September 10, 2025 • 10 mins
THE TECH BRO MURDERS is a new true crime series exploring the dark side of Silicon Valley – where brilliance and madness collide with sinister consequences. Guided by retired Palo Alto PD detective Sandra Brown, the six-part series unpacks some of the most shocking and twisted murder cases going back to the early days of the tech boom, when being on the cutting edge could carry a deadly price.Featuring expert analysis from Brown, who holds connections and insight into the featured cases, THE TECH BRO MURDERS unpacks tragedies that unfold in the high-stakes digital frontier of Silicon Valley where the culmination of ambition, genius, greed, and power can breed violence and deceit. From the discovery of a body of a known tech executive on his private yacht after a heroin-fueled evening with a mystery femme fatale to a cold case unearthed by a governor bid, each episode of THE TECH BRO MURDERS explores cases that have haunted Silicon Valley for decades, offering access to key voices of victim’s loved ones, law enforcement officers, and archival footage. In the season premiere Killer Code, airing Tuesday, September 9 at 10/9c on ID, police have a puzzle to solve when they find a gifted programmer and a jilted lover at the scene of the murder of a beloved 62-year-old Menlo Park, CA resident. As they work to get to the bottom of who is responsible, the investigation leads them in an unexpected direction.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and good morning, detective. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm pretty happy?
Speaker 3 (00:04):
How are you? Ooh?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I love that term, because in order to be pretty happy,
you've got to really be living it.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
You know, we have nothing to complain about. That's where
I go. I say this to everybody everywhere, and people
are always surprised why I've never heard that before, and
then it makes them happy.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well, so that's my vote.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
What part of the country are you from, because I mean,
it's like being from Montana. There's a different way that
we explained. I always say I'm fantastic people, what really Well, yeah,
that's what I was trained to say. I'm fantastic.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
No, I'm born and bred in California, lived in the
Bay Area until about three years ago, and now I
reside in Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So you have lived with this around you for a
very long period of time. You know, we're talking about
the tech the tech world where I mean, my god,
I didn't realize half the stuff that you're talking about
inside this and it really is an eye opener for me.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yes, yes, so, I mean I I've moved to Santa
when I was five. My entire family worked Silicon Valley
I worked Silicon Valley before I became a police officer,
and then I worked in Palo Alto, which is the
gateway back in the day to Silicon Valley. So you know,
very familiar with all of this, very familiar.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, But did you know that all of this was
taking place behind the scenes, because I guess I don't
look at the tech world as being basically an underground
black world.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, you know, I'll.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Be honest with you, a lot of people don't. And
working as working homicide cases for the city of Palo Alto,
of course I knew because we had some cases.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
That would just blow you out of the water.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I mean we you know, we had cases where people
were trying to stage the murder to make it look
like something else, and then when you get there and
you go, wait a minute, nothing's adding up.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
This doesn't look right.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
You know, my wife fell down the stairs when you
actually murdered her and then threw down the stairs and
make it look like she fell down the stairs and
put her shoes in the steps backwards.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Sometimes these people are so are away from reality. They
have so much money, and they have so much genius,
and they have so much ambition that they forget they're
just as common as everybody else is. But their minds
make them think that they could get away with anything,
and sometimes their mind makes them think they can get
away with murder.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
See I would be the guy that would walk up
onto a scene and see how unbelievable it is and
then go, where's Leonardo DiCaprio. I know this has got
to be a movie set. There's no way this is happening.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I got to be honest with you.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
They sometimes they do make movie right, they do make
movies out of them. So, for instance, we have this
this stereotypical idea within the world, and I'll bring it
down to the country and I'll bring it down to
the West Coast that if you live in Silicon Valley,
that if you work for a tech company or you
have an idea and then you can make it big,
(02:47):
that everything's going to be fine. The world's going to
be perfect. You're going to live in a mansion, you're
going to drive a high priced car, your kid's going
to go to private school, you're gonna have a private jet,
you're gonna eat the best restaurants, and it all looks
fine and Danby, But for the reality everybody that moves
to Silicon Valley or thinks about working in Silicon Valley.
You know, there's more failures in Silicon Valley than there
(03:08):
are people who have made it. And for some of
those people who have failed, it's heartbreaking and sometimes it
tips them over. They can't they can't deal with it.
And so these six cases that we're going to see
over the next six weeks, and let me just put
what I got to put out there. Tonight's number one
Killer Code. It starts at ten o'clock ninth Central. It's
(03:30):
going to be on Investigation Discovery Channel, commonly referred to as.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
The ID Channel. Everybody loves the ID Channel. It's also
going to be Ono.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Max, and we'll see them consecutively over the next six weeks.
This will bring people to a reality that just because
you made it in Silicon Valley doesn't mean you made
it in the world. And maybe there's not as many
happy people in Silicon Valley as one would think.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Please do not move. There's more with Detectives Under Brown
coming up next on Investigation and Discovery, the ID Channel,
The Tech bro Murders. We're back with Detective Center Brown.
I think the eye opening thing here, and the you know,
where you start getting compassion and empathy for the innocent
people is the fact that this is like a bad
(04:13):
drug deal gone wrong, but it's it's involving technology. And
I think that's the big shocker for me because you
think of big business, Oh, we're safe with the big company.
They got the money to back them up.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
No, because when you look at also to these cases,
these people either worked at Cisco, Google, Facebook, I mean,
the dreams of these these tech bros. Right, people look
at that from the Midwest and from the other side
of the country, like, oh my goodness. You know, when
I grew up in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and
technology was just in the Bay Area. Of course, now
(04:49):
it's everywhere, right, But this whole idea, I.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Mean things costs.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
The the cost of living in the Bay Area has skyrocketed.
A house I grew up in that was probably one
hundred and thirty thousand.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Is over a million dollars now, you know, And I've
seen people out.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
My husband and I recently traveled back to the bar
and went to all of our homes and homes.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
That we paid.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You know, we paid five hundred thousand, four three point
five million now right from twenty eight years ago. And
so you know, everybody wants to live that life. I
moved out because I don't want to live that life.
I want to live a simple, quiet life here. I
live now in Phoenix, Like I said, in Phoenix, Arizona.
I live in a great neighborhood. And crime can occur
(05:30):
here as well. Crime doesn't have a zip code, and
people think.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
That it does.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Right, People think, I mean, isn't that the truth? People
think that, oh, it's only going to happen in the
inner cities, It's only going to happen in and I'm
quoting here. My fingers are doing a litle coote thing
because I don't believe in ghettos, but I believe the
lower socio economic communities.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
People believe that.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Those crimes only happen there, or you got to be
on drugs, or you've got to be in a motorcycle gang,
or you got to be you know, all these other
ideas and stereotypes that they have. You know what, you
can be wealthy, you can have a lot of money,
you can live in a nice home, and you can
still commit crime, and or you can still be a
victim of said crime. And so you know, six, these
(06:12):
six episodes and documentaries will will even the playing score
that people will see and say, oh, okay, I really
want to live like that, But maybe I don't. Maybe
you know, maybe I have this bit of that.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
It's a wonderful, great world, but maybe it's not.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
It's an eye opener. I mean to the point to
where I actually looked at my wife and I said, hey, look,
I said, I said, is the big push to get
away from Silicon Valley to go to Texas because they
don't want to play with their past anymore? And they
think that, oh, if we replant our seeds, we're going
to have a better life.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah. Well you know what I say to that, people
be careful. Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
It doesn't matter. When I was working in Palo Alto,
and I've said this so many times over the years,
people always used to say, oh my god, I love
living here.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It's so safe.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
We don't even lock our doors at night. Okay, no,
you need to lock your doors, right? How many how
many cases have I responded to where someone was in uh,
in their house sleeping on the couch because they thought
they were home, because they were intoxicated, and you know,
you wake up and you see a stranger in your home.
You know how frightening that is, especially if you have
(07:17):
little kids, you know. And so I used to tell
people all the time, lock your doors, because just because
you live in a mansion and a nice neighborhood doesn't
mean that sometimes people drive through those neighborhoods and they take,
you know, they take opportunities of your unlocked door to
rob you, to urgalize.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Detective with everything that you have studied in doing and
bringing criminals to you know, to justice. The thing about
it is, though, is that they don't look like the
people that we call criminals. They have a different look
about them that which just I think maybe that might
be the shaker part.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Well, well here's the shaker part. That's called bias.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Right, People say, oh, he especially when they're watching these
crime shows, all I knew was him, he looks crazy.
And then.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Tie or the lady of a nice dress and the
nice expensive shoes, They go, oh, I would have never
thought that, right.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Because we these stereotypes, and unfortunately, because of movies and
television and news and what you know's what's being put
out there, sometimes we're right. Yeah, he was the killer
and he looked like the killer. But a lot of
times were wrong. And Silicon Valley is a I grew
up there. It was a wonderful place to grow up.
I loved living there. I just, you know, I just thought,
(08:26):
you know, let's go try something different and live a
little I'm living better than I would have lived in
the Bay Area here in Phoenix. But I'll say it again.
Crime doesn't have a zip code, crime doesn't have a
look right. And in these six episodes, you will see
people who have made it that lost their lives. You
will also see people who struggled and strived to make
(08:47):
it and they became violent, and they were the ones
that committed the crimes.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
This is not just a California thing, is it. I mean,
when you talk about technology, this is global.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Oh yeah, it's global.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
You know, the grass always looks better on the other side,
but when you get there.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
You wish you'd stay where you were.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Okay, it's all based it's all, you know, it's all
we get it wrong. Sometimes it's all based on stereotypical
stuff that doesn't make any sense. We have to, you know,
we have to, we have to be safe. We have
to look over our shoulders. Sometimes, we have to lock
our doors sometimes. And you know, you might want to
go and be in Silicon Valley and be wealthy, being
(09:25):
rich and all that stuff, but you know, it's not
always the best thing for an individual.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Where can people go to find out more about everything
that you're doing and get on board with this six
part series.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Well, it starts tonight ten o'clock ninth Central on Investigation
Discovery commonly referred to as the ID Channel, and it's
also on HBO Max and it will show at the
same time ten o'clock ninth Central the next uh sit tonight,
in the next the following five tunesdays.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Oh man, you got to come back to this show
anytime in the future. I love what you are doing.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Wait a minute now, so you you're in North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
North Carolina, I've been there when I've rolled through. I'm
gonna look you up.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Please do. We'll get together for some southern barbecue.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Oh I got that.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Will you'd be brilliant today? Okay, thank you, Take care
Hello and good morning, detective. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm pretty happy?
Speaker 3 (00:04):
How are you? Ooh?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I love that term, because in order to be pretty happy,
you've got to really be living it.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
You know, we have nothing to complain about. That's where
I go. I say this to everybody everywhere, and people
are always surprised why I've never heard that before, and
then it makes them happy.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well, so that's my vote.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
What part of the country are you from, because I mean,
it's like being from Montana. There's a different way that
we explained. I always say I'm fantastic people, what really Well, yeah,
that's what I was trained to say. I'm fantastic.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
No, I'm born and bred in California, lived in the
Bay Area until about three years ago, and now I
reside in Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So you have lived with this around you for a
very long period of time. You know, we're talking about
the tech the tech world where I mean, my god,
I didn't realize half the stuff that you're talking about
inside this and it really is an eye opener for me.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yes, yes, so, I mean I I've moved to Santa
when I was five. My entire family worked Silicon Valley
I worked Silicon Valley before I became a police officer,
and then I worked in Palo Alto, which is the
gateway back in the day to Silicon Valley. So you know,
very familiar with all of this, very familiar.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, But did you know that all of this was
taking place behind the scenes, because I guess I don't
look at the tech world as being basically an underground
black world.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, you know, I'll.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Be honest with you, a lot of people don't. And
working as working homicide cases for the city of Palo Alto,
of course I knew because we had some cases.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
That would just blow you out of the water.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I mean we you know, we had cases where people
were trying to stage the murder to make it look
like something else, and then when you get there and
you go, wait a minute, nothing's adding up.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
This doesn't look right.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
You know, my wife fell down the stairs when you
actually murdered her and then threw down the stairs and
make it look like she fell down the stairs and
put her shoes in the steps backwards.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Sometimes these people are so are away from reality. They
have so much money, and they have so much genius,
and they have so much ambition that they forget they're
just as common as everybody else is. But their minds
make them think that they could get away with anything,
and sometimes their mind makes them think they can get
away with murder.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
See I would be the guy that would walk up
onto a scene and see how unbelievable it is and
then go, where's Leonardo DiCaprio. I know this has got
to be a movie set. There's no way this is happening.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I got to be honest with you.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
They sometimes they do make movie right, they do make
movies out of them. So, for instance, we have this
this stereotypical idea within the world, and I'll bring it
down to the country and I'll bring it down to
the West Coast that if you live in Silicon Valley,
that if you work for a tech company or you
have an idea and then you can make it big,
(02:47):
that everything's going to be fine. The world's going to
be perfect. You're going to live in a mansion, you're
going to drive a high priced car, your kid's going
to go to private school, you're gonna have a private jet,
you're gonna eat the best restaurants, and it all looks
fine and Danby, But for the reality everybody that moves
to Silicon Valley or thinks about working in Silicon Valley.
You know, there's more failures in Silicon Valley than there
(03:08):
are people who have made it. And for some of
those people who have failed, it's heartbreaking and sometimes it
tips them over. They can't they can't deal with it.
And so these six cases that we're going to see
over the next six weeks, and let me just put
what I got to put out there. Tonight's number one
Killer Code. It starts at ten o'clock ninth Central. It's
(03:30):
going to be on Investigation Discovery Channel, commonly referred to as.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
The ID Channel. Everybody loves the ID Channel. It's also
going to be Ono.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Max, and we'll see them consecutively over the next six weeks.
This will bring people to a reality that just because
you made it in Silicon Valley doesn't mean you made
it in the world. And maybe there's not as many
happy people in Silicon Valley as one would think.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Please do not move. There's more with Detectives Under Brown
coming up next on Investigation and Discovery, the ID Channel,
The Tech bro Murders. We're back with Detective Center Brown.
I think the eye opening thing here, and the you know,
where you start getting compassion and empathy for the innocent
people is the fact that this is like a bad
(04:13):
drug deal gone wrong, but it's it's involving technology. And
I think that's the big shocker for me because you
think of big business, Oh, we're safe with the big company.
They got the money to back them up.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
No, because when you look at also to these cases,
these people either worked at Cisco, Google, Facebook, I mean,
the dreams of these these tech bros. Right, people look
at that from the Midwest and from the other side
of the country, like, oh my goodness. You know, when
I grew up in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and
technology was just in the Bay Area. Of course, now
(04:49):
it's everywhere, right, But this whole idea, I.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Mean things costs.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
The the cost of living in the Bay Area has skyrocketed.
A house I grew up in that was probably one
hundred and thirty thousand.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Is over a million dollars now, you know, And I've
seen people out.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
My husband and I recently traveled back to the bar
and went to all of our homes and homes.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
That we paid.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You know, we paid five hundred thousand, four three point
five million now right from twenty eight years ago. And
so you know, everybody wants to live that life. I
moved out because I don't want to live that life.
I want to live a simple, quiet life here. I
live now in Phoenix, Like I said, in Phoenix, Arizona.
I live in a great neighborhood. And crime can occur
(05:30):
here as well. Crime doesn't have a zip code, and
people think.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
That it does.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Right, People think, I mean, isn't that the truth? People
think that, oh, it's only going to happen in the
inner cities, It's only going to happen in and I'm
quoting here. My fingers are doing a litle coote thing
because I don't believe in ghettos, but I believe the
lower socio economic communities.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
People believe that.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Those crimes only happen there, or you got to be
on drugs, or you've got to be in a motorcycle gang,
or you got to be you know, all these other
ideas and stereotypes that they have. You know what, you
can be wealthy, you can have a lot of money,
you can live in a nice home, and you can
still commit crime, and or you can still be a
victim of said crime. And so you know, six, these
(06:12):
six episodes and documentaries will will even the playing score
that people will see and say, oh, okay, I really
want to live like that, But maybe I don't. Maybe
you know, maybe I have this bit of that.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
It's a wonderful, great world, but maybe it's not.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
It's an eye opener. I mean to the point to
where I actually looked at my wife and I said, hey, look,
I said, I said, is the big push to get
away from Silicon Valley to go to Texas because they
don't want to play with their past anymore? And they
think that, oh, if we replant our seeds, we're going
to have a better life.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah. Well you know what I say to that, people
be careful. Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
It doesn't matter. When I was working in Palo Alto,
and I've said this so many times over the years,
people always used to say, oh my god, I love
living here.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It's so safe.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
We don't even lock our doors at night. Okay, no,
you need to lock your doors, right? How many how
many cases have I responded to where someone was in uh,
in their house sleeping on the couch because they thought
they were home, because they were intoxicated, and you know,
you wake up and you see a stranger in your home.
You know how frightening that is, especially if you have
(07:17):
little kids, you know. And so I used to tell
people all the time, lock your doors, because just because
you live in a mansion and a nice neighborhood doesn't
mean that sometimes people drive through those neighborhoods and they take,
you know, they take opportunities of your unlocked door to
rob you, to urgalize.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Detective with everything that you have studied in doing and
bringing criminals to you know, to justice. The thing about
it is, though, is that they don't look like the
people that we call criminals. They have a different look
about them that which just I think maybe that might
be the shaker part.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Well, well here's the shaker part. That's called bias.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Right, People say, oh, he especially when they're watching these
crime shows, all I knew was him, he looks crazy.
And then.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Tie or the lady of a nice dress and the
nice expensive shoes, They go, oh, I would have never
thought that, right.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Because we these stereotypes, and unfortunately, because of movies and
television and news and what you know's what's being put
out there, sometimes we're right. Yeah, he was the killer
and he looked like the killer. But a lot of
times were wrong. And Silicon Valley is a I grew
up there. It was a wonderful place to grow up.
I loved living there. I just, you know, I just thought,
(08:26):
you know, let's go try something different and live a
little I'm living better than I would have lived in
the Bay Area here in Phoenix. But I'll say it again.
Crime doesn't have a zip code, crime doesn't have a
look right. And in these six episodes, you will see
people who have made it that lost their lives. You
will also see people who struggled and strived to make
(08:47):
it and they became violent, and they were the ones
that committed the crimes.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
This is not just a California thing, is it. I mean,
when you talk about technology, this is global.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Oh yeah, it's global.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
You know, the grass always looks better on the other side,
but when you get there.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
You wish you'd stay where you were.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Okay, it's all based it's all, you know, it's all
we get it wrong. Sometimes it's all based on stereotypical
stuff that doesn't make any sense. We have to, you know,
we have to, we have to be safe. We have
to look over our shoulders. Sometimes, we have to lock
our doors sometimes. And you know, you might want to
go and be in Silicon Valley and be wealthy, being
(09:25):
rich and all that stuff, but you know, it's not
always the best thing for an individual.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Where can people go to find out more about everything
that you're doing and get on board with this six
part series.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Well, it starts tonight ten o'clock ninth Central on Investigation
Discovery commonly referred to as the ID Channel, and it's
also on HBO Max and it will show at the
same time ten o'clock ninth Central the next uh sit tonight,
in the next the following five tunesdays.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Oh man, you got to come back to this show
anytime in the future. I love what you are doing.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Wait a minute now, so you you're in North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
North Carolina, I've been there when I've rolled through. I'm
gonna look you up.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Please do. We'll get together for some southern barbecue.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Oh I got that.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Will you'd be brilliant today? Okay, thank you, Take care
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The Charlie Kirk Show
Charlie is America's hardest working grassroots activist who has your inside scoop on the biggest news of the day and what's really going on behind the headlines. The founder of Turning Point USA and one of social media's most engaged personalities, Charlie is on the front lines of America’s culture war, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of students on over 3,500 college and high school campuses across the country, bringing you your daily dose of clarity in a sea of chaos all from his signature no-holds-barred, unapologetically conservative, freedom-loving point of view. You can also watch Charlie Kirk on Salem News Channel