Presumed Guilty

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery. I'm Jill and I'm Dick. Hey,
this is our six hundredth episode. Oh yeah, believe it pop. Yeah,
So I don't really have a special episode related to that,
but I just thought it was worth mentioning that that's
a lot of episodes.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't seem like it's that many.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
No, No, and that doesn't include bonus ones we did
early on. So lots of episodes. And I just want
to thank everyone who's hung in there and listened with us.
It's been really great. Has Yeah, so let's keep it going.
I guess right, we got some left in us. I
think so. So when Monica Done, a beautiful mother of three,

(01:08):
was shot to death in her home. Her husband was
with her, but he would claim that she had done
it to herself. Likely story, right, Yeah, we've heard this before,
we have, but this might be a little different. The
couple had become estranged after months of infidelity and some
really vicious arguments. So Monica's police officer husband, Paul Donne,

(01:29):
was the logical suspect in her death, but Paul maintained
that he was innocent, even though no one believed him.
He was ostracized by his fellow law enforcement officers and
his friends, despised by Monica's family, and even less custody
of his children. Join us at the quiet end for
presumed guilty. The mysterious death of Monica done so. Monica

(01:51):
and Paul lived a life that was very passionate, but
there was also a lot of volatility. After Monica's sudden
and violent death, shocking secrets about her life and her
relationships revealed a marriage that was doomed from the start.
So would a murder trial provide closure to Monica's family
or would the reason for her death remain forever unknown.

(02:13):
That's what we're going to talk about.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Today, Okay, And we've got a nice new Mexico beer today.
This is from a Newish brewery called Flock of Moons
that's rapidly becoming one of my favorite breweries. What we're
drinking today is Lunar Winter. It's a season with seven
percent alcohol by volume. Beers are clear gold color, large
white head, a little bit of lace, wonderful of aroma,

(02:35):
lemon spice, and we got a nice taste lemon, lemon,
Rye's tart, a little bit of ginger, crisp, and clean
Mouthfield is one of the best beers I've ever had.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Well, that's saying something, because how many beers have you rated?

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Oh, thirty four hundred somewhere around there?

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Wow? Okay, so if this is becoming your favorite, that
means something.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
It's an incredible beer. Yeah, and it's not one of
the styles of beer that I like really that much.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
This hits it all right, sounds great. So it is
interesting that our six hundredth episode is a case in

(03:21):
New Mexico.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
That wasn't on purpose.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Was No, it wasn't. It just kind of happened because
this case was actually recommended to us by Justin not
that long ago, and I just read about it and
became really interested in mostly the forensics of how proving
how this happened, you know, by looking at the trajectory
and wounds and things like that. It's a good thing
to talk through. I think as far.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
As cris it's an interesting case.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, absolutely so. Monica and Paul Dunn lived in the
small town of Farmington, New Mexico, and it's near the
very north of the state, at a region known as
the Four Corners, and that's where you could stand in
four states, once New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. So
Paul was born in Albuquerque in nineteen fifty eight, and

(04:07):
in his early years his family actually lived in Santa Fe.
He had a younger brother named Mark and an older
sister named Robin, and when he was thirteen, they all
moved to a small farm in Nambi, New Mexico. So
Paul would describe his childhood as happy and normal. He
played basketball, and he learned to ride horses. He enjoyed

(04:28):
taking care of the animals on his family's farm. When
Paul was sixteen, he met some New Mexico State police
officers and that would really just kind of change his
whole outlook on life, or at least it would have
him decide what he wanted to do with his life
as an adult. So these state police officers stopped by
a gas station where Paul was working, and one of

(04:49):
the officers invited Paul to do a ride along, which
he did do. He actually ended up doing that several times.
This experience would lead him to a career in law enforcement,
and after he graduated from high school, Paul did take
law enforcement classes at New Mexico State University in Las
Crusis for a year. So in nineteen seventy seven he

(05:09):
was hired by Santa Fe to work as a corrections
officer at the jail there, and he was working there
when he met and married his first wife, Juliet Martinez.
In nineteen seventy nine, he became a Santa Fe police officer.
So Paul and Juliet had a daughter who they named April,
and she was born in nineteen eighty one, and they

(05:31):
moved to Farmington, New Mexico in nineteen eighty two, And
that's because Paul was offered a job at their police
department and there he could have better wages and more
opportunities for advancement. So in those years, Paul was very
focused on being the best copy could be. He was
very particular about how he looked, wearing a pressed uniform,

(05:52):
shined boots, and a neat crew cut. He did have
some friends, but many of his coworkers saw him as
being arrogant, was just a bit too much for some
of them, and some of them may have been jealous
of this young officer who was good looking and muscular
and did attract the attention of women. But he also
may have been a little standoffish. He could come across

(06:13):
his cocky, and he spent hours on his looks and
his physique, running and lifting weights at the gym. One
officer's wife, though, would call Paul an asshole. He had
a hatred for anyone who broke the law, and he
was known to get into fights with suspects, so that's
not great. But always committed to his job. He did
take courses in firearms training, He worked both patrol and traffic,

(06:39):
and then he did work to become an accident reconstruction expert.
So he was a hard worker.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah. But oh, so far you're paying a picture of
the type of police officer that kind of takes law
into his own hands.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Well, I don't know if i'd go that far, but yeah,
I see what you're saying. He was a bit much. Yeah, yeah,
but you know it's kind of like a the cop
who's all jacked up.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
And you know, on steroids, all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
All that stuff.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, So when Paul met Monica. She was working as
a clerk at the courthouse. She was a gorgeous woman
who put a real effort into looking her best. She'd
gotten pregnant at age fifteen and married the baby's father,
Patrick Cortez, who was her high school sweetheart. The couple
divorced in the nineteen eighties, and then later on he
got killed by a drunk driver a few years later

(07:27):
while riding his motorcycle. So, even though they were divorced
and had been divorced for some time, Monica would never
fully get over Patrick's sudden death.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
No, so, Monica was very close to her family, though
she visited her parents every day and kept in frequent
contact with her siblings. At the courthouse, she was very friendly,
and she'd bring in candy to share with anyone who
came by her desk. Some of her coworkers thought she
was aloof but her looks could also be intimidating because
she seemed like she was always just really dolled up.

(07:59):
Monica met Paul when he came to the courthouse to
get a citation book. Because Paul wrote a lot of tickets.
He liked to write tickets. He liked to pull people
over so he needed a new citation book. That day,
he was out of tickets when he noticed the side
door of the municipal clerk's office was open. He peeked
in and he saw Monica sitting at her desk and

(08:20):
she was crying. So Paul asked her if there was
anything he could do. Now, I don't know if he
would have said that if it was like a sixty
year old woman. I don't know if her looks had
something to do with this, because it does seem like
he was attracted to her. Many men were yeah, that's
a good question. Yeah. But Monica told Paul that her
cousin was in serious condition after being in a car accident,

(08:43):
and it was difficult to understand what she was saying
because she really was sobbing, but he stayed with her
for several minutes and tried to comfort her. So that
was their first really getting to know each other, although
they had seen each other, you know, inside the courthouse
here and there, but Paul did generally work nights, so
he'd rarely seen Monica enough to talk to her. But

(09:05):
now he did notice that she had these big brown eyes,
flawless skin, and thick, dark curls. But Paul was still
married at this time. Although there were problems in his marriage,
still he and Juliet were supposed to be working on things.
And it's hard to say how committed he was to
this because he would end up, of course, with Monica.

(09:27):
But at the time he would say that he wasn't
interested in Monica. Really, he was trying to work on
his marriage. But the very same afternoon that he spoke
with Monica, Paul did ask a fellow cop about the
beautiful woman working in the municipal courthouse. He told Paul
Monica's name, but warned him that she was dating their
sergeant at the time. Now, of course, Monica was aware

(09:49):
of the attention that men would pay to her. She
didn't try to hide her body, but she dressed professionally.
She didn't, you know, dress like a sex worker or anything.
And despite having a lot of money, she was wearing
some very fashionable outfits and she would rarely repeat the
same outfit twice. So wherever she went, Monica liked to
be the best dressed woman there, and even at home

(10:12):
she dressed very nicely. She really wasn't into cooking or
keeping the house up, but she worked hard at her job,
and she did take good care of her daughter.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
So when Monica was twenty two and Paul was twenty five,
Monica broke off the relationship with the sergeant and she
turned her attention to Paul and started flirting with him.
Paul couldn't believe that such a beautiful woman would be
interested in him. Paul had never cheated on his wife's before,
but he started seeing Monica romantically. They're flirting at work,
progressed until it was obvious to the other employees what

(10:44):
was going on, And the first evening they went out together,
they had sex in his car.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, and soon when Paul wasn't working, he was just
with Monica all the time. Monica helped him with his
divorce in nineteen eighty four, and he thought she was
just the perfect woman. But then he did notice one
thing that did bother him, but apparently not enough to
end the relationship with her. Monica was jealous of Paul's daughter, April,
who lived with her mother. Now, the child was only

(11:11):
four years old when they got together, but Monica seemed
to resent her and really didn't like having her around
at all. So that should have been a real red flag.
You bet, Yeah, later on, when April was older, she
would say that Monica had been verbally abusive to her
behind her father's back. So really, no love loss between
those two.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
No, it wasn't. In Paul, he really didn't understand how
Monica could be so jealous of a child. He thought
it was just a passing phase. So he put that
out of his mind and he and Monica planned for
their wedding and life together. They were so absorbed with
each other and with the relationship that other people were
just off in the background somewhere. So Paul became a
little isolated from his friends, but he only wanted to

(11:52):
be with Monica. This isolation, you know, cutting yourself off
in friends is an early sign of an unhealthy relationship.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
It is, and I think we've heard of it more
often with men who are controlling their wives or girlfriends
who kind of want to keep them separated from their
friends and family. And I've also heard of men who
are jealous when their wife has a baby of the
attention the baby gets from them. Sure, so it's really
something that Monica seemed to have. It must be an insecurity.

(12:22):
I mean, where do you think that stems from?

Speaker 3 (12:25):
Well, Monica has a child from her previous marriage, right.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, she related okay with that kid. Yeah, she was
a good mom, everybody said. Yeah, it was just having
another woman's child at her house that seemed to bother her.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
That and the fact that if she's living in the house,
she has attention paid to her.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, but she wasn't living with them full time. April
lived with her mother full time. Yeah, but I just
wonder if having April around was maybe a reminder that
there was another woman in Paul's life before and kind
of kept that connection between the two.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
I was just also thinking that she was a little
off with April because she's the other woman's child, And yeah,
if she's Paul spending time with the child, he's not
paying attention to Monica.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, And I think Monica really kind of needed most
of the attention centered on her. She was used to that.
She was always just kind of striking and got a
lot of attention, So I think anything that would take
the attention off of her was probably difficult for her.
Right here you are, So, I think there are those
several things we talked about that probably played into this,
but definitely a sign of things not being very healthy

(13:33):
in the relationship.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yeah, and they're not even married yet.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yes, So Monica and Paul were married on Valentine's Day
nineteen eighty six. Many of Monica's family members didn't approve
of Paul, though, They would call him a gringo because
Monica was Latina and he was not. Every Sunday they
visited Monica's parents like she always had, but her sisters
and her brother would give Paul unpleasant looks or just

(13:59):
completely ignore him, kind of just didn't want him around,
it seemed like. And then they would all speak Spanish
to each other, which Paul didn't know, and this made
him feel like even more of an outsider. So even
though Monica's siblings didn't really give Paul a chance at all,
her parents and her uncle did like Paul and treated
him quite well. So it was just the siblings really,

(14:22):
So at least the parents were accepting of him. They
liked the fact that he was a police officer and
upstanding citizen all that. Yeah, and of course they could
tell that he just adored Monica, I mean that was obvious.
So Monica did keep her job at the municipal court,
and Paul continued to work as a police officer. He
soon did take on a second job as a security

(14:44):
officer for the former governor to help make ends meet.
Monica did like to spend quite a bit of money
on clothing, and Paul really didn't mind, at least early on.
He just wanted her to be happy and he was
willing to do whatever it took. She was very sweet
and loving with him, so he thought, you know, she's
doing all this for me, as far as being here
for me and loving me. I don't mind working more

(15:06):
to please her because I love her. So it seemed
to be okay at least early on. Now, two years
into the marriage, Monica and Paul planned to buy a
home and have a child together, and after Monica got pregnant,
Paul just couldn't believe it. He thought she looked even
more beautiful, but Monica did not like how pregnancy changed
her appearance. Still, they were both thrilled when she gave

(15:28):
birth to their daughter, Diane on September third, nineteen eighty eight,
but it was Paul who would get up in the
night with a new baby. Monica didn't want a breastfeed,
you know, to ruin her breasts, and she didn't want
to be up in the night losing sleep. So Paul
was in charge of all that, and it was an
agreement that they had, so he really wasn't resenting it,
at least at first, because he also did most of

(15:51):
the house cleaning, the laundry, and the cooking, even though
he's working two jobs. But he's, you know, young, he's
in love. He just seemed to take it all in stride,
happy to put in the effort to keep his wife
and his baby daughter well care for. So seemed okay,
so far, so far, so good.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yeah, he's taken on a lot of extra things, he is.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
But Monica is still working, so it's not like she's
doing nothing.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah. No. Later in nineteen eighty eight, after Diana was born,
Paul joined the school program Adoptokop. Paul worked with kindergartener's
first grade, third grade, and fifth graders. When the police
department issued trading cards with police officers pictures, Paul's card
was very popular, and he was a guest speaker at
the driving school also.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, and he was really good at that because he
was an accident reconstruction expert. And one of the things
they do in driving school, at least they used to do,
is they would show you videos of accidents and horrible
things that could happen when you drive.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Don't drink and drive, right.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Right, don't drink and drive, don't speed, all that stuff.
So he was really good at kind of scaring them straight,
if you will, kind of keeping that fear the dangers
of driving and instilling in them the idea that it's
important to drive safely, that that's the priority. Driving a
car is a big responsibility. You need to be safe
and all that.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
But then Monica got upset because she learned she was
pregnant again just about one year after they had her daughter.
So she wanted an abortion. Actually, she just didn't want
her body to go through that. She really didn't think
they needed another child, but Paul was very determined that
they would go through with this pregnancy, that she would
have this child. So to get her to follow through

(17:34):
with having the child, Paul agreed to have a vasectomy
so it wouldn't happen again. So she agreed, but she
really just didn't enjoy being pregnant, you know, it's not
fun for a lot of people. She suffered from morning
sickness well past the first trimester, and of course she
complained about the weight game. She was very vain and
that was just important to her. It was part of
her identity to be beautiful. In her seventh month, Monica

(17:57):
got appendicitis, so she had to have her appendix removed.
So they went to the OAR for an emergency appendectomy
and she had to have a sea section, so they
decided they needed to take the baby. They did the
C section first and then they did the apendectomy, so
their next daughter, Rapel was born. She was born healthy
on August third, nineteen eighty nine.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
So this baby was born about eight weeks early, had
a fairly uncomplicated newborn course.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, too fine.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
They figured, as long as they're doing the appendect and
they will do a c secont. I mean, how do
they arrive at a decision to do both?

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Well, I really don't know. I think they just decided
that it'd be better if she wasn't pregnant when she
went through the ependectomy. And I don't know if it
had perhaps it had burst, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
I guess that could be. Yeah, it just didn't quite
follow for me that you had to have both together.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Well, I mean, this was the late eighties too, this
was a while ago. Yeah, so I think that there
were more open apendectomies back then. So for whatever reasons
at the time, they decided it was safer to do
the sea section before doing the ependectomy. But then after that,
Paul and Monica really loved their daughters and Paul was
a caring father, and it seemed like everything would be okay.

(19:31):
But one thing was that Paul would not show his
affection publicly, which did seem to kind of start to
bother Monica, and it would actually work against him as
well when it comes to his being seen as a
loving husband or as someone who would hurt his wife
later on down the road. But Paul began to feel
like he couldn't satisfy Monica no matter what he did.

(19:52):
After that, she had trouble accepting the changes to her
body after the sea section, especially the scars from the
sea section and the ependectomy. She believed she was only
attractive if she was made up and nicely dressed, so
she wouldn't believe Paul when he told her that she
was beautiful. So her sagging breasts were a daily complaint
of hers and she really wanted to get surgery and implants,

(20:16):
so they began to argue a lot about that and
just a lot of things. They just had different ways
of looking at things. But eventually Monica did get breast
surgery and this gave her self esteem a boost. But
Paul was upset because her boss had paid for the surgery. So,
I mean, what do you think of that? That's a
little red flagish.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Just a bit. I know she said that three thousand
dollars was a bonus, but give me a break.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
Well, what do you mean expand? Well, what are you
implying here?

Speaker 3 (20:43):
I'm implying it. There's something going on with Monica and
her boss. Is I don't believe that they just gave
three thousand dollars to her and said have your breast done?

Speaker 2 (20:51):
No? Probably not. I mean, she could have asked him
for the money.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Yeah. To me, it just seems that there's more going
on than a simple financial transaction.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yeah, and that's pretty much what Paul felt as well.
You know, it just didn't seem to make sense to
him that her boss would want to pay for her
to have surgery to enhance her breasts, has nothing to
do with her job. I've heard of things like that
when women are exotic dancers, or if they're acting and
something like that where the breasts are actually kind of
part of the job, right, although still doesn't seem necessary.

(21:22):
But this she's working at a desk, and there were
just some thoughts going on around them that something was
going on anyway. So I guess you're right to think
that that was suspicious.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's obvious.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I mean there were rumors about Monica and her boss,
and some of her coworkers had seen him giving Monica
backrubs at her desk, so very inappropriate for her doing
that as well. So as Paul and Monica's daughters became
toddlers and then preschoolers, Monica and Paul's relationship continued to deteriorate.
Even though it seemed like Monica was being unfaithful or

(21:59):
at least flirting with other men. She was very jealous
of any interactions Paul had with other women, and then
Paul felt like Monica was trying to separate him from
his family and friends because she just always wanted him
to herself. They only spent time with her family, and
Paul began to feel isolated and kind of just not
fitting in. He had let it happen but he just

(22:20):
felt it was easier to go along with what Monica wanted,
which was fine until he started resenting that. You know,
at first, Paul's ego was boosted by Monica's jealousy, but
he began to feel suffocated by it over time. He
was a bodybuilder, so plenty of women would look at
him or admire his looks, but if you look back
at them when Monica was around, she would become very upset.

(22:42):
She would ask him if he was sleeping with the
woman or if he wanted that woman instead of her,
and it just became problematic.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
And now Monica had been molested as a child by
a relative, and she had been convinced by her abuser
that she was irresistible to men and she had to
submit to their wants.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
That's awful.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Well, yeah, I think we cause problems for right, Yeah, yeah,
bigger If you like her only value was in her
appearance and sexuality. Sure, yes, So even if Paul showed
her his love by being an attentive husband and father,
Monica would always question her attractiveness and compare herself to
other women, which is hard.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
As you're getting older and you have children, it's hard
to keep up that you bet yeah. But as their
arguing got worse, things began to get even physical. Sometimes.
Monica once threw a drinking glass at Paul, and another
time he lifted her off the ground and she was
kicking and screaming at him, and when he let go
of her and dropped her that time she sprained her ankle.

(23:40):
And this was his explanation of the event. So after that,
Paul said he tried to be more passive and Monica
would use the silent treatment against him. But then Paul
met Anita Harris. So Anita was riding horses with a
friend on the former governor Tom Bollock's land when she
saw Paul outside chainsawings some wood near his truck. So

(24:01):
she said hello and told her friend that she thought
he was cute. Then she went ahead on her horse
ride without giving it too much thought afterwards. But then
Anita saw Paul again at a Christmas party. So he
was with Monica at the party, and Anita noticed that
she was very possessive, holding onto his arm and keeping
an eye on the other women who were there. Still,

(24:22):
Paul did manage to speak with Anita at that party,
and something just kind of happened. There was an attraction,
a moment, Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
And soon after that party, Anita and Paul met up
back on the former governor's property, and she had stories
from their lives. For Paul, Anita was someone who he
could tell about the feelings he'd been holding in for
such a long time. He'd never had a real friendship
with a woman before. His experiences with women had all
started with a physical attraction, but with Anita it seemed

(24:52):
like a deeper connection. She is certainly different from Monica.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Very different, almost the opposite.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
Almost.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
She wore little makeup, best very casually with his strawberry
black hair and a ponytail and freckles at her skin.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, so very different from Monica. And not just in looks,
but in the way she thought about life, the way
she behaved, the whole thing, the whole thing, And Paul
was attracted to that. At the same time, money was
a big part of the problems between Monica and Paul.
They had separate bank accounts, and Paul was the one
who was responsible for all of the household bills. The
thing is, he didn't know where Monica's money went. He

(25:29):
did know that she spent a lot of it on
clothing and makeup and things like that, so he knew
she spent most of it on herself, and over time
he did begin to resent this a little bit because
he didn't make a lot of money anyway. He was
a policeman and a security guard, so he wasn't rolling
in money. Oh and he had the older daughter from
his first marriage and now they have two children, so

(25:52):
there were a lot of expenses. So the resentments building
up over all these things. So after several weeks of
talking getting closer to each other, Anita and Paul discuss
the possibility of having a relationship like a romantic relationship.
But Paul said, if you get a divorce, he would
lose custody of his daughters and he wasn't willing to

(26:12):
do that. Anita said she understood, but Paul was falling
in love with her. He would say it wasn't the
same passionate love that he'd had with Monica, but he
knew that that kind of love really wasn't long lasting.
Anita actually saw a soft, caring side of Paul that
most people would never see. When Paul told her about
his home life, Anita was really upset with how Monica

(26:33):
treated him. So, I don't know, when there's a married
guy telling you about the problems that his wife has,
you kind of have to take that with a grain
of salt.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Yeah, and unless you get both sides of the story right.
So I don't think she's going to look up Monica
to get her side of it.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
No, But Paul was telling her and she started seeing
Monica is self centered and thought that Monica really treated
Paul more like a servant than a husband. That may
have been somewhat true, but actually, you know, Paul had
set it up that way. He'd had no problem doing
the cleaning and taking care of the babies and all that.
So you really can't blame Monica when that's how they

(27:11):
started out. That was how the relationship worked.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
There might have been different expectations about that.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
I'm sure. Yes. So even though Anita couldn't understand why
Paul would love someone like Monica, most of the people
in Paul's life couldn't imagine him with a woman like Anita.
She lived in jeans and dirty boots and really seemed
to prefer animals to humans. She was a real free
spirit and she had a natural look. Rarely wearing any makeup,

(27:38):
and she could be kind of outspoken. So Paul's friends
and family just really wouldn't see him with someone like Anita.
That hadn't been his type in the past anyway. But
he felt like he was kind of growing and having
a more mature relationship at this point in his life. Yeah,
which you know they wouldn't understand because he really kept
most of that inside and the only person he really
shared that with at this point was Anita. So Anita's

(28:01):
differences from his wife were much of the attraction that
he had to her. She had this easy self confidence,
which was the opposite from Monica's neediness and jealousy. And
it took Monica at least two hours to get ready
to leave the house, even just to run to the store,
but Anita would get up in the morning and just
throw on a T shirt and jeans and she was
ready to go. Anita and Paul did start having an affair.

(28:25):
You knew that was going to happen, right, Yeah, we
saw that coming. And they started sleeping together that March,
and the first time that they had sex was in
a car parked under some cottonwood trees by a river,
and Anita would describe this as very romantic. So Anita
had learned a lot about relationships. She'd been in an
abusive relationship prior to meeting Paul, and she'd been through

(28:48):
therapy and read books, and she gave Paul a book
that she'd read about codependency. So after Paul read that book,
he said that he realized how unhappy he really was
with Monica, and he kind of shocked Danita because he
started talking about leaving Monica and getting his own apartment.
And this just seemed kind of out of the blue
and too fast to Anita, so she kind of backed

(29:09):
up and broke things off with Paul. After her bad marriage,
she didn't want to get involved with someone after her
bad marriage. She really didn't want to get involved with
someone who was in a not great relationship himself. She
wanted to be healthy, so she knew if Paul divorced
Monica that would really change things. So she needed to
figure out what she really wanted in life before plunging

(29:32):
into a serious relationship with Paul. And this was hard
for Paul because he was totally in on Anita at
that point.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
So Paul wrote a letter to Anita expressing his love
for her. He told her they would be great together,
but he knew he had to let her go. He
had written a letter mainly to get his feelings out
and didn't know if he would ever send it, so
he put it in a glove compartment of his truck,
thinking he would be safe there. Meanwhile, he began to
speak up to Monica and point out that he was
the one making the sacrifices and doing all the giving

(30:00):
in their relationship. But this made Monica wonder why he
was having such a drastic change of attitude, so she
starts keeping a closer eye on him, searching his things.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Now it's this trouble.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
Trouble's coming.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah. After she didn't find anything in the house, she
moved on to searching his truck. Oh no, I think
he should have done a better job of hiding.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
That letter, absolutely, especially knowing what a jealous woman she was.
It's really kind of dumb that he did that.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
She had eventually popped open a glove compartment, of course,
and found the letter that Paul had written to Anita.
And even though the body of the letter was that
Paul was ending the affair, Monica focused on the words
of love he had written to the other woman Paul
loved Anita. That meant he didn't love her. She felt
betrayed and alone.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yeah, I think it was very upsetting for her. Even
though Monica probably was having affairs, or at least unaffair.
We'd find out later that she did have an abortion,
and of course Paul had had a vasectomy, So pretty
sure that Monica did have an affair. But I think that.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Was just to try and that wasn't her husband.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yes, yes, right, maybe the boss who bought the breast implants,
that's a possibility. But I think that even though she
did that, she felt very betrayed by Paul, because I
think Monica was just someone who needed that kind of
constant reassurance for men about her attractive I think so.
So even though she did that, I don't know if
she really was thinking about leaving Paul at all. And

(31:48):
of course, to her, with her ego him leaving her,
he leaving her would be much worse than she leaving
him be a lot for her to handle. So after
reading the letter, Monica decided to go to the bank
where Anita worked as a loan officer. She brought some
friends along with her too, and when she walked into
the bank, looking beautiful, of course, in a tight fitting

(32:10):
suit with flawless makeup, Anita recognized her as Paul's wife.
So when Monica saw Anita's nameplate, she walked right over
to her desk and loud enough for everyone in the
lobby to hear, she said, I'm Paul Dunn's wife. I
just wanted to meet the woman who was breaking up
my marriage. So Anita was just kind of horrified. She
quietly tried to explain that she wasn't seeing Paul anymore,

(32:33):
which I think was true at that moment, but Monica
raised her voice even more and said, how can you
live with yourself being with another woman's husband? So Anita
was just kind of mortified. Then, after Monica and her
friends left the bank, Anita called Monica at the municipal
court and she told Monica that she did not have

(32:53):
designs on her husband and that she was not the
reason that Paul was leaving her. And we don't even
know that Paul was going to leave her at that point.
But when Monica got home that evening, she told Paul
to leave. That was it. She wasn't even going to
discuss it, and he did as she said, so he
took most of his things, But it is important to
mention that she asked him to leave a shotgun behind.

(33:16):
She said she wanted to keep it for security reasons,
although I think we know that you're more likely to
have you or someone in your family hurt than to
save yourself with a loaded gun in the house. Yes,
but she said she wanted it for home defense, and
Paul said he understood. Then the next day, Monica went
to see an attorney, Victor Titus, who was a friend

(33:37):
of hers and Paul's. She told Titus that she was
seeking a divorce and would need an attorney who was
not so close to them as he was, But she
didn't mention anything about any spousal abuse or about Paul
having an affair.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
And a few days later, Monica went to see Farmington
police officer Lawrence Dusty downs when he saw bruise on
her face planet was from Paul. Now, it was common
knowledge among the police that Paul and Monica were having
marriage issues, so he wasn't entirely surprised. Monica's sister's boyfriend
had come to the police station with her, and Monica

(34:12):
spoke for the first time about being abused by Paul
and confided that she believed he was taking steroids. Downs
took photos of her bruises in a room with a
blinds drawn, but he did not have a female officer
in the room with them when he took them, which
is the normal procedure. So Monica had a bruise on
her face, her thigh, on her side. Downs also interviewed

(34:33):
Monica and gave her a pamphlet on domestic violence.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
So it's hard for me to understand why he would
go against protocol. And of course many people would say, well,
there was something going on between those two, Well sure, yeah,
you just immediately would think that.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
Well, if you take the whole thing in totality, doing
the pictures like that could be a signed that they
were having a little get together.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah, I mean it's really strange. Why would you want
to do that without a female officer if everything was
on the up and up, because you're just problems, yeah, exactly.
So it was curious. There would be people that would
question why that happened, and we don't really know now.
Some people believe that Paul was still seeing Anita romantically,

(35:18):
and many people thought Monica and Dusty downs were having
an affair, especially after that incident. Monica's best friend, Vicky Maestis,
said that Monica often came to work with tears in
her eyes or she had red eyes from crying. Monica
told her that after Paul moved out, he had been
harassing her at home and following her to find out
where she was and who she was with all the time.

(35:40):
Monica told Vicky that she had looked in Paul's truck
and found a letter he had written to Anita, so
it was obvious that Paul and Anita had had an
affair if they weren't currently, and Monica made copies of
the letter, keeping one for herself and giving one to
her father, So she'd involved her family in this, and
her parents are turning against Paul at this point as
well because he's hurt their daughter.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, So one day at work, when Monica seemed especially sad,
two of her co workers decided to go and see
her after work. While they were visiting with her, Paul
showed up at the front door. Paul and Monica spoke
at the front door, and the coworkers heard them arguing.
Paul told Monica that he loved her, but he didn't
think he was in love with her anymore. Oh, those

(36:22):
are the words of death. Now, it's just like, it's
not me, it's you. So Monica was just angry and
upset and told him to leave. So he left.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
Now, he did come to the house every Monday and
Tuesday to see his daughters. He brought groceries, he cooked,
he did the laundry. Monica and Paul went to a
movie together once, met at a neighborhood pub a couple times.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah, so it seemed like maybe they were going to
try and work things out.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
But when Monica went to Las Vegas for a weekend,
she wouldn't tell Paul who she went with. There were
rumors as she had gone on the trip with Dusty Downs.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Well, if you won't say who you went with, right there,
that's a bad sign.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
Well it makes it seem less.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Well yeah, I mean, even if she did go with
a mail, it would be better to say than to say,
I'm not going to tell you, because then you for
sure think she's having an affair, right right, So Monica
filed divorce papers on April first, and then she had
lunch with Dusty Downs. So I think there was something there.
About the rumor.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
I think it's more than just rumor.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
I think so too. That Friday, Paul stopped by Monica's
office and told her he would be picking up the
girls on Monday morning. He said he also planned to
mow the lawn, clean out the hot tub, and do
the grocery shopping. But when Monica followed Paul, she saw
that he went to Anita's house, so she was very upset.
It seemed like maybe he was hoping to come back
home to her and her daughters, but now he's going

(37:43):
to Anita, So she's like, what the fuck is going on?
And that same weekend, Monica cried as she told a
friend about seeing Paul struck at Anita's house. So she
was definitely hurt by this, and you can't blame her.
I think maybe Monica's the type of person where if
her husband's doing that, she kind of had to have
someone on the side just to make her feel better.

(38:03):
I mean, I kind of see it that way, because
she was just so dependent on being attractive to men
for her self esteem that it had to be really
hard for her to have her husband interested in someone else.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Yeah, I think if you look at it that way,
it had to be a tough time for Yeah. Absolutely,
her early worth who is to her is to have
men being interested in her.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yeah, And she was sexually abused as a child. She
got pregnant at fifteen. She's very young still, so very
difficult situation for her. So Monica then showed her friend
Bruce Is on her elbow and on her side and
said that Paul had thrown her into a mirror and
broken it. So she described Paul as a doctor Jekyl
and mister Hyde type of person. On the Saturday before Easter,

(38:48):
Paul brought gifts to the house for the girls. Then
he went inside to get a drink of water, and
Monica followed him around and she wouldn't let him look
in the master bedroom. So he's thinking, there's a guy here, right.
He tried to look in the bathroom and she blocked him,
so he ended up punching a hole in the wall
out of anger and frustration. After he left, Monica called
her friend Vicki and told her that Paul had abused

(39:10):
her again and threatened to kill her. Now that had
not been overheard, but to Vicki, Monica did seem like
she was genuinely afraid of Paul. So Monica told Vicky
about the domestic violence packet that she'd gotten from Dusty Downs,
and she told her she was going to file charges
against Paul despite his threats. So she said that she
was afraid of what he would do once he was

(39:31):
notified about the charges, because I'm assuming that won't be
good for his job. He'll at least be put on
leave and probably fired.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Not going to be good for his job.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
And we know that he was very invested in being
a police officer since he was a kid. Basically, he'd
wanted to be a police officer. So on Easter Sunday,
Monica contacted Dusty Downs again and she told him that
she wanted to proceed with filing charges against Paul for
domestic abuse. So Downs explained to her that this would
automatically start an administrative investigation of Paul o sure, and

(40:04):
he explained that she would need to file the papers
in person at the court, So Monica promised to do
that the next day. She asked Downs actually to call
her the next day, but that would never happen.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
Because on that Monday morning, Paul arrived at Monica's house
just as she was backing out of the driveway with
the girls in the minivan. Monica saw Paul and pulled
back into the driveway. She got out of the van
and told him she was taking the girls to their
grandmother's house before she went to work. Paul didn't understand
this because they had already made plans for him to
watch the girls. So he got the girls out of

(40:36):
the van and they all followed Monica back into the house.
The girl sat at the table, Paul gave each o
one of them a bowl of cereal. Monica's older daughter
went take a shower.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah. So at this point, Monica announced that she was
filing domestic abuse charges against Paul, and Paul said that.
He said incredulously, what are you talking about. Then she
turned toward him and said, look at me, I'm bruised
all over. She stood in front of him for a moment,
then she turned and walked toward the master bedroom. She
was wearing a new purple dress which hugged all of

(41:06):
her curves. She had pantyhose on and high heeled pumps.
Monica went into the bedroom and closed the door and
outside Paul pleaded with her to talk to him, and
he said he had never hit her, so what was
going on? But when Monica wouldn't answer him, Paul pounded
on the door. He was losing his temper for sure.
He yelled at her to open the door, and then
he heard a click and she called out, come here.

(41:29):
So this is where everything went to hell. Paul opened
the bedroom door, and he would later say that he
saw Monica sitting on the waterbed. Then he saw the
shotgun in her lap. He knew it was loaded because
he always kept his guns loaded in the house and
he had told Monica to keep them that way. Then
there was the shotgun blast. Monica's body flew backward and
blood spilled onto the floor, and Monica fell onto the floor.

(41:52):
She was shot and she was bleeding profusely from her abdomen.
Paul tried to lift Monica, but she was covered in
blood and she kept shopping from his grasp, so he
tried repeatedly to pick her up, but he couldn't get
a grip on her. Then he saw his fifteen year
old stepdaughter, Amanda, fresh out of the shower, looking at
him with hatred in her eyes, and she yelled, what

(42:13):
did you do to my mom? So Paul said nothing,
he told Amanda to call nine one one. Her little sister, Diane,
was already making the call, but her big sister took
control of the phone and Paul half dragged, half carried
Monica through the house. He took her to the garage
and tried to put her in the van. He said
he was trying to rush her to the hospital, but
he couldn't get her in the van and decided that

(42:35):
he needed to start doing CPR there. Amanda kept the
two little girls away from the garage, but she was
watching Paul very suspiciously as he began doing CPR on Monica.
So when the first responders arrived, they took over CPR
and tried to stop the bleeding, but it was obviously
too late. She died in my arms, Paul repeated over

(42:55):
and over again. The Farmington police officers who arrived at
the house did not show sympathy towards Paul at all,
which kind of surprised him. I mean, these were supposed
to be.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Like his brothers comrades.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, they just had these blank, grim faces, which kind
of confused him. But what he didn't understand at the
time was that everyone believed he had shot his wife.
All they saw was a man dragging his bloody wife
to the car, So it was really hard for them
to believe that she could have shot herself in her
abdomen with the large gun. It was a long gun
which would be very difficult to use on yourself. Then

(43:29):
they found the police reports that she had filed that
she had filled out inside of her car. So this
was a woman who was planning to file domestic abuse
charges against her husband that very day, and now she's dead.
So it looks very bad for Paul. I'd be suspicious, Yes,
everyone was.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
That's the other thing. I'm just why would he carry her,
drag her through the house and try to do CPR
on her after he couldn't get her into his truck?
Why don't you do the CPR right away?

Speaker 2 (43:57):
What do you mean after he couldn't get her into
the truck, he dragged her from the bedroom towards the truck,
trying to get her in the truck and driver to
the hospital. Right, But when he couldn't get her in
the truck, he started CPR right there in the garage, right, yeah? Right?

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Didn't he start CPR in the bedroom?

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Well? Yeah, that's a fair question. A lot of people have.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
Asked, that's another thing that would make me a little suspicious.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Well, you would think as a policeman, a first responder type,
that he would know that you do. But also, at
the same time, if it's your personal life, you don't
always act the same way as you would in your profession.
You know, it's a shocking event. But then I also
wonder what did the older daughter say on the nine
one one call. She was not a fan of Paul.
Maybe she said my stepdad shot my mom right from

(44:38):
the beginning, because her first response to him was, what
did you do to my mom? Right? So, after the
ambulance took Monica to the hospital, Paul looked at his
blood covered hands and just was in shock. Basically, the
officers ordered him not to wash because they would want
to do gunshot residue testing. And of course he was
the chief suspect. They had been arguing and he had

(44:59):
gone after Monica and then the gun had gone off
and there were no witnesses to who pulled the trigger
but Paul, So it sounds like he's in big trouble.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
It does.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
For two hours, New Mexico State Police officers questioned Paul
while he still had Monica's dried blood on his hands.
He was not allowed to go to the hospital to
be with his wife, and he wasn't allowed to see
his children. They did let him wash his hands finally,
and eventually he was allowed to leave the station. He
was not under arrest, as he underwent blood and urine

(45:30):
testing at the hospital, but he knew everyone believed that
he had shot Monica. It was really hard to believe
that a beautiful young woman with three children and a
good job would do that to herself, especially with a shotgun.
That's very unusual for a woman. It is women most
often kill themselves by taking an overdose of pills, so
the whole thing's very shocking. And then Dusty Downs brought

(45:54):
up that Monica had visited him just the day before
and showed him her bruises. She told him that she
was afraid of Paul and afraid of what he would
do once she did file domestic abuse charges. So all
signs are pointing to Paul as her killer. She had
finally gotten the courage to speak up about the abuse,
and now she was dead, and that's how they looked

(46:15):
at it. Is it's not that uncommon when a woman's
ready to leave. That's when she's in the most danger.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
Yeah, I can see how they're thinking.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, But Paul repeated over and over that he did
not shoot Monica, even though no one was really believing him.
At the hospital, Monica's family was gathered around her, and
they were, of course convinced that Paul had killed her.
They couldn't believe that Paul had the nerve to say
that she had shot herself with his shotgun. The family
would never believe that Monica would end her own life.

(46:45):
She would never do that to them or to her children. Plus,
they were a pretty strong Catholic family, and Monica knew
that killing herself would be a sin that would be
punishable by an eternity in hell, so it seemed very
unlikely that this was something she would have done.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
After he left the police department, Paul went to his apartment.
He talked on the phone with his father and stepmother.
He also called his mother. After he hung up with
his family, Anita called it. Paul told Anita that Monica
had shot herself and that she was dead now. Anita
already knew that after Monica died, her niece had come
to the bank and said, I hope you're happy that

(47:20):
son of a bitch murdered Monica.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Wow, that's a guilt trip.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
So Paul thought that Anita had trouble believing his explanation
of what had happened. But she's really just stunned by
the news, of.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
Course, and I'm sure she has her own feelings of
guilt forever being involved with him.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
Yeah, she just needs some time to let this all
sink in.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah. Well, she wasn't just going to run right over
and be at Paul's side, No, No. So Attorney Victor
Titus met with Paul, and he told Paul not to
say anything to anyone. He didn't know that Paul had
been having an affair or that Monica had recently found
out about it. She just told him that she and
Paul were getting divorced. So it bothered Titus that Paul
had never told him about the affair because they were friends.

(48:01):
So to him, it was possible that Paul could have
shot Monica, but he also saw what was happening in
the marriage as a motive for Monica to perhaps commit
suicide because she was very upset about things. Paul didn't
see Anita until three days after the shooting. He was
staying at a friend's house. People had already begun to
ostracize Anita because of her affair with Paul, which was

(48:23):
now very public knowledge. Paul was put on administrative leave
with pay until the investigation was over, and after her autopsy,
Monica's body was returned to Farmington and her funeral was
held four days later. Now this is interesting and pretty
important that Victor Titus was surprised when he was asked
to be a pallbearer, and he wondered why her family

(48:45):
would choose him.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
I would too. He's not a friend of the.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Family, right, They didn't really know him.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
He's done some legal work.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Yes, he knew Monica, and he knew Paul, but not
really Monica's family.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yeah, So Paul was told not to attend the funeral,
and Monica's parents refused to allow him to even see
or talk to his daughters at all. And worst of all,
they separated Diane and Raquel, who'd you know, always been together.
Diane went to stay with Monica's parents and Raquel went
to stay with her aunt Teresa. So after the funeral,
Monica's nephews stood outside of a Walmart store and they

(49:19):
handed out yellow ribbons for people to tie to their
vehicle antennas in memory of Monica. Later, a memorial flag
was raised at the city's domestic violence shelter in her
honor as well. DA Allen Whitehead had more than enough
motives to feel confident that Paul would be charged in
his wife's death. Monica's family, the Sanchezes, were well known

(49:40):
in Farmington. Both the governor and the Lieutenant Governor visited
the Sanchez home after the shooting, and still Whitehead denied
any pressure for him to prosecute Paul Dunn.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
The medical examiner's report says that the shotgun was one
to three feet away from Monica when the trigger was pulled.
Monica had marks on her body from a shot cup.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Yeah, let's explain that a little bit.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
When a shotgun shoots, there are metal pellets in this
shot cup. So if the gun's two feet away, the
shot cup will come out and hit the body with
four petals that break apart, and you can see that
on the skin. On Monica's abdomen had marks from the
shot cup. So if the gun was two feet away
from Monica when it was fired, there's no way that
she could have done it to herself.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
No, she wouldn't have been able to reach the trigger.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
The shot cut marks and the holes in the wall,
according to the medical examiner, showed that Monica did not shoot.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Herself right now. When questioned by the media, da Whitehead
brought up the domestic violence packet that had been filled
out by Monica just one day before she died, and
this included the photos of her bruises that had been
taken by Dusty Downs. He said it would be almost
impossible for someone to kill themselves with a shotgun, and
he pointed to Paul Dunn's physical strength and said that

(50:53):
Paul had control problems. So they're kind of setting up
Paul as this cliche of the angry cup. Yeah, which
may have been a little bit true. I'm not sure,
but there was no way that Monica could have pulled
the trigger with her foot. She'd had panty hoseen heels on,
and there's no way that she could reach the trigger
of the shotgun if she'd been standing up with a gun.

(51:14):
Right So, state police sought out a portion of the
bedroom wall where the shot pellets ended up and took
pieces of the drywall for evidence. Paul took two polygraph exams,
one for the prosecution team and one for the defense team,
which he passed. I don't know how much strength would
you give that. Not much, No, I think it's I'm
not sure about those lie detector tests.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
Well, as one of our listeners said in a recent case, yeah,
it's not a lie detector, Well not really, it's justologic
response to questionally.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
Right, right? And it is stressful to take a polygraph
O kid. Yeah, So Victor Titus was not a criminal lawyer,
and he referred Paul to an attorney named Gary Mitchell.
Paul was arrested and he couldn't make bail, so he
was held in the jail and he was held in isolation.
And that's because he was a policeman. He couldn't just
be in the general pop right, right. But this meant

(52:07):
he was in a cell by himself for twenty three
hours a day and this would go on for eight
and a half months. So this was very difficult. Thats
hard to imagine. So his life was also ruined because
he had no job and he had no contact with
his children at all. Monica's family was not going to
allow that, so the DA took the case to the
grand jury, and they asked a lot of good questions

(52:28):
about what kind of spread you would expect to see
if the gun was shot one to three feet away
from Monica. In the end, though, they decided to charge
Paul with first degree murder and Gary Mitchell would lead
Paul's defense. He looked for the best ballistics and forensic
experts to testify for the defense. The prosecution experts had

(52:48):
already determined many things that made Paul look guilty, so
the defense brought in ballistic expert Nelson Welch and forensics
expert doctor Martin Thackler. Beckler worked with another expert on
the wound characteristics, trying to explain Monica's entrance and exit wounds.
So the prosecution was saying that there was no way

(53:09):
that the shot cup could have hit her the way
it did if she had had the gun pressed up
against her when she fired, and that would be the
only way she would have been able to do it.
They said that she had been standing by the bed
when Paul had shot her, so the defense needed to
show that Monica had shot herself while actually sitting kind
of reclining on the bed.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
Yeah, she had to be more more supine.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
Yeah, like if she was sitting and holding the gun
and leaning forward with her upper body, that's really the
only way she could have pulled that off. So there
was a bit of a turning point in the case
when Victor Titus asked Monica's family why he was chosen
as one of the pall bearers. Remember, I said that
was important. Monica was not around to request him, but

(53:51):
the family told him that Monica had wanted him to
be one of her pallbearers. So Victor told Gary Mitchell
about this, and Mitchell had his private investigator talked to
Monica's father, Tory Sanchez. So he was just trying to
make like chitchat with Tory, and he said to Tory, well,
what about that letter that Monica wrote? Really just fishing
for information, he had no idea about a letter. Yeah, yeah,

(54:14):
So he was surprised when Tory said, yes, there is
a letter. I know about it, but it was written
to Monica's sister's boyfriend, Ricky, and it's a private matter
and we're keeping it private. But of course this was
big news or the PI.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
So it turns out Monica had written a letter where
she left some of her belongings to people, and she
wrote down who she wanted for Paul bearers. This letter
was written just days after she had found Paul's letter
to Anita in his glove compartment. Then soon after she
wrote the letter, Monica was dead. The letter talked about
how cruel the world is and suggests that she won't

(54:50):
be alive much longer. And her father said that this
was just a last will and testament. But this letter
was written more like almost like a suicide note. So
it could have been a suicide note. It could have
been like a foreshadowing of a homicide too. It would
match either one of those things. But it really wouldn't
match just a last will and testament. No, no, So

(55:11):
the attorneys had a special hearing for the production of
the letter, and the judge ordered that the letter be produced.
So I'll read you a couple important parts of this letter.
It was a two or three page letter though, So
the letter read, help everyone get through this and remember
I will never be truly gone through my beautiful girls.
I'm really sorry about this. I don't have any more

(55:31):
strength to go on. I'm tired. When I'm gone, the
bruises on me will show. And she wrote out who
should be her pall bearers even made a little joke
saying Paul bearers. Paul like Paul's name, Paul Bearers, and
she wrote out who should give her eulogy. She also
wrote who should get her car and specified that Paul
should not get her car. So how in the world

(55:54):
would she know that she would have bruises when she
did die? And if she wasn't planning on her herself,
why would she say I'm really sorry about this, I
don't have the strength to go on, I'm tired. That
really doesn't sound like that. So her death didn't happen
until like a month after the letter was written because
it was dated. So how would she know that she'd
have the bruises. Either she planned it or she was

(56:17):
saying that Paul beat her all the time, and of
course she would have bruises at any time. So the
trial did go forward though, and Paul anticipated being found
guilty because most people were aligned against him. He did
have a good attorney and some respected experts on his side,
and that's probably what would save him. But still, Paul
kept a razor hidden in his cell because if he

(56:39):
were found guilty, he planned to kill himself rather than
go to prison. So he'd had a plastic razor to shave,
and he'd taken the little razor out of that and
hid it. And he had hidden it so that he
would be able to use that to take his own life,
because he thought if he went to prison, it would
just be hell being a police officer in prison. Especially.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
The defense claimed that all the evidence showed the prosecution's
theory was completely raw. The defense tried to map out
the trajectory of the pellets and it didn't work. When
the trajectory was followed, it came back to her sitting
on the side of the bed. So they're able to
debunk the idea that Monic had been standing. Yes, the
defense expert actually put the shell casing up to the

(57:21):
marks on Monica's body showed that it was a sight
at the end of the muzzle that made one of
those marks.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Yeah, so the cup, the shot cup has like four
petals that will separate, right, But one of those marks
was not from a pedal, it was from the site.
So the shotgun had to be pressed up against her
for that to happen, but upside down, and it would
have been upside down, which makes it even more curious.
And then it has it's like the shot cup and

(57:48):
it has the pellets, and then there's this white grex
material that holds the pellets together when they're shot, so
they just don't expand immediately. And this was found inside
of her wound and in her exit wound. So if
Paul shot her, he would have had to be down
on his knees in front of her holding the gun
up against her body, which she would pretty much have
to allow him to do. She couldn't have been fighting him, really,

(58:11):
So the expert just could not believe all the things
that were missed by the medical examiner in the shooting.
The situation initially seemed like the stereotypical steroid taking abusive
police officer losing his temper and killing his estranged wife,
but Paul actually was not someone who was known to
have a temper or had ever beaten his wife's or girlfriends.

(58:33):
They would testify that he was not abusive to them.
Monica's daughter Amanda had seen him push Monica, but no
one had seen him beat her or hit her, so
there may have been some abuse. There probably was some
kind of pushing around that wouldn't surprise me, but there
really was no evidence of that either, So the defense
was able to disprove the prosecution's theory and show evidence

(58:55):
that Monica herself had pulled the trigger. The jury found
Paul done not guilty in less than one hour, which
was amazing. Jurors would later report that they immediately took
a vote which was unanimously not guilty. Then they'd waited
forty five minutes, used the bathroom comb their hair so
the judge wouldn't be angry and think they hadn't given
their verdict enough thought. So they were really convinced by

(59:17):
these forensics and ballistics, so they all.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
Believed the defense's experts, yes, more than the prosecutions experts.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
Well, in the prosecutions experts really did not have the data.
They had not done the testing. The defense had actually
set up the headboard and the bed and used bowels
for the projectories and figured out the blood spatter. They
had really done some in depth from investigation and testing
on these items. So that's why say it was Paul's

(59:47):
defense team and defense experts who saved him.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
So they had a tunnel vision.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yes they did right from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
For sure, there are still people who believed Paul was
responsible for killing Monica.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Well, I can kind of see it. Really, I could
really find it kind of hard to believe that she
would do that. Does that mean she was trying to
set up Paul by writing them you know all that? Well,
I guess not. By writing the letter that wouldn't set
him up. That's kind of saved him actually, But is
that why she did it with him there? It could
have been she just wanted to hurt him by doing
it in front of him, yeah, Or it could have

(01:00:20):
been that she really wanted to set him up and
have him go to prison for it. It's hard to
say it is. But if it weren't for that evidence,
I would say that I would think he did it. Basically,
if I was just told the basic facts from the beginning,
it's easy to say, yes, the husband probably did this.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Yeah, I think there's still a little part of me
that thinks he could have been responsible.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
Yeah, me too, me too, But certainly I agree that
they did not prove him to be guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt, So I think it was the correct verdict.
Monica was suffering from depression and I think she just
really didn't know how to deal with it. So I
think maybe she'd done this to punish him. But it's
really amazing to me that she would do that to
her children. She would have had to be in a

(01:01:02):
very bad place, I would think, because her children were
there in the house. So to have a woman do
this with her children in the house in such a
violent way is very unusual.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
It certainly is. Yeah, So Victor Titus filed civil suits
to get compensation for Paul dat pointing out that it
come to light that a law enforcement official had engaged
in misconduct by advising Monica's family to destroy her letter.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Yeah, that letter hadn't come out. I don't know. I mean,
they still did have the forensics and the ballistics on
their side, but the letter I think was very important.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Letter helps tremendously.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
Yes, So the city of farming Can settled for thirty
thousand dollars and gave Paul this job back under the
condition that he would resign immediately.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
What does that mean.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Well, it's to make the best out of a bad situation.
We'll pay thirty grand, we'll give him his job, but
he's got to resign. We don't want him here.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Well, I think he no longer wanted to work in
law enforcement anyway. No, I think he really lost faith
in this system. He looked at his coworkers as people
that would have his back. Whatever happened to that, But
I kind of can see why. Paul's mother even ran
a full page advertisement in the newspaper declaring that Paul
had been a political prisoner. She said he was upon

(01:02:14):
in a cruel game where his friends had abandoned him,
his department had condemned him, and his state's crime laboratory
and medical investigator had changed documents to fit their theory.

(01:02:48):
So six years after Paul's not guilty verdict, he and
Anita moved in together with his daughters, Diane and Raquale.
So that relationship survived, and it's still far as I know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
As I know, they live in New Mexico.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Yeah, and he works as a construction foreman. He's totally
out of law enforcement. Yeah yeah, But it's interesting. I
think maybe they did have a real connection. I think
he kind of grew.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
Up and changed sounds like he might have.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
Yeah, it does. But it's just kind of incredible how
if you don't have the right people behind you, you
can really just be right in the slammer based on
what people think.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
Being able to find that letter was a big help.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Yes, yeah, the letter was a big thing. If you
read through the entire letter, which I've read it a
couple times, it definitely does read like a suicide letter
to me. The only other thing you could see it
as is someone who believes they're going to be killed.
But she didn't really mention that she was afraid Paul
was going to kill her in the letter.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Noah, we haven't heard any of that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
No, the only time she said that was when she
said it to her friends right beforehand, which kind of
makes me think she wanted Paul to get into trouble.
It was very angry with him, so not too surprising.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
No, Well, thank you Justin for recommending this case. We
really enjoyed researching and talking about it. It's an interesting one.
So before we move on to feedback, which I hope
you'll stick around for, i'd just like to remind those
of you who are not subscribed to TCB Premium that
it is still an option for you. Ads can be
a real bummer. You can just be getting into a
story and then boom, you get these annoying ads, and

(01:04:26):
if you just become a member, you can get all
of our episodes with no ads, plus bonus episodes every month,
and if you sign up, that means you're going to
get the entire backlog of episodes without ads, which, like
we said today, we're on number six hundred.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
It might take a while, you know, if.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
You're looking for something to listen to, something to binge,
that would be something that you could really get a
lot out of. And we do appreciate your support, whether
you subscribe or not, we appreciate you listening. And a
couple of freeways to support the show are to leave
a five star review on Apple Podcasts, or would love
to get your feedback or a case suggestion. You can
go ahead and send us an email with any kind

(01:05:05):
of feedback you have on a case we've covered, or
any kind of suggestions of cases you'd like us to
cover to True Crime Brewery at tigreber dot com, or
you can record it yourself in your own voice in
a voicemail by clicking on the voicemail link in our
show notes or on our website. Again, that website is
tigraber dot com. So thank you for listening and now feedback.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
It's time for listener feedback. So I was looking through
some suggestions on the Facebook group. Have four suggestions of cases.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
All right, so what have you got?

Speaker 3 (01:05:59):
So leslie us to cover the murder of Michelle Alvila.
These girls, Michelle Avila and Karen Seederson have been best
friends since here eight years old, and once they hit
high school, the relationship cooled down a bit. Jealousy might
have been a factor because Avilla was thought to be
more popular in Severson and in their junior year, a
Villa dated a boy named Randy. She broke it off

(01:06:20):
after a month, allegedly because of the party too much,
but then Randy began to date Sefferson and Avila tried
to warn Severson about Randy, but she didn't take very
well to that. She thought that Villa just wanted Randy
back for her own self. So there's some bad blood brewing.
Severson and some other girls got into a physical confrontation
with a Villa, and then on October first, Avilla met

(01:06:42):
Severson and another friend, Laura Doyle to do some shopping
and be three good buddies. Wing not to do some shopping,
but instead of shopping, the girls went to Angelus National
Forest where Seversen and Doyle killed a villa by drowning
her six inches of water. They held her down and
held her face in the water.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
This was why she wasn't even with the guy.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
Ope serious and it was pissed at her.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
Okay, well there's some problems there. So they only served what, well,
I guess you can't say, only twenty years in prison.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
They're convicted of second degree murder.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Yeah, how's that second degree? It sounds pretty planned.

Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
Out me, Well, we're going to if we do this case,
that's some stuff we need to find out, because so
that was my thought. It sounded like those plans. So
that's first degree. But they're convicted of second degree murder.
Siverson served twenty and a half years and well twenty
one years in that ballpark, a little over twenty years.
They've been out for about fifteen years now and apparently

(01:07:39):
are mining themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
Okay, so no more murders that we know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
No more enticing a friend.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
Where did that take place?

Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
In the Angelus National Forest, California outside of LA All.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Right, that sounds like an interesting one. I know we've
done them before of teenagers and teenage girls and how
vicious they can be is really shocking.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
Yeah. I remember one case in Particulate.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Yeah, I think where the girl was beaten to death
by the other girls.

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Yeah, that was a brutal one.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
That was a while ago. We did that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
Yeah, yeah, I bet you're talking about Shonda's cher It
was in the early nineties. I believe she was only
twelve and these teenage girls just brutally killed her for
no apparent reason. Really, it's just terrible. I remember seeing
an interview with her mother and being heartbroken. Yeah, we
covered that many years ago. I guess we'd been doing

(01:08:27):
this for nine years now, So I bet that case
was done over five or six years ago anyway, but
a well known case.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
So we also have a suggestion from Lizzie Liz nine
nine one five for the case of Tara Calico. So
in September one, nineteen eighty eight, Tara Calico with for
a bike ride near her home in belln New Mexico,
and she hasn't been seen since. In twenty thirteen, authorities
announced new information in the case, but this has not
resulted in any arrests. And now we're twelve years later.

(01:08:58):
So another new Mexico case.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Yeah, I looked at that because it's New Mexico. We
always want to do home state cases if we can, yep.
And it's just the timeline for this. It's been a
cold case kind of forever. And then, as you said,
twelve years ago the authoritie said there's new information in
the case. Tara was sixteen years.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Old, so sounds like an abduction.

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
It's an induction, yeah, with no findings, no body or anything. Wow.
And I'm thinking that if they had an announcement in
twenty thirteen of new info and there's no result of that,
it's not very fruitful.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
Well, tra Lee Palko about my age now. It was
back in nineteen eighty eight when she left her home
at nine thirty am to go on her daily bike
ride along New Mexico's State Road forty seven. So apparently
she rode this route almost every morning, and sometimes she
went with her mother. However, her mom stopped writing with

(01:09:55):
her after she felt that she'd been stalked by a motorist,
so she told her daughter to think about carrying mace,
but Tara didn't do that. So on the morning she disappeared,
she told her mom to come and get her if
she wasn't home by noon, because she had plans to
play tennis with her boyfriend. But when she didn't come home,
her mom went searching for her along the usual bike

(01:10:17):
route and ended up calling the police because she couldn't
find her. So there was this polaroid photo of an
unidentified young woman and a boy, both gagged, and this
was actually discovered in a parking lot at a convenience
store in Port Saint Joe, Florida. And it's funny or
strange that this is the same photo that people had

(01:10:41):
identified as possibly being the missing girl Amy Lynn Bradley,
which is the very first case we ever did. This
was a girl who disappeared off of a cruise ship
that she was on with her parents. But this same
photo of a girl that's gagged with a little boy
bound and gagged behind her, it's been thrown around there

(01:11:02):
that it could be Tara as well as Amy Lynn Bradley,
and probably more people as well. The photo was broadcast
on a Current Affair back then, and Tara's mom was
contacted by friends who had seen the show and thought
that the woman in the picture could be her daughter.
But like I said, there are other parents that thought
it might be their child, and we don't know. Still

(01:11:25):
now we don't know. In nineteen ninety eight, Tara was
declared officially dead and a judge did rule that she
had died by a homicide. But in twenty thirteen there
was a six person task force that was put together
to reinvestigate her disappearance, but still nothing. The FBI even
announced a reward, but that really didn't have any effect

(01:11:47):
at all. And in twenty twenty one, the new Mexico
State Police put out a statement that they had a
new lead in the case and that was the focus
of a sealed warrant for an unknown private residence, but
no details were provided. And then in twenty twenty three,
the Valencia County Sheriff's office announced a breakthrough. Sheriff Denise

(01:12:07):
Vigil and other law enforcement officers were at a press
conference and they said that they believed there was sufficient
evidence to submit the investigation to the DA's office to
review for potential charges. But nothing since then either, So
it's a mystery. Our next suggestion is from Lisa S.
And this is about George Trepaul. In February of nineteen

(01:12:31):
ninety one, George Trepaul was convicted of murdering his neighbor
Peggy Carr and attempting to murder her family with thallium.
He introduced sallium into bottles of coca cola. Huh, where
would you get thallium?

Speaker 3 (01:12:43):
Apparently you can order it from chemical warehouses.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
But then there's a record of it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
Yeah, we'll have to check. I just I was interested
in thallium because that's certainly not a drug i'd use
or i'd think of using and trying to kill somebody.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
Now it sounds like kind of an old drug. I
remember some poisonings back in the eighteen hundreds I read
about with allium.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
Yeah, this thallium is pretty soluble in water. I guess
you can ingest it without knowing that you are ingesting it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
So what's behind this? What was the apparent motive?

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
He just wanted to try it?

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
Oh, so you had nothing against these people.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
Not that I could find. He introduced the thalium into
the bottles of coca cola, And I guess that Peggy
drank more of the coke than the other family members
because she's the only deceased person. The other family members
all survived. But yeah, I'm thinking arsenic Holithlenk like.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
All, that's a big one.

Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
Cyanide is one we've had. I hadn't heard of thallium
being used as a murder weapon.

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):
Oh I have. Yeah. And what about that case with
the man who poisoned his woman with nicotine? Have we
covered that case or is that just a dateline or something.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
I think that's just when we've seen on TV.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Oh, I'd like to cover that one because that was
pretty fascinating.

Speaker 3 (01:13:52):
Maybe we could do something about novel ways of poisoning people. Yeah,
nicotine is what he ended up taking, nicotine cigarettes, and
I think so distilling it or did something to it,
something very creative to make it concentrated.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
Yeah, it actually injected it in an IV at one point. Yeah,
so that's pretty brutal. Yeah, that is one i'd like
to cover. I don't remember the names, but I bet
a lot of our listeners know what we're talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:14:19):
I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
Yeah, Okay. So we also have one more recommendation, and
that is from Lana Pappen. So this is about Robin Adams,
who was murdered back in nineteen seventy six, but the
case went unsolved until nineteen eighty four. Melvin Garza, a
former boyfriend, and his sister Nora were charged with the murder,

(01:14:42):
so Nora cooperated with authorities by showing them where Robin
had been buried. Melvin was convicted of first degree murder
and is serving a life sentence. Nora was found guilty
of accessory after the fact, and her conviction was set
aside in twenty eleven. So what else do we know
about this?

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
Well, so Melvin didn't take kindly to breaking up with
Robin Adams, and he killed her. That's the short story, okay,
And then he recruited his sister to help conceal the body,
and so she did and stayed quiet about it for
several years. Eventually, I'm not sure whether her conscience got
the better of her or what, but she went to

(01:15:22):
the authorities told him that she had participated in the
killing and helped bury the body. So she got a deal.
Instead of being convicted of first degree murder like her brother,
she got accessory after the fact, and after serving some time,
her conviction was out aside, so she's not convicted at all.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:15:40):
Yeah, I like, I thought that'd be something to look
into a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
More, absolutely sure, all right? Yeah, We've got some updates.
We'll probably do next time because in a couple of
weeks we are going to have the trial starting on
Brian Kolberger in Idaho.

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
There's an interesting dateline this past Friday about developments in
the case.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
Ye did they say that was new? I know it
was Keith.

Speaker 3 (01:16:02):
Well, they had new evidential things like being able to
see a car resembling the when Kolberger drove passing by
the house where the people lived many times, many times,
more than a dozen times. And they have on the
night of the murders, they have a vehicle that looks
like his car in the vicinity of the house.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
Yeah, and his phone was shut off, which is always
suspicious shut off. Well, I thought what I saw and
I remember from that dateline last weekend was the selfie
he took after the murders. It was a few hours
after the murders. He looks like he's freshly showered and
taking a selfie with a thumbs up, like congratulating himself
on that super creepy boy. If I was one of

(01:16:44):
those roommates that survived, I don't know just how close
you came to being slaughtered.

Speaker 3 (01:16:50):
Is Yeah, you walk right by one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
Yeah, yeah, yep, so that'll be an interesting trial definitely.
And then with Lori Valo being charged in the attempted
murder of Brandon Boudrou, I'm waiting to see if Melanie
Boudreau or Pulowski as it is now, will testify either
for the prosecution or defense. She's testifying for the prosecution
in order to save her own ass because I feel

(01:17:13):
like they could prosecute her if they wanted to. Don't
trust her at all.

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
They certainly could have.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
They could have, I think. So we'll see what happens
with that. But in the meantime, thank you all for listening,
and I hope you're enjoying this nice springtime. It's getting
really nice out down here anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:17:29):
It is nice. Yeah, Well, today's supposed to be windy,
which means dust blowing dust yeah, our favorite springtime activity,
sweeping the patio.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
But it's nice enough to sit outside and have a beer,
so it is. Let's do that.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):
We might do that, We might do it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
Okay, all right, thank you everyone for listening, and we'll
see you next time at the Quiet End Money Room.

Speaker 3 (01:17:50):
Come on down, Bye bye bye, guys and bly

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Presumed Guilty

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

The Joe Rogan Experience

All Episodes

Presumed Guilty

On Purpose with Jay Shetty