Category: Crime Redefined Podcast

Find Terrence Woods-Part 1-S1 33

27-year-old Terrence Woods went missing on October 5, 2018.  He was working with a production crew that was filming a TV series in mountainous central Idaho.  Reportedly he ran down a steep embankment in the Idaho wilderness never to be seen again.  His father Terrence Woods, Sr. joins Crime Redefined to set the record straight on what may have happened and how he feels the investigation has been handled and portrayed in the media. Part 1 of 2 of our interview with Terrence Woods, Sr. https://www.gofundme.com/f/2hqmj-find-my-missing-son-terrence-woods

[00:00:00] Announcer: Welcome to the Crime Redefined Podcast produced by Zero Cliff Media coming to you from the US Bank Tower high above downtown Los Angeles. In our podcast, we drill deep into forensics and criminal investigation from the viewpoint of the defense, as well as explore the intersection of the media and the justice system.

[00:00:21] Dion Mitchell: Thanks for joining us on Crime Redefined today. I’m Dion Mitchell here with my Crime Redefined cohost Mehul Anjaria. We truly appreciate you taking the time to listen to our episodes and interact with us on social media.

[00:00:33] Mehul Anjaria: Please keep the comments coming on Twitter and Instagram and all of that, we like to hear your feedback and commentary on how we’re doing. So today we have the honor of talking to Terrence Woods Sr. whose son Terrence Jr., mysteriously disappeared almost three years ago on October 5th, 2018 to this day there are no real substantial leads as to what may have happened to him. So needless to say, this has been a very grueling and long ordeal for our special guest today.

[00:01:06] Dion Mitchell: We just felt it was important to give Terrence Senior another platform to get his perspective on his son’s disappearance out there, just like in a cold case investigation, the more, the story is told, the more likely it is that someone will come forward with new information, ideas, or resources to help solve this mystery. So today we’re going to take a little bit of time and we’re going to set this up for you with all the details that we have and where things stand as of today.

[00:01:35] Mehul Anjaria: Yeah. This will be brief, I mean, certainly you can read a lot about the case and we’ll, after we talked to Terrence, we can all decide what are established facts and what are in question, but it goes like this Terrence Jr. was part of a 12 person crew from a London based production company and they were on site in Idaho working on a TV show in the Orogrande area of Central Idaho.

[00:02:01] Dion Mitchell: Now another kind of full disclosure, I’m familiar with this area and it is heavily forested and it’s also at elevation of about 4,500 feet. It is truly a no man’s land where the Penman mine is located as you’ll hear from Terrence, even the basic facts surrounding his son’s disappearance are not necessarily agreed on.

[00:02:22] Mehul Anjaria: Right. So let’s go with again, just what’s been reported kind of universally, so it was reported that on the evening of October 5th, 2018, again, almost three years ago that Terrence, all of a sudden said that he needed to go to the bathroom and he put down his handheld radio and proceeded to run extremely fast down a very steep embankment into treacherous terrain and from that point supposedly crew members ran down this embankment after him basically didn’t see him, I guess they couldn’t catch up to him. Didn’t find a trace of him and it was claimed that when these crew members then came back up the embankment, that because of the terrain and all the trees, their clothes were torn and they were actually scraped up

[00:03:09] Dion Mitchell: As they should be. Like I said, this is heavily forested and most of the ground there is either, what’s the word for it? Where branches and stuff come down and it’s a lot of shale rock. So it’s slippery going and I believe there was snow on the ground at the time, or at least some moisture, which would have made it even more treacherous, Mehul.

[00:03:29] Mehul Anjaria: Yeah. We’ll get into this, but it’s worth noting that Terrence was not known as a mountain man or anything like that.

[00:03:36] Dion Mitchell: I think it’s fair to say he’s a city guy for the most part.

[00:03:38] Mehul Anjaria: And there were descriptions. Yeah. Him running like, like a hare or something very fast down the steep embankment. So we’ll get into that with Terrence.

[00:03:46] Dion Mitchell: So anyway, the crew now, did what they needed to do and a put out the call and a search ensued for Terrence Jr. In this harsh terrain, including scent dogs, helicopters with thermal imaging equipment and a search and rescue team. There was no evidence developed that Terrence had been in the area it was claimed that he ran to.

[00:04:08] Mehul Anjaria: So now this is an interesting development. I think this would depend on what filter, you’re looking at the facts through. So what you described can mean one or two things, basically, right? This is a mystery. This guy ran down and there’s this no sight of him. What, what the hell happened, or if you want to play devil’s advocate, you might look at this and say, well, wait a minute. They threw everything they could and there’s no sign that he ever ran down that embankment, so did that even happen? So, of course, Terrence Senior and Terrence’s mom wanted to get out to Idaho as soon as possible, find out what the heck was going on and when they did that, they expected to meet with the Sheriff of Idaho county, as well as the TV crew that Terrence was with on the shoot, because obviously they would be the best witness, but when they got to the Sheriff’s department, there was only one crew member left at the meeting and apparently the rest had already returned to London, and this episode that they were all filming actually never made it to the air.

[00:05:08] Dion Mitchell: So it just kind of, just ups, the level of the mystery, right?

[00:05:12] Mehul Anjaria: Yeah, it sure does. Is there a reason that they weren’t at the Sheriff’s department?

[00:05:17] Dion Mitchell: If anything it just doesn’t look right. So although Terrence has spent some time in London working in production, he’d been living with Terrance senior in Maryland when he agreed to the goldmine shoot. When Terrance left home for the shoot, the first stop he made with the crew was actually, and I believe he was picked up in the, in an airport in Montana , it was not in Idaho. So as you will hear from Terrence Senior, the overall investigation is sadly lacking. Which in my opinion is kind of a mystery there another mystery in itself, there does not seem to even be definitive evidence that Terrence ever made it to Idaho from Montana.

[00:05:58] Mehul Anjaria: Yeah, Dion I have to admit, I really hadn’t heard of this case until you brought it to my attention year and a half ago and I know you kept pushing me. Hey, check this out and then when I finally did.

[00:06:09] Dion Mitchell: I know you love a good mystery.

[00:06:10] Mehul Anjaria: Absolutely, and you were right so, you know, to kind of study up on the case. I think we both read the articles that were out there. There’s one on Deadline, there’s one on Vice, I think those are the major ones anyway and then there’s a six-part Fox Five podcast called Missing Pieces: Into the Woods and then finally at the end of 2020 there was a Dr. Phil episode dedicated to the disappearance of Terrence and yeah. I have to say, I tuned out a little bit after Dr. Phil and I sort of just assumed that, well, after the Dr. Phil episode, there’s going to be a big break. That’s going to solve it. That’s the publicity, it needed a, there’s going to be some new leads and all of that and then, just, I don’t know, a few weeks ago, poking around on the internet. I couldn’t find one development in that case, or any evidence of any leads that came from the Dr. Phil Show and I was kind of shocked because, isn’t that the thing now in cold case investigation, that you get it on a podcast, you get it on, somebody and it just shakes it up.

[00:07:14] Dion Mitchell: I mean, come on. This is Dr. Phil. That’s a lot of eyeballs.

[00:07:16] Mehul Anjaria: Yeah. I mean, how are you going to reach more people? In fact, we talked to Lindsey Wade about that too, about rewarming these cold cases and that something always shakes out in this day and age of social media and all that didn’t happen here.

[00:07:31] Dion Mitchell: Yeah. So instead of rehashing the prevailing narrative on what happened at Terrence Jr and pretending we were experts on this case, we wanted to speak directly to Terrence Sr, to get a more well-rounded view of some of the puzzling, assertions and facts surrounding the investigation.

[00:07:48] Mehul Anjaria: Yeah it’s frustrating that there’s just a lot of speculation out there. There’s a lot of connecting the dots, maybe prematurely without the hard evidence or without that what I want to see. I want to see that physical evidence, show me some DNA,  I just, when I’m involved in post conviction investigations. The re-investigation is so thorough, people are knocking on doors and looking at reports and as we’re going to find out, there’s really a dearth of reports and stuff because of the status of the case and so now we’re left with a bunch of theories that are all over the place. So, some would say that well, Terrence he wanted to get off the grid and he wanted to disappear or ghost himself, or maybe there was foul play by somebody, maybe it was his coworkers did Terrence fall into mine shaft? Did he succumb to the elements or to a bear or something like that? There’s also rumor that Terrence had a mental breakdown and there’s probably a whole bunch more. So, our feeling here is let’s kind of get to the closest source we can which is Terrence Jr’s dad Terrence and in the end, as you’ll hear, we had a very poignant and I would say long discussion with Terrence. We’re gonna break this into a two-part episode, and we’re also working on potentially speaking to another person who’s very close to the case and may have some information. So here’s part one of our interview with Terrence Woods Sr.  Terrence we’re honored to have you on Crime Redefined today.

[00:09:18] Terrence Woods Sr.: I thank you for having me as well.

[00:09:20] Mehul Anjaria:  Yeah. Thank you so much for taking some time out of an evening and Terrence, it’s our hope that today’s interview will move that needle forward in the long process of getting some answers about your son.

[00:09:30] Terrence Woods Sr.: We definitely need the answers. It’s going on three years and every time I think I’m getting closer to something and get knocked back 25 feet. I’ve been on Dr. Phil I’ve been on talk shows, Fox Five other radio shows and, spoken to a lot of people in the, in the beginning, everybody, oh, we want to help, we can help X, Y, and Z and the next thing is a dead end.

[00:09:52] Dion Mitchell: Yeah, we’re going to try to do everything we can to just get more information out there and spread the word, but you know, my first question for you is how are you and how are your family? You just mentioned it’s coming up on three years. I’m just wondering how are you doing? And how’s your family doing?

[00:10:04] Terrence Woods Sr.: It’s real rough. I mean, because my two sons Terrance is my oldest and he’s 29 now my youngest son is 25. I’ve been raising my kids for over 18 years by myself although their mothers in their life, we’re not together and I, they’ve always been with me. So it was kinda rough because the day that I took my son to the airport, September 30th, 2018, his bedroom is the same exact way it was the day I took him to the airport. So I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s real difficult on me.

[00:10:32] Dion Mitchell:  There was no way that I think that’s that you, anybody can possibly imagine, you know what you’re going through until you actually go through it. We just wanted to kind of see how you were doing and how you’re doing now. Compared to how you were when you first found the news, those first couple of weeks.

[00:10:47] Terrence Woods Sr.: The first couple of weeks were a shock and it was, denial that this can’t be happening. This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening. We are going to find him and he’s going to come home now, are we going over two and a half years. And you would think it would get better, but it’s getting worse because after two and a half years with no answers still, it’s not a good feeling. I try to go to sleep some nights and my son said dad help me dad help me and I just sit up and go sit in his room on the bed and say, man, I ain’t gonna forget about you. I’m gonna find you. I’m fine, and by the time I know it’s four o’clock I got to go to work. I ain’t been asleep all night. I got to go to work and put on a $9 smile and act like, Hey, what’s going on? and inside of me is like upside down.

[00:11:30] Mehul Anjaria: Well, Terrence, let’s get into some of the reasons why you don’t have any answers. So can you explain for our listeners why it is that the Idaho County Sheriff’s office considers Terrence’s disappearance, an open case? And then how that designation hinders you from collecting more information or, doing your own investigation?

[00:11:55] Terrence Woods Sr.: Well, the sad thing with the Idaho Sheriff’s department is I don’t know what’s going on with them. Right, but to say the least, but if they close the case, then the records become public records. So anyone could get the information. Now, I don’t know if you seen the Dr. Phil show when I was on the Dr. Phil show and when Dr. Phil asked the sheriff, well, why don’t you close the case? So the family can get, information. He said, I’m not closing the case. Well if you don’t close the case, then are you going to still work it? No, we’re not actively looking as well. So if you’re not going to close the case, you’re not going to look for him. Then what’s the hard part about closing it, why don’t you want us to see what you have not really done, and the lies that you all have told people.

[00:12:45] Dion Mitchell: I was going to say, what’s your gut feeling of why he would be holding this up and when it just makes no sense logical sense of why he would be kind of working against you?

[00:12:51] Terrence Woods Sr.: Because it’s more behind it, then he’s admitting to, and that he wanted anyone to know. They know they dropped the ball. If they didn’t have something to do with the ball from day one, when I got to Idaho, when I went to Sheriff’s department, this young man that worked there, he said, and this is the person I spoke to on the phone. He worked in the Sheriff department. He’s the one that took the 911 call when he took the 911 call and I spoke, he said, Mr. Woods, something’s not right about it. Something is not right. He said, when you get to Idaho, make sure you see me. When I got Idaho went to the Sheriff’s department and I seen this person gave me an envelope. He said, whatever you do don’t tell anybody I gave just to you and don’t show it to anybody. No problem. I go back to the hotel room. I opened the envelope up. It’s the original police report. It was called in and it’s police report is saying detail for detail what quote unquote was said when they called this in one, they said my son was a dark complexion person. I don’t know if you seen pictures of my son?

[00:13:52] Dion Mitchell: Yeah. He doesn’t fit that description.

[00:13:54] Terrence Woods Sr.: Not dark at all. Right. Okay. Moving along then. You also. That morning, he had an anxiety attack. Okay. Well, if he had an anxiety attack, did you all call professional medical assistance and no report that you would hear or read or anything No one ever once up to this second, then they call for professional medical assistance, but you told me, oh, we had to detain him. Oh, you said he had an anxiety attack. So do you mean restrain? No. Well, detain mean to hold against your will, detain mean to hold down. If he had an anxiety attack, why would you have to detain him somewhere? No, but everything worked out. You still didn’t answer that question. Well, everything worked out and then we went on out and the day was going along well. Okay, Now everything worked out from him having this anxiety attack. Now mind you, if you look at any of your reports, listen to anything. You don’t hear anyone dwell on Montana. Well, Montana, that’s the place he first went to on September 30th, which was that Sunday. Well, if he was in Montana from Sunday to Thursday, which was the 4th of October now, woke up on the fifth, which was that Friday. No one speak nothing about from Sunday to Thursday, no one say in Montana, he allegedly had an anxiety attack. He was tripping and you had no conversation about Montana. Now he’s in Idaho, but less than 24 hours, the day he wake up that Friday from that Thursday, getting there, he has an anxiety attack. Wow. Out of the clear, but four days he’d been in Montana. We speak nothing of that. No one even shows, there is no pictures of him in Montana you don’t even see any pictures up in Idaho. Okay. So nevertheless, that day going to the fifth. Now you say you’re out on the shoot and he has, this relapse he’s acting strange. He tries to grab a drone out of the sky, still no one sat him down and put them in a car, truck, whatever, and got professional medical assistance. If I go to work right now, if you go to work and your coworkers, see you acting strange out of the norm, whoa, man, let’s call some help for him. No one, not once said they call for professional medical assistance where this person who was at work with 10 other people grown people, you will read nothing no one ever said they call for a professional medical. No one even said they called for medical assistance. Not even putting the word professional in front of it but you all determined that this young man who’d been all over the world, never had an issue. Nowhere before he’s with you over this one trip and it’s one morning, although he was with you four days prior in Montana, which you speak nothing of, but just one morning in Idaho, he wake up that morning, have a mental breakdown, starting the morning off and just lose it in the evening and leap off a cliff and run like a hare.

[00:17:11] Mehul Anjaria: I want to follow up on something you said Terrence, other than, I guess the lucky break of that one police officer handing you that envelope, have you seen any type of official reports on the investigation?

[00:17:24] Terrence Woods Sr.: No, nothing. They will not, they will not give anything. That’s just like when originally, when I spoke to him on the phone, I was supposed to speak to the whole crew, by the time I got there, it was only one person there. There’s no reason for me to speak to anyone else. Once again, I asked a simple question, If you go to work today, I go to work. Then I’m with coworkers, God forbid something happens the first thing your family’s going to say, who was he with? Who was she with? And they went, if nothing’s funny, nothing’s out of line. He is with Joe Blow Mike, Sally, because your family want to ask, but when you say no, you can not speak to them and you get everyone out of the country. Really, really? Because guess what? 10 people can’t tell the same lie and if its all the truth all of us can say the same story if it’s all true, but if we got 10 people and we know something shady online, everybody ain’t gonna tell the same lie. So how do you cover a lie? Getting nine of the ten people out of here, we got one host here to talk, come on man. Up to this day, they won’t give anyone the other people’s information. Come on.

[00:18:37] Dion Mitchell: So you actually have the original report that the original report that came from the 911 operator.

[00:18:42] Terrence Woods Sr.: I have the original 911 call and that’s another thing that took place with the sheriff department when I was out there. So the guy, Simon, the one person that was allegedly that’s the person they stated did not get along with my son and he told me out his own mouth, then when he first met my son, he had high standards of my son, but all of a sudden those standards dropped and he don’t know what was wrong with my son because my son didn’t know what type of fruit to give him when he told him to go get his fruit. My son don’t know you why would he know what kind of fruit to get you, sir?

[00:19:13] Mehul Anjaria: It’s almost like shifting the blame is kind of what that sounds like. Why is it the first thing? Here’s some parents who were upset. Why is it the first thing that you tell them is that you essentially dis their son. It’s crazy.

[00:19:24] Terrence Woods Sr.: Exactly and I spoke to this dude on the phone prior to even going at that morning and this guy is saying all this negative stuff about my son, although my son is the one that’s missing and you were the one that was supposed to be with him and your telling him you were uncomfortable. He disappointed you, you all just told me my son is missing and you tell me about my son disappointed you and did not stand up to your standards, really?

[00:19:49] Dion Mitchell: Do you think he came out of Montana? Do you ever think that he was actually in Idaho? Do you have actually people that you spoke with.

[00:19:54] Terrence Woods Sr.: You have a couple of locals, which I have not actually physically seen or spoke to it’s word of mouth. That said they saw him. They were up on the mountain top when they spoke with them. Well, this place had 200, the population is 200, 206 people. It’s one way in and one way out. They knew who I was when I walked into the gas station, supermarket all that. They knew who I was. Oh, you must be the young man’s father, who disappeared here. So you all know who I am, but nobody know what happened to my son, but moving quick forward and then we can rewind. So when I’m in the sheriff department that morning now they don’t know I have this paperwork. So then speaking, so I said let me why did you all say, my son had a mental breakdown and leaped off a cliff and this dude Simon said, no one ever said that. I said, well, why did you all say my son was dark complexion, no one said that. I said that was said the sheriff looks down and he said, Mr. Woods, I have the 911 report right here in front of me he opens up a yellow manila folder looks down. No, no one said anything like that. I have the 911 report also, right and I read it last night, but I never said nothing to them at that time. I said, man, I got to get out of here, cause I might disappear. He lied to me and looked down at the paper. No one said that no one said anything like that Mr. Woods, where would you get something like that from?

[00:21:21] Dion Mitchell: Definitely sounds like they’re trying to cover something there for the life of me I can’t figure out what it would be.

[00:21:28] Terrence Woods Sr.: I’ll say this. I don’t know even if my son made it to Idaho, but my thing is this, When my son texted well, when I got the text from my son’s phone, I don’t even know if it was him texted, but I got a text when I got the text from his phone and it said ‘dad I’m coming home’ so I’m not knowing that anything was wrong. I’m like, good. Make sure you bring me my shot glasses because everywhere he goes, that’s the only thing I don’t want nothing, but the shot glass goes in the cabinet. So I’m thinking I’m gonna talk to him later on because I get this text, on Friday. So I’m say, well, later on, he’s gonna tell me, why he cut it short? Why are you coming home? I’m thinking I’m going to talk to my son later on now, not knowing that if that was him that sent the text. So could text came from his phone, whatever happened, cause I didn’t verbally speak to him. This is a text coming to me.

[00:22:19] Mehul Anjaria: Yeah. That’s a great point. Terrence and I know much was made of, I think it was on Dr. Phil. They made it seem like a mystery why Terrence left early yet in other media coverage, like a podcast, the claim was that his mother was having medical tests and that’s why he wanted to leave early, but you bring up a great point and it we’ll get to this, but in any good investigation, you look at the cell phone evidence, all that, but we don’t know that those messages are coming from Terrence and so what’s your take on why he would leave the set early?

[00:22:54] Terrence Woods Sr.: Well, he’s never left a set early. That’s first and foremost, okay. First and foremost, he’s never left a set early. Secondly, they were in Montana, they have pictures of it on a Facebook page with all of them in Montana. My son is in none of the pictures. They have pictures of them in Idaho. My son is in none of the pictures. Well, when I had the private investigator, before he started stealing money. He claimed, which I never got that I paid for, that he had the footage from the hotel. Well, you would, if I’m a sheriff, whatever, why don’t they have the footage from the hotel? So show me some pictures of my son walking in a hotel, walking out the hotel. I have not seen any of that yet. No one, you know what I’m saying? So where’s that at? No, I haven’t seen no footage of proof, other than word of mouth. Some couple of locals. that you all could have paid money to say anything. You know what I’m saying? You were in this little, small town, somebody tell you I’m gonna give you 50, $50,000 and that’s more than three, four years of salary to you, You can say anything.

[00:23:58] Dion Mitchell: Yeah. We have those questions, the questions that you have and your statements that you’re making we have those exact same ones. I mean, this stuff screamed at us when we were watching all this in the interviews.

[00:24:06] Terrence Woods Sr.: You know what I’m saying? And they make them like, okay, you had this quote unquote mental breakdown. Okay, you all keep saying he had a mental breakdown. So what doctor professional medical assistant person documented that and said that, so what happened in Montana first? They started this from four days Sunday to Thursday, y’all on the trip on to Idaho. No one say nothing about no funny behavior from Sunday. There’s no one is nothing you won’t pick up any information from Sunday to Thursday. Only thing you hear about is this team on Friday, he had a mental nervous breakdown, et cetera, et cetera, and all hell broke loose and went zero for my son. What? No one is leading up to this. Come on.

[00:24:52] Dion Mitchell: You mentioned the private investigators that you hired. How was it working with them?

[00:24:58] Terrence Woods Sr.: It was terrible, it was terrible, I was shocked, I was vulnerable. Don’t get me wrong. When I met the first guy, he talked real good, sounded real slick, my son missing. So I’m just trying to find somebody to help me find my son. So I gave him my bank account, man, what you need  take this money? Just send me the bill, tell me what you are taking it for. I get a bill, a phone call to London, I gave him a friend of my son’s phone number, he called that person and charged me $600 for a phone call, and I gave you the person name and phone number and I got a $600 London phone call.

[00:25:33] Mehul Anjaria: As far as, Terrence the investigators that you dealt with, the private investigators were, they like licensed people that would appear reputable?

[00:25:42] Terrence Woods Sr.: Well on the internet, the one I found that he was supposedly, he had some good stuff on the internet, and it caught my eye. You know what I’m saying? So, I, at the time I was just trying to find some, I went to several people in this guy’s little biography sound real good. So I’m like, oh yeah, he talked a good game. So, all right, well, what we got to do get started and haven’t seen paperwork is here and we signed this and we’re going to get started. So I’m thinking, okay, man, I’m trying to find my son, you know what I’m saying. I ain’t nothing like this never happened to anyone. I know, so I don’t know who to ask to give me advice to tell me don’t do that don’t do this, man, my son is missing.

[00:26:22] Dion Mitchell: So basically, well, it sounds like you didn’t get a lot from them and they just blew your cash.

[00:26:26] Terrence Woods Sr.: Oh, I mean, I got them money taken from me then I had to close to cut cancel that debit card and then I’ve got the next guy and this guy found out he was working with the damn Sheriff’s department in Idaho. Yeah, so it hadn’t been happening and I thank God that I believe in God, man. Cause that’s the only way to keep you strong, man, because I gotta stay strong. For my youngest son, he won’t even talk about, he don’t, he didn’t want him to talk about his brother and he’s 25 years old. He’s the banker at PNC bank. He owns a wedding planning company, so he’s doing great, but he’s on, he’s staying strong, but he won’t talk about his brother. He don’t even want to talk. So right now it’s just me and him home now, cause both of my sons still live with me.

[00:27:05] Mehul Anjaria: Well, let me ask you this so far, we’ve talked about how you weren’t treated right by the cops. You weren’t treated right by the private investigators. How do you feel that the media has treated you and the story of Terrence’s disappearance?

[00:27:19] Terrence Woods Sr.: I think the media I’m not, I’m not going to get political right now. I’m not a Donald Trump follower. If you are, that’s your business, but, and what’d he say, fake media? Yeah, shit fake media, because I read some stories, man and I’m like, where the hell are these people get this story from? These people never contact me. I don’t know who they spoke to. So people grabbing stuff that Idaho put out this person and then they put in these stories, oh, he disappeared on his own. Oh, he didn’t get along with his family. Did you speak to his family? How you create these stories? I look at these stories, I’m like, well, who did these people speak to and get this information? I never spoke to this person, I had never gave this person permission. You know what I’m saying? So we’re, I put in my son’s name and see all these stories come up missing, missing and I read a little. Wow really what the hell.

[00:28:11] Dion Mitchell: That’s actually one of the reasons why we wanted to speak with you because so many of the, so much of the media that we read and watch, you can see that everything was slanted for a narrative to for clicks and we could not understand why and my next question is, and I think you’ve already answered is do you feel there’s been enough national exposure. I don’t understand after, when I first came in contact with this, why like Hollywood and why everybody, sports athletes, everyone is just not talking about this kids just don’t disappear.

[00:28:45] Terrence Woods Sr.: I’ve tried to get in touch with Tyler Perry. I tried to Jennifer Hudson. He worked with Jennifer Hudson on the Voice. My son worked on the Voice with Jennifer Hudson, Will I Am, Tom Jones, all of that, got pictures with them, all of that. I don’t know, I’m sure all of them, people read their mail and see what they’re going to give them and all this stuff. So, I don’t have no direct line. So I sent stuff to Tyler Perry, Jennifer Hudson Will I Am, President Obama, Mrs. Obama. You know what I’m saying? And it’s like, damn.,

[00:29:19] Dion Mitchell: And no one would touch it.

[00:29:22] Terrence Woods Sr.: No replies from nobody and then the people that do say, oh yeah. Oh man, there’s something wrong with this. We going to get all of it and suddenly they go dead. Like, somebody say, leave it alone. You know what I’m saying? That’s like in London, I spoken to several people in London in the journalism field and they say, man, they would blackball you out here. If you mentioned your son thing, like what.. I ain’t going to talk about that. Is Raw TV, too powerful? They said, man, we trying to get into business. You can’t bring up that story. Well, that alone saying, why would I blackball someone if you’re not doing nothing wrong? What are y’all what big picture y’all trying to cover? Because my thing is this if there was a text from my son and like you said, people were saying, oh, he told him that his mother was having an operation. If he told them this because his mother was not having an operation, then maybe he told him that because he saw something, heard something, he wasn’t comfortable with something and he felt he had to say something that might make them, allow him to get the hell out of it without the eyebrows going up, but my thing is this, If I get a text from you on Friday saying that you coming home and 7:20 AM, Saturday morning, I get a call, saying you leaped off a cliff when no one could find a trace of you, as you heard the Sheriff say on Dr. Phil, your dogs went to the area where they said, quote, unquote, my son went off, couldn’t find a trace and smelled nothing of him helicopters up in the air,  couldn’t find no heat detection of him or he was not there.

[00:31:09] Dion Mitchell: Yeah. I’m wondering that as well.

[00:31:11] Terrence Woods Sr.: Yeah, my son didn’t go over 70 degree angle cliff and like I told you, I said, first of all, my son had $300 inserts in his shoes. He’s flat foot, my son trips, walking up the steps. Now you all want to say in the evening that he dropped his radio in the evening, in the woods, and then he had a car waiting, so this boy never been here in his life, but he had a car to wait on the road and he’s going to run, drop your radio drop, don’t have a flashlight left your book bag with your light in it. In his bag, he had a stun gun in his bag and he had a pocket knife in his bag, he left his bag with a stun gun, pocketknife, everything, the leap down a cliff at night in the dark and you’re going to make it in the dark through the woods that you never been in, get your room and make it to the destination. They said when he was running, we sent one of the vehicles to the road, by the time the vehicle got there, he never crossed it cause he ain’t never go down there, but then they said when they went after him, as he was running like a hare. They came back up, they clothes was ripped and they were bleeding. Well, y’all came back up with ripped clothing and bleeding, but he didn’t lose a drop of blood for a dog to smell a piece of his clothes didn’t get ripped. So he flew down the cliff, get the hell out of here.

[00:32:25] Dion Mitchell: You mentioned Raw TV, obviously, Raw TV is a part of Discovery, which has got pretty long arms in the entertainment industry and I was wondering at the end of the Dr. Phil Show they finished up with, they said Raw TV had reached out to you and offered to meet with you and the Idaho Sheriff’s department. Did that follow up meeting ever occur?

[00:32:44] Terrence Woods Sr.: First of all, Raw TV and this is only hearsay, that’s only what they told us, no one reached out to me. Right? So Raw TV. Why do I have to come back to Idaho for you to meet up with me? We could do a zoom meeting, I don’t want to come back to Idaho. Why do you want to get me back there? So now I can disappear? My son disappeared out there. The sheriff showed me he was up to something shady, when he sat up and looked down and read a piece of paper and told me I was wrong and I got the same paper in my pocket and now you’re going to tell me we can meet up in Idaho. Hell no

[00:33:21] Dion Mitchell: So that meeting never took place that follow up that they threw on it.

[00:33:24] Terrence Woods Sr.: Raw TV haven’t offered me a penny to get a lawyer. They didn’t offer me a private investigator. Didn’t offer no help. Now y’all want to get me back in Idaho. The Idaho Sheriff’s department said, they’re not looking for my son.

[00:33:42] Mehul Anjaria: Well, let me ask you this Terrence.

[00:33:43] Terrence Woods Sr.: I’m listening.

[00:33:44] Mehul Anjaria: What person or organization in your opinion has actually been the biggest help to you as you sought to find some answers?

[00:33:53] Terrence Woods Sr.: No one as of yet. I thought Dr. Phil was going to be a plus, and I followed Dr. Phil show. When you go on these TV shows 99.9% of the time. If you have a drug problem, oh, we are going to put you in counseling marriage problem. We going to get you help with that at the end of that show, they offer you help towards whatever the reason you come on Dr. Phil didn’t offer me nothing. They ain’t saying, well, we can get you a private investigator. We can No!, well, one when you first took the case, the show, it took you over two months to actually air the show. You asked me to do it, then when you finally aired it, it was a put together show. You took what I told you and what my ex-wife said and we said, and then you spoke to the Sheriff Department totally separately and then you put that together. I wasn’t on the show where I could say, hold up, Sheriff, you’re lying about it and about people talking back and forth.

[00:34:57] Mehul Anjaria: Yeah, we were talking about this before we got on and the editing is crazy. It is so chopped up. Yeah.

[00:35:05] Terrence Woods Sr.: Come on, man. Man. Come on, man. Yeah, exactly.  Dr. Phil show, normally Dr. Phil, he come at you. You know what I’m saying? As you know, he come at you, he tap danced on that show, he didn’t eat him up, he tap danced. Then when he asked the Sheriff, so why don’t you give the family, then we’re not doing a follow and we’re not giving them no information. Okay. If you look at Dr. Phil show at the end of any show, they offer a drug addict, counseling, marriage people, counseling. They offer you something to help you at the end of that show, the show was over. Cut. I ain’t never hear from them yet since it was a wrap.

[00:35:52] Mehul Anjaria: Yeah, you’re right. Terrence. That’s the formula. Dr. Phil is supposed to be aggressive and get the answers and not just sit in the chair.

[00:35:58] Terrence Woods Sr.: Resolution, what was the resolution? If you watched it, what resolution you seen there? Like I said, his show revolves around everybody’s asking questions. If you cheat on your wife, your wife’s there, whatever it is then you had us and then you had the sheriff, you did a separate interview with him and whatever you felt made him look good, you put that in and then you made the show together. Sheriff your lying, Sheriff, I know I had a copy. I have a copy of the original report. I couldn’t say that, and so that was his background and everything, but I feel he’s under Oprah Winfrey, and she has a partnership with Discovery.

[00:36:43] Dion Mitchell: There you go. Good point

[00:36:46] Terrence Woods Sr.: Big situation. No.

[00:36:50] Dion Mitchell: You think that she would pick it up?

[00:36:51] Terrence Woods Sr.: Oprah Winfrey have ownership with Discovery, Dr. Phil is under Oprah Winfrey right before all this went out. Oh, well, no, you can’t, you can’t step hard on this one. You told him he was going to do it, you made yourself obligated. Okay, we’ll put it up there, but doctor it up and you don’t fuck with them.

[00:37:09] Dion Mitchell: I want to get into some of the investigation stuff and I was wondering has anybody I probably know the this answer as well, checked his Terrence’s electronic footprint, like his cell, any social media before and after the computer bank records, et cetera, is any of that investigated?

[00:37:25] Terrence Woods Sr.: Now let’s go with that one cell phone. Of course, we don’t have a cell phone. The cell phone quote unquote was with him. Supposedly he couldn’t ping it. Cause the first thing I said, well, why don’t you ping his phone? Well, we’re in the woods and we have Satellite phones cause there’s no service. Well ping his phone to see where the last service was when It took place, nothing happens. You know what I’m saying? Don’t exist. Now as far as this laptop, mind you. When I got there, the Sheriff department had everything. They gave me his laptop. They said you can’t get in, we tried to get into it, but he had a triple firewall in it and if you go into there and you do something, it’s going to burn everything up. We doubt if you can get into it, I brought it home, gave it to somebody and said, man, I don’t know what kind of firewall they have. I say that to say, I don’t know if people did whatever they wanted to do to it and then they put the firewall in there. I don’t know. I know his diary that came back home, I know pages are ripped out of that, that I never received. I know in his camera I have his camera. You would think as soon as I opened up, you can think all the pictures that I would see would be the first pictures of whatever he took while he was in Idaho and Montana. I couldn’t find new pictures until midway flipping through the pictures.

[00:38:51] Dion Mitchell: That’s a great point because I noticed that with your son, he was really big on either video or photographs, diaries, documenting everything he did and there would be a photograph trail.

[00:39:07] Terrence Woods Sr.: Anywhere my son go, he going to take pictures. He gonna make it, he going to take pictures of himself. He is no nothing, not nothing on it with my son, physical body.

[00:39:19] Mehul Anjaria: A quick question on that point. Have you ever considered, or have you ever talked to a computer forensics expert who could go in and trace what some of the deletions and editing and tampering might have.

[00:39:31] Terrence Woods Sr.: I’ve been trying to find such a person. I have people to say, oh, I know this person and get that person and I don’t know, I can’t get there. Oh, I know this person or I can do it. It’s going to cost you $2,500 though. You know what I’m saying? Oh, now you’re putting a price on it. You’re going to go pimp me for money. Huh? I’m a working person. I’ve been working all my life work now to take care of my kids. Both of my kids went to college, we live very comfortable and it’s just the three of us. I never got remarried, no other woman ever lived in my house, their relationship with their mother, It is what it is. You know what I’m saying? That’s their mother, you know what I’m saying? She loved him. They love her, but they always live with me.  Dr. Phil, Terrence was in Montana from Sunday y’all left, arrived in Idaho on Thursday as you, if you seen, when I opened up his suitcase with his clothes, all his clothes are neatly, folded up brand new underwear tags still on socks, still rolled up pants, not worn shirts, but he got one pair of muddy, dirty boots and with all these clean clothes where are his dirty clothes for the last five days?

[00:40:51] Dion Mitchell: A side question. Terrence, did he, and this is just kind of standard they ask about when they do search and rescue, did they just does Terrance aside from, you mentioned the $300 inserts, which I have as well for my flat feet. So I can relate to that any medical issues of, heart lungs, like headaches or anything like that?

[00:41:09] Terrence Woods Sr.: No, I told them they could get his doctor records from his doctor. You know what I’m saying? He has a regular primary doctor at Kaiser Permanente . We have insurance, we have doctors. We go to see the dentist. We go get physicals, get his doc, everybody talking about he had, okay, first now you’re saying the young man had a mental breakdown. Now you’re trying to say. yeah, I’ve found pills, that’s called hearsay. Show me evidence that you went to his primary doctor where his physicals are his lab work is then just go to, if you got work from, give me some of that and you show me one, one physical, one thing from any of his doctors that said he was coming in for anything. Show me some proof from a professional person not of created word of mouth trying to down talk to the person, or make this person look like the enemy, so people say, oh, he had mental problems, all the hell with him. That’s just, I guess the Sheriff said, oh, he from the city? We don’t even live in the city. My son was never even brought up in the city. You know what I’m saying? So well, because he’s black. He’s from the city?

[00:42:25] Mehul Anjaria: Yeah that’s kind of the inference. You might draw by what he said and it’s funny when you said that 911 caller said Terrence had a dark complexion. Well, compared to everybody else in Idaho. Yeah.

[00:42:36] Terrence Woods Sr.: But even from some of the people, not who he looked like, some of them.

[00:42:41] Mehul Anjaria: Well, let me go back to Raw TV real quick and I think I know the answer to this question, but again, another claim on Dr. Phil by the Sheriff, I believe. He said that you had the names of every one of the crew numbers members. Now, is that true or is Simon the only name that you have?

[00:43:00] Terrence Woods Sr.: Simon is the only name that they would give me, Simon is the only person I met and only name they would give. Raw TV would not, they said there was no criminal investigation and there was no need to give anyone else’s name not up to this day, even when Fox Five, that’s another joke of a newscast story they did a six-part podcast on my son, terrible, because it was totally one sided, everything that Melanie did was what the sheriff department said, what the sheriff department said. There is nothing in a six-part podcast that this lady did on my son where she had people that he knows people that he went to school with family members, the thing is what they said. Wow. Then the last one was, my son was with the lady that owned the RV company and told her, he don’t get along with his father, him and his brother fight. He don’t love his mother.

[00:44:02] Dion Mitchell: And none of that’s true?

[00:44:04] Terrence Woods Sr.: Hell no. Like I said, my son lived with me, his bedroom, very comfortable.

[00:44:12] Dion Mitchell: You mentioned, you mentioned a couple of pieces of evidence and stuff and I was just wondering, what do you think what’s the one most important piece of evidence or piece of the puzzle that you don’t have that might kind of blow this open or reignite it?

[00:44:25] Terrence Woods Sr.: One, if we could get in that computer to see, like you said, what was all deleted? And two, like I said, in his camera, if right now you take a bunch of pictures. So now get your camera, the pictures that you. Should not be, it shouldn’t be 200 pictures in front of them, 50 pictures in front of them. That means somebody went through them and you know what I’m saying? Scattered them around or whatever. Someone went through that.

[00:44:53] Dion Mitchell: Well, that’s it easy to figure out. So, I’m assuming since Terrence was a pro he’s probably using a pretty nice 35 millimeter camera, correct?

[00:45:01] Terrence Woods Sr.: Yes.

[00:45:02] Dion Mitchell: Okay. So that means that you can download all the pictures off the camera, via USB into a computer, and then you should be able to see each picture is timestamped. There’s no way around that and then it also should be in synchronicity. So it should be like depending how many photos is taken. It would be, 1000, 1001, 1002, 1003 and then you can look at the timestamps. So that’s fairly easy and that’s something that you can actually do right now and that’s just hook that 35 up to a PC.

[00:45:30] Terrence Woods Sr.: Okay. Well, I was I looked at, I was looking at him, through the little scan on them and I could see dates and stuff on them.

[00:45:39] Dion Mitchell: So right there. Yeah, exactly. So right there that would tell you because you get it

[00:45:43] Terrence Woods Sr.: Right. So that’s my point.

[00:45:46] Dion Mitchell: Terrence was really good he was taking all these pictures. So if there was a gap, of more than 24 hours, that would be odd.

[00:45:57] Terrence Woods Sr.: Exactly. That’s my point. Okay. So that’s my point. So I’m looking at pictures, but I’m looking at pictures. Okay. Like I said, he was just in Idaho. So those should be the first pictures then to be Montana pictures, those pictures are from when he was in Rome, I had the wrong pictures show up before the Idaho pictures.

[00:46:18] Dion Mitchell: Yeah, that’s not right.

[00:46:19] Terrence Woods Sr.: Come on.

[00:46:19] Dion Mitchell: You mentioned Terrance’s suitcase. When did you come in contact with it? And then how long did it take you to actually open it up?

[00:46:26] Terrence Woods Sr.: They gave it to me the day after I got there.

[00:46:31] Dion Mitchell: And you opened it up right away.

[00:46:32] Terrence Woods Sr.: No I looked in his backpack, his suitcase, I didn’t wanna open it up for months and then I finally opened it up and that’s when I seen everything easily folded up. That’s like they said it was 30, it was 32 degrees the night they did the shoot.

[00:46:52] Dion Mitchell: Was there snow, is there snow on the ground up there?

[00:46:56] Terrence Woods Sr.: Yes.

[00:46:56] Dion Mitchell: Was there a lot or little?

[00:46:58] Terrence Woods Sr.: In the mountains, It was, that’s why they had to stop because of the weather. So mind you, it’s 32 degrees. He runs down this hill well, what did he have? Oh, he had on, we believe a light jacket and some pants, one light jacket. Well, 32 degrees. The snow suit that I bought him before he left that’s at home with me. He didn’t have his snow suit on his secondary coat. Heavy coat I brought home with me. So he’s out, out in the woods. Y’all all got on winter coats, everything, but he’s out there with a little jacket on it. Snow coat, snow pants he doesn’t wear none of that. His boots, he didn’t have boots. He got muddy pair of shoes where these shoes are muddy, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve seen the Dr. Phil show, you’ll see the shoes. So why would he be out in that type of, and I know he took, he wouldn’t, he loves Doc Martens. So I know he had Doc Martens, I guess he might’ve had those on that day. Cause they didn’t come back, sneakers still in his bag. Like I said, no dirty clothes, no dirty underwear, no dirty t-shirts, no dirty socks. If those boots, those shoes is in there muddy, there should be some muddy pants around, should be some pants around with bottom of the pants would be muddy too, but nothing else is dirty.

[00:48:18] Dion Mitchell: Yeah. I got hung up on that pretty early as to where where were the clothes? I’ve just no, full disclosure here, I’ve worked in production for a really long time, 20 years on a set and when you get done at the end of the day, you’re not putting those clothes back on, there’s a pile of dirty clothes and you move on. So clearly he’s worked on enough sets that he knows that you pack accordingly because basically you wear something it’s done until you bring it home and you wash it. So where do you think that his dirty clothes went?

[00:48:48] Terrence Woods Sr.: Who’s to say how many days he really was there, who’s to say his dirty clothes wasn’t a part of some type of evidence and y’all got rid of them, not you all meaning you, but they got rid of them, come on, man.

[00:48:59] Mehul Anjaria: Well, then that leads into my next question. Obviously that hotel room is a very important piece of evidence and now did you say that the private investigator, the only thing he or she did was give you a photograph of the hallway of the hotel?

[00:49:13] Terrence Woods Sr.: No, I said they didn’t give me anything. They told me they have it. I have no evidence.

[00:49:18] Mehul Anjaria: That’s right. You haven’t seen it.

[00:49:19] Terrence Woods Sr.: Oh, No one will, let me see anything and remember this, I don’t know if you heard in the interview where they said the crew quote, unquote, went back to his room and went into his room and then they taped his room off and locked his room, so no one else could get in it. So the crew went back in the room before the Sheriff’s department or anyone even got there.

[00:49:40] Mehul Anjaria: You now have multiple instances where people, if they wanted to, could have tampered with evidence.

[00:49:46] Terrence Woods Sr.: Could have done anything, man. Yeah. That’s my point.

[00:49:48] Announcer: Thank you for listening to the Crime Redefined podcast, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Crime Redefined. Please send us your comments and questions and join us for the next episode.

 

 

Aleida K. Wahn: The True Crime Lawyer-S1 32

Aleida K. Wahn (aleidalaw.com) is an attorney, award-winning true crime writer, and legal analyst of criminal cases. She has provided commentary on Court TV and the Law & Crime Trial Network, and authored the book, Judging Winslow Jr.-From NFL Star to Serial Rapist? Inside the Shocking Rape Trial of Kellen Boswell Winslow II.  Aleida joins Crime Redefined to discuss her career trajectory, the intersection of the media and the justice system, and a disturbing stalking case she has been following.  Hosted by Dion Mitchell and Mehul Anjaria.  A Zero Cliff Media production.

Lindsey Wade-DNA Detective-S1 31

Lindsey Wade (lindseywade.org) has just authored a book about her incredible career as a cold case detective with the Tacoma Police Department where she masterfully leveraged the latest advances in DNA technology to solve cases decades old. She now works tirelessly with the Washington State Attorney General’s Office on a sexual assault kit initiative that strives to resolve even more cases with DNA technology. Lindsey joins Crime Redefined to discuss her fascinating career.  Hosted by Dion Mitchell and Mehul Anjaria. A Zero Cliff Media production.

Lindsey Wade-DNA Detective

Unofficial Transcript

 

B=Show Bumpers

DM=Dion Mitchell, Co-host

MA=Mehul Anjaria, Co-host

LW=Lindsey Wade

 

B

Welcome to the crime redefined podcast produced by Zero Cliff Media coming to you from the US Bank tower high above downtown Los Angeles. In our podcast, we drill deep into forensics and criminal investigation from the viewpoint of the defense as well as explore the intersection of the media and the justice system.

 

DM

Hey, crime redefined fans. I’m Dion Mitchell and with me is my co-host, Mehul Anjaria. On this episode of Crime Redefined we are joined by Lindsey Wade, who retired from the Tacoma police department as a cold case detective in 2018, after an illustrious 21 year career, Pretty cool, huh, Mehul?

 

MA

Yeah, but you know, she didn’t really retire. As soon as she was done with Tacoma police department, she immediately started writing a book. And she also began working with the Washington State Attorney General’s office, and she was working on their sexual assault kit initiative. And that’s because it’s it’s pretty clear that her passion is using DNA to solve cold cases. And as a matter of fact, she was instrumental in the 2019 passage of the so-called Jennifer and Michella’s law, which served to expand the types of samples that could be placed into the DNA database, aka CODIS.

 

DM

That’s right. And I guess I’m always impressed when I hear 21 years at anything. It sounds like part of her retirement is she has a new book that’s going to be available soon. And it will be a glimpse into the mind of a brilliant detective and her persistence in solving the most difficult and hideous crimes. Her signature case, if you will, is the disturbing sexual assault and murder of Michella Welch and Jennifer Bastian in 1986. in Tacoma, Washington, they were only 12 and 13 years old, respectively. And at the time, Lindsey Wade was just 11 years old.

 

MA

This is a disturbing and fascinating case. And it’s very cool how it got solved eventually, with DNA technology. So we’re going to talk about the case with Lindsey, of course, but we’re not going to necessarily go through the nuts and bolts of it. So I would recommend listeners that after this episode, check out the Dateline episode, entitled, ‘evil was watching’. And it’s all about this case, I think it was from 2019. Lindsay’s in it. And so you could actually go to Lindsay’s website, which is Lindseywade.org,  that’s Lindseywade.org. And she has a link to the full episode. And also on her site, you can see her appearance on ‘on the case with Paula Zahn’, and she’s been on a number of news stories as well.

 

DM

You know, her work was really familiar to me, not necessarily her work, but the case that she was involved in having lived in the northwest for a number of years myself, I’m particularly interested in hearing about Lindsey’s thoughts on Ted Bundy and how she tracked down his DNA. And I’m sure that’s going to be fascinating. As you will hear, Lindsey has been at the forefront of DNA technology using many of the techniques we have discussed on past Crime Redefined episodes.

 

MA

Yeah, it’s definitely going to be this interview will be a good rehash of some of the themes we’ve hit on in the past, but

 

DM

Well, it’s just like real world application type stuff, right? Hey, here’s a, you know, 21 years career, here’s a person who’s on the forefront, you know, the things we’re talking about, boom, here they are using it.

 

MA

Right, this is how to use it in the field. And, you know, along those lines, we haven’t really talked to many detectives on this podcast. So it’s going to be, you know, really cool to hear Lindsey’s take on how the system works, how it doesn’t work, and how she does her job and what her part in this this whole system is. So, I really think that you know, whether listeners, you’re a criminal justice practitioner, or maybe you’re just a fan of true crime and want to know how things are really done, you know, how how investigations are conducted, how DNA and other science is used. I mean, I think you’re really going to enjoy this interview and learn a lot from it. So let’s get to it.

 

DM

Hey, Lindsey, welcome to Crime Redefined today.

 

 

LW

Thanks for having me.

 

DM

Mehul and I are excited to speak with you and hear about your interesting cases and amazing career.

 

LW

Yes, well. It’s been interesting, to say the least

 

MA

Lindsey, let’s kind of go go way back. Take us back to 1986. When you first heard about the murders of Michella Welch and Jennifer Bastian, what kind of effect did that have on you personally, when you were a young girl, and you know what kind of effect did that have on the community you know, these terrible murders?

 

LW

Well, you know, I was a young girl, you know, elementary school, I think I was 11 at the time. And so, you know, it’s pretty shocking. And it was, it was pretty terrifying for kids and adults, it really had a pretty significant impact on the community, not just, you know, the, the city of Tacoma, but kind of the surrounding communities as well. And it lasted a very long time. That, you know, the cases went unsolved for over 30 years. So they really, you know, became almost like, urban legend in this area. And, you know, most people that have lived here, for any length of time, you know, knew something about the cases or, you know, had heard about them, and, you know, everybody, and I have their own take on, you know, what kind of an effect the cases have on them personally.

 

DM

Tell us about what were the big factors in those two cases that led everyone to believe that they must have been committed by the same perpetrator?

 

LW

So unfortunately, I can’t talk about the Michella Welch case. At this point. I agreed with the prosecutors that I won’t do any interviews on that case, until it’s resolved. That offender is awaiting trial. You know, I’m sure you guys can piece together the information that’s already out there in the media, about, you know, why we thought the cases were related. But I just, I can’t speak about her case at this point.

 

MA

Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. And we’ll come back to that case a little bit, you know, in in general terms, but I want to pick up Lindsey on your trajectory towards a career in law enforcement. Tell us a little bit about where you were in life when you first picked up the stranger beside me by Anne Rule. And, you know, what drew you to that book? What did you take from that? And, you know, what did that book mean to you?

 

LW

Well, I was in high school, and, you know, when I read that book, it, it definitely kind of set me on my path towards becoming a police officer, and eventually a detective. You know, that book really scared the shit out of me to be I, it was just unbelievable. And the fact that it, you know, a lot of it happened near where I lived, and you know, that Ted Bundy was from Tacoma, and, you know, all these things were just so fascinating to me. And, you know, that was the first time that I really read about, you know, police investigations, and I was just absolutely fascinated. And not only was I fascinated with the investigative part, you know, it also just absolutely floored me that, you know, somebody like him could be so successful and, you know, operate for as long as he did, and, you know, that he just pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. And, you know, people just absolutely could not believe that he would be capable of the crimes that he committed. And, and so, you know, I just think there were so many different elements about that book that stuck with me. And really, you know, from from that point on, I just kind of knew that, you know, that’s what I wanted to do with my life was, you know, be a detective.

 

DM

Let me build on that a little bit, tell us about your career in law enforcement. But what were your first impressions of the job? While you’re at the academy? And then when you first went on patrol?

 

LW

Oh, okay. So the police academy was, you know, that’s your first stop. And so that was, at that time, a three-month period. And, you know, really, the police academy is like drinking from a firehose, I mean, you’re trying to learn everything, you’re trying to learn laws, and you’re trying to learn, you know, Criminal Procedure, and how to do traffic stops, and how to, you know, how to handcuff somebody. And, you know, there’s just so much that, you know, when you get out of the Academy, and, I mean, I can clearly remember my first day on the street. And, you know, just, I was 22 years old by that point. And I just, I just remember thinking, this is crazy, like, I, I mean, I really have no idea what I’m doing. And, I mean, honestly, nobody does when they come out of the Academy, you know, and that’s why you have a training officer and, you know, you you ride with a training officer for several months before you’re on your own and, you know, even then, I mean, I think for most officers, you know, it takes several years before you really, you know, feel confident in yourself. In your abilities, you know, to handle pretty much any situation that gets thrown at you. I mean, when you think about most jobs, you have kind of a set parameter and set parameters of what your duties are. When you’re a police officer. I mean, it’s like anything goes, I mean, you know, your day is not dictated by you, you have no control over what happens. And you’re expected to be an expert in about 100 different things. And so it’s, it’s challenging. And it’s, you know, it’s an exciting job. It’s a job like, no other I would say. But, you know, I did enjoy my time as a patrol officer, I spent about five years in patrol, and then made a short transfer to narcotics, I spent about a year there. And I was on the detective list when I was in narcotics. And so I ended up getting promoted. A little after a year of being there to detective.

 

 

DM

Did that switch to narcotics, Was that something you wanted to do? Or just came organically?

 

LW

It was something I wanted to do. I knew it was a good steppingstone for becoming a detective.

 

DM

Which is which that was your obviously your endgame. And the other quick follow up question. You mentioned the Academy is, was your training that was three months? correct?

 

LW

Yes.

 

DM

Is that something just that you feel? having gone through it that should be longer? You know, four months, five months, six months, or longer

 

LW

Now it is actually six months currently, but you know, when I went through, it was three months.

 

MA

So I want to go back to Ted Bundy. So once you became a detective, I understand that you were interested in getting Ted Bundy’s DNA profile into CODIS, could you walk us through a little bit about how you went about doing that, and what some of the roadblocks were?

 

LW

Sure. So in 2011, I was working with my then partner, Gene Miller, and he was the cold case detective for our agency at that time. And we had been discussing the Ann Marie Burr  case, which is the oldest cold case, in Tacoma. It happened in 1961. And, you know, a lot of people have believed over the years that perhaps, Ann Marie Burr might be, you know, Ted Bundy’s, first victim. And so, you know, we knew that, but at the same time, there was really nothing in the case that linked him to the crime. And so, kind of, during our early discussions about the case, we started talking about suspects. And, of course, Bundy’s name came up and, and I started, you know, kind of wondering, Well, you know, if, in fact, we do you have any testable evidence in this case, are we going to have anybody to compare it to, and so that kind of started me on my journey of researching, Bundy, and, you know, striking out all over the place when I was searching for his DNA. And, you know, it wasn’t in Washington, I couldn’t find it at the medical examiner’s office where he was executed, and finally ended up getting in contact with the Florida Department of law enforcement crime lab and talking to their CODIS manager. And, you know, he, and I just sort of put our heads together, because, you know, he had been asked the same question multiple times. And, you know, the answer was always No, you know, we don’t have it. And so, you know, we kind of brainstormed and thought about, well, you know, how could we find his DNA? And so I kind of went on my journey in Washington, tracking down leads, which, you know, ultimately led me to an Ann Rule. And, you know, she was able to provide me with some letters and envelopes from letters that he had written to her when he was in jail, and prison. And so I thought, well, you know, maybe there’s a possibility I could get his DNA from the stamps on the letters. And so that was kind of one avenue of investigation. And then David Coffman, the CODIS manager down in Florida. He kind of went on his own path. And so I guess they have kind of a Bundy Museum at the crime lab down there. And so he looked at some items that were in the lab. But you know, couldn’t get a usable profile. And so, he could, you know, continued on with his search and he actually ended up finding I think it was two blood vials in the I believe it was the Columbia County Clerk’s office. And these vials had been collected from Bundy in 1978. Shortly after he was arrested, and, you know, the vial the blood itself, the liquid blood was no good. It was, you know, completely putrified. Luckily, there was dried blood on the lid of the the vials. And so he was able to his lab was able to generate a full profile from that and get it uploaded into Florida’s DNA database, which was a great start, but then that’s, you know, I was told that’s where it was gonna stay, because Bundy didn’t meet the criteria to go into the national database. And I was like, wait a minute.

 

DM

After all that,

 

LW

yeah, like, I mean, it’s great that he’s going into Florida. I mean, right? murders across the country, how can his DNA only reside in Florida’s database, that makes no sense. And so there was a conversation that took place with the NDIS custodian, that, you know, the FBI to try to figure out how to rectify the situation. And eventually, it was decided that he would go into national in the legal index. And so that’s where he sits currently. And so now his profile, you know, can be searched against profiles from, you know, all the other state databases as well.

 

DM

That’s a good segue to my next question. And besides the case that you just mentioned, are there other murders you’re convinced Bundy is responsible for? And if so, Which ones?

 

LW

I can’t say I’m convinced of any, because I know there aren’t any that it’s just like, Oh, for sure. There’s so much evidence overwhelmingly, it’s him. Not one that I know of. I know that there are, you know, certainly cases that people suspect him of. And I have no doubt that he’s committed way more murders than we know about. You know, he confessed to 30 right before he was executed. And 11 of those were in Washington, but only eight of those victims have been identified. So, I mean, we know he committed more murders. But, you know, I don’t know, you know, if we’ll ever link him to those cases, I hope, I hope this at some point, he is linked by, you know, scientific methods, but at this point, you know, there are, it’s hard to say,

 

DM

yeah, it was that was my next question is what do you think just personally, what do you think his real number is?

 

LW

I don’t know. Um, you know, I’ve heard all the, you know, triple digit stuff. And I mean, I don’t know, it’s hard to say, I mean, it is strange, that he would have, you know, starting his killing career in his 20s, it seems, you know, pretty late for somebody like him to have started killing. But I just don’t think that we’ll ever know, why , I know we won’t ever know his history or number. But I think it’s, you know, far more than 30.

 

MA

Well, Lindsey, in researching your career, I learned about, I think, for the first time, the phenomenon of these so-called civil commitment centers, such as the one on McNeil Island on Puget Sound. And I actually had never heard of this concept before. Can you explain to our listeners a little bit about the history of these centers, what their purpose is, and then, you know, moving into what your specific interest was, with regards to them and collecting DNA?

 

LW

Sure. So there are 22 states in the United States that have civil commitment laws. And what that means is, an offender who is deemed to be a sexually violent predator can be detained civilly for an indeterminate amount of time after they serve their prison sentence. So basically, the state deems them too dangerous to be released out into the community when they’re done with prison, and so instead of being released, they get detained. And then they go through a trial. And then well, you know, if they’re, if they are found to meet the definition of being a sexually violent predator than they are detained at this facility, and so in Washington, we have a place called the special commitment center, and it’s on McNeil Island, and offenders who are found to be sexually violent predators and those who are pending trial. So those that are just detained waiting to be tried for this can be held out there and it’s a secured facility. You know, they can’t leave If so, you know, since the program started, I believe they’ve had well over 400 sexually violent predators that have gone through the island. The program started in 1990, I believe, here in Washington and back again, 2011. It was my year, I guess. 2011, I was working on a cold case. And I was in contact with Department of Corrections on a pretty regular basis, because, you know, get records from them on different things. And I started asking some questions about the special commitment center. And specifically about, you know, whether or not all the sex predators on the island had their DNA in CODIS. And I never really, you know, got an answer initially. And once they did some research, they figured out that actually, no, the answer is no. And a lot of the offenders out there had never had their DNA collected. So I was, it ended up being over 40. people out there who had not had their DNA collected. And so that was a, you know, a well over a year, probably closer to two-year long project, working with the special commitment center staff, and the State Patrol crime lab, to get those individuals DNA collected. And then, you know, there was one person who refused, and so we had to take them to court. And so it took a while, but eventually, all the samples were collected from these guys, and some of them had been out there since the 90s. And probably would never be released, you know, because of their history. And so once all the samples were collected and uploaded into CODIS, they ended up actually getting a hit on one of the guys. And his name is Michael Halgren. And he was I think at the special commitment center since 2001. And he and he had come there from prison. And he hit to a 1980 murder case, and have a like a 19 year old woman in Bellevue, Washington, which is a city north of Tacoma. And so that was really exciting. Because I mean, I really thought, oh, gosh, you know, that we’re going to like, there’s going to be some CODIS hits out of this, for sure, these guys are the worst of the worst in Washington. And, you know, sure enough, one of them hit to this, this murder case. And when I spoke to the detective, who was investigating that case, he had been investigating that case for 12 years, you know, dozens of DNA samples from suspects, and you know, never made any headway on the case. And then one day, he comes into work, and he’s got this crime lab report in his box that says, there’s a hit on this cold case, you know, and he had no idea why they had came in. And so when I called them up and told him about the project, and he was, he was pretty excited.

 

DM

I can’t imagine what that feeling must be like, as, you know, if you’re working a cold case, like all of a sudden, you’re like you said you’ve been, you know, putting in the time and energy in. And then he walks in, and then like, boom, it’s laying on his desk.

 

LW

Yeah, yeah. And a name that he had never heard before. I mean, he was not in the case file. He wasn’t, you know, a person of interest. And so, you know, it was it was a shock. But, you know, it was it was just amazing. And he was, he was kind enough to let me go with him to make the arrest out on the Island and bring the guy back to be booked in for the murder.

 

DM

I guess however gets done. Right. No matter how you get there, as long as you get there, right?

 

LW

Yes, exactly.

 

DM

You know, going back to the Michella and Welch in the Jennifer Bastian cases. And it seems like you’re really on the forefront of a lot of this tech DNA technology. There was such an interesting use of everything new in DNA techniques, such as early genetic genealogy, DNA phenotyping, and, of course, more advanced genetic genealogy. When you were a detective, how did that how is it that you became aware of these tools and that you stayed on top of all of them, especially since they were kind of like growing really by the day?

LW

Right? I just I made it a point to really try to stay on top of anything, any kind of forensic technology. I’ve always been really interested in DNA. And so I just kind of made it my mission to build relationships. with people that are much smarter than me, and so, you know, So it’s like I, you know, just sort of have created this network of people that I really was able to learn from over the years and ask a ton of questions. Whether it was, you know, with somebody from the crime lab, or, you know, forensic anthropologist, or, you know, I’ve got a good friend who’s a, you know, a DNA expert. And so, it’s, you know, it’s been helpful to cultivate those relationships, and then, you know, stay on top of it by going to trainings and talking with detectives. And really, you know, that’s how I first learned about genetic genealogy was talking to a detective in Phoenix, who, you know, told me about the canal murders and the surname search that Colleen Fitzpatrick had done. And, and that was in 2015. And, you know, when I heard that, I was like, Oh, I got to do this. And so, you know, ultimately, that’s what led to the arrest. And then the Jennifer Bastian case, of course, was that surname. And, you know, that was, you know, one of the surnames that Colleen had provided me with Washburn, and that turned out to be, you know, my suspect’s last name. So, um, you know, just, it’s amazing how fast just from 2015 to 20, you know, well, even Yeah, to now to 2021, how quickly the technology has changed, and the M-Vac, I mean, I thought, and that was, like, you know, the next coming of Christ. And then, you know, all of a sudden, you know, now there’s genetic genealogy, and you know, that, you know, it’s been one thing after the other, and it’s just such an exciting time for anyone working cold cases, because, I mean, I can remember for years, I, there are so many cases that I worked on for years. And I mean, I, I mean, I spent hundreds of hours on these cases, I submitted, you know, dozens and dozens of pieces of evidence to the crime lab, to the point where I’m sure the lab was so tired of me calling. And never made a dent, you know, never advanced the cases forward. And it was so frustrating. And, you know, as a cold case, Detective, that’s the majority of your day, that’s the majority of your week, and your month, and your year is, it’s like swimming upstream. And so when this new technology came along, at least for those cases, where there is DNA, it’s been a game changer, as you know, these cases that were previously thought to be unsolvable, you know, now, you know, you can get answers. It’s, it doesn’t help for those cases where you don’t have DNA. And I would say, most cold cases do not have DNA. And so it’s, it’s still really hard for those families that are waiting for answers. And they, you know, their case doesn’t have, you know, can’t be worked with genetic genealogy, or, you know, people think it’s kind of like, a slot machine, or like the magic button, right? It really isn’t. You know, those cases are few and far between. And so that, you know, I think that right now, there seems to be such a great interest in, in the public with cold cases. And so I think that’s really great. Because I’m, you know, I think that’s going to help kind of keep that energy going and help kind of keep the momentum. And, you know, a lot of agencies don’t have resources, and they don’t have people to work. They’re cold cases. And so they just are, you know, they’re languishing. They’re sitting on a shelf collecting dust. And so I think that because of all the interest that’s out there, you know, I think that it will help to, you know, also, hopefully, have these agencies put some resources towards it, right.

 

 

DM

You must really think, like, for the cases where there is DNA, you must look back and go, Oh, my God, what were we doing before these technologies? Were here? I mean, you were literally feeling around the dark.

 

LW

Yeah

 

DM

Did this make you because of you are really staying on top of us within the department. Did this kind of making you use kind of a baseball term, like a closer was like, like a rock star, everybody that had a DNA in their case where they all coming to you for your, for your help, and for your input?

 

LW

Not really, no Yeah, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t say that. I mean, people would ask me questions, but I no, I don’t think so. It wasn’t that way, although now working at the attorney general’s office, and, you know, of course, now I have access to cases statewide. And so, you know, I have done some case reviews for other agencies and, you know, looked at their cold cases. And so, you know, I am able to kind of utilize those skills and to help people, you know, other than just Tacoma cases, but cases all around the state of Washington, which has been nice.

 

MA

Well, Lindsay, other than the the almighty gold standard that DNA is, what would you say, is the most the the next most powerful tool that you would have is a cold case detective?

 

LW

Time, I mean, you have time, and you know, relationships change. And, you know, this, that person that might not have wanted to talk 20 years ago, because of a relationship they had, that relationship may no longer be in existence. So, or, you know, their, their life has changed. And, and so they, you know, they just feel differently about the situation. So I think time is a benefit, and it’s something that can help with cold cases. And the fact that you have time as a detective, you know, when you’re working a fresh murder case, you you’re on the clock, you’re, you know, the clock is ticking, there’s a lot of pressure to solve the case quickly. But with a cold case, you don’t have that pressure, you have time to sit back and focus and come up with a game plan and look at the case from different angles. And that’s not a luxury that you have with a fresh case.

 

MA

Yeah, and then I suppose another emerging tool is actually the media and podcasts, you know, just kind of waking people up to getting interested in it. And maybe people are crawling out of the woodwork. And we hear how that is now invigorating, a lot of these investigations. It’s almost like a crowdsourcing approach to it.

LW

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people are interested. And you know, they’re talking about these cases. And they’re, you know, you’ve got the web sleuth community and, you know, people doing their own research and, you know, it’s, there’s just, it’s a lot more visible than it used to be.

 

DM

Yeah, you’ve just got a lot of eyeballs, you know, looking at these cases now. Tell us about the time period around your retirement from Tacoma PD, what was the status of the Bastian-Welch investigation? And then kind of walk us through the case breakthrough that happened shortly after your retirement?

 

LW

Yeah. So I, you know, 20, kind of the beginning of 2018, I had been approached by the attorney general’s office, about a grant that they had received, and this position that was going to be coming available as an investigator working on the statewide sexual assault kit initiative. And, you know, at that point, I, you know, I gave it a lot of thought, and, you know, I decided that I was ready to make a change and do something different, and, you know, to be to retire from law enforcement, you know, by that point, I’ve been on for 21 years. And so, I decided that I was going to go ahead and do it. And I had been, you know, in the years, couple years prior to that, doing a ton of work on those cases. And it collected about 160 DNA samples from, you know, potential suspects. And those cases, you know, those samples were being sent off to the lab in small batches, for testing, and so January of 2018, I had sent off the last batch of samples to the crime lab, knowing full well, you know, it’d be a few months before they the results came back. But I really, I mean, I had no hope at that point that, you know, any of them were going to result in a hit, you know, all of the ones in my mind that I thought looked really good, had already come back, not a match. And so, you know, when I left, I had kind of this To Do List of, you know, all these different things that were pending at the lab that I had handed off to my coworker that took over for me, and it just, you know, I was, I was sad, in a sense to be leaving and, and really that, you know, one of the hardest things was was telling Jennifer Bastian’s mom that I was leaving, because we’d become really close. And, you know, she knew that I had put a lot of time into working on her daughter’s case. So that was one of the hardest things. But you know, I kind of in the back of my mind was thinking, Well, I’m going to be doing all this work with DNA for the the Attorney General’s office. And so, you know, I think there’s still hope that at some point, you know, these cases will still be solved, you know, maybe it’ll be as a result of, you know, the sexual assault kit, testing, who knows? So that was sort of, you know, that was it for me. I mean, I left, retired in April of 2018. And went to work for the attorney general’s office. And it was less than a month later, I think it was, like, 25 days later, I get a call from the detective who replaced me in the cold case unit, telling me that he had gotten a hit on the Jennifer Bastian case. And it was, you know, one of the last one of the guys that was in that last batch of samples that I had submitted in January. And so, you know, it was, it was overwhelming.

 

 

 

DM

Well, do you mind if I ask where you were at, or what you were doing when you got the call?

 

LW

Yeah, I was at home, I was working from home. And, you know, when he called me, you know, I just, I couldn’t even respond initially, I was just so overwhelmed. And then, you know, I asked him who, you know, what’s the name? Who is it, and he told me, and then, you know, I knew exactly who it was when he told me the name Washburn, but, you know, Washburn, he wasn’t really, he didn’t look like a really good suspect. On paper. He, the only reason that I even included him in my list of people to get samples from was because of his last name. But you know, everybody else that I had collected from at that point, were people that I had kind of deemed higher priority based on, you know, their criminal history, mainly, and this guy, you know, he really didn’t have anything that stood out at all. And he really was only, you know, collected from because of his last name. So anyway, it was, it was just overwhelming. And even more difficult was that I had to wait two days to tell Patty Bastian about the hit, because of course, we wanted to keep it under wraps until he was in custody. And he was out of state. And so detectives had to fly to Illinois to arrest him. And then as soon as he was in custody, then I got to go knock on Patti’s door, and tell her the news. And so that was pretty, it was the best day of my career without a doubt hands down.

 

MA

You know, and I guess along those lines, Lindsay, you probably never can truly retire. Because this is going to continue to happen, that cases that you worked 20 or 30 years ago, whatever, they’re gonna continue to get solved and suck you back in and and i’m sure along those lines, you’ve built other relationships with family members, and it just would imagine it’s gonna stay a part of you for the rest of your days.

 

LW

Yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s hard. Because, you know, this the cases, I think, I think more about the cases that I didn’t solve more than the cases that I that I did solve, and, you know, this this case is, I mean, they keep me up at night. Because, you know, as a detective, I mean, you take those cases, personally, and, you know, you, you do build a relationship with family members. And but you also, you know, have just a personal stake in the case. And so, it is hard. And, you know, for ask any homicide detective, and when they retire, you know, the hardest thing for them to do when they retire is to have any open cases left, because it’s just, you know, you feel like you just didn’t do your job.

 

MA

Well, kind of continuing with the more personal questions. I read a fantastic blog post on your website, entitled, ‘I am me’. Can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write that, and what its meaning is, particularly through the lens of today, you know, with the tough times for race relations, and of course, police-community relations.

 

LW

Yeah, you know, I mean, I, when I wrote that it was, you know, kind of, I think, maybe it was right after George Floyd, but, you know, things have just become just so polarizing. And I kind of feel like I’m sort of stuck in the middle, you know, because I am a black female, but I’m also, you know, a former police officer, you know, my husband’s a police officer. And, you know, it’s, I understand both sides. And so I, you know, sometimes feel like I’m sort of stuck in the middle, and so that’s, that’s kind of where that poem came from as is, you know, I just had all these thoughts and all these feelings. And, you know, for me, the way that I like to express my feelings is to write things. And so, you know, that’s, that’s where that came from.

 

DM

I guess it’s kind of a good segue, I want to wish you congratulations, I understand that you’re a new author.

 

LW

Yes. So I, I started writing my book shortly after I retired. And, at this point, just working with my, my agent on a, you know, trying to figure out how we’re going to get it published. So it’s been a very long road, I know nothing about, you know, the publishing industry or the literary world. And so it’s been a huge learning curve for me. You know, I’m used to writing police reports, where it’s like, who, when, what, where, you know, why, and how, and that’s it, you don’t add your, your opinion. And you don’t add your feelings, for sure. And so, writing a book that somebody wants to read, is quite different than, you know, the style of writing that I’m used to. So it’s been challenging, but also a lot of fun, to be able to actually, you know, get my thoughts and feelings down on paper and, and to share, you know, some of the interesting cases that I worked on in my career,

 

DM

that’s really interesting, and makes me think, tell us, can you tell me just share with our listeners just a little bit about the process? Because that’s a, that’s a big transition that you just mentioned. So how do you go from reports to basically entertainment? So how did you like, you carve out a space in your house? And how did you make that transition?

 

LW

So I, I think, when I was writing the book for print, most of the time, I literally just, you know, had a desk in my living room. And I would write after my family went to bed. So I just had, you know, peace and quiet. It, you know, early on, I actually hired a book coach, and that was the best thing I could have done, because she really helped kind of shape the way that I was writing and, and move it from, okay, just, you know, getting all the facts down, versus, you know, What did it look like? What did it smell like? What did it feel like?, you know, let’s add some color, you know, all the things that I was that, you know, it was like, beat into me, as a, you know, a police officer, you know, you don’t write that stuff. It just took a long time to write it, even though I was used to reading books, and I knew what I liked to read, it was hard to write it. And so, you know, it took it took a lot of editing a lot of back and forth, a lot of track changes with my book coach, but she really did help push me to get add more of that flavor. And, you know, add the life into the story. And, and then when I found my agent, you know, she also helped me with that considerably. And so, you know, it’s been great working with people that are professional writers. And you know, I am not a professional writer, I am, you know, I’m, I guess I’m a subject matter expert that’s writing about my subject matter. And so, it’s been great to have those people that are experts in that, and their craft helped me along the way.

 

MA

Lindsay, you’ve also been a very strong and excellent advocate for the expansion of these DNA databases. Can you describe for us a little bit about the work you did in developing, promoting and eventually executing Jennifer and Michella’s law?

 

LW

Yeah, so um, I worked really closely with Washington State Representative Tina Orwall. And she’s been a big proponent of sexual assault reform and a lot of the legislation that’s occurred in Washington since 2015 related to sexual assaults, and, you know, victims of sexual assault and really, you know, helping survivors get justice. And so I was able to work with her and, gosh, we went, I think it took four years of advocating before we finally got that bill passed into law. And it was it was hard. You know, Patti Bastian was a huge advocate. And she would come down to Olympia and testify. I would go down and testify. And it was finally you know, in 2019, and we finally had enough backing and support to get that law passed. And, you know, it was fantastic, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s much needed, and I think it’s so great to have you know, something -a law. especially related to DNA, you know, in the name of those two girls, because, you know, they should never be forgotten. And I think, you know, DNA is such a powerful tool. And we assume, I think a lot of people assume that because the DNA laws have been around for so long, that the system really works, and that people’s DNA does actually get collected when they go to prison, and it gets put into CODIS. But, you know, it’s, that’s not always the case. And so, you know, for me, and I’m always looking for ways to kind of fix some of the loopholes, when it comes to DNA related laws.

 

DM

You know, I want to take advantage, Lindsey, of our unique opportunity to speak with you. And your background, you’re such an accomplished detective, and I really excited to kind of ask this question, walk us through, what are the initial steps in a cold case investigation? So a detective picks up a binder on a case and he or she is hoping to rekindle. What are those first steps out of the gate to kind of fire things up?

 

LW

Read the case, you know, the first thing you want to do is, you know, I guess even before you read it is you want to look to make sure you have everything and you know, with cold cases, especially, you know, you’ll find that there might be documents at the prosecutor’s office, or the crime lab or the medical examiner’s office, or the property room that are not in the binder. So, it’s really important to make sure you have everything to start with. And then to read it over. And you know, usually more than once, and I’m a big sticky note, component or proponent. And so, you know, I, for me, I would read through the book first just and then go back a second time and read it and make sticky note. And, you know, make notes for myself on things that I found interesting things I wanted to go back to things I wanted to look into. And then, you know, you kind of have to figure out, Where’s everybody at? You’ve got all these people listed in the in the case? Are they alive? Are they dead? Are they in prison? Did they move to Oklahoma? You know, you got to figure out where these people are? And you know, are you going to be able to locate them? And then, you know, really, really importantly, for me, especially since I always kind of focused on the forensic side was, what about the evidence? You know, what kind of evidence was collected? Is it still maintained? And what can we do with that evidence today that couldn’t, you know, that couldn’t have been done when the crime was committed? And so, you know, one of the things that I always find interesting is, sometimes I’ll hear, you know, detectives say, Well, you know, yeah, they did DNA testing already. And they didn’t find anything. Okay, well, if they didn’t do DNA testing within the last, like, five years, they need, So I, when people tell me that I just like, yeah, okay, I’m gonna, let’s take another look. But, you know, and, you know, it’s not just DNA, I mean, heck, you know, with next generation fingerprinting, they’re solving all kinds of cases now, with, with that technology, because a lot of these fingerprints haven’t been looked at in these cases for decades. And so, you know, that’s really been a game changer for some of these cold cases. But I think it’s, you know, just important to look at everything, you know, and because with cold cases, you weren’t there, you weren’t part of the investigation originally, you know, it’s important to go back to the crime scene, it’s important to talk to everybody. And you know, in some cases, you know, I’ll even go back and talk to the medical examiner, and have them really explain to me like, how did you come up with this? You know, or how did the medical examiner from that time, come up with this determination? Because I don’t really understand it. I think the biggest mistake that a detective can make is not asking questions. And I think sometimes people hesitate to ask questions because they feel like it, you know, might undermine them somehow, or, you know, make it seem like they don’t know what they’re doing. But I think it’s the complete opposite. You got to you know, you got to ask questions and keep asking questions, because that’s how you learn.

 

MA

Well, interestingly, in some of the missing persons cases, it seems like at least on rare occasion, the individual is actually missing on purpose. And I think there is a term like runner or ghosting or something like that. When you have that type of situation, what are some of the telltale signs that someone who is labeled as a missing person actually intended to fall off the grid and disappear?

 

LW

Um,gosh, you know, I mean, I had a few cases where, you know, someone intentionally took off and actually committed suicide. But they just were, you know, kind of identified as a missing person for a long period of time until they were found. I can’t say that I’ve had any experience with somebody that just decided, like, I’m going to start a new life and go move to, you know, some other place and change my identity. So I haven’t dealt with that myself. But, I mean, it certainly happens.

 

MA

So it truly, truly is a rare phenomenon.

 

LW

I think so yeah. I mean, I did, I worked missing persons for quite a few years. And I mean, I can’t say that I ever came across that there were definitely people that got reported missing, who, I mean, they weren’t intending to, like, hide from people, but they just, you know, they lived a lifestyle that didn’t really like, they just, you know, sometimes people don’t keep in contact with their relatives or their or their, you know, their loved ones, because of their lifestyle, especially if they’re living a high-risk lifestyle. Or, you know, if they’re in a relationship that doesn’t allow for that. So, you know, there certainly are times when people get reported missing, that, you know, they just, they’re fine. You know, once once they’re, they’re located but they just intentionally weren’t keeping in contact.

 

DM

But you, but you think it’s a kind of a rare, like, if someone you know, ghosting themselves, you think it’s actually pretty rare.

 

LW

I have not seen that, personally.

 

DM

Well, so we’ll I guess we’ll start to wrap it up a little bit. It’s only fair that we ask you to tell us about your podcast, and to talk about the, your cold case podcast.

 

LW

Yeah, so we haven’t recorded a new episode in in quite a while. But I started the podcast with a friend of mine named Mike McCann, who is also working on a book about Ted Bundy. And so we decided to kind of focus on cold cases, both solved and unsolved. And to, you know, try to focus on, you know, interviewing some of the experts within the field. So, you know, we interviewed Colleen Fitzpatrick in one episode, and we interviewed our state forensic anthropologist, and, you know, we just thought the listeners, aside from just, you know, telling stories about cases would be interested to hear from, you know, some of the really phenomenal people that do the work, oftentimes behind the scenes on some of these cases.

 

DM

We enjoyed it. I enjoyed listening to it. Where can they? Where can our listeners find it?

 

 

LW

And so it’s the podcast is called ‘anatomy of a cold case’, and it’s on Apple, , Spotify, Anchor, and I don’t know, wherever you find your podcasts.

 

DM

That’s enough places I think.

 

MA

Well, Lindsey, we learned a lot today. Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it.

 

LW

Yes, well, thank you. appreciate you having me on.

 

MA

Yeah, you bet. And, you know, best of luck to you with the book and you know, whatever it is, whatever else it is you decide to conquer.

 

LW

Thank you.

 

MA

Well, Dion, I get the feeling that now that Ted Bundy’s DNA is in the database that eventually he’s going to be linked, you know, with DNA to many more cases. And obviously, the the evidence is quite old in those cases from the 70s. But people aren’t gonna lose interest in them. And if some of that evidence still exists, you know, now that the DNA testing methods are improving, there’s going to be a greater and greater chance that they can get usable DNA. And there’s just bound to be more hits. And, you know, I wanted to touch on something I want to get technical here just for a minute, but Lindsey was talking about how it was very hard to get a sample of Ted Bundy’s DNA, and eventually they found this vial of blood in the court clerk’s office. Well, guess what, if it’s at the court clerk’s office, it’s not refrigerated obviously. So as she said, you know, the DNA from the liquid blood was no good, it was all putrefied but there was dried blood still somewhere on that vial. And that gave a full profile. So you know, dried blood stains, even if they’re stored at room temperature, or even worse, they’re gonna give you DNA for years and years and years. This is precisely why this is the preferred method of storing DNA from blood, you put it onto a card, you make a dried stain and you freeze it. So Dion, did you get your Ted Bundy questions answered?

 

DM

Yes, no and maybe well, I tried it a couple of times to get her to bite on a couple of questions. But she being a smart detective….didn’t bite

 

MA

She’s still a detective after all…

DM

One quick comment is that I found her or her comment was interesting about the Ted Bundy shrine. But the the Florida the Florida was it Dade County?

 

MA

The Ted Bundy Museum?

 

DM

Yeah, the museum actually had like a sign or a shrine or a museum setup for him because there was so much material, which goes to actually my comment, one of the questions I couldn’t get her to bite on is, what’s his real number? I mean, I don’t think it’s 30, or whatever she mentioned. It was I think it’s a lot more I was having deja vu visions of H. H. Holmes, that I think that there’s no incentive for Ted Bundy to give any kind of a real number, but I would guess it’s at least well over 50 you can’t be doing what he was doing for that long across the United States in that time period without DNA, and these other forensic techniques, and have the number. You know, be in my opinion, unfortunately, that that low? I think it’s a lot more, I think, yeah.

 

MA

Yeah. And as a serial killer. You know, you’re constantly trying to deceive the cops. So when you get caught, you know, I don’t think that ends, you know, you’re still gonna toy with them. Oh, was it 30 people? Was it 100?

 

DM

Look, we’re still keeping the legacy living on? We’re still talking about him. Right.?

 

MA

You know what, dummies like us are still talking about it. Right?

 

DM

We are still making movies about Ted Bundy, perhaps he is getting the last laugh.

 

MA

You’re right. Right, exactly. But, you know, she was very dogged with DNA in all her cases, you know, historical ones, Ted Bundy, and current ones. And it was really great to see detective who’s so up to date on the latest DNA trends. And she gave the example when she you know, would when she cracks open a cold case, first thing to do is go talk to the people who worked at originally go talk to the medical examiner…

 

DM

I love that breakdown that was inside baseball for me. hey, how do you? What do you do to get started on this? you know, some of that stuff is logical, hey, do this. But I was really cool to hear it right from a veteran detective, you know

MA

What struck me is that it’s essentially the same operation, when you’re looking at a case post-conviction, because you’re looking at it with the eyes that they did not convict the right person. So it’s now a cold case again. So if you’re trying to exonerate somebody, it’s obviously best to solve the case at the same time. So all these steps she was talking about, sounded very familiar to me looking at cases from a post-conviction posture. So it’s kind of funny how the two worlds in that regard intersect.

 

DM

But it’s a goal in mind. You may be on different teams. It’s the same get the right guy or girl,

 

MA

It’s an unsolved case. Anyway you, look at it. what struck me is she was talking about she went and talked to the detective. In this one particular case. He said, Oh, yeah, we tried DNA. And you know, it was a dead end. And she asked, Well, how long ago, you know, five years? Well, Gosh, that’s ancient history now in, DNA technology. So there’s the Lindsey’s out there. But I think the detective that she described, you know, just saying, Hey, we did DNA, and that’s enough, that’s probably more reflective, where most law enforcement is actually

 

DM

I checked a DNA box there’s nothing to see here. Let’s move along on to something else, you know, something that maybe they unfortunately, you know, I don’t mean this as a dig that they understand. Right?

 

MA

Well, yeah, yeah, for sure. And, of course, when DNA was brand new, it was just over everybody’s had. And we can’t really say that DNA is a new technology, but the way that it’s used is constantly new, every two years or something, we have these dramatic breakthroughs. So I don’t know how many Lindsey’s there are out there.

 

DM

Well, let’s also break that down even further. So let’s say there. Let’s say there’s a new DNA technique doesn’t come up for a number of years, but let’s just stay with genetic genealogy. there’s going to be more people uploading it. So even for that alone, you need to keep going back and tasting it because you may get a familial hit, right? Or, because every year those that database is expanding.

 

MA

Well, it’s true and even and I’ll kind of run a parallel with attorneys. You know, a lot of attorneys they might have went 10, 15,20 years without ever seeing DNA in a case. Part of that is because when DNA was first used, it was clunky and expensive. It was only used in the most serious cases. Well, now I mean, if it’s a you know, somebody who’s jaywalking and dropped a piece of gum, they they might use DNA in it. More attorneys, more detectives are going to have to deal with this is going to be right in their face.

 

DM

Yeah, it’s I think it’s truly incredible how the technologies like genetic genealogy are closing these cases, one after another.

 

MA

So I mean, there’s no doubt that genetic genealogy is like you say, in the baseball parlance that that it’s the closer, but I think one thing we’ve got to remember is that, although you know, it looks like genetic genealogy quickly solves a case and maybe easily solves  case, you’ve got to kind of understand how that sausage is actually made. So getting the DNA sample, in a lot of cases might be the easy part. And then just uploading it into this open access genealogy, that database, that’s probably the the easy part, it’s what happens after that to actually get the lead, that can be extremely labor intensive. And that’s why you can’t throw this at every case, even if you have a DNA sample, because it’s gonna take months of hard work, and probably numerous individuals working together to refine this genealogy research. In other words, to look at documents track down leads, interview, people maybe perform additional DNA testing. So to get to that magic moment of cuffing the perp, and say, DNA did it that takes a lot of time and effort. And you know, like Lindsey said, most of the cold cases don’t even have DNA evidence. So we hear about the genetic genealogy, but it’s really just a drop in the bucket of the cold cases, they’re there, and it’s not available for most of them.

 

DM

Yeah, unfortunately, there is going to be a little bit of a, I guess, a time stamp cut off. So everything after this date, DNA will have an impact, because they just weren’t collecting it, or knew to collect it. Or this. And let’s say, you know, something falls out of the sky, and they’re able to, to link it to somebody that could be a potential suspect or witness in a case.

 

MA

I mean, if you don’t have it, you can’t test it.. That’s all there is to it. And a lot of times people are it was collected, maybe in the 80s, but it could have been destroyed, it could have been damaged. Believe it or not, these things get lost. You know, for example, like the, the Ted Bundy blood vial in the clerk’s office, seemed like Lindsey and other people had to go through a lot of work to even locate it. You know, where was that? Where’s the evidence tracking system in the 70s? And 80s? You know, it was it was probably written on a cocktail napkin.

 

DM

Yeah, that was a little bit of a jaw drop for me. It just should haven’t been that she had to go through that much work. And here it was sitting in a lab. There was a and there was a shrine, you know, it just,

 

MA

Yeah, that was one. And then then the, you know, the clerk’s office? Like I said before, it’s like, well, that’s, you know, I mean, you’re not looking to preserve evidence there. It’s just that it was probably a court exhibit, you have to hold on to that stuff. So it was just thrown in a box somewhere.

 

DM

Well, I guess that kind of a positive side to that, that that Lindsey raised, that it’s that time is on the cold case Detective’s side. that there’s, there’s no, you know, there’s not so much pressure, timing, pressure, and that they’ll get there when they get there. And then also, now departments have dedicated Cold Case units. This way, they’re not taking it away from resources from from current cases, which I thought was also smart, I think you’re going to see a lot more of, I guess, compartmentalizing, in, I think medium to large forces just for that, because I think as we keep moving forward with the DNA, they’re gonna be able to really go back and like, like we just talked about, and start applying some of this DNA that’s sitting on a shelf somewhere to these cold cases

 

MA

Well, when you think about the amount of material that has to be reviewed on a cold case, you really can’t be pulled in 25 different directions, doing other cases. So these dedicated cold case units are a great idea. Because you think about a brand new case, there’s only so much evidence, so many police reports only so much has been done. But if you’re looking at a cold case, there might be 40 years of people investigating this and researching it. And you have to plow through all of that. So you really have to be focused on it. And it seems to me that, you know, Lindsey is really, really cut out for this job. And I suppose to the outside world, it sounds like she just sort of sailed through her career was continually promoted and excelled. But I’m sure Dion it wasn’t that easy. And, you know, maybe we should have asked her more about some of the challenges that she faced, and hopefully we can talk to her again, down the road, you know, particularly when her book comes out. And, you know, even just the fact that in this, you know, in the business she’s in I mean, she’s, she’s a woman, and she’s biracial at that. So what challenges must that have brought onto her? And I bet we’ll hear about that in her book.

 

DM

Yeah, I hope so. I still go back to how rewarding it must be. When a detective finally solves a mystery that’s, that’s decades old, you know? Like, how cool is it that cases Lindsey worked on for years will likely end up being solved in the future and she’ll continue to celebrate them? I think that’s, I think that’s why you get into the business and why she works so hard to become a detective.

 

MA

Well, you know what else? The more complicated these cases are, the longer they’re going to live on. Because some of the cases that Lindsey thought were solved, are going to come back on appeal, convictions might be overturned. And so you never get away from these cases, particularly the complicated murder cases.

 

DM

I agree. But I also there’s another thing I took away from, I guess, from her, her spirit on this is that, obviously, she loves bringing closure to the family, you can tell by that part of the discussion. I don’t want to, you know, go too much in that because it just spoke for itself. But I’m sure that she also is always, you know, spending a lot of time focused on the cases that she couldn’t solve during her career, I bet you that probably really eats her up.

 

MA

Yeah, that’s, that’s definitely a tough side effect to this line of work. And I mean, just to kind of close out here, I think that this interview was a great lesson and how it’s not really the DNA technology that solves the case, it’s the detective who put the work in, to first of all, find the DNA, and then make sure that it can be compared to as many people as possible. If you’re suspect is, not in a database, somewhere there, there’s just not going to be a hit. So, you know, for example, I was really impressed with how Lindsey thought about these civil commitment centers, and had the idea that, hey, we don’t know that their DNA profiles are necessarily in a database. So she went and wasn’t easy, but ended up getting those guys tested. And lo and behold, she solved a case that way.

 

DM

Well, it’s that kind of out of the box thinkingI think it’s gonna keep the, you know, I hate to keep using sports analogies, but the ball, you know, moving down the field, you know, it’s like, Okay, well, we tried this. We’ve been doing it this way. How much success? What else can we try?

 

MA

Well said.

 

DM

So we look forward to talking with Lindsey again in the near future. And of course, reading a book, it seems like there’s so many questions we could have asked her but we only had a short amount of time. To learn more about Lindsey, check out our website at lindseywade.org . And also check her out on Twitter @elledubb7. And we want to say hey, thanks again for listening and for interacting with us on social media. keep those questions coming. We love it. We like to play you know, stump the DNA expert when we get every chance we get. We hope everyone is doing better now that the pandemic is subsiding a little bit, and make sure you check out all of our past episodes at crime redefined.com be well everyone.

 

B

Thank you for listening to the Crime Redefined podcast, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @crimeredefined. Please send us your comments and questions and join us for the next episode.

Silent Witnesses-S1 30

Wensley Clarkson is a British best-selling crime author and journalist.  His upcoming book The Real Silent Witnesses:  Shocking Cases From The World Of Forensic Science, is a fascinating account of the rise of forensic science in the UK. Wensley joins Crime Redefined to discuss the intriguing cases and issues highlighted in his book. Hosted by Dion Mitchell and Mehul Anjaria. A Zero Cliff Media production.

Who’s Watching You?-S1 29

Don Johnson’s new book Who’s Watching You? is a harrowing look at the horrifying crime his wife Ellen survived. It also highlights Ellen’s important work in expanding the DNA database in Louisiana. Don joins Crime Redefined to dig deep into this powerful book that serves as a warning to all of us. Hosted by Dion Mitchell and Mehul Anjaria. A Zero Cliff Media production.

Loyola Project For the Innocent-S1 28

The Loyola Project For the Innocent (LPI) in Los Angeles, CA works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted.  Lead attorneys Paula Mitchell and Adam Grant join Crime Redefined to describe the unique experience that their clinic provides for students who are passionate about criminal law. Check out this video for more about LPI:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bc_TsZbo3w.   Hosted by Dion Mitchell and Mehul Anjaria.  A Zero Cliff Media production.

 

 Loyola Project For the Innocent

Unofficial Transcript

 

B=Show Bumpers

DM=Dion Mitchell, Co-host

MA=Mehul Anjaria, Co-host

PM=Paula Mitchell, Guest

AG=Adam Grant, Guest

 

B

Welcome to the crime redefined podcast produced by zero cliff media coming to you from the US Bank tower high above downtown Los Angeles. In our podcast, we drill deep into forensics and criminal investigation from the viewpoint of the defense as well as explore the intersection of the media and the justice system.

 

DM

Hello, I’m Dion Mitchell here with my co-host and DNA expert Mehul Anjaria. On this episode of crime redefinde we’re taking you inside the Los Angeles based chapter of the innocence network. The Loyola project for the innocent is located inside the Loyola law school in Los Angeles. And today, we have the pleasure of speaking with legal director Paul Mitchell and program director, Adam Grant.

 

MA

What exactly is the innocence network?, I’m gonna go ahead and just read the description right off of the website. So it’s 68 organizations from around the world, working to exonerate unjustly convicted men and women, including independent nonprofits, as well as organizations affiliated with law schools, or other educational institutions, units of public defender offices, and pro bono sections of law firms.

 

DM

You know, one of the first things I learned about this, this organization Mehul is that they’re international. And I thought it was really amazing to find that they had innocence networks all around the world. And I’ll rattle off a couple of examples. Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and Italy. All have innocence projects. I thought that’s pretty cool.

 

 

MA

Yeah, it is. It really, really spread and caught fire. And, you know, of course, it all started on American soil back in 1992, in New York with the Innocence Project. And you probably first heard of its co founders, Barry Scheck, and Peter Neufeld when they were members of OJ Simpson’s Dream Team. During that thing, they called the trial of the century back in 1995. And so if you go back to the origin of the innocence network, in 1992, DNA testing was really in its infancy. And if you think in terms of public exposure of DNA, it was really the OJ trial that was the watershed event that put it on everybody’s radar. Well, of course, DNA is a powerful tool to establish innocence. But the innocence network also takes on non- DNA cases, which of course make up a vast majority of the cases where there’s a wrongful conviction,

 

DM

You know, is interesting at Loyola, the students are the driving force behind the success of this program. Here in Los Angeles, it seems that every few months, we’re hearing about another wrongfully convicted person being released, with the help of the Loyola project for the innocent or LPI,for short, I believe and correct me if I’m wrong, that in 2017, they had three in one month. Is that correct?

 

MBA

That’s right. There may have been more that year, but they were one after another. I mean, before I knew who Adam was, I would, you know, see in the news. I’m like, oh, there’s that guy with the bow tie again.

 

DM

You know, you know, once we hear from them, people will have a better appreciation for that number. Because of the amount of time and, and legwork that goes into, you know, one of these undoing one these wrongful convictions. So with that, let’s hear from Paula and Adam.

 

Hi, Paula and  Adam, thank you so much for joining us on crime redefined today. We’re really looking forward to learning more about you and your amazing team at LPI.

 

PM

Thank you for having us. It’s a pleasure to be here.

 

MA

Well, Paula, you’re the Legal Director of the project. What exactly is your role and your duties?

 

PM

Well, we have a clinic, a legal clinic at Loyola law school. So students can sign up, take the seminar class where we learn about the causes of wrongful conviction. And they also help us work on the cases that come to us. People write to us asking for help. And we we get those requests and review them and then investigate them and, you know, try to see if cases are are worth looking into and try to help where we can. I wear so many hats, frankly, it would take a while to go through them all. But basically, you know, what we have found is that these wrongful conviction cases are incredible teaching tools. And it’s like the perfect way to explain to you know, young, not even just young, anybody in law school, anybody who wants to learn about what, where the problems are in the criminal justice system. Can do that by looking at that actual case involving a real person. And so, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s the thrust.

 

MA

Well, Adam, same question for you as the program director. You know, what’s your role and what kind of duties do you have?

 

AG

When we started, I was one of the two people who started this clinic. Laurie Levenson and I started it when I had just graduated from law school. And we had been working on an innocence case together while I was in school, that became the first case in the clinic when we started the clinic. And so when we began the clinic, and when Paula came aboard, there were there was nobody else there. So we we did everything. Now that we have some staff attorneys, our roles are I mean, it’s a little hard to define what our role is. But you know, we all work on the cases, we all supervise students, we all take part of the teaching. Paula and I both do a lot of the sort of directorial tasks that have to do with dealing with the school and dealing with people who want things from us and people who contact us from outside. And some of the things I used to do sort of as case manager and things like that have been delegated to other people. And I try to work on as many cases as I can. And it essentially, my favorite part is investigation. So I try to do as much investigating as I possibly can also.

 

MA

So at present, how many staff members does LPI have?

 

AG

I think we have about seven people working altogether now.

 

DM

Paula you mentioned just a minute ago, you have that you kind of are a little bit of a gatekeeper and kind of vet the cases that come in, I’m curious, how many inquiries do you receive every year from inmates who claim to be innocent? And then from those how many cases do you actually take on?

 

PM

Great question, we get between 800 and 1000 letters a year from people who are incarcerated, some of them we know right away, we cannot help because they are not in custody in the state of California. So that is one of the main criteria, you have to be close enough that we can actually get to get to you and get to your witnesses and do the investigating, like Adam said, and then, you know, because there are the line is so long, we try very hard to take the cases and review them as they come in. So the older the case, the the closer it is to the top of the list. However, there are situations that come up where, for example, somebody comes in and says, oh, my son is in prison. And he just got this declaration from the main witness who testified against him at trial. And this witness is saying I lied, I made up the whole thing or somebody pressured me, it’s not true, he didn’t do it. And when that happens, we kind of have to move the case up, because it sort of starts the clock ticking in terms of how long we have to bring this claim that the person is innocent to the court’s attention. So you can’t take a fresh piece of new evidence like that, and just stick it in the file drawer, and let it sit there for five years while you keep working on your cases that that are, you know, ahead of it. So it’s, you know, we try very hard to be systematic, and take the cases as they come. But like I said, there are different ways to get to the front of the line,

 

DM

That’s a great way to frame it and actually answers the question. So now it sounds like probably a better way I should have asked that is how many cases are you juggling at one particular time? Because it sounds like you can like I said, you know, something comes in and starts the clock ticking on another case that maybe you weren’t working on at that time. So if you were to put a ballpark number on how many in a given month, do you think that you’re you and your team are juggling?

 

PM

Well, we currently have a oh my gosh, I’m gonna say like six or seven cases in litigation. Some of them have been filed recently, some of them have been filed several years ago, sometimes these cases can go on for years. So in terms of actually, you know, going to court and we’re in the thick of it, I’d say six or seven cases like that. And then we have another, I would say six or seven cases that we’re very close to being ready to file the petition on to get that case, they get those cases into court. But we have to, you know, we have limited resources. We’re a nonprofit. So we can’t, we can’t over commit ourselves. We have to make sure that once we are ready to file, we have all the resources we need to see that case through. And then I’d say we probably have another 30 cases that are under investigation in at some stage. Does that sound right to you?

 

AG

Yeah. You know, like any good lawyer, we can’t give you a straight answer

 

DM

I was gonna keep digging, but I thought I’d just I cut it off there.  But actually, that’s a great segue, since you started in 2011, about how many students have completed your clinic?

 

AG

I would say we’ve had between 150 and 200 students. And you know, there are also those are law students. And then we also have a robust summer program, where we work with a lot of law students from other schools, and also undergrads from around the country. And so that’s probably another, I don’t know, 60, or 80 students, as well.

 

DM

And those are just ones that come in like, like during the summertime, they’re not full time.

 

AG

Well, what’s great about the summer is that they are full time over the summer. So when, when we’re, you know, working with students during their school year, we have to compete, with four or five other very important draws on their time and attention. But as sort of the opposite of the way the rest of the world works, where everybody tries to take it easy over the summer, we usually go full throttle over the summer, because that’s our opportunity to get full time help for us. And so we have a little hive of energy and activity going on in the summer

 

MA

I was curious to know, how often do students maybe start the clinic and just drop out and decide it’s just not for them? And if that does happen, what are the typical reasons?

 

AG

Well, we often have, we will often have one student who decides that it’s not for them kind of roughly at orientation. You know, the thing about wrongful convictions is that I think most people are very aware of wrongful convictions and innocent people in prison now, but the way they come to it is that they see somebody collapsing into the arms of their family, getting out of prison, and it’s a very joyous occasion. And maybe everybody doesn’t think about the fact that this started with a murder or, or a sex crime or a kidnapping. And there’s, there’s a, there’s a straight up criminal victim, I mean, victim of a crime, and a horrible story that’s occurred and horrible facts attached to it. And then there’s a whole other set of victims who are the wrongfully convicted person and his or her family. And there’s so much suffering and so much just awful facts and awful things that you kind of have to live in as you do the case that I think sometimes people want to come on board because they see the joy and they see the back end or the front end or whatever it is, but they don’t see. They may not be prepared for what they’re really going to see when when you peel back the lid on these areas.

 

DM

Adam to kind of build on that. Do your students ever circle back in their career to help out LPI with cases or in fundraising or even promotion?

 

AG

Oh, yeah, we, we there are a lot of times when we ask when we ask our students to help us with promotion or something that we’re doing but there and there are a lot of times when students will email us from a job at a big law firm and say, I’m finally able to do some pro bono work, is there something I can do with you. And we also have, you know, a lot of former students who are working for public defenders or other justice oriented organizations who are sort of doing our work in in in another setting, there are a lot and there are also a lot of people who generally people do our work or our clinic in there 2L year. But there’s always a percentage of them who really don’t want to let their case go after a year and want to come back for their three year and even try to get some kind of a fellowship for after they graduate. So we you know, we don’t require that people want to go into criminal law when they join the clinic, but we find that we have we do have a lot of converts and a lot of people who went to law school to try to help people or specifically to work on innocence cases.

 

DM

You know, that’s a great point. It would be hard to give a year of your life working on this and then just to walk away because your time’s up I could see a lot of lot of the students wanting to come back continue to be involved, you know, as much as they possibly can just get across the finish line.

 

AG

Yes, because the case is taking much longer than then they’re gonna be in the clinic, but I also tell them you know, I apologize in advance for ruining you for every other legal job since this is the most moving most, you know, fulfilling thing you’re probably ever going to do.

 

MA

So for the students that are then turned on by criminal law and pursue it, what percentage of those students end up working for the good guys that is, as criminal defense attorneys?

 

AG

Oh, I mean, overall, I think there’s, it’s, it’s not a majority. But I would say there’s a good, maybe 30% of the students end up working in criminal defense in one way or another, beyond doing pro bono work and things like that.

 

PM

I would just add that, you know, even those who don’t go on to do criminal defense work, are often profoundly moved by the experience. And I just got an email yesterday, from Brittany Whitehead, who was a volunteer with us in 2015. And she was here as an undergrad from Colorado, she’s going to college in Colorado, and she came to volunteer with us. And she wrote me this really nice email, and she said, You know, I worked on Jane Dorotik’s case, which is one of our cases, and, and it’s still going on, but she has been released from prison, and her conviction has been overturned. And Brittany just said, I check, I have a, you know, reminder in my calendar to check every week to see, you know, if anything, if there’s any news on the case, and she was ecstatic to hear some of the things that she was working on five years ago, you know, still matter, and they helped, they helped us get Jane out. So our client, Jane Dorotik out. So, you know, I was really happy that she reached out in and said that, because you never know, you know, when somebody comes in volunteers and then moves on, you don’t always know what impact they experience had for them. And she just expressed it so well, I was happy.

 

 

MA

So Paula, to build on that, for the students that do go on to be prosecutors, what do you hope that they’ll will take with them after their experience in the clinic?

 

PM

I hope that they have a clear- eyed view of the fact that we all make mistakes, and a lot of mistakes are inadvertent, but they’re still mistakes. And it is incredibly important that we hold ourselves accountable. And for for reviewing possible mistakes, uncovering them, and then fixing them. And it’s not an indictment of one’s character to admit that you made a mistake. It’s a testament to your character, that you can acknowledge that and, and try to fix it and then and learn from it and move forward. And I also hope that they, they take into their position as a prosecutor, an understanding that there’s a lot of gray, in criminal law, things are not always as black and white, as they are sometimes presented to the jury. And what I mean by that, as an example is, you know, just because the law says you can throw the book at somebody and charge them with 14 different crimes and gun enhancements and gang and like, you know, you can just load it up, it doesn’t mean that you should, and, you know, prosecutors too, can look at the whole picture, you know, who is this kid? What, where’s he coming from? How did he end up in the situation? Is this that, you know, all of those questions that, that go both to public safety and to our humanity, and how we treat people in the criminal justice system and out, I think, I think that they need to, you know, take with them when they when they leave our project.

 

DM

Let’s stay with the students. And I’m gonna open this up to either one of you to answer, tell us about the selection process for students in what what goes into that? What’s some of the qualities that you’re looking for? And then how do you coach them up?

 

AG

You know, we are looking for people who can get things done, who sort of had a history of taking care of business, frankly, it not necessarily just in justice, but did things in high school where they had to sort of take charge and accomplish something and get something completed. You know, we’d love to see people who, who have a history of trying to help other people and trying to make justice happen wherever they wherever they can. But we also recognize that that not everybody has launched, you know, all kinds of justice projects by the time they’re in law school. But the idea that we’re looking for people who don’t wait for somebody else to tell them exactly how to do things for people who don’t wait for other people to do things for them. And I like to look at how they talk about the work that they assume they’re going to be doing. Because everybody has a decent idea of what we do as an Innocence Project, maybe not the nitty gritty, but what our cases are going to be about. I like to see how people talk about that work, and how or whether they talk about the effect it’s going to have on the clients or whether they talk about the effect that it’s going to have on them.

 

 

 

MA

Well I know that the clinic is very hands on for the students. So besides, you know, helping out with legal motions and proposed court orders and this kind of thing, what type of boots on the ground investigation and, you know, kind of real lawyering experience do the students actually get?

 

PM

Well, one area that comes up quite a bit, in our cases, is has to do with expert witnesses. Because a lot of these cases involve forensics, or as you know, DNA things, issues for which we really do need expertise. And I like to give the students opportunities to interact with the experts, a big part of lawyering, especially litigation, any kind of litigation, frankly, is the ability to become quickly become a little mini expert yourself, because you cannot interact with your own experts, you cannot appropriately address the issues in your own case, unless you understand them. And that means science or, you know, brain injury, or DNA or whatever. And so, I like giving the students chances to interact with the experts help them get the materials they need to review, explain to the students, you know, what’s going to be helpful to the court, we need to get these experts to tell the court the information that that the court needs to decide the issue. And it’s a really great exercise, and it’s a great way to teach them how to do that analysis. They also do a lot of witness interviews go out, we actually go out we knock on doors, and we Adam is is really good at this, you know, we they come to the door, and we ask if we can talk to them about something happened 35 years ago, and and the students are there, we prepare them ahead of time, they understand, you know, the reason we’re going to see a particular witness. And I think it’s really a beautiful thing to watch, because in the beginning, they’re usually pretty shy. For the most part, they don’t want to speak up too much. But by the end of even the first semester, you know, they’re they’re finding their, their comfort zone and and getting in there and, and adding value to those witness interviews, don’t you think? h,

 

AG

Yeah absolutely. And, you know, the witness interviews are one of the more fascinating aspects because there’s, there’s a whole lot of psychology and there’s a whole lot of just understanding people and how people operate and, and using that to try to get to the truth of the matter. And, you know, for for a lot of law students, there’s an opportunity opportunity to talk to someone in a part of the city or, or in a situation that they really don’t spend much time in and learn how to talk to different kinds of people and people in different situations. And understand that you know, people have different lives and and you have to go into interactions with people, just not assuming that you know, everything about them or not assuming that, you know, what, what, what you will find when you talk to them. So it’s great. It’s also great practice for any kind of legal area that they work in. But it’s such an exercise in understanding humans and trying to really have a an honest interaction with a person that you probably never meet otherwise.

 

DM

Yeah, I find this part of the work that you do extremely fascinating. I don’t think that a lot of people that are that may have heard the Innocence Project, understand that these students are going out into the field now and I find this a really interesting part of of your work. And I was curious, since you probably have, you know, you said students coming from across the country to come out and work and I’m sure that there’s things where they’re maybe going into South Central is there have  there been situations where students felt unsafe or at least extremely scared while conducting an investigation or doing these interviews?

 

AG

Well first of all, we take a lot of precautions to make sure that everybody is safe. We nobody ever goes anywhere alone. They don’t go out without somebody on the staff and we have a lot of experience as to you know how to keep ourselves safe. I think when people have become frightened, it’s not even about really dealing with people, it’s more like making sure they’re, you know, whether there’s a dog in the yard or when you see a dog in the yard, whether you can go in that yard or not, or figure out a creative way to keep yourself safe and stay away from that dog. Or some some circumstances where you go into a building, looking for a witness. And it’s, you know, it’s a very intricate series of hallways, and it’s dark. And you wonder if you’re really safe in there, we take a lot of precautions, and we have a lot of faith that we have, you know, we have truth and justice on our side. And we don’t think anything’s going to happen to us, if we’re smart about it.

 

PM

Also, I, you know, one of the things that we do in every case is, I would say maybe there, maybe there is an exception or two is we go, we go physically to where the crime occurred if we can, and, you know, training people who are potentially considering being a prosecutor or a criminal defense attorney, to actually go and lay eyes on a on a scene is really important. And I don’t know that a lot of that happens a lot in, in during the trial, pre trial and trial phases of a lot of cases. And, you know, for example, if you have a witness who says, Oh, I saw the person, I saw the defendant, go across the street and do X, Y, and Z. And it was, you know, midnight, and it was on such and such a corner, and we go there at night at that same time. Sometimes we even go on the very day, or we look at the moon conditions, we look at the lighting we go and we we see, could they even really see this. And I think the students are often surprised when they see the results, like just physically going in and putting yourself there can be incredibly informative.

 

MA

Well, Adam, you hit on this already. But obviously this type of work is grueling, it can be extremely frustrating, and at times actually disturbing for the reasons that you pointed out Adam, and also just the sort of pictures and things that you see in discovery. So I’m curious for what I’ll call a kid, since I’m old now, you know, a student who may be in their 20s, who doesn’t have a lot of worldliness and they’re thrown into this work, what kind of resources are you able to provide them to help them cope with with the stress?

 

AG

Well, we do have the ability to obtain the services of specialist for secondary trauma, if people feel like they’ve been really traumatized, by things that they’ve seen, or things that they’ve heard. Um, and we spend a lot of time talking about, you know, after we go somewhere, after we see something we spend a lot of time talking about what we’ve seen and what its effect is on on us. And I have to say the students have, you know, when this works, the students really give over emotionally to their case. I don’t see a lot of students who are, who are seemed traumatized or who are seem to be thinking about themselves very much they, I think they most have almost all of them that I can think of have really taken it in stride. And again, I think the ones who who are easily traumatized by some of this work kind of weed themselves out early, but we do make sure that there are counselors available if somebody needs one. And we talk a lot about how we feel about things. And what we’ve seen. It is a constant worry, though, because they are young people. And some of them have never had a job before even. And they’re looking at, you know, we see autopsy photos and, and pieces of evidence with blood on them and all kinds of grim things. And by the way, you know, we also go to prisons all the time and talk to people. You know, we talked to some witnesses who unfortunately really have no future at all to look forward to and we all have to figure out how to talk to a person who essentially has nothing to look forward to. How do you really communicate with them and and make them feel heard, without reminding them of all the things that they’re missing? And that’s somewhat I don’t know if traumatic is the right word, but it’s pretty serious stuff.

 

DM

That could really, you know, weigh on you when you’re trying to make a connection with somebody I could completely identify with that. You mentioned this early on in our conversation Paula about some of time people make mistakes. And I was wondering some of the more what’s the most egregious instance of injustice that you’ve seen in one of your cases?

 

PM

I would say it’s probably in Andrew Wilson’s case, Mr. Wilson had his conviction was overturned in 2017, after he was in prison for 32 years. And, you know, to the, to the DA his credit that the deputy DA on the case at the time, discovered that the trial prosecutor knew some information before Mr. Wilson’s trial even occurred, and the information that she knew strongly pointed to another suspect. And that was not disclosed to the defense. It wasn’t raised at trial, she went forward with the trial and, and he was convicted and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. And the, you know, the trial prosecutor, it may be that she really didn’t know the value of the information she had. You know, generally I don’t think prosecutors set out to convict innocent people. But it was a huge injustice. And it was clear, you know, when we saw it, how incredibly exculpatory, the evidence was, and that it clearly should have been given over to the defense. And they they acknowledged that and they conceded that his conviction should be overturned. I don’t know, Adam, am I forgetting anything?

 

AG

Well, also, I would add to that, that prosecutor didn’t. Not only did that prosecutor not turn over the information, but there was no effort made to investigate it, either. To make sure, you know, that it wasn’t important, or was important.

 

PM

You know, what’s, what’s interesting, too, is Adam and I contacted her all these, you know, decades later, she’s like, yeah, sure, come on over, I’ll talk to you. And we told her what case it was. And she said, Oh, this case has always troubled me. And she listened to, you know, all the problems and the case, and she signed a declaration that said, You know, I think there might be some problems in this case, and she didn’t remember, you know, the, the material that I was just describing, she didn’t remember that happening. But there was something about the case that always bothered her. And she came forward and said, So, which was really helpful. And it was also the right thing to do.

 

 

DM

How do you stay calm?

 

How do you hear see it the first time and then go back and talk to her again? How do you how do you stay calm? I feel like I would I don’t know.

 

AG

It’s a particular lawyer skill that you have to have at the moment when something you’re hearing somebody who’s sitting two feet away from you is telling you something that’s like an earthquake. And you have to figure out how to keep your poker face on and not let them know how important it is what they’re saying. So they keep talking. It’s a particular legal skill. I don’t know what what to call it.

 

DM

Clearly, I would not be good at it.

 

PM

If you ask a lot of people on my staff, they would tell you, I do not stay calm

 

DM

Thanks for making me feel better Paula.

 

MA

So Paula and Adam,big picture, in all the cases that you’ve handled in the project, if you had to rank the top three causes for wrongful convictions, what would you say they would be?

 

AG

Well, in our office, I, the number one cause seems to be prosecutorial and and related police misconduct, I would say, Would you, Paula?

 

PM

I would say that’s present in almost every case, I would say eyewitness ID is probably second.

 

AG

Mm hmm. And of course, those aren’t mutually exclusive. Right. And there are, you know, increasingly, we’re seeing cases where, where it’s about bad science

 

PM

And bad defense, lawyering You know, it’s, it’s the same on both sides. There are prosecutors, some are trained better than others. Some are, are just better than others. And the same is true on the defense side. And, you know, everybody has their resource limitations, and they have their own issues. But we have seen some really horrendous cases, including an attorney who had just graduated from law school two years and 10 months before taking on a potential death penalty case. and had never been really had much felony experience. And Yep, that was back in 1980. I think things are maybe better now.

DM

So. Let’s move on to something more positive. Tell us if you want to name names. Tell us a couple of if you don’t mind sharing a couple of stories on some past students who went on to do some really great things in their career.

 

PM

Well, one of our first fellows, her name is Jackie Rambis. And she was in the clinic she worked on which case Adam was it Kash?

 

AG

I think she came along just after Kash’s case. Well, to be honest, she worked very hard on a couple of cases that we ended up closing that i don’t i don’t know that we need to say the names of she spent an awful lot of time working on a couple of cases that that didn’t pan out, for for the person who was convicted.

 

PM

She worked on Maria Mendez, and now she works at the LA County Public Defender’s Office. And we have another staff attorney named Seth Hancock. And he also now works at the LA County Public Defender’s Office, we have a former student, Charlie Nelson Keever, who is now pursuing postconviction opportunities. And I’m trying to think of, we have a couple of students who have now become fellows within our clinic. So there, they claim they’re never leaving. We’re trying to make that happen.

 

AG

And there’s Lauren,Lauren Noriega, who has her own firm does a lot of postconviction work. Also,

 

PM

Ariana Price has moved to Tucson, she left us and moved to Tucson, got married and had a baby, and she’s also doing postconviction work.

 

MA

Well, that’s great. And along those lines, I’m kind of curious to know, what kind of bond do you and the students end up forming with your exonerees and their families as a result of sharing is such a profound experience?

 

PM

It’s pretty, it’s a pretty profound bond, you’re right. It we are, in many instances, a member of the family and they they we have, you know, friends, slash former clients, who just straight up call us brother and sister. And you know, when you think about it, they they see us as instrumental in in really helping to save their lives in some respects. And, you know, when you were asking earlier about the students, and you know, how we, how we go about protecting them from things that might be traumatic, you know, we we give them a heads up and like, these are autopsy photos, don’t look, if you don’t want to look, we, you know, we’ve tried to prepare them as much as possible. But one of the things we tell them is, look, the people who are writing to us, they don’t have anywhere else to go. They don’t have it’s not like, should we choose? Should we choose Loyola Or should we just go hire a lawyer, they don’t have money. And so, you know, I encourage the students, if they ever feel like, you know, I just don’t know if I want to do this, I don’t know if this is going to be too hard. I want them to really dig deep and think, you know, if I don’t help this person, or if we don’t help these people, there isn’t anybody else. So, you know, with respect to our former exonerees I mean, our former our clients who have been exonerated you know, it’s always a joyful thing to stay in touch to hear how they’re doing. And it is forever they they will forever be part of our extended family.

 

AG

The other thing about our clients is that you know, what, when you’re in prison when you’re imprisoned in, in America, in state prison or in county jail. You know, there’s this process of dehumanization that goes on and, and when you’ve been in prison for 30 years or 20 years, you know, you’ve been dehumanized, sometimes on purpose. Sometimes inadvertently, in certain situations. You’ve you’ve had most of your or somebody has tried to take most of your humanity. And one of the one of the ways that manifests itself is that nobody listens to you. And you know, if you imagine yourself having been a victim of this terrible injustice, and and put in a cage for all this time, and then every time you try to tell somebody about it, they just kind of shake their head like yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard somebody else say that once, you know, who’s, I mean, it’s so profound and and one of the things that we try to do for everybody who asks for our help, even the people that we can help is just to try to give them an experience of being treated like a person again, and being listened to again. Then being taken seriously again, and treated like somebody who might be telling the truth, or has something to say. And so if you start from there, and you build a relationship where you where you then go on to help them in this profound way, I mean, you know, the attachment, the fulfillment that it gives us, and the, the effect that it has on them, it just can’t help but create this incredibly intense relationship and friendship and kinship. And when you combine that with the fact that, you know, to get to this stage, our clients are some of the most strong willed, resilient, remarkable people that that we’ve ever met. It really creates this bond that I mean, it’s one of the privileges of this work, I’ve, you know, you’ve never had a relationship like it, probably. And if the students get a little taste of it, it’s another one of the really intoxicating things that we hope will help them remember the power and the privilege that they have to help other people. It’s really an incredible relationship,

 

DM

I could understand now that connection could last forever, you know, that your just, you’re giving them a piece of themselves back.

 

AG

Or their mom and their sister. They may have never seen outside of prison before. You know, it’s it’s unbelievable. It, it couldn’t be more intense.

 

DM

I want to talk about how DNA is, is how it’s a powerful tool to potentially win someone’s freedom. Tell us a little bit about the post -conviction DNA testing grant that you received, and was actually just renewed.

 

PM

The grant is for public institutions only. And Loyola is a private, a private law school. So we decided what we needed to do is get creative and figure out some way to propose a project that would have us collaborating with a public institution. And so Cal State LA, which is where the crime lab that services, LAPD  and LA sheriff’s department, and they have a criminalistics program and a graduate program, the the director of that program, Dr. Kathy Roberts, and I got together and thank you to Mehul, who introduced us, you know, she could help train her students who want to go into criminalistics and be criminalists, one day, the same way we’re training our law students, which is, you know, by looking at some of these cases where we think there might be problems. And so we got the grant. And we coordinate our case work, where we think that there might be evidence that can be DNA tested, and we are doing it in connection with her program. So it’s been, it’s been incredibly successful, I think, which may be partly why we got renewed. And we’ve got a couple of cases where DNA is being analyzed right now, right this very minute. And we have a DNA expert retained who advises us and gives us his opinion. You might have heard of him, his name is Mehul Anjaria. And he’s wonderful. And, you know, he’s, he teaches our students, he comes into our class, and he’s like, we’re gonna learn about DNA. And it’s incredibly helpful. Because, you know, one of the things that people always joke about lawyers is, you know, they’re terrible at math, and they’re terrible at science. But you know, doing this kind of work, you can’t, you can’t afford to be bad at science you have to learn. And so, through the DNA grant, we have funding to actually physically pay an independent lab to go analyze the evidence and look for DNA. And we have funding to to do some investigation and to do some travel and things like that. So those those funds are dedicated to cases where we suspect DNA might be present that could help you know, exonerate one of our clients.

 

DM

So speaking of DNA, obviously, the origin of the whole Innocence Project was Barry Scheck and  Peter Neufeld in New York. I’m curious, how much interaction do you have with that mothership Innocence Project in New York?

 

PM

We actually have a really a really organized network there are between 60 and 70. I think now, innocence projects across the country, actually internationally. There are a couple outside of the United States now too. And we all get together once a year at an annual meeting in different cities across the country. Barry and Peter are very much stewards of this work still and you know, what we have learned by studying these wrongful conviction cases, is incredible. And it is guiding all sorts of reforms that need to take place across the country. Because you know what we all know, no one better than Peter, Peter and Barry is, you know, getting people out one at a time is it takes forever, it’s a tremendous amount of work. And it’s really not going to move the needle in terms of making things better going forward. What we need to do, in addition to working on those cases is we need to look at the systemic problems that are revealed in these cases. And we need to talk about legislative reforms, changing the way we police changing the way we punish and think about public safety through a different lens, all the stuff that you’ve been hearing about in terms of the idea of criminal justice reform, and and the information that we’ve gotten by studying these cases. It did all start with Barry and Peter, and the DNA cases that they did, because what DNA did is it showed conclusively you got the wrong person. And then what we did after that is we’ve studied it and like, why did we get the wrong person? And that’s where we came up with all the what we now call the common causes of wrongful conviction, a coerced false confession, erroneous eyewitness ID, police or official misconduct, all of those things. Now we know how we can go and and try to address it and fix it. So to answer your question, they’re very much still involved. And we do have contact with the mothership in New York as well as our our friends and colleagues across the country at other projects, you know, constantly a new issue comes up that nobody’s ever heard of. And so we all say, Hey, does anybody have seen this before. And we try to support each other that way

 

AG

People think of lawyers as very competitive. But you know, everybody in the network really wants to see everybody else exonerate as many people as they can. And everybody’s very generous with their time and their brainstorming and their advice and their ideas. Whether it’s New York, or some of the other projects around the country, we’ve had a lot of great success, just just helping each other and, and, you know, helping each other to succeed. Because we’re all really, you know, we’re doing the same thing. It’s very specialized. There are very few people around the country who have the same conversations we have. But we are all very, very collaborative.

 

DM

I want to talk about another important element of your wrongfully convicted, and that’s the media coverage. You know, obviously, we know how important these days social media is about framing and framing these cases. How can you potentially use it to your advantage of getting out in front, on on framing, the messaging and these cases?

 

AG

Well, it’s so interesting to me that there are so many now days when you’ll see the news, or see some feed that you have, and and there’ll be a story about somebody walking out of prison, who was wrongfully convicted and who was innocent. It’s, um, it’s, it’s no mystery anymore, that these things happen. And they happen more and more, which means that these wrongful convictions are still happening. So you know, as a threshold, it helps just for the entire nation to now be educated on what what really happens. And in wrongful convictions and the fact that there are wrongful convictions. I do think now we need to try to figure out a way for people to really pay attention to the frank facts of how it happens, why it happens, and why it may not be happening any less than it ever was, and how will we need to actually take measures to change things so that, you know, it’s not just something awful that used to happen. It’s it’s happening today, people innocent people are being convicted today. And it’s helpful that we’re talking about justice reform in the media. But I think we really need to start concentrating not only on the success stories, but on, unfortunately, you know, the real nuts and bolts of why this is happening and how we how we can stop it.

 

PM

Also, I mean, just to address your question, that maybe from a different angle, because people are becoming more engaged, whether it’s because they’re watching things in the media or because they are watching social media. And we have seen sort of an uptick in projects and supporters taking a case right to the streets, right. So they they’ll put it up on on social media, you know, we want you to help Mr. so and so he’s wrongfully convicted, or let’s write to the governor and trying to mobilize support like that, to bring this case to the, you know, to get more attention. And it’s it’s a good strategy. It’s something we talked about internally a lot. It’s always difficult and things are in a litigation posture, because, you know, you have to be careful about everything, you don’t want to do anything that might compromise your case so, you know, that’s a needle we’re trying to thread and think about, and be creative with. Because people are, they seem to be kind of hungry for it. They want to be engaged. We’ve gotten so many requests in the last year, let us help, how can we help I want to volunteer Can I donate? And I think a lot of it’s because of what’s going on politically and culturally across the country, and in Los Angeles. And we want to be able to respond to that we want to give people opportunities to engage and to help and to feel like they are part of the solution. So if you guys have any ideas,

 

DM

That’s what we’re here for. We’ve actually had a good number of people reach out to us and want to bring exposure to their their particular case or someone else’s case. So yeah, and we have a couple of ideas that we can talk about.

 

 

 

MA

Well, Paula, besides grant funding, what are the other sources of your funding for the program? And how can people help you out?

 

PM

We rely almost entirely on grants and donations. And we have, we have been when developing some really good community relations, working on community outreach, and, and taking our case out there to people who are looking for ways to help, you know, donations are huge. We have events, both both events that we charge for, and raise money with, and events that we don’t. But really, what we need is money. We need more attorneys. As you heard me describe earlier, the the caseload that we have the number of people who are waiting, we need help with social media, we need help with our website, we need help, you know, getting the word out to people that we are here, and we can help if we you know, if we have the resources.

 

AG

I mean, it’s, it sounds awful to say, but you know, just raising money to pay attorneys is is is a huge part of the ballgame. Having people who, as you just asked about the media, you know, having people who can help us raise our profile, will, will would be helpful, because it would again, point us toward funders and people who, who want to give us that kind of help. Um, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s hard for people, people always want to help us, but these cases, help us in kind or, you know, to actually do tasks or come into the office and, and do help. But, um, it’s, it’s a very hard place, I think, to, to help in short bursts. You know, the kind of help that we need from people often involves a real time commitment. Because these cases take so long and these, these matters are so complicated. So you know, we love having people volunteer with us on and we try to be creative about different ways they can help. We have a high school student, for instance, who started a an Innocence Project club at her high school, and just sort of raised awareness at her high school among the other students who didn’t know all the things that she knew about wrongful convictions. There’s all kinds of creative ways to do it. People can who are involved. We’ve spoken, for instance, at meetings of organizations that are sort of continuing organizations, education organizations, for older people, and retirees who just want to learn more things. We’ve spoken to that to those groups, and they can branch out and help us in various ways if they’re engaged. So there are a million ways to do it.

 

DM

What do you see in the future for for the LPI?

 

PM

Well, in the near future, we are planning to announce that we are changing our name to the Los Angeles Innocence Project, so that it will help people find us. You know, there are a number of other institutions of higher learning in the country called Loyola. So we’ve had people comment that you know, it’s a little bit difficult. Are you in New Orleans? Are you in Chicago? Where are you? So we’re going to be Los Angeles Innocence Project. So hopefully that will help.

DM

Some simple branding, I think will probably clear some things up.

 

PM

Yeah. And so that’s on the horizon, we have some cases that we are, you know, up to our, our eyeballs and litigating. So hopefully we’re going to be getting a few more clients exonerated. And, you know, that’s about it. I mean, we were holding it together during COVID. It’s the as you can tell from these this conversation, the nature of this work is extremely collaborative. And it’s been really hard. I mean, I know, it’s hard for everybody to be a part in isolated, but the way we work and the way we have to investigate our cases and get out and knock on doors, you know, it’s been a little, it’s been challenging this year, but we have really weathered it. And, you know, we’ve still, we’ve had four people released from custody this year.

 

AG

Just to return to your previous question about how people can help, too. One thing I we haven’t talked about in this conversation is the aftercare that goes on when our clients are exonerated and released from prison. And in a lot of cases, you know, they walk out of prison with absolutely nothing, no belongings, sometimes no family, no housing, no jobs, very little job training, no money, obviously. I mean, literally, sometimes no belongings at all. And they’re automatically, they’re not entitled to anything automatically when they get out of prison. As opposed to even parolees who have, you know, there are programs of support for parolees, but not for exonerees, necessarily. And so there’s a tremendous amount of aftercare that goes on with our, our clients, when they come out of prison, you never know exactly what they will need, but we have to sort of stand at the ready to make sure that we can help to provide it. And so there are lots of opportunities for people from outside who wants to do something good for our clients, to help with the aftercare and the support and the sort of helping them to put their lives back together and launch the next part of their their lives, the happy part of their lives. You know, not just money, and not just things but all kinds of different support. There, you just never know exactly what they’re going to need. But almost all of them need quite a bit just to get themselves started. And so that’s a great way for help people to help us and our clients.

 

MA

Well, Adam, my final question is specifically for you. Let’s talk about this signature bow tie. What’s the story behind that? And how long have you been rocking it?

 

AG

Well,I, you know, I don’t even know how to answer that question. I just Well, there’s one really profound thing about bow ties. And that’s, it’s so much, it’s so much easier to get through lunch without getting your lunch on your bow tie.  It saves you money in the long run and makes you a little less dopey.  The rest of it is rather confidential.

 

 

MA

Okay, Fair enough. Well, Paula and Adam, I happen to know that you’ve a big hearing to get ready for tomorrow. So we don’t want to hold you any longer. But I thought this was a great discussion. Thank you so much for your time. And we hope that you’ll come back on crime redefined. And maybe we can get into some specific cases and issues as appropriate.

 

AG

Yes, We’d love to come back anytime

 

PM

That would be fantastic.

 

DM

Really appreciate it. Good luck tomorrow.

 

PM

Thank you. Thank you for what you’re doing. I really love the podcast, and you guys are great.

 

MA

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, Paula. Take care.

 

DM

It was really a fascinating discussion Mehul. I can see that from the outside looking in that it really takes an army of resources to undo wrongful convictions.

 

MA

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s just so good that LPI has some resources, you know, they have all of the students to do a lot of legwork, that in the original investigation probably never was done.

 

DM

That’s right. And not only are they battling the legal and the scientific issues, but also issues of human nature. And I think this is a big part of where these wrongful convictions come from. And that’s ego and not wanting to admit any wrongdoing.

 

MA

Yeah, those issues are harder to deal with than the evidence in the case itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DM

I don’t know, that’s just human nature. You know, like I said, I don’t know if that’s something that will ever change. You know, hopefully we can get to a spot where people can just say, hey, look, you know, this is wrong, you know, take it on the chin and then and then move on.

 

MA

I would say that, you know, in my consulting work, if I have criticism of the prosecution crime lab, I hope that they take it as constructive criticism.

 

DM

versus an attack?

 

MA

Yeah, they may take..

 

DM

there’s a difference, obviously, right?

 

MA

Well, yeah. And they may take it as an attack initially. And that’s fine. But I hope maybe they’ll go back to the lab and say, Oh, you know what, yeah, we need to look at how I do that in the future.

 

DM

That kind of goes to my next point is that I was really impressed with both of them with both Paula and Adam, with their attitude. And the acknowledgement that people sometimes make mistakes. And that it, that it’s about fixing the injustice rather than pointing fingers.

 

MA

Yeah. And I mean, listen, there’s politics here, too, you know, it takes a lot of people to get somebody out of out of prison, it takes a judge, it takes a DA to cooperate on some level. So there has to be some diplomacy.

 

DM

That’s right. And I think at the bottom of everything, there’s always going to be, you know

either politics or money or both.

 

MA

Yeah, and I think you have to handle it with care. Because ultimately, you do need the cooperation of the district attorney in some regard to, you know, get these cases resolved and get these people free. And I’ve noticed that very often, their clients have already done a lot of legwork on their own cases. And that gives LPI a really good head start. And I’ve had that same experience with some of the pro pers that I work with who are really mindful. I mean, after all, it’s you know, they’re the ones whose life is basically at stake here. And the more responsible pro pers I work with, they want to be the expert in their case, they want to know everything about it. And, you know, unfortunately, these wrongful conviction cases, at some point in the process, it basically it falls on the shoulders of the wrongfully convicted individual to seek out, you know, the last resort for their freedom, such as LPI. But you wonder how many of these men and women slipped through the cracks? You know, after being so demoralized by their case, and the insurmountable issues with the legal system?

 

DM

We definitely heard that a lot from from Adam. And then, you know, Paula had mentioned some of the numbers of the volume of cases that they’re going through. So you’re right, it’s really on the the wrongfully convicted to to push this and make sure they get it in front of somebody.

 

MA

Yeah. And not to give up if LPI doesn’t get right back to them, because of course, they’re backlogged as well.

 

DM

That That’s right. You know, and something else that I, you know, kind of took away from this is that this work isn’t for everyone. But it seems like the law school clinic provides students with an on an awesome launchpad to begin a, a really rewarding and intense career in criminal law. And it’ll be interesting to see what they do next.

 

MA

Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know how you can’t be inspired after going through their clinic. And, you know, having had the the pleasure of working with LPI, on some cases, you know, as the role in the role of a DNA consultant, I’m always really struck with how relentless both the attorneys and the students are, and the drive that they have. And you know, they essentially have to redo the entire investigation of the case, either because the prosecutor didn’t really do their job initially. Or maybe even scarier, is that a defense attorney who may have been paid a lot of money during the trial, didn’t do their job as well. And by the way, this is several years later, which makes it much harder, because now it’s cold, as you mentioned. people’s memories aren’t as good people may have died, records may have been lost, evidence may be gone. I mean, it’s really, really a Herculean task. But you know, what I’ve seen from LPI is that they don’t leave any stone unturned as they battle for justice. And I gotta tell you, Dion that, you know, they’ve rubbed off on me that being you know, around their talented attorneys and motivated students is, is really helped me to up my game.

 

DM

Yeah, I don’t, I don’t see how that can’t be really infectious and push you to, you know, to do it, do whatever you can and work harder at, you know, like you said, you know, work harder at your game, right?

 

 

MA

Yeah. And then you got you really have to personalize it and think of that poor person who is innocent, who has been in jail for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And just know that you know, LPI may be their very last hope.

 

DM

This has really been an interesting look at the issue of wrongful convictions from all sides on crime redefined. We talked about the common causes and spoke with a exoneree Fernando Bermudez and now we went behind the scenes, you know, of a program that makes exonerations happen.

 

MA

Well, listeners, we will post a link to a video that will show you and tell you more about LPI. And we’ll put that right in the episode description. And I also wanted to point out the very good work that LPI does in advocating for reform of the criminal justice. system. So Also be sure to check out their Instagram account @projectfortheinnocent, where you can learn more about their victories and their fundraising events. If you want to get involved and help out.

 

DM

You know, we really want to, you know, let people know we appreciate our listeners and say thank you to all the wonderful guests we have the honor of talking to on crime redefined. A huge thanks to all of you out there that are also downloading our episodes and following us on social media. Don’t hesitate, we mean that to weigh in and tell us what you think about crime redefined.

 

MA

Yeah, the good and the bad. Should I’ve said that?

 

DM

Yeah, be careful what you ask. And  Halloween is around the corner, so be sure to please visit crimeredefined.com where you can access all of our episodes and do some binge listening to this crazy year of 2020.

 

B

Thank you for listening to the crime redefined podcast, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at crime redefined. Please send us your comments and questions and join us for the next episode.

 

A Conversation With the Hosts-S1-27

Co-hosts Dion Mitchell and Mehul Anjaria take a pandemic-pause to take listeners behind the scenes of the Crime Redefined podcast. They talk about their backgrounds, past episodes, and their views on the criminal justice system.  The origin of Crime Redefined is revealed along with other Zero Cliff Media projects.  The hosts give their takes on hot topics such as equality in the justice system and genetic genealogy. Hosted by Dion Mitchell and Mehul Anjaria.  A Zero Cliff Media production.

Fight or Flight With Cung Le-S1 26

Cung Le is an MMA legend and Hollywood action movie star.  He joins Crime Redefined to discuss his new television project, Fight or Flight , which teaches viewers how to survive life-threatening scenarios. Cung also discusses his background and MMA and film careers. Hosted by Dion Mitchell and Mehul Anjaria.  A Zero Cliff Media production.

 

 

Unofficial Transcript (Explicit Content)

B=Show Bumpers

DM=Dion Mitchell, Co-host

MA=Mehul Anjaria, Co-host

CL=Cung Le, Guest

 

B

Welcome to the crime redefined podcast produced by zero cliff media coming to you from the US Bank tower high above downtown Los Angeles. In our podcast, we drill deep into forensics and criminal investigation from the viewpoint of the defense as well as explore the intersection of the media and the justice system.

 

DM

I’m Dion Mitchell here with my socially distanced co-host Mehul Anjaria. On this episode of crime redefined, we have a special treat for you. We’re talking to MMA legend and Hollywood action film star, Cung Le about his new TV project, Flight or Flight-that just might save your life.

 

MA

Yeah, as a big MMA fan, I’m really looking forward to today’s interview. Cung Le is a former Strikeforce middleweight champion who famously defeated Frank shamrock for that belt. Cung also fought in the UFC and he’s been in the ring with the likes of Michael Bisping, Vanderlei Silva, and Rick Franklin.

 

DM

Now if you’re not as familiar with MMA as Mehul is you may know Cung from the impressive list of movies he’s been in, to name a few, Fighting with Channing Tatum, Pandorum with Dennis Quaid, Dragon Eyes with Jean Claude Van Damme and Puncture Wounds with Dolph Lundgren.

 

MA

Well, I think we’ve established that Cung is a tough guy. And so now that we know his resume, it’s pretty obvious that Cung’s got the right stuff to bring us a TV show about survival. And let’s face it, with all the craziness in the world right now, we really all could, you know, benefit from paying more attention to some basics, like situational awareness, self-defense, and first aid. Like Cung says, you are your first responder.

 

DM

Cung has a sizzle reel out for his new and improved version of Fight or Flight. The timing couldn’t be better in this age of COVID civil unrest and increasing violent crime

MA

Don’t forget the asteroid strike that’s coming as well.

 

DM

Why not? Let’s just get it all in in 2020. Right. Sit back and relax. Enjoy the hour long chat we were privileged to have with Cung Le on a number of topics.

 

MA

Cung, it’s a great honor to have you on crime redefined today.

 

CL

Thanks for having me.  I’m looking forward to this interview and seeing what you guys got for me.

 

MA

Yeah, you know, I’ve enjoyed watching you fight in Strikeforce and UFC over the years and we really do appreciate your time today.

 

DM

We’ll make this fun. So let’s just jump into it. But let’s just set the stage and first of all, tell our listeners what is fight or flight response and what happens to the human body when it occurs?

 

CL

Well, fight or flight basically, you’re in a situation that could be life or death. Your body responds in certain things like your adrenaline kicks in. And it all comes down to how you react to it, you know, and there’s, there’s, there’s a moment when you might have to fight or you decide, you take flight. So, my show, I’ve done this show, but I started this show about two years ago. And I got an investor to fund one episode, I actually ended up shooting two episodes out of the funding, but one of my co-hosts who I paid for both shows, ended up thinking that he was bigger than the project itself. And he said that if I had to use if I was going to use his likeness, then I would have to renegotiate with him for back end ownership. So, I decided to scrap the scrap the project and you know, put it in God’s hand and when it was the right time to reboot it again.

 

DM

You know, those things, those things happen, you know, there is a there’s always a giant ego out there somewhere under a rock

 

CL

Well, in a way, it’s my fault because, you know, when we were doing this show, he was only gonna come on for one episode. And I, you know, we did a gentlemen’s handshake. And you know, now I learned a little. Right, I learned the hard way. So, um, you know, I easily could have won in court, you know, but, you know, he’s a veteran, you know, he served our country and, you know, whether he decides to, you know, you know, be this way and, you know, I think, you know, you know, a part of it is, you know, you know, could be his wife, too. I don’t know, whatever the case is, I just moved on, you know, I moved on, and now we got an amazing team the concept is way better. And, you know, so I’m really excited where we shot the sizzle, we edited him completely out of it. And now, we’re completely redoing the show. So I told the person who invested my show, you know that I apologize, but I don’t want to give him any credit out there. He doesn’t deserve it. And, you know, yeah, sure he served our country but, you know, I’m moving on to you know, someone who, who’s more, you know, you know, a man of faith. And I know that I put in God’s hands, you know, with God for me, nothing can stand against me. So, here we go again, right in the pandemic, right when everyone needs it. And it’s time.

 

MA

Yeah, it’s great timing Cung, I just saw it online last weekend. You know, the reboot is really kick ass. It looks really intriguing. So, tell us about where you’re at now, who are your current cast members and what’s really the goal of the show?

 

CL

Well, um, you know, Chad, He’s, uh, yeah, I don’t want to give everything away. But Chad he’s, you know, 10 year veteran also who instructed for the, you know, seal teams, and, you know, anti- terrorism instructor and did  13 month tours as a, you know, diplomatic protection and and, you know, I got a also someone who’s gonna talk about the PTSD and the facts that what, what what a person will feel before the incident and how they can recover and take steps to recover after an incident and you know, I think, you know, it’s like the three elements of you got your tactical guy you got your martial artist, you know, world, you know, I’ve been on, you know, fighting martial arts, you know, on different platforms, different styles, you know, throughout my whole career. I know what works in self-defense, I know what works in combat and I know what doesn’t work either, you know, so and then then we have our, you know, family therapist that can work with, you know, like a man or woman or even a child because we’re dealing in today’s world, you know, look what’s going on. Kids are going missing. You know, there’s pedophilia going on there’s, you know, you know, obviously right now the COVID is, you know, out shining, what’s happening to our kids. So, you know, how do we protect our kids? How do we protect ourselves? You know, and when do we fight? When do we run? You know, and I believe that show this show will kick ass. You know, think of Ridiculousness, where in the show, it tells you what not to do. And you know, and it shows funny stuff. And in our show, we show you the realness of the world we live in, and what you could do in these incidents with your skill level

 

MA

Well, to that point Cung, I am addicted to your flight or fight official TV IG account. And absolutely one of the most disturbing things on there are the human trafficking scenes. And I understand that Instagram actually shut your site down before Why is that?

CL

I have no idea. You know, we actually pulled a, you know, pull the content off of, you know, other sites, and then, you know, we, we make sure all of our content, you know, is, you know, we, when we post something, it’s facts, and there’s facts behind it, you know, there’s news covering it. So, I don’t know, you know, as you as you hear, you know, certain  people are controlling the media and when they want something to be out, they they’ll let it out when they want when they don’t want something they’ll  red flag you or they’ll shut you down. We’ve been shut down, you know, different times. But with, with all the overwhelming support, you know, I think, you know, and you know, God’s Will we’re always back on so we are very careful on what we’re posting. Now we even have a backup account with 10,000 followers, you know, and I, I feel blessed to, you know, be be the, the the guy behind this, you know the mastermind and putting it all together and I feel really blessed with a great team now, you know, before I felt like, you know, it’s like a two man show and we were gonna bring in victims, but now it’s about bringing in different specialists because, you know, we can’t just focus on one, one person’s, you know, something that happened to one person, but we got to focus on what everyone in the world can do if this happened, and since there’s footage out there, you know, we will take the footage, we will break it down, and then we’ll give you all the different options from, you know, the hand to hand combative, you know, tactical side and then there’s the tactical element of, you know, you know, the gun dynamics and, and military mindset and and then when we bring in our special guests we actually even have someone who was a an expert home invader and looks for all the the weak signs and and what they would go after you know someone who would be an easy victim or if they want to, you know, turn up their you know, adrenaline rush then they go after someone who’s tougher, you know so we, we break down there’s three different kind of predators out there there’s a predator that goes after the weak only the weak they will go after and then there’s a you know, the spontaneous where oh, you know and opportunities, and then you know, the moments right for them, and they don’t care who it is. And then they, you know, they become the predator and they go after the victim. And then there’s the last one, I believe is the most scariest one. Those are the predators that look for a trophy, they look for something hard, they look for, you know, someone to, you know, hurt or rape or kill or, you know, steal from, and those are the ones you know, you put on top of the, you know, on the list of, you know, the predators that are, they hunt for the trophy, they hunt for the thrill, you know, when they don’t have to

 

DM

Cung, that’s a great segue for my next question. In your sizzle reel and on Instagram, you mentioned a number of products that can help people with preparedness and self-defense, such as pepper spray. First of all for our listeners, Is pepper spray legal?

 

CL

Yes, well, you know, in most states it’s legal, right I don’t know, in other countries, but now, as you’re living in a pandemic, and you can’t carry a gun or haven’t taken your CCW or don’t like firearms. What are you gonna do? If you’re 120 pound female, and you know you’re about to be attacked. You know, like, what what I say is, you know, don’t you know don’t be that victim, you know, at least give yourself a fighting chance, you know, not only should you have that pepper spray, I suggest get the one that looks like a fire extinguisher. You can punch with that. You know, big ass, you know, pepper spray and you can spray and it has distance. You can walk around with it, pull it out of your purse if you feel threatened. And, and then, you know, you don’t even have to give warnings as soon as someone steps into your into your area of you know, comfort area. and, and if you have that mindset and you are in control of your emotion, then you can say, “You’re making me feel uncomfortable. I have pepper spray, I will use it”. And if they continue, then spray them get off the x and keep spraying them and run.

 

DM

Is there a particular brand that you like? And if so, where can you purchase it at?

 

CL

Well Evoke Tactical they carry Sabre. It’s a brand called Sabre. I’m doing some, you know, product development with some other companies of the military grade pepper spray, you know, like for me, as you see that the Asian communities been, you know, affected really bad by like everything. I’m not saying that, you know, you know, no one else has been affected. I’m saying we have been affected, mostly our elders because you know, you know, we are easier victims because our elders, you know, are you know, self-sufficient. They’ll walk to the store by themselves. They’ll go grocery shopping, they’ll go to the bank. And, and, and they’re just easy targets. They’re just easy target because they’re rolling around with their purse. And as you see, there’s 80% of the things that I I watch is because, you know, these elderly, you know, little elderly, you know, grandmas or granddad’s that are out and getting caught in the crossfire is you know

 

DM

Let’s talk about that. let’s say we’re, you know, giving some advice for the elderly community What are some of the products that people should own in a case of emergency like this, when we’re going through the pandemic?

 

CL

Well, first of all, like before I even stress product, right I stress situational awareness, right? I stress about hey, if you’re if you’re gonna go out right now, in this in this time and age, let’s let’s wait till someone gets home so you can go into you know, traveling in twos, you know, at least there’s two people and, and if someone’s standing in front of you, or you’re getting, you know, your purse or you know, you’re getting mugged, you’ve done everything else wrong already, because you didn’t check your situational awareness, you didn’t see, you know, check your surroundings and you didn’t check for all the people that are in that area and you know, or the cars or been suspicious. So, that’s, that’s one layer that you have to go through and to if they’re in front of you, and they are about to, you know, attempt something to rob you or to, you know, a hate crime. You got pepper spray and use the pepper spray, they somehow got through the pepper spray their eyes, they are blinded, or if you didn’t blind them, right, make sure you have some kind of blade. You know, of course, if you don’t know how to use it, you know, then then that blade could, you know, end up in their hands. So there’s a lot of different elements but for me, if I If I’m going out, if it’s my time, I want I prefer to go out fighting rather than going out on my knees.

 

MA

Well said, Cung. Take us back to your youth. And if you would, paint a picture for us  of what it was like to be a young Vietnamese kid growing up in San Jose, and how that turned you into the warrior that you are today.

 

CL

You know, when I first came to America, I was, you know, first we stopped in three different refugee camps, first in the Philippines. Then after that, in Guam, then in down in the Monterey area, then we got a sponsor, so and took us in in Monterey. And then from there, after almost a year, we moved to San Jose. And you know, we, I’m that Asian, you know, family like fresh off the boat where you’re loaded in a small house, four bedroom house with 13 you know, people, you know, where the first two rooms is dedicated to my grandparents who, who, who got the house and then my great grandma had her own room and then the aunts got one room and the uncles got the others and I was with the aunts because my mom you know, you know, I was the first the first kid you know, in the batch so yeah, it was a it was crazy, you know, living with a bunch of, you know, ants in one room was rough.

 

So, just growing up and you know, being bullied and you know, a lot of you know, kids whether they’re American or African or Mexican, they didn’t understand why their uncle or their dads died in Vietnam. So they definitely had a lot of, you know, animosity and hate and resentment, you know, to the to the boat people. The Vietnamese people came in trying to start over and you know, we lost our, our country, you know, and, and we’re starting over so and, you know, it was it was, it was tough, but I believe through toughness and through the struggles that I endured, it helped me become the person that I am, along with having faith in God. And my mom teaching me right, you know, so I wasn’t raised by my dad, my dad was, you know, stuck in Vietnam, and he came over when I was eight, but you know, they were divorced by time I was a freshman, so it obviously didn’t work out. And, you know, being, being from Vietnam as a refugee and going through what I’ve endured, I believe this is like the American dream, you know, where you can struggle for success. And you know, now we’re in a time of pandemic. This is you you’re living in your own movie.

 

MA

Cung, tell us a little bit about your entree into martial arts and the first time that you were able to shut one of these bullies down physically. And what that felt like

 

CL

When I first started martial arts was when my mom says, that’s enough, you know, I came home with a bloody nose and a black eye and she said, I’m gonna take you to a dojo and, and, you know, we’re gonna find you a teacher to teach you how to defend yourself. But you know, going in she she still had to work two or three jobs to get me in consistently, you know, so, and when she told me, you know, you know, at first she told me, you know, don’t fight you know, it’s not good if you the one thing that you do when you fight is you don’t think one thing that you gain is one more enemy. And so I didn’t fight I just, you know, got bullied and picked on and beat up. And then, like, my teacher told me, you know, you know, sometimes you have to defend yourself so, but he didn’t really I didn’t really go through like, consistency of classes. But what you know, so I continue to get bullied. I, you know, just going through a couple weeks of martial arts doesn’t mean that you can fight so I was still getting my butt my butt whooped. Not until I started joining wrestling and then got, you know, you know, got into it, you know, after, like, after seventh grade, I felt like I can carry my own. I even in seventh grade my first year into wrestling. I, I went to the Nationals I didn’t, I didn’t place but I went, you know, and and I, you know, come eighth grade before I went to before I became a freshman. I remember the last day of school, some freshmen came in, and you know, just because I did, I was in you know, like, you know, You know, I, I did something wrong to one of his cousins or whatever, I don’t know whether I don’t remember exactly, but I did start it. And you know, he came in and he tried to you know, try to pick fight and you know next thing I know I picked him up and double legs I’m down and the fight was over knocked out of him and that was it. And pretty much the whole school saw that and it was like the last day of school. So from there I went into as a freshman in high school everything was who I just competed for the you know, try to compete for the varsity spot which I didn’t get but you know, I had so much great experience and the wrestling journey began you know, really began as a freshman you know, even as eighth grade I actually placed at Nationals but you know, I wasn’t like year round yet. I was still like, you know, like six months and then take a couple months off and then back into wrestling. But, you know, as a freshman I was year-round wrestling. All the time

 

DM

It really sounds like it got a hold of you. And it’s amazing how, with that kind of motivation, what’s what’s possible, I want to ask you about your sizzle reel where you show a lot of advanced tactical weapons techniques and martial arts moves. But what are some of the basic tips that we should all know about survival?

 

CL

The basic tip is stick to the basics. There’s nothing fancy about anything and don’t go to a class a self- defense class for a weekend and believe that now you can defend yourself. This is a pretty much every day, if not five days a week, whether you’re in the shower or whether you’re at home taking a break from your work, or for the kids out there. If you’re taking a work from in between your home studies, and your shadowboxing and you’re doing your basic punches your basic you know headbutts your your basic angles, you’re you’re working, you’re 50% to your zero percent, meaning if someone’s down in front of you, you don’t want to be in front of them that’s been out there hundred percent you you will take on the hundred percent of their power, you take off the 50 you still got your hundred, but they’re only at their 50% so they’re only really, you know, got one good side to attack you from before you guys square up again. So that’s, you know, just you know, those are the basics that I teach and you know your basic jab, your cross your hook, your knees, your low, get your arms and and putting a blade in your hand. If whoever’s done boxing, whoever’s done kickboxing, you know, I’m not going to reinvent the wheel you you put a knife in reverse grip position, and you’re done combos with that you can punch with the fifth, then slice after or you can hit with the blade only and having a blade or two in your hands. I believe that that’s the game changer. You’re not doing any stabbing. You’re not trying to be a knife fighter. You’re not going through your, you know, nine or 10 or 11 different slashes that you learn in a knife, you know, class, whether it’s a saber, knife position or whether it’s a reverse grip, you know, you you are doing what you normally do in a kickboxing class, you don’t combination that someone’s face, and you got a blade in your hand, you know, and, and if you’re, if you’re fighting, you’ve done everything wrong about, you know, again, I always stress that to the people I teach. If, if you’re fighting or you’re confronted with someone, you everything you’ve done with situational awareness, and knowing your surroundings, you, you you failed.

 

DM

So you’re saying you should if your heads up and you’re aware of your environment and in tune with what’s going on and you can, you know, kind of see maybe a situation potentially coming up on you to remove yourself from that. So you’ve lost the battle already. If you found yourself kind of, you know, in that situation where you’ve got to fight is is kind of what you’re saying?

 

CL

Correct, you know, at this level, you know, and if you feel like you’ve been followed here are the things you need to know, the time that you’ve been followed the distance that you’re being followed, and you make that change of direction. And that guy still on your tail you’re being followed, get to a busy, crowded area. And basically, you know, work your elements work your mirrors that when you walk in, and and you know that if you’re in this place, there’s a lot of people and there’s cameras, and that’s, that’s your safer bet. And that’s when you can pull out your cell phone. And if you don’t have one, you can ask the one in there saying that you been followed and you need to borrow their phone. And you know, you, you know, you can, you know, hand them something so they don’t think that you’re going to run off with their phone. And then you make your call and you stay right there until someone gets there and then you can report it. But while you while you while, during the time during the distance, you should try to get the plates you know, you try to get the make of the car and if you’re able to, you know see the person in there, then you should try to get a facial description. You know, right away, make those notes

 

DM

Those are all great tips and advice and I hope people will listen to this several times. So it, it sinks in, it’s great. And it actually sets up another great segue. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to throw out just a really simple scenario. So how would you apply fight or flight technique to the average person and here’s the scenario, let’s say someone using Kenosha or Seattle or Portland or any of these hotspots right now, who is inadvertently found themselves the wrong place the wrong time. So let’s say for example, a car is too easy because that happens. But let’s say you’re just walking down a city street, you don’t know that anything’s going on, you turn the corner, and all of a sudden, you’re just you’re in it, and then they’ve turned on you. Do you have any suggestions there any tips you can give us?

 

CL

Well, you know, if you’re walking, and then you turn the corner, and you’re not seeing everything that’s going on before what happens you can’t just turn a corner and all sudden, you’re right now like missed a battle, right? The battle has people running have people scared. So if you’re not looking ahead and you don’t you’re not seeing one or two people running or you know, you know yelling and you know, gunshots then again you’ve done everything wrong and you happen to turn that corner and you see everything going on, what’s the best thing to do is turn right around and, and turn you know, turn on those, you know, turn on those rockets and and, and sprint out of there

 

DM

You know, and that’s that’s great and you’re actually you know, you kind of did a soft call out to me because you’re right if you’re if your heads down in your phone, and you’re walking down you should be able to hear or you say you, you know, see people or you know walk going the other direction or commotion going that direction. So, what you’re saying is if your head is up, and your eyes are forward, you’re not buried in your phone. That scenario should never happen. You should have your head on swivel your ears open and you should be seeing things coming your way. So, there is not really a scenario where you turn a corner and you should be surprised. Am I understanding you correctly?

 

CL

Correct, correct. You know, if, again, there’s a lot of things 99.9% of time, if you have your head on swivel, and you’re paying attention to what’s going on, you can avoid the whole situation, don’t even go there. Drive all the way around, take a scenic route, whatever it takes, you know, instead of, you know, if you walked into it, then you know, unless you’re, unless you’re a sheep dog, you know, because sheep dogs, they, they tend to run towards gunfire and you know, try to see what they can do. And you know, there’s always the the smart ones and the wise one right sometimes, you know, it’s better to be smart and learn from the wise one and don’t make the mistake that that wise person makes you know, so you have to you know, assess the situation, analyze it. kind of figure out, you know, what, what the risk is, and if anyone’s life is in danger because I, for me, I’m that person, I won’t turn a blind eye, if I can help or save someone, but at the same time, you know, whether it’s a quick phone call to 911 or it’s calling, you know, the police. And of course, you are your first responder. So, don’t put yourself in that situation where you have to respond to yourself. So, if you’re responding to someone else, someone else’s because they’re, they’re in a situation or they’re bleeding out, then you are the second responder because they don’t know what to do. You’re always going to be, the police will always be the second responder or whoever comes there, you know, and sees you for the first time. So, it’s, you need to know what you’re doing. You need a tourniquet yourself. Unless you’re not excuse my Vietnamese unless you’re knocked the fuck out and someone that you can check the pulse see if the person is alive or breathing. And then you know, if you have CPR get to work. If not, call 911 will come.

MA

Obviously as a martial artist you experience fight or flight daily. But I wanted to ask you about a few situations that you’ve been in that I’ve heard you speak about previously. So first of all, in the Michael Bisping UFC fight when you had your orbital broken in the middle of the fight, but you decided to go on how did you dig deep and find the strength to do that? And how did that feel what was going through your head?

 

CL

When Michael hit me with that jab that didn’t really move my head and the feeling that I felt was I had to throw up and take a shit at the same time. Kind of like, yeah, so it wasn’t the orbital bone. It was the bone that held up your eyeball so I was bleeding inside my face. And, you know, it was just the most awkward, painful situation that I was ever in because, you know, at one point, you can actually just stop and say shit, something happened to my eye here, you’re like you got some, you know, some, you know, a top level fighter trying to take your head off and he sees that you’re squinting and because he damaged your eyes so he’s gonna go for the kill. You know, I think at the time right there, you know, for me, I’m in a fight. It’s a, you know, you can call it Bloodsport, or you call it whatever you want. It’s really gonna get that’s the thing that you’ll see you see us and, you know, I just didn’t think of my life or, you know, my well-being because I was in my fight or flight I couldn’t get out. You know, and I’m not that guy who, who’s gonna quit. So I’m gonna go until I until they carry me out on the stretchers or, or the fights over. And you know, when you’re in that situation you, you kind of know who what kind of person you are what you do, if it really came down to a life or death situation, maybe that was a life or death situation. So I was in it. So that was my experience and I know what I would do so I wouldn’t bail out on any of my family or my friends if we’re in that that situation. So, you know, after that I realized, you know, I could have stopped the fight sooner, but, uh, you know, being hard headed and wanting to finish the fight, you know, or get carried out or the referee stops it. Then, you know, that’s the decision that I took in, you know, I took the gamble and you know, I, what I learned from it is, I won’t quit you’ve got to kill me.

 

MA

Yeah, you’ve never tapped out. Have you Cung?

 

CL

Nope

 

MA

Wow that’s incredible and I also heard you recently mentioned that you were able to successfully defuse a potential road rage road rage incident with your family in the car. Could you kind of describe that a little bit and talk about the mindset you used to achieve such a favorable outcome in that tough situation?

CL

Yeah, I was driving and these guys came in and you know, they they took an illegal turn and I then got I saw that so I kind of swerved out and back in but I you know, I didn’t throw open my window or like flip them off or anything. I kept my cool and I was more thankful like that nothing happened to me and you know, like in my car, so they were in a beemer, but right away, I saw you know, like they swerved out too because they almost hit me. And you know, is my right of way, you know? So basically, I right way I saw them. I saw three guys in the car and they and they were like, you know, be pressing hard to come come to my to, you know, to my driver side in their car and I was driving, so I kind of move over and kind of, you know, kind of cut them off so they couldn’t drive by me because I didn’t know what was going on right so, um, so you know I so from that situation they they literally like pull right beside me because I came to a stop sign a stoplight and they were in a like a turning lane now. And they just started saying, hey, go back to China go back to you know,. You know, going off and, you know, I you know, I you know, I you know, and nowadays you know, you know, I might be an MMA fighter but I I’m not you know, but I was prepared. I was prepared. My son was in the car. My wife was in the car. So, but, you know, I, you know, I was ready to take action but at the same time, I was looking on the right and I was looking on the left even though it’s red light was able to, you know speed past that red light without, you know getting hit by another car. I checked my situational awareness and I saw, you know, these guys are just running their mouths and, you know, I didn’t see a threat. So, you know, I, I just kind of got it and, and and kind of, you know, just diffused it by, you know killing them with kindness.

 

DM

That’s great advice because I don’t think that there’s a driver in Southern California or Northern California that has not experienced that. I think every single driver on the road has has, you know, has run into that situation. So that’s some great advice. So hopefully everybody’s paying attention and, and we’ll we’ll follow your advice. So let’s talk about your film career. On top of everything else we’ve discussed, you have an impressive career as well. I understand that on your first film in 2007, in Toronto, you were thrown into the deep end and were acting with some big names like David Carradine. So full disclosure. I grew up on Kung Fu. I’m a huge David Carradine fan. But I’d love to know what that was like.

 

CL

When I first came on, they said, I was actually coaching the US national team. And the event was in Hanoi, Vietnam. And I was the head coach and I had six people in the in the semifinals. And 2 just moved on to the finals. And then, you know, I got a call. And it was my mom. She’s like, hey, you got to call this Russian producer back. He wants to put you in a movie. And I’m like mom. Can you call me like, later on? I’m right in the middle of coaching. And and then she’s oh, no, you have to call this guy right now. Mom, it’s two o’clock in morning your time, what are you trying to, you know, get some sleep mom. And and so I said I promise I’ll call him so I did call him and he’s all I need you over here right now I said sorry I got, you know, fighters going for going for the bronze medal to in the finals, I cannot leave and then he said can you leave tomorrow and said, Nope, that’s award ceremonies. I want to be there for my fighters that you know, because they’re getting their medals. And then then he goes, what about the day after I said, I can travel the day after. So we we made the agreement, I flew out there. And as soon as I got on set, I was like no breaks, they put on makeup and I did my first fight scene. And I thought I was just signing a $20,000 contract to be in the main fight. But when I got there and then I shot my first scene in the weight room. And then the producer says, hey, everyone’s come together. I want to introduce you our new star. I was like holy shit. So they said that, you know, I’m gonna take lead in the whole movie and then, you know, that’s, you know, and then the lady who had the call sheet and then the scripts like the dialogue for tomorrow she’s all here you go. My first scene was with David Carradine. And so I was like, oh, thank thank goodness that I’ve been taking acting lessons and you know, and, you know, from that day I got like, acting lessons from David Carradine. I got lessons from Cary Tagawa

 

DM

That’s really impressive, not many people can say that right?

 

CL

Yeah, well, you know, the next day when I showed up on set, he’s on a, you know, you’re taking over Mark Dacascos’ spot. And so I don’t know how you’re good your acting skills, uh, but uh, you know, make sure, just just go with the flow and, let’s do it. Let’s do a read right now he’s all I don’t do that. Go ahead and start the dialogue he’s all you’re so stiff, relax, right? Am I? Well, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been watching you, you know, so I’m excited. He’s all relax and he kind of gave me his flask and I’m all I don’t drink you know? And then he’s all look I don’t want you to make I don’t want you to make me look bad. So I’m gonna give you these tips he’s all, have you done a job interview? Have you done this? And I said, I answered yes to everything. So okay, you have a great memory bank. Now. You’re here looking for a job and convince me why I should give you this job. Okay? I’m like, okay, and, and he’s all don’t go off that dialogue. Like you’re too stiff.. I don’t want you to read from it and try to remember the lines. Just go on here. We do it like an interview. I said, Okay, cool. That’s kind of like my first lesson from Dave Carradine.

 

MA

I want to go back to your road rage story because we had a little bit of a drop in the connection and I don’t know that we got to your punch line. Can you kind of pick it up with what exactly you said to the guys in the car and how they responded?

 

CL

So when when I pulled up to the stop sign, you know, because I actually cut these guys off. So they, they wouldn’t pull beside me. But there was a turning lane. I knew that they’re going to come right up on me. And you know, my window was already down soon as I soon as they pulled up there were like, swearing cussing, saying go back to China. You know, you Chinese virus, the whole nine yards, and I just said, Okay, I just nodded and I just put my hand like, I waved to them. And they’re like, what you want some of this? I said, No, I don’t. I don’t want I don’t want I don’t want no trouble. And then and then like everything that came out of their mouth was fuck you you fucking gook fucking nip. I just kind of just nodded and I you know, I glanced to the right. I glanced to the left and I made sure that the road was clear in case I had to make a quick exit. You know, I kind of like, looked at my, you know, look at these guys and, you know, I couldn’t judge if they were like just all talk or or anything, but I saw that they weren’t in the best shape and they weren’t, you know, that fit. So I figured you know, it wouldn’t be wouldn’t take much to, you know, you know, if they got the car, I just have to, you know, swing my door around and make sure you know, my kids and everything are safe or speed up, you know, so I just looked at my options, looked at my situational awareness kind of looked at the distance from their car to my car, how fast as soon as they open their door, I had to be ready to either open my door or take off, you know, drive through the red light. So I already had it all, you know, like, okay, plan one, plan two, plan three, and it’s just how quick you put it all together to to, you know, maneuver and take action. So, you know, it’s just a lot of a lot of name calling and and you know, and I just tell them, I’m Sorry, you feel that way, you know, you know, I’m Asian? Yes. But I’m not Chinese. And it’s not the Chinese virus, you know? It’s called COVID-19. So, you know, and, and then they’re like, Oh, you you’ve been a fucking smart mouth. Oh, not at all. I’m just trying to let you know what it is. It’s not called Chinese virus. It’s COVID-19. So, you know, like, that’s, that’s basically how, you know like, giving them that but I never like raised my voice by me keeping the tone I would talk like right now, kind of defuse escalate, you know, defuse the whole situation. Because if I would raise my voice, then ego checks in, right? So I know to check my ego at the door. I know what I can do to these guys, if I drop one of them on their heads, and then  kick the other guy in the face then I’m paying for a dental bill and, you know, a hospital bill because I think the guy in the back of the car he was quite young and you know, my son would have come out and beat his ass you know so i think it was from that day on you know i i decided to get this insurance where if I pull a gun out and I had to use a gun or if I had to take someone out or my dog took someone out or my son took someone else out because of self -defense, we’re protected I got a $2 million policy and you know, it’s you know, I think it’s probably one of my best investments, 50 something dollars each month that I can spend, you know, spend my money on.

 

MA

Cung, didn’t you also tell those guys in the car something like hey, if you get road rage, you’re gonna get a heart attack and it’s not good for your health?

 

CL

I actually did. thanks for bringing that up. Hey, you know, you guys are really upset right now. road rage. It’s actually not healthy for you and they’re like, they were like right there confused. Right? I said, it can give you high blood pressure and give you a heart attack and they’re just like tripping out. And then as soon as the light turns, you know, turn green for them as they’re turning away, I can still hear them, fuck you, you know, it’s just like, and actually my son says, hey, Dad, you know, what would you have done? I said, what I just did. Nothing, nothing. There’s no, you know,  you didn’t have to see me come out and beat someone or them pull out a gun and now we’re, you know, we’re all dodging bullets you know. So, you know, God is good, right? This is what should happen and you know, God will help those who help themselves right so we were able to avoid a conflict or avoid able to avoid any injuries happening to us, especially any injuries happening to them because I’m a professional fighter. I still do it. I still train on a regular basis and you know some guys could have really got hurt we, we would end up with the hospital bill.

 

MA

And doesn’t it seem like the biggest assholes are usually the guys who are not in good shape whatsoever?

 

CL

Yeah, yeah, you know, I think I think, you know, these are the guys that prey on like the victim so when they saw me you know I was in my car you know so they didn’t see like the whole my whole body right so right like just me carrying myself like, like when when I told them I don’t want no trouble and stuff like that I wasn’t nervous at all I was calm, I was collected. And I think, you know, I saw the driver. He was kind of like, you know, like, kind of like he assessed that, like, you know, like kind of like you looking at your opponent checking them out, seeing you know, you know, where, you know where the where the weak spots are right and I saw the driver like, he was definitely scoping the whole situation out, you know, so in a way, maybe these guys are, you know, they like to find trouble and they they look for the weak, like the weak victim because I did nothing wrong I just, you know, like when I glance over the right, you know, they almost hit me so I just served out back and I know they’re like pulling, trying to pull right beside me so I just cut them off, you know, trying to pull up to me, you know, I don’t know what they’re gonna do. You know, I don’t know if they can pull out a gun. So I just played it safe. If they if they were to pull to my, my passenger side, I would have took that left, you know.

 

MA

I want to go back real quick. I wanted to ask you something about your film career. Can you take us through some of the struggles you’ve had with, of course being asked to portray Asian stereotypes like a triad member in movies, and where you think the industry is today in that regard?

 

CL

Well, I think the industry for me I’m a big physical Asian, I can speak English. So, you know, I can act. So I think I was getting a lot of those roles as the villain. And I actually got two roles as the hero in Dragon Eyes and in Puncture Wounds, which was should have been called a certain justice, but, you know, they decided to change the name and, you know, for whatever reason it is but, and then, you know, like in Pandorum, you know, it was like, you didn’t know if I was a good guy or bad guy, but in the end, I saved the whole, like, you know, mankind, you know, during during the end end scene, so I felt like, you know, two years ago, , I also got the most votes as the best villain. So, I don’t want to continue to be that villain guy, you know, so I just figured what I need to do. You know, so I just started learning how to write my own scripts and look for my own funding and, you know, figure it out. Unless it’s a really good part, I’ll take it. If not, then then I won’t, you know, I just figure, you know, I just didn’t want to play the bad guy and you know the gangster anymore. And, you know, I’d  rather do something that’s, you know, worthwhile, you know, with with, you know, where the audience can really enjoy and get a good message out of it.  I’m going to produce and get financing for my own film, you know, so. And that’s what I decided. So, you know, it’s been two years since I, you know, since I got, you know, you know, got on, got on set because I’m turning parts down because I don’t want to be the villain.

 

DM

Yeah, I thought that was a really positive take that you’re controlling your own destiny, and developing your own content. I was reading some other stuff about you that had comments about the portrayal of Asians in film and TV and I just thought your take on it was really positive and there was a lot to take way from for other Asian actors. I thought it was really great advice.

 

CL

Yeah, I’m glad you saw that, you know, I think a lot of people, you know, they have their own mixed views on it, you know, and, and, you know, now that you saw, you know, Crazy Rich Asians where the movie did great in the box office, and there was a huge interest from the Asian community. I think now, you know, I’m doing I’m writing scripts, you know, that will, you know, kind of, kind of, what’s the right word? Kind of marinate with the pop culture of today what people are into, you know, come talk about, like, you know, like end of day stuff, you know, give a good message. You know, I got this great assassin script that I put together and it’s kind of like, like, an Asian John Wick meets 28 days later and it’s basically like, talks about the dead will rise and and you know, the choices that this assassin makes, is like, you know, he’s he knows, you know, to, you know, to kill people. And the reason why he was trained to do this because he thought that whoever he’s killing was the ones that killed his family.

 

Long story short, you know, his sister who also works on the same team with them gets killed and leaves, leaves, leaves our son behind. So I, my character has a choice to continue to do what he does or quit and take them and, you know, get off the grid and train them in mountains and train them how to survive. And, and, and basically, during this whole time, you know, like, you know, we saw that what drugs do it turns people into these crazy 28 days later, you know, creatures or humans that you know, go crazy and then we eliminated that we, you know, got the, the, the the formula back off, you know off this guy who betrayed the guy who was raising us and then then then, you know, my sister finds out that, you know, the guy who’s raising us was the guy who killed our, you know, our real parents and so, you know, now all all barrels are pointed at us and, you know, it’s, that choice of an antihero who who’s the villain in the movie who’s killing people, he makes a choice whether he gets saved in you know, and say save from, you know, his sins or not, you know, so, is he gonna continue to sin because he knows that he’s kind of like doomed or is he gonna do the right thing and, you know, take care of the you know, his nephew and, and do the right thing. And so that’s what he has choices to do. And then there’s all kinds of twists and turns with

 

DM

I’m gonna cut you off because I don’t want you to give away too much.

 

CL

Don’t worry. There’s a lot more

 

DM

That’s great, yeah, I’m in, I want to ask you real quick about your website and I noticed that you’re offering online fighting and fitness training in this era of COVID. First of all, it’s a great idea. And I want to know how that how that works and how it’s been going?

 

CL

I got really busy so I pulled it off, but I started putting a whole bunch of stuff on my YouTube page. And now I’m gonna do it on my Facebook I just gonna give away basic self-defense and, and basic tips on fight or flight situations for people to you know, kind of understand if the people who are like, say that they don’t have time to do it, well, maybe one lesson might give them like a spark to spark their interest to learn more because it’s free online, you know, so it’s something that I can give back and, you know, maybe save someone, you know, down the line and, you know, and hopefully, hopefully people realize how serious these times are right now.

 

DM

Currently obviously everybody’s kind of shut down but do you currently have a physical training center and if you do where is that at and once we get past this this endemic here you’ll you know, take people on and train them in person?

 

CL

Well you know, everything’s closed right now but I do have a key to the gym that I merge with Smash gyms San Jose, but there’s a lot of people that you know, invite me to their gym, I can train there anytime I want but you know, I trained at Smash gyms or I train at Bay Area Tactical. And then you know, I’m doing some privates here and there with like, more like, firearms training because I did get my, my NRA, you know, you know cert to to train people in firearms. So, you know, I’m helping out Bay Area Tactical with that, and, you know, they were overwhelmed with so much business. So I figured, you know, I learned more when I taught in martial arts than when I when I did it then I turn around and I’m able to apply it better, right? But now that I’m, you know, teaching firearms, I’m learning so much about gun safety, you know, how to manipulate the gun and just by teaching, it’s helped me become a better, you know, better at that, you know, the art of it, you know

 

MA

Well Cung, for my last question. I want to shift gears a little bit. In my line of work, which is forensic science, specifically DNA analysis. There’s a lot of problems in the industry with shoddy scientific practices and techniques. And these are in cases where there’s high stakes, you know, people could be facing the death penalty. They could have life in jail. And I thought what was a good parallel was your experience with the HGH blood test. So, if you don’t mind, could you tell us a little bit about how you were kind of screwed over and what the problems were with that testing?

 

CL

Yes, I can totally tell you about that. So basically, before that even happened, right, I was two weeks out from the Michael Bisping fight. And I was gonna spend my last two weeks in, Vietnam, to kind of acclimate to the, to the time change and then you know, and also Saigon Sports Club always sponsored me so they have me come out and do all my media and my press at the, at their 80,000 square foot gym. And so the lawyer from UFC called me and says, Hey, did you you know, you know, we need you to sign a you know, another 18 month contract six fight deal and, you know, I I looked it over but my lawyer didn’t get a chance to look it over and he was on. He was on vacation. So I, I wasn’t gonna risk risk, you know, you know, signing it. So I told him, my my lawyers out and I’ll sign it, I’ll have a look at it if I sign it and they wanted to me to sign it that day because I was leaving the next day to, to to Vietnam and I didn’t sign it and, you know, during during, you know, during the fight as you know, with any anabolic or drug tests, when when you do it, you have to be fasted, your resting heart rates got to be you know, when you wake up, you can’t be exercising, especially not after a fight and you’re bleeding your HGH levels will be at the max, you know, output. And, and so after they said I was my, my HGH level was elevated. You know, I re did my blood test I asked him to, you know, give me a retest on that blood. And you know, I want to see what about, you know, my opponents blood work and somehow, you know, magically it got destroyed so I was you know, confused by that and luckily, Dr. Caitlin got on social media and says hey you’re messing with my 10 year research, you know Cung Le actually his levels are normal because he didn’t try to protect me because like we knew each other he is protecting his 10 year research. So from the 10 year research, whenever you test for someone with elevated HGH levels, you got to test them fasted and you have to test them when they just woke up from you know, their, their resting heart rates got to be at rest. And you know, when they did that, it was 15 minutes right after I fought. And I was you know, as you saw my face I was kind of banged up, but you know, so I want to see my opponent’s blood work. But it was it was destroyed

 

MA

And on top of that, the lab that they used to do the testing, were they like not accredited or not really set up to do that type of testing?

 

CL

Yes. They they basically used not a, you know, what are those labs called the, the official lab that is, you know, for for performance enhancing drug testing, it was just a regular lab that they that they use for, like, you know, like if you own a company and you have to get your, you know, employees checked out, that’s what they used.

 

DM

So Cung besides launching flight or fight soon, what are the media projects are you currently working on? I understand that you are now the Shadowcast Chief Content Officer. What does that involve?

CL

Yeah, you know, he’s got to get his, his, uh, his software to, you know, kind of catch up to the speed of like, you know, his, what he wants to achieve before I can start, you know, developing, like storylines for him you know, so you know, there and then I’m just writing my own scripts and then getting my own projects funded through, you know, through investors, that’s that’s what I got going on right now and I’m working with the Bay Area Tactical whenever, you know, because with this COVID it’s hard to get group classes going. So you either you know, do, you know, small classes, which, you know, I, I feel like you know, it’s a little bit difficult because, because, you know, it’s with the small class, you can’t, you know pay like, all your instructor so everyone’s rotating.

 

MA

Well Cung, I know we took up too much of your time, but thank you so much for joining us today and just for being an all-around inspiration.

 

CL

Thank you for having me. And, you know, I appreciate it. Maybe the next time I get on we can we can chat about my my wife’s case, because there’s a lot of stuff that you can answer for me. And I think that would be a big one because, you know, this is the, this is the corruption side of fight or flight.

 

DM

Man we really got a lot of survival tips from Cung Le that I thought will help all of us to be better prepared for almost anything. You don’t have to be an MMA beast or tactical weapons expert to walk away from dangerous situations unscathed. But if you are, of course that helps

 

MA

Yeah, it really does. Cung’s fight or flight show is I think really going to be a great public service. And I found it interesting that how it’s not all about physical actions. Sometimes it’s just how you present yourself, or how you use your voice or even just having a calm and prepared mindset. And one of the tips that Cung gives in the sizzle reel has to do with pepper spray. And I think you know, we typically think of pepper spray of something that you use when you’re in close quarters with somebody if you’re being attacked, but it could prevent an attack as well. So like Cung said, in the sizzle reel, let’s say God forbid, you’re involved in a home invasion, you’re upstairs in the bedroom, you hear them downstairs, well go out your bedroom door flood the zone with pepper spray, which will either block them from getting to you slow them down, or when they do get to you, they’re going to have red eyes. And again, it just buys you enough time to call 911 to lock yourself in somewhere to get a weapon, whatever, but it’s just about getting that couple of seconds or whatever can make a difference.

 

DM

Yeah, I just thought it was a really smart, easy to apply tip. You know, I was really also excited Mehul to listen to Cung talk take us behind the scenes of his MMA and film career. I thought that was a very cool anecdote about him getting acting tips from David Carradine on set. Sounded like he gave us a scoop a TMZ scoop there about here’s a few tips and a flask

 

MA

Well, I mean that that proves that Cung takes care of his body you know,as if we didn’t know that

 

DM

You know he did decline You heard him decline it right?

 

MA

Absolutely. Yeah, I thought it was just gracious of Cung to spend so much time with us today. And I think it was cool that we got to go deep on a number of topics. So, you know, we will definitely take Cung up on his offer for a follow up episode.

 

DM

Yeah, absolutely. You know, you can catch the sizzle reel for flight or fight at Cung’s YouTube page and we’ve also posted a link with the description of this episode. Also check out Cung’s IG accounts @cungle185 and @fightorflightofficialtv,  for all things Cung Le check out his official website at cungleofficial.com.

 

You know, we really hope our listeners are staying safe and healthy and we truly appreciate all the downloads, follows and feedback. Please check out all of our episodes at crimeredefined.com and feel free to hit us up on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

 

B

Thank you for listening to the crime redefined podcast, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @crimeredefined. Please send us your comments and questions and join us for the next episode.

Use of Force-S1 25

Timothy T. Williams, Jr. is a nationally renowned expert in police procedure, use of force, and wrongful convictions.  He joins Crime Redefined to discuss his timely book A Deep Dive:  An Expert Analysis of Police Procedure, Use of Force, and Wrongful Convictions, as well as George Floyd, Elijah McClain and high-profile cases he has worked on.  Hosted by Dion Mitchell and Mehul Anjaria.  A Zero Cliff Media production.

FBII-Fernando Bermudez Is Innocent!-S1 24

Fernando Bermudez is an inspirational exoneree and criminal justice educator and activist.  His nightmare began in 1991 when he was arrested for a murder he did not commit. He suffered a wrongful conviction and 18 years of incarceration as a result. In 2009 he was found actually innocent and began the fight for his rightful compensation. Mr. Bermudez is a distinguished international public speaker.  Hosted by Dion Mitchell and Mehul Anjaria.  A Zero Cliff Media production.