February 19, 2021 • 32 mins
Jonathan Luna was operating in a toxic work environment when he undertook the last trial of his life -- a federal drug conspiracy case against two men selling drugs out of a rap music studio in Baltimore.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Somebody Somewhere is a production of Rainstream Media Incorporated. This
podcast investigates the unsolved death of federal prosecutor Jonathan Luna
in two thousand and three. It is a true story,
but the opinions of the hosts and interviewees are simply
that opinions, not facts, and the credibility of the witnesses
and what they say is to be determined by the listener.
(00:27):
Everyone is presumed innocent until proven otherwise in a court
of law. Previously on Somebody Somewhere, he was working late
crafting plea deals when without his glasses, he left the
courthouse and drove a mysterious path through four states.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Let me he was a bright light.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
He was a special one with so much potential.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
The question is what Luna was doing after he withstream
money from ATM Arrest up until he entered depends on
Mean Turnpike.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
He had this monioacal obsession about punctuality.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
The way this case evolved, half of the people working
on the case of outside half thought it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
It was suicide.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
This is episode two of season three Stash House Records.
I'm your host, David Payne. It's been ten years since
the federal prosecutor was found ednand Borough Leicaester County.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
We will find out who did this.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Was he trying to stage some sort of attack and
went too far.
Speaker 5 (01:53):
If you're like most people, this COVID crisis has forced
a reflection on what's important to you family, health values.
Some people are blessed enough that they had introspection before
a pandemic thrust it upon them. Jonathan Luna's friends and
colleagues paint a picture of a man who most always
had his priorities in the right place.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
It's just a good guy. I mean, people really liked him.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
He was always Jonathan's best friend in law school. Reggie
Schufford was reluctant to talk to us at first, but
he realized that Jonathan needed a voice to speak for
him now.
Speaker 6 (02:32):
Oftentimes, when situation like these happened, where someone's murdered, people
become one dimensional really and it's their death that tends
to define them. But if you wouldn't mind share more
about his values and beliefs.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Happy to do that.
Speaker 7 (02:49):
And if I'm being honest, Jonathan's death almost seventeen years
ago is still deeply painful for me.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I agree to kind of.
Speaker 7 (02:59):
Talk about him selectively, in part to preserve his legacy
beyond the fact that he was killed, and to present
a more nuanced perspective on who Jonathan the man and
person was.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I mean, people really liked him.
Speaker 7 (03:20):
He was a runner, a marathoner, was into physical fitness,
and he was gentle and thoughtful and upbeat and optimistic
and hopeful.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Loved his family. I mean when we were roommates.
Speaker 7 (03:38):
He actually left law school early and took I think
a year off because his dad was stricken with cancer,
and he took a year off to go spend time
and help nurse his dad back to health.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
So family came first.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
Beyond his family first values. Jonathan also had principles and
the strength of character to stand behind them. And while
we never met our legal pass actually did cross in
the late nineties on one of those principles. In nineteen
ninety five, when I was serving as in house council
to Ted Turner's Atlanta Braves, I was resistant to efforts
(04:18):
to change the team's name. Jonathan, though, was advocating for change,
writing a letter to the Baltimore Sun criticizing the racism
inherent in MLB Indian mascots.
Speaker 7 (04:30):
See ahead of his time, right where you consider the
same debates we're having today ahead.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
Of his time, he wrote, the difference between Native Americans
and African Americans or Jews is that Native Americans make
up barely one percent of the US population and compared
with the other two groups have virtually no political power.
Should population or political clout determine the level of tolerance
we are willing to give racist imagery?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
That is quintessentially who who he.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Was twenty five years ago to you know, almost to
the day when we're replacing the Redskins names and those
discussions are happening.
Speaker 7 (05:08):
And of course he loves sports, so he would have
know that's mixing the love of sport with the love
of justice that can bring in that together. So I
not at all surprised, and he was an excellent writer.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
But wherever you stand on these issues, and I'm big
enough to say I think I was wrong those many
years ago, there's no question that being a stand up,
principles driven guy within a large organization is hazardous duty.
Jackie Rodriguez cost is a retired former AUSA from Baltimore
and Puerto Rico. She worked closely with Jonathan and saw
(05:45):
firsthand how that played out with him.
Speaker 8 (05:48):
It got to the point where at some point de
Agiel locked him out of the office, which is like
an extreme measure to take.
Speaker 9 (05:57):
Against an assistant US attorney.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Understanding was that the man locking Jonathan out of his
office was the US Attorney for Maryland, their boss, Tom
de Baggio, and the question was how and why the
two men got to that point, something that newly appointed
to Baggio never publicly explained.
Speaker 10 (06:18):
I remember everyone being really excited about him coming back
because he had been a prosecutor in the.
Speaker 8 (06:24):
Office and so he was kind of seen as one
of us.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Igo was But despite that initial enthusiasm for the appointment
of Tom de Baggio, cost paints a picture of an
administration that's set about to methodically discriminate against people who
didn't fit the mold or tow the new party line.
It was exactly the type of environment that would push
up against Jonathan's values and sense of justice and would
(06:50):
get him crosswise with his new boss.
Speaker 9 (06:53):
I know I follow an EO complain.
Speaker 10 (06:55):
I know Jonathan follow an EO complain against him.
Speaker 9 (06:57):
I know about least one other African.
Speaker 8 (06:59):
American a USA filed the complaint against him, who settled
in her favor. But I understood that he targeted minority
at usas in that office after he came in. Eventually,
I know he was asked to step down by the
Department of Justice.
Speaker 10 (07:15):
I don't remember, you know.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
I was Jonathan, who had been recruited by the previous
US attorney, Lynn Battaglia, suddenly found himself targeted by the
incoming administration, and having reviewed all his case files, I
didn't see anything that would suggest a valid reason for it.
Speaker 10 (07:32):
I was the only Hispanic assistant US attorney at the time,
and I know that that was a big factor for Lynn.
She discussed it with me in the interviews that she
was affirmatively trying to diversify the office because it was
not very diverse. But we had something like sixty five attorneys,
(07:55):
and like you know, there were no Hispanic assistant year's attorneys,
and I want to say there were a handful, and
when I mean a handful, maybe about five African American assistants.
Speaker 5 (08:13):
But it doesn't appear to have just been his race
that potentially put him in the crosshairs of his new boss.
It was equally likely to have been his political views.
Speaker 10 (08:23):
It was a very political office, the Historinese office in Maryland.
Contrary to what my experience had been in San Juan,
this office was very different. I quickly learned that it
was considered to be a bit of a stepping stone
for people that wanted to get into higher ranking positions
within the department in Washington, DC. I also quickly learned
(08:46):
that people knew very openly who was a Republican and
who was a Democrat. I remember being like openly asked,
you know, I bought my political persuasion I.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Came in, I remember.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
And it also wasn't just the prosecutors being asked about
their political beliefs that was troubling. It was the entire
question of who was being targeted for prosecution. In Baltimore,
WBAL reporter Jane Miller explains a.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Really intriguing character in all of this is the then
US Attorney Ton Devagio. He made news because he wrote
a memo to his office that he wanted a certain
number of public corruption cases by a certain time, which
happened to be in.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
November election of two thousand and four.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
But he made a lot of news with that because
the memo got leaked and he wasn't in the office
much long after that, And I think he got somewhat
of a slap on the wrist by the Justice Department
for that behavior.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
You remember who, right, who gave him the slap?
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Who is the Attorney General?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
James Comy gave him. That's right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 11 (09:55):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
This rare public rebuke of Jonathan's boss by fellow Republican
James Comy for politicizing the Justice Department was related to
a memo Debaggio wrote demanding a quota of no less
than three front page worthy public corruption cases against Democratic
Baltimore officials prior to the two thousand and four elections.
(10:22):
In effect, he said the quiet part out loud. So
this was de Baggio's office environment that Jonathan and Jackie
cost were trying to navigate. And it's frankly not surprising,
given what we know about Jonathan's personality and character, that
Rock would meet hard place.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
And when you.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
Say, Jackie that he locked him out of the office,
what do you mean did he tell him not he
physically couldn't come to the.
Speaker 8 (10:48):
Office, physically could not come to the office, like he
was locked out, escorted out of the Department of Justice
space and could not come back.
Speaker 9 (10:55):
In what was told to you about why, So I
don't know.
Speaker 8 (10:59):
I really don't have a recollection of anyone really explaining
to me exactly what was going on and why that happened.
And my understanding was that he didn't follow the proper
protocol in order to take that action, and it was revolved,
and so Jonathan was allowed back into the office. But
again I was not there, so I didn't really know
(11:23):
the ins and outs of what was going on in.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Relation to that.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
Whatever the reason that Jonathan was locked out and whatever
the reason he was let back in, Investigators would later
theorize this tension with his boss would manifest itself in suicide,
but from this vanished point, it was hard to see
anything of the sort. Jonathan had survived far worse in
his life and was a resilient person, and so his
(11:49):
work at the office after this episode continued unabated and
apparently independent of the internal and external office politics, including
handling a case that provided the perfect metaphor for a
law and order republican US attorney, a crackdown on a
rap music label that was accused of being a drug
Distribution Front.
Speaker 9 (12:14):
So Hi, I'm Gail Gibson. I worked for the University
of Michigan overseeing the Kessler scholars Program, which supports first
generation college students. In my prior career, I was a
journalist and I worked for a number of years at
The Baltimore Sun, including covering.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
When people talk about the quote paper of record in Baltimore,
that means the Baltimore Sun, and as the Sun's beat
reporter for federal courts, Gail Gibson was the person of
record for anything that happened there. Practically speaking, that means
perhaps more than any one person. Her stories on this
case in Jonathan have colored most outside observers perceptions than
(12:53):
any others. And when Jonathan went missing on the morning
of December fourth, two thousand and three, Gibson was predictably
on the scene reporting on the rap music drug case
Jonathan was leading.
Speaker 9 (13:08):
It was a drug case that we were sort of
following with just a little curiosity because it had this
great name Stash Records, where they were funneling drug funny
for a recording studio in a part of Baltimore. I mean,
it wasn't the.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
Biggest true to form in the office the stash house
records case provided Luna's boss the opportunity for newspaper headlines
showing he was winning both the drug and culture wars
of Baltimore in the early two thousands, and Jonathan, either
politically offensively or defensively, was also trying to make sure
he got credit for the score.
Speaker 9 (13:45):
It was just kind of an interesting, smaller scale drug story,
but had just enough interest it would make the paper.
The day before Jonathan went missing, he had reached out
and said, hey, you'll want to be in court in
the morning. They're probably going to plead out, you know.
Just he wanted to make sure it was going to
get some coverage, and so I made a point put
it on my calendar to be there that morning. I
(14:08):
thought that would be a good story that the paper
would want to have.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
Jonathan's called to Gibson the day before he died, which
has never before been reported, goes straight to a key
issue in his death investigation. One of the supporting planks
to the suicide theory was that Jonathan was so distraught
about what was happening in the trial and the fact
that it was breaking down into a plea on lesser charges,
(14:38):
that it was a stressor that drove him to take
his own life, but that doesn't appear to be the
case at all. Gibson tells us Jonathan was actively seeking
out press for this accomplishment, and it wasn't the first
time either. Do you remember any specific cases that he
reached out to you about and thought you should cover.
Speaker 9 (15:00):
So Jonathan was an assistant US attorney that was still
sort of establishing himself in that office, and a lot
of his kind of bread and butter work were, you know,
heroin cases, gang cases, coming mostly out of the drug
trade in Baltimore, and the paper was interested in covering those,
so it got his name in the paper, and it's
(15:21):
that sort of symbiotic reporter and source relationship, you know.
And in all of that, Jonathan was a really charming guy.
So he wore his hair a little long and curly,
and he had a great smile and he was chatty.
So it was a guy who was just really easy
to like, and you found yourself kind of rooting for
(15:43):
him in cases where you were, of course supposed to be,
you know, the neutral person sitting on the bench in
the back. And I think he had a lot of
folks in the legal community there that were really taken
by him and really saw big things ahead for him.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
And the biggest thing in front of Jonathan in the
four days before he died was his Stash House Records case.
A win might get him out of the doghouse with
his boss, and a loss might be devastating to his career.
And so the facts of what happened in that trial,
both in and outside the courtroom, would be scrupulously scrutinized
(16:19):
by investigators. And who better to do that for us
than the man who had a front row seat to
Jonathan's last trial.
Speaker 11 (16:28):
My full name is Archangelo Michael Tuminelli, although I only
used the M as an initial.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
I am from Bolt Defense attorney. Archie Tuminelli has over
four decades of Baltimore court experience. He represented Walter Poindexter,
one of the two defendants in the Stash House Records case.
Let's talk about the environment in the two thousands of
what was going on in the federal court system criminal
cases wise.
Speaker 11 (16:57):
In Baltimore, the over wwhelming majority of cases being tried
were multi defendant drug conspiracies.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So if we could just tee.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
Up what that case was about, it was the USA
versus Poindexter and Smith. Can you give us a summary
of what that case was.
Speaker 11 (17:18):
The government had a cooperating witness who had been charged
himself prior to the indictment of Smith and Poindexter. Then
you know, through his cooperation, told the agents that he
was working with that he could make buys from those two.
There were three control buys, two from Pointdexter, one from Smith,
(17:41):
and the two of them were indicted.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
A bit of terminology here might help. Despite the headline
grabbing stash house records, Veneer, Jonathan's final case was a
run of the mill by bust drug case. The FBI
used an informant whom they had already arrested, a man
named Warren Grace, to roll on people allegedly higher up
the drug chain, Dion Smith and Walter Poindexter, and to
(18:15):
gather evidence. They would send Grace with Mark money to
buy drugs from the two men. And when the FEDS
are involved in something as pedestrian as a controlled drug buy,
they're going to have overkill. Almost one hundred hours of
audio and video recordings, surveillance photos the whole shooting match
exactly the type of evidence that ninety five percent of
(18:36):
the time ensures a guilty plea. But that's not what
happened here.
Speaker 11 (18:43):
So both defendants wanted to work out please. But the
problem with Poindexter was there was a murder that wasn't
charged that the government believed he had committed, and under
the guidelines at that time, if Poindexter had worked out
(19:07):
a plea, the judge would be able to consider that
and his guidelines would resulted in a potential license. So
I say, you know, get rid of the murder, give
me an insurance that you can't use that in writing,
and we'll be all right. And he kept saying, we
can't do that, We can't, I can't get permission for.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
That, which is really unusual because you know, you know
how that works, right, Yeah.
Speaker 11 (19:30):
Under the guidelines, the court could look at all the
behavior that was related to the charge for which the
defendant was convicted. The court could sentence the person as
if the person were convicted of a murder.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
The related conduct provisions of the sentencing guidelines, in effect
at the time, were one of a prosecutor's biggest arrows.
In essence, all you had to do was wait for
a defendant to plead guilty and then give whatever information
you had about his related conduct to the Probation Department,
who would then write it up for the judge to
(20:12):
consider it sentencing. And Jonathan, like all ausas, wasn't permitted
without supervisor approval to give that up, especially when the
related conduct was a murder.
Speaker 11 (20:25):
I told Jonathan, look, you have to give me assurances
that if he pleads when we get the sentencing, you're
not going to try and use the murder and say
the murder was related. And at that point, Jonathan is
like really pressing me to work this case out.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
So what do you say.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
I'll give you verbal assurances.
Speaker 11 (20:47):
I just can't do now, right And now what he
told me he just couldn't get approval not to do that,
so he wanted a play without any kind of assurances
about the murder.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
Jonathan's reluctance to come to terms on a plea agreement
has many possible interpretations, particularly in light of his imminent death.
The most obvious is that he was simply following US
Attorney guidelines prohibiting him from waiving related conduct for an
alleged murder, But he also could have had reluctance going
to a supervisor for approval in a situation that might
(21:25):
make him look weak with his boss. And there was
a very specific reason why Jonathan may have been concerned.
Speaker 11 (21:32):
And he kept saying, we can't do that, we can't,
I can't get permission for that.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Did Jonathan want to do that?
Speaker 11 (21:38):
Or and he was getting Jonathan Jonathan wanted to do that.
But the problem was, I don't know to what extent
Jonathan was disclosing the information to his supervisor. Something that
I haven't mentioned yet about this case, which you probably
know about with regard to Grace.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Right, Grace as in War and Grace, the cooperating witness
that the government had flipped to buy drugs from and
then testify against his former friends Walter Poindexter and Dion Smith.
You see, even though the government had one hundred hours
of audio and videotape to support their Stash House records case,
(22:25):
they would need Grace to testify to authenticate the voices
and give the tapes context, and Grace's credibility would be
a key issue determining whether Walter Poindexter and Dion Smith
would spend the next fifty years in jail.
Speaker 11 (22:40):
We knew that Grace during the period he was cooperating
with the government. He was placed on electronic monitoring, but
he was home and.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
He was under the supervision of the FBI at that point.
Speaker 11 (22:54):
Yeah, right, And Ken had followed the motion to ask
the court to order the Preachile Services Division to show
us their foul on Grace.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
Ken is Ken Ravenel, the defense attorney for the other
co defendant, Dion Smith.
Speaker 11 (23:13):
I can tell you, as someone who practiced all the
time in federal court, that would have been a laughable motion.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
The timing, outcome, and consequences of this ordinarily laughable motion
in Jonathan Luna's last case are potentially critical to understanding
his state of mind the night he died. The Stash
House records case began on Monday afternoon, December one, two
thousand and three. The defense attorneys gave their opening statements
(23:45):
after the lunch break, and Jonathan called Warren Grace as
his first witness, leading him through preliminaries and setting the
stage for him to authenticate the recorded drug buys. And
it was in that context that Attorney Ken Ravenel made
his life affable motion to get Grace's pre trial records.
At the end of the first day, do you think
Ken had information from pretrial someone to leaked to him.
Speaker 11 (24:08):
I don't know if I don't know if he did,
but look, you could never get that information. No, no
judge down there would order that. So it wasn't the
sort of thing that defense attorneys would typically even asked for,
but Ken asked for it.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
Judge Quarrels was a former prosecutor himself and a hard
nosed judge. He wasn't about to let two curious defense
attorneys go sniffing around in what were essentially court files
relating to a witness without more cause. But he promised
Ravenol he would have pretrial services prepare a summary of
Grace's pretrial violations for the following day. With that out
(24:47):
of the way, the judge then took his impatience with
the trial's pace and Luna's preparedness out on the young lawyer.
Here's the reporter who sat literally in the middle of
that crossfire that afternoon.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
My name's Nybridcherson. I was a federal court reporter for
years and years. I saw many a trial in my day,
and I loved my work, and I made a lot
of friends, and I messed it terrible when I left.
Speaker 5 (25:20):
So former court reporter Ned Richardson is retired now, and
although he has a tendency to romantically reminisce about his job,
he's got a pretty clear memory of what happened in
the Stash House Records case. Do you remember much about
the dynamic at play between the judge and the defense
attorneys and Jonathan?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Was it tense? Yeah? It was ten. Yeah, I don't
know why what war see. By the time I get
in court, it just seemed like bombs were bursting in air,
and I thought, what I don't understand. I couldn't get
into my head what's going on?
Speaker 5 (25:58):
Why it's attorneys in Luna or the judge and.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Luna mostly more with the judge. I don't know why.
I thought something terrible must have happened, because he would
just lean on him, you know. It was like sometimes
I felt like he was going to out of his way,
and I thought, well, did we get through this all
on one piece? I thought I was going to get
Hazar's duty pay. I thought, good habits. What is going on?
Speaker 5 (26:26):
What was happening was that the judge was frustrated with
Jonathan's performance that day, primarily because he perceived that Luna
was wasting his and the jury's time by being both
unprepared and by not corralling his evasive cooperating witness Warren
Grace to stay on message. And Judge Quarrels was notorious
(26:47):
for his obsession with time.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Well, I had the misfortune being assigned to Judge Quarles,
and that was the saddest day in my life. I
think I went into him and he had this maniacal
obsession about punctuality. And if you came into his court
and you were five ten mens late, you were dead meat.
(27:12):
I mean, that was it. That was like a capital offense.
He would yell at the lawyers. Told I thought, my God,
did give me the guys five minutes late? You know, well,
we would start without him, We would actually start without
an attorney. It just got on the nerves.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
And even though Judge Quarrels would later say he was
a mentor to Jonathan during this stash House records case,
he showed no favoritism and treated him with the standard
disdain he saved for all time wasting lawyers.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
But the way Jonathan was acting when we got rolling,
it was like I looked at him like, oh my god,
what the hell would you do? I mean, mayn You're
you're in deep crap. He had to rast to what
I deal.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
With Somebody somewhere will return right after this break. The
next day, the second day of the Smith Poindexter trial,
would not go any better for Jonathan Warren. Grace was
(28:24):
back on the stand doing his reluctant witness bid, further
agitating the time obsessed judge, and at the appropriate time
during direct Jonathan did what every experienced litigator with a
bad witness does. He tried to take the sting out
of the expected defense cross examination in this case by
(28:45):
asking Grace about his pre trial release violations.
Speaker 11 (28:49):
Yeah, he's wearing a monitor on his ankle, and when
pre Trial Services finds out about this when he slips
the bracelet, Services.
Speaker 12 (29:01):
Filed a report to the court that this guy had
slipped his monitor and they were moving the court to
remove him from pre Trial Services supervision.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
Unfortunately for Jonathan, the more facts he tried to elicit
from Grace about what happened when he slipped the bracelet,
the worse his witness looked. And as the testimony continued,
it wasn't so much Grace that looked bad to the jury,
as it was Jonathan to the judge. Quarrels was becoming
increasingly open to defense counsel's arguments that Jonathan had not
(29:38):
properly disclosed everything he knew about Grace's actions, and at
the conclusion of the second day of trial, the judge
would have had enough.
Speaker 11 (29:47):
And to my surprise, Judge Quarrels ordered pre trial to
sit down with the two of us and go through
pre trial's fall, an order.
Speaker 5 (29:59):
That would that in motion a series of events that
would culminate in Jonathan's death just thirty six hours later.
Next time, on somebody somewhere.
Speaker 9 (30:21):
I told him, by the way, you are not getting
the style. You're not getting these documents, but you can
ask questions.
Speaker 11 (30:27):
In all the years I've been here, I've never seen
anything like this.
Speaker 9 (30:33):
Carls knew Warren Grace was shady, shady dude, and that
Jonathan should have known about it.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Jonathan was so distracted he couldn't keep it together, and
I thought something is wrong.
Speaker 11 (30:47):
Jonathan wanted to do that, but the problem was to
BODYO was trying to fire him.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
So I told him move all. That's the last time
I saw Jonathan alive.
Speaker 11 (31:01):
Here it goes the devil telling me to lie again,
says I'm around me sales.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
It's all right to Britain that you can get more.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Don you give.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
Somebody Somewhere is a production of Rainstream Media Incorporated. Sound design,
editing and mixing has been provided by Resonate Recordings. Original
score and voiceover work provided by Hallie Paine. Artwork provided
by Evan McGlenn and Kendall Paine. If you have any
information regarding the Jonathan Luna case, please contact us via
(31:42):
our website sbswpodcast dot com. And finally, if you enjoyed
this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
It really helps and we really appreciate it. Thank you
for listening.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Dear God, it I hate to say I'm sun.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
Would I just want.
Speaker 11 (32:10):
To love.
Speaker 7 (32:13):
Nep don't still love mon?
Speaker 3 (32:19):
I need more money
Somebody Somewhere is a production of Rainstream Media Incorporated. This
podcast investigates the unsolved death of federal prosecutor Jonathan Luna
in two thousand and three. It is a true story,
but the opinions of the hosts and interviewees are simply
that opinions, not facts, and the credibility of the witnesses
and what they say is to be determined by the listener.
(00:27):
Everyone is presumed innocent until proven otherwise in a court
of law. Previously on Somebody Somewhere, he was working late
crafting plea deals when without his glasses, he left the
courthouse and drove a mysterious path through four states.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Let me he was a bright light.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
He was a special one with so much potential.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
The question is what Luna was doing after he withstream
money from ATM Arrest up until he entered depends on
Mean Turnpike.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
He had this monioacal obsession about punctuality.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
The way this case evolved, half of the people working
on the case of outside half thought it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
It was suicide.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
This is episode two of season three Stash House Records.
I'm your host, David Payne. It's been ten years since
the federal prosecutor was found ednand Borough Leicaester County.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
We will find out who did this.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Was he trying to stage some sort of attack and
went too far.
Speaker 5 (01:53):
If you're like most people, this COVID crisis has forced
a reflection on what's important to you family, health values.
Some people are blessed enough that they had introspection before
a pandemic thrust it upon them. Jonathan Luna's friends and
colleagues paint a picture of a man who most always
had his priorities in the right place.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
It's just a good guy. I mean, people really liked him.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
He was always Jonathan's best friend in law school. Reggie
Schufford was reluctant to talk to us at first, but
he realized that Jonathan needed a voice to speak for
him now.
Speaker 6 (02:32):
Oftentimes, when situation like these happened, where someone's murdered, people
become one dimensional really and it's their death that tends
to define them. But if you wouldn't mind share more
about his values and beliefs.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Happy to do that.
Speaker 7 (02:49):
And if I'm being honest, Jonathan's death almost seventeen years
ago is still deeply painful for me.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I agree to kind of.
Speaker 7 (02:59):
Talk about him selectively, in part to preserve his legacy
beyond the fact that he was killed, and to present
a more nuanced perspective on who Jonathan the man and
person was.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I mean, people really liked him.
Speaker 7 (03:20):
He was a runner, a marathoner, was into physical fitness,
and he was gentle and thoughtful and upbeat and optimistic
and hopeful.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Loved his family. I mean when we were roommates.
Speaker 7 (03:38):
He actually left law school early and took I think
a year off because his dad was stricken with cancer,
and he took a year off to go spend time
and help nurse his dad back to health.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
So family came first.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
Beyond his family first values. Jonathan also had principles and
the strength of character to stand behind them. And while
we never met our legal pass actually did cross in
the late nineties on one of those principles. In nineteen
ninety five, when I was serving as in house council
to Ted Turner's Atlanta Braves, I was resistant to efforts
(04:18):
to change the team's name. Jonathan, though, was advocating for change,
writing a letter to the Baltimore Sun criticizing the racism
inherent in MLB Indian mascots.
Speaker 7 (04:30):
See ahead of his time, right where you consider the
same debates we're having today ahead.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
Of his time, he wrote, the difference between Native Americans
and African Americans or Jews is that Native Americans make
up barely one percent of the US population and compared
with the other two groups have virtually no political power.
Should population or political clout determine the level of tolerance
we are willing to give racist imagery?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
That is quintessentially who who he.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Was twenty five years ago to you know, almost to
the day when we're replacing the Redskins names and those
discussions are happening.
Speaker 7 (05:08):
And of course he loves sports, so he would have
know that's mixing the love of sport with the love
of justice that can bring in that together. So I
not at all surprised, and he was an excellent writer.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
But wherever you stand on these issues, and I'm big
enough to say I think I was wrong those many
years ago, there's no question that being a stand up,
principles driven guy within a large organization is hazardous duty.
Jackie Rodriguez cost is a retired former AUSA from Baltimore
and Puerto Rico. She worked closely with Jonathan and saw
(05:45):
firsthand how that played out with him.
Speaker 8 (05:48):
It got to the point where at some point de
Agiel locked him out of the office, which is like
an extreme measure to take.
Speaker 9 (05:57):
Against an assistant US attorney.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Understanding was that the man locking Jonathan out of his
office was the US Attorney for Maryland, their boss, Tom
de Baggio, and the question was how and why the
two men got to that point, something that newly appointed
to Baggio never publicly explained.
Speaker 10 (06:18):
I remember everyone being really excited about him coming back
because he had been a prosecutor in the.
Speaker 8 (06:24):
Office and so he was kind of seen as one
of us.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Igo was But despite that initial enthusiasm for the appointment
of Tom de Baggio, cost paints a picture of an
administration that's set about to methodically discriminate against people who
didn't fit the mold or tow the new party line.
It was exactly the type of environment that would push
up against Jonathan's values and sense of justice and would
(06:50):
get him crosswise with his new boss.
Speaker 9 (06:53):
I know I follow an EO complain.
Speaker 10 (06:55):
I know Jonathan follow an EO complain against him.
Speaker 9 (06:57):
I know about least one other African.
Speaker 8 (06:59):
American a USA filed the complaint against him, who settled
in her favor. But I understood that he targeted minority
at usas in that office after he came in. Eventually,
I know he was asked to step down by the
Department of Justice.
Speaker 10 (07:15):
I don't remember, you know.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
I was Jonathan, who had been recruited by the previous
US attorney, Lynn Battaglia, suddenly found himself targeted by the
incoming administration, and having reviewed all his case files, I
didn't see anything that would suggest a valid reason for it.
Speaker 10 (07:32):
I was the only Hispanic assistant US attorney at the time,
and I know that that was a big factor for Lynn.
She discussed it with me in the interviews that she
was affirmatively trying to diversify the office because it was
not very diverse. But we had something like sixty five attorneys,
(07:55):
and like you know, there were no Hispanic assistant year's attorneys,
and I want to say there were a handful, and
when I mean a handful, maybe about five African American assistants.
Speaker 5 (08:13):
But it doesn't appear to have just been his race
that potentially put him in the crosshairs of his new boss.
It was equally likely to have been his political views.
Speaker 10 (08:23):
It was a very political office, the Historinese office in Maryland.
Contrary to what my experience had been in San Juan,
this office was very different. I quickly learned that it
was considered to be a bit of a stepping stone
for people that wanted to get into higher ranking positions
within the department in Washington, DC. I also quickly learned
(08:46):
that people knew very openly who was a Republican and
who was a Democrat. I remember being like openly asked,
you know, I bought my political persuasion I.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Came in, I remember.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
And it also wasn't just the prosecutors being asked about
their political beliefs that was troubling. It was the entire
question of who was being targeted for prosecution. In Baltimore,
WBAL reporter Jane Miller explains a.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Really intriguing character in all of this is the then
US Attorney Ton Devagio. He made news because he wrote
a memo to his office that he wanted a certain
number of public corruption cases by a certain time, which
happened to be in.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
November election of two thousand and four.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
But he made a lot of news with that because
the memo got leaked and he wasn't in the office
much long after that, And I think he got somewhat
of a slap on the wrist by the Justice Department
for that behavior.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
You remember who, right, who gave him the slap?
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Who is the Attorney General?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
James Comy gave him. That's right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 11 (09:55):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
This rare public rebuke of Jonathan's boss by fellow Republican
James Comy for politicizing the Justice Department was related to
a memo Debaggio wrote demanding a quota of no less
than three front page worthy public corruption cases against Democratic
Baltimore officials prior to the two thousand and four elections.
(10:22):
In effect, he said the quiet part out loud. So
this was de Baggio's office environment that Jonathan and Jackie
cost were trying to navigate. And it's frankly not surprising,
given what we know about Jonathan's personality and character, that
Rock would meet hard place.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
And when you.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
Say, Jackie that he locked him out of the office,
what do you mean did he tell him not he
physically couldn't come to the.
Speaker 8 (10:48):
Office, physically could not come to the office, like he
was locked out, escorted out of the Department of Justice
space and could not come back.
Speaker 9 (10:55):
In what was told to you about why, So I
don't know.
Speaker 8 (10:59):
I really don't have a recollection of anyone really explaining
to me exactly what was going on and why that happened.
And my understanding was that he didn't follow the proper
protocol in order to take that action, and it was revolved,
and so Jonathan was allowed back into the office. But
again I was not there, so I didn't really know
(11:23):
the ins and outs of what was going on in.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Relation to that.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
Whatever the reason that Jonathan was locked out and whatever
the reason he was let back in, Investigators would later
theorize this tension with his boss would manifest itself in suicide,
but from this vanished point, it was hard to see
anything of the sort. Jonathan had survived far worse in
his life and was a resilient person, and so his
(11:49):
work at the office after this episode continued unabated and
apparently independent of the internal and external office politics, including
handling a case that provided the perfect metaphor for a
law and order republican US attorney, a crackdown on a
rap music label that was accused of being a drug
Distribution Front.
Speaker 9 (12:14):
So Hi, I'm Gail Gibson. I worked for the University
of Michigan overseeing the Kessler scholars Program, which supports first
generation college students. In my prior career, I was a
journalist and I worked for a number of years at
The Baltimore Sun, including covering.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
When people talk about the quote paper of record in Baltimore,
that means the Baltimore Sun, and as the Sun's beat
reporter for federal courts, Gail Gibson was the person of
record for anything that happened there. Practically speaking, that means
perhaps more than any one person. Her stories on this
case in Jonathan have colored most outside observers perceptions than
(12:53):
any others. And when Jonathan went missing on the morning
of December fourth, two thousand and three, Gibson was predictably
on the scene reporting on the rap music drug case
Jonathan was leading.
Speaker 9 (13:08):
It was a drug case that we were sort of
following with just a little curiosity because it had this
great name Stash Records, where they were funneling drug funny
for a recording studio in a part of Baltimore. I mean,
it wasn't the.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
Biggest true to form in the office the stash house
records case provided Luna's boss the opportunity for newspaper headlines
showing he was winning both the drug and culture wars
of Baltimore in the early two thousands, and Jonathan, either
politically offensively or defensively, was also trying to make sure
he got credit for the score.
Speaker 9 (13:45):
It was just kind of an interesting, smaller scale drug story,
but had just enough interest it would make the paper.
The day before Jonathan went missing, he had reached out
and said, hey, you'll want to be in court in
the morning. They're probably going to plead out, you know.
Just he wanted to make sure it was going to
get some coverage, and so I made a point put
it on my calendar to be there that morning. I
(14:08):
thought that would be a good story that the paper
would want to have.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
Jonathan's called to Gibson the day before he died, which
has never before been reported, goes straight to a key
issue in his death investigation. One of the supporting planks
to the suicide theory was that Jonathan was so distraught
about what was happening in the trial and the fact
that it was breaking down into a plea on lesser charges,
(14:38):
that it was a stressor that drove him to take
his own life, but that doesn't appear to be the
case at all. Gibson tells us Jonathan was actively seeking
out press for this accomplishment, and it wasn't the first
time either. Do you remember any specific cases that he
reached out to you about and thought you should cover.
Speaker 9 (15:00):
So Jonathan was an assistant US attorney that was still
sort of establishing himself in that office, and a lot
of his kind of bread and butter work were, you know,
heroin cases, gang cases, coming mostly out of the drug
trade in Baltimore, and the paper was interested in covering those,
so it got his name in the paper, and it's
(15:21):
that sort of symbiotic reporter and source relationship, you know.
And in all of that, Jonathan was a really charming guy.
So he wore his hair a little long and curly,
and he had a great smile and he was chatty.
So it was a guy who was just really easy
to like, and you found yourself kind of rooting for
(15:43):
him in cases where you were, of course supposed to be,
you know, the neutral person sitting on the bench in
the back. And I think he had a lot of
folks in the legal community there that were really taken
by him and really saw big things ahead for him.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
And the biggest thing in front of Jonathan in the
four days before he died was his Stash House Records case.
A win might get him out of the doghouse with
his boss, and a loss might be devastating to his career.
And so the facts of what happened in that trial,
both in and outside the courtroom, would be scrupulously scrutinized
(16:19):
by investigators. And who better to do that for us
than the man who had a front row seat to
Jonathan's last trial.
Speaker 11 (16:28):
My full name is Archangelo Michael Tuminelli, although I only
used the M as an initial.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
I am from Bolt Defense attorney. Archie Tuminelli has over
four decades of Baltimore court experience. He represented Walter Poindexter,
one of the two defendants in the Stash House Records case.
Let's talk about the environment in the two thousands of
what was going on in the federal court system criminal
cases wise.
Speaker 11 (16:57):
In Baltimore, the over wwhelming majority of cases being tried
were multi defendant drug conspiracies.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So if we could just tee.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
Up what that case was about, it was the USA
versus Poindexter and Smith. Can you give us a summary
of what that case was.
Speaker 11 (17:18):
The government had a cooperating witness who had been charged
himself prior to the indictment of Smith and Poindexter. Then
you know, through his cooperation, told the agents that he
was working with that he could make buys from those two.
There were three control buys, two from Pointdexter, one from Smith,
(17:41):
and the two of them were indicted.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
A bit of terminology here might help. Despite the headline
grabbing stash house records, Veneer, Jonathan's final case was a
run of the mill by bust drug case. The FBI
used an informant whom they had already arrested, a man
named Warren Grace, to roll on people allegedly higher up
the drug chain, Dion Smith and Walter Poindexter, and to
(18:15):
gather evidence. They would send Grace with Mark money to
buy drugs from the two men. And when the FEDS
are involved in something as pedestrian as a controlled drug buy,
they're going to have overkill. Almost one hundred hours of
audio and video recordings, surveillance photos the whole shooting match
exactly the type of evidence that ninety five percent of
(18:36):
the time ensures a guilty plea. But that's not what
happened here.
Speaker 11 (18:43):
So both defendants wanted to work out please. But the
problem with Poindexter was there was a murder that wasn't
charged that the government believed he had committed, and under
the guidelines at that time, if Poindexter had worked out
(19:07):
a plea, the judge would be able to consider that
and his guidelines would resulted in a potential license. So
I say, you know, get rid of the murder, give
me an insurance that you can't use that in writing,
and we'll be all right. And he kept saying, we
can't do that, We can't, I can't get permission for.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
That, which is really unusual because you know, you know
how that works, right, Yeah.
Speaker 11 (19:30):
Under the guidelines, the court could look at all the
behavior that was related to the charge for which the
defendant was convicted. The court could sentence the person as
if the person were convicted of a murder.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
The related conduct provisions of the sentencing guidelines, in effect
at the time, were one of a prosecutor's biggest arrows.
In essence, all you had to do was wait for
a defendant to plead guilty and then give whatever information
you had about his related conduct to the Probation Department,
who would then write it up for the judge to
(20:12):
consider it sentencing. And Jonathan, like all ausas, wasn't permitted
without supervisor approval to give that up, especially when the
related conduct was a murder.
Speaker 11 (20:25):
I told Jonathan, look, you have to give me assurances
that if he pleads when we get the sentencing, you're
not going to try and use the murder and say
the murder was related. And at that point, Jonathan is
like really pressing me to work this case out.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
So what do you say.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
I'll give you verbal assurances.
Speaker 11 (20:47):
I just can't do now, right And now what he
told me he just couldn't get approval not to do that,
so he wanted a play without any kind of assurances
about the murder.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
Jonathan's reluctance to come to terms on a plea agreement
has many possible interpretations, particularly in light of his imminent death.
The most obvious is that he was simply following US
Attorney guidelines prohibiting him from waiving related conduct for an
alleged murder, But he also could have had reluctance going
to a supervisor for approval in a situation that might
(21:25):
make him look weak with his boss. And there was
a very specific reason why Jonathan may have been concerned.
Speaker 11 (21:32):
And he kept saying, we can't do that, we can't,
I can't get permission for that.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Did Jonathan want to do that?
Speaker 11 (21:38):
Or and he was getting Jonathan Jonathan wanted to do that.
But the problem was, I don't know to what extent
Jonathan was disclosing the information to his supervisor. Something that
I haven't mentioned yet about this case, which you probably
know about with regard to Grace.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Right, Grace as in War and Grace, the cooperating witness
that the government had flipped to buy drugs from and
then testify against his former friends Walter Poindexter and Dion Smith.
You see, even though the government had one hundred hours
of audio and videotape to support their Stash House records case,
(22:25):
they would need Grace to testify to authenticate the voices
and give the tapes context, and Grace's credibility would be
a key issue determining whether Walter Poindexter and Dion Smith
would spend the next fifty years in jail.
Speaker 11 (22:40):
We knew that Grace during the period he was cooperating
with the government. He was placed on electronic monitoring, but
he was home and.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
He was under the supervision of the FBI at that point.
Speaker 11 (22:54):
Yeah, right, And Ken had followed the motion to ask
the court to order the Preachile Services Division to show
us their foul on Grace.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
Ken is Ken Ravenel, the defense attorney for the other
co defendant, Dion Smith.
Speaker 11 (23:13):
I can tell you, as someone who practiced all the
time in federal court, that would have been a laughable motion.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
The timing, outcome, and consequences of this ordinarily laughable motion
in Jonathan Luna's last case are potentially critical to understanding
his state of mind the night he died. The Stash
House records case began on Monday afternoon, December one, two
thousand and three. The defense attorneys gave their opening statements
(23:45):
after the lunch break, and Jonathan called Warren Grace as
his first witness, leading him through preliminaries and setting the
stage for him to authenticate the recorded drug buys. And
it was in that context that Attorney Ken Ravenel made
his life affable motion to get Grace's pre trial records.
At the end of the first day, do you think
Ken had information from pretrial someone to leaked to him.
Speaker 11 (24:08):
I don't know if I don't know if he did,
but look, you could never get that information. No, no
judge down there would order that. So it wasn't the
sort of thing that defense attorneys would typically even asked for,
but Ken asked for it.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
Judge Quarrels was a former prosecutor himself and a hard
nosed judge. He wasn't about to let two curious defense
attorneys go sniffing around in what were essentially court files
relating to a witness without more cause. But he promised
Ravenol he would have pretrial services prepare a summary of
Grace's pretrial violations for the following day. With that out
(24:47):
of the way, the judge then took his impatience with
the trial's pace and Luna's preparedness out on the young lawyer.
Here's the reporter who sat literally in the middle of
that crossfire that afternoon.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
My name's Nybridcherson. I was a federal court reporter for
years and years. I saw many a trial in my day,
and I loved my work, and I made a lot
of friends, and I messed it terrible when I left.
Speaker 5 (25:20):
So former court reporter Ned Richardson is retired now, and
although he has a tendency to romantically reminisce about his job,
he's got a pretty clear memory of what happened in
the Stash House Records case. Do you remember much about
the dynamic at play between the judge and the defense
attorneys and Jonathan?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Was it tense? Yeah? It was ten. Yeah, I don't
know why what war see. By the time I get
in court, it just seemed like bombs were bursting in air,
and I thought, what I don't understand. I couldn't get
into my head what's going on?
Speaker 5 (25:58):
Why it's attorneys in Luna or the judge and.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Luna mostly more with the judge. I don't know why.
I thought something terrible must have happened, because he would
just lean on him, you know. It was like sometimes
I felt like he was going to out of his way,
and I thought, well, did we get through this all
on one piece? I thought I was going to get
Hazar's duty pay. I thought, good habits. What is going on?
Speaker 5 (26:26):
What was happening was that the judge was frustrated with
Jonathan's performance that day, primarily because he perceived that Luna
was wasting his and the jury's time by being both
unprepared and by not corralling his evasive cooperating witness Warren
Grace to stay on message. And Judge Quarrels was notorious
(26:47):
for his obsession with time.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Well, I had the misfortune being assigned to Judge Quarles,
and that was the saddest day in my life. I
think I went into him and he had this maniacal
obsession about punctuality. And if you came into his court
and you were five ten mens late, you were dead meat.
(27:12):
I mean, that was it. That was like a capital offense.
He would yell at the lawyers. Told I thought, my God,
did give me the guys five minutes late? You know, well,
we would start without him, We would actually start without
an attorney. It just got on the nerves.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
And even though Judge Quarrels would later say he was
a mentor to Jonathan during this stash House records case,
he showed no favoritism and treated him with the standard
disdain he saved for all time wasting lawyers.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
But the way Jonathan was acting when we got rolling,
it was like I looked at him like, oh my god,
what the hell would you do? I mean, mayn You're
you're in deep crap. He had to rast to what
I deal.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
With Somebody somewhere will return right after this break. The
next day, the second day of the Smith Poindexter trial,
would not go any better for Jonathan Warren. Grace was
(28:24):
back on the stand doing his reluctant witness bid, further
agitating the time obsessed judge, and at the appropriate time
during direct Jonathan did what every experienced litigator with a
bad witness does. He tried to take the sting out
of the expected defense cross examination in this case by
(28:45):
asking Grace about his pre trial release violations.
Speaker 11 (28:49):
Yeah, he's wearing a monitor on his ankle, and when
pre Trial Services finds out about this when he slips
the bracelet, Services.
Speaker 12 (29:01):
Filed a report to the court that this guy had
slipped his monitor and they were moving the court to
remove him from pre Trial Services supervision.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
Unfortunately for Jonathan, the more facts he tried to elicit
from Grace about what happened when he slipped the bracelet,
the worse his witness looked. And as the testimony continued,
it wasn't so much Grace that looked bad to the jury,
as it was Jonathan to the judge. Quarrels was becoming
increasingly open to defense counsel's arguments that Jonathan had not
(29:38):
properly disclosed everything he knew about Grace's actions, and at
the conclusion of the second day of trial, the judge
would have had enough.
Speaker 11 (29:47):
And to my surprise, Judge Quarrels ordered pre trial to
sit down with the two of us and go through
pre trial's fall, an order.
Speaker 5 (29:59):
That would that in motion a series of events that
would culminate in Jonathan's death just thirty six hours later.
Next time, on somebody somewhere.
Speaker 9 (30:21):
I told him, by the way, you are not getting
the style. You're not getting these documents, but you can
ask questions.
Speaker 11 (30:27):
In all the years I've been here, I've never seen
anything like this.
Speaker 9 (30:33):
Carls knew Warren Grace was shady, shady dude, and that
Jonathan should have known about it.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Jonathan was so distracted he couldn't keep it together, and
I thought something is wrong.
Speaker 11 (30:47):
Jonathan wanted to do that, but the problem was to
BODYO was trying to fire him.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
So I told him move all. That's the last time
I saw Jonathan alive.
Speaker 11 (31:01):
Here it goes the devil telling me to lie again,
says I'm around me sales.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
It's all right to Britain that you can get more.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Don you give.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
Somebody Somewhere is a production of Rainstream Media Incorporated. Sound design,
editing and mixing has been provided by Resonate Recordings. Original
score and voiceover work provided by Hallie Paine. Artwork provided
by Evan McGlenn and Kendall Paine. If you have any
information regarding the Jonathan Luna case, please contact us via
(31:42):
our website sbswpodcast dot com. And finally, if you enjoyed
this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
It really helps and we really appreciate it. Thank you
for listening.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Dear God, it I hate to say I'm sun.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
Would I just want.
Speaker 11 (32:10):
To love.
Speaker 7 (32:13):
Nep don't still love mon?
Speaker 3 (32:19):
I need more money
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