December 15, 2023 • 44 mins
Family members defend Libby’s boyfriend and help shed light on his actions over the years.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Original.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This is an iHeart original. This story can be hard
to hear. There's detailed talk of suicide and violence, but
we think it's important not to gloss over the reality
of what happened to Libby Caswell. Please take care while listening.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I cared about Elizabeth more than any human being on
this plane.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
She was going to be my wife, you know what
I mean, for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
We were supposed to be together.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
You're hearing the voice of Devon Martin, a voice you
might have noticed has been largely absent from the series
so far. It's not for lack of trying. For the
past year and a half, I've made numerous attempts to
speak with Devon, sending him emails and reaching out over
social media, letting him know I was making a show
about Libby and that I wanted his side of the story.
(01:00):
I know he's received my messages, but I've never heard
anything back. His mom, Mindy said he didn't want to
talk to me. What I do have of Devin's voice
is the nine one one call and the two interviews
he's done with the Independence Police Department. One in twenty seventeen,
right after Libby's death, and then one two years later,
(01:20):
and it's in that second interview where he gets more personal.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
I'm during that's turning on the inside.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
I'm one had to experience all of this.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I get that, I can tell that you're heard.
Speaker 7 (01:31):
I get that, okay, And I'm still dealing with this
year and it's been almost two years.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It's almost been two years. I lost my son's mom
and I almost lost myself almost this to be old boy.
Speaker 6 (01:44):
I want my life back.
Speaker 8 (01:45):
Phobe Caswall was won by so many people.
Speaker 9 (01:47):
No one wanted to believe that she would ever do
anything like that to herself because no one could believe that.
I look at us.
Speaker 10 (01:52):
We as the fucking We was the king and Queen
is fucking in high school.
Speaker 9 (01:56):
That's what we did.
Speaker 8 (01:57):
I was a job, She was a and a cheerleader.
Speaker 11 (02:01):
And that's everyone out now.
Speaker 9 (02:02):
So I'm looking at him.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
It was the perfect couple.
Speaker 6 (02:04):
Nobody wants to believe that shit happened.
Speaker 8 (02:06):
I should have fucked out, but it.
Speaker 9 (02:07):
Is what it is.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
That is what happened.
Speaker 7 (02:10):
This shit is fucking ruining my life and people need
to leave me alone.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
And that's how I feel about it, because I'm the
one who lost someone genarly to me.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
There's so much I'd like to talk to Devin about,
not just what happened the night Libby died. Devan has
always maintained his innocence. I don't think he'd give me
a different account. And not just his perspective on his
and Libby's relationship, the allegations of domestic violence, the drug use.
But I'd also like to hear from Devin about his
(02:41):
life and how he grew up, because, as I've come
to understand, it wasn't easy.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I watched my mother did abused my entire childhood. I've
been around my whole life.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I was picking my mom up up the floor with
needles hang.
Speaker 12 (02:55):
Out her arm when I was five years old.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
I know what the ship brings.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Even if Devon won't talk to me, I still want
to try to paint a fair portrait because just as
Libby's story didn't happen in a vacuum, neither did Devans
In his absence. I've spoken to people close to him,
including his mom, his stepmom, and his sister. These are
women who love Devon, who support Devon, who admit he's
(03:23):
a complicated character, but who also wholeheartedly believe that he
is not responsible for Libby's death.
Speaker 13 (03:30):
My son did not murder Libby. There's no way he
could live with himself and just live live if he
had done something like that.
Speaker 8 (03:39):
I know he couldn't.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
I know they did some gun things together and you know,
made some bad choices together.
Speaker 8 (03:45):
But in my heart a heart, I don't really love
that boy did that.
Speaker 11 (03:49):
I feel it in my heart. And if I'm wrong,
then I'm wrong. But then I guess I would know
my brother. You know.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
It's a fuzz through.
Speaker 11 (04:07):
So what is she.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
From? iHeart Podcasts. I'm Melissa Jelson And this is what
happened to Lippy Caswell.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Cous She didn't ever tell me the extent of all
the things that happened, you know, I had to find
out after her death.
Speaker 9 (04:37):
So was she on her back and he was like
straddling her? Yes, okay? And he had his hands around
her throat?
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Yes, there were you know, young puppy love.
Speaker 13 (04:47):
It was always oh babe, this babe ba.
Speaker 9 (04:50):
Maybe a stupid nickname is a.
Speaker 11 (04:51):
Big Colliehow.
Speaker 8 (04:54):
He really went off the rails with nuts Like some
people go off the rails, some people don't.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Chapter seven Black shadows are never good. For most of
the time I've been reporting on Libby, Devon has been
in prison in Kansas, serving time on a drug charge.
He was recently released and paroled back to Missouri. In
(05:45):
and out of jail, This is a pattern for Devon
that stretches back years. It's hard to get a complete
picture as his offenses cover multiple states and counties, but
as far as I can tell, Devon has had dozens
and dozens of encounters with police since the age of seventeen,
many of them related to drugs and theft. The summer
(06:06):
before Libby died, he had gotten in enough trouble that
he was included on the ipd's monthly Most Active Core
Offenders list. His mugshot was one of ten emailed to
the entire department alerting them of his recent arrests for burglary, assault,
and disturbance. It noted that he was quote physically violent.
(06:27):
According to IPD, the people added to this list were
the ones with the most frequent and recent police contact.
They were then targeted by IPD for quote proactive enforcement
and by county prosecutors for potential legal action. So how
did Devon end up on this list? At age twenty one.
(06:48):
More importantly, I wanted to find out how did this
pattern begin.
Speaker 13 (06:53):
At Devon's request, agdn't want may.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
Adopting you, but I don't care if he gets mad
at me for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I feel like I need to talk to It took
me more than a year of trying before Devn's mom, Mindy,
finally agreed to talk to me to help me fill
in the blanks in Devon's backstory. Once I got her
on the phone, she was surprisingly open and eager to
share about her own life and about Devon's childhood.
Speaker 13 (07:21):
His father and I both had such as abuse problems.
His father and I stayed together until he was I
want to say, four or five, and then we finally split.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Mindy says after they broke up, Devin initially stayed with
her and his half sister, Roxanne, who was seven years
older than Devin, and with Mindy working, it was often
Roxanne who had to care for her little brother.
Speaker 11 (07:47):
She was making the money whatever, saying care of us,
that I was the one that always did a laundry,
made sure Devin was like give him bath, you know,
like all this kind of stuff. If anybody knows Devin,
it's me because I'm the one that raised him.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Roxanne told me it took her a while to recognize
science for her mom's drug abuse.
Speaker 11 (08:11):
As I got older, I realized she still was getting
high because later on in my life I got high.
And I know what it is now, like seeing her
in the bedroom smoking cigarettes and then coloring busby posters,
falling asleep, like burning her blankets, you know, like because
(08:33):
she's falling out, you.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Know, mindy. Devin's mom told me that she struggled with
methamphetomine throughout her life. One relapse happened when Devon was
about eight.
Speaker 13 (08:45):
I had been claimed for seven years, seven and a
half years, and I fell off the wagon, lost my
job and was losing my apartment, and so he went
with his father, who I believed was plain.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I asked her specifically how witnessing drug use at home
might have impacted Devon.
Speaker 13 (09:07):
Well, I'm sure it affected him tremendously. He's not ever
said anything to me, so that I'm not saying it
didn't happen by no means. I'm sure it probably did,
But I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
What it's all, you know, Devin seems to have spent
most of his elementary school years with his mom, and
his middle school years with his dad and his stepmom,
who have since split up. Devn's dad, Charlie, hasn't wanted
to speak with me about his son. However, I did
manage to get a hold of Devin's stepmom, Jamie. Do
(09:42):
you know you know, had there been any physical violence
or emotional abuse in either of the households that he
grew up in.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
No, it never got physical, but I think that marble
is probably what.
Speaker 8 (09:56):
He dealt with.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Jamie is adamant that the periods Devin lived with his
dad and her, they were sober and stable, but when
she thinks about the other years when she wasn't around,
it's trickier.
Speaker 9 (10:09):
Would you say that Devin experienced a lot of trauma
as a child.
Speaker 8 (10:14):
I would say possibly.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
I don't know if trauma is the right word, but
I would say he experienced, like maybe some abandonment issues.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
As Devin entered his teens, he began clashing with his father, and,
according to his mom, Mindy, his dad pulled.
Speaker 13 (10:32):
Away when he was fourteen. Devin called me from school
one day and.
Speaker 8 (10:37):
Said, Mom, come to get me.
Speaker 13 (10:39):
And I said what your dad's never going to let
me come and get you what he's talking about.
Speaker 8 (10:44):
Charlie signed a.
Speaker 13 (10:45):
Piece of paper saying he was signing his rights over
to me. We didn't go to court with it or anything.
But he did that in front of Devon, and that
affected Devon tremendously. I cried for Devin when his father
did that.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I also found out that for some stretch of his
teen years, Devin lived in a boy's home. He kept
running away. Trauma, abuse, abandonment. Those are difficult terms to
say out loud, especially when it's about someone you care about,
when it feels personal. I understood why Jamie was hesitant
(11:21):
to label Devin's experience, but when I prodded her on specifics,
like the drug abuse he has described seeing as a kid,
her tone changed.
Speaker 8 (11:31):
I do believe that he I guess that would be trauma. Yeah,
I do.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
I know that he experienced seeing some things that he
probably shouldn't have seen, or I know that he shouldn't
have seen and probably heard some heard things that he
should not have heard.
Speaker 8 (11:45):
Yes, I will agree to that.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
In my years reporting on men who are violent towards
their partners, some similarities have emerged. It's cliche to say
hurt people hurt people, but it's often true, and it's
especially true of kids who grow up neglected or witness
or experience emotional or physical abuse As they grow older.
(12:12):
Not only are these kids more likely to have problems
with substance abuse, they are also more likely to either
perpetrate or be a victim of violence in their own
intimate relationships.
Speaker 12 (12:24):
Okay, so the brain is extraordinarily complex and we know
a lot about it, but there's way, way, way more
that we don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Diane Vines is a family therapist who specializes in how
trauma can affect neurodevelopment, or the way the young brain
builds pathways for things like learning, focus, and social skills.
She isn't Devin's therapist, doesn't know his case, but I
asked her to talk broadly about how childhood trauma can
translate into behavioral patterns.
Speaker 12 (12:54):
When your brain perceives that you are under threat, it
mounts a stress response, so a lot of things happen.
You are more likely, because of the way your brain
is wired to help you either fight, flight, freeze faint,
more likely to engage in behaviors that are unhealthy, like
more drinking, more, smoking, illicit drugs, you know, casual, dangerous sex,
(13:19):
all kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Vine says that some children learn to cope with trauma
in unhealthy ways that carry over into adulthood.
Speaker 12 (13:28):
People think about abuse, and then they think about neglect,
and very often neglect is even worse. You learn not
to trust people when you grow up in that kind
of house where there are no adults who are emotionally
present for you. In order to get any needs met,
you're going to have to manipulate people and situations just
(13:48):
to get basic needs met, because you can't just simply ask,
so you basically train to be manipulative just to survive.
That's a pretty easy connection to make. People who have
not been supported by people don't trust people. They take
what they need, They use people the way they need to,
(14:10):
and they discard the rest. They don't let people get
close to them, because people get close hurt.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
From what I've gathered, it doesn't seem like Devon had
many supports in place to handle the challenges he was
facing as a young boy. It's not surprising, perhaps that
as Devin went from kid to teen, he turned to
a thing that was readily available, something he'd seen in
his own home, something he had been trying his whole
life to avoid.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
I yet telling me, yeah, no, I'm not going to
do that, Christine, I don't want. I see what my
dad's going through, and I see what my mom does.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I talked to Christine, a woman an independence whose daughter
dated Devon in eighth and ninth grade before he dated Libby.
Speaker 6 (14:53):
For the most part, he was a really polite kid,
always saying yes sir, yes, ma'am, please say. He was
a hard worker anytime we were good, and any kind
of work with the how he helped us with that.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Christine had memories of going to his wrestling matches in
football games, where Devin showed a lot of talent. She
and Devin spoke often too, and despite his home life,
he seemed okay, but she soon started to worry for him.
Speaker 6 (15:22):
In ninth grade, I could tell Devon was starting to separate.
I could see it. I knew it was coming, and
I had talked to him and talked to him and
kept trying to encouraging. I'm like, don't Devin, it's all bad,
you know, And He's like, I know, I know. My
mom talks about the black shadows that haunt her when
(15:44):
she does her drugs, and I'm like, see, you don't
want to do that.
Speaker 8 (15:48):
I said, that's not good.
Speaker 9 (15:50):
Black shadows are never good.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
At some point, Devin began to use meth, the drug
that it plagued the city of Independence, the drug that
had wreaked havoc on his childhood homes. And after that
things changed. He dropped out of school. No more wrestling,
no more football, no more polite, helpful kid. Meth caught
(16:17):
up with his sister, Roxanne too. She told me that
it was her goal as a child to avoid following
the same path as her mom Mindy, but ultimately meth
was just there.
Speaker 11 (16:30):
I always told myself I was never going to do
what she did, you know, But then like I got
so tired of it, and I just I wanted to
try it because I wanted to know why she wouldn't
stop to be there for us kids, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Diane Vines told me that it's common for people who've
experienced high levels of childhood trauma to struggle with drugs
and alcohol.
Speaker 12 (17:01):
I think they're self medicating, to be honest. You know,
when your body's feeling that tense and that and you're
that upset and you can't get those thoughts to stop
sometimes for often if you take us ub sence, it'll
stop for a while. So if you can get that
dopamine hit that you can't get from people and that
(17:22):
you need so that you relieve that physiological distress, that's
very often what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Roxanne admitted that this was one reason why she and
Devin used drugs often together.
Speaker 11 (17:36):
There would be times to where it's like, you know,
like we'd be sitting there crying with each other and
then it's like we hate our lives and it's as ridiculous.
So it sounds like we bu sit there and cry together,
and then like right after we say all that stuff there,
(17:57):
we go light up a bowl, you know, because it's
it's like the only thing that would just make us
stop crying or feeling anything.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
You know.
Speaker 11 (18:05):
I didn't want my life to turn out how it
was and how it is, and he didn't either.
Speaker 8 (18:19):
I was at.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
Charlie's apartment and I heard somebody out in the living
them and I came up out of it.
Speaker 8 (18:25):
Because I heard Devin was like, I just fell lib dead.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
I just tell.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Liby, Jamie, Devin's stepmom, remember seeing Devon on that day,
December eleventh, twenty seventeen. She and Charlie had split up
by then, but she said she was over at his apartment.
In her recollection, it was evening, but she admits she'd
been using drugs at the time, so her memory is
(18:51):
a little hazy still. She can't forget how Devin was acting.
Speaker 8 (18:56):
But look on his face. He was terrified.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
I remember being terrified, and he was shaken, and he
said he would just found her in panic mode straight
panic gramadies that he founder and called lie on one
and he left.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
This, of course, is also the same story that Devin
told police the night of Libby's death. Jamie couldn't remember
any other details from that night, including Devin's phone call
from jail, where he seemingly asked her and Charlie to
tell police he had been at their house. But Jamie
told me she is convinced that Devin's story is true,
(19:30):
and points to the fact that in twenty nineteen, IPD
interviewed him again and offered up a polygraph.
Speaker 11 (19:37):
There is a way that you can show me that
you did or.
Speaker 7 (19:41):
Didn't do this live take throughs and how you're asking
me this right now would you take one, absolutely, would
you pass it?
Speaker 6 (19:48):
No question?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
I mean if you passed them, would settle this?
Speaker 9 (19:55):
Well, let's go, what happened?
Speaker 6 (19:56):
You're failing, There's no, that's.
Speaker 11 (19:58):
Not an option.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Devin eventually took the polygraph and he did pass, but
the idea that the results could quote settle the issue
of whether Devon was involved in Libby's death wasn't actually true.
Polygraphs have long been discredited because they're just not accurate,
and their results are no longer admissible in court. These days,
(20:23):
police use the polygraph mostly as an investigative tactic, a
way to put pressure on a suspect to confess. Still,
voluntarily taking and passing the polygraph was important to Devon
and his family. They saw it as proof of his innocence,
something that showed just how far he had gone to
(20:43):
clear his name.
Speaker 11 (20:45):
He had went through my detager tests and stuff, and
he passed them, and all of this still was out there.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Devin's sister, Roxanne, was upset about continued accusations against her
brother and about something Cindy did. Shortly after Libby's death.
She'd put up posters around Independence asking for information. The
posters included photos of Devon and Libby and the text
quote last scene with the mail above.
Speaker 11 (21:16):
We were walking at that little hotdog store. I seen
my brother's face on a flyer on their window, and
Cindy was like posting all of these things out there
saying that he was a murderer and if you see him,
report blah blah blah blah blah. How can you call
(21:36):
somebody a murderer when they're not even convicted or charged
or anything, you know.
Speaker 13 (21:42):
I understand her drive that. I feel like she is
looking at the wrong person.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Devin's mom Mindy, despite everything, actually has a lot of
empathy for Cindy.
Speaker 9 (21:57):
I tried to.
Speaker 13 (21:58):
Talk to Cindy after be passed. I wanted to tell
her and I still do that I am so sorry
for what happened. I couldn't imagine living a child. I
couldn't imagine it.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Cindy's not the only one hurting. Devon's family says that
losing Libby has been immensely painful for Devon, and especially
in the immediate aftermath of Libby's death, Mindy worried for
her son's sanity.
Speaker 13 (22:27):
I'm sorry this is hard for me because I loved Libby.
Speaker 9 (22:32):
She was a part of.
Speaker 13 (22:33):
Our family for a long time. I remember thinking, I
hate that that's the last vision he will have of
her forever, you know, after Libby, he was lost for
a long time. When Libby died, Devon was just lost.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Devon himself said as much in his second interview with
IPD in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 13 (22:57):
Myself that day, truth, I has never been than that.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I talk about Let's suicide was on my mind any
after that stuff happened, because I didn't want to be alive,
but I knew our son needed somebody and that's the
only reason.
Speaker 13 (23:09):
That I'm still here.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
And his stepmom Jamie saw the change in him too.
Speaker 8 (23:15):
He didn't care what happened to him after Levy had died,
because he lost the love of his life.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
This attitude is reflected in his arrests and interactions with
the police the summer before Libby's death. Devon may have
been one of the ipd's most active Corps offenders, but
in the years following Libby's death, Devin seemed to go
on a crime spree, accruing multiple convictions possession of a
controlled substance, tampering with a motor vehicle, stealing two counts
(23:44):
of resisting arrest. And that was just in the state
of Missouri. In nearby Kansas, I can identify even more
by any measure, Devon was clearly struggling.
Speaker 8 (23:56):
Yeah, so he was ribbon and roaring through people's life.
He didn't care if you die. He didn't care what
happened to himself.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Of course, you can analyze this behavior in a number
of ways. On one hand, this recklessness, this hopeless disorientation,
could be a sign of guilt. On the other hand,
it could be a response to an all consuming grief,
And the latter is what Devon's family holds onto. The
women I interviewed made it clear that they believe that
(24:28):
Devon was not responsible for Libby's death. I asked Roxanne
directly about this.
Speaker 9 (24:34):
Are you one hundred percent certain that she died by
suicide and that no one else was involved?
Speaker 11 (24:40):
How can anybody be one hundred percent certain?
Speaker 9 (24:44):
Do you have any suspicions that Devon might have been involved?
Speaker 11 (24:48):
Absolutely not, absolutely not, Like they loved each other like
like no other. I don't. I think I know he
did not do anything to her.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
But when I asked them about physical violence prior to
Libby's death, the physical violence that so many people have
alleged happened in the relationship. They're decidedly less certain. Here's Jamie.
Speaker 5 (25:20):
I did not see any violence between the two of them,
but I did hear of it, And when I left
Devin's father, I went about my own way, so I wasn't.
Speaker 8 (25:32):
There for the worst part of it. Of the relationship.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
They just never got like that in front of me,
So it's hard for me to think that he is
like that.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Mindy, Devin's mom, conceded the relationship did involve some abuse,
just of a different kind.
Speaker 13 (25:48):
I mean, my son emotionally abused her. I witnessed that,
but I never witnessed any physical abuse from Devin to
her besides maybe restraining her. You know, they fought a lot,
and a lot of the physical part actually was from Livvy,
(26:12):
you know, and she was a feify little thing.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
But Mindy admitted there may have been things she hadn't seen.
Speaker 8 (26:19):
Behind closed doors.
Speaker 13 (26:20):
You know, nobody really knows, honestly, and with drugs involved.
I mean, I've experienced it myself. You know, I've lived
here it.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Myself, Mindy, Roxanne, Jamie. Their responses don't entirely surprise me.
In my many years reporting on domestic violence, I've interacted
with a lot of family members of men accused of
hurting their partners, and by and large, they tend not
to believe the allegations of abuse, regardless of the strength
(26:53):
of the evidence in front of them. Denial is a
powerful coping mechanism. It allows us to without having to
critically examine the past and our roles in it. I
saw an example of this denial in my conversation with
Roxanne when I asked her about the alleged strangulation of
Libby that occurred one week before her death, the strangulation
(27:16):
that was witnessed by Gary Stevens. She told me she
thought Gary had made it up.
Speaker 9 (27:23):
So do you not believe that he's telling the truth? No?
Speaker 11 (27:25):
No, oh, Why would anybody in their right mind like
allow a man that is supposedly choking this chick leaves
together and then not report it until after she dead.
Speaker 9 (27:43):
I'm telling you, I've interviewed him and his story is
very credible to me, Like he cares about Devin, and
he's very conflicted that he you know that he had
to go to the police and report what he saw.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
But later in our conversation, she conceded that it was
possible Gary was telling the truth. The more we talked,
she backed off her black and white response to the
accusations about Devon's behavior and seemed open to exploring the
uncomfortable gray area of domestic violence. In fact, Roxanne recognized
(28:17):
a similarity between Devon and Libby's relationship and the one
she herself had been in back then, a relationship that
she acknowledged wasn't especially healthy.
Speaker 11 (28:28):
In both of our relationships, they're not in abusive ways,
but they give us toxic more mental you know, like
meneral sociopath my manipulating gas lighting masters is what I
call them.
Speaker 9 (28:42):
So that could be considered like emotional abuse. There's certainly
different different ways that people can hurt their partner. That's
not only physical.
Speaker 11 (28:51):
And even emotional you know, can turn into physical, like
in your body, you know what I mean, Like it
can make you make you sick, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Roxanne had been shocked when she heard the story that
Libby had died by suicide. She too had seen how
much Libby loved Xavier and how dedicated she was to
her son. But Roxanne also believed the toxicity of Libby
and Devon's relationship could have been partially responsible.
Speaker 9 (29:21):
So are you saying that you believe she might have
been driven to suicide because you know there was so
much like emotional abuse and stuff going on in her
relationships with dev.
Speaker 11 (29:37):
Yes, that's the first thought I came into my head,
was that she was just so.
Speaker 10 (29:43):
Tired of being tired of having to keep up with
Devin just to feel loved and to love him.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Roxanne told me she could imagine why Libby might have
felt like this because because it's something she had felt
too in her relationship with her ex boyfriend.
Speaker 11 (30:05):
I'm going to try, but it's like I have tried
most of the time.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Taking myself because.
Speaker 10 (30:16):
I loved him so much, and then he just wouldn't
stop doing drugs.
Speaker 7 (30:21):
You know, probably the most surprising thing is that we
keep looking for conscious intent. You know, we keep thinking, well,
(30:44):
abusers must know what they're doing, they're consciously setting about
to be controlling and domineering. I don't think it operates
at that level.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
This is David Adams, a psychologist and co founder of Emerge,
the first counseling program in the nation for men who
abuse women.
Speaker 7 (31:02):
Most abusive men in my experience somehow think of themselves
as victims. And it all comes from this sort of
self centered orientation. And these are men who are being
extremely controlling and domineering, and yet they somehow manage to
think of themselves as victims.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I wanted to talk to David Adams because, just as
it's important to work on improving the systems of support
for victims of domestic violence, I also believe people who
use violence against their partners deserve help too. They often
have their own trauma to process, their own struggles to overcome,
and if we truly want to end the cycle of violence,
(31:43):
we can't afford to ignore those who perpetrate it. We
don't have reliable statistics on how many men commit domestic
violence in the US, but we know it's a staggeringly
large number. Consider that, according to the CDC, one in
four women will experience physical violence by their intimate partner
at some point during their lifetime. Back in the nineteen seventies,
(32:07):
when David Adams first began working with this population of men,
the US was finally beginning to reckon with the pervasiveness
of domestic violence and the permissive culture that allowed it
to thrive. States began to develop specific laws that criminalized
abusive behavior. The first shelters opened for victims, but for
(32:28):
men who were using violence, there were very few options
beyond jail, and that's where a merge came in.
Speaker 7 (32:36):
The founders of were merged or ten men. Some of
us were social workers just fresh out of graduate school.
Some of us were teachers. I think we had one
taxi driver. What we had in common was that we
had female friends who had been involved in establishing some
(32:56):
of the first so called battered women's programs. Our friends
would tell us that they would get calls on their
hotlines from men, and these were abusive men, and they
were actually seeking help. And the women didn't feel it
was their responsibility to help the abuser, but they still
felt that there should be some sort of help available.
(33:17):
So they asked us, as a group of men that
they knew and trusted, would we be willing to take
this on.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
David and his friends did take it on, but in
nineteen seventy seven, there was very little research to guide
their approach. They spoke with a bunch of women who'd
been abused, and one of them gave them something that
shifted how they'd been thinking about the issue.
Speaker 7 (33:39):
One of the women actually had encouraged her abusive partner
to send an audio tape to us, and so one
evening we sat around listening to this hour and a
half audio tape in which he was apologizing. I think
he was desperate to be back in the relationship with her.
But what was really interesting to us was that his
(34:00):
pologies pretty quickly turned to making excuses for his abusive
behavior and even romanticizing his abusive behavior, that somehow his
feelings are so strong, you know, that he loves are
so strongly that his jealousy comes out. That was eye
opening for us because we were very naive about domestic violence,
(34:23):
and we thought, well, well, just tell them that it's wrong, right,
And so this kind of introduced us to the idea
that it was a lot more complicated. There was not
just the abusive behavior, but there was ways that it
was justified and rationalized.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
The intervention program that developed from these conversations decades ago
has been refined over time. Emerge is now a forty
week program where men meet regularly to discuss their history
with violence and work on developing critical skills to change
their behavior. About half of the men who participate are
court mandated the other half show up of their own accord.
(35:02):
Emerge has two cornerstones, respect and empathy, both their skills
Adams believe can be taught. In weekly sessions. The men
do exercises to model respectful behavior and learn how to
empathize with their partners and the pain they endured as
a result of the abuse. I wanted to speak directly
(35:22):
to someone who'd used violence against their partner and was
working to address their issues, and so David Adams connected
me to an emerged participant who was willing to share
his experience. His name is Tyler. He's twenty four and
works in a restaurant in Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Me and by a girlfriend at the time got into
an argument because the suspectator of cheating, and instead of
having a full conversation about it and Peter Rachel, I
just kind of acted out fully and so he went
to angry. Didn't have any other emotion other than that,
(36:03):
So I started yelling, I started throwing things. I pushed her,
and I just kept escalating from there and I ended
up breaking her phone. She had cuts on her hand.
I grabbed her throat for a second and into let go.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Tyler was arrested, charged and convicted of domestic violence. As
part of his sentence, he is mandated to attend forty
weeks of Emerge. At the time I spoke with him
on the phone during a work break, he had been
in the program for sixteen weeks.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
It brings up a lot from like my child is
seeing the visuside from my father and my mother and
hearing everywhere else's stories. Yeah, there was quite a bit
of trauma in my life as a kid. I was molested,
was taking advantage by multiple people in my family. It
was kind of all just, yeah, everything around after another.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Tyler said the men in the group had a lot
in common, especially as they looked back on their upbringings.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
It's like me realizing that, hey, I've been around in
my whole life. I've never really realized it. But hearing
everyone's different stories kind of brings up late. Okay, there's
other people that are in the same boat that I was,
or have done the same things, and they're trying to
better their acting.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
The assault that led Tyler to Emerge, it wasn't the
first time he was arrested for domestic violence against his girlfriend.
He told me it happened once before three years earlier,
and though he said he wasn't physically violent with her
in those intervening years until the recent arrest, he's since
come to see more of his behavior as abusive, the
(37:48):
way he talked to her, monitored her activities, and controlled
their finances. I asked him to describe his feelings now
about how he treated her back then.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I feel defeated hate towards myself because not only did
I do what I saw happened to my mother, I
did what I saw happened to my mother, to the
mother of my three kids, everything like that. I caused
her pain in a way that I never wanted it.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Tyler imagines that his girlfriend now X feels betrayed. He
said they haven't spoken since the night he strangled her.
She has a protective order that bar's contact. Instead, he's
working on himself at a merge, and he's optimistic about
his capacity for change.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
You always share the expression once an abuser, always an abuser.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
I don't want to be that. That's not who I
want to be.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
I don't want to be the person that everyone's afraid of,
that someone swinches around or you can't talk to her
where you're afraid of having someone taken away. I don't
want to be that person.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
For Tyler's sake, for his future partner's sake, I hope
he's SUSA that he's able to recognize and refrain from
all forms of abusive behavior. Going through a merge certainly
improves his chances. But hearing about Tyler's ongoing journey made
me reflect on what I know about Devon. As far
(39:18):
as I'm aware, Devon has never had an experience like emerge,
an opportunity to interrogate his past and learn how to
move forward in a healthy way. I think about Devon,
who as a teenager was exhibiting lots of signs of
being vulnerable and in need of help. What types of
(39:39):
interventions could have made a difference. All those times IPD
showed up and did nothing to help Libby, they also
did nothing to help Devon. And all the people in
Devon's life, and all the institutions that are supposed to
prevent kids from slipping through the cracks? Did they miss
all the signs that Devon was headed for disaster. One
(40:03):
of the more stable adults in Devon's life back then
was Cindy, did you have any epcy for Devon.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
I really do. It's very hard because I knew him
as a kid. I knew the potential as a kid
that he had. He was academically on top of things
in school. He could have been a star football player.
He really was funny. You know. I'd seen how he
(40:35):
had it with his family members, you know, and I
would think sympathetically with that poor kid. You know, he
just never had.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
A good chance.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
He's got these drug addicted people in his life that
are he's depending on. And I helped him get some
help through the child services, like get a clothing voucher,
but he didn't have any anybody did, like enrolling in
school or anything. I wanted to help him, I really did.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
But that was several years ago, long before Libby would
be found in a Motil bathroom with Devon's belt wrapped
around her neck. Those early feelings of empathy for Devon
have been replaced by anger and grief, feelings that are
even more complicated because Cindy is raising Libby and Devon's son,
(41:25):
and even though Devon's parental rights were terminated after Libby's death,
he's still Exavier's father. Cindy has to grapple with how
to raise a child who in many ways has lost
both parents.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
So we made a memory book, and that was one
of my first things I did for him, so that
he could see his mother's face and every picture is
him and her. I just decided I was never going
to tell him bet his death. He didn't need to
know him. He's not even in parties life. But in therapy,
Xavier wants to know this that is, you know. So
(42:02):
that's real hard, you know. I didn't never want to
do that. But so we added two pictures to his
book and it's of him and his mom and dad,
and I told him his.
Speaker 6 (42:13):
Name, you know, and.
Speaker 11 (42:16):
You just can't.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
Pretend he didn't ever have a dad. It was unrealistic
of me.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
In the next and final episode of What Happened to
Libby Caswell, and so in.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
My mind, I thought, why don't they know about this?
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Why is this a secret? It feels like a secret,
you know.
Speaker 8 (42:45):
When I seen that story that I was floored.
Speaker 11 (42:48):
I really was.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
That's not what happened.
Speaker 7 (42:52):
If this was a powerful woman with status in the culture,
this case would have been resolved by now and the
case would be in jail.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
What happened to Libby Caswell is written, reported, and hosted
by me Melissa Jolson, with writing and story editing by
Marisa Brown and Lauren Hanson. This episode was edited by
Zubin Hensler. Our executive producer is Ryan Murdoch for iHeart Podcast.
Executive producers are Jason English At Katrina Norvel, with our
(43:24):
supervising producer Carl Catel. Fact checking by Maya Shukri. Our
theme song is written by Aaron Kaufman and performed by
Aaron Kaufman and Elizabeth Woolf. Original music by Aaron Kaufman
with additional music by Jeremy fall. Our episodes are mixed
and mastered by Carl Catele. To find out more about
(43:45):
my investigation or to send a tip, please email me
at what Happened to Libby at gmail dot com. Thanks
so much for listening
Original.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This is an iHeart original. This story can be hard
to hear. There's detailed talk of suicide and violence, but
we think it's important not to gloss over the reality
of what happened to Libby Caswell. Please take care while listening.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I cared about Elizabeth more than any human being on
this plane.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
She was going to be my wife, you know what
I mean, for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
We were supposed to be together.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
You're hearing the voice of Devon Martin, a voice you
might have noticed has been largely absent from the series
so far. It's not for lack of trying. For the
past year and a half, I've made numerous attempts to
speak with Devon, sending him emails and reaching out over
social media, letting him know I was making a show
about Libby and that I wanted his side of the story.
(01:00):
I know he's received my messages, but I've never heard
anything back. His mom, Mindy said he didn't want to
talk to me. What I do have of Devin's voice
is the nine one one call and the two interviews
he's done with the Independence Police Department. One in twenty seventeen,
right after Libby's death, and then one two years later,
(01:20):
and it's in that second interview where he gets more personal.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
I'm during that's turning on the inside.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
I'm one had to experience all of this.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I get that, I can tell that you're heard.
Speaker 7 (01:31):
I get that, okay, And I'm still dealing with this
year and it's been almost two years.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It's almost been two years. I lost my son's mom
and I almost lost myself almost this to be old boy.
Speaker 6 (01:44):
I want my life back.
Speaker 8 (01:45):
Phobe Caswall was won by so many people.
Speaker 9 (01:47):
No one wanted to believe that she would ever do
anything like that to herself because no one could believe that.
I look at us.
Speaker 10 (01:52):
We as the fucking We was the king and Queen
is fucking in high school.
Speaker 9 (01:56):
That's what we did.
Speaker 8 (01:57):
I was a job, She was a and a cheerleader.
Speaker 11 (02:01):
And that's everyone out now.
Speaker 9 (02:02):
So I'm looking at him.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
It was the perfect couple.
Speaker 6 (02:04):
Nobody wants to believe that shit happened.
Speaker 8 (02:06):
I should have fucked out, but it.
Speaker 9 (02:07):
Is what it is.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
That is what happened.
Speaker 7 (02:10):
This shit is fucking ruining my life and people need
to leave me alone.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
And that's how I feel about it, because I'm the
one who lost someone genarly to me.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
There's so much I'd like to talk to Devin about,
not just what happened the night Libby died. Devan has
always maintained his innocence. I don't think he'd give me
a different account. And not just his perspective on his
and Libby's relationship, the allegations of domestic violence, the drug use.
But I'd also like to hear from Devin about his
(02:41):
life and how he grew up, because, as I've come
to understand, it wasn't easy.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I watched my mother did abused my entire childhood. I've
been around my whole life.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I was picking my mom up up the floor with
needles hang.
Speaker 12 (02:55):
Out her arm when I was five years old.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
I know what the ship brings.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Even if Devon won't talk to me, I still want
to try to paint a fair portrait because just as
Libby's story didn't happen in a vacuum, neither did Devans
In his absence. I've spoken to people close to him,
including his mom, his stepmom, and his sister. These are
women who love Devon, who support Devon, who admit he's
(03:23):
a complicated character, but who also wholeheartedly believe that he
is not responsible for Libby's death.
Speaker 13 (03:30):
My son did not murder Libby. There's no way he
could live with himself and just live live if he
had done something like that.
Speaker 8 (03:39):
I know he couldn't.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
I know they did some gun things together and you know,
made some bad choices together.
Speaker 8 (03:45):
But in my heart a heart, I don't really love
that boy did that.
Speaker 11 (03:49):
I feel it in my heart. And if I'm wrong,
then I'm wrong. But then I guess I would know
my brother. You know.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
It's a fuzz through.
Speaker 11 (04:07):
So what is she.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
From? iHeart Podcasts. I'm Melissa Jelson And this is what
happened to Lippy Caswell.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Cous She didn't ever tell me the extent of all
the things that happened, you know, I had to find
out after her death.
Speaker 9 (04:37):
So was she on her back and he was like
straddling her? Yes, okay? And he had his hands around
her throat?
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Yes, there were you know, young puppy love.
Speaker 13 (04:47):
It was always oh babe, this babe ba.
Speaker 9 (04:50):
Maybe a stupid nickname is a.
Speaker 11 (04:51):
Big Colliehow.
Speaker 8 (04:54):
He really went off the rails with nuts Like some
people go off the rails, some people don't.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Chapter seven Black shadows are never good. For most of
the time I've been reporting on Libby, Devon has been
in prison in Kansas, serving time on a drug charge.
He was recently released and paroled back to Missouri. In
(05:45):
and out of jail, This is a pattern for Devon
that stretches back years. It's hard to get a complete
picture as his offenses cover multiple states and counties, but
as far as I can tell, Devon has had dozens
and dozens of encounters with police since the age of seventeen,
many of them related to drugs and theft. The summer
(06:06):
before Libby died, he had gotten in enough trouble that
he was included on the ipd's monthly Most Active Core
Offenders list. His mugshot was one of ten emailed to
the entire department alerting them of his recent arrests for burglary, assault,
and disturbance. It noted that he was quote physically violent.
(06:27):
According to IPD, the people added to this list were
the ones with the most frequent and recent police contact.
They were then targeted by IPD for quote proactive enforcement
and by county prosecutors for potential legal action. So how
did Devon end up on this list? At age twenty one.
(06:48):
More importantly, I wanted to find out how did this
pattern begin.
Speaker 13 (06:53):
At Devon's request, agdn't want may.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
Adopting you, but I don't care if he gets mad
at me for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I feel like I need to talk to It took
me more than a year of trying before Devn's mom, Mindy,
finally agreed to talk to me to help me fill
in the blanks in Devon's backstory. Once I got her
on the phone, she was surprisingly open and eager to
share about her own life and about Devon's childhood.
Speaker 13 (07:21):
His father and I both had such as abuse problems.
His father and I stayed together until he was I
want to say, four or five, and then we finally split.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Mindy says after they broke up, Devin initially stayed with
her and his half sister, Roxanne, who was seven years
older than Devin, and with Mindy working, it was often
Roxanne who had to care for her little brother.
Speaker 11 (07:47):
She was making the money whatever, saying care of us,
that I was the one that always did a laundry,
made sure Devin was like give him bath, you know,
like all this kind of stuff. If anybody knows Devin,
it's me because I'm the one that raised him.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Roxanne told me it took her a while to recognize
science for her mom's drug abuse.
Speaker 11 (08:11):
As I got older, I realized she still was getting
high because later on in my life I got high.
And I know what it is now, like seeing her
in the bedroom smoking cigarettes and then coloring busby posters,
falling asleep, like burning her blankets, you know, like because
(08:33):
she's falling out, you.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Know, mindy. Devin's mom told me that she struggled with
methamphetomine throughout her life. One relapse happened when Devon was
about eight.
Speaker 13 (08:45):
I had been claimed for seven years, seven and a
half years, and I fell off the wagon, lost my
job and was losing my apartment, and so he went
with his father, who I believed was plain.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I asked her specifically how witnessing drug use at home
might have impacted Devon.
Speaker 13 (09:07):
Well, I'm sure it affected him tremendously. He's not ever
said anything to me, so that I'm not saying it
didn't happen by no means. I'm sure it probably did,
But I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
What it's all, you know, Devin seems to have spent
most of his elementary school years with his mom, and
his middle school years with his dad and his stepmom,
who have since split up. Devn's dad, Charlie, hasn't wanted
to speak with me about his son. However, I did
manage to get a hold of Devin's stepmom, Jamie. Do
(09:42):
you know you know, had there been any physical violence
or emotional abuse in either of the households that he
grew up in.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
No, it never got physical, but I think that marble
is probably what.
Speaker 8 (09:56):
He dealt with.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Jamie is adamant that the periods Devin lived with his
dad and her, they were sober and stable, but when
she thinks about the other years when she wasn't around,
it's trickier.
Speaker 9 (10:09):
Would you say that Devin experienced a lot of trauma
as a child.
Speaker 8 (10:14):
I would say possibly.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
I don't know if trauma is the right word, but
I would say he experienced, like maybe some abandonment issues.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
As Devin entered his teens, he began clashing with his father, and,
according to his mom, Mindy, his dad pulled.
Speaker 13 (10:32):
Away when he was fourteen. Devin called me from school
one day and.
Speaker 8 (10:37):
Said, Mom, come to get me.
Speaker 13 (10:39):
And I said what your dad's never going to let
me come and get you what he's talking about.
Speaker 8 (10:44):
Charlie signed a.
Speaker 13 (10:45):
Piece of paper saying he was signing his rights over
to me. We didn't go to court with it or anything.
But he did that in front of Devon, and that
affected Devon tremendously. I cried for Devin when his father
did that.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I also found out that for some stretch of his
teen years, Devin lived in a boy's home. He kept
running away. Trauma, abuse, abandonment. Those are difficult terms to
say out loud, especially when it's about someone you care about,
when it feels personal. I understood why Jamie was hesitant
(11:21):
to label Devin's experience, but when I prodded her on specifics,
like the drug abuse he has described seeing as a kid,
her tone changed.
Speaker 8 (11:31):
I do believe that he I guess that would be trauma. Yeah,
I do.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
I know that he experienced seeing some things that he
probably shouldn't have seen, or I know that he shouldn't
have seen and probably heard some heard things that he
should not have heard.
Speaker 8 (11:45):
Yes, I will agree to that.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
In my years reporting on men who are violent towards
their partners, some similarities have emerged. It's cliche to say
hurt people hurt people, but it's often true, and it's
especially true of kids who grow up neglected or witness
or experience emotional or physical abuse As they grow older.
(12:12):
Not only are these kids more likely to have problems
with substance abuse, they are also more likely to either
perpetrate or be a victim of violence in their own
intimate relationships.
Speaker 12 (12:24):
Okay, so the brain is extraordinarily complex and we know
a lot about it, but there's way, way, way more
that we don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Diane Vines is a family therapist who specializes in how
trauma can affect neurodevelopment, or the way the young brain
builds pathways for things like learning, focus, and social skills.
She isn't Devin's therapist, doesn't know his case, but I
asked her to talk broadly about how childhood trauma can
translate into behavioral patterns.
Speaker 12 (12:54):
When your brain perceives that you are under threat, it
mounts a stress response, so a lot of things happen.
You are more likely, because of the way your brain
is wired to help you either fight, flight, freeze faint,
more likely to engage in behaviors that are unhealthy, like
more drinking, more, smoking, illicit drugs, you know, casual, dangerous sex,
(13:19):
all kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Vine says that some children learn to cope with trauma
in unhealthy ways that carry over into adulthood.
Speaker 12 (13:28):
People think about abuse, and then they think about neglect,
and very often neglect is even worse. You learn not
to trust people when you grow up in that kind
of house where there are no adults who are emotionally
present for you. In order to get any needs met,
you're going to have to manipulate people and situations just
(13:48):
to get basic needs met, because you can't just simply ask,
so you basically train to be manipulative just to survive.
That's a pretty easy connection to make. People who have
not been supported by people don't trust people. They take
what they need, They use people the way they need to,
(14:10):
and they discard the rest. They don't let people get
close to them, because people get close hurt.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
From what I've gathered, it doesn't seem like Devon had
many supports in place to handle the challenges he was
facing as a young boy. It's not surprising, perhaps that
as Devin went from kid to teen, he turned to
a thing that was readily available, something he'd seen in
his own home, something he had been trying his whole
life to avoid.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
I yet telling me, yeah, no, I'm not going to
do that, Christine, I don't want. I see what my
dad's going through, and I see what my mom does.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I talked to Christine, a woman an independence whose daughter
dated Devon in eighth and ninth grade before he dated Libby.
Speaker 6 (14:53):
For the most part, he was a really polite kid,
always saying yes sir, yes, ma'am, please say. He was
a hard worker anytime we were good, and any kind
of work with the how he helped us with that.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Christine had memories of going to his wrestling matches in
football games, where Devin showed a lot of talent. She
and Devin spoke often too, and despite his home life,
he seemed okay, but she soon started to worry for him.
Speaker 6 (15:22):
In ninth grade, I could tell Devon was starting to separate.
I could see it. I knew it was coming, and
I had talked to him and talked to him and
kept trying to encouraging. I'm like, don't Devin, it's all bad,
you know, And He's like, I know, I know. My
mom talks about the black shadows that haunt her when
(15:44):
she does her drugs, and I'm like, see, you don't
want to do that.
Speaker 8 (15:48):
I said, that's not good.
Speaker 9 (15:50):
Black shadows are never good.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
At some point, Devin began to use meth, the drug
that it plagued the city of Independence, the drug that
had wreaked havoc on his childhood homes. And after that
things changed. He dropped out of school. No more wrestling,
no more football, no more polite, helpful kid. Meth caught
(16:17):
up with his sister, Roxanne too. She told me that
it was her goal as a child to avoid following
the same path as her mom Mindy, but ultimately meth
was just there.
Speaker 11 (16:30):
I always told myself I was never going to do
what she did, you know, But then like I got
so tired of it, and I just I wanted to
try it because I wanted to know why she wouldn't
stop to be there for us kids, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Diane Vines told me that it's common for people who've
experienced high levels of childhood trauma to struggle with drugs
and alcohol.
Speaker 12 (17:01):
I think they're self medicating, to be honest. You know,
when your body's feeling that tense and that and you're
that upset and you can't get those thoughts to stop
sometimes for often if you take us ub sence, it'll
stop for a while. So if you can get that
dopamine hit that you can't get from people and that
(17:22):
you need so that you relieve that physiological distress, that's
very often what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Roxanne admitted that this was one reason why she and
Devin used drugs often together.
Speaker 11 (17:36):
There would be times to where it's like, you know,
like we'd be sitting there crying with each other and
then it's like we hate our lives and it's as ridiculous.
So it sounds like we bu sit there and cry together,
and then like right after we say all that stuff there,
(17:57):
we go light up a bowl, you know, because it's
it's like the only thing that would just make us
stop crying or feeling anything.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
You know.
Speaker 11 (18:05):
I didn't want my life to turn out how it
was and how it is, and he didn't either.
Speaker 8 (18:19):
I was at.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
Charlie's apartment and I heard somebody out in the living
them and I came up out of it.
Speaker 8 (18:25):
Because I heard Devin was like, I just fell lib dead.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
I just tell.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Liby, Jamie, Devin's stepmom, remember seeing Devon on that day,
December eleventh, twenty seventeen. She and Charlie had split up
by then, but she said she was over at his apartment.
In her recollection, it was evening, but she admits she'd
been using drugs at the time, so her memory is
(18:51):
a little hazy still. She can't forget how Devin was acting.
Speaker 8 (18:56):
But look on his face. He was terrified.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
I remember being terrified, and he was shaken, and he
said he would just found her in panic mode straight
panic gramadies that he founder and called lie on one
and he left.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
This, of course, is also the same story that Devin
told police the night of Libby's death. Jamie couldn't remember
any other details from that night, including Devin's phone call
from jail, where he seemingly asked her and Charlie to
tell police he had been at their house. But Jamie
told me she is convinced that Devin's story is true,
(19:30):
and points to the fact that in twenty nineteen, IPD
interviewed him again and offered up a polygraph.
Speaker 11 (19:37):
There is a way that you can show me that
you did or.
Speaker 7 (19:41):
Didn't do this live take throughs and how you're asking
me this right now would you take one, absolutely, would
you pass it?
Speaker 6 (19:48):
No question?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
I mean if you passed them, would settle this?
Speaker 9 (19:55):
Well, let's go, what happened?
Speaker 6 (19:56):
You're failing, There's no, that's.
Speaker 11 (19:58):
Not an option.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Devin eventually took the polygraph and he did pass, but
the idea that the results could quote settle the issue
of whether Devon was involved in Libby's death wasn't actually true.
Polygraphs have long been discredited because they're just not accurate,
and their results are no longer admissible in court. These days,
(20:23):
police use the polygraph mostly as an investigative tactic, a
way to put pressure on a suspect to confess. Still,
voluntarily taking and passing the polygraph was important to Devon
and his family. They saw it as proof of his innocence,
something that showed just how far he had gone to
(20:43):
clear his name.
Speaker 11 (20:45):
He had went through my detager tests and stuff, and
he passed them, and all of this still was out there.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Devin's sister, Roxanne, was upset about continued accusations against her
brother and about something Cindy did. Shortly after Libby's death.
She'd put up posters around Independence asking for information. The
posters included photos of Devon and Libby and the text
quote last scene with the mail above.
Speaker 11 (21:16):
We were walking at that little hotdog store. I seen
my brother's face on a flyer on their window, and
Cindy was like posting all of these things out there
saying that he was a murderer and if you see him,
report blah blah blah blah blah. How can you call
(21:36):
somebody a murderer when they're not even convicted or charged
or anything, you know.
Speaker 13 (21:42):
I understand her drive that. I feel like she is
looking at the wrong person.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Devin's mom Mindy, despite everything, actually has a lot of
empathy for Cindy.
Speaker 9 (21:57):
I tried to.
Speaker 13 (21:58):
Talk to Cindy after be passed. I wanted to tell
her and I still do that I am so sorry
for what happened. I couldn't imagine living a child. I
couldn't imagine it.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Cindy's not the only one hurting. Devon's family says that
losing Libby has been immensely painful for Devon, and especially
in the immediate aftermath of Libby's death, Mindy worried for
her son's sanity.
Speaker 13 (22:27):
I'm sorry this is hard for me because I loved Libby.
Speaker 9 (22:32):
She was a part of.
Speaker 13 (22:33):
Our family for a long time. I remember thinking, I
hate that that's the last vision he will have of
her forever, you know, after Libby, he was lost for
a long time. When Libby died, Devon was just lost.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Devon himself said as much in his second interview with
IPD in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 13 (22:57):
Myself that day, truth, I has never been than that.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I talk about Let's suicide was on my mind any
after that stuff happened, because I didn't want to be alive,
but I knew our son needed somebody and that's the
only reason.
Speaker 13 (23:09):
That I'm still here.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
And his stepmom Jamie saw the change in him too.
Speaker 8 (23:15):
He didn't care what happened to him after Levy had died,
because he lost the love of his life.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
This attitude is reflected in his arrests and interactions with
the police the summer before Libby's death. Devon may have
been one of the ipd's most active Corps offenders, but
in the years following Libby's death, Devin seemed to go
on a crime spree, accruing multiple convictions possession of a
controlled substance, tampering with a motor vehicle, stealing two counts
(23:44):
of resisting arrest. And that was just in the state
of Missouri. In nearby Kansas, I can identify even more
by any measure, Devon was clearly struggling.
Speaker 8 (23:56):
Yeah, so he was ribbon and roaring through people's life.
He didn't care if you die. He didn't care what
happened to himself.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Of course, you can analyze this behavior in a number
of ways. On one hand, this recklessness, this hopeless disorientation,
could be a sign of guilt. On the other hand,
it could be a response to an all consuming grief,
And the latter is what Devon's family holds onto. The
women I interviewed made it clear that they believe that
(24:28):
Devon was not responsible for Libby's death. I asked Roxanne
directly about this.
Speaker 9 (24:34):
Are you one hundred percent certain that she died by
suicide and that no one else was involved?
Speaker 11 (24:40):
How can anybody be one hundred percent certain?
Speaker 9 (24:44):
Do you have any suspicions that Devon might have been involved?
Speaker 11 (24:48):
Absolutely not, absolutely not, Like they loved each other like
like no other. I don't. I think I know he
did not do anything to her.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
But when I asked them about physical violence prior to
Libby's death, the physical violence that so many people have
alleged happened in the relationship. They're decidedly less certain. Here's Jamie.
Speaker 5 (25:20):
I did not see any violence between the two of them,
but I did hear of it, And when I left
Devin's father, I went about my own way, so I wasn't.
Speaker 8 (25:32):
There for the worst part of it. Of the relationship.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
They just never got like that in front of me,
So it's hard for me to think that he is
like that.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Mindy, Devin's mom, conceded the relationship did involve some abuse,
just of a different kind.
Speaker 13 (25:48):
I mean, my son emotionally abused her. I witnessed that,
but I never witnessed any physical abuse from Devin to
her besides maybe restraining her. You know, they fought a lot,
and a lot of the physical part actually was from Livvy,
(26:12):
you know, and she was a feify little thing.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
But Mindy admitted there may have been things she hadn't seen.
Speaker 8 (26:19):
Behind closed doors.
Speaker 13 (26:20):
You know, nobody really knows, honestly, and with drugs involved.
I mean, I've experienced it myself. You know, I've lived
here it.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Myself, Mindy, Roxanne, Jamie. Their responses don't entirely surprise me.
In my many years reporting on domestic violence, I've interacted
with a lot of family members of men accused of
hurting their partners, and by and large, they tend not
to believe the allegations of abuse, regardless of the strength
(26:53):
of the evidence in front of them. Denial is a
powerful coping mechanism. It allows us to without having to
critically examine the past and our roles in it. I
saw an example of this denial in my conversation with
Roxanne when I asked her about the alleged strangulation of
Libby that occurred one week before her death, the strangulation
(27:16):
that was witnessed by Gary Stevens. She told me she
thought Gary had made it up.
Speaker 9 (27:23):
So do you not believe that he's telling the truth? No?
Speaker 11 (27:25):
No, oh, Why would anybody in their right mind like
allow a man that is supposedly choking this chick leaves
together and then not report it until after she dead.
Speaker 9 (27:43):
I'm telling you, I've interviewed him and his story is
very credible to me, Like he cares about Devin, and
he's very conflicted that he you know that he had
to go to the police and report what he saw.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
But later in our conversation, she conceded that it was
possible Gary was telling the truth. The more we talked,
she backed off her black and white response to the
accusations about Devon's behavior and seemed open to exploring the
uncomfortable gray area of domestic violence. In fact, Roxanne recognized
(28:17):
a similarity between Devon and Libby's relationship and the one
she herself had been in back then, a relationship that
she acknowledged wasn't especially healthy.
Speaker 11 (28:28):
In both of our relationships, they're not in abusive ways,
but they give us toxic more mental you know, like
meneral sociopath my manipulating gas lighting masters is what I
call them.
Speaker 9 (28:42):
So that could be considered like emotional abuse. There's certainly
different different ways that people can hurt their partner. That's
not only physical.
Speaker 11 (28:51):
And even emotional you know, can turn into physical, like
in your body, you know what I mean, Like it
can make you make you sick, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Roxanne had been shocked when she heard the story that
Libby had died by suicide. She too had seen how
much Libby loved Xavier and how dedicated she was to
her son. But Roxanne also believed the toxicity of Libby
and Devon's relationship could have been partially responsible.
Speaker 9 (29:21):
So are you saying that you believe she might have
been driven to suicide because you know there was so
much like emotional abuse and stuff going on in her
relationships with dev.
Speaker 11 (29:37):
Yes, that's the first thought I came into my head,
was that she was just so.
Speaker 10 (29:43):
Tired of being tired of having to keep up with
Devin just to feel loved and to love him.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Roxanne told me she could imagine why Libby might have
felt like this because because it's something she had felt
too in her relationship with her ex boyfriend.
Speaker 11 (30:05):
I'm going to try, but it's like I have tried
most of the time.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Taking myself because.
Speaker 10 (30:16):
I loved him so much, and then he just wouldn't
stop doing drugs.
Speaker 7 (30:21):
You know, probably the most surprising thing is that we
keep looking for conscious intent. You know, we keep thinking, well,
(30:44):
abusers must know what they're doing, they're consciously setting about
to be controlling and domineering. I don't think it operates
at that level.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
This is David Adams, a psychologist and co founder of Emerge,
the first counseling program in the nation for men who
abuse women.
Speaker 7 (31:02):
Most abusive men in my experience somehow think of themselves
as victims. And it all comes from this sort of
self centered orientation. And these are men who are being
extremely controlling and domineering, and yet they somehow manage to
think of themselves as victims.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I wanted to talk to David Adams because, just as
it's important to work on improving the systems of support
for victims of domestic violence, I also believe people who
use violence against their partners deserve help too. They often
have their own trauma to process, their own struggles to overcome,
and if we truly want to end the cycle of violence,
(31:43):
we can't afford to ignore those who perpetrate it. We
don't have reliable statistics on how many men commit domestic
violence in the US, but we know it's a staggeringly
large number. Consider that, according to the CDC, one in
four women will experience physical violence by their intimate partner
at some point during their lifetime. Back in the nineteen seventies,
(32:07):
when David Adams first began working with this population of men,
the US was finally beginning to reckon with the pervasiveness
of domestic violence and the permissive culture that allowed it
to thrive. States began to develop specific laws that criminalized
abusive behavior. The first shelters opened for victims, but for
(32:28):
men who were using violence, there were very few options
beyond jail, and that's where a merge came in.
Speaker 7 (32:36):
The founders of were merged or ten men. Some of
us were social workers just fresh out of graduate school.
Some of us were teachers. I think we had one
taxi driver. What we had in common was that we
had female friends who had been involved in establishing some
(32:56):
of the first so called battered women's programs. Our friends
would tell us that they would get calls on their
hotlines from men, and these were abusive men, and they
were actually seeking help. And the women didn't feel it
was their responsibility to help the abuser, but they still
felt that there should be some sort of help available.
(33:17):
So they asked us, as a group of men that
they knew and trusted, would we be willing to take
this on.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
David and his friends did take it on, but in
nineteen seventy seven, there was very little research to guide
their approach. They spoke with a bunch of women who'd
been abused, and one of them gave them something that
shifted how they'd been thinking about the issue.
Speaker 7 (33:39):
One of the women actually had encouraged her abusive partner
to send an audio tape to us, and so one
evening we sat around listening to this hour and a
half audio tape in which he was apologizing. I think
he was desperate to be back in the relationship with her.
But what was really interesting to us was that his
(34:00):
pologies pretty quickly turned to making excuses for his abusive
behavior and even romanticizing his abusive behavior, that somehow his
feelings are so strong, you know, that he loves are
so strongly that his jealousy comes out. That was eye
opening for us because we were very naive about domestic violence,
(34:23):
and we thought, well, well, just tell them that it's wrong, right,
And so this kind of introduced us to the idea
that it was a lot more complicated. There was not
just the abusive behavior, but there was ways that it
was justified and rationalized.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
The intervention program that developed from these conversations decades ago
has been refined over time. Emerge is now a forty
week program where men meet regularly to discuss their history
with violence and work on developing critical skills to change
their behavior. About half of the men who participate are
court mandated the other half show up of their own accord.
(35:02):
Emerge has two cornerstones, respect and empathy, both their skills
Adams believe can be taught. In weekly sessions. The men
do exercises to model respectful behavior and learn how to
empathize with their partners and the pain they endured as
a result of the abuse. I wanted to speak directly
(35:22):
to someone who'd used violence against their partner and was
working to address their issues, and so David Adams connected
me to an emerged participant who was willing to share
his experience. His name is Tyler. He's twenty four and
works in a restaurant in Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Me and by a girlfriend at the time got into
an argument because the suspectator of cheating, and instead of
having a full conversation about it and Peter Rachel, I
just kind of acted out fully and so he went
to angry. Didn't have any other emotion other than that,
(36:03):
So I started yelling, I started throwing things. I pushed her,
and I just kept escalating from there and I ended
up breaking her phone. She had cuts on her hand.
I grabbed her throat for a second and into let go.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Tyler was arrested, charged and convicted of domestic violence. As
part of his sentence, he is mandated to attend forty
weeks of Emerge. At the time I spoke with him
on the phone during a work break, he had been
in the program for sixteen weeks.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
It brings up a lot from like my child is
seeing the visuside from my father and my mother and
hearing everywhere else's stories. Yeah, there was quite a bit
of trauma in my life as a kid. I was molested,
was taking advantage by multiple people in my family. It
was kind of all just, yeah, everything around after another.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Tyler said the men in the group had a lot
in common, especially as they looked back on their upbringings.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
It's like me realizing that, hey, I've been around in
my whole life. I've never really realized it. But hearing
everyone's different stories kind of brings up late. Okay, there's
other people that are in the same boat that I was,
or have done the same things, and they're trying to
better their acting.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
The assault that led Tyler to Emerge, it wasn't the
first time he was arrested for domestic violence against his girlfriend.
He told me it happened once before three years earlier,
and though he said he wasn't physically violent with her
in those intervening years until the recent arrest, he's since
come to see more of his behavior as abusive, the
(37:48):
way he talked to her, monitored her activities, and controlled
their finances. I asked him to describe his feelings now
about how he treated her back then.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I feel defeated hate towards myself because not only did
I do what I saw happened to my mother, I
did what I saw happened to my mother, to the
mother of my three kids, everything like that. I caused
her pain in a way that I never wanted it.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Tyler imagines that his girlfriend now X feels betrayed. He
said they haven't spoken since the night he strangled her.
She has a protective order that bar's contact. Instead, he's
working on himself at a merge, and he's optimistic about
his capacity for change.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
You always share the expression once an abuser, always an abuser.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
I don't want to be that. That's not who I
want to be.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
I don't want to be the person that everyone's afraid of,
that someone swinches around or you can't talk to her
where you're afraid of having someone taken away. I don't
want to be that person.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
For Tyler's sake, for his future partner's sake, I hope
he's SUSA that he's able to recognize and refrain from
all forms of abusive behavior. Going through a merge certainly
improves his chances. But hearing about Tyler's ongoing journey made
me reflect on what I know about Devon. As far
(39:18):
as I'm aware, Devon has never had an experience like emerge,
an opportunity to interrogate his past and learn how to
move forward in a healthy way. I think about Devon,
who as a teenager was exhibiting lots of signs of
being vulnerable and in need of help. What types of
(39:39):
interventions could have made a difference. All those times IPD
showed up and did nothing to help Libby, they also
did nothing to help Devon. And all the people in
Devon's life, and all the institutions that are supposed to
prevent kids from slipping through the cracks? Did they miss
all the signs that Devon was headed for disaster. One
(40:03):
of the more stable adults in Devon's life back then
was Cindy, did you have any epcy for Devon.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
I really do. It's very hard because I knew him
as a kid. I knew the potential as a kid
that he had. He was academically on top of things
in school. He could have been a star football player.
He really was funny. You know. I'd seen how he
(40:35):
had it with his family members, you know, and I
would think sympathetically with that poor kid. You know, he
just never had.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
A good chance.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
He's got these drug addicted people in his life that
are he's depending on. And I helped him get some
help through the child services, like get a clothing voucher,
but he didn't have any anybody did, like enrolling in
school or anything. I wanted to help him, I really did.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
But that was several years ago, long before Libby would
be found in a Motil bathroom with Devon's belt wrapped
around her neck. Those early feelings of empathy for Devon
have been replaced by anger and grief, feelings that are
even more complicated because Cindy is raising Libby and Devon's son,
(41:25):
and even though Devon's parental rights were terminated after Libby's death,
he's still Exavier's father. Cindy has to grapple with how
to raise a child who in many ways has lost
both parents.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
So we made a memory book, and that was one
of my first things I did for him, so that
he could see his mother's face and every picture is
him and her. I just decided I was never going
to tell him bet his death. He didn't need to
know him. He's not even in parties life. But in therapy,
Xavier wants to know this that is, you know. So
(42:02):
that's real hard, you know. I didn't never want to
do that. But so we added two pictures to his
book and it's of him and his mom and dad,
and I told him his.
Speaker 6 (42:13):
Name, you know, and.
Speaker 11 (42:16):
You just can't.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
Pretend he didn't ever have a dad. It was unrealistic
of me.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
In the next and final episode of What Happened to
Libby Caswell, and so in.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
My mind, I thought, why don't they know about this?
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Why is this a secret? It feels like a secret,
you know.
Speaker 8 (42:45):
When I seen that story that I was floored.
Speaker 11 (42:48):
I really was.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
That's not what happened.
Speaker 7 (42:52):
If this was a powerful woman with status in the culture,
this case would have been resolved by now and the
case would be in jail.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
What happened to Libby Caswell is written, reported, and hosted
by me Melissa Jolson, with writing and story editing by
Marisa Brown and Lauren Hanson. This episode was edited by
Zubin Hensler. Our executive producer is Ryan Murdoch for iHeart Podcast.
Executive producers are Jason English At Katrina Norvel, with our
(43:24):
supervising producer Carl Catel. Fact checking by Maya Shukri. Our
theme song is written by Aaron Kaufman and performed by
Aaron Kaufman and Elizabeth Woolf. Original music by Aaron Kaufman
with additional music by Jeremy fall. Our episodes are mixed
and mastered by Carl Catele. To find out more about
(43:45):
my investigation or to send a tip, please email me
at what Happened to Libby at gmail dot com. Thanks
so much for listening
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