September 22, 2020 • 41 mins
On July 14, 1994, University Kentucky football player Trent DiGiuro, was enjoying his birthday party at his home on Woodland Avenue in Lexington Kentucky, near the university.
As he and a few friends were winding down on the front porch, a loud bang shattered the warm peace of the summer evening.
Friends asked Trent what the sound was, and when he did not respond, they found him injured and unresponsive. After help was called and arrived, Trent was transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead within 30 minutes of arriving at the hospital.
Part 1 of a 2-part series, offers then Sergeant Dan Gibbons, who was the sergeant of the Homicide Unit with the Lexington Police Department in 1994, describing the investigation from the supervisor’s perspective. Hear Dan reveal details that were never covered in the many national television shows and documentaries, as he walks listeners through a complex investigation, that took years to resolve.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you have been looking for a realistic true
crime experience, you just foundit.
Get ready for true crime withreal detectives on the Murder
Police Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
There were actually two persons present at the time
the shooting occurred.
Those individuals, once theydetermined that there was a
significant injury to Trent,called 911, which resulted in
police dispatch.
The officers arrived on thescene.
They determined that he wasvery seriously injured.
(00:33):
Emergency response unitsarrived on the scene,
transported him within just acouple of minutes to the closest
hospital and within 30 minuteshe was pronounced dead at the
hospital closest hospital andwithin 30 minutes he was
pronounced dead at the hospital.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Warning the podcast you're about to listen to may
contain graphic descriptions ofviolent assaults, murder and
adult language.
Listener discretion is advised.
Welcome to the Murder PolicePodcast the Murder of Trent
DiGiro, part 1 of 2, with yourhosts Wendy and David Lyons, and
our guests Dan Gibbons and Raythe DA Larson.
Dan, just what is this caseabout?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well, it has to do with the death of a young man
three days shy of his birthday.
It involved a long-held revengemotive.
It's one of those cases thatcomes along during a career very
infrequently in this area.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Why?
Why is it infrequently?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So many of the cases that the police investigators
encounter have to do with what Iwould call a sudden heat and
passion type of thing.
It's a spur of the momentdecision, a bad result that
basically comes down to thepolice.
You know pretty well, knowwho's responsible for the crime,
and it's just a matter ofpulling together the evidence to
(02:17):
prove it.
This was one of those casesthat's more of a whodunit, where
you really don't have anythingother than a limited amount of
physical evidence, a limitednumber of eyewitnesses, and
because of that it makes thechallenge much greater in
bringing someone before thecourt.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Well, Dan, can you tell us a little bit about
yourself?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I'm retired Lexington Police Department.
I served with them for 25 yearsdepartment.
I served with them for 25 years.
13 of those years I was a partof the Homicide Investigations
Unit, seven of the 13 as thesupervisor of that unit.
And then you know, I mean theother times I've served in
sections that deal with, youknow, drug investigations,
(02:58):
burglary investigations andthings of that nature.
But a huge portion of my careerwas as an investigator.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Well, how did you get involved in this case?
How did?
Were you just sitting at homeand your phone rang?
Or what step initially wastaken when you learned of this
Trent DiGiro homicide?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
There were actually two persons present at the time
the shooting occurred.
Those individuals, once theydetermined that there was a
significant injury to Trent,called 911, which resulted in
police dispatch.
The officers arrived on thescene.
They determined that he wasvery seriously injured.
(03:38):
Emergency response unitsarrived on the scene,
transported him within just acouple of minutes to the closest
hospital and within 30 minuteshe was pronounced dead at the
hospital.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
What was he doing, Dan, when the shooting happened?
What kind of environment was hein?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
This.
Like I said, he was, I think,three days shy of his 21st
birthday.
Friends had gathered at thehouse where Trent lived, just a
couple of blocks off the campusof the university, to give him a
birthday celebration, and itwas more of an open house where
people were coming and going.
Not like everybody stayed forthe entire evening, so it was
(04:19):
essentially a small gathering ofpeople.
It was kind of on the tail endof the party.
It was winding down.
Trent was sitting in a chair onthe front porch on one end of
the porch.
These two other individualswitnesses, for lack of a better
term were actually on the otherend of the porch, engaged in a
(04:40):
conversation with each other,and a shot, a single shot, rang
out to 40 in the morning or so.
And then when they finallydetermined that, you know, trent
had been injured from that shot, when they determined that it
was a shot and not a carbackfire or fireworks or
something of that nature, that'swhen they called the police and
(05:03):
on the, the university, that's,university of Kentucky right.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yes, and he was a student there.
He was a student.
Was he involved with athletics,with the football team?
Can you tell a little bit aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I can a little bit.
He had enrolled at theuniversity as a freshman in 1991
.
He had taken the steps to walkon to the football team and got
accepted.
He was a practice playeressentially for a couple of
years, finally got some playingtime in 1993.
And that playing time continuedto develop over the course of
(05:38):
time to the point that he wasgetting ready to start his
senior season and he was goingto be a starting right guard for
the team.
Good deal what?
Speaker 4 (05:47):
happened after that?
After they arrived, how didhomicide get involved?
After patrol arrived at thescene?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Back at that time when a homicide occurred, we had
and I don't remember exactlyoff the top of my head exactly
how many members there were inthe unit, but there were
probably in the neighborhood of10 members of the homicide unit.
They were all called to thescene to participate in this, to
become involved in doing thevarious things that need to be
(06:15):
done.
That was just kind of astandard protocol that when
uniformed officers arrived onthe scene they determined that
they had a crime of this nature,then they would do a call out
and the entire unit responded.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
What does patrol do?
Waiting for homicides?
Is there anything that'sexpected of them when the
detectives arrive?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Oh sure, yeah.
Yeah, I mean they have to play abig role.
Primarily, their job is toinitially identify and protect
the crime scene.
And protect the crime scene andthat's going to entail doing a
quick cursory search of the areato determine if there's any
evidence that's visibly presentor readily identifiable.
It's going to be taking thetime to actually mark that off,
(06:57):
to barricade it off with what'sjust typically called crime
scene tape, to kind of definethe parameters, you know, of
what they want to be focused on.
It's going to involve trying toidentify any and all witnesses
that might have some somethingto add to learning what had
transpired up to that point, andit's going to mean even doing
(07:20):
some very cursory preliminaryinterviews with those people.
It could possibly even, youknow, a commander on the scene
may take the step to say we'regoing to initiate a neighborhood
investigation and they wouldassign patrol officers then to
go door to door or, you know,writing down license numbers of
cars or trying to talk to peopleat their homes or identifying
(07:43):
anybody that might have been inthe area at the time.
So that's primarily going to be.
Their job is to protect thescene and try to identify
witnesses.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Gotcha.
And how did we determine whogets assigned the homicide
investigation back then?
Was there a process for that?
For who drew the case?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
A lot of times, in all honesty, I mean it was kind
of random, but a lot of times itwas based upon an officer's
caseload.
If we had an investigator whohad already drawn a homicide
investigation two days before,for example, then obviously we
wouldn't want to add to thatperson's caseload by signing a
new one to that person.
And it might very well be thatit's just kind of, you know,
(08:22):
keeping track of who's got whatassigned to them and you know
how actively involved they areand how large the scale the
cases are that they have.
There was one other componentthat came into play.
Occasionally I don't think itreally did on this one that much
but a lot of times the firstofficer on the scene may have
information and may show awillingness to be actively
(08:43):
engaged information and may showa willingness to be actively
engaged and in order to bringtheir knowledge of what they
learned up to that point to thecase and in order to maybe give
them some experience,occasionally we would transfer
that person in temporarily tothe homicide unit to work
alongside someone else.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
So, dan, tell me about.
You're there and you've got adead person that's been shot and
you're there as the supervisorof the homicide unit.
What do you do next?
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, hopefully, patrol has adequately identified
the crime scene area and gottenit protected sufficiently, and
I think then we're going to takea step back as the
investigations team and we'regoing to let our crime scene
technicians come in and they'regoing to do the things that you
see a lot of times on TV throughmovies like CSI and things of
(09:37):
that nature they're going toprocess the scene for evidence.
They're going to look forfingerprints.
They're going to look for bloodsamples they're going to look
for in a shooting case.
They're going to look forfingerprints.
They're going to look for bloodsamples they're going to look
for in a shooting case.
They're going to look for spentprojectiles.
They're going to look forcasings they're going to I mean,
they're going to look foranything you know, whatever it
might be, that would providethem with some sort of a lead or
a place to start trying todetermine who's responsible.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Who in this kind of a situation?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
one of the things that's always bothered me as a
prosecutor is how are the lovedones notified of a death of a
loved one?
And again that comes case bycase.
Having distance like in thiscase there was some physical
distance from where Trent'sparents lived that makes it a
little bit harder to makenotification.
Ideally it's going to besomeone who can display and can
(10:38):
show a lot of compassion, isgoing to be asked to take on the
task of finding family andmaking that notification.
In a case like this where youdon't really have any family
local, the family is actually acouple of hours away.
Then we could even do that overthe telephone.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
That's not ideal, certainly, but it does happen.
So here you are.
What kind of evidence did youhave, what kind of leads did you
have, at three o'clock in themorning on July, the 17th 1994?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
The responding officers that were on the scene.
Initially they identified whatthey thought was the crime scene
.
They put their barrier tape upto protect it, they posted
officers there to watch to makesure that no one entered the
scene and contaminated it in anyway.
And they had done some cursoryinterviews with the people that
were present and essentiallywhat they were able to tell the
(11:39):
investigators when they arrivedwas that these three people
Trent and the other twowitnesses were sitting on the
porch.
This loud shot rang out.
The two witnesses looked up.
They saw no vehicles in thearea.
They saw no pedestrians in thearea.
They wasn't really sure exactlywhat the sound was and made a
(12:02):
comment to Trent what was that?
And got no response.
And then when they checked andthey saw that he had been
injured, he was unresponsive andthat's when they called the
police.
You know, once theinvestigators get there, the
crime scene technicians arrive,they begin processing the crime
scene itself, with no moreinformation that we had
(12:23):
available to us at that time.
You know it was reallyimportant that we do what we
could.
Now we're talking about threeo'clock in the morning and
there's not a lot of lighting inthat area Finding physical
evidence was.
We were at a little bit of adisadvantage given the elements.
We started looking for what arethe possible scenarios to help
(12:45):
us maybe direct ourinvestigative effort.
The way this was situated andwhere the injury was on the
victim thought there was apossibility that someone had
maybe walked up a graveldriveway between the two houses
to the side of the porch whereTrent was seated and possibly
shot him with a handgun.
(13:05):
So we, you know, searched thatarea, obviously for any spent
shell casings or footprints oranything of that nature.
We also thought it was apossibility that someone was
across the street and fired ashot but again, not knowing
where the shot came from exactly, it was hard to identify what
(13:27):
areas to search.
At that time of night, doing abroad search of that entire area
just really wasn't feasible.
You know, we tried to theorizea little bit as to what could
have happened and then we triedto wait until we got more
information the medicalexaminer's office until we got
more information from our crimescene tech officers.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
The medical examiner's office.
Was Trent's body taken to thecustody of his body, taken by
the coroner?
Correct, and what is thecoroner?
Speaker 2 (14:00):
order.
Well, the coroner has aresponsibility for determining
cause and manner of death, andthey'll use information from the
police investigation.
They'll use information from anautopsy conducted by the
medical examiner to make thatdetermination.
Once the coroner collects thebody from the hospital, they
take it to a facility and thenthe medical examiner performs
(14:24):
the autopsy and then prepares asubsequent report.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
And tell me what the medical examiner did.
He obtain any evidence from thebody of Trent DeGiro?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
He did he did Determined that the cause of
death was a single gunshot woundto the head.
The shot actually entered theorifice of the left ear.
Through the course of theautopsy, they were able to
recover fragments of a bulletthat had caused death, and this
(14:59):
is not a structured bullet thatthey recovered.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Well, I mean you know what a bullet looks like.
I mean most people do.
The bullet is totallyfragmented.
Once it entered it fragmentsinto many, many, many small
pieces of lead and copper.
There was items obtainedthrough the course of the
autopsy and they did provideevidence for us, but not to the
(15:29):
extent that you would have ifthat bullet was fully intact.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
So you get the pieces of the bullet as an
investigator, then what do youdo with it, with all of those
pieces?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Well, I mean, obviously they're going to get
logged into as evidence, they'regoing to be given a specific
number for tracking and makingsure that we don't have a
problem putting them back as theitem that was actually
recovered.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Those items, once they get logged in, then they're
going to be submitted to, forus, the Kentucky State Police
Crime Lab, where they'll undergoa variety of different tests to
see what information they canyield for us, and hopefully that
information would be somethingthat would number one in the
(16:21):
early stages, give us a lead tofollow up, but then it could
also, be in the latter stages,be used as evidence against
someone who's been charged.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
And did they give you some information about those
bullet fragments that let youconclude?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
anything Somewhat limited, but they did.
Yes, they determined that theround had been fired from a
specific caliber weapon.
Yes, they determined that theround had been fired from a
specific caliber weapon.
They were able to speculate andtheorize a little bit, based on
an educated guess that it was aparticular type of weapon, and
(16:58):
they gave us the configurationof the gun itself that fired
that particular shot.
So we had some idea as aninvestigations team as to what
type of weapon we were lookingfor and, quite honestly, the
type of weapon went a long waytoward giving us a little
understanding of what hadtranspired.
We felt pretty certain afterhearing the information from the
(17:21):
medical examiner that thetheory that someone walked up
between the houses and shot himfrom just a few feet away with
this particular weapon justwasn't a very valid summary.
We felt like we needed to lookin another direction, other than
that scenario.
It was helpful.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
What kind of gun did the Kentucky State Police Crime
Lab suggest that it likely wasthey?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
concluded pretty definitively that it was a .243
caliber rifle and then they wereable to say specifically that
the round, the weapon, had abarrel that had four grooves
with a right-hand twist, with aright-hand twist, and it's those
(18:08):
grooves and the rate of twistthat they're cut into the barrel
that helps identify the bullet.
It's kind of like a fingerprinton a bullet.
That's correct.
Yes.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
So a .243 rifle.
Did you learn anything aboutthe common nature of those guns?
Were they common or were theyrare, or what did you know?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
243 caliber rifles are a fairly common rifle.
There's a lot of those inproduction.
There was some speculation,educated speculation, that they
could pin it down to aparticular type, particular
(18:48):
brand of weapon.
But it wasn't an absolute basedupon the evidence that they had
, but it did give us.
You know, one of the firstthings we would look at is
number one is it a 243 caliber?
And number two does it fit thetype of weapon that the
(19:12):
ballistics examination had toldus it very well could be?
Speaker 1 (19:16):
We will be right back after this important message we
want to share.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
In the wake of the senseless and evil act that took
young Trent DeGiro's life, hisfamily created the Trent DeGiro
Foundation to keep his namealive and to help students
succeed.
As stated so well on thefoundation's website, the Trent
DeGiro Foundation wasestablished to raise funds for
and make contributions tovarious educational scholarship
(19:44):
funds and scholarships in thename of Trent DeGero.
The foundation is dedicated tokeeping Trent's memory alive.
All proceeds are used tosupport scholarships at three
high schools in Oldham County,kentucky, and at the University
of Kentucky.
The foundation website can befound at tDegeroFoundationorg
and we will put a link to thison our show notes, which are
(20:05):
located atMurderPolicePodcastcom.
Do us a favor and spend sometime at the Foundation website
and, more importantly, considermaking a donation to this very
worthy cause to help keep Trentin our collective memories.
Now back to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Did you find any rifles that fit the description
of the bullet?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
This was at the time, in my opinion, a very
high-profile investigation andbecause of that it prompted a
lot of calls from the publicwith information.
Once we distributed the type ofweapon that we were looking for
, we received numerous callsthat pointed us in direction of
(20:57):
people who had those caliberweapons.
That pointed us in direction ofpeople who had those caliber
weapons, and we pursued everyone of those and none of those
came back as being the weaponthat fired that round.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Dan, you got this information about the rifle and
you got this information aboutthe markings on the fragments
taken from Trent's head.
So where do you?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
go from here.
Well again, the evidence thatwe had really was fairly limited
.
We thought our best approachwas to conduct interviews with
as many of the people that knewhim as we could possibly find.
We wanted to do a comprehensivecanvas of the neighborhood just
(21:40):
to see if we could find anyonethat could provide information.
Along those lines, we assignedour team various assignments to
begin the process of those twothings primarily.
So we took and actually made aneffort on the night of the
(22:01):
offense to go door to door, butagain, it's three o'clock in the
morning and a lot of timespeople just don't come to the
door at three o'clock in themorning.
We put forth that effort, keptrecord of everyone we talked to
and what they had to say.
We then went back the next dayand expanded our crime scene
search, looking for anythingthat we couldn't find during the
(22:24):
darkness around the time thatthe offense occurred, and assign
that list out to variousinvestigators with the
instruction that they go door todoor and that they go back as
(22:45):
often as they need to in orderto make contact with someone at
every residence on that list andto determine did they see, did
they hear anything that night?
Who was in the house that night, talk to each person that you
identify as being friends andeven some family members of
Trent's, and assigned those toinvestigators for them to locate
(23:06):
those people and to conduct acomprehensive investigation with
them, and the goal of thatparticular effort was to find if
there was anything related toTrent and Trent's past that
might generate a motive for whysomeone would want to shoot this
young man.
So those were the primaryefforts at that time and again,
(23:30):
it was a very high profile caseand because it was so public, we
got a lot of phone calls, tothe point that we actually had
to develop a, I guess, a rosterof tip sheets and who was
assigned to that tip to followup.
Because we followed up on everytip we got.
We put forth for an extendedperiod of time those efforts
(23:55):
trying to generate any kind oflead that would give us a motive
, any kind of lead that wouldpoint us in the direction of who
the offender might be oranything that might even lead us
to any evidence that might berelevant to it, and that went on
for a long time.
It resulted in numerous callsthat pointed us in the direction
of people that owned guns thatpossibly could match the
(24:17):
description, and we followed upon each one of those.
We took the steps to go andlocate the individual that owned
the weapon that was named inthe tip.
We would conduct interviewswith them.
We actually went through theprocess of collecting their
weapons and submitting thoseweapons to the State Police
Crime lab to have them comparedto the evidence that was
(24:41):
recovered during autopsy, andnone of those weapons that were
collected during that effortresulted in a tangible
identification.
Going door to door in aneighborhood, it absolutely
generated very little evidence.
A few people heard a loud bangin the middle of the night, saw
(25:02):
nothing Beyond that.
It really didn't generateanything other than well, I knew
who lived there.
I know the victim, I've talkedto him a couple times in passing
, things of that nature.
The expanded physical search ofthe area during the next day
during the daylight hoursyielded no additional evidence
(25:23):
other than and the turf under atree catty corner from the
residence across theintersection from where that
residence is located.
One of our investigators founda couple of divots in the turf,
in the dirt, in the grass thatwas there, and those divots were
(25:46):
positioned in such a way thatit could make one think that it
was left by.
It was an indention left by abipod that is commonly used on
rifles of 243 caliber.
We didn't know that that's whatit was, but it was significant
(26:06):
enough that we recorded it, hadour crime scene technicians
photograph it, preserve it, notreally leading us to anyone or
to any other evidence.
It was just a fact that wedeveloped through the course of
this evidence.
It was just a fact that wedeveloped through the course of
this.
You know, in talking to thefriends that we interviewed, our
(26:27):
pursuit was what could havehappened in Trent's life that
might make someone angry enoughthat they would want to take
this type of revenge out on him.
And we learned that Trent was.
He was a pretty good-sizedfella.
He was 6'2", 270 pounds.
(26:49):
Quite honestly, everyone wespoke to said there was no doubt
he was the strongest player onthe University of Kentucky
football team bench, pressing inthe neighborhood of 400 plus
pounds.
He's a pretty strong guy.
And everyone that we talked tosaid they called him a big teddy
bear and they looked at him astheir protector.
(27:11):
Anytime something happened thatcreated a verbal or physical
altercation, they reported thatTrent was there to stand up, to
protect them, to stand guardover them.
So there were times when therewere verbal altercations.
There were times when therewere some physical altercations
(27:33):
none major by any stretch of theimagination but we thought, you
know, could this be a revengemotive, where he's made someone
mad and they just came back andand took this action as a
retaliatory measure.
You know, we heard things fromvarious people that was we
determined to be morespeculation or theorizing than
(27:57):
actually coming from any kind offact.
Things like he was so big andso strong, was he involved with
using steroids?
Who was his dealer?
You know, did he stealsomething from someone?
Did he rip some dealer off?
You know there were all kindsof speculation along those lines
and those leads wereinvestigated thoroughly and none
of that ever proved to be thetruth.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
How long did I mean?
Did this, these things thatyou're talking about following
up on these leads, did that?
Just how long did this stretchthis?
Your investigation into themurder of Trent DeGiro?
Speaker 2 (28:35):
This went for several years.
We're talking about a crimethat occurred in 1994 and didn't
really gain any significanttraction as far as identifying
the offender until 2000.
On leads and of course you knowthose leads, they would come in
(28:59):
frequently in the beginning, somuch so that it took a lot of
extra man hours just to stay ontop of following up on the tips.
We would see those tips startto become fewer and fewer as
time passed and at that timethere were programs that were
(29:20):
being done to reenact thesetypes of crimes, and that was
done on this case, trying togenerate a lead that might
become tangible.
And of course, when you do ashow like America's Most Wanted
that's a national show you get alot of tips.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
I'll bet.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
And it did.
It generated a lot ofinformation.
But, again, all of those leadsthat came in we followed up on.
Some of them were leads thatwere cross-country and we were
able to use other policeagencies to help us follow up on
those, and we were able to useother police agencies to help us
follow up on those.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
But none of those tips really ever came to any
tangible belief that we knew whowe were looking for.
You know, dan.
As the prosecutor in this case,I stayed in close contact with
the parents of Trent DeGiro,Mike and Ann DeGiro.
And Mike always said somebodyknows something out there and
(30:29):
sooner or later they're going totell us he.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
just he had great faith that somebody would come
forward and tell and he hadconveyed that to me from time to
time and I got calls from Mikeand I got calls from Ann on a
regular basis, just checking inbecause they were in my opinion
they seemed somewhat desperate.
(30:53):
It may not be the right word,but they certainly wanted to
know what had happened.
But they certainly wanted toknow what had happened.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Well, sure, and I think, as a parent, any parent
would want to know who and whyhas done this to my child and
furthermore, why, six years intoit, do we still not know?
Right, and I'm guessing thatthey were wondering, like most
people would.
What are you doing during thistime when the leads are just
(31:21):
dead ends and they're goingnowhere?
Where do you, as aninvestigator, go from that point
when nothing is turning up?
What do you do then?
And all the while, I'm assuming, more cases are piling on.
So you know you're trying toprioritize what's coming in
versus what still hasn't beensolved.
How do you handle that?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
As this time passes, when our investigators are
pursuing all these tips thatcome in, you're right, other
cases continue to come andthat's important because the
unit that handles the homicidesat that time for the police
department handles the homicides.
(32:02):
At that time for the policedepartment, not only did they
investigate suspicious deathsand homicides, they also
investigated all levels ofassault.
They investigated sexualassaults, they investigated
harassing communications.
So all of those complaintscontinued to come in during the
course of years that we wereinvestigating this case.
And my posture with our unit wasalways when you look at a case
(32:29):
on this side that's a homicideinvestigation and you look at a
case over here that's aharassing communications matter,
in your eyes, as theinvestigator you're going to put
more emphasis on the homicide.
But in all honesty, the victimof this harassing communications
has nothing more important tothem in their life at that time
than that harassingcommunications.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Right, and I'm imagining that they may look at
it like they may be the nextvictim and maybe it's not as
intense as they're thinking itis, but in their mind I would
think.
I would want you to focus on mycase, and exclusively my case,
because that's important to me,without knowing that you have
all these other cases, and Ithink many people don't realize
(33:11):
that in the back scenes you'vegot a lot of other stuff going
on that's really more importantthan mine.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Right, that's really more important than mine, right,
and I always made it clear toour investigators that it wasn't
acceptable to use the excuseI've got 50 other cases to work
as an example of why I can'twork on yours.
That just that doesn't.
That wasn't acceptable.
You had to give some time tothese other cases, but clearly
this homicide was important andit stayed important through the
(33:37):
course of the entireinvestigation.
We got tips on things that weregenerated pretty quickly after
the offense occurred.
Things like during the party.
There were a couple of men thatwalked up to the party and
asked to join in and theyweren't known by the people that
were at the party.
(33:58):
So they were told no, sorry,it's a private birthday
gathering, so sorry, no, so whatis the possibility that that
offended them and they came backand did this investigating this
(34:22):
.
There was a vehicle that drovedown Woodland Avenue and that
there was a person in the backseat of the vehicle that kind of
leaned out, stuck his arm outthe window and pointed and the
witnesses had pointed like hehad a gun in his hand at the
crime scene.
Well, is that someone returningto the scene?
You know what is that exactly?
And all of those were, you know, followed up on and again, none
(34:43):
of them produced a tangiblesuspect or tangible motive.
So we looked at things likemotives or leads as a random
drive-by shooting.
You know, is it possible thatsomebody just they were out
roaming around at three o'clockin the morning and saw a guy
sitting on the front porch andjust shot him randomly, with no
way of knowing if there's anyconnection at all?
(35:03):
We looked at the fact that, youknow, could someone in the
neighborhood have gotten upsetbecause there was a party and
sounds did echo at three o'clockin the morning, you know, was
it loud enough that it angeredsomeone?
And that's the way they tookcare of it.
You know, was there an argumentat the party that maybe two
(35:27):
people got into an argument over?
We looked at all of thosethings and none of them provided
any tangible information.
Then there was a call that camein from an individual who
declined to identify himself.
That individual talked aboutthere being tunnels underneath
the UK campus and that therewere people who lived in the
tunnels and that they would comeout at night and they would
(35:47):
actually assault people.
From a person, from a policeofficer who receives that kind
of information, you really don'tgive it a lot of credibility.
Not because they're sayingthere's tunnels under the campus
, because there are utilitytunnels that run under the
campus, but because the tip wasso vague there are people that
(36:08):
live in the tunnels, there arepeople that come out and commit
assaults.
Didn't give a whole lot ofcredibility to that tip but we
did enough on it to verify.
You know that, yeah, there weretunnels and we actually went
and walked through and there wassome evidence that people had
been in the tunnels, but notevidence that people were living
in the tunnels, not mysterioustunnel people who's coming out
(36:30):
hunting Lexington of the nightRight.
A short time after that firstcall came in, this same person
called in a second time and justwanted to know what we found
out about the tunnels and thenasked through the course of that
conversation it was strictlythis person now had a couple of
suspects that he wanted to nameand he provided us their names.
We researched it.
(37:09):
There was nothing that tiedthose individuals to Trent in
any way, and then it startedcoming around that this fellow
was obviously obsessed becausehe kept calling back and we
finally managed to secure hisidentity.
So we were able to do someresearch on him and what we
(37:29):
found was that he lived in anadjoining county, tafayette
County.
He lived on a piece of propertythat was owned by his parents.
That he was an avid shooterowned multiple guns, was a very
good shot.
By all reports.
He spent a lot of time on thefiring range.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
So you may be thinking, at this point your
interest is piqued, thinking isthis our guy?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Well, we're now Since he's such a good shooter.
That's right, because we'relooking at a shot that most
people would say was an expertmarksman, and so now we've got a
tip that leads us to anindividual who is providing
something that ties to that inone way.
We locate this guy and we doall the things that
(38:15):
investigators would do.
We conduct interview, wecompile the information that we
would do.
We conduct interview, wecompile the information that we
had to that point.
We actually do a search of hisresidence and we found things
that just added to the beliefthat you know the information
that he was giving us probablywas not accurate, valid
information, but it was stillthere.
(38:38):
We couldn't find anything thatcould eliminate, but we didn't
find anything that tied him toit either, but there were things
that were on the plate, like hehad a family member that lived
within eyesight of where thiscrime occurred.
From the family member's backporch was a straight visual line
to where Trent was sitting whenhe got shot.
(38:59):
We found things that made usbelieve that this fellow was
under the illusion that he andTrent looked so much like that
they could be mistaken for twins.
Through the course of it all,he thought maybe he was supposed
to be the target, not Trent,but they looked so much alike
that somebody got it wrong.
We spent a lot of timefollowing up on this information
(39:22):
and trying to either tie him tothe murder or eliminate him as
a suspect, and that went on foran extended period of time, and
we were never able to get to apoint that we were comfortable
with one way or the other.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
So I guess, did you ever at any point say to him did
you do this?
Of course?
And he just said no, and hedenied it right.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
He denied it and there was no evidence to put him
at the crime scene.
There was just a lot ofcircumstantial facts that this
many years into an investigation, without having had anything
tangible it's something Wassomething to pursue.
And we did pursue it, pursuedit pretty aggressively and again
, like all the others, itfinally got to the point where
(40:05):
it kind of went cold.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Another dead end Another dead end.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
So that kind of gets us up to the point of where we
finally got a tangible lead.
It was a phone call that one ofour investigators received from
an attorney who wasrepresenting a person who had
information that relateddirectly to the shooting and
(40:31):
that person was willing toprovide it.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Hey, you know there's more to this story, so go find
the next episode and listen.
Hey, you know there's more tothis story, so go, find the next
episode and listen.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and
David Lyons and was created tohonor the lives of crime victims
, so their names are neverforgotten.
It is produced, recorded andedited by David Lyons.
Found on your favorite Apple orAndroid podcast platform, as
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(41:06):
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Speaker 2 (00:13):
There were actually two persons present at the time
the shooting occurred.
Those individuals, once theydetermined that there was a
significant injury to Trent,called 911, which resulted in
police dispatch.
The officers arrived on thescene.
They determined that he wasvery seriously injured.
(00:33):
Emergency response unitsarrived on the scene,
transported him within just acouple of minutes to the closest
hospital and within 30 minuteshe was pronounced dead at the
hospital closest hospital andwithin 30 minutes he was
pronounced dead at the hospital.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Warning the podcast you're about to listen to may
contain graphic descriptions ofviolent assaults, murder and
adult language.
Listener discretion is advised.
Welcome to the Murder PolicePodcast the Murder of Trent
DiGiro, part 1 of 2, with yourhosts Wendy and David Lyons, and
our guests Dan Gibbons and Raythe DA Larson.
Dan, just what is this caseabout?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well, it has to do with the death of a young man
three days shy of his birthday.
It involved a long-held revengemotive.
It's one of those cases thatcomes along during a career very
infrequently in this area.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Why?
Why is it infrequently?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So many of the cases that the police investigators
encounter have to do with what Iwould call a sudden heat and
passion type of thing.
It's a spur of the momentdecision, a bad result that
basically comes down to thepolice.
You know pretty well, knowwho's responsible for the crime,
and it's just a matter ofpulling together the evidence to
(02:17):
prove it.
This was one of those casesthat's more of a whodunit, where
you really don't have anythingother than a limited amount of
physical evidence, a limitednumber of eyewitnesses, and
because of that it makes thechallenge much greater in
bringing someone before thecourt.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Well, Dan, can you tell us a little bit about
yourself?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I'm retired Lexington Police Department.
I served with them for 25 yearsdepartment.
I served with them for 25 years.
13 of those years I was a partof the Homicide Investigations
Unit, seven of the 13 as thesupervisor of that unit.
And then you know, I mean theother times I've served in
sections that deal with, youknow, drug investigations,
(02:58):
burglary investigations andthings of that nature.
But a huge portion of my careerwas as an investigator.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Well, how did you get involved in this case?
How did?
Were you just sitting at homeand your phone rang?
Or what step initially wastaken when you learned of this
Trent DiGiro homicide?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
There were actually two persons present at the time
the shooting occurred.
Those individuals, once theydetermined that there was a
significant injury to Trent,called 911, which resulted in
police dispatch.
The officers arrived on thescene.
They determined that he wasvery seriously injured.
(03:38):
Emergency response unitsarrived on the scene,
transported him within just acouple of minutes to the closest
hospital and within 30 minuteshe was pronounced dead at the
hospital.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
What was he doing, Dan, when the shooting happened?
What kind of environment was hein?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
This.
Like I said, he was, I think,three days shy of his 21st
birthday.
Friends had gathered at thehouse where Trent lived, just a
couple of blocks off the campusof the university, to give him a
birthday celebration, and itwas more of an open house where
people were coming and going.
Not like everybody stayed forthe entire evening, so it was
(04:19):
essentially a small gathering ofpeople.
It was kind of on the tail endof the party.
It was winding down.
Trent was sitting in a chair onthe front porch on one end of
the porch.
These two other individualswitnesses, for lack of a better
term were actually on the otherend of the porch, engaged in a
(04:40):
conversation with each other,and a shot, a single shot, rang
out to 40 in the morning or so.
And then when they finallydetermined that, you know, trent
had been injured from that shot, when they determined that it
was a shot and not a carbackfire or fireworks or
something of that nature, that'swhen they called the police and
(05:03):
on the, the university, that's,university of Kentucky right.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yes, and he was a student there.
He was a student.
Was he involved with athletics,with the football team?
Can you tell a little bit aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I can a little bit.
He had enrolled at theuniversity as a freshman in 1991
.
He had taken the steps to walkon to the football team and got
accepted.
He was a practice playeressentially for a couple of
years, finally got some playingtime in 1993.
And that playing time continuedto develop over the course of
(05:38):
time to the point that he wasgetting ready to start his
senior season and he was goingto be a starting right guard for
the team.
Good deal what?
Speaker 4 (05:47):
happened after that?
After they arrived, how didhomicide get involved?
After patrol arrived at thescene?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Back at that time when a homicide occurred, we had
and I don't remember exactlyoff the top of my head exactly
how many members there were inthe unit, but there were
probably in the neighborhood of10 members of the homicide unit.
They were all called to thescene to participate in this, to
become involved in doing thevarious things that need to be
(06:15):
done.
That was just kind of astandard protocol that when
uniformed officers arrived onthe scene they determined that
they had a crime of this nature,then they would do a call out
and the entire unit responded.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
What does patrol do?
Waiting for homicides?
Is there anything that'sexpected of them when the
detectives arrive?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Oh sure, yeah.
Yeah, I mean they have to play abig role.
Primarily, their job is toinitially identify and protect
the crime scene.
And protect the crime scene andthat's going to entail doing a
quick cursory search of the areato determine if there's any
evidence that's visibly presentor readily identifiable.
It's going to be taking thetime to actually mark that off,
(06:57):
to barricade it off with what'sjust typically called crime
scene tape, to kind of definethe parameters, you know, of
what they want to be focused on.
It's going to involve trying toidentify any and all witnesses
that might have some somethingto add to learning what had
transpired up to that point, andit's going to mean even doing
(07:20):
some very cursory preliminaryinterviews with those people.
It could possibly even, youknow, a commander on the scene
may take the step to say we'regoing to initiate a neighborhood
investigation and they wouldassign patrol officers then to
go door to door or, you know,writing down license numbers of
cars or trying to talk to peopleat their homes or identifying
(07:43):
anybody that might have been inthe area at the time.
So that's primarily going to be.
Their job is to protect thescene and try to identify
witnesses.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Gotcha.
And how did we determine whogets assigned the homicide
investigation back then?
Was there a process for that?
For who drew the case?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
A lot of times, in all honesty, I mean it was kind
of random, but a lot of times itwas based upon an officer's
caseload.
If we had an investigator whohad already drawn a homicide
investigation two days before,for example, then obviously we
wouldn't want to add to thatperson's caseload by signing a
new one to that person.
And it might very well be thatit's just kind of, you know,
(08:22):
keeping track of who's got whatassigned to them and you know
how actively involved they areand how large the scale the
cases are that they have.
There was one other componentthat came into play.
Occasionally I don't think itreally did on this one that much
but a lot of times the firstofficer on the scene may have
information and may show awillingness to be actively
(08:43):
engaged information and may showa willingness to be actively
engaged and in order to bringtheir knowledge of what they
learned up to that point to thecase and in order to maybe give
them some experience,occasionally we would transfer
that person in temporarily tothe homicide unit to work
alongside someone else.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
So, dan, tell me about.
You're there and you've got adead person that's been shot and
you're there as the supervisorof the homicide unit.
What do you do next?
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, hopefully, patrol has adequately identified
the crime scene area and gottenit protected sufficiently, and
I think then we're going to takea step back as the
investigations team and we'regoing to let our crime scene
technicians come in and they'regoing to do the things that you
see a lot of times on TV throughmovies like CSI and things of
(09:37):
that nature they're going toprocess the scene for evidence.
They're going to look forfingerprints.
They're going to look for bloodsamples they're going to look
for in a shooting case.
They're going to look forfingerprints.
They're going to look for bloodsamples they're going to look
for in a shooting case.
They're going to look for spentprojectiles.
They're going to look forcasings they're going to I mean,
they're going to look foranything you know, whatever it
might be, that would providethem with some sort of a lead or
a place to start trying todetermine who's responsible.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Who in this kind of a situation?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
one of the things that's always bothered me as a
prosecutor is how are the lovedones notified of a death of a
loved one?
And again that comes case bycase.
Having distance like in thiscase there was some physical
distance from where Trent'sparents lived that makes it a
little bit harder to makenotification.
Ideally it's going to besomeone who can display and can
(10:38):
show a lot of compassion, isgoing to be asked to take on the
task of finding family andmaking that notification.
In a case like this where youdon't really have any family
local, the family is actually acouple of hours away.
Then we could even do that overthe telephone.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
That's not ideal, certainly, but it does happen.
So here you are.
What kind of evidence did youhave, what kind of leads did you
have, at three o'clock in themorning on July, the 17th 1994?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
The responding officers that were on the scene.
Initially they identified whatthey thought was the crime scene
.
They put their barrier tape upto protect it, they posted
officers there to watch to makesure that no one entered the
scene and contaminated it in anyway.
And they had done some cursoryinterviews with the people that
were present and essentiallywhat they were able to tell the
(11:39):
investigators when they arrivedwas that these three people
Trent and the other twowitnesses were sitting on the
porch.
This loud shot rang out.
The two witnesses looked up.
They saw no vehicles in thearea.
They saw no pedestrians in thearea.
They wasn't really sure exactlywhat the sound was and made a
(12:02):
comment to Trent what was that?
And got no response.
And then when they checked andthey saw that he had been
injured, he was unresponsive andthat's when they called the
police.
You know, once theinvestigators get there, the
crime scene technicians arrive,they begin processing the crime
scene itself, with no moreinformation that we had
(12:23):
available to us at that time.
You know it was reallyimportant that we do what we
could.
Now we're talking about threeo'clock in the morning and
there's not a lot of lighting inthat area Finding physical
evidence was.
We were at a little bit of adisadvantage given the elements.
We started looking for what arethe possible scenarios to help
(12:45):
us maybe direct ourinvestigative effort.
The way this was situated andwhere the injury was on the
victim thought there was apossibility that someone had
maybe walked up a graveldriveway between the two houses
to the side of the porch whereTrent was seated and possibly
shot him with a handgun.
(13:05):
So we, you know, searched thatarea, obviously for any spent
shell casings or footprints oranything of that nature.
We also thought it was apossibility that someone was
across the street and fired ashot but again, not knowing
where the shot came from exactly, it was hard to identify what
(13:27):
areas to search.
At that time of night, doing abroad search of that entire area
just really wasn't feasible.
You know, we tried to theorizea little bit as to what could
have happened and then we triedto wait until we got more
information the medicalexaminer's office until we got
more information from our crimescene tech officers.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
The medical examiner's office.
Was Trent's body taken to thecustody of his body, taken by
the coroner?
Correct, and what is thecoroner?
Speaker 2 (14:00):
order.
Well, the coroner has aresponsibility for determining
cause and manner of death, andthey'll use information from the
police investigation.
They'll use information from anautopsy conducted by the
medical examiner to make thatdetermination.
Once the coroner collects thebody from the hospital, they
take it to a facility and thenthe medical examiner performs
(14:24):
the autopsy and then prepares asubsequent report.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
And tell me what the medical examiner did.
He obtain any evidence from thebody of Trent DeGiro?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
He did he did Determined that the cause of
death was a single gunshot woundto the head.
The shot actually entered theorifice of the left ear.
Through the course of theautopsy, they were able to
recover fragments of a bulletthat had caused death, and this
(14:59):
is not a structured bullet thatthey recovered.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Well, I mean you know what a bullet looks like.
I mean most people do.
The bullet is totallyfragmented.
Once it entered it fragmentsinto many, many, many small
pieces of lead and copper.
There was items obtainedthrough the course of the
autopsy and they did provideevidence for us, but not to the
(15:29):
extent that you would have ifthat bullet was fully intact.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
So you get the pieces of the bullet as an
investigator, then what do youdo with it, with all of those
pieces?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Well, I mean, obviously they're going to get
logged into as evidence, they'regoing to be given a specific
number for tracking and makingsure that we don't have a
problem putting them back as theitem that was actually
recovered.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Those items, once they get logged in, then they're
going to be submitted to, forus, the Kentucky State Police
Crime Lab, where they'll undergoa variety of different tests to
see what information they canyield for us, and hopefully that
information would be somethingthat would number one in the
(16:21):
early stages, give us a lead tofollow up, but then it could
also, be in the latter stages,be used as evidence against
someone who's been charged.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
And did they give you some information about those
bullet fragments that let youconclude?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
anything Somewhat limited, but they did.
Yes, they determined that theround had been fired from a
specific caliber weapon.
Yes, they determined that theround had been fired from a
specific caliber weapon.
They were able to speculate andtheorize a little bit, based on
an educated guess that it was aparticular type of weapon, and
(16:58):
they gave us the configurationof the gun itself that fired
that particular shot.
So we had some idea as aninvestigations team as to what
type of weapon we were lookingfor and, quite honestly, the
type of weapon went a long waytoward giving us a little
understanding of what hadtranspired.
We felt pretty certain afterhearing the information from the
(17:21):
medical examiner that thetheory that someone walked up
between the houses and shot himfrom just a few feet away with
this particular weapon justwasn't a very valid summary.
We felt like we needed to lookin another direction, other than
that scenario.
It was helpful.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
What kind of gun did the Kentucky State Police Crime
Lab suggest that it likely wasthey?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
concluded pretty definitively that it was a .243
caliber rifle and then they wereable to say specifically that
the round, the weapon, had abarrel that had four grooves
with a right-hand twist, with aright-hand twist, and it's those
(18:08):
grooves and the rate of twistthat they're cut into the barrel
that helps identify the bullet.
It's kind of like a fingerprinton a bullet.
That's correct.
Yes.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
So a .243 rifle.
Did you learn anything aboutthe common nature of those guns?
Were they common or were theyrare, or what did you know?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
243 caliber rifles are a fairly common rifle.
There's a lot of those inproduction.
There was some speculation,educated speculation, that they
could pin it down to aparticular type, particular
(18:48):
brand of weapon.
But it wasn't an absolute basedupon the evidence that they had
, but it did give us.
You know, one of the firstthings we would look at is
number one is it a 243 caliber?
And number two does it fit thetype of weapon that the
(19:12):
ballistics examination had toldus it very well could be?
Speaker 1 (19:16):
We will be right back after this important message we
want to share.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
In the wake of the senseless and evil act that took
young Trent DeGiro's life, hisfamily created the Trent DeGiro
Foundation to keep his namealive and to help students
succeed.
As stated so well on thefoundation's website, the Trent
DeGiro Foundation wasestablished to raise funds for
and make contributions tovarious educational scholarship
(19:44):
funds and scholarships in thename of Trent DeGero.
The foundation is dedicated tokeeping Trent's memory alive.
All proceeds are used tosupport scholarships at three
high schools in Oldham County,kentucky, and at the University
of Kentucky.
The foundation website can befound at tDegeroFoundationorg
and we will put a link to thison our show notes, which are
(20:05):
located atMurderPolicePodcastcom.
Do us a favor and spend sometime at the Foundation website
and, more importantly, considermaking a donation to this very
worthy cause to help keep Trentin our collective memories.
Now back to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Did you find any rifles that fit the description
of the bullet?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
This was at the time, in my opinion, a very
high-profile investigation andbecause of that it prompted a
lot of calls from the publicwith information.
Once we distributed the type ofweapon that we were looking for
, we received numerous callsthat pointed us in direction of
(20:57):
people who had those caliberweapons.
That pointed us in direction ofpeople who had those caliber
weapons, and we pursued everyone of those and none of those
came back as being the weaponthat fired that round.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Dan, you got this information about the rifle and
you got this information aboutthe markings on the fragments
taken from Trent's head.
So where do you?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
go from here.
Well again, the evidence thatwe had really was fairly limited
.
We thought our best approachwas to conduct interviews with
as many of the people that knewhim as we could possibly find.
We wanted to do a comprehensivecanvas of the neighborhood just
(21:40):
to see if we could find anyonethat could provide information.
Along those lines, we assignedour team various assignments to
begin the process of those twothings primarily.
So we took and actually made aneffort on the night of the
(22:01):
offense to go door to door, butagain, it's three o'clock in the
morning and a lot of timespeople just don't come to the
door at three o'clock in themorning.
We put forth that effort, keptrecord of everyone we talked to
and what they had to say.
We then went back the next dayand expanded our crime scene
search, looking for anythingthat we couldn't find during the
(22:24):
darkness around the time thatthe offense occurred, and assign
that list out to variousinvestigators with the
instruction that they go door todoor and that they go back as
(22:45):
often as they need to in orderto make contact with someone at
every residence on that list andto determine did they see, did
they hear anything that night?
Who was in the house that night, talk to each person that you
identify as being friends andeven some family members of
Trent's, and assigned those toinvestigators for them to locate
(23:06):
those people and to conduct acomprehensive investigation with
them, and the goal of thatparticular effort was to find if
there was anything related toTrent and Trent's past that
might generate a motive for whysomeone would want to shoot this
young man.
So those were the primaryefforts at that time and again,
(23:30):
it was a very high profile caseand because it was so public, we
got a lot of phone calls, tothe point that we actually had
to develop a, I guess, a rosterof tip sheets and who was
assigned to that tip to followup.
Because we followed up on everytip we got.
We put forth for an extendedperiod of time those efforts
(23:55):
trying to generate any kind oflead that would give us a motive
, any kind of lead that wouldpoint us in the direction of who
the offender might be oranything that might even lead us
to any evidence that might berelevant to it, and that went on
for a long time.
It resulted in numerous callsthat pointed us in the direction
of people that owned guns thatpossibly could match the
(24:17):
description, and we followed upon each one of those.
We took the steps to go andlocate the individual that owned
the weapon that was named inthe tip.
We would conduct interviewswith them.
We actually went through theprocess of collecting their
weapons and submitting thoseweapons to the State Police
Crime lab to have them comparedto the evidence that was
(24:41):
recovered during autopsy, andnone of those weapons that were
collected during that effortresulted in a tangible
identification.
Going door to door in aneighborhood, it absolutely
generated very little evidence.
A few people heard a loud bangin the middle of the night, saw
(25:02):
nothing Beyond that.
It really didn't generateanything other than well, I knew
who lived there.
I know the victim, I've talkedto him a couple times in passing
, things of that nature.
The expanded physical search ofthe area during the next day
during the daylight hoursyielded no additional evidence
(25:23):
other than and the turf under atree catty corner from the
residence across theintersection from where that
residence is located.
One of our investigators founda couple of divots in the turf,
in the dirt, in the grass thatwas there, and those divots were
(25:46):
positioned in such a way thatit could make one think that it
was left by.
It was an indention left by abipod that is commonly used on
rifles of 243 caliber.
We didn't know that that's whatit was, but it was significant
(26:06):
enough that we recorded it, hadour crime scene technicians
photograph it, preserve it, notreally leading us to anyone or
to any other evidence.
It was just a fact that wedeveloped through the course of
this evidence.
It was just a fact that wedeveloped through the course of
this.
You know, in talking to thefriends that we interviewed, our
(26:27):
pursuit was what could havehappened in Trent's life that
might make someone angry enoughthat they would want to take
this type of revenge out on him.
And we learned that Trent was.
He was a pretty good-sizedfella.
He was 6'2", 270 pounds.
(26:49):
Quite honestly, everyone wespoke to said there was no doubt
he was the strongest player onthe University of Kentucky
football team bench, pressing inthe neighborhood of 400 plus
pounds.
He's a pretty strong guy.
And everyone that we talked tosaid they called him a big teddy
bear and they looked at him astheir protector.
(27:11):
Anytime something happened thatcreated a verbal or physical
altercation, they reported thatTrent was there to stand up, to
protect them, to stand guardover them.
So there were times when therewere verbal altercations.
There were times when therewere some physical altercations
(27:33):
none major by any stretch of theimagination but we thought, you
know, could this be a revengemotive, where he's made someone
mad and they just came back andand took this action as a
retaliatory measure.
You know, we heard things fromvarious people that was we
determined to be morespeculation or theorizing than
(27:57):
actually coming from any kind offact.
Things like he was so big andso strong, was he involved with
using steroids?
Who was his dealer?
You know, did he stealsomething from someone?
Did he rip some dealer off?
You know there were all kindsof speculation along those lines
and those leads wereinvestigated thoroughly and none
of that ever proved to be thetruth.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
How long did I mean?
Did this, these things thatyou're talking about following
up on these leads, did that?
Just how long did this stretchthis?
Your investigation into themurder of Trent DeGiro?
Speaker 2 (28:35):
This went for several years.
We're talking about a crimethat occurred in 1994 and didn't
really gain any significanttraction as far as identifying
the offender until 2000.
On leads and of course you knowthose leads, they would come in
(28:59):
frequently in the beginning, somuch so that it took a lot of
extra man hours just to stay ontop of following up on the tips.
We would see those tips startto become fewer and fewer as
time passed and at that timethere were programs that were
(29:20):
being done to reenact thesetypes of crimes, and that was
done on this case, trying togenerate a lead that might
become tangible.
And of course, when you do ashow like America's Most Wanted
that's a national show you get alot of tips.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
I'll bet.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
And it did.
It generated a lot ofinformation.
But, again, all of those leadsthat came in we followed up on.
Some of them were leads thatwere cross-country and we were
able to use other policeagencies to help us follow up on
those, and we were able to useother police agencies to help us
follow up on those.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
But none of those tips really ever came to any
tangible belief that we knew whowe were looking for.
You know, dan.
As the prosecutor in this case,I stayed in close contact with
the parents of Trent DeGiro,Mike and Ann DeGiro.
And Mike always said somebodyknows something out there and
(30:29):
sooner or later they're going totell us he.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
just he had great faith that somebody would come
forward and tell and he hadconveyed that to me from time to
time and I got calls from Mikeand I got calls from Ann on a
regular basis, just checking inbecause they were in my opinion
they seemed somewhat desperate.
(30:53):
It may not be the right word,but they certainly wanted to
know what had happened.
But they certainly wanted toknow what had happened.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Well, sure, and I think, as a parent, any parent
would want to know who and whyhas done this to my child and
furthermore, why, six years intoit, do we still not know?
Right, and I'm guessing thatthey were wondering, like most
people would.
What are you doing during thistime when the leads are just
(31:21):
dead ends and they're goingnowhere?
Where do you, as aninvestigator, go from that point
when nothing is turning up?
What do you do then?
And all the while, I'm assuming, more cases are piling on.
So you know you're trying toprioritize what's coming in
versus what still hasn't beensolved.
How do you handle that?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
As this time passes, when our investigators are
pursuing all these tips thatcome in, you're right, other
cases continue to come andthat's important because the
unit that handles the homicidesat that time for the police
department handles the homicides.
(32:02):
At that time for the policedepartment, not only did they
investigate suspicious deathsand homicides, they also
investigated all levels ofassault.
They investigated sexualassaults, they investigated
harassing communications.
So all of those complaintscontinued to come in during the
course of years that we wereinvestigating this case.
And my posture with our unit wasalways when you look at a case
(32:29):
on this side that's a homicideinvestigation and you look at a
case over here that's aharassing communications matter,
in your eyes, as theinvestigator you're going to put
more emphasis on the homicide.
But in all honesty, the victimof this harassing communications
has nothing more important tothem in their life at that time
than that harassingcommunications.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Right, and I'm imagining that they may look at
it like they may be the nextvictim and maybe it's not as
intense as they're thinking itis, but in their mind I would
think.
I would want you to focus on mycase, and exclusively my case,
because that's important to me,without knowing that you have
all these other cases, and Ithink many people don't realize
(33:11):
that in the back scenes you'vegot a lot of other stuff going
on that's really more importantthan mine.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Right, that's really more important than mine, right,
and I always made it clear toour investigators that it wasn't
acceptable to use the excuseI've got 50 other cases to work
as an example of why I can'twork on yours.
That just that doesn't.
That wasn't acceptable.
You had to give some time tothese other cases, but clearly
this homicide was important andit stayed important through the
(33:37):
course of the entireinvestigation.
We got tips on things that weregenerated pretty quickly after
the offense occurred.
Things like during the party.
There were a couple of men thatwalked up to the party and
asked to join in and theyweren't known by the people that
were at the party.
(33:58):
So they were told no, sorry,it's a private birthday
gathering, so sorry, no, so whatis the possibility that that
offended them and they came backand did this investigating this
(34:22):
.
There was a vehicle that drovedown Woodland Avenue and that
there was a person in the backseat of the vehicle that kind of
leaned out, stuck his arm outthe window and pointed and the
witnesses had pointed like hehad a gun in his hand at the
crime scene.
Well, is that someone returningto the scene?
You know what is that exactly?
And all of those were, you know, followed up on and again, none
(34:43):
of them produced a tangiblesuspect or tangible motive.
So we looked at things likemotives or leads as a random
drive-by shooting.
You know, is it possible thatsomebody just they were out
roaming around at three o'clockin the morning and saw a guy
sitting on the front porch andjust shot him randomly, with no
way of knowing if there's anyconnection at all?
(35:03):
We looked at the fact that, youknow, could someone in the
neighborhood have gotten upsetbecause there was a party and
sounds did echo at three o'clockin the morning, you know, was
it loud enough that it angeredsomeone?
And that's the way they tookcare of it.
You know, was there an argumentat the party that maybe two
(35:27):
people got into an argument over?
We looked at all of thosethings and none of them provided
any tangible information.
Then there was a call that camein from an individual who
declined to identify himself.
That individual talked aboutthere being tunnels underneath
the UK campus and that therewere people who lived in the
tunnels and that they would comeout at night and they would
(35:47):
actually assault people.
From a person, from a policeofficer who receives that kind
of information, you really don'tgive it a lot of credibility.
Not because they're sayingthere's tunnels under the campus
, because there are utilitytunnels that run under the
campus, but because the tip wasso vague there are people that
(36:08):
live in the tunnels, there arepeople that come out and commit
assaults.
Didn't give a whole lot ofcredibility to that tip but we
did enough on it to verify.
You know that, yeah, there weretunnels and we actually went
and walked through and there wassome evidence that people had
been in the tunnels, but notevidence that people were living
in the tunnels, not mysterioustunnel people who's coming out
(36:30):
hunting Lexington of the nightRight.
A short time after that firstcall came in, this same person
called in a second time and justwanted to know what we found
out about the tunnels and thenasked through the course of that
conversation it was strictlythis person now had a couple of
suspects that he wanted to nameand he provided us their names.
We researched it.
(37:09):
There was nothing that tiedthose individuals to Trent in
any way, and then it startedcoming around that this fellow
was obviously obsessed becausehe kept calling back and we
finally managed to secure hisidentity.
So we were able to do someresearch on him and what we
(37:29):
found was that he lived in anadjoining county, tafayette
County.
He lived on a piece of propertythat was owned by his parents.
That he was an avid shooterowned multiple guns, was a very
good shot.
By all reports.
He spent a lot of time on thefiring range.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
So you may be thinking, at this point your
interest is piqued, thinking isthis our guy?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Well, we're now Since he's such a good shooter.
That's right, because we'relooking at a shot that most
people would say was an expertmarksman, and so now we've got a
tip that leads us to anindividual who is providing
something that ties to that inone way.
We locate this guy and we doall the things that
(38:15):
investigators would do.
We conduct interview, wecompile the information that we
would do.
We conduct interview, wecompile the information that we
had to that point.
We actually do a search of hisresidence and we found things
that just added to the beliefthat you know the information
that he was giving us probablywas not accurate, valid
information, but it was stillthere.
(38:38):
We couldn't find anything thatcould eliminate, but we didn't
find anything that tied him toit either, but there were things
that were on the plate, like hehad a family member that lived
within eyesight of where thiscrime occurred.
From the family member's backporch was a straight visual line
to where Trent was sitting whenhe got shot.
(38:59):
We found things that made usbelieve that this fellow was
under the illusion that he andTrent looked so much like that
they could be mistaken for twins.
Through the course of it all,he thought maybe he was supposed
to be the target, not Trent,but they looked so much alike
that somebody got it wrong.
We spent a lot of timefollowing up on this information
(39:22):
and trying to either tie him tothe murder or eliminate him as
a suspect, and that went on foran extended period of time, and
we were never able to get to apoint that we were comfortable
with one way or the other.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
So I guess, did you ever at any point say to him did
you do this?
Of course?
And he just said no, and hedenied it right.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
He denied it and there was no evidence to put him
at the crime scene.
There was just a lot ofcircumstantial facts that this
many years into an investigation, without having had anything
tangible it's something Wassomething to pursue.
And we did pursue it, pursuedit pretty aggressively and again
, like all the others, itfinally got to the point where
(40:05):
it kind of went cold.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Another dead end Another dead end.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
So that kind of gets us up to the point of where we
finally got a tangible lead.
It was a phone call that one ofour investigators received from
an attorney who wasrepresenting a person who had
information that relateddirectly to the shooting and
(40:31):
that person was willing toprovide it.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Hey, you know there's more to this story, so go find
the next episode and listen.
Hey, you know there's more tothis story, so go, find the next
episode and listen.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and
David Lyons and was created tohonor the lives of crime victims
, so their names are neverforgotten.
It is produced, recorded andedited by David Lyons.
Found on your favorite Apple orAndroid podcast platform, as
well as atMurderPolicePodcastcom, where
(41:06):
you will find show notes,transcripts, information about
our presenters and a link to theofficial Murder Police Podcast
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We are also on Facebook,instagram and YouTube, which is
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(41:28):
On Apple Podcasts or whereveryou download your podcasts, make
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Speaker 1 (41:40):
Lock it down, Judy.
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