Sleuth & Surgeon

On May 28, 2004,  a sunny Friday afternoon in Waller County, Texas,  Nancy Merck came to the Morning View Ranch to groom her horse. Hours later she was dead on the stall floor - her throat slashed, her clothing cleanly cut and her horse "Whiskey" covered with blood.  Law enforcement said the horse did it.

Two Horse Slay is a 7 episode chilling tale that lays bare a Texas murder, unforgettable for its utter trag...

After a funeral home mortician discovered stab wounds to Nancy's back her body was taken to the Southeast Texas Forensic Center. There, board-certified forensic pathologist Dr. Patricia Moore performed Nancy Merck's autopsy. The critical findings were stab wounds to the back, sharp wounds to the neck, particularly the deep cuts to the carotid artery and jugular vein, and defensive wounds on her hands. Waller Co...

On May 29, 2004 after Dr. Patricia Moore's completed autopsy declared Nancy Merck's death a homicide, Nancy Merck's family was visited by detectives from the Waller County Sheriff's Office. They were not told the results of the autopsy, or that Nancy had been murdered. The Texas Rangers were called in to review the "questionable death" case. The report by the Texas Rangers' lead investigator noted the autopsy result was a homicide ...

The chilling 9-1-1 call came in on the morning of January 30, 2005, Eight months after the homicide at the Morning View Ranch. It was a crisp Sunday morning, at the Oaks of Kendalwood, a horse farm in Harris County when equestrian Deborah Gail Kay, was found dead in a pool of blood on her bedroom floor, her throat slashed,  just like Nancy Merck.

There was no trial for the brutal killing of Deborah Gail Kay, found in a pool of blood on her bedroom floor — stabbed in the chest, her throat slashed, and defensive wounds marking her final struggle. Sixteen-year-old ranch hand Jose Fernando Bustos Diaz confessed to the murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison at the Dolph Briscoe U...

In 2015 — eleven years after her death — Nancy Merck's family finally learned the truth. The sexual assault kit collected by Dr. Moore at the autopsy was tested and matched to Jose Fernando Bustos Diaz, who had confessed to the 2005 murder of Deborah Gail Kay.

But justice remains elusive. Bustos Diaz escaped from a Texas prison in 2010 and is still a fugitive.

TK and Dr. M explore old and new questions that remain unanswered.

Board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Jaye Crowder forms a hypothesis based on evidence from the case and listening to Jose Fernando Bustos Diaz's confession. 

On Sleuth and Surgeon, TK and D...