Transcript of Episode 6 - The Trial

This is an iHeart podcast. Where's the best place to bend your favorite true crime podcast? On the edge of your seat or under the Caribbean Sun on an award-winning Virgin Voyages ship. This October, set sail on the first-ever true crime podcast voyage from Virgin Voyages. Catch live recordings at sea, meet iHeart true crime hosts, enjoy Halloween theme parties, and more. All aboard a kid-free, luxurious Virgin Voyages ship. It's like a floating five-star hotel with plot twists. Book now at virginvoyages. Com/truecrime. It was an unimaginable crime. It's four consecutive live terms for Brian Kauberger, who killed a four University of Idaho students. Nearly 30 months of silence until... Bomshell development, Brian Kauberger has agreed to plea guilty. No trial, no testimony.

The defense are on a sinking ship.

This isn't the justice wanted. But this is justice. Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. From iHeartPodcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to The Turning, River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did it occur to you that he charmed you in any way? Yes, it did, but he was a charming man. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.

I often ask myself, now, Did I know the true Jan at all?

Listen to Hot Money, Agent of Chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bbc Studios. Hey, it's Maggie. Just a quick heads up before we begin. This episode does contain some pretty detailed descriptions of violence and deals with adult themes. Tell me a little bit about Houston. I've never been there. What's it like?

Houston is the most diverse town in the state of Texas. Very, very ethnic friendly, lots of culture, lots of restaurants.

It might not sound like it, but I've been desperate to talk to this guy ever since I started working on this story.

It's a nice little part of Southeast Texas that nobody considers to be Texas.

He has a unique insight.

We like to go out and test different restaurants. Sometimes we have Thai food, and sometimes it's the steakhouses that serve excellent food.

And his opinion really counts.

There's plenty of text mix, and there's even variations of text mix. You can go in one restaurant, text mix, and then something next week will be a little bit different. I think we have the most cultural influence, although the country It is getting more and more culturally influenced by Hispanic America, so that's always good. Totally.

I'm with you. It has taken me hours and hours of searching online and dozens of phone calls to find Aaron Day. Tell me why we are talking to you today.

You want to know my take on the Sandra Melgar murder trial?

Do you still think about the case? Oh, yeah.

It will never leave me.

Aaron Day. He was one of the jurors in the State of Texas versus Sandra Jean Melgar.

It's part of my life, part of my history. I got called into something I didn't want, but I was asked to do it. I did it because that's my civil responsibility.

Starting at the beginning, I'd love to talk a little bit about the jury selection process. Yeah, in the Vordy. Vordy, which, again, I'm sure Erin and I are pronouncing 100% correctly, is when prospective jurors are assessed on whether they can be truly impartial or not.

I remember this as part of the prosecutor's first words. She said, Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Vordie. I have one question I want you to think about. Well, can you convict a person of murder with no motive? I answered that question, yeah. I think if there's evidence, we should be able to convict. If we can't, and the evidence isn't prevalent enough, then we won't convict us. That's what our legal system is all about.

And what did you think of that question when she asked?

I thought it was really unusual. I knew it would be an unusual trial.

A woman found tied up and trapped in a closet. Her hands tied. The door jammed shut from the outside. On trial for stabbing her husband to death. Without a motive, I'm Maggie Robinson Katz, and from BBC Studios and iHeartPodcasts, this is Hands Tied. Episode 6, The trial. When Sandra Melgar walked into the courtroom, she was walking with a cane, and I was struck by how petite she is and her delicate features. That's Amanda Orr, a journalist covering the case for Reuters. She had a shock of whitish gray hair that was about shoulder length. She was wearing glasses, and she didn't seem like a big hulking woman that would have been physically capable of overcoming a grown man. Amanda joins her fellow spectator the media, law students, and your casual gaukers all cramped onto the uncomfortable wooden benches, waiting for the show to start. Murder trials are some of the greatest traumas any human can witness. It's really a fascinating thing to behold. The greatest lawyers know that winning a jury over is about presenting the facts in a way that engages them. And so attorneys are tasked with the job of being storytellers. Whoever tells the best story wins.

One of those storytellers is a silver-haired defense attorney, Max Seacrest. He's also joined by his niece and protégé, Allison Seacrest. Max dressed in a dark, somber suit and wears round, tortichelle glasses. While Allison sports an understated linen suit, pearls, her long hair pulled back. Telling another story is prosecutor Coleen Barnet, a confident woman with a shoulder-length blonde bob and a in her suit. We tried to get Coleen for this podcast, but we didn't get her response. So what comes next are her words taken from the court transcript spoken by an actor.

You're going to hear testimony that Hyme's brother knocked on the front door and didn't get an answer.

This is Coleen's opening statement.

You're going to hear testimony that when he went into the house, he found his brother's body in his brother's closet, brutally stabbed to death, multiple stab wounds on his chest and his neck. He went into another part of the house where he found Sandra Melgar in her closet with her hands tied behind her back and her ankles wrapped. She was in her closet in the bathroom, and there was a chair on the outside of the bathroom door wedged up against the door. The police were called immediately.

Coleen tells the jury how she thinks Jim died.

We're going to show you that what we believe happened is that she enticed Hymey into some type of, maybe some liaison or something that she was going to do, made him sit in the chair.

Then Sandy stabbed him to death, she says. She warns the jury not to believe the story the defense is going to tell.

That there was a burglar there. What we're going to be able to show you is that there was no way for any burglar to enter that house. There was no reason for anybody to have anything to do against Hyme. He was a loved person at his work and in the neighborhood. There was no vendetta from anybody.

Coleen thinks Sandy could have made it to look like a break-in to cover her tracks. She tells the jury to not trust Sandy about her health, about her relationship with Jim, and about her version of events the night Jim died.

And I didn't hear anything because the Jacuzzi was going. And that's broken, by the way. And I can't turn off if I wanted to because it's broken. And the noise was so loud from the Jacuzzi that I couldn't hear my husband getting stabbed. Couldn't hear it.

So if this were a courtroom TV drama, we could maybe see Pauline make her way to the jury, looking each of them intently in the eye. Maybe she'd rest her hand on the wooden divider, separating the jury from the rest of the court, because this is her moment, the crescendo of her opening argument.

We believe that we're going to be able to prove this case to you beyond a reasonable doubt. Don't know that I have motive here, but there's no other way any other thing could have happened. Other than she just brutally murdered her husband.

Again, continuing my imagined version of what she did, Coleen pauses, ensuring that the jury heard those last words, that she Sandy brutally murdered her husband.

Thank you.

She thanks the jury and takes her seat. But even if they accept that Sandy enticed her husband into a sexual liaison before murdering him, how is that possible when Sandy was found trapped in a closet, her hands and feet tied? We Where's the best place to bend your favorite True Crime podcast? On the edge of your seat or under the Caribbean Sun on an award-winning Virgin Voyages ship? This October, set sail on the first ever true crime podcast voyage from Virgin Voyages. Catch live recordings at meet iHeartTrueCrime hosts, enjoy Halloween-themed parties, and more. All aboard a kid-free, luxurious Virgin Voyages ship. It's like a floating five-star hotel with plot twists. Book now at virginvoyages. Com/truecrime. It was an unimaginable crime. It's four consecutive live terms for Brian Kauberger, who killed a four University of Idaho students.

The defense are on a sinking ship.

It was clear at that point he was of options. Nearly 30 months of silence until... Bombshell development, Brian Kauberger, appearing set to accept a plea deal just five weeks before his quadruple murder trial was set to start. No trial, no testimony. He has pleaded guilty to five criminal counts, one of burglary, and then four counts of murder. In this final season, we return to Moscow with interviews from those still searching for answers.

Why did the prosecution take this?

They were holding all the cars. How on earth could you make a deal? What message does that send? Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For myHeart podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is the turning, River Road. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life, what that meant. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor? But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey. Listen to The Turning, River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare.

Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me. But me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Leveretown, New York. But reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margi Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is LeverTown, a new podcast from iHeartPodcasts, Bloomberg and Colliderscope. Listen to LeverTown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A video is played in court. The shaky hand detailed camera pans across the disheveled bedroom belonging to Jim and Sandy Melgar. This is the video the police took the night of Jim's murder, capturing the scene of the crime. The room is a mess. The bedsheets rumpled, clothes everywhere. The camera moves into the bathroom, where we see the remnants of their celebratory evening.

Drinks set on the edge of the Jacuzzi, a tub of cream with the strawberry perched on top. Then we see a gloved hand pull a white satin chair in front of the closet door.

The Sheriff's Department did a video showing you can be on the inside of the bathroom and pull the rug so the chair wedges up against the door. They can show you that that can happen, that she could have done that, and that is what she did.

To Coleen, this video is proof that Sandy could have herself in the closet, put the chair on a piece of fabric, making sure that half of it was outside and the other half inside. Cindy could have cracked the door slightly, just enough to place her hand on the top of the chair, making sure it hooks underneath the door handle. Close the door, then, couch down and pull the part of the chair that is inside of the closet towards her, causing the chair to be set in place, locking herself in. This theory clicked juror erraday.

And they showed how you can pull that chair with a rug underneath it to make it look like the door was actually blocked, so a person couldn't get out. So that was like, Oh, okay, that makes sense.

But how could she have done all of that when she was found with her hands tied behind her back? Well, Coleen has an answer for that, too. Sandy tied herself up. Coleen stands before the jury and takes out a piece of fabric. Its ends tied together. She methodically loops it around one of her wrists in a figure eight pattern. Then with both hands behind her back, she twists the material around the other wrist. Holding her forearms parallel with each other, each hand gripping the opposite elbow, the binding looks tight around her wrists. But Coleen shows she can easily slip her hands free. So Sandy could have tied her own hands behind her back.

The prosecution was able to demonstrate to the jury that you can bind your hands behind your back and make it look convincingly real and not have anybody actually tie you up. That was the big thing for me. It's like, Well, okay, yeah, I guess you can bind yourself.

The only problem was that wasn't the way that Sandy was tied up. That was not at all consistent with the testimony testimony of the only two witnesses who saw her tied up.

To Mack, Sandy's defense attorney, Colleen's demo doesn't match with what actually happened.

She wasn't tied at the wrist. She was tied with her arms behind her back. The ligatures ran from her wrist up, basically, to below her elbow. When you look at the crime scene unit photographs of Sandy's arms, Guess what? She has red marks consistent with that on her arms.

So if you remember, Sandy was cut free by her brother-in-law, Herman, and his wife before the police arrived. Herman gives evidence in court to say her arms were bound so tightly behind her back that he couldn't untie the knots and needed scissors to cut her free. While Aaron may be convinced if Colleen arguments? There's another question that looms across the entire trial.

How can this poor little sick lady commit murder? When I saw Sandra, I was surprised by the picture she portrayed of her physical being.

And can you say a little bit more about that? What does that mean?

She walked with a cane when she walked into the courtroom. I immediately questioned that she couldn't have done it because she looked so frail and unhealthy the way she presented herself.

But prosecutor Coleen Barnet argues that it didn't matter how strong or how frail Sandy might have been because she believes Sandy planned the whole thing and took Jim completely by surprise.

So she gets Hyme to sit down in the chair, and maybe she's massaging his neck or whatever. I don't know what. And then she pulls it out. And then, while he isn't Looking, she makes a strike straight up all the way to his neck. That's what the first strike is. Hyme, of course, gets up to try to defend himself, turns around, and that's when she gets him on the thumb, and that's when the blood starts spurting out onto the chair. This was the first strike. And then she had him. There was no place for him to go. As you saw, there's only two feet wide and not that deep. He was just stabbed to death. She had the knife.

Coleen points out that Jim wasn't a big guy. At 5'7, he was a bit taller than Sandy, but she's heavier than his 125 pounds. And the stab wounds weren't particularly deep, three inches at most, which gets juror Aaron way thinking.

It made sense that she didn't have to be superwoman or strong or any of those other things you would think a murderer would have to do to murder somebody.

But there's also the matter of Sandy's health. She's had her hips replaced, has epilepsy and lupus. And ever since her police interview, she has pointed to her health as a possible explanation for not knowing what happened the night Jim was killed. Sandy suspects she had a seizure and blacked out.

I want to go into that.

Coleen has her medical records from Sandy's primary care doctor and asks a witness to read them to the court.

Under seizure disorder, what does it say?

That she was stable, reads the witness. Sandy's medical records show that despite fairly regular checkups, she hasn't reported having a single seizure in the four years before Jim's murder. According to Coleen, Yes, Sandy had a condition that could cause seizures, but it was stable, controlled by medication. Sandy hadn't felt good. She had been resting a lot. She had been experiencing auras, which are many seizures. Defense attorney Allison Seacrest argues that those medical records don't tell the full story or reflect Sandy's health in the months before Jim's death.

If she's using her illnesses and she's saying she She conveniently had a seizure and then a blackout for 12 hours when her drugs were supposedly controlling these things, and she was not complaining to her doctors. Maybe she did blackout, but I can't find any evidence that she did.

Over 10 days, Coleen tears into Sandy's claim of innocence. Coleen tells the court that she was unhappy, plotted the whole thing, and locked herself in the closet and tied her own hands. The only thing that is missing is why. Why would Sandy do this?

When I've ordiared you guys, one of the things that I was a little worried about was motive, because I showed you the things we have to prove, and we've proven all of them. We've proven all of them, but motive is not one of them. And one of the things that I worried about was being able to establish that.

She offers the jury a theory, or two. The first is the classic. Jim had life insurance policies worth some half a million dollars.

She'd be getting a lot of money.

The second is religion. Coleen argues that as a devout Jehovah's Witness, Sandy couldn't divorce Jim without being ostracized.

But if I kill him and nobody finds out, I I'm not ostracized and nobody finds out, and I still get the money.

I can imagine Coleen locking eyes with the jury, ensuring that her last words are heard clearly.

There's zero evidence. Zero evidence. Zero evidence that somebody else did this. No evidence that anybody else did this. She's guilty, ladies and gentlemen. She's guilty. Please find her so. Thank you.

Now it's the defense's turn to take the stage, to try and convince the jury that the prosecution has got it all wrong, and Sandy is innocent. Where's the best place to bend your favorite true crime podcast? On the edge of your seat or under the Caribbean Sun on an award-winning Virgin Voyage's ship? This October, set sail on the first ever true crime podcast cast Voyage from Virgin Voyages. Catch live recordings at sea. Meet iHeartTrueCrime hosts. Enjoy Halloween-themed parties and more. All aboard a kid-free, luxurious Virgin Voyages ship. It's like a floating five-star hotel with plot twists. Book now at virginvoyages. Com/truecrime. It was an unimaginable crime. It's four consecutive live terms for Brian Kauberger, who killed a four University of Idaho students.

The defense are on sinking ship.

It was clear at that point he was out of options. Nearly 30 months of silence until... Bomshell development, Brian Kauberger appearing set to accept a plea deal just five weeks before his quadruple murder trial was set to start. No trial, no testimony. He has pleaded guilty to five criminal counts, one of burglary and then four counts of murder. In this final season, we return to Moscow with interviews from those still searching for answers.

Why did the prosecution take this?

They were holding all the cars. How on earth could you make a deal? What message does that send? Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From iHeartPodcasts and Rococo Punch, this is the turning, River Road. I knew I wanted to obey and submit But I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor. But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey. Listen to The Turning, River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare.

Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in LeverTown, New York. But reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the Internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law. And about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Maggie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is LeverTown, a new podcast from iHeartPodcasts, Bloomberg and Colliderscope. Listen to LeverTown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When it's the defense's turn to address the jury in defense, Sandy, Max Seacrest makes a big decision. He doesn't call Sandy to the stand. Instead, he relies on a very simple but powerful argument.

It's the worst investigated case I've ever seen.

He says the only reason Sandy is on trial is because the police failed to do their job properly.

They had an agenda. They weren't objective, and they jumped to conclusions, and they were sloppy. They assumed it's the rubric that if two people are married and one of them is dead, then the other one must have done it. And that's pretty much what propelled the entire investigation from the get-go.

He claims potentially crucial evidence slipped through the cracks.

There's actually a bloody thumbprint on a safe in the closet where Hyme was found.

Mack tells the jury that this is the bloody smear that Liz noticed when she was packing up her old house. When she's called as a witness, Liz tells the court, she sent a photo of the bloody mark to the police, and they told her it had already been processed.

And guess what? They didn't bother to analyze it. In fact, one of the detectives said that it had been analyzed when, in fact, it never had been.

The crime scene investigator tells the court that his team had spotted the blood, but they didn't swab it for DNA or test the safer prints. When asked on the stand why, he says, Because we assumed it was Sandy's blood.

So, I mean, again, this is indicative of what we're dealing with.

According to Mac and his fellow defense attorney, Allison Seacrest, the police cherry-picked evidence that suited their case and ignored anything that didn't. Like the fact that forensic analysis of the Melgar's phones and computers and a keyword search for rope, knot, stab, crime scene, and murder revealed nothing. And according to friends, family, and neighbors, the Melgar's had a healthy relationship. There was no evidence of any infidelity or animosity between the pair. Sandra and Jim had a really loving relationship. Then there's the lack of physical evidence linking Sandy to the murder.

Jim died in a brutal, savage attack. At least 51 sharp force and blunt force injuries, 31 what we call sharp force trauma. He had all the hallmarks of someone who had been beaten to death. What's startling is when you examine Sandy's hands, there was no trauma to her hands. It's very, very common in stabbing cases that if I'm holding a knife and I start to stab you, and I stab you, and I stab you, it's going to produce a lot of blood. It's very typical that that blood will cause your hand to slip, and the assailant will likely cut his or her own hand by repeatedly wielding a bloody instrument. In Sandy's case, the inside of her hand is no cuts at all. And amazingly, she had 10 beautiful fingernails, no breaks, no chips, no cracks. And yet she grossly, brutally worked him over, including hitting him with her fist.

Jim's autopsy report details fractures to his skull, bruises on his head, shoulders, torso, arms and legs, and notes that there was internal bleeding linked to some of those bruises.

Because of the 51 plus blunt and sharp force injuries, it was agreed to by all sides that the the salent would be covered in blood. There was no blood found on Sandy at all. There was no blood found on any of Sandy's clothing at all. All the examination of her fingernails and the DNA under her fingernails, no blood at all.

And there was no evidence of a cleanup. To the defense, this proved Sandy didn't kill Jim, and makes them question why the police so quickly discounted the theory of a robbery gone wrong. They seemed to believe that there was no obvious signs of a break-in. No windows broken, no doors knocked in, so no robbery. I think she was the only suspect because these officers rushed to judgment and made up their mind that because there was no forced entry into the house, that it had to have been Sandy. But there is one key sign the police may have overlooked. Sandy told the detectives in her interrogation that the garage door could have been left open.

The garage was open when the family arrived and was able to enter the house through the unlocked interior door. So that's how Herman got into the house, and we believe, of course, that's how the intruders got into the house.

To juror Aaron Day, though, this argument doesn't add up.

My thought process was, yes, the garage door may have been open, but if you go to somebody's house to rob them, why would you murder one and leave another one tied up in a closet? It just didn't make sense that the defense said this was a robbery gone bad and person got killed.

It's Sunday December 23, 2012.

This is Sean Cribs, Health Harris County Sheriff's Office Homicide, 60 Henry 42.

The current time is 9: 42 PM. Okay. Ma'am, can you identify your sofa me? Sandra Milgar. One part of this story that I can't quite shake is Sandy's interview with the police the night she was found. If you remember, she's distressed, can't remember details. We went up deep. Okay. Where's on the wait at? It's a Mexican restaurant. I think it was the Bravos. Bravos? Where... In what town was that? No, it wasn't Bravos.

It was Cucos.

I'm listening about 8: 00. I mean, I'm just guessing. I don't know. Okay, so approximately 8: 00?

Mm-hmm.

How will this tape play in court? To the prosecution, Sandy's behavior proves she's dodgy. She's evasive, unclear. She seems numb, detached, and when she cries, they don't see tears.

Are you covering something else, Amy? No.

Why would you take a polygraph? Because I'm so stressed right now. I can't even think straight.

It's not a good reason.

I just don't want it used against me. That's all. I'll take it, but not just- Why would we have to use it against you? Because I'm stressed. And I mean, I just... Because you're stressed.

It's beyond that.

She was making them angry because she wouldn't answer questions. She would avoid eye contact. She would avoid... And she would mumble, and she wasn't shedding tears of emotion.

But the defense call an expert witness, a former police investigator who's reviewed the interview. He tells the court he didn't see any sign that Sandy was trying to mislead the officers or that they ever considered she was traumatized and the victim of a serious crime.

Did you hear him screaming? I didn't hear you. When he was in pain. We know that.

He suffered a lot. I need you to help me.

I need you to help me. I need you to help me on this. Help me, Sandra.

Help me.

Tell me.

Your husband's a nice guy. He went through a lot of pain.

Help me.

I didn't hear anything.

Stop already. I need help, Sandra. I need help. Help me.

That's it. I need a lawyer. I'm not talking anymore because you guys are just trying to torture me here.

We wanted the jury to hear her suggesting that maybe she ought to get a lawyer because obviously the tenor of the questioning was Absolutely unfair.

So the minute you said, I want to stop and see a lawyer, they should have stopped. So that's really where I blame the investigators, the interrogators.

Immediately after that police interview, Detective Carousel contacts the district Attorney's office to try and charge Sandy. However, the DA refuses, saying they need more evidence.

Here's a guy that even before they know the analysis of what the DNA may show. Hours before the crime scene, people had left the scene, he's trying to get murder charges filed.

Mack wants the jury to see this as yet another example of a biased and narrow approach by the police. But Detective Sean Carrizel says he was just keeping the DA informed.

No wonder why they were suspicious at the onset. And that's when I give the police credit for being suspicious that they had their murderer were, and they didn't need to do more investigations.

Mac then reveals his Trump card. Detective Sean Carrizel has been fired. Two of Sean Carrizel's former colleagues tell the court that his work on a previous case was sloppy and that he's not truthful. For journalist Amanda Orr, listening to this in court, it's a slam dunk. The fact that the lead detective had fired. And the fact that there were testimonies that the lead detective had been untruthful in other investigations would have been enough for me as a juror to say that everything about this investigation is called into question. But she's not on the jury. Aaron is. And he's more, well, forgiving.

Yeah.

Nobody's perfect, Maggie.

The jury Warrant told the full story about why Sean Carrizel was fired, only that there was an issue over a search warrant. But the truth is, he forged a search warrant in another case and lied about it. We reached out to Sean Carrizel for the story, but he didn't respond to our questions. Closing arguments have just wrapped up in the case against a woman accused of murdering her husband and then trying to cover it up. I told Colleen Barnet that she the best she could. Sandy couldn't have done it, and the evidence is so clear. But members of the media watching in court didn't seem so sure. Yes, Bill. Well, the prosecutor arguing very strongly that Sandra Melgar did murder her husband. Now it's up to the jury. Sandra Melgar's fate lies in their hands.

Well, I tried to keep an open mind. I want to believe somebody is innocent until the state can prove them guilty. And then we all went back the real like, Okay, where do we start?

You've been listening to Hands Tied, a new eight-part true crime series from BBC Studios and iHeartPodcasts. New episodes will be released weekly, so subscribe or follow on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out. If If you like the show, please help us by spreading the word or giving us a five-star review. I'm Maggie Robinson-Katz, and the producer is Maggie Latham. Sound design and mix is by Tom Brignell. Our script consultant is Emma Wetherall. Production support is from Dan Marciini, Elaina Botang, and Mabel FINNEGEN-Wright. Our production executive is Laura Jordan-Raule. The series was developed by Anya Sanders and Emma law. At iHeart, the managing executive producer is Christina Everett. And for BBC Studios, the executive producer is Joe Kent. James Cooke is the creative director of Factual for BBC Studios Audio, and the director of audio at BBC Studios is Richard Knight. Where's the best place to binge your favorite true crime podcast? On the edge of your seat or under the Caribbean and Son on an award-winning Virgin Voyages ship. This October, set sail on the first-ever True Crime podcast voyage from Virgin Voyages. Catch live recordings at sea, meet iHeartTrueCrime hosts, enjoy Halloween-themed parties, and more.

All aboard a kid-free, luxurious Virgin Voyages ship. It's like a floating five-star hotel with plot twists. Book now at virginvoyages. Com/truecrime. It was an unimaginable crime. It's four consecutive live terms for Brian Kauberger, who killed the four University of Idaho students. The defense are on a sinking ship. It was clear at that point he was out of options. Nearly 30 months of silence until... Bomshell development, Brian Kauberger appearing set to accept a plea deal just five weeks before his quadruple murder trial was set to start. No trial, No testimony. He has pleaded guilty to five criminal counts, one of burglary and then four counts of murder. In this final season, we return to Moscow with interviews from those still searching for answers. Why did the prosecution take this? They were holding all the cars. How on earth could you make a deal? What message does that send? Listen to season three of the Idaho Massaker on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For My Heart podcasts in Rococo Punch, this is the Turning, River Road. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant.

In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. Why did I think that way? Why did I I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor. But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey. Listen to The Turning, River Road on the iHeartRad app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levertsown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the internet, and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography.

This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law, and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Maggie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is LeverTown, a new podcast from iHeartPodcasts, Bloomberg and Collidoscope. Listen to LeverTown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A video is played in court. The shaky handheld camera pans across the disheveled bedroom belonging to Jim and Sandy Melgar. This is the video the police took the night of Jim's murder, capturing the scene of the crime. The room is a mess. The bedsheets rumpled, clothes everywhere, The camera moves into the bathroom, where we see the remnants of their celebratory evening. Drinks set on the edge of the Jacuzzi, a tub of cream with the strawberry perched on top. Then we see a gloved hand pull a white satin chair in front of the closet door. The Sheriff's Department did a video showing you can be on the inside of the bathroom and pull the rug, so the chair wedges up against the door. They can show you that that can happen, that she could have done that, and that is what she did.

To Coleen, this video is proof that Sandy could have shut herself in the closet, put the chair on a piece of fabric, making sure that half of it was outside and the other half inside. Sandy could have cracked the door slightly, just enough to place her hand on the top of the chair, making sure it hooks underneath the door handle, close the door, then couch down and pull the part of the chair that is inside of the closet towards her, causing the chair to be set in place, locking herself in. This theory clicked for juror Aaron Day. And they showed how you can pull that chair with a rug underneath it to make it look like the door was actually blocked, so a person couldn't get out. So that was like, Oh, okay, that makes sense. But how could she done all of that when she was found with her hands tied behind her back. Well, Coleen has an answer for that, too. Sandy tied herself up. Coleen stands before the jury and takes out a piece of fabric, its ends tied together. She methodically loops it around one of her wrists in a figure 8 pattern.

Then with both hands behind her back, she twists the material around the other wrist. Holding her forearms parallel with each other, each hand gripping the opposite elbow, the binding looks tight around her wrists. But Coleen shows she can easily slip her hands free. So Sandy could have tied her own hands behind her back. The prosecution was able to demonstrate to the jury that you can bind your hands behind your back and make it look convincingly real and not have anybody actually tie die you up. So that was the big thing for me. It's like, Okay, yeah, I guess you can buy yourself. Only problem was, that wasn't the way that Sandy was tied up. That was not at all consistent with the testimony of the only two witnesses who saw her tied up. To Mack, Sandy's defense attorney, Coleen's demo doesn't match with what actually happened. She wasn't tied at the risk. She was tied with her arms behind her back. The ligatures ran from her wrist up, basically, to below her elbow. And when you look at the crime scene unit photographs of Sandy's arms, guess what? She has red marks consistent with that on her arms.

So if you remember, Sandy was cut free by her brother-in-law, Harmon, and his wife before the police arrived. Herman gives evidence in court to say her arms were bound so tightly behind her back that he couldn't untie the knots and needed scissors to cut her free. While Aaron may be convinced of Colleen's arguments, there's another question that looms across the entire trial. How can this poor little sick lady commit murder? When I saw Sandra, I was surprised by the picture she portrayed of her physical being. And can you say a little bit more about that? What does that mean? She walked with a cane when she walked into the courtroom. I immediately questioned that she couldn't have done it because she looked so frail and unhealthy the way she presented herself. But prosecutor Colleen Barnet argues that it didn't matter how strong or how frail Sandy might have been because she believes Sandy planned the whole thing and took Jim completely by surprise. So she gets Hyme to sit down in the chair, and maybe she's massaging his neck or whatever. I don't know what. And then she pulls it out. And then, while he isn't looking, she makes a strike straight up all the way to his neck.

That's what the first strike is. Hyme, of course, gets up to try to defend himself, turns around, and That's when she gets him on the thumb, and that's when the blood starts spurting out onto the chair. This was the first strike. And then she had him. There was no place for him to go. As you saw, there's only two feet wide and not that deep. He was just stabbed to death. She had the knife. Coleen points out that Jim wasn't big guy. At 5'7, he was a bit taller than Sandy, but she's heavier than his 125 pounds. And the stab wounds weren't particularly deep, three inches at most, which gets juror Aaron Day thinking. It made sense that she didn't have to be superwoman or strong or any of those other things you would think a murderer would have to do to murder somebody. But there's also the matter of Sandy's health. She's had her hips replaced, has epilepsy and lupus. And ever since her police interview, she has pointed to her health as a possible explanation for not knowing what happened the night Jim was killed. Sandy suspects she had a seizure and blacked out.

I want to go into that. Coleen has her medical records from Sandy's primary care doctor and asks a witness to read them to the court. Under seizure disorder, what does it that she was stable, reads the witness. Sandy's medical records show that despite fairly regular checkups, she hasn't reported having a single seizure in the four years before Jim's murder. According to Coleen, yes, Sandy had a condition that could cause seizures, but it was stable, controlled by medication. Sandy hadn't felt good. She had been resting a lot. She had been experiencing auras, which are many seizures. Defense attorney Allison Seacrest argues that those medical records don't tell the full story or reflect Sandy's health in the months before Jim's death. If she's using her illnesses and she's saying she conveniently had a seizure and then a blackout for 12 hours when her drugs were supposedly controlling these things and she was not complaining to her doctors, maybe she did blackout. But I can't find any evidence that she did. Over 10 days, Coleen tears into Sandy's claim of innocence. Coleen tells the court that she was unhappy, plotted the whole thing, and locked herself in the closet, and tied her own hands.

The only thing that is missing is why. Why would Sandy do this? When I vor-diared you guys, one of the things that I was a little worried about was because I showed you the things we have to prove, and we've proven all of them. We've proven all of them, but motive is not one of them. And one of the things that I worried about was being able to establish that. She offers the jury a theory, or two. The first is the classic. Jim had life insurance policies worth some half a million dollars. She'd be getting a lot of money. The second is religion. Coleen argues that as a devout Jehovah's Witness, Sandy couldn't divorce Jim without being ostracized. But if I kill him and nobody finds out, I'm not ostracized and nobody finds out, and I still get the money. I can imagine Coleen locking eyes with the jury, ensuring that her last words are heard clearly. There's zero evidence. Zero evidence. Zero evidence that somebody else did this. No evidence that anybody else did this. She's guilty, ladies and gentlemen. She's guilty. Please find her so. Thank you. Now it's the defense's turn to take the stage, to try and convince the jury that the prosecution has got it all wrong, and Sandy is innocent.

Where's the best place to bend your favorite true crime podcast? On the edge of your seat or under the Caribbean Sun on an award-winning Virgin Voyages ship. This October, set sail on the first-ever true crime podcast voyage from Virgin Voyages. Catch live recordings at sea, meet iHeartTrueCrime hosts, enjoy Halloween-themed parties, and more. All aboard a kid-free, luxurious Virgin Voyages ship. It's like a floating five-star hotel with plot twists. Book now at virginvoyages. Com/truecrime. It was an unimaginable crime. It's four consecutive live terms for Brian Kauberger, who killed the four University of Idaho students. The defense are on a sinking ship. It was clear at that point he was out of options. Nearly 30 months of silence until... Bombshell development, Brian Kauberger appearing set to accept a plea deal just five weeks before his quadruple People murder trial was set to start. No trial, no testimony. He has pleaded guilty to five criminal counts, one of burglary, and then four counts of murder. In this final season, we return to Moscow with interviews from those still searching for answers. Why did the prosecution take this? They were holding all the cars. How on earth could you make a deal?

What message does that send? Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For My Heart podcasts in Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor? But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey. Listen to the Turning, River Road, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in LeverTown, New York. But Reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Maggie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is LeverTown, a new podcast from iHeartPodcasts, Bloomberg and Collidoscope. Listen to LeverTown on Bloomberg's big Fake podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When it's the defense's turn to address the jury and defend Sandy, Max Seacrest makes a big decision. He doesn't call Sandy to the stand. Instead, he relies on a very simple but powerful argument. It's the worst investigative case I've ever seen He says the only reason Sandy is on trial is because the police failed to do their job properly. They had an agenda. They weren't objective, and they jumped to conclusions, and they were sloppy. They assumed it's the old rubric that if two people are married and one of them is dead, then the other one must have done it.

And that's pretty much what propelled the entire investigation from the get-go. He claims potentially crucial evidence slipped through the cracks. There's actually a bloody thumbprint on a safe in the closet where Hyme was found. Mac tells the jury that this is the bloody smear that Liz noticed when she was packing up her old house. When she's called as a witness, Liz tells the court she sent a photo of the bloody mark to the police, and they told her it had already been processed. And guess what? They didn't bother to analyze it. In fact, one of the detectives said that it had been analyzed when, in fact, it had been. The crime scene investigator tells the court that his team had spotted the blood, but they didn't swab it for DNA or test the safer prints. When asked on the stand why, he says, Because we assumed it was Sandy's blood. So, I mean, again, this is indicative of what we're dealing with. According to Mac and his fellow defense attorney, Allison Seacrest, the police cherry-picked evidence that suited their case and ignored anything that didn't. Like the fact that forensic analysis of the Melgar's phones and computers and a keyword search for rope, knot, stab, crime scene, and murder, revealed nothing.

And according to friends, family, and neighbors, the Melgar's had a healthy relationship. There was no evidence of any infidelity or animosity between the pair. Sandra and Jim had a really loving relationship. Then there's the lack of physical evidence linking Sandy to the murder. Jim died in a brutal, savage attack. At least 51 sharp force and blunt force injuries, 31 what we call sharp force trauma. He had all the hallmarks of someone who had been beaten to death. What's startling is when you examine Sandy's hands, there was no trauma to her hands. It's very, common in stabbing cases that if I'm holding a knife and I start to stab you, and I stab you, and I stab you, it's going to produce a lot of blood. It's very typical that that blood will cause your hand to slip, and the assailant will likely cut his or her own hand by repeatedly wielding a bloody instrument. In Sandy In this case, the inside of her hand, no cuts at all. And amazingly, she had 10 beautiful fingernails. No breaks, no chips, no cracks. And yet she supposedly brutally worked him over, including hitting him with her fist.

Jim's autopsy report details fractures to his skull, bruises on his head, shoulders, torso, arms and legs. And notes that there was internal bleeding linked to some of those bruises. Because of the 51 plus blunt and sharp force injuries, it was agreed to by all sides that the assailant would be covered in blood. There was no blood found on Sandy at all. There was no blood found on any of Sandy's clothing at all. All the examinations of her fingernails and the DNA under her fingernails. No blood at all. And there was no evidence of a cleanup. To the defense, this proves Sandy didn't kill Jim and makes them question why the police so quickly discounted the theory of a robbery gone wrong. They seemed to believe that there was no obvious signs of a break-in. No windows broken, no doors knocked in, So no robbery. I think she was the only suspect because these officers rushed to judgment and made up their mind that because there was no forced entry into the house, that it had to have been Sandy. But there is one key sign the police may have overlooked. Sandy told the detectives in her interrogation that the garage door could have been left open.

The garage was open when the family arrived and was able to enter the house through the unlocked interior their door. So that's how Herman got into the house. And we believe, of course, that's how the intruders got into the house. To juror Aaron Day, though, this argument doesn't add up. My thought process was, yes, the garage door may have been open, but if you go to somebody's house to rob them, why would you murder one and leave another one tied up in a closet? It just didn't make sense that the defense said this was a robbery gone bad and person killed. It's Sunday, December 23, 2012. This is Sean Cribs, Health Harris County Sheriff's Office Homicide, 60 Henry 42. The current time is 9: 42 PM. Okay, ma'am, can you identify your sofa me? Sandra Milgar. A part of this story that I can't quite shake is Sandy's interview with the police the night she was found. If you remember, she's distressed, can't remember details. We went out to eat. Where's Jungle Eats at? It's a Mexican restaurant. I think it was in Bravos. In what town was that? No, it wasn't in Bravos. It was Cucos.

I'm missing about 8: 00. I mean, I'm just guessing. I don't know. Okay, so approximately 8: 00? Mm-hmm. How will this tape play in court? To the prosecution, Sandy's behavior proves she's dodgy. She's evasive, unclear. She seems numb, detached, and when she cries, they don't see tears. Are you covering something else, Sandy? No. Why would you take a polygraph? Because I I'm so stressed right now. I can't even think straight. It's not a good reason. Well, I just don't want it used against me. That's all. I'll take it, but not just-Why would it have to use against you? Because I'm stressed. I mean, I just-Because you're stressed. I'm tired of hennies. It's beyond that. She was making them angry because she wouldn't answer questions. She would avoid eye contact. She would avoid, and she would mumble. And she wasn't shedding tears of emotion. But the defense call an expert witness, a former police investigator who's reviewed the interview. He tells the court he didn't see any sign that Sandy was trying to mislead the officers or that they ever considered she was traumatized and the victim of a serious crime. Did you hear him screaming?

When he was in pain, we know that he suffered a lot. I need you I need you to help me. I need you to help me. I need you to help me on this. Help me, Sandra. Help me. Tell me. Your husband's a nice guy. He went through a lot of pain. Help me. I didn't hear anything. Stop already. I need help, Sandra. I need help. Help me. That's it. I need a lawyer. I'm not talking anymore because you guys are just trying to torture me here. We wanted the jury to hear her suggesting that maybe she ought to get a lawyer because obviously the tenor of the questioning was absolutely unfair. So the minute you said, I want to stop and see a lawyer, they should have stopped. So that's really where I blame the investigators, the interrogators. Immediately after that police interview, Detective Carrizel contacts the district Attorney's office to try and charge Sandy. However, the DA refuses, saying they need more evidence. Here's a guy that even before they know the analysis of what the DNA may show, hours before the crime scene people had left the scene, he's trying to get murder charges filed.

Mack wants the jury to see this as yet another example of a biased and narrow approach by the police. But Detective Sean Carrizel says he was just keeping the DA informed. No wonder why they were suspicious at the onset. And that's why I give the police credit for being suspicious that they had their murderer, and they didn't need to do more investigations. Mac then reveals his Trump card. Detective Sean Carrizel has been fired. Two of César César César's former colleagues tell the court that his work on a previous case was sloppy and that he's not truthful. For journalist Amanda Orr, listening to this in court, it's a slam dunk. The fact that the lead detective had been fired and the fact that there were testimonies that the lead detective had been untruthful in other investigations would have been enough for me as a juror to say that everything everything is called into question. But she's not on the jury. Aaron is. And he's more, well, forgiving. Yeah. Nobody's perfect, Maggie. The jury aren't told the full story about why Sean Carrizel was fired, only that there was an issue over a search warrant. But the truth is, he forged a search warrant in another case and lied about it.

We reached out to Sean Carrizel for the story, but he didn't respond to our questions. Closing arguments have just wrapped up in the case against a woman accused of murder her husband and then trying to cover it up. I told Colleen Barnet that she did the best she could. Sandy couldn't have done it, and the evidence is so clear. But members of the media watching in court didn't seem so sure. Yes, Bill. Well, the prosecutor arguing very strongly that Sandra Melgar did murder her husband. Now it's up to the jury. Sandra Melgar's fate lies in their hands. Well, I tried to keep an open mind. I want to believe somebody's innocent until the state can prove them guilty. And then we all went back in the room, like, Okay, where do we start? You've been listening to Hand's Tied, a new eight true crime series from BBC Studios and iHeart podcasts. New episodes will be released weekly, so subscribe or follow on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out. If you like the show, please help us by spreading the word or giving us a five-star review.

I'm Maggie Robinson-Katz, and the producer is Maggie Latham. Sound design and mix is by Tom Brignell. Our script consultant is Emma Wetherall. Production support is from Dan Marciny, Elaina Botang, and Mabel FINNEGEN-Wright. Our production executive is Laura Jordan-Raule. The series was developed by Anya Sanders and Emma Shah. At iHeart, the managing executive producer is Christina Everett. And for BBC Studios, the executive producer is Joe Kent. James Cooke is the creative director of Factual for BBC Studio's audio, and the director of audio at BBC Studios is Richard Knight. Where's the best place to bend your favorite True Crime podcast? On the edge of your seat or under the Caribbean Sun on an award-winning Virgin Voyages ship? This October, set sail on the first-ever True Crime podcast voyage from Virgin Voyages. Catch live recordings at sea, meet iHeartTrueCrime hosts, enjoy Halloween-themed parties, and more. All aboard a kid free, luxurious Virgin Voyages ship. It's like a floating five-star hotel with plot twists. Book now at virginvoyages. Com/truecrime. It was an unimaginable crime. It's four consecutive live terms for Brian Kauberger, who killed a four University of Idaho students. Nearly 30 months of silence until... Bomshell development, Brian Kauberger has agreed to plea guilty.

No trial, no testimony.

The defense are on the sinking ship.

This isn't the justice you wanted, but this is justice. Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did it occur to you that he'd charmed you in any way? Yes, it did. But he was a charming man. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.

I often ask myself, now, did I know the true Jan at all?

Listen to Hot Money, Agent of Chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. From iHeartPodcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to The Turning, River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, you get your podcasts. This is an iHeartPodcast.