,
really for even the family that believes that, you know,
I could have been responsible. If you knew my parents,
(34:38):
you knew there would be definitely no reason why I'm
going to ever hurt them, harm them, and definitely certainly
not kill them. But at so at the end of
the day, because my family being quote my dynamic for
my father and my mother, there's no nothing for them
either right now, even though they're not here, they still
they're not ju I mean, they did not want to
get killed, and they finally didn't deserve for you know,
(35:00):
everything that happened to me then and right now the
people I really do feel out there. So that's a
lot of the thing to me, you know, that gets
my live, But the other lives that I've been in
and I get.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Find a whole situation that's it for our deep dive
into Brandon Woodruf's case. But for more information, you can
visit Freebrandon dot org, or you can go to the
Free Brandon Facebook page at facebook dot com slash Free Brandon.
That's it for this week's episode of True Crime Story
(35:32):
It Couldn't Happen Here. But we'll be back next week
to answer some questions from our listeners, and in the
weeks that follow, we'll be right here digging into our
next case, which takes place in Andre, North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yeah, you think about them all the time. You know,
there's several cases where they stay inside you and you
think about them, and you think about the people who
you've got to know and the people who are affected
by these things that have happened.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Join us next week as we continue to roll up
our sleeves and dig in. Thank you so much for
joining us. If you haven't watched Sundance TVs True Crime
Story It Couldn't Happen Here, you can catch all of
our episodes streaming on AMC Plus. For more information about
this and other cases we've covered, follow at ic HH
(36:22):
stories on Instagram. True Crime Story It Couldn't Happen Here
was produced by Mischief Farm in association with Bungalow Media
and Entertainment, Authentic Management Productions and Figdonia in partnership with
Sundance TV. Executive producers are me Hillary Burton, Morgan Liz Accessor,
(36:42):
Robert Friedman, Mike Powers, and Meg Mortimer. Producers are Maggie
Robinson Katz and Libby Siegel. Our audio engineer is Brendan Dalton,
with original music by Philip Ridiotes. We want to say
a special thank you to everyone who participated, but especially
the family is impacted by our cases.
Hi guys, it's Hillary here. Just a quick note. This
series does deal with a lot of tough subject matter
that may be difficult for some listeners, so please keep
this in mind when and where you choose to listen
to these episodes. Last episode, we had a candid conversation
(00:21):
regarding the challenges the people in the LGBTQIA plus community
face across our country, and specifically how those prejudices affected
Brandon himself. Additionally, we featured interview clips from our chat
with Scott Pogancy, who grew up as a gay man
in Texas and became impassioned to find justice in this case.
(00:43):
On this episode, we're going to wrap up our look
at Brandon Woodruff's case and explore possible alternative suspects to
where Brandon's case is now. But before we do that,
I just want to be very clear why I picked
Brandon's case. When we learn that someone was convicted most
likely because of their sexuality, I was deeply affected by that.
(01:06):
I mean, it was two thousand and five, fine, a
long time ago, but this shit is still relevant in
our news cycle now. It feels like it could have
happened yesterday. All the prejudices I had hoped that we
could get passed in the early two thousands. It is
all still ripe in our modern day environment, and so
this case is very near to mean Because I am
(01:26):
an LGBTQIA plus advocate and I'm an ally and if
we don't raise our voices against these injustices and systemic issues,
people will continue to be prosecuted unfairly. And I don't
think anyone should have to live in a place where
they have to hide who they are or be scared
that because of who they are, they won't get what
(01:47):
our Constitution's supposed to guarantee, the right to a fair trial.
As we wrap up Brandon's case, my sincere hope is
that we all continue to challenge our judicial system and
ask questions and rise up when we have something to say,
because the real question isn't whether Brandon is innocent or guilty.
(02:11):
The question is was he given a fair trial? That
should concern all of us. I'm Hillary Burton Morgan, and
this is true crime story. It couldn't happen here? All right,
(02:34):
you guys, welcome to another episode of It couldn't happen here.
I'm Hillary Burton Morgan, and you know our team. We
have Andrew Dunn, Poecutcheons, Dan Flaherty. Thank you guys for
joining us. Before we really get into things this week,
I just wanted to ask you kind of a blanket
question because I know I get feedback. I wanted to
know if people reach out to you and give you feedback.
(02:56):
You know, your friends, your family, just people who watch
these kinds of shows. What do you hear from them?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Oh? Yeah, we get strangers who call, We get people
who are involved who call. We get friends and family
who talk to us. You know. I mean I always post,
and most of us post on the socials when these
things come out and people comment, and certainly there's some
shows I've done that have gotten a huge amount of
public reactions, sometimes changing people's minds and other times vitriol.
(03:25):
I think that what we all want here is not
to change people's minds, not to change anyone's minds. What
we want to do is open people's minds to looking
at things, maybe a little differently, and to not be
afraid to challenge certain narratives, and to encourage and help
them think critically about what they're seeing.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
And leaving it open ended allows for the intelligence of
the viewer. I just I don't know. I get bothered
when people coddle viewers and treat them like they're stupid,
because I know my fan base is bright. They are problems.
So they are thinkers, they are people who engage with
one another, and they're involved in advocacy. And so if
(04:06):
we were to spoon feed them a narrative, I just,
I don't know. I think it's condescending. So when we
leave it open ended, they're bright enough to come to
their own conclusion.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, we never want to tell somebody what to think,
you know, it's just encouraging them to think just.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
That about it. Yeah, all we want to do is
put it on your radar.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And for us, I mean for a lot of the
stories that we tell, we don't know what happened. I
mean I don't know, you know, I wasn't there, and
so all I could do is raise questions. We tell
stories where there is a question of whether justice has
been served, or questions about how it was handled, or
questions about the system.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
I think it's only fair to leave it open or
not a jury. We're journalists and we can only present
what we're given. And in the end, if it's overwhelmingly
feels like someone is innocent or should not be in jail,
then that is a parent. That's a parent in what
we present. And if somebody in a more complicated case
(05:04):
feels conflicted about it, and it's reflected in that in
the ending, probably we feel conflict too on some ways.
Because we can't advocate specifically for something that we don't
know the absolute truth about.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
We can advocate for the system, yes, to better itself
at every turn. So when we make a complaint, it
is not this person's innocent or this person is guilty.
When we make a complaint, it is that we are
operating within a system that is hesitant to self correct.
We are operating within a system that does not want
(05:40):
to reflect on their own.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Errors or correct their own errors.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And that is what we have a problem with.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
And I do want to say something really quickly. You said,
we can only present what we're given, and that's not
what we do. We can absolutely curate for an opinion.
What we try really hard to do is gather as
much evidence and as much information and as much very
worrying opinions about somebody about the case from people that
are involved in it, and then present them in a
balanced way, and that's what we do. And I don't
(06:08):
think that we're leading somebody in one way or the other.
I think we're very balanced about how we go about it,
and we try really hard, and we point out the
problems that we see, and we are conflicted about some
of them because we don't know some of them. We
have better ideas of what we think, but we still
never say unequivocally what happened, because how could we?
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And so, in your opinion, if Brandon Woodruff's trial happened
today in twenty twenty three, with the advances we have
in DNA, with a different understanding of what it is
to be gay in a small town, or maybe not
a difference given current legislation, But do you believe he
would be convicted in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Possibly, it's up to the jurisdiction and the jury. You
can certainly, I mean, right today, we have plenty of
cases that are happening right now. I mean, I think
that some of the things that we're done in assumptions
that were made would be quite I think some of
the DNA and things like that would potentially be clarifying.
I think the way they dealt with this crime scene
would probably be very different. So there could be ways
(07:10):
that the investigation in the trial went differently. But I
could not say in this day and age whether he
would or wouldn't be convicted. I mean, I've seen stuff happening.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Brandon was convicted on circumstantial evidence, but people get convicted
on circumstantial evidence all the time.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I think what really hits for me is that when
we walked away from this shoot, which we did well
over a year ago, I walked away thinking there's no
way Brandon would be convicted in this day and age.
And then this landslide of legislation happened in the South,
in rural communities, specifically in Texas, and I can't say
(07:44):
that anymore. And it's terrifying, you know, we have backslid.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Can I just say one thing is to separate what
bothers me the most about Brandon being the suspect is
there's actually no illustration of anything in his life where
he is murderously angry at both of his parents. I mean,
there's nothing. There's also nothing that points him out in
(08:10):
any of his life or from any of the things
that we've heard about him, and in our interview that
he's a bizarre psychopath who snapped one day.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, I mean the Estheringtons were talking about him killing
baby kittens, So there was stuff that was pointed out
of him being a violent person. But there's no evidence
of any of that.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
But it's not just evidence. There's no other sources other
than the Etherrington's.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I think what you're saying, Andrews, that there's nothing that
shows that kind of animosity towards his parents. I mean,
I think I haven't heard anybody say that he had
a contentious relationship in any way with his parents.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Right, except for the arrest warrant that he had been
saying he hated them online and he hadn't.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Right, which was pretty quickly keeping showing de bunk.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Right, except that he was in jail.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Motive, Yeah, there's no motive.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
There's no DNA and there's no motive, or there's no
forensic evidence and there's no motive.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Right, So we have no motive, no forensic evidence, and
these are the conclusions we're coming to. There's something I
want to ask each of you, after all of these
months of us working on this case, do you have
(09:25):
any working theories on what you think happened here.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I mean, this one's a hard one. What's fair And
what I like to do is say on every case
is also say, Okay, this person is claiming they're innocent.
We're looking into the possibility of them being innocent. Let's
think about it as if they did it. I think
it's really important and Dan and I do this, and
I do this a lot, is say okay, if they
did do it, you know, when we don't have actual
physical evidence proving that somebody else did it. If they
(09:49):
did do it, let's piece it together. We've pieced together
a lot of it, and a lot of it looks hard,
but it doesn't look impossible.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
The question is working theory. Po I think you're about
to get a lot of dodges here, Hillary, Well, I mean.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Because you guys committed from a different place. I've always
said I'm not a journalist, and i am not a lawyer,
and I'm not law enforcement. I'm a lady from a
town that's small that wants to go to other small
towns and cover these stories. And for me, from the
very beginning of this entire case, the thing that bothered
me so much was that Dennis and Norma were seated
(10:24):
so close together on that couch, it was the most
unnatural positioning for a long time married couple to be in.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
The whole crime scene is really weird and it felt
hostagy to me. And the fact that they walked through
it in the dark freaked the heck out of me.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Right, they videotaped that crime scene in the dark, so
I mean they could have knocked things over, they could
have missed things, they could have messed up key evidence anything.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
And like just Nole's storytelling about what happened there didn't
feel true to me.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
The idea that this couple that's been married for like
twenty years is seated right on top of each other
and that they were somehow caught off guard by their
son who showed up with a gun and a dagger.
That does not ring true. Think about how you sit
with your spouse in your house when you're settling in
for the night, and those are the tiny things that
it becomes very important to put yourself in the shoes
(11:19):
of the victims of the people who are being talked
about and theorized about. I don't know any married couple
that sits that way.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Well, I mean, let's be fair, I know, married couples
that drape all over each other. They weren't draped all
over each other. It was more proper. That's what was
weird about it. It was more city ap proper feeling.
I mean from bodies that are strewed about.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I think these are. I mean, the fact that they
were sitting next to each other is a fact, right,
But you could read into it two different ways. Right
to look at it as the way you're looking at it,
which it seems unnatural for them to be sitting that
close to each other. Somebody else looks at it saying,
they look like they're very comfortable sitting there. And I
think the spit cup in Dennis's hand supports that in
(12:01):
some way that it wasn't just you know, you stand
over there. He was sitting in there with his spit
cup in his hand, you know, not like, oh my god,
I'm a hostage. It's somebody. I'm just sitting here casually
chewing tobacco watching TV. You know. So I think you
can look at the same facts and interpret them two
different ways. But I think that's sort of why there
are so many questions with this. I mean, I think
that it makes sense that if you look at the
(12:23):
evidence and you read the circumstantial evidence a certain way.
Brandon is the most likely suspect, and it makes sense
that they would go to that direction, But that doesn't
mean that that's the only interpretation of that evidence.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, but there's also evidence that we haven't even touched yet,
and honestly, it's always really bothered me. So there were
some other materials that were discovered at the crime scene, Dan,
can you tell us about this?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Well, this is interesting, you know, digging into the case
materials and looking to see what evidence was collected. There's
not necessarily a record of all the things that were collected.
The investigators ask Charla about things that they found at
the house, but I don't see that collected as evidence.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
So you've got a discrepancy discrepancy.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Already, Like I don't like we were looking for, like
what did they find? And so they were asking Charla
about her parents' lifestyle. The things that they asked Charla
about were pornographic videos that were in plain sight, flavored
condoms that were out in the open. I don't see
that coming up too many other.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Places, right, Okay, So this is Charla's first interview with
law enforcement. And as a reminder for you guys at home,
Charla is Brandon's older sister. So let's listen to that clip.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Now we've talked about your relationship to your parents and
your and your relationship to your brother, let's talk about
your parents' relationship with one another. Do you think that
there's a possibility again, you might not know, and you
may be able to tell me no right off the bat.
Is there a possibility that either won of your mother
(14:01):
or your dad could have been having an affair or
something like that with the you know, or swinging or ya.
I know that that's kind of a you know, the
g uh a weird deal, But could they have been
involved in something of that nature to where they had
you know.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
I'm not gonna lie. There was one time in life
that I can friend in my parents and I asked
them straightforward and I said, are you I asked them both,
are you having an affair? And they both straight up
looked me downe the eye and they said nope.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
Now, w what made you think that they were having
an affair?
Speaker 6 (14:40):
Because my mom would stay at work for ever and
ever and ever and ever and never mom uh.
Speaker 7 (14:48):
And that was back in the fourteen to sixteen.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
Year here where when you didn't wanna be at home either, right, okay?
Speaker 6 (14:55):
And so so she would never I mean, and she's
always gone, always gone. And my dad I all even
talk about was just different girls and his offens se
the flirt, okay, And so I was ask them both
stead on, you know, and all they did is they
(15:16):
turned around and asked me if I was having an
affair with my teachers at school, why did ask that.
Speaker 8 (15:24):
I have annoida?
Speaker 6 (15:25):
I think they just thought that it was the most
stupidest thing that I could have ever asked them. And
they just thought of like the most stupidest thing they
could ever ask me.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 5 (15:35):
Yeah, I how I guess.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
So, you know, it's a cause I asked them. They
look if we didn't die and said no, and then
they're like, in this sarcastic, stupid way, They're like, well
are you?
Speaker 5 (15:47):
And I was like told, you know, like okay, what
about as couples though, was swinging or doing something like that?
Because there was there was stuff found at the residents,
some pornography and some things like that that were that
was found there. Well, exactly, I've got a flavored or
something like that, you know, just strange.
Speaker 6 (16:10):
I've never seen that at the health ever.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I don't know, man, this is something that has always
kind of stood out to me because it's weird and
it's uncomfortable, and law enforcements trying to do their job
and figure out motive, but they're having to ask some
very awkward questions, and they're asking the daughter of the
victims about this swinging lifestyle. So it's not just brandon
sexuality that becomes a topic in this case, but also
(16:38):
the sexuality of his parents. What would lead them to
think that the materials there were used with other people
as opposed to just with each other.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I don't know, it's interesting, right, I've seen this in
a couple of different criminal investigations where they find a
condom at the crime scene and the investigators were like,
there's a condom here, so there must have been an affair.
As if married people don't use condoms.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah, I mean, we know what early forties, you know,
they're young.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
They don't want to have kids again, they watch porn.
Lots of couples watch porn. I think it was less
accepted back then.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Well, the difference is you can get it on your
phone now, and before you used to have to go
and have a physical copy.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
You had to buy I had to go into it
was the walk of shame. You had to go into
a porn store. It was a very seedy place.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And so for them to have this collection is not
a big deal. I think the point that was being
made was that this collection was out in the open,
knowing that their son had just been in their house
hours before, right, and that along with the condoms being
out in the open, was weird.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
It is weird. I mean, if Brandon was walking through
their house, you know, that would be a real interesting
family where their parents are just leaving porn and condoms
rolling around the house for the kid to see.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And they asked Charlie about it. They asked if that
was something that was often out in the open, and
she says no, she had never seen.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
That, so it was something unusual. They do ask about it,
So it's weird if they'd ask about it if it
wasn't there. But we don't have evidence it was there
because it's not in any of the photographs that we
got from the police files.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That's so weird.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
And this is the frustrating aspect for us. These other
items that are being found, yet we have no crime
scene photos of them.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I mean maybe photos were taken of them and that
we didn't receive them. Somewhere along the way they got
taken out of the case files. I don't know. We
just don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
To Brandon, probably would have been kept.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Maybe they weren't pertinent so they weren't part of discovery
and they were Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, think they could have been destroyed or deleted. I
mean maybe they I don't know, but this is the frustration.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Have been there and they were taken out of the
case file because they weren't pertinent to the person they
thought who they were going to prosecute.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So Andrew, what should law enforcement do?
Speaker 4 (18:42):
I mean we only get a partial picture, and the
partial picture from law enforcement is angled at the person
that is their suspect. But do they make available these
other omitted items.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Usually when you have crime scene photos, all of the
crime scene photos are there. They don't usually give you
a select number unless there's reasons for later. What they
put in trial. What they show is exhibitions, aren't every
single photo they took. But when they take crime scene photos,
they take pictures of everything they think is pertinent at
the crime scene when they're doing their job, right.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
So generally, when I get a package of crime scene
photos to sort of process through for the show, that's
what we've selected producorially, right, But generally, if I go
back to the original source files, that's right. There's lots
of irrelevant photos of things we don't even here's a.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Coffee cup, here's a coaster, here's some shirts, And it
doesn't make sense until you've conducted the investigation on day one,
day two, day three. When you're photographing everything at the
crime scene, you don't know what's going to be important later,
so you have to shoot everything right. So we don't
have the photos, but we know they ask Charla about
(19:50):
her parents' relationship to one another and the possibility of
an affair. Do we know if they ever questioned anyone
directly about an affair.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Not that we know of. That doesn't mean that they didn't,
but we don't see any record of them talking to
anyone that they might have possibly had an affair with.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Well, did they explore any other possibilities, like literally anyone
else that could be responsible for this?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
You know, they did explore possibilities of could this be
some other person, not a family member, you know, someone
connected to the family in some other way that they
had problems with. But I don't think anything ever came
of that.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
I think that once you go beyond the small circle
of people who may have known them and the people
who everybody knows knows them and their interactions, you know,
how do you investigate that? How do you look like anybody?
Speaker 9 (20:35):
Does?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
You go find out, you fingerprint, you look at their
phone records, you do all the normal policing. But I mean, yes,
but I think that look, Noel said when he walked
in there the next day, he paints a picture that
he said, they figured out right away it was a
crime of passion. It was somebody who knew them and
who was angry that somebody had to know their way
around the house the picture painted. I mean, yes, it's
(20:57):
now him talking about it. But it seems like it
was very clear on the first day that they decided
that that was the likely scenario.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Right when Norma called the investigators even before these autopsies
were complete, she told them they should look at Brandon exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
And so the big clues are that stabbing. Yeah, the overkill, right,
I mean, they could have whoever killed them could have
just shot them both and be done with it.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And no sign of breaking in it.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Okay, repeated stabbing makes it seem personal.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And to that point, if they're swinging with someone and
it goes wrong, is that a potential situation for overkill,
for a strong connection.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Or if it doesn't go wrong with somebody's a psycho
and that's part of their kink.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
I think these are all plausible possibilities. But if everybody
is saying it's somebody who is known to them.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, but no breaking in enry, there's an overkilled crazy
stab stab stab, and that it looks like somebody washed up.
They must have known their way around the house. Those
are three big things, right.
Speaker 4 (21:59):
But if it's somebody they just met outside of their
circle of friends, if it's a totally random person who
comes into their life, it's very difficult for law enforcement
to actually solve those particular crimes. We have seen this
time and time again, and you can read about in
plenty of cases where if the killer is not known
(22:22):
to the family or any of the friends, they're going
to go on for years without even being detected. And
in this case, you know that's a hard thing to solve.
It's actually almost impossible.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
A random home invasion is a tough case to solve.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
But he's talking more about you know, if there was
some a new body man, if there was some swinging
going on and it was some sexual thing, that they
would come in, I mean, or if it was somebody
who mistook the house and came in. But then there
would be more breaking an entry. I mean, yeah, there are.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
But you know what if somebody knocked on my door
and I felt safe in my neighborhood and said, I
have a flat tire, can you help me out? I
might let them into the house. I'll let them, you know,
let them use the phone. You know, people are the.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Boston Strangler pretended to be a handymancher, you know what
I mean. Like, there's a reason people put their guard
down and say, oh, yeah, come in, no big deal.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
But they choose not to.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
I mean, maybe they choose not to really look at
that that well or that closely. Because of all this.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
You know, it's easier to look at Brandon.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Sure well, people are accusing him right away.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
So in this case, we do have the possibility to
look at other people because we have these like clues.
We have these items like the porn and the condoms
that I don't feel like they were thoroughly investigated. You know,
we have this suggestion of a possible affair or swinging.
But what else in this case can we look at
(24:01):
and draw conclusions from in terms of potential other suspects.
What about the history of this house that they just
moved into. What do we know? I mean, Brandon mentioned
something about workers at the house.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
What Brandon was saying which is pretty valid, which is
that there were workers and builders, They were getting ready
to build stuff, They had built some things to move
their horses over. There were a lot of strangers coming
in and out of and around that property. That said
it wasn't a robbery.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
It's hard to know what was missing.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Your point about the workers in and out is important.
You know, when you're making a move, you're trusting so
many strangers in your personal space.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
We know somebody whose loved one was murdered because the
construction person downstairs was making noise, yes, and there was
a confrontation and she ended up dead. Yeah, so it
is not something It's not a leap outlandish to think, hey,
we should look at all these strangers wandering around that said,
(24:58):
the overkill, the lack of breaking an entry, the lack
of robbery.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Can I just say that I think that this kind
of discussion is very behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, well it is because if we only get forty
two minutes, it's how much do we speculate in that
forty two minutes?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Right?
Speaker 4 (25:14):
And it can seem wildly insensitive, sometimes callous, But the
intention is not necessarily to criticize people.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Well, I know what you're saying, because if we are
frustrated that Norama and Dennis were characterized as being unaccepting
of a gay lifestyle, if we're upset that law enforcement
and the community just assumed that they would be upset
with their son being gay, it is also hard for
us to say, like, maybe they were swingers. Maybe, you know,
(25:44):
we're still making characterizations about victims who aren't here to
speak for themselves, and so when we hypothesize stuff like that,
it's not coming from a place of judgment. I don't
care if someone's a swinger. I don't care if they
look at porn. What I care about is getting to
the truth. And if information and evidence could point to
(26:05):
another person being involved, why does Brandon become the only
person that, as far as we can tell, becomes a suspect.
It's a question that still bugs me. Why just Brandon.
But we can't go back in time. Right, Brandon is
in jail. He's been there since two thousand and five,
where he has lost his chance at adulthood from behind
(26:25):
bars and he's all alone. And you know, when I
met Scott Pogancy, the podcaster that you guys heard from
in the last episode, I was really concerned to hear
what Brandon's life in prison is like.
Speaker 10 (26:35):
Now.
Speaker 11 (26:36):
He tries to keep busy, like he's allowed in the
craft shop, so he is able to do like leather work,
and you know, he made me like a gun case
to you know, put my gun in.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
He made me a little.
Speaker 11 (26:48):
Key chain, says Scott on it, you know, leather. So
he tries to, like I said, he tries to keep
out of prison. He tries to keep his mind out
of prison, so as often as he can, and.
Speaker 12 (27:00):
He'll go in and work in the in the craft
shop or you know, he pretty much just keeps to himself.
And that's the That's one of the saddest things to
me when I think about it, is you know, he'd yeah,
and he's in a place where he's surrounded by three
thousand people, but he's alone.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Brandon has a life sentence, which means he could be
stuck in prison forever, but there are people who are
trying to help him. Let's talk a little bit about
the Innocence Project of Texas. How did they first get involved?
Speaker 3 (27:34):
It was actually, Scott, tell you about the work that
you've done. How long have you been working on this case,
and how has that affected his case.
Speaker 13 (27:42):
It wasn't until twenty seventeen that I really decided we
really need to put this into kind of a video
documentary format. That's when I really started investigating the case,
looking over all the documents with a fine tooth comb
and really starting to put together timelines and witness statements
(28:02):
and things like that. So in early twenty twenty one,
I was actually I was going to be filming a
reenactment for part of the film, and I put a
mass call casting call, and Richard Ray, who was a
reporter here in Dallas Fort Worth for almost forty years,
(28:25):
he responded to it and said, you know, thanks for
the invite, but I really don't think that this is
something that I want to do. And I've lived in
Dallas Fort Worth a long time, so I immediately recognized
him and I was like, oh, wait a second, I
didn't know that this was that Richard Ray. And so
we started talking back and forth and he asked me
about the project. So being in the media for a
(28:45):
long time, he knew some people and he started making
some calls and we were finally able to connect with
Mike Ware of the Texas Innocence Project to talk about
the case. The way that the Innocence Project of Texas
worked is the case is that they take on they
assigned to certain law students as part of their graduating
(29:09):
and so Mike said, yeah, let's take a look at
this and see if there's anything to it. So he
assigned the case to one of the law students and
she was blown away by everything that happened in this
case and she said, absolutely, we need to take on
this case one hundred percent. Mike called us back and said, hey, guys,
we're all in on this case. And I got to
tell you that was one of the happiest days of
(29:30):
my life.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
So that's big. I mean, what was it specifically about
this case that the Innocence Project of Texas thought they
could help with do we know.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
I don't know if it was one thing specifically, but
I do know the big thing is getting the hairs
tested that were enormous hand.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
They can't take on every case. What they try to
do is take on a case that has untested DNA
that they can then go back into and test. And
in this case, there is this DNA. There was a
bunch of hair in one of her hands that they
believe is hers. But there's this one hair and you
can see it in the crime scene photographs that is different.
And what we've heard is that they combined them all,
(30:07):
which is a kind of a crazy red flag for
US as far as evidence gathering. But that one single
hair is very, very different. And what we've been told
is that they can't go test all the hairs. It's
very very expensive, so they have to figure out what
that one hair is since it's supposedly combined. But that
one hair is a thing.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I don't know why they haven't tested all of those hairs.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Test all the hairs, no, but it costs like thousands
and thousands per hair, I know, but people fight twenty
years to get one batch of DNA, it's just backloads,
it's expensive. Every state has different protocol.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
Aren't all the hairs now mixed up?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
That's what we've been told. What we've been told is
that they just bagged all the hair together in one
and so they wouldn't be able to find that one hair.
That's the story that we've been told as to why
it hasn't been tested.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
But if you tested every single hair in that bag
and ninety nine point nine percent it came back as Norma's,
and there was one hair mixed in with the blood
on her hand that came back not belonging to Norma,
it would lead one to believe that whoever had that
hair was the person who committed this crime.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I mean, that's like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth
of testing. Who's going to test one hundred thousand on
a convicted guy that has a very circumstantial claim to
innocence as much as they have a circumstantial claim to guild.
You know, once somebody's convicted, post conviction law is incredible.
You have people where there's confessed killers, where there's DNA
that's clear and bright, they'll just say, oh, well, they
(31:35):
were not the only one there at the crime. You
have so many cases where getting a person out is insane.
It takes forever. They block it and block it. And
the way that you address it in post conviction crime,
it's not a pile of things. Circumstantial doesn't work in
post conviction. It has to be one unequivocable thing or
three unequivocable things that show unequivocably that they didn't do it.
(31:57):
So a confession from somebody else who had the time, time, motive,
and opportunity DNA that proves that that other person did it.
I mean, you need a whole plethora of stuff to
get the guy out that got convicted. Who's going to
put up two hundred thousand dollars to test all that?
It costs so much money, Like who pays for that right?
Speaker 1 (32:16):
So that's the fight. The Innocence Project of Texas wants
to get that hair tested because that hair could change
things for Brandon. If that hair belongs to someone who
is not Norma and who is not Brandon, they might
just know who Norma was defending herself from. And so
all of these people helping Brandon Scott, the Innocence Project
(32:39):
of Texas, his grandmother Bonnie. They have hope. We hear
hope from Catherine, Brandon's lawyer.
Speaker 8 (32:47):
I wouldn't give up hope completely. There's always hope. I'm
grateful that the Innocence Project of Texas has has gotten
involved in it, because if anyone can get some traction
on this for Brandon, it would be them. They've done
some amazing work in other cases in similar scenarios where
(33:08):
there was a rough to judgment.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
And we also hear hope from Bonnie.
Speaker 9 (33:14):
I've always had hope that they're going to take a
closer look. And I've always had hope and I still
have hope.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
It's hard.
Speaker 5 (33:22):
You are.
Speaker 7 (33:25):
You are a strong person, but it's it's really hard.
It's hard, and I feel like you have to put
on a good front for everybody. Do you feel like
you can't let him see you cry.
Speaker 9 (33:44):
I don't guess he's seen me cry. Yeah, you know,
he might have seen me cry in court. I don't know.
He probably did then, but I haven't. When I go
to visit him, I don't cry. You know, got to
be strong for him.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
I also have hope for Brandon. I have to because
that means I have hope for a judicial system, Explain
to me what does at stake for you? You know,
you've got what for me.
Speaker 10 (34:17):
In my life, but more certainly, I mean my life
is you know, is here on earth. But at the
same time, my parents there's judged. When we say that
judge has not been heard of course, that I haven't
occurred for me, that I haven't deserved, for my grandmother,
really for even the family that believes that, you know,
I could have been responsible. If you knew my parents,
(34:38):
you knew there would be definitely no reason why I'm
going to ever hurt them, harm them, and definitely certainly
not kill them. But at so at the end of
the day, because my family being quote my dynamic for
my father and my mother, there's no nothing for them
either right now, even though they're not here, they still
they're not ju I mean, they did not want to
get killed, and they finally didn't deserve for you know,
(35:00):
everything that happened to me then and right now the
people I really do feel out there. So that's a
lot of the thing to me, you know, that gets
my live, But the other lives that I've been in
and I get.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Find a whole situation that's it for our deep dive
into Brandon Woodruf's case. But for more information, you can
visit Freebrandon dot org, or you can go to the
Free Brandon Facebook page at facebook dot com slash Free Brandon.
That's it for this week's episode of True Crime Story
(35:32):
It Couldn't Happen Here. But we'll be back next week
to answer some questions from our listeners, and in the
weeks that follow, we'll be right here digging into our
next case, which takes place in Andre, North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yeah, you think about them all the time. You know,
there's several cases where they stay inside you and you
think about them, and you think about the people who
you've got to know and the people who are affected
by these things that have happened.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Join us next week as we continue to roll up
our sleeves and dig in. Thank you so much for
joining us. If you haven't watched Sundance TVs True Crime
Story It Couldn't Happen Here, you can catch all of
our episodes streaming on AMC Plus. For more information about
this and other cases we've covered, follow at ic HH
(36:22):
stories on Instagram. True Crime Story It Couldn't Happen Here
was produced by Mischief Farm in association with Bungalow Media
and Entertainment, Authentic Management Productions and Figdonia in partnership with
Sundance TV. Executive producers are me Hillary Burton, Morgan Liz Accessor,
(36:42):
Robert Friedman, Mike Powers, and Meg Mortimer. Producers are Maggie
Robinson Katz and Libby Siegel. Our audio engineer is Brendan Dalton,
with original music by Philip Ridiotes. We want to say
a special thank you to everyone who participated, but especially
the family is impacted by our cases.
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