September 28, 2022 • 53 mins
Anne Marie revisits the case of Jennifer Anderson who was mysteriously found dead in her garage, February of 2006. Retired Deputy District Attorney, Ruanne Dozier joins forensic expert Faye Springer to recount the clues and evidence behind the case as well as reveal unique forensic details found in the pursuit of justice.
(Originally aired 15Sept22)
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Anne Marie (00:01):
OLAS Media presents inside the crime files with Anne Marie Schubert.
Ruanne (00:12):
This case touched me deeply because of who Jennifer was.
She was a young lady that had had fairly low self-esteem,
but a big heart.
Faye (00:25):
Her hair was in front of her face. She had
her glasses on and there was a rope that she
was tied to the rafter with. At the tail of
the rope was inside her sweater.
Ruanne (00:41):
It was the pathologist who also found it unusual that
she had a she had broken bones in her neck.
The astrologist saw the control and and that almost was
foreseeing what would occur. We were looking at the trace evidence.
(01:06):
So did the inference lead to that she was murdered
or did this trace evidence lead to that she committed suicide?
Most prosecutors say they have one case that they will never,
ever forget. And I have to say, this is one
of those occasions.
Faye (01:27):
I am Anne Marie Schubert. And this is inside the
crime files.
Anne Marie (01:31):
Inside the Crime Files is produced by OLAS media in
San Diego, California.
Faye (01:46):
Welcome to Inside Crime Files with Anne Marie Schubert Podcast.
I am Anne Marie Schubert. In this podcast takes listeners
inside and behind the scenes of the investigation and the
prosecution of some of the most notorious and horrific criminal cases,
perhaps in California history. This podcast also examines some of
the most interesting cases that we've seen in the ways
(02:08):
in which those cases were solved. Today, we're going to
talk about a case that I find to be fascinating.
Was this a murder or was this a suicide? My
guests are recently retired deputy district attorney Ruthann Dozier, and
I would call her renowned forensic expert, Faye Springer, from
our crime lab. And I just want to say welcome, everybody.
(02:29):
Thank you. So let me start, first of all, for
the listeners. I'm going to start off with you Ruanne .
If you can tell everybody kind of a little bit
about yourself, your career, the types of cases perhaps that
you focused in on in your illustrious career.
Ruanne (02:44):
Sure. So I have been a prosecutor for 32 years.
As Anne Marie said, recently retired and I began focusing on
domestic violence cases. I've probably spent at least ten years
prosecuting domestic violence cases. And as part of those in
those years, I actually had several domestic violence homicides in
(03:10):
domestic violence. We're always looking at how can we make
sure that the couple doesn't end up one of them
killing the other? How can we help the victim escape
the domestic violence situation? So in looking at those homicides,
we would look at what was going on in this
relationship and how could this have been prevented. So the
(03:34):
case we're going to talk about today, it was probably,
as most prosecutors say, they have one case that they
will never, ever forget. And I have to say, this
is one of those cases I got to know Jennifer
after her death, meaning I got into her head. I
read all of her diary entries, etc.. We'll be talking
about that later. But this is one of those cases
(03:57):
that that will stick with me, I'm sure, for the
rest of my life.
Faye (04:00):
All right. Great. OK . I think I learned about
you before I actually met you by reading appellate court
cases about, you know, scientific advances in forensics. And so
maybe you can kind of tell the listeners about your
career and what your expertise is. Well, I've been doing
forensics for 50. There were years, 52 years, I guess.
(04:24):
And I think the reason that you probably read about
some of my cases in appellate hearing is because I
kind of grew up with the science itself. You know,
things like even DNA, you know, in the early days,
it was typing for a. And so as the technology developed,
(04:44):
the challenges developed in almost every field of forensic science,
from biological evidence to DNA and from microscopic evidence to
the sophisticated instrumentation that we use to try to individualize
even microscopic documents. So, you know, this part is it
(05:09):
was pretty cool being part of that development. And I've
seen a lot of changes and I kind of found
my niche after several years. And I loved using the
microscopes and doing the unseen evidence, the trace evidence that
nobody else could really do other than the few of
(05:30):
us that had that kind of training. So one of
the things that, you know, I think your listeners often
know is that we oftentimes talk about DNA on this podcast, which,
you know, it's my passion in my life. But what
I found fascinating from you say in this case, which
you're going to talk about, is this was not about
DNA at all. This is about what we call trace evidence. And,
(05:51):
you know, I learned probably 30 years ago about this
concept called cards principle. You probably talked to me. But
what you tell my listeners, because it is rooted in
this the trace evidence analysis to my right, saying that
it's kind of rooted in that principle. Sure. Yeah. I mean,
that's the principle behind looking at trace evidence. So the
(06:12):
idea is that if you touch something or you have
contact with something or you rub against something, that whatever
that material is will shed on either part of the
material or itself or whatever is on that material. And
you pick it up on your clothing or your body
or your hands. And so that's kind of the basis
(06:34):
of our theory, is it we think leaves traces, emotions
can transfer from object to object. So then trace evidence.
That's what we look at. So when their DNA isn't
answering the question or firearms evidence isn't answering the questions,
we can go in and look and see if there's
some room to look at trace evidence to try to
(06:57):
answer the present. The specific question that's being asked in
a case, you know, maybe the listener is an example
of the different types of trace evidence that you listen.
I know you're an expert in a lot of things
of these types of trace, but I think it's fascinating
if you can kind of tell them the types of
trace evidence that can be analyzed and what you can
do with it. So all the types of trace evidence
(07:18):
that we deal with on a daily basis is hair evidence,
fiber evidence, glass evidence, paint transfers like in hit runs,
or in this case, contact from paint that is flaking
soil evidence. If you walk into a certain area, you
might pick up soil on your shoes and that could
(07:40):
be compared. You know, same with burial sites. You could
look at soil from the different layers of the grave
to see that matches something on a shovel or in
a car and shoes on the shoes and plant. Plant material, too,
because plants decompose, they pollinate and they grow again. So
(08:01):
all of that leaves traces that can be picked up.
The usual questions are, is that significant? Right. And that's
that's the real issue that we look at. Is that
unique enough? Is it significant and does it answer the
question in the case? And I would imagine that in
a lot of these cases, especially the one we're about
to talk about, it's really kind of circumstantial evidence.
Ruanne (08:24):
Yes. A lot of cases are circumstantial evidence. What we
see at the crime scene, what do we see on
the victim's body? What do we find in the victim's car?
And what inferences can we draw from that evidence? And
as you mentioned, the kind of the title of this
is whether this murder or whether suicide. We were looking
(08:45):
at the trace evidence that we talked about later and
look at having to go down both those paths. So
did the inference lead to that she was murdered or
did this trace evidence and did those inferences lead to
that she committed suicide?
Faye (08:58):
Okay. So you started off by telling us her name
was Jennifer. What was the name of the person you
were prosecuting?
Ruanne (09:03):
His name is Keir Kiera Anderson.
Faye (09:06):
Okay. And just maybe just tell the listeners kind of
the relationship they had kind of you know, one of
the things I learned a long time ago was what
was what was the 72 hours leading up to her death? Right.
So she's obviously. Deceased. Correct? Correct. Okay. So maybe just
explain to the listeners kind of kind of what the
relationship was like and how we got to this point
(09:28):
that there was a homicide investigation.
Ruanne (09:30):
So Keir and Jennifer had been together almost ten years.
They married. They'd been married together. 17, dating and then married.
And they had two children, two girls. One was four
and one was 18 months old. And here was older
than Jennifer. And so he had he had an influence
(09:54):
over her because she was young and impressionable when they met.
And so and over time, he had decided to experiment
sexual and with sexuality, with and their sex life. And
he was bisexual. Jennifer knew that. And Jennifer was comfortable
with that. So period always wanted to have a another
(10:17):
man into their relationship and to develop a threesome. And
so it eventually did occur. I'm going to refer to
Jay is was the third and the third guy and
third person in the relationship. And Jay had happened to
be friends with both of them going through some hard
(10:37):
times themselves. And here asked him if he was interested
in exploring and having sex with both he and Jennifer.
So Jay moved in with Kear and Jennifer and they
had a sexual relationship for about 2 to 3 weeks.
And listeners might wonder, how did we know all of this? Well,
(11:01):
Kier was a prolific diary diarist, if you will, person
who wrote down everything here. Kier was. And so we
did find all of his journal entries, if you will,
that discussed the sexual relationship that the three of them had.
And not only that, but like emotionally how Kier was
(11:22):
feeling about this situation. He was quite pleased in these writings.
We determined he was pleased with the way it was
going on. But what developed is that Jennifer started having
feelings for Jay. So here would find that she would
sneak off with Jay and the two of them, Jennifer
(11:45):
and Jay would be together, leaving Kier out of the mix.
So Kier began to feel left out, if you will,
and things kind of boiled up. And there were some
argue me arguing about.
Faye (11:58):
That.
Ruanne (11:58):
Fact, and Jay ended up saying, I can't deal with this.
I'm out. So he leaves and moves out of here.
And Jennifer oh, well, Jennifer began to feel it was
very she missed Jay because Jay had provided her with
some emotional support that she didn't get from here. So
(12:22):
she wanted to continue to see. Jay And as in
domestic violence situations, this was making a very controlling here.
I'll refer to him as being very controlling, quite upset.
So what moving forward, that jealousy, that on Keira's part,
(12:45):
that feeling of abandonment, that his wife was abandoning him
for another man and led to eventually killing Jennifer. And
we can go into details later about the hours moving
up to that point in time.
Faye (13:04):
So your experience with domestic violence, and I've heard this
phrase before with it called lethality factors, maybe kind of
explain what is that and did that play were there
signs here that those factors were present?
Ruanne (13:20):
Well, the biggest lethality that that we see is in
a domestic violence relationship is that when and I'll just
refer to the female when the female part of the
relationship wants to leave and take steps toward leaving, that
is when that that female is in the most danger
of being killed by her partner, because the partner, the
(13:44):
domestic violence abuser is very is controlling, wants to control
his partner. And when he starts to lose control of
that partner, that is when a murder can take place.
And just kind of as a side note, domestic, why
I found domestic violence fascinating is it crosses all socioeconomic folk.
(14:08):
So and we've had you know, I've prosecuted doctors, I
prosecuted lawyers. So it's just it's the type of person
that they just snap at the certain. When they feel
they completely lost control.
Faye (14:21):
So kind of lead us up. This this incident happened
in February of 2006. Kind of what led up and
tell us kind of tell us about how she was found.
Ruanne (14:34):
All right. So as I mentioned earlier, Jennifer was upset
that Jay had left the home and actually here had
over the days that went by. And it was about
three weeks this happened. She was killed about three weeks
after Jay moved out here for bathed her from communicating
(14:57):
with Jay. And we know that because of his off
again in his journaling, he also had written up a
covenant of marriage. And it found that on the computer
where he wanted her to sign this covenant, saying that
she acknowledged here was her husband, she would not cheat
(15:18):
on him, she would not have sex with anybody else
but her husband, etc.. So Jennifer was beginning to feel very.
Constricted and essentially being suffocated emotionally. We know this because
we talked with her friends and her family and she
(15:39):
was very at first conflicted about what did she want?
What's she going to do? Is she going to stay
with care? Because they were obviously married and they have
these two children? Or is she going to leave care
for Jay? Jennifer was into astrology. And so to solve
(16:00):
this question or help her work through it in her mind,
she went to see an astrologist and this particular astrologist
tape recorded the session. And we got that tape. And
in that tape, that astrologist says, in looking at all
of the stars and how they lined up and I'm
no astrologer, so I can't really explain how it works.
(16:21):
But in looking at all of the stars and everything,
she said that she was the one that she that
Jennifer needed to stick with on the night that she
was killed here, was aware that she had gone to
see this astrologist. So Jennifer's on the phone with her
mother and talking with her mother just about her day
(16:43):
and how things have been going, how things had gone.
And we know she had just come home from work
because she she worked at a church and she would
do the the drops at the bank. And we had
the bank surveillance showing when she had the drop at
the end of the day. So we knew we had
a timeline going on. So she is back at home
and she's talking to her mother right after she got
(17:03):
home from work. And the mother says she hears here,
come into the bedroom. We believe she was in the
bedroom during this conversation. And here says, where's the tape?
Referring to the astrology tape. Uh, let's see. The mother
says she heard the two of them arguing over this tape,
(17:25):
and then the phone goes dead. So Mom tries to
call back, and just with getting either her voicemail or
the phone was just dropping, she couldn't get through to Jennifer.
So the Jennifer's father tried to call. They waited a
couple of hours. And then Jennifer's father called the police
(17:48):
and asked for a welfare check. A welfare check was
done at about 1030 that night, and the officers went
to the house here, answered the door, and they said,
we need to come in. We're doing a welfare check.
And they asked where Jennifer was and he said, We
got into an argument and she stormed out of here.
(18:10):
And it was a really bad storm that that night
with pouring down rain and the officers went in and
looked for Jennifer, went into the home and actually opened
up the garage. The garage.
Faye (18:25):
Was.
Ruanne (18:25):
Full. They were kind of pack rats full from the
ground to the feeling. And they just kind of poked
their heads in and looked around and didn't see anything
and they left. So the parents, Jennifer's parents, the next
morning were very concerned because they could not get a
hold of Jennifer. So they they went over to the
(18:48):
house and they had keys to the house. And at
this point here had already left for work. They go
into the house and the mother sees Jennifer's coat on
the coat rack, and inside the pocket work was her
phone and her keys. And immediately mother knew there was
something wrong, that she would not have left her phone.
(19:10):
There were her keys in her coat pocket and she
would have been wearing the coat in this horrible rainstorm.
So then they called the police again and this police
came out and that one particular officer did a moral,
more thorough search out the garage and basically starting pitching
(19:30):
boxes here, there and everywhere to move from me where
the kitchen door goes into the garage and then moving
forward toward the wall top. And that is where he
found Jennifer hanging from the rafter.
Faye (19:46):
Just a matter of process. Once, once. Bodies found. It's
a homicide investigation. It's a separate police department, right? Correct.
So the normal course of events is then she's taken
down and she's taken in for her autopsy, right? Correct. Okay. Okay.
Let me ask you this. You work with our crime
lab for many, many years. Were you when did you
(20:06):
get involved in this case? I first was. I first
got knowledge of it, I think, during the autopsy, because
during the autopsy the investigator calls and says there's this
debris on the victim's skin and on her buttocks. And
(20:30):
it looks like the autopsy surgeon said it looks like
a flat material. And so I probably should go back
out there and pick up that material. And I think
they were suspicious right at the beginning because what was
explained to me on the phone was her hair was
in front of her face while she had her glasses on.
(20:51):
There was a rope that she was tied to the
rafter with that the tail of the rope was inside
her sweater. So the end of the rope was tucked
in the sweater inside this letter and then came back
out at the bottom of this letter. And the pathologist
was saying it did not look like a hanging. So
(21:12):
how is she? Now, maybe you can answer either one
of you. But how? How? When she was found hung
from the rafters. Clothed, unclothed. How was she dressed?
Ruanne (21:22):
She was clothed. And as they said, the tail of
the noose was inside of her sweater. It was a
cardigan sweater, so button up sweater. And she was wearing
pants that had an elastic waistband and her socks. She
(21:43):
was wearing socks and her socks. I don't remember phase
one or two, but at least one was upside down,
meaning the heel was on the top of the world.
And as they mentioned, her hair was she had very
long hair and her hair was like in front of
her face. And then the glasses were put on like
over the hair.
Faye (22:03):
Well, I think it was under the hair came over
quite a bit of both, but middle. Yeah. When you
look at the photographs, the hair, you can't see the
glasses until you kind of move it aside.
Ruanne (22:15):
So, you know, kind of getting back to our theme
are not a thing. But the truth was, was this
suicide or was this murder? And they was the one
who pointed out when we were looking at the CSI
photos that, wait a minute, the tail is in between
underneath her sweater. So if she had really committed suicide,
(22:37):
how on earth did it get underneath the sweater? Because
she would have yet she tied the noose and then
the tail gets cut under the sweater. That just didn't
make sense.
Faye (22:48):
Well, it was under the sweater in the back and
not in front. So then you could see in the
photographs that she was leaning up against a table saw.
So you came out of the bottom of her sweater
and then it was outside the pants she was wearing.
And you could see that in the photographs. And then
(23:10):
the socks in the photographs looked like they were upside down.
But I would confirm that once the socks came into
the laboratory. Okay. So she has a pair of pants on.
You get called because in the autopsy she appears to
have plant material on her buttocks. Right. Not on the pants,
but on the actual skin. Right. Okay. So what else
(23:33):
kind of were you looking at ultimately in the laboratory?
Did you go back out to the scene? Yeah. So
when they called and asked her to pick up or
select plant materials and I better look at it first.
So I don't know whether she's going to be picking
up plant material from trees or bushes or grass or
flowers or whatever. So they sent the they brought the
(23:55):
kit up right away, and I looked at it. Well, yeah,
there were there were pieces of the leaves and soil
and paint and some other things on there, too. And
I said, Well, I'd better go with you stuff to
her bones. Yeah, well, they had been removed at that point,
but because the pathologist had removed it and so they
(24:16):
were going to get a warrant then. And that was
the first time I went out to the scene. Okay,
so what really kind of just walk us through like
what you would you do at the scene, what you
collect and then what you analyze? Well. I collected everything
that I thought might be on her body that might
(24:37):
be relevant as to where she might have been killed.
My feeling was she was regressed and that the particles
on her skin and her underwear were more important than
what was on the outside of her clothing that she
was wearing when she was home where she lived. There
(24:59):
was also that that wasn't as relevant in terms of
answering a question about what the sequence of events were. Right.
So anything that even though I knew there was paint
and soft material, I collected other things that I thought
could be there if she was in the garage, if
she was in the backyard. Because at this point, we
(25:22):
don't know from the time she died where she might
have been before she was hung. And we knew that
there was supposedly a fight and she had lots of
bruises on her body. So we looked at there was
a like a spa in the back. We collected samples
from there, collected samples from any of the paths from
(25:44):
the back of the house to the front of the house.
The side of the house collected the plant material, anything
that was crumbly, because this was plants material that had
come from like fallen leaves and they were decomposing. And
then there were some eventually some like plastic material or
(26:05):
plastic type material. And so we had the. Actually go
back and make sure that we got what we needed
to actually say, whether or not it occurred in the
back or the front on the side yards. So we
went twice the initial time to confirm. The type of
(26:28):
material is correct. And I think. The original piece that
we picked up was one layer, and it was a
layer on the victim's bodies. I wanted to go out
and get some additional samples in addition to what we
already have. So let's start with the paint, though. So
she's got paint on her buttocks and then we're able
(26:49):
to associate that paint to someplace in the house. Yes.
Where was the garage? Garage floor. So at some point,
she's obviously on the floor. Right. And it's on her
buttocks underneath the underwear. Okay. So that's the other question
I was going to ask you out. So Rue and
she's found Hung. She's got a sweater on. The tail
is underneath the sweater. She's got a pair of pants.
(27:11):
She's got a sock that's on backwards. And then she's
obviously she's got a pair of underwear. Right?
Ruanne (27:17):
Right. Yeah. So that they looked at the underwear. And
what was interesting about the underwear is that it was
and they can elaborate, if I recall, what you explained
is that it was folded in a way the underwear
had kind of been. So the markings on the underwear,
(27:37):
on the buttocks, part of the underwear and was the
dirty and the dirty markings were not like a random circle.
It was they were felt like the fabric had been folded.
So we were starting to develop this theory that she
had been dragged once he killed her, strangled her, and
(27:57):
then he was dragging her as he dragged was dragging her.
The underwear kind of got scrunched up, if you will,
a little bit also. And we had detected some urine
on the underwear, but not on the pants. And why
is that significant? Because what happens to people who are
(28:19):
strangled is often they lose control of their bladder or
their vows. And so we saw they found underwear. I'm sorry,
urine on the underwear, but not on the pants. So
which further supported that? She had been dressed after she
was murdered?
Faye (28:35):
There was a little urine. It was a considerable amount,
and it was from the crotch area to the buttocks area.
So that looked like she was laying down at the time.
And it was the quantity was enough that if she
had been wearing the pants that she was found in,
it should also been stained with urine. And there was
(28:56):
no ear in the crotch of the purple pants she
was wearing. Okay. You mentioned the autopsy and that she
had bruises and you've done lots of strangulation routinely know
you've seen strangulation cases. Were there signs? Okay. So we've
got her hung by a noose, but are there different
(29:19):
kinds of injuries you might expect to see from what
we call manual strangulation, meaning that they use their hands?
So was there things on her body that was more
consistent with being strangled by someone's hands versus suicide?
Ruanne (29:31):
Yes. So that is, you know, as you talked about
a timeline after a murder and what happens to the
body when it's removed from the scene. It goes to
the coroner's office for an autopsy. It was the pathologist
who not only found the debris on the buttocks, but
also found it unusual that she had a she had
(29:55):
broken bones in her neck, specifically the hyoid and the
thyroid bones were broken. And the pathologist explained to me,
you do not find that in a regular hanging. There's
only certain circumstances where you would expect to find broken
bones in somebody who has hung themselves. And this was
(30:16):
not one of those circumstances. So. So not only did
she have that she had the broken bones in her neck,
but she also had what's called PTI. PTI is where
if somebody is strangled and they're gasping for air, blood
vessels in their eyes will burst. And she had significant
(30:36):
PTI in both eyes. So the biologist was very suspicious
that this was not a hanging because. Or a suicide,
I'm sorry, because you would not expect to see the
amount of PTI that was found. In addition, as you've mentioned,
the bruising the bruising show to the pathologist that there
(30:57):
had been a struggle because she had significant bruising on
her legs as if she had been while being strangled.
She was trying to kick kick him and fight back.
And we had to look at, okay, if she really
hung herself again, we're going back to this murder or
was it suicide? How did she get the bruises on
(31:20):
her leg if it were suicide or.
Faye (31:23):
How did she.
Ruanne (31:23):
Self exam?
Faye (31:25):
So, okay, so you mentioned the paint. You looked at
the paint. You also looked at the plant material. Yes.
What did you ultimately figure out from that? You took
some plant material from the yard. What was your ultimate
opinion of when you're preparing all that? Well, the leaf
fragments were consistent with the tree that was out front,
(31:46):
so it had lost its leaves, its winter time. And
so there were a bunch of decomposing leaf fragments around
the yard. I mean, it's not significant in terms of
putting her at the house is where she lives there.
So what's significant is where they're located on her body. Okay.
So how did it get there? So I think the
(32:07):
theory is that we looked at was that she was
dressed only in her bra and her underwear at the
time of the murder case because her bra also had
a small bloodstain on it that was not on the sweater. Well, interesting.
And we think maybe that at some point she winds
(32:30):
up in the garage, on the floor, in her underwear
and her bra and the laundry is out there, her
washing machine in dryers out there in the garage. And
we thought the clothing probably came from the laundry because
a clothing was dirty, the socks were dirty, the pants
was dirty, and the sweater was very dirty. So so
(32:52):
there is one other thing that I thought interesting when
I was kind of reading about the case is that
in in the world of homicide, there is what's called
pre mortem injuries that you can have, like what happened
before she died and post-mortem injuries. And am I right
early on that there was some evidence that she had
a post mortem injury on her hand? Remember that like
she had scratched well, that no blood had come out
(33:15):
of this injury.
Ruanne (33:16):
Right. And that we were thinking that while she was
being manually strangled, that she would she was pulling it
back his hands with her hands. And maybe that's how
she suffered this this scratch. And we also were looking
at the ligature marks on her neck. We were looking
(33:39):
to see and in the autopsy, they took lots of photographs.
We were looking to see if we could find any fingerprint.
Faye (33:46):
The present shape.
Ruanne (33:47):
Yes. And if I recall.
Faye (33:49):
I believe there.
Ruanne (33:50):
Was one on her jaw.
Faye (33:53):
There were scratches on it. That's right. Direction. So let's
let me ask about the husband. Who's the suspect here?
What was his claim? What was this? You know, went
to trial. But obviously, he's interviewed at some point before this.
Am I right? The law enforcement, right?
Ruanne (34:11):
Yes. What what's.
Faye (34:11):
His defense?
Ruanne (34:13):
Well, his he stuck to his claim that they had
gotten in a fight and she left and he didn't
see her again. And so wasn't me. That was his defense.
Faye (34:27):
Did he end up testifying at the trial at all?
Ruanne (34:29):
He did not. And the reason he did it is
because I played his entire interview. And so his defense
was I needed to do that for a timeline. And
so his defense was already in front of the jury.
Faye (34:42):
So in terms of this, so goes to trial, you
kind of talk for a minute about how you kind
of had to learn about Jennifer, obviously, after she was dead.
But is that something that comes into evidence? Is the
jury listening or do they get to hear kind of
what led up to this?
Ruanne (35:01):
Yes. So like I said earlier, here was prolific at journaling.
And Jennifer also kept a diary, which we located. And
so it was we were fortunate and that we could
get into her state of mind and what was going
on during this three week period where she was very
(35:25):
conflicted about whether she should stay or whether she should
go off with Jay. And we as I mentioned earlier,
we had the astrologist tape at journaling, and Jennifer also
kept a diary, which we located. So it was we
(35:48):
were fortunate and that we could get into her state
of mind what was going on during this three week
period where she was very conflicted about whether she should
stay or whether she should go off with Jay. And
we as I mentioned earlier, we had the astrologist tape.
(36:11):
So we were able to I listened to the astrology
tape and I could hear Jennifer's voice and the astrologist
and I could, you know, I listened to her questions
that she would ask the astrologers. And she was very
conflicted in her conversation with the astrologers. And it was
one point. It was very eerie, the astrologer said, as Jennifer. Well,
(36:33):
let me let me get the backdrop. As Jennifer was
describing her relationship with Kira and how he was very
controlling and how he had wanted her to sign a
covenant that I mentioned earlier, the astrologer said, you know,
he's slowly killing you. And that was just very, very
eerie to me that that the astrologer saw the control
(36:57):
and and that almost force was foreseeing what would occur.
Faye (37:03):
How was that astrology session like the day.
Ruanne (37:06):
Of the.
Faye (37:07):
Killing or the.
Ruanne (37:08):
Day before?
Faye (37:09):
Well, I remember years ago having a domestic violence murder
case where the victim had called nine.
Ruanne (37:14):
One advance and said, My.
Faye (37:16):
Boyfriend's going to kill me. And some of this that's
the whole point to me is on some of these
domestic violence cases, there's.
Ruanne (37:22):
Almost just like we.
Faye (37:23):
Talked about lethality.
Ruanne (37:24):
That's like the.
Faye (37:25):
Factors that lead up to someone potentially being killed. And
those factors were present.
Ruanne (37:30):
Here they were. And bringing up modality factors. It's important
for your listeners to know that one of those factors
is strangulation. So even in, you know, in a domestic
violence relationship where the perpetrator not only hits but strangles,
that's that's something we look at as a value for
(37:52):
potentially this person being killed in the future. And people
might ask or wonder, was there any domestic violence in
Jennifer in his relationship prior to this? There wasn't any
physical that we knew of. So the family didn't know
of any physical altercations or Jennifer never journaled about any
(38:16):
of any physical violence towards her, but the emotional abuse
was rampant.
Faye (38:22):
Okay. I mean, in some ways, I mean, you in
your career with DV, a lot of abuse happens over years, right? Physical, emotional, mental.
This one, obviously, that ultimately the homicide. It's in three weeks. Correct.
Ruanne (38:38):
It just snowballed. I mean, I would say the emotional abuse,
based on all of my readings of her journal, her
diaries and of his journal of the emotional abuse had
been going on for a while. He was very controlling.
Like I said earlier, he was older than she was.
He wanted to control what she did. And so she
was very passive, docile and put up with it. It
(39:02):
didn't seem to bother her until J enters into the
situation and she has feelings for him and sees him
or experiences J treating her much differently, much kinder, much
more loving, much more supportive of her emotionally. And I
(39:23):
think that's what really caused her to pause and reflect.
Wait a minute. There's another way I can live my life.
Faye (39:29):
Why did she. Just curious. Did she sign the Covenant?
She did. Well, interesting. Yes. Let me ask you this.
So you went out to the scene a couple of times.
You collect a lot of evidence. How much? Just so
people understand the amount of work that goes into this,
how many how many hours or how much time did
it take for you to, like, analyze all this stuff,
(39:50):
write a report and months probably or a month total.
You know, you don't work 100% of the time when
you're in the eight hour day, but the cases tend
to drag on. So, you know, it comes in stages.
Like the first part was identifying the plant and the
(40:11):
paint and making sure that we were on track as
far as where they came from and what it meant. Right.
And then at some point after that, you get I
got to look at his that killer statements. So, you know,
he said there was a fight. The fight was in
the backyard by the spa. And so then what we
(40:37):
do is we look at his statements and see that
if there's any physical evidence that might support that. Okay.
So that was the reason or one of the reasons
for going back a second time for the search warrant,
because now we have the statement and we can pick
up materials from these different areas that he describes as
where the fight occurred and any evidence that there was
(41:01):
a fight, the physical evidence or the pants or anything
to show there was a fight in the backyard. No.
So that's what we went out to do. The. He
had nothing that indicated that anything happened in the back yard.
The only physical evidence that was on her body either
came from the garage or the side of the house,
by the group, by what was a garage door opens
(41:23):
to a sidewalk, and then there was some, like a
decomposing tarp and some plant material that matched some of
the plant material on the underwear, not on the box,
but on the underwear. And so it supported her being
in that position or in that area. So at some
(41:44):
point in her end, at least, we don't know. He
probably had to take her to the front of the
garage in order to hang her because of the guardrails
so full of stuff. Okay. So that's what we think
happened is she was in the back of the garage first,
was taken around the side yard up to the front.
(42:06):
The little girl throws open when she was home. Okay.
So through this goes to trial, he claims she just.
Ruanne (42:15):
Wondered.
Faye (42:16):
Who killed her. And it really, you know, the.
Ruanne (42:18):
Mystery.
Faye (42:18):
Man. The mystery man came in and killed her, his
wife and her. Fair to say that this was pretty
much 100% circumstantial evidence case?
Ruanne (42:28):
Absolutely. 100% circumstantial.
Faye (42:31):
So when you testifies, right, as an expert witness amongst
many other people that you have to bring in J.
Ruanne (42:38):
We did. I had to bring in J to have
him set the scene to establish the motive. Now, as
far as, you know, Emory, in homicide prosecution, we don't
have to prove motive. But in this case, motive was
huge for us. And so, yes, Jay was important part
of showing motive on Keira's part because he could talk
(43:01):
about your feelings about him leaving the relationship.
Faye (43:07):
Very testified as an expert. And then what was ultimately
did you testify what your findings were? Did you give
an expert opinion? I gave up an opinion that she
was regressed after she was hung. And it was based
on four factors the rope being inside the sweater, the
(43:28):
socks being upside down, the blood on, the bra being
not on the sweater. And then the debris and the
condition of the underwear or the stains that were on
the underwear that were not present inside the pants. So
what's interesting Rudy mentioned is when the cops rolled up
(43:51):
and she's found everybody's alarms go off, this doesn't seem right.
But as a prosecutor or as a forensic scientist, you
have to still prove it. Right. It's not just saying
something doesn't look right here. It's these steps that you
guys took ultimately. And then how did you argue this ultimately?
What was your basic argument to the jury?
Ruanne (44:11):
Well, I focused a lot on his motive and how
he was starting to unravel because he was losing control of.
And Jennifer, we I had the parents testify. So we
I approached in my closing argument as a timeline. I
had a timeline set up. So we know that there
(44:33):
that he was upset about the astrology tape. The jury
heard that astrology tape. So they got to hear Jennifer's
voice in a post mortem. I mean, after she died,
they got to hear her voice. And then with obviously
today's testimony, the sequence sequence of events and that the
(44:53):
strangulation and the killing happened out on the back patio,
that she was then dragged either through the house into
the garage and placed on the floor, because how else
is she going to get the very unique paint chips
and say they were unique because they were either two
or three layers of different colored paint? And that was
(45:16):
the only place correct me if I'm wrong, that was
the only place in the home where that paint was located.
And then we argued how physically he would not have
been able to pull her up and over all of
the junk that was in the garage that he had
to have gone out the site, dragged her out the
side pedestrian door, which is where the decomposed tarp particles
(45:41):
landed on her underwear. And then he had to drag
her to the front and roll up the garage door
and pull her inside. And so it was a combination
of the motive that he was very, very angry and
he and that she had made up her mind that
she was going to leave him, because that was in
(46:02):
the astrology tape as well. In addition, I had several
of her girlfriends testify that because her state of mind
was very important, was she just, you know, again, was
it murder or was it suicide? Was she just in
a suicidal state in the days and hours leading up
to her murder? No, she actually one of her girlfriends
(46:23):
testified she she appeared her emotional state on the day
of the killing was one of relief that she was
feeling emboldened, if you will.
Faye (46:33):
Finally made up her mind.
Ruanne (46:33):
Like she finally made up her mind that she was
going to do what she needed to do. And so
focusing a lot on both her state of mind, his
state of mind, and then obviously the circumstantial evidence.
Faye (46:44):
And I think also what's the circumstantial evidence? It's you
can always explain one thing, right? You know, maybe the
rope might be a little odd, but, you know, putting
the pieces together and the socks upside down, you know,
most people don't wear their socks upside down. But if
she was in a hurry or we could always have
(47:05):
an explanation. Could you put everything together? It just didn't
make any any sense other than she was stressed after
she was hung. Number four, you know, I remember when
I was a trainee lawyer with Miranda and I both
started out together in 1990 and we both worked in
the Bay Area and there was the earthquake in San Francisco.
(47:28):
And listeners remember the big deal, 1989, Bay Bridge collapse,
the fires and all that. And I remember and I'm
reminded by what you say is that you can say
that the Bay Bridge collapsed because of some structural damage
or the fires happened because of some problem with utility,
whatever it is. But it all happened at the same time,
(47:50):
at the same place for the exact same reason. And
I used to use that as my circumstantial example that
put it all together. And the only logical conclusion is
that here Anderson strangled his wife and then Hunger addressed
her post killing. And I think as a scientist, we
we did do due diligence in looking at alternative theories
(48:13):
like we looked to see if there was paint anywhere
else at the house. We looked to see if there
was any decomposing type anywhere else. So we, I think,
consider the alternatives considered his story to be correct. And
the physical evidence just wasn't there. We went back to
the second time for that purpose is to make sure
(48:34):
that we had it put together correctly. Fascinating. So rewound
that jury convicted him of first degree murder. Okay. And
he's in prison currently. He's in prison. So fascinating to me.
It's it's fascinating not only because it's circumstantial evidence, but
the amount of work that went into it and the
uniqueness of the case. But, you know, as we kind
(48:55):
of wrap it up, I'll start with you kind of,
you know, you've done a lot of cases in your career.
I'm assuming you've done other cases where they were kind
of what I would call staged suicide, where somebody kills somebody,
tries to act like suicide. I mean, what do you
think is important for the listeners to kind of walk
(49:16):
away with in terms of just lessons from this case
or realities of this case? Well, you know, these kinds
of cases are difficult because there's so many moving parts.
And for every event or every thing that you see
or every piece of evidence, I think you always have
to ask the alternative. And the more complete you are
(49:38):
in asking those questions and considering them, by the time
everything is put together, it becomes a better case. And
so communications. Understanding what the autopsy is, understanding how the
investigation is progressing and what their concerns are, understanding what
the prosecutor's concerns are as far as proving an element
(50:03):
is absolutely critical, because if we don't understand what the
issue of proof is or what the real question is, right,
we may of just done an analysis and have no
idea what it means and we can't testify to what
it means basically is out there in limbo by itself
(50:26):
or the scientist. So, you know, we can do a
much more thorough job in answering questions from the broader
the perspective is in contrary to the theory that if
we know too much, you're biased. Right. But, you know,
if you know too much, you can also try to
(50:47):
prove the alternative explanations. So I don't buy into that
at all. I just remember trying to be myself. I
think I met you say, probably in the mid-nineties, and
it was a case in another county rape case, but
you were doing some plant work on it. And I'll
never forget just the first thing you said is, well,
what question you trying to answer here? It's true. It's
(51:09):
a really important thing. So thank you for that. But really,
how about you? What do you think you want the
listeners to know about this particular case?
Ruanne (51:16):
Well, as they mentioned, you know, we needed to answer
all of the questions. I didn't mention earlier that it
took us nine months to answer all of those questions.
We did not rush out and arrest Kira Anderson after
we found his wife hanging in the garage. It took
us nine months to go for her to do all
(51:36):
of her work, for me to meet with the pathologist
numerous times, to get those answers from the pathologist and
again to sift through all of the written evidence we
found at the journals of both Kira and Jennifer. This
case touched me deeply because of who Jennifer was. She
(51:59):
was a young lady that had had fairly low self-esteem,
but a big heart. You could tell by how she
raised her, how she was treating her children, the love
she had for her mom and her dad and her brother. And,
you know, she finally was kind of like her wings
were finally opening up and she was going to be
(52:22):
able to move on and get out from under his control.
But sadly, that was not to be because he was
going to have, if not the last word, the last act.
Faye (52:38):
So. Yeah. Well, thank you both for joining me today.
Fascinating case. I always try to kind of end it, really.
You kind of highlighted this is these cases are about
the human toll of crime. I mean, she had a family,
many children that are now left behind. So I thank
you for that and thank you both for your insight.
And to our listeners, thank you for joining in. And
(52:59):
if you want to find more, you can go to
our podcast on inside crime files dot com. Thank you.
Anne Marie (53:06):
Inside the Crime Files is produced by Alliance Media in
San Diego, California. OLAS Media.
OLAS Media presents inside the crime files with Anne Marie Schubert.
Ruanne (00:12):
This case touched me deeply because of who Jennifer was.
She was a young lady that had had fairly low self-esteem,
but a big heart.
Faye (00:25):
Her hair was in front of her face. She had
her glasses on and there was a rope that she
was tied to the rafter with. At the tail of
the rope was inside her sweater.
Ruanne (00:41):
It was the pathologist who also found it unusual that
she had a she had broken bones in her neck.
The astrologist saw the control and and that almost was
foreseeing what would occur. We were looking at the trace evidence.
(01:06):
So did the inference lead to that she was murdered
or did this trace evidence lead to that she committed suicide?
Most prosecutors say they have one case that they will never,
ever forget. And I have to say, this is one
of those occasions.
Faye (01:27):
I am Anne Marie Schubert. And this is inside the
crime files.
Anne Marie (01:31):
Inside the Crime Files is produced by OLAS media in
San Diego, California.
Faye (01:46):
Welcome to Inside Crime Files with Anne Marie Schubert Podcast.
I am Anne Marie Schubert. In this podcast takes listeners
inside and behind the scenes of the investigation and the
prosecution of some of the most notorious and horrific criminal cases,
perhaps in California history. This podcast also examines some of
the most interesting cases that we've seen in the ways
(02:08):
in which those cases were solved. Today, we're going to
talk about a case that I find to be fascinating.
Was this a murder or was this a suicide? My
guests are recently retired deputy district attorney Ruthann Dozier, and
I would call her renowned forensic expert, Faye Springer, from
our crime lab. And I just want to say welcome, everybody.
(02:29):
Thank you. So let me start, first of all, for
the listeners. I'm going to start off with you Ruanne .
If you can tell everybody kind of a little bit
about yourself, your career, the types of cases perhaps that
you focused in on in your illustrious career.
Ruanne (02:44):
Sure. So I have been a prosecutor for 32 years.
As Anne Marie said, recently retired and I began focusing on
domestic violence cases. I've probably spent at least ten years
prosecuting domestic violence cases. And as part of those in
those years, I actually had several domestic violence homicides in
(03:10):
domestic violence. We're always looking at how can we make
sure that the couple doesn't end up one of them
killing the other? How can we help the victim escape
the domestic violence situation? So in looking at those homicides,
we would look at what was going on in this
relationship and how could this have been prevented. So the
(03:34):
case we're going to talk about today, it was probably,
as most prosecutors say, they have one case that they
will never, ever forget. And I have to say, this
is one of those cases I got to know Jennifer
after her death, meaning I got into her head. I
read all of her diary entries, etc.. We'll be talking
about that later. But this is one of those cases
(03:57):
that that will stick with me, I'm sure, for the
rest of my life.
Faye (04:00):
All right. Great. OK . I think I learned about
you before I actually met you by reading appellate court
cases about, you know, scientific advances in forensics. And so
maybe you can kind of tell the listeners about your
career and what your expertise is. Well, I've been doing
forensics for 50. There were years, 52 years, I guess.
(04:24):
And I think the reason that you probably read about
some of my cases in appellate hearing is because I
kind of grew up with the science itself. You know,
things like even DNA, you know, in the early days,
it was typing for a. And so as the technology developed,
(04:44):
the challenges developed in almost every field of forensic science,
from biological evidence to DNA and from microscopic evidence to
the sophisticated instrumentation that we use to try to individualize
even microscopic documents. So, you know, this part is it
(05:09):
was pretty cool being part of that development. And I've
seen a lot of changes and I kind of found
my niche after several years. And I loved using the
microscopes and doing the unseen evidence, the trace evidence that
nobody else could really do other than the few of
(05:30):
us that had that kind of training. So one of
the things that, you know, I think your listeners often
know is that we oftentimes talk about DNA on this podcast, which,
you know, it's my passion in my life. But what
I found fascinating from you say in this case, which
you're going to talk about, is this was not about
DNA at all. This is about what we call trace evidence. And,
(05:51):
you know, I learned probably 30 years ago about this
concept called cards principle. You probably talked to me. But
what you tell my listeners, because it is rooted in
this the trace evidence analysis to my right, saying that
it's kind of rooted in that principle. Sure. Yeah. I mean,
that's the principle behind looking at trace evidence. So the
(06:12):
idea is that if you touch something or you have
contact with something or you rub against something, that whatever
that material is will shed on either part of the
material or itself or whatever is on that material. And
you pick it up on your clothing or your body
or your hands. And so that's kind of the basis
(06:34):
of our theory, is it we think leaves traces, emotions
can transfer from object to object. So then trace evidence.
That's what we look at. So when their DNA isn't
answering the question or firearms evidence isn't answering the questions,
we can go in and look and see if there's
some room to look at trace evidence to try to
(06:57):
answer the present. The specific question that's being asked in
a case, you know, maybe the listener is an example
of the different types of trace evidence that you listen.
I know you're an expert in a lot of things
of these types of trace, but I think it's fascinating
if you can kind of tell them the types of
trace evidence that can be analyzed and what you can
do with it. So all the types of trace evidence
(07:18):
that we deal with on a daily basis is hair evidence,
fiber evidence, glass evidence, paint transfers like in hit runs,
or in this case, contact from paint that is flaking
soil evidence. If you walk into a certain area, you
might pick up soil on your shoes and that could
(07:40):
be compared. You know, same with burial sites. You could
look at soil from the different layers of the grave
to see that matches something on a shovel or in
a car and shoes on the shoes and plant. Plant material, too,
because plants decompose, they pollinate and they grow again. So
(08:01):
all of that leaves traces that can be picked up.
The usual questions are, is that significant? Right. And that's
that's the real issue that we look at. Is that
unique enough? Is it significant and does it answer the
question in the case? And I would imagine that in
a lot of these cases, especially the one we're about
to talk about, it's really kind of circumstantial evidence.
Ruanne (08:24):
Yes. A lot of cases are circumstantial evidence. What we
see at the crime scene, what do we see on
the victim's body? What do we find in the victim's car?
And what inferences can we draw from that evidence? And
as you mentioned, the kind of the title of this
is whether this murder or whether suicide. We were looking
(08:45):
at the trace evidence that we talked about later and
look at having to go down both those paths. So
did the inference lead to that she was murdered or
did this trace evidence and did those inferences lead to
that she committed suicide?
Faye (08:58):
Okay. So you started off by telling us her name
was Jennifer. What was the name of the person you
were prosecuting?
Ruanne (09:03):
His name is Keir Kiera Anderson.
Faye (09:06):
Okay. And just maybe just tell the listeners kind of
the relationship they had kind of you know, one of
the things I learned a long time ago was what
was what was the 72 hours leading up to her death? Right.
So she's obviously. Deceased. Correct? Correct. Okay. So maybe just
explain to the listeners kind of kind of what the
relationship was like and how we got to this point
(09:28):
that there was a homicide investigation.
Ruanne (09:30):
So Keir and Jennifer had been together almost ten years.
They married. They'd been married together. 17, dating and then married.
And they had two children, two girls. One was four
and one was 18 months old. And here was older
than Jennifer. And so he had he had an influence
(09:54):
over her because she was young and impressionable when they met.
And so and over time, he had decided to experiment
sexual and with sexuality, with and their sex life. And
he was bisexual. Jennifer knew that. And Jennifer was comfortable
with that. So period always wanted to have a another
(10:17):
man into their relationship and to develop a threesome. And
so it eventually did occur. I'm going to refer to
Jay is was the third and the third guy and
third person in the relationship. And Jay had happened to
be friends with both of them going through some hard
(10:37):
times themselves. And here asked him if he was interested
in exploring and having sex with both he and Jennifer.
So Jay moved in with Kear and Jennifer and they
had a sexual relationship for about 2 to 3 weeks.
And listeners might wonder, how did we know all of this? Well,
(11:01):
Kier was a prolific diary diarist, if you will, person
who wrote down everything here. Kier was. And so we
did find all of his journal entries, if you will,
that discussed the sexual relationship that the three of them had.
And not only that, but like emotionally how Kier was
(11:22):
feeling about this situation. He was quite pleased in these writings.
We determined he was pleased with the way it was
going on. But what developed is that Jennifer started having
feelings for Jay. So here would find that she would
sneak off with Jay and the two of them, Jennifer
(11:45):
and Jay would be together, leaving Kier out of the mix.
So Kier began to feel left out, if you will,
and things kind of boiled up. And there were some
argue me arguing about.
Faye (11:58):
That.
Ruanne (11:58):
Fact, and Jay ended up saying, I can't deal with this.
I'm out. So he leaves and moves out of here.
And Jennifer oh, well, Jennifer began to feel it was
very she missed Jay because Jay had provided her with
some emotional support that she didn't get from here. So
(12:22):
she wanted to continue to see. Jay And as in
domestic violence situations, this was making a very controlling here.
I'll refer to him as being very controlling, quite upset.
So what moving forward, that jealousy, that on Keira's part,
(12:45):
that feeling of abandonment, that his wife was abandoning him
for another man and led to eventually killing Jennifer. And
we can go into details later about the hours moving
up to that point in time.
Faye (13:04):
So your experience with domestic violence, and I've heard this
phrase before with it called lethality factors, maybe kind of
explain what is that and did that play were there
signs here that those factors were present?
Ruanne (13:20):
Well, the biggest lethality that that we see is in
a domestic violence relationship is that when and I'll just
refer to the female when the female part of the
relationship wants to leave and take steps toward leaving, that
is when that that female is in the most danger
of being killed by her partner, because the partner, the
(13:44):
domestic violence abuser is very is controlling, wants to control
his partner. And when he starts to lose control of
that partner, that is when a murder can take place.
And just kind of as a side note, domestic, why
I found domestic violence fascinating is it crosses all socioeconomic folk.
(14:08):
So and we've had you know, I've prosecuted doctors, I
prosecuted lawyers. So it's just it's the type of person
that they just snap at the certain. When they feel
they completely lost control.
Faye (14:21):
So kind of lead us up. This this incident happened
in February of 2006. Kind of what led up and
tell us kind of tell us about how she was found.
Ruanne (14:34):
All right. So as I mentioned earlier, Jennifer was upset
that Jay had left the home and actually here had
over the days that went by. And it was about
three weeks this happened. She was killed about three weeks
after Jay moved out here for bathed her from communicating
(14:57):
with Jay. And we know that because of his off
again in his journaling, he also had written up a
covenant of marriage. And it found that on the computer
where he wanted her to sign this covenant, saying that
she acknowledged here was her husband, she would not cheat
(15:18):
on him, she would not have sex with anybody else
but her husband, etc.. So Jennifer was beginning to feel very.
Constricted and essentially being suffocated emotionally. We know this because
we talked with her friends and her family and she
(15:39):
was very at first conflicted about what did she want?
What's she going to do? Is she going to stay
with care? Because they were obviously married and they have
these two children? Or is she going to leave care
for Jay? Jennifer was into astrology. And so to solve
(16:00):
this question or help her work through it in her mind,
she went to see an astrologist and this particular astrologist
tape recorded the session. And we got that tape. And
in that tape, that astrologist says, in looking at all
of the stars and how they lined up and I'm
no astrologer, so I can't really explain how it works.
(16:21):
But in looking at all of the stars and everything,
she said that she was the one that she that
Jennifer needed to stick with on the night that she
was killed here, was aware that she had gone to
see this astrologist. So Jennifer's on the phone with her
mother and talking with her mother just about her day
(16:43):
and how things have been going, how things had gone.
And we know she had just come home from work
because she she worked at a church and she would
do the the drops at the bank. And we had
the bank surveillance showing when she had the drop at
the end of the day. So we knew we had
a timeline going on. So she is back at home
and she's talking to her mother right after she got
(17:03):
home from work. And the mother says she hears here,
come into the bedroom. We believe she was in the
bedroom during this conversation. And here says, where's the tape?
Referring to the astrology tape. Uh, let's see. The mother
says she heard the two of them arguing over this tape,
(17:25):
and then the phone goes dead. So Mom tries to
call back, and just with getting either her voicemail or
the phone was just dropping, she couldn't get through to Jennifer.
So the Jennifer's father tried to call. They waited a
couple of hours. And then Jennifer's father called the police
(17:48):
and asked for a welfare check. A welfare check was
done at about 1030 that night, and the officers went
to the house here, answered the door, and they said,
we need to come in. We're doing a welfare check.
And they asked where Jennifer was and he said, We
got into an argument and she stormed out of here.
(18:10):
And it was a really bad storm that that night
with pouring down rain and the officers went in and
looked for Jennifer, went into the home and actually opened
up the garage. The garage.
Faye (18:25):
Was.
Ruanne (18:25):
Full. They were kind of pack rats full from the
ground to the feeling. And they just kind of poked
their heads in and looked around and didn't see anything
and they left. So the parents, Jennifer's parents, the next
morning were very concerned because they could not get a
hold of Jennifer. So they they went over to the
(18:48):
house and they had keys to the house. And at
this point here had already left for work. They go
into the house and the mother sees Jennifer's coat on
the coat rack, and inside the pocket work was her
phone and her keys. And immediately mother knew there was
something wrong, that she would not have left her phone.
(19:10):
There were her keys in her coat pocket and she
would have been wearing the coat in this horrible rainstorm.
So then they called the police again and this police
came out and that one particular officer did a moral,
more thorough search out the garage and basically starting pitching
(19:30):
boxes here, there and everywhere to move from me where
the kitchen door goes into the garage and then moving
forward toward the wall top. And that is where he
found Jennifer hanging from the rafter.
Faye (19:46):
Just a matter of process. Once, once. Bodies found. It's
a homicide investigation. It's a separate police department, right? Correct.
So the normal course of events is then she's taken
down and she's taken in for her autopsy, right? Correct. Okay. Okay.
Let me ask you this. You work with our crime
lab for many, many years. Were you when did you
(20:06):
get involved in this case? I first was. I first
got knowledge of it, I think, during the autopsy, because
during the autopsy the investigator calls and says there's this
debris on the victim's skin and on her buttocks. And
(20:30):
it looks like the autopsy surgeon said it looks like
a flat material. And so I probably should go back
out there and pick up that material. And I think
they were suspicious right at the beginning because what was
explained to me on the phone was her hair was
in front of her face while she had her glasses on.
(20:51):
There was a rope that she was tied to the
rafter with that the tail of the rope was inside
her sweater. So the end of the rope was tucked
in the sweater inside this letter and then came back
out at the bottom of this letter. And the pathologist
was saying it did not look like a hanging. So
(21:12):
how is she? Now, maybe you can answer either one
of you. But how? How? When she was found hung
from the rafters. Clothed, unclothed. How was she dressed?
Ruanne (21:22):
She was clothed. And as they said, the tail of
the noose was inside of her sweater. It was a
cardigan sweater, so button up sweater. And she was wearing
pants that had an elastic waistband and her socks. She
(21:43):
was wearing socks and her socks. I don't remember phase
one or two, but at least one was upside down,
meaning the heel was on the top of the world.
And as they mentioned, her hair was she had very
long hair and her hair was like in front of
her face. And then the glasses were put on like
over the hair.
Faye (22:03):
Well, I think it was under the hair came over
quite a bit of both, but middle. Yeah. When you
look at the photographs, the hair, you can't see the
glasses until you kind of move it aside.
Ruanne (22:15):
So, you know, kind of getting back to our theme
are not a thing. But the truth was, was this
suicide or was this murder? And they was the one
who pointed out when we were looking at the CSI
photos that, wait a minute, the tail is in between
underneath her sweater. So if she had really committed suicide,
(22:37):
how on earth did it get underneath the sweater? Because
she would have yet she tied the noose and then
the tail gets cut under the sweater. That just didn't
make sense.
Faye (22:48):
Well, it was under the sweater in the back and
not in front. So then you could see in the
photographs that she was leaning up against a table saw.
So you came out of the bottom of her sweater
and then it was outside the pants she was wearing.
And you could see that in the photographs. And then
(23:10):
the socks in the photographs looked like they were upside down.
But I would confirm that once the socks came into
the laboratory. Okay. So she has a pair of pants on.
You get called because in the autopsy she appears to
have plant material on her buttocks. Right. Not on the pants,
but on the actual skin. Right. Okay. So what else
(23:33):
kind of were you looking at ultimately in the laboratory?
Did you go back out to the scene? Yeah. So
when they called and asked her to pick up or
select plant materials and I better look at it first.
So I don't know whether she's going to be picking
up plant material from trees or bushes or grass or
flowers or whatever. So they sent the they brought the
(23:55):
kit up right away, and I looked at it. Well, yeah,
there were there were pieces of the leaves and soil
and paint and some other things on there, too. And
I said, Well, I'd better go with you stuff to
her bones. Yeah, well, they had been removed at that point,
but because the pathologist had removed it and so they
(24:16):
were going to get a warrant then. And that was
the first time I went out to the scene. Okay,
so what really kind of just walk us through like
what you would you do at the scene, what you
collect and then what you analyze? Well. I collected everything
that I thought might be on her body that might
(24:37):
be relevant as to where she might have been killed.
My feeling was she was regressed and that the particles
on her skin and her underwear were more important than
what was on the outside of her clothing that she
was wearing when she was home where she lived. There
(24:59):
was also that that wasn't as relevant in terms of
answering a question about what the sequence of events were. Right.
So anything that even though I knew there was paint
and soft material, I collected other things that I thought
could be there if she was in the garage, if
she was in the backyard. Because at this point, we
(25:22):
don't know from the time she died where she might
have been before she was hung. And we knew that
there was supposedly a fight and she had lots of
bruises on her body. So we looked at there was
a like a spa in the back. We collected samples
from there, collected samples from any of the paths from
(25:44):
the back of the house to the front of the house.
The side of the house collected the plant material, anything
that was crumbly, because this was plants material that had
come from like fallen leaves and they were decomposing. And
then there were some eventually some like plastic material or
(26:05):
plastic type material. And so we had the. Actually go
back and make sure that we got what we needed
to actually say, whether or not it occurred in the
back or the front on the side yards. So we
went twice the initial time to confirm. The type of
(26:28):
material is correct. And I think. The original piece that
we picked up was one layer, and it was a
layer on the victim's bodies. I wanted to go out
and get some additional samples in addition to what we
already have. So let's start with the paint, though. So
she's got paint on her buttocks and then we're able
(26:49):
to associate that paint to someplace in the house. Yes.
Where was the garage? Garage floor. So at some point,
she's obviously on the floor. Right. And it's on her
buttocks underneath the underwear. Okay. So that's the other question
I was going to ask you out. So Rue and
she's found Hung. She's got a sweater on. The tail
is underneath the sweater. She's got a pair of pants.
(27:11):
She's got a sock that's on backwards. And then she's
obviously she's got a pair of underwear. Right?
Ruanne (27:17):
Right. Yeah. So that they looked at the underwear. And
what was interesting about the underwear is that it was
and they can elaborate, if I recall, what you explained
is that it was folded in a way the underwear
had kind of been. So the markings on the underwear,
(27:37):
on the buttocks, part of the underwear and was the
dirty and the dirty markings were not like a random circle.
It was they were felt like the fabric had been folded.
So we were starting to develop this theory that she
had been dragged once he killed her, strangled her, and
(27:57):
then he was dragging her as he dragged was dragging her.
The underwear kind of got scrunched up, if you will,
a little bit also. And we had detected some urine
on the underwear, but not on the pants. And why
is that significant? Because what happens to people who are
(28:19):
strangled is often they lose control of their bladder or
their vows. And so we saw they found underwear. I'm sorry,
urine on the underwear, but not on the pants. So
which further supported that? She had been dressed after she
was murdered?
Faye (28:35):
There was a little urine. It was a considerable amount,
and it was from the crotch area to the buttocks area.
So that looked like she was laying down at the time.
And it was the quantity was enough that if she
had been wearing the pants that she was found in,
it should also been stained with urine. And there was
(28:56):
no ear in the crotch of the purple pants she
was wearing. Okay. You mentioned the autopsy and that she
had bruises and you've done lots of strangulation routinely know
you've seen strangulation cases. Were there signs? Okay. So we've
got her hung by a noose, but are there different
(29:19):
kinds of injuries you might expect to see from what
we call manual strangulation, meaning that they use their hands?
So was there things on her body that was more
consistent with being strangled by someone's hands versus suicide?
Ruanne (29:31):
Yes. So that is, you know, as you talked about
a timeline after a murder and what happens to the
body when it's removed from the scene. It goes to
the coroner's office for an autopsy. It was the pathologist
who not only found the debris on the buttocks, but
also found it unusual that she had a she had
(29:55):
broken bones in her neck, specifically the hyoid and the
thyroid bones were broken. And the pathologist explained to me,
you do not find that in a regular hanging. There's
only certain circumstances where you would expect to find broken
bones in somebody who has hung themselves. And this was
(30:16):
not one of those circumstances. So. So not only did
she have that she had the broken bones in her neck,
but she also had what's called PTI. PTI is where
if somebody is strangled and they're gasping for air, blood
vessels in their eyes will burst. And she had significant
(30:36):
PTI in both eyes. So the biologist was very suspicious
that this was not a hanging because. Or a suicide,
I'm sorry, because you would not expect to see the
amount of PTI that was found. In addition, as you've mentioned,
the bruising the bruising show to the pathologist that there
(30:57):
had been a struggle because she had significant bruising on
her legs as if she had been while being strangled.
She was trying to kick kick him and fight back.
And we had to look at, okay, if she really
hung herself again, we're going back to this murder or
was it suicide? How did she get the bruises on
(31:20):
her leg if it were suicide or.
Faye (31:23):
How did she.
Ruanne (31:23):
Self exam?
Faye (31:25):
So, okay, so you mentioned the paint. You looked at
the paint. You also looked at the plant material. Yes.
What did you ultimately figure out from that? You took
some plant material from the yard. What was your ultimate
opinion of when you're preparing all that? Well, the leaf
fragments were consistent with the tree that was out front,
(31:46):
so it had lost its leaves, its winter time. And
so there were a bunch of decomposing leaf fragments around
the yard. I mean, it's not significant in terms of
putting her at the house is where she lives there.
So what's significant is where they're located on her body. Okay.
So how did it get there? So I think the
(32:07):
theory is that we looked at was that she was
dressed only in her bra and her underwear at the
time of the murder case because her bra also had
a small bloodstain on it that was not on the sweater. Well, interesting.
And we think maybe that at some point she winds
(32:30):
up in the garage, on the floor, in her underwear
and her bra and the laundry is out there, her
washing machine in dryers out there in the garage. And
we thought the clothing probably came from the laundry because
a clothing was dirty, the socks were dirty, the pants
was dirty, and the sweater was very dirty. So so
(32:52):
there is one other thing that I thought interesting when
I was kind of reading about the case is that
in in the world of homicide, there is what's called
pre mortem injuries that you can have, like what happened
before she died and post-mortem injuries. And am I right
early on that there was some evidence that she had
a post mortem injury on her hand? Remember that like
she had scratched well, that no blood had come out
(33:15):
of this injury.
Ruanne (33:16):
Right. And that we were thinking that while she was
being manually strangled, that she would she was pulling it
back his hands with her hands. And maybe that's how
she suffered this this scratch. And we also were looking
at the ligature marks on her neck. We were looking
(33:39):
to see and in the autopsy, they took lots of photographs.
We were looking to see if we could find any fingerprint.
Faye (33:46):
The present shape.
Ruanne (33:47):
Yes. And if I recall.
Faye (33:49):
I believe there.
Ruanne (33:50):
Was one on her jaw.
Faye (33:53):
There were scratches on it. That's right. Direction. So let's
let me ask about the husband. Who's the suspect here?
What was his claim? What was this? You know, went
to trial. But obviously, he's interviewed at some point before this.
Am I right? The law enforcement, right?
Ruanne (34:11):
Yes. What what's.
Faye (34:11):
His defense?
Ruanne (34:13):
Well, his he stuck to his claim that they had
gotten in a fight and she left and he didn't
see her again. And so wasn't me. That was his defense.
Faye (34:27):
Did he end up testifying at the trial at all?
Ruanne (34:29):
He did not. And the reason he did it is
because I played his entire interview. And so his defense
was I needed to do that for a timeline. And
so his defense was already in front of the jury.
Faye (34:42):
So in terms of this, so goes to trial, you
kind of talk for a minute about how you kind
of had to learn about Jennifer, obviously, after she was dead.
But is that something that comes into evidence? Is the
jury listening or do they get to hear kind of
what led up to this?
Ruanne (35:01):
Yes. So like I said earlier, here was prolific at journaling.
And Jennifer also kept a diary, which we located. And
so it was we were fortunate and that we could
get into her state of mind and what was going
on during this three week period where she was very
(35:25):
conflicted about whether she should stay or whether she should
go off with Jay. And we as I mentioned earlier,
we had the astrologist tape at journaling, and Jennifer also
kept a diary, which we located. So it was we
(35:48):
were fortunate and that we could get into her state
of mind what was going on during this three week
period where she was very conflicted about whether she should
stay or whether she should go off with Jay. And
we as I mentioned earlier, we had the astrologist tape.
(36:11):
So we were able to I listened to the astrology
tape and I could hear Jennifer's voice and the astrologist
and I could, you know, I listened to her questions
that she would ask the astrologers. And she was very
conflicted in her conversation with the astrologers. And it was
one point. It was very eerie, the astrologer said, as Jennifer. Well,
(36:33):
let me let me get the backdrop. As Jennifer was
describing her relationship with Kira and how he was very
controlling and how he had wanted her to sign a
covenant that I mentioned earlier, the astrologer said, you know,
he's slowly killing you. And that was just very, very
eerie to me that that the astrologer saw the control
(36:57):
and and that almost force was foreseeing what would occur.
Faye (37:03):
How was that astrology session like the day.
Ruanne (37:06):
Of the.
Faye (37:07):
Killing or the.
Ruanne (37:08):
Day before?
Faye (37:09):
Well, I remember years ago having a domestic violence murder
case where the victim had called nine.
Ruanne (37:14):
One advance and said, My.
Faye (37:16):
Boyfriend's going to kill me. And some of this that's
the whole point to me is on some of these
domestic violence cases, there's.
Ruanne (37:22):
Almost just like we.
Faye (37:23):
Talked about lethality.
Ruanne (37:24):
That's like the.
Faye (37:25):
Factors that lead up to someone potentially being killed. And
those factors were present.
Ruanne (37:30):
Here they were. And bringing up modality factors. It's important
for your listeners to know that one of those factors
is strangulation. So even in, you know, in a domestic
violence relationship where the perpetrator not only hits but strangles,
that's that's something we look at as a value for
(37:52):
potentially this person being killed in the future. And people
might ask or wonder, was there any domestic violence in
Jennifer in his relationship prior to this? There wasn't any
physical that we knew of. So the family didn't know
of any physical altercations or Jennifer never journaled about any
(38:16):
of any physical violence towards her, but the emotional abuse
was rampant.
Faye (38:22):
Okay. I mean, in some ways, I mean, you in
your career with DV, a lot of abuse happens over years, right? Physical, emotional, mental.
This one, obviously, that ultimately the homicide. It's in three weeks. Correct.
Ruanne (38:38):
It just snowballed. I mean, I would say the emotional abuse,
based on all of my readings of her journal, her
diaries and of his journal of the emotional abuse had
been going on for a while. He was very controlling.
Like I said earlier, he was older than she was.
He wanted to control what she did. And so she
was very passive, docile and put up with it. It
(39:02):
didn't seem to bother her until J enters into the
situation and she has feelings for him and sees him
or experiences J treating her much differently, much kinder, much
more loving, much more supportive of her emotionally. And I
(39:23):
think that's what really caused her to pause and reflect.
Wait a minute. There's another way I can live my life.
Faye (39:29):
Why did she. Just curious. Did she sign the Covenant?
She did. Well, interesting. Yes. Let me ask you this.
So you went out to the scene a couple of times.
You collect a lot of evidence. How much? Just so
people understand the amount of work that goes into this,
how many how many hours or how much time did
it take for you to, like, analyze all this stuff,
(39:50):
write a report and months probably or a month total.
You know, you don't work 100% of the time when
you're in the eight hour day, but the cases tend
to drag on. So, you know, it comes in stages.
Like the first part was identifying the plant and the
(40:11):
paint and making sure that we were on track as
far as where they came from and what it meant. Right.
And then at some point after that, you get I
got to look at his that killer statements. So, you know,
he said there was a fight. The fight was in
the backyard by the spa. And so then what we
(40:37):
do is we look at his statements and see that
if there's any physical evidence that might support that. Okay.
So that was the reason or one of the reasons
for going back a second time for the search warrant,
because now we have the statement and we can pick
up materials from these different areas that he describes as
where the fight occurred and any evidence that there was
(41:01):
a fight, the physical evidence or the pants or anything
to show there was a fight in the backyard. No.
So that's what we went out to do. The. He
had nothing that indicated that anything happened in the back yard.
The only physical evidence that was on her body either
came from the garage or the side of the house,
by the group, by what was a garage door opens
(41:23):
to a sidewalk, and then there was some, like a
decomposing tarp and some plant material that matched some of
the plant material on the underwear, not on the box,
but on the underwear. And so it supported her being
in that position or in that area. So at some
(41:44):
point in her end, at least, we don't know. He
probably had to take her to the front of the
garage in order to hang her because of the guardrails
so full of stuff. Okay. So that's what we think
happened is she was in the back of the garage first,
was taken around the side yard up to the front.
(42:06):
The little girl throws open when she was home. Okay.
So through this goes to trial, he claims she just.
Ruanne (42:15):
Wondered.
Faye (42:16):
Who killed her. And it really, you know, the.
Ruanne (42:18):
Mystery.
Faye (42:18):
Man. The mystery man came in and killed her, his
wife and her. Fair to say that this was pretty
much 100% circumstantial evidence case?
Ruanne (42:28):
Absolutely. 100% circumstantial.
Faye (42:31):
So when you testifies, right, as an expert witness amongst
many other people that you have to bring in J.
Ruanne (42:38):
We did. I had to bring in J to have
him set the scene to establish the motive. Now, as
far as, you know, Emory, in homicide prosecution, we don't
have to prove motive. But in this case, motive was
huge for us. And so, yes, Jay was important part
of showing motive on Keira's part because he could talk
(43:01):
about your feelings about him leaving the relationship.
Faye (43:07):
Very testified as an expert. And then what was ultimately
did you testify what your findings were? Did you give
an expert opinion? I gave up an opinion that she
was regressed after she was hung. And it was based
on four factors the rope being inside the sweater, the
(43:28):
socks being upside down, the blood on, the bra being
not on the sweater. And then the debris and the
condition of the underwear or the stains that were on
the underwear that were not present inside the pants. So
what's interesting Rudy mentioned is when the cops rolled up
(43:51):
and she's found everybody's alarms go off, this doesn't seem right.
But as a prosecutor or as a forensic scientist, you
have to still prove it. Right. It's not just saying
something doesn't look right here. It's these steps that you
guys took ultimately. And then how did you argue this ultimately?
What was your basic argument to the jury?
Ruanne (44:11):
Well, I focused a lot on his motive and how
he was starting to unravel because he was losing control of.
And Jennifer, we I had the parents testify. So we
I approached in my closing argument as a timeline. I
had a timeline set up. So we know that there
(44:33):
that he was upset about the astrology tape. The jury
heard that astrology tape. So they got to hear Jennifer's
voice in a post mortem. I mean, after she died,
they got to hear her voice. And then with obviously
today's testimony, the sequence sequence of events and that the
(44:53):
strangulation and the killing happened out on the back patio,
that she was then dragged either through the house into
the garage and placed on the floor, because how else
is she going to get the very unique paint chips
and say they were unique because they were either two
or three layers of different colored paint? And that was
(45:16):
the only place correct me if I'm wrong, that was
the only place in the home where that paint was located.
And then we argued how physically he would not have
been able to pull her up and over all of
the junk that was in the garage that he had
to have gone out the site, dragged her out the
side pedestrian door, which is where the decomposed tarp particles
(45:41):
landed on her underwear. And then he had to drag
her to the front and roll up the garage door
and pull her inside. And so it was a combination
of the motive that he was very, very angry and
he and that she had made up her mind that
she was going to leave him, because that was in
(46:02):
the astrology tape as well. In addition, I had several
of her girlfriends testify that because her state of mind
was very important, was she just, you know, again, was
it murder or was it suicide? Was she just in
a suicidal state in the days and hours leading up
to her murder? No, she actually one of her girlfriends
(46:23):
testified she she appeared her emotional state on the day
of the killing was one of relief that she was
feeling emboldened, if you will.
Faye (46:33):
Finally made up her mind.
Ruanne (46:33):
Like she finally made up her mind that she was
going to do what she needed to do. And so
focusing a lot on both her state of mind, his
state of mind, and then obviously the circumstantial evidence.
Faye (46:44):
And I think also what's the circumstantial evidence? It's you
can always explain one thing, right? You know, maybe the
rope might be a little odd, but, you know, putting
the pieces together and the socks upside down, you know,
most people don't wear their socks upside down. But if
she was in a hurry or we could always have
(47:05):
an explanation. Could you put everything together? It just didn't
make any any sense other than she was stressed after
she was hung. Number four, you know, I remember when
I was a trainee lawyer with Miranda and I both
started out together in 1990 and we both worked in
the Bay Area and there was the earthquake in San Francisco.
(47:28):
And listeners remember the big deal, 1989, Bay Bridge collapse,
the fires and all that. And I remember and I'm
reminded by what you say is that you can say
that the Bay Bridge collapsed because of some structural damage
or the fires happened because of some problem with utility,
whatever it is. But it all happened at the same time,
(47:50):
at the same place for the exact same reason. And
I used to use that as my circumstantial example that
put it all together. And the only logical conclusion is
that here Anderson strangled his wife and then Hunger addressed
her post killing. And I think as a scientist, we
we did do due diligence in looking at alternative theories
(48:13):
like we looked to see if there was paint anywhere
else at the house. We looked to see if there
was any decomposing type anywhere else. So we, I think,
consider the alternatives considered his story to be correct. And
the physical evidence just wasn't there. We went back to
the second time for that purpose is to make sure
(48:34):
that we had it put together correctly. Fascinating. So rewound
that jury convicted him of first degree murder. Okay. And
he's in prison currently. He's in prison. So fascinating to me.
It's it's fascinating not only because it's circumstantial evidence, but
the amount of work that went into it and the
uniqueness of the case. But, you know, as we kind
(48:55):
of wrap it up, I'll start with you kind of,
you know, you've done a lot of cases in your career.
I'm assuming you've done other cases where they were kind
of what I would call staged suicide, where somebody kills somebody,
tries to act like suicide. I mean, what do you
think is important for the listeners to kind of walk
(49:16):
away with in terms of just lessons from this case
or realities of this case? Well, you know, these kinds
of cases are difficult because there's so many moving parts.
And for every event or every thing that you see
or every piece of evidence, I think you always have
to ask the alternative. And the more complete you are
(49:38):
in asking those questions and considering them, by the time
everything is put together, it becomes a better case. And
so communications. Understanding what the autopsy is, understanding how the
investigation is progressing and what their concerns are, understanding what
the prosecutor's concerns are as far as proving an element
(50:03):
is absolutely critical, because if we don't understand what the
issue of proof is or what the real question is, right,
we may of just done an analysis and have no
idea what it means and we can't testify to what
it means basically is out there in limbo by itself
(50:26):
or the scientist. So, you know, we can do a
much more thorough job in answering questions from the broader
the perspective is in contrary to the theory that if
we know too much, you're biased. Right. But, you know,
if you know too much, you can also try to
(50:47):
prove the alternative explanations. So I don't buy into that
at all. I just remember trying to be myself. I
think I met you say, probably in the mid-nineties, and
it was a case in another county rape case, but
you were doing some plant work on it. And I'll
never forget just the first thing you said is, well,
what question you trying to answer here? It's true. It's
(51:09):
a really important thing. So thank you for that. But really,
how about you? What do you think you want the
listeners to know about this particular case?
Ruanne (51:16):
Well, as they mentioned, you know, we needed to answer
all of the questions. I didn't mention earlier that it
took us nine months to answer all of those questions.
We did not rush out and arrest Kira Anderson after
we found his wife hanging in the garage. It took
us nine months to go for her to do all
(51:36):
of her work, for me to meet with the pathologist
numerous times, to get those answers from the pathologist and
again to sift through all of the written evidence we
found at the journals of both Kira and Jennifer. This
case touched me deeply because of who Jennifer was. She
(51:59):
was a young lady that had had fairly low self-esteem,
but a big heart. You could tell by how she
raised her, how she was treating her children, the love
she had for her mom and her dad and her brother. And,
you know, she finally was kind of like her wings
were finally opening up and she was going to be
(52:22):
able to move on and get out from under his control.
But sadly, that was not to be because he was
going to have, if not the last word, the last act.
Faye (52:38):
So. Yeah. Well, thank you both for joining me today.
Fascinating case. I always try to kind of end it, really.
You kind of highlighted this is these cases are about
the human toll of crime. I mean, she had a family,
many children that are now left behind. So I thank
you for that and thank you both for your insight.
And to our listeners, thank you for joining in. And
(52:59):
if you want to find more, you can go to
our podcast on inside crime files dot com. Thank you.
Anne Marie (53:06):
Inside the Crime Files is produced by Alliance Media in
San Diego, California. OLAS Media.
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