Transcript of The Bloody Dollar Murder - Perry, Utah

Hello everybody, and welcome back to "Small Town Murder" Express.

Yay and choo-choo!

Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigalo, I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Wissman.

Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another really wild, crazy, insane edition of "Small Town Murder" Express. This is all aboard the murder train, pulling away from the station. This is one that seems like it's a real kind of, "Hey, what are we even doing with this?" And then it gets real weird and creepy and it's strange. So I can't wait to get into this. A lot of wild stuff. Before we do, head over to shut up and give me murder.com.

Oh yeah.

And that's really, that's a favor for yourself, honestly. Patreon is great and we, it's worth it. Patreon.com/crimeinsports, just like the name of our other show there.

Yeah.

Great stuff. All you've got to be is $5 a month or above and you get so much. As soon as you subscribe, you're going to get like almost 400 back bonus episodes immediately.

So much, yeah.

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That's suspicious.

Unless you're like 140 years old, that seems a little suspicious. So it's a wild story. We'll get into all of that. It's on Netflix. You can check it out. Patreon.com/crimeinsports is where you get all of that. And you get, on top of that, you also get all the shows we put out. Your stupid opinions, Crime in Sports, and Small Town Murder, all ad-free.

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That's right. On top of that, you also get a shout out at the end of the regular show too. So it's all there. It's all we can do for you. Patreon.com/crimeinsports is where that happens. That said, I think it's time, everybody. What do you say?

Hey!

I think it's time to sit back here. Let's clear the lungs, clear all the travel out of our lungs here. Arms to the sky, I guess you could say, and we're ready to go on a trip here. But first, we have to say.

Shut up and give me murder!

Let's do this, everybody.

Okay!

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

Yeah.

All right. We're doing this. We are going to Utah this week.

Fuck yeah.

Perry, Utah.

Where's that at?

P-E-R-R-Y, like Perry. It is, let's say here, it's North Central Utah, about an hour away from Salt Lake City, up north of Salt Lake City.

Okay, between there and Provo.

Kind of in the middle of nowhere, this place. It's five hours to our last Utah episode, St. George, Utah, episode 705, "Medicine Made Me Murder." That was the guy who was blaming Ms. Medicine on everything. And he was a bad guy. With medicine, without medicine, really didn't matter. So this is in Box Elder County.

Like?

Box, like a box.

Like your box?

Like your, in your, an elder's box county. And two separate words. Area code 435, population 5,444. So not a big, not a big place and pretty rural out here too, especially when we're going to talk about it, because Utah's blown up in population in the last 25 years or so, but this took a place a little before that. Median household income here is higher than the national average, $89,069.

All right.

And the median home cost here, $472,900. So pricey. It's pricey up there. The motto here is, quote, "Building a community together."

I don't know.

Everybody's got to do their part. Everyone's doing something here apparently.

Pick up the hammer. Here we go.

We're building it. A little bit of history here. This is in the Bear River Valley, which I guess is a big agricultural area in Utah here. Orrin Porter Rockwell and his brother Merritt laid claim to some land in 1851 around here in a town.

Those are called Mormons.

Orrin, yeah.

You bet.

O-R-R-I-N, like hash.

I think so.

You bet your ass. This is the year that Box Elder was a town. It's now Bingham City, but it used to be, or Brigham City, sorry, like Brigham Young. Used to be Box Elder. And yeah, so that was how this all started. They got scared of Indian attacks. That never really, it didn't even happen, but they got scared of them and left. And then in 1853, a bunch of Mormons showed up and began to settle the area as well. Little bit of other thing, in 1896, a rainstorm happened before all the snow was melted, which caused a huge flood of water into the reservoir, which flooded everything.

Oh no!

Homes were lost, farms were covered in gravel and debris, just destroyed everything in the town.

And cold water.

Not good. Yeah, it was bad stuff here. So anyway, in 1898, they changed the name. It was Three Mile Creek was the name of the town. Then they changed it to Perry in honor of Orrin Alonzo Perry, which. Orrin Alonzo?

Yeah.

Alonzo is, to me, I mean, Alonzo Mourning is who I think of first. So I think of a.

Alonzo Bowden.

Large black men is what I think of.

Yes, big.

Not the whitest people who've ever lived. It's very, very weird here. Yeah, giant comic or giant basketball player, one of the two. Alonzo Bowden's a really nice guy though.

What a guy.

He's huge and scary, but not when you talk to him. He's a great dude.

No. The humility that the man shows online too.

He's a great guy.

He really laughs at himself about how.

Nice guy.

Yeah, how, whatever.

Gave somebody a goddamn kidney. He's a good guy.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

What a guy.

So the population of this town in 1900 was 261, which is about 11 Mormon families, I believe, give or take. One or two.

Two, three.

Yeah, two, three.

Two, three families.

Some reviews of this town, here's five stars. It's such a cute little town and the people here are so nice. They have two elementary schools right in the town, which both have amazing teachers and staff. There are churches. I would assume there are. I bet there's a ton of those. And a nice park with lots of trees. There's also a Walmart and a Maverick. They have a gas.

And a Maverick!

They have a gas station and a Walmart. This place blowing up. I love it here. It must be the Maverick.

It's a soggy sandwich.

It must be the Maverick, everybody.

Yeah.

Then the lowest rating they have is three stars. Here's three stars. Perry is a small town with great charm and positive atmosphere. However, there's a lack of diversity and the local shopping and dining could only be found in Brigham City, which is very close. So then what are you complaining about if it's very close? It's like five miles away, I think.

Who expects diversity outside of Salt Lake City in Utah?

In rural Utah? In Salt Lake City, it's just all blonde people.

Yes, mostly.

It's all blonde people.

White people and a few Mexicans and Samoan people.

Yeah, and any.

Islanders of some point.

Yeah, and a couple of people who play for the jazz and that's it.

That's it.

That's it. They said it would be wonderful to have one or two Perry-based businesses.

Yeah.

They go all the way over there.

They're never getting that.

Nope. And then finally here, three stars. As with being in a small city, business is limited and that curves the amount of income. I think curbs is what they're looking for there. Curves the amount of income that is produced by either small or large business.

Oh.

Whoa. I hope you're not an economy teacher because I didn't understand even what the hell you're talking about. So that said, moving on.

It is too advanced for us.

Maybe they are. Maybe it's like high-level Harvard shit. We just don't know about things to do here. There's a lot of ghost shit. And since it's Halloween coming up here, let's talk about some ghost shit here. A couple of things. Brigham City's train depot was built in 1906 and it's said to be haunted by a shadowy figure.

Come see dead Mormons.

Oh yeah. And they've had orbs and electronic voice stuff and all that shit. Idle Aisle Candy, which is a store. They say after closing time, objects fall from the shelf, furniture moves, and a Native American man just appears.

In the candy shop?

Hanging out in the candy shop. Yeah. I don't know.

Is he standing out front holding cigars, perhaps?

Is that a possibility? I'm going to say, I don't know if he's just got a sweet tooth or what the story is here, but one account.

He's a gross man.

One account says that the ghost ordered dinner for a cafe employee.

Whoa.

Who ordered this? Or the ghost got it for you. Don't worry about it.

I didn't order a pastrami.

No. Crystal Hot Springs Resort, which is nearby. There's an evil shadow. I don't know how a shadow can be evil. What can a shadow do? How do you know it's evil? Maybe it's just bored and lonely.

Don't look at me.

We have no idea here. There's all sorts of other ones here. Utah folklore collector, Danny B. Stewart, documented a phantom clown sightings as well. Phantom clowns.

Phantom, okay. Was it disappear?

One tale involves a clown in full regalia marching through Pioneer Park at 1:00 a.m., pausing to stare directly at an observer before moving toward him. Good. Let's get it on, clown. Me and you. We're going to throw it out of this park and there's no one else here to see it.

You better have a weapon that doesn't squirt water.

That's what I'm saying. Because I'm going to have clown blood all over me when this thing's over. So there you go. That said, let's talk about some murder. Because this is.

All right.

This is a crazy story that when you first dip into it, I'm looking at it and reading it and I'm like, that's not really, it doesn't have anything to it. And then you go peel a layer back and you're like.

A little deeper?

Oh, this is crazy, this story. Yeah. All right. Here we go. Friday, May 25th, 1984.

Yeah.

That Friday night, two students at Utah State University, Ali Sabbah, S-A-B-B-A-H, and Bassam Barish, which that sounds like a band name, Bassam Barish.

Different, all right.

I don't know. They go to school there. It doesn't sound like it. Those Mormons recruit far and wide, let me tell you.

They also have wild names.

They do.

Who even knows?

You never know. Yeah. O-R-R-I-N. Who would've thought of that?

Yeah.

So these two on that night had stayed up studying. They've been studying for a final all night because it's the end of the year. It's May. So that night, when it flips over after midnight into May 26th, they're studying, they're studying, and about three in the morning, they decide that we should take a break. This is crazy. We've been up all night.

Can't do this all night.

Yeah. Let's go, we'll go toward Ogden and find some place to get some, we'll get gas, we'll get some supplies, and we'll get some breakfast maybe, and then come back.

Head on over to the New Wise Guys Club.

Let's do that. Oh yeah, they're big comedy club fans here. Big club fans here. So US 89, the highway, runs out of Cash Valley through Sardine Canyon. Lovely name there. Good job.

I'm sure there's lots of them there.

Tons. Not dried out in the sun. And into Brigham City. And from there, the road follows the base of the Wasatch Front, as we talked about with the Donner Party. This is up against the Wasatch Mountains toward Willard and Ogden. So it's past three o'clock in the morning and it's Memorial Day weekend too. Memorial Day is Monday.

Through a winding mountain canyon road?

Yeah, there's nothing there out there. So basically, there's nothing along this stretch is open in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend. And then they come across the Texaco short stop gas station. Short stop, two different words. It's only stop for a short time, then fuck off.

Stick around for a Slim Jim and fill your tank and get the fuck out of here.

That's it. And that's the only place to go, really. It's in the town of Perry and it's the only thing open in Perry. So they pull up to the self-service pump and because they saw lights on inside, so they were like, "Oh, that place is open. Cool." And it's a 24/7 joint. So they pull up to the self-service pump before, like as he's reaching for the nozzle, a man comes out of the store and says, "I'll do that for you. I'll take care of it."

Oh.

Seems to be the employee. He's about six feet tall. He's described as lean with black hair, dark eyes, and a scruffy beard. Dude who works at a gas station in the middle of the night, basically.

Graveyard shift gas station, man.

In the middle of nowhere. So Sabbah there, I think that's Ali, yes, Ali Sabbah, he guessed that the guy was around 30, the attendant. He said the attendant had scratches and bruises on his arms and there was something all over his clothes that looked like dried blood on his clothes. And something on his shoes that was like a wet liquid, dark color. One of them said, "I was looking at him and I saw blood stains on his hands. There was definitely blood wiped off of his shoes."

Five bucks.

And the Barish guy, he started walking toward the store to go in and buy cigarettes.

Yeah.

The man steps in front of him, the attendant, and says, "I'll get them for you. I'll go get them for you."

It's closed.

He just said, "I'll go get them for you. What do you want?" And he told him and the guy said, you know, Barish said, "How much?" And he said, "A dollar." So he said, "Okay."

They're on sale today. Yeah.

I looked, the average price of cigarettes at 84 was $1.06. So that's about right.

Oh, that's about right.

Yeah. So Barish handed him a five. The man went inside, came back out with a pack of cigarettes and gave him four $1 bills and change, which appeared to be the same four bills that Sabbah had given him for the gas.

Probably gave him, yeah.

So the other guy. So he noticed, but now one of the bills has what appears to be a fresh blood stain on it.

Oh.

And he said he thought the attendant was acting like weird. Like he was acting like, "Don't go in there." Like he was acting real funny. Like but he was like, "I don't know, whatever. Maybe he's got some chicken there or something. Who knows?"

Covered in paint or blood.

Or blood or something here.

Yeah.

But he notices the fresh blood stain on the bill. The students leave the gas station and they're like, "That was fucking weird, right? Was that weird? Is that guy acting weird?" Like number one, that's a, well, first of all, it's a self.

Are you sleep deprived?

It's a self-service station. So how many self-service stations have you ever been to where somebody runs out of the store and pumps your gas for you?

Insists.

I've never had that happen once.

Never.

That ain't my job. Pump away, motherfucker. Like that's, they don't care.

Only that it happened in Jersey.

Yeah.

It's the law.

It's the law. And I think Oregon for a while, it was like that.

It is.

There were some other, there's a couple other states like that. So anyway, they're discussing, "That was weird." And he wouldn't let me go in the store and he gave me this, and I got this bill. It's got, it looks like it has blood on it.

Blood on it, yeah.

So they take the $1 bill with blood on it and put it on the dashboard.

Yeah.

They keep that away from the rest of the bill fold. And the Basim guy or Bassam guy said, "We thought something was going on. I put the bloody dollar bill on the dashboard to protect any fingerprints that may have been on it."

Wow.

Smart guys, actually.

In '84?

Thinking about forensics in '84.

Yeah.

Now that might be normal. He watched a lot of law and order and forensic files and all this shit in the first '48, but in '84, none of that was on. So anyway, they were concerned about the encounter. So they decide, this is a wild plan. They're like, "Okay, we should talk, we should get a hold of the police. We're on a dark highway in the middle of nowhere. Let's just put the pedal to the metal and speed."

See if we can get ourselves pulled over.

And try to get pulled over.

Yeah.

Which when you're trying to, that'll never happen.

Never.

Ever, a million years.

Never.

So they gun it, they're weaving all over the road. They look like drunk maniacs. Nobody pulls them over. It doesn't happen.

Because there's no cops out at 3:00 a.m. in the mountains.

No. Well, I guess there's a lot of speed traps up there and they know that. That's why.

Yeah.

So he said, "We decided to go to a phone and go fast, hoping someone would catch us on the way because we knew the area was a speed trap."

Okay.

It's the whole thing. It's like Texas, you know?

Yeah.

So no one pulled them over. So they called a pay phone or they found a pay phone. They called the cops. Detective Allen Beard arrives and takes them to the Brigham City Police Station. They tell him, "This is what happened. A guy came out and then he wouldn't let us in the store. We gave us these $4 bills. One of them has blood. Here it is." Gives it to this guy. He puts it as like in a bag and everything. Sabbah is, he got the longest look at the guy while he was pumping gas. So he said, "Will you participate in a sketch for us?"

Yeah.

But Ali's also an artist. That's like what he's in school for.

Oh, he can, I'll just draw it.

Well, at the police station, he got really frustrated because the sketch artist couldn't get it the way he described it. So he said, "I'll fucking draw him." Okay? And he drew him. There you go. There's the sketch. This is the guy.

That's my guy.

So he made two drawings apparently. Now, while this is going on, because they're listening to them for a while, but they don't know if these guys are out of their minds or high on drugs or they have no idea.

Right.

So after a little while, at about 4:30 a.m., they send a patrol officer over to the gas station just to just check it out. Just go in and see.

Give it a run. Yeah.

Walk in, see if you think the guy's acting weird and then ask him a couple questions, maybe, whatever.

Sure.

So the sheriff and an officer enter the store through the public entrance. First thing they see is a blood trail in the store.

Oh.

That's not good. It's leading to a storage room, but the door is closed and locked. So there's a blood trail going under the door that they can't get to. Now they don't, they're thinking about kicking it open, but they're like, "Well, we don't know what's going on in there."

We don't know. There's so many people in there with guns.

Or it could be somebody with a knife to somebody's throat.

Yeah.

We have no idea. So they go outside, they walk around the back of the building and look through a window into the storage area where they see a man's body lying on the ground and a lot of blood.

Yeah.

So then they go back into the store and kick open the locked storage door. And they determine that the man, the actual gas station attendant, is dead. So this guy immediately calls for the investigation team. They cancel an ambulance and they call for basically a forensic unit instead. So the scene shows a lot of evidence of a struggle. The body is covered in bruises and defensive wounds. Hands are bound behind the back with electrical cord.

I shot the clerk.

"I shot the clerk." This doesn't look like your average sack of suds robbery.

Yeah.

Where they just.

"I shot the clerk."

Yeah, "I shot the clerk." So it doesn't look like that because this looks pretty fucking personal. This looks pretty mean.

Yeah, this is robbery and humiliation, torture, murder.

Yeah, this might be, yeah, this looks like somebody owed the Lucchese family money. This is crazy.

It's a big problem.

Yeah. So the clerk is a young man named Bradley Newell Perry. And same as the town, Perry.

Yeah.

And Brad Perry is, wasn't that the weather guy in Phoenix?

Brad Perry.

Who tried to do comedy and used to do weird.

Oh, no. Brad Perry is the other effeminate news man, the black guy.

That's who I'm talking, oh, he wasn't weather, but that's the guy I'm talking about. Yeah. He was on like the morning show.

Did he try to do comedy too?

Oh yeah.

Oh.

Oh, absolutely. I remember watching him. He did like some dance thing and I was like, "Well, this isn't good at all."

Oh no.

I don't know what it is about people in like mediocre news jobs that think they need to do stand-up, but I've seen weathermen try to do it. It's not good.

It's a taste. I think it's a taste of that local celebrity where Corey McCloskey goes places and gets recognized and he's like, "Well, then I should just parlay this into other things."

That's like saying stand-up is a craft. Like that's like going, "Well, I should just be a professional chef. I mean, people recognize me." Like that's not, no, you don't know how to cook and you don't know how to fucking do comedy either. You're not fucking.

Was it Corey that did the.

That contest that we did. Remember I made fun of him.

Yeah, but the joke that was nova literally in Spanish means no go.

Oh, Christ.

Is that Corey that did that?

That's a Paul Rodriguez joke from like 1986.

Yeah.

Literally. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think it was Corey that did it.

It means no go. It was funny.

I don't want to put, I don't want to put words in Corey's mouth.

I just remember introducing him and going, "He's very uncomfortable without clouds and shit behind him. So be nice to him." So anyway.

I mean, Brad Perry's great. I don't know if he's funny, but I like that guy.

Yeah, he's not funny at all, but he seems like a nice guy.

No, I can't believe that.

So this Brad Perry, this poor kid, man, Jesus. He's the oldest child of Newell Perry and Claudia Perry. Claudia, these are nice people, by the way.

Yeah.

These are those religious people that actually like take.

They practice what they preach.

They practice what they preach and they're actually kind and forgiving and really, really good people.

Wow.

So he grew up, Brad did, with two brothers and two sisters. So he's five kids, which is a small Mormon family. He was active in the Brigham City Sixth Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Latter-day Saints.

So very active Mormon. He is, everyone says he's the most loved and easygoing and hardworking of all the siblings.

Brad is.

Brad is, yeah.

Yeah.

Very gentle guy. He's a pretty big guy too. Six two and change. Not a small man at all. Really gentle. The Perrys love to hunt and fish. Brad doesn't hunt and fish because.

What's that got to do with it?

They said he couldn't, he could never kill a mammal and he can't even kill a fish. He just feels bad. Doesn't want to do it.

Can't kill a fish.

Can't kill a fish. Can't take it out, let it go.

All right.

So yeah. So yeah, it was weird. They said they would do that on Saturdays and if they were hunting or fishing and he would just kind of, he'd hang out, but he'd just stand off to the side. He wouldn't do it. So he's got a sister here because he's got his brother Lee was born after him and we'll talk about him too. Then he has sisters, he has sisters Nanette and Valerie. Now Nanette had polio as a child.

Fuck.

Yeah. And had a disability that was a lingering effect of the polio.

That shit is wild, man.

So kids being as lovely as they are would make fun of her a ton because she had a disability from polio because that's what kids do. And Brad said he put a stop to that shit.

He put.

He went and said.

Getting the beats.

You pick on my goddamn sister, you're going to have problems. And Nanette said, "Brad was my protector. He'd walk me home from school and tell me how beautiful I was when I got teased."

Oh.

He's a sweet man. Nanette said he was her best friend.

Yeah.

Always. She said he could be, he had a sense of humor and he could be mischievous, but never in a mean way. Just it wasn't in his, in his spectrum.

Tighter thicker shoes, that's pretty funny.

Yeah, that's it. So his brother Lee called him a kind, gentle person and a peacemaker. He graduated from Box Elder High School and also from LDS Seminary School in 1980. He started college at Snow College in Ephraim and then left on a full-time church mission to Louisiana.

Oh my.

He's doing the whole thing.

The whole thing.

Now in Louisiana, he was riding his bicycle as they do. And he got hit by a car.

Fuck.

And it was a bad one. He was in intensive care. He had serious facial injuries and had to go through a long string of surgeries to put his face back together afterwards so he didn't look terrible.

And in '84 in Louisiana, that was a cutlass supreme or some shit.

Oh, that's something big.

Big and metal.

Big fucking car. A big old pickup truck with a shotgun rack and somebody.

It was solid.

Somebody drinking one of those yard long drinks while they're driving it and it's legal.

Neck full of beads.

Yeah. Oh, for sure. Well, and the chick next to him does. He's got beads throw.

He's got them to throw more to see titties.

So in the hospital, Brad kept a journal. And years later, his younger brother Lee would find the journals and actually really helped him a lot later on. I guess Brad had a, he had to figure out, he had to reconcile why if he's a faithful guy, why would God let this happen to him, basically.

Yeah, I'm on the road.

I've been a good guy.

Yeah.

Well, I've been a good guy.

I'm spreading your word.

I'm spreading your word. I've done nothing that deserves this. Why is this happening? So he said that he had to come to the conclusion that not everything's God's fault. This is from him. This is his, I think everything's God's fault. So, no, I'm just kidding. I don't believe in God at all, but this is a, he says he believes everything's God's fault. Not everything that happens is God's fault. Sometimes bad things just happen and the challenge is getting through them. So he's taken the free will argument and moving it to random events.

Brad presented you with this challenge so that you can find your way through it.

And maybe that'll help others if you can maybe figure out a way. And that's how Brad's looking at it because he's got, he's trying to keep a positive outlook. So Lee would say that that passage would help him repeatedly in his adult life get through things. So back home, Brad earned the Duty to God Award from the church, which is apparently like a Mormon Purple Heart. He got injured on the job there.

The injury injured while preaching. Injured on the road. Like injured in the battlefields, baby.

Yeah.

I'm really doing it.

He's also an Eagle Scout.

Yeah.

He taught Sunday school and served as an assistant scout master. And all the kids liked him because they said he was willing to be silly. He was like a silly guy.

Oh, yeah.

He's a big guy, six two, 200 pounds. And everything about what that describes is either the nicest guy in the world or a pedophile, one of the two. And nobody's ever come forward saying anybody he ever did it to anybody. So I'm going to go with maybe the nicest guy in the world, probably.

Yeah.

That's my, that's going to be one or the other.

All of that is post the accident?

Yes. He did all that pre and post. He was always doing all this stuff because to be an Eagle Scout, you have to really go through it. That's a long process.

Oh God, that's a lifetime. Well, it's through, it's meant to and structured to get you through high school so that when you graduated, you become an Eagle Scout. And then you go on your way and hopefully that model of how to be a good person has stuck and it'll carry you through life.

So spring of '84, right before this, Brad had transferred to Weber State or Weber State, whatever it is, in Weber, in Ogden. He'd been accepted into the radiology program there. He wants to become a doctor eventually.

Oh fuck.

That's his goal.

A cancer doc.

He's a very smart kid too. That's the other thing. So I think he's just a really nice person. I really do. Like from all of.

How the hell he cares.

Nobody has a bad word to say. He's also engaged, of course. Young man is definitely. A woman named Laura Boyd. They'd only been together about eight months, but they were already planning a wedding for the fall because gotta start putting some kids out there. Now Brad wanted the wedding to be done correctly. And to do that, he said he needed, they needed extra money. So for extra money, he picked up graveyard shifts at the Texaco short stop on US 89, the 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.

That is the most humbling thing I could possibly think of.

He is a, he seems like a wonderful young man. Like just a great guy.

Yeah. Willing to do the worst thing to get his happiness.

And it gets even more magnanimous here. That weekend, Memorial Day, the rest of his family, they had a trip planned for a long time. Claudia.

Place on shift. Yeah.

Yeah, Claudia was the mother was taking the younger brothers, including the 17-year-old and everybody else on a road trip to California to go to SeaWorld. And Brad was also invited, but he decided to stay at home at work because he said he couldn't miss all the shifts and extra money that weekend.

And he also didn't believe in all the horrible shit they're doing to animals.

Yeah. I don't think anybody knew that in 1984 at all.

No.

They were just like, look at them jump.

They do backflips for smell. That's amazing.

They must be so happy to jump out of the water like that. So he said, my brother, his brother said, my brother stayed home to earn extra money.

Wow.

So now the autopsy report on Brad said he has various injuries. Almost everything used to kill Brad was already in the store.

Oh, they brought nothing?

The phone he had picked up to call police had blood on it and he'd been beaten with it. Because we'll talk about it, but he went to call the cops and that's what went down here. Then he was stabbed with both the.

A knife.

Oh, Christ.

Either a heavy cast iron bell or they think it's probably the metal Dr. Pepper syrup canister that feeds the fountain machine.

Holy fuck.

It's described somewhere between 40 and 60 pounds it weighs.

Yeah.

Big.

It's one of those little cylinders, the chrome ones.

Yeah, it's horrible.

So the detective here said the victim had been stabbed with a foot-long screwdriver that penetrated through his upper chest. There was a large cast iron bell, appeared to be hit in the side of the head with that and had a skull fracture from that. The coup de gras was a large soda canister, probably weighing in the neighborhood of 40 to 60 pounds used to crush his skull.

Oh my.

He's been killed three times over. It's really unnecessary, especially if it's just a robbery. It makes no sense. So.

Grimy to stab somebody with a screwdriver.

Now the stab wounds, some press accounts counted 15 screwdriver wounds, but the chief medical examiner described six wounds from stabbings. So we don't know. A partial dental bridge was found on the floor that belonged to Brad as well. Got knocked out of his head. The cause of death was blunt force injury to the head and neck along with multiple stab wounds. And they did find that approximately $100 was missing from the cash register.

All of that for $100.

For Stevie's bail money. All of that for that. The store's safe was open, which is interesting because Brad does not have a key to that safe.

How the hell do they do that?

And the person who does have the key is the assistant manager. So right away they're like, let's go talk to the next guy who has a key because somebody got that safe open. So the next day, everything rips through the town. Obviously, this is a big story. I mean, there's a nice kid that seemingly killed for no reason here. They located Newell Perry, the dad, and told him, but he said, Jesus, my wife is in a hotel somewhere in California. And it doesn't have a cell phone.

Wow.

So I assume another probably from the church, I would think. Now the firefighter had no training and didn't know any of the answers to the questions. He just showed up and said, hi, I've been here to set to tell you your kid's dead.

Ugh.

Sorry. And Claudia said, somebody killed him just like that. I lost it. And Lee, the brother, the younger brother said, back in '84, my mom and my little brother and myself all left on a trip to go to California. Brad stayed behind, but by dawn he'll be brutally murdered. So Claudia loads up the kids and drives back to Utah, which has to be an excruciating ride.

It's the longest ride. Yeah.

And on the way, the car gets a flat tire.

Ugh.

Okay. Now I forget it. Now I'm going to be, if I was them, I would have gone into full blast for me at that point. I'm done with all this shit. You guys, no one is protecting me. She was so sick with stress of everything. She started throwing up on the side of the road. This poor woman, I can't imagine. Imagine what she's going through. Her guts are getting ripped out. They finally get to the house. Reporters are waiting on their lawn, shouting at her and her two young children.

They are.

They're already there. Now a neighbor keeps walking over to shoo them off. Like when you put extra seed down on your grass and you go out and clap your hands so the birds fly away. That's what he's doing. That neighbor has a daughter who will be very important in this case later on named Amy Hugie. Hugie or Hugie, H-U-G-I-E. Now that night, not too far from the gas station, officers found a man walking along the road who looked a lot like the sketch that was made.

Oh.

He had blood on his hands and shirt, which is a good sign also.

Generally, yeah, he's involved in something awful.

So the police bring him in for a lineup. They bring in both the students, line them all up, and they look at him and go, not him.

No?

Some other bloody guy who hangs out in his area.

How do you have two bloody guys?

No idea, but they said, that is certainly not the guy we saw. Absolutely not. They both said it separately. He wasn't the guy. So he's not the guy. We don't know who that guy was or why he was covered in blood. That's his story ends there. And I'm real interested in that. Another report came in about two men in a truck matching one seen leaving the area and also cruising slowly past a different gas station as if they were casing the joint. So police took that as a sign that we're probably looking for two people.

And there's two weapons minimum.

That's the other thing. So they're like, this is, there's at least three weapons, screwdriver, knife, and canister.

And the bell and the canister.

All sorts of shit.

Two stabbies, somebody rarely grabs a screwdriver and a knife and is half and away with both of those.

Odd thing is, we'll find out. That's kind of what happened here, which is interesting.

What?

Yeah. It's a wild thing. I mean, this case.

I'd be a terrible cop.

It's like, well, that didn't happen.

Shit.

Well, there was four people here.

Must have been four people. Three, four, five, six people here. Could have been a couple watching. We don't know. Somebody jerking off in a chair in the corner. Who knows?

A couple of gals back there kissing.

Yeah. You know how it is in a gas station robbery. So yeah, that's what they're doing. Now the sketches generate some leads because they run them in the papers. And so there's a lot of tips coming in because it's a sketch of a guy and a lot of people look like that. So basically they got 250 leads in the first few days. And now the FBI ends up being coming in too because investigators thought the killer might be a drifter that was just passing through on the highway. So he could be in another state by now.

Because you have a good, yeah.

People are on their lawn all the time and their kids' dads. It's horrible. So they went to stay with some friends of theirs in Montana.

Okay.

Just to get away from everything and to get the, because they have younger kids too that are having to deal with this. So they wanted to just get away. When they come back around, which is about the time of Brad's funeral, they found how shitty, my Christ, their house had been broken into.

No way. They got robbed?

Four fucking people. Could it be worse? And what happened inside is horrible. It had been ransacked. Cash was taken, tapes, you know, at the time, music tapes, shit like that. The piggy banks were stolen. The kids' piggy banks.

Everything was violated.

Especially Brad's things were the most damaged, including someone took a shit in his bedroom. Someone amberheard at his room.

Like in the bed.

Yeah. Took a dump in his bedroom, which is, what are you doing? You know what I mean?

That's super disrespectful.

His brother Lee said, whoever did it, broke into our house, vandalized it, stole some stuff, and even went so far as to defecate in Brad's bedroom. Why would somebody do something like that? Good question. Claudia, mom says, I think I know exactly who did something like that. Our next door neighbor who's 15 years old named Craig Martinez. I think it was him.

Why does she think that?

Well, because she went over there and Martinez's parents found items stolen from the Perry house in there. So she was right.

Who the hell do it?

Yeah. He ended up being convicted of the burglary. At the time, they were like, maybe it's unrelated to the murder, but the Perrys said, we think he had something to do with this fucking murder too.

Really?

Why would he do both? The murder seems personal and then this too. It seems like the unrelated thing.

Yeah, why is he so mad at us knowing exactly what happened to our family? Why would he break in, steal things, and shit on us?

It's inexplicable. It's insane. So here are the suspects now that they've assembled. Two names are really going to hang around for a long time.

Okay.

But there's others too. First is Thomas Nager. He's 21 years old at the time of '84. He's the assistant manager at the key to the safe.

Okay.

So they look into him. He apparently was supposed to come into work that morning, the 7 o'clock when Brad was supposed to get off and never showed up.

He didn't show up.

And he's the lone cashier at the place. So basically, if he doesn't show up, who's going to run the joint? You know what I mean? When he did finally show up hours late, he walked into this big crowd of a crime scene and police pulled him away because they said, you're the exact guy we were looking for, asshole. His explanation is, I slept in. Brad calls me to wake me up. That's my alarm. He never called me. So I didn't make it on time.

Part of Brad's responsibilities are make sure you call the next guy.

Call your manager, make sure he's awake so he can come in.

Wow.

Now the officer said he seemed very nervous and his boss, this Nager guy's boss, told the cops that I don't trust him. That's why I made him the assistant manager, gave him a key to my safe because I don't trust him.

To put him in charge.

He called later that same day to fire him because he found out that he was stealing money from him and failing to make deposits also.

Ah, okay.

Nager eventually would admit that he not only stole money from there, but also had sold drugs out of the store as well.

Great dude.

So I mean, great if you're a teenager looking for shit, it's a good place to find it, but not a good guy if you want him to run your store. He also has.

He's done what I think all assistant managers of the gas stations are doing.

Definitely. Why else are they there? He also has long hair and a beard.

Oh.

Yes. So they show Ali Saba, a photo lineup, and he picked Thomas Nager's picture as someone, he doesn't say that's definitely him. He says, and he says it very legalese too, he's consistent with the man that I saw. Similar characteristics.

I can't rule him out.

Yep. But he said, I can't say it's him as well. So suspect two is Craig Martinez, the 15-year-old next door. He's known as a troublemaker and even his friends and family have nicknamed him Monster because he has a violent temper. And he and Nager, the assistant manager, are friends.

Of course they are.

Of course. Because Nager, this piece of shit is friends with a 15-year-old because that's normal.

With a really active bowel.

Yeah. And they were involved together in selling drugs out of the station, the rumor was. Who knows? Okay. There was more on him later. Suspect three, Michael Caldwell, was a friend of both of them. Over the years, he told police, as this goes on, a story that put both Martinez and Nager in the store that night, but then he kept changing his story every time he told it.

Okay.

So that's not helpful. But this guy, around 11 p.m., according to what Michael Caldwell would say on and off, he drove his father's white 1970 pickup truck to the gas station with the two other guys in it and waited outside. So that story puts Craig Martinez and Nager at the scene that night.

At the scene. Yeah.

Now, what they did say, the cops said that his story is inconsistent and changed during every conversation he had with the police, which rather than ruling anything out, just includes him as a suspect now too. So now instead of ruling people out, now we have three suspects. Now here comes other guys, a guy last name of Ritter, who police were told had been caught by Brad burglarizing cars near the station with Martinez.

Oh my God.

So Brad had caught Craig and his friend burglarizing cars and told on them. Another two guys named Del Monte Gentry and Glen Danzi, who were not Danzig, Glen Danzi, who were said to wear tennis shoes, drive white pickup trucks, and brag about murders. So they're in there because the guy was wearing tennis shoes, driving a truck, and having a murdering. Basically, there's hundreds of people they look into here.

Yeah.

None of the suspects seem to really pan out though. This Nager and Martinez are the two that really keep circling the bowl, but everybody else is pretty ruled out pretty quickly here. Now Nager ends up having several felony convictions for all the other shit he does. He's a drug dealer and a crook. And he also claims, though, Nager, that he heard from other people he knows that Craig Martinez had bragged about killing Brad.

Holy.

Yeah. So with all that said, the case goes cold because they can't put it together and there's no DNA or anything like that back then. So witnesses are important and they don't have anybody. Now, younger brother Lee has a hard time, real hard time with this.

After this, yeah.

He's 17 when his brother's killed and his brother was like his idol and he.

I'm sure.

His bud. And basically, he said he had no idea how to be the oldest son is what he said. He goes, I'm the younger brother. Like that's not my role. I don't know how to be the older brother, basically. Like we all looked to Brad as being that guy.

I need to be the, that's where I fit. I don't fit anywhere else.

So he went through some real crisis here. He got himself a fake driver's license so he could buy booze when he's a teenager.

Nice.

And from rumors that I heard, he kind of got into some whatever, smoking weed and hanging out and just being not, he was questioning his faith.

Yeah, not real LDS.

Yes.

Bad behavior.

But then he gets it together after he read Brad's journals from the hospital. That's what he said. And he's decided after that, he decided he was going to try to get his life together. He took a part-time clerical job with the highway patrol, Utah Highway Patrol, because the hours fit his class schedule. And then he went on a ride along and he said, I kind of like this. This is cool.

Oh.

So he later said he becomes a police officer, Utah Highway Patrol and Department of Public Safety officer here.

How about that?

And he said, we get to help people and we get to drive fast, which are, I mean.

Ah, you do, yeah.

Sounds like what a 12-year-old would say when you ask him, why do you want to be a cop? Because you get to drive fast and help people. That's okay.

If I turn my lights on, I can go as fast as I want.

That's cool. He rose to the rank of lieutenant in the Box Elder County Police Force here too, or whatever that is, the sheriff's department. As a trooper, he made a habit. Everybody said if there was a death notification, he volunteered to do it all the time.

Oh, that's nice. Look, I know how this feels. It sucks a lot. I'm going to tell you some bad shit.

He knew how it felt to get it and not the best way too. So he could be empathetic and knows how to do this. Nanette became a teacher and was a high school teacher later on. So that's her job there. Now for years, the case just goes cold. Ice cold. 1997, the case goes to a new Box Elder County sheriff's detective named Scott Cosgrove.

Yeah.

And he said, he said he prayed about it. And he said, he put the Perry name in a Perry family's name in a prayer box. And then he said, I received an answer in my heart. Same look I had that this was going to be solved.

Okay.

Mormons use that word heart a lot when they come to this shit.

Yeah, but your heart doesn't stand up in court. So maybe let's just do some fucking police work.

Yeah. And that's fine for everybody else, but not a homicide detective. You can do that shit at home, but on the job, none of that shit matters. Evidence is the thing we need here, my friend. Now he worked the case for nine years. He ran through everything. And by the year 2000, the Perrys are saying he's dragging his feet and not doing shit.

No, he's got a heart, you guys.

It's in my heart. So the Utah Attorney General's office, a group of DNA and fingerprint experts gathered in Brigham City to go over the evidence. They had more than 150 fingerprints because it's a gas station. And only circumstantial cases against whoever. They don't have anything here. Now they still have the two suspects they're really looking at, which was Nager and Martinez. In October 2000, Nager was served with some summons. And they also got a search warrant for Craig Martinez.

Okay.

In it, he told the court that Martinez had burglarized the Perry home on the day of Brad's funeral, destroyed some of Brad's things, and stolen shit from his room. So that's pretty interesting. Now, so this is all a big deal. So the case here, they went public also attacking the family does attacking the county attorney, John Bunderson, accusing him of dragging his feet on charges and refusing to release evidence to them. Their lawyer was Amy Hugie, a young girl from next door that Brad used to babysit for and whose father would shoo the fucking press off the lawn.

Yeah.

So she was a little girl at the time. Now she's grown up in a lawyer and she's representing the Perrys and pissed. Craig Martinez by late 2000 is in the Utah State Prison, not shockingly.

Right.

On drug and weapons charges. They have tons of his prison calls. Over a series of calls, Martinez told family members that a key witness was talking too much and needed to be quieted.

Oh.

His quote is, kick his ass, stomp his neck.

Wow.

He also talked to his mother about the investigation and especially the detective who was currently running it and he summed him up like this, quote, "I'll fuck him up." So there's that.

I bet you won't.

So investigators based on that and everything else get a warrant for hair samples from Martinez. Because now we can run DNA in 2000.

Right. Yeah.

So the hairs, they had the hairs vacuumed from the fight area, the hairs that they found there, and mitochondrial DNA testing had reached the point where you could compare. When it came time to collect, it took a team of guards to get Martinez into the prison nurse's office. Once he was there, they found out he had shaved his entire body.

Oh, wow.

He said, I guess you won't be getting any of my hair, will you? But he missed one thing. He forgot to shave his nipples. The hair around his nipples was still there. He missed them. Missed his nipple hair. So they yanked all of his nipple hairs out.

You didn't see that?

And younger Brad's brother Lee said, why would you shave yourself from head to foot if you had nothing to do with the crime? Which makes a lot of sense.

Excellent. Excellent point.

Problem is the hairs don't match Martinez. It's not him. He's not the guy. It doesn't match Nager either. They're two big suspects. DNA ruled them out now.

Why has he done this then?

None of the fingerprints match him either. He's just an asshole. He's just an asshole. Which is crazy. Out of the hundreds of prints lifted from the store, none were Nager's, which is crazy because he's the assistant manager of the fucking store. So it's like he doesn't touch anything. He doesn't do shit.

This motherfucker doesn't show up. Who's he thinking he is? Me?

Right. Jesus. 2002.

Yeah.

And the new election for a Box Elder County attorney, guess who's running against the current county attorney? Amy Hugie, the neighbor.

Hugie, yeah.

Yep. And she wins.

Oh, fuck.

So she is now the person in charge of finding who did this and prosecuting them.

Oh boy.

What she was doing this whole time. That's the whole point of her whole existence pretty much up to this point is that.

This is the only thing she gives a shit about. She's going to retire after this.

This is it. Yep. That's it for me. By 2003, Claudia is looking very pissed because the case looked like it wasn't going anywhere.

He's stalling, yeah.

February 2003, they're like, could it be Martinez though? Could it be? He's in prison on four second degree felony counts of obstruction of justice and four third degree felony counts of witness tampering based on the recorded calls. These are new charges he's got on him. And Detective Cosgrove, who had been working this case for years, said he's our prime suspect at the time.

Wow.

Martinez's lawyer though said they ended up getting him out of the Utah obstruction of justice charge because the statute had been changed for a short time and that was the time this all happened. So those charges are eventually dismissed. Now, September 2003, the detective here sent a letter to Amy Hugie and said that after six years and more than 300 suspects, basically, I got nothing else.

I got nothing.

We have exhausted every lead. We've run it to the ends of the earth. And basically, if someone's going to solve it, he said there's no more we can do. It now rests in the county attorney's hands. We've done everything. If you can get us more subpoenas or that's one thing. But they said we believe we answered all the questions. Except the only one that matters, which is who the fuck did this to this poor guy.

Who did this?

Yeah. Claudia told the newspaper that she doesn't expect anything will ever come out of this at all. She said, I doubt very much that they will file charges. Without physical evidence, not much will get done. Unless something else happens, it's over. Which is.

Thanks for watching, guys. Have a great day.

That's it. Claudia said, we know who the five are who did it. I guess we just have to have the knowledge of that and move on and live with it.

Claudia thinks the five did it.

She named a bunch of people, Nager, Martinez, and their circle. By the way, none of those people will ever be charged with anything. Claudia also said, we had put it to bed years ago, then you get excited again, you think you're going to get justice, but then it's dead again.

I get nothing.

In the same interview, she said that the Martinez family had lived next door for years. She says she has no ill will toward Martinez's mother who still lives there. She said it's not her fault.

Just her kids.

Just her kids. Yeah. And Lee said, quote, "We really thought it would have to be dealt with in the afterlife." Like, I'm going to whoop his ass in heaven, I guess, but until then, I got nothing. Or God's going to do it or whoever. Early 2005 now, the hair failed. Remember the hair they tried? They had to peek the hair.

Nipples. Yeah.

And it didn't work. Nipple hair and all that. Nothing for prints. The only thing here, they have all the blood comes back as Brad's blood that they've tested so far all over the place. That's the thing. They're thinking, what do we do here? The dollar bill has been stored separately and frozen since 1984.

Nice.

Because they didn't know they could do anything with it, but they said, maybe someday.

It's blood. We got to hang on to it.

So they've been freezing it since 1984. Now they get a profile from the blood stain and it is not Brad. It's a different blood.

Got to be our guy that did it.

So they put it into CODIS, the National DNA Database, which by then was including the DNA of federal prisoners, and they get a hit.

No fucking way.

They get a hit. So they do a second test because sometimes they're fucked up. That hits too. It's a match. Full match. They said that the odds are that this blood came from someone else besides this one person are one in 1.7 trillion.

Uh-oh.

And Amy, the county attorney, said, we had a hit, but the name he gave was somebody we had never even heard of.

Never even knew him.

Never mentioned in the investigation in 30 years.

Wow.

Or 20 years, sorry. The name is Glen Howard Griffin, a 47-year-old who's serving federal time in California on weapons charges and was just about to get out of prison. He was just about to walk.

Oh, we better lock his ass up.

So they said, we hit gold because of the technology, we solved who it was.

Yeah.

So this guy, Glen Howard Griffin, born in 1957 or '58, they also had a fellow inmate of Griffin's, a guy named Benjamin Britt.

Interesting.

Told police that Griffin made incriminating statements about the murder to him while they were in prison together.

Wow.

A little bit about Glen, adopted at three months old by his foster mother, Arlene Pyle. He's worn glasses since childhood, which will come in handy. He's got a temper that his own family was scared of.

Yeah.

They said that he was in trouble early, had problems in school, got expelled, was using drugs by junior high, dropped out of high school, tried to commit suicide by 17, full of petty crime, used to hurt and kill animals all the time for no reason, not for hunting, animal torture.

The whole thing.

It's everything. Now Glen's mom said that Glen ran with a friend named Wade Maugen and that whenever the two of them got together, they got into trouble and she said, my son was the ringleader though. Arlene said, Glen is the ringleader.

He's the follower. Yeah.

Yeah. Wade Maugen is the follower. Now Maugen's a couple of years older than Wade and he's been close with him since the early '80s and that's how this goes. Now Glen, in his adult life, he's a sheet metal worker.

Oh.

And so that's what he was doing at the time of the murder as well. He had a huge criminal record. He had 27 charges just in the town of Logan alone.

27.

In years. Drugs, robbery, weapons, you name it. At one point, he was even operating a meth lab. So all class. All class this guy. Now, a little tale about Glen to tell you the kind of guy he is. His ex-wife, Jadine Roberts, told investigators one New Year's Eve that this asshole, Griffin here, got an invitation to a party that sounded better than staying home with his family. So he told his 14-year-old daughter to babysit the younger kids.

Nice.

He broke a wall with a 14-year-old girl's head.

Stay here and watch your siblings.

The ex-wife took the children and hid in the basement of a friend's house, but Griffin guessed where they had gone. So he showed up, kicked down the front door, and came in with a pistol drawn.

Oh my.

This is a crazy psychopath bad guy.

It's a bad guy.

This is the one, if you get a restraining order, he's going to come shoot you quicker. This is that guy.

Restraining orders don't work.

Not for this fucking asshole. Because he doesn't care about the law either. So police arrived. He was charged with burglary and intoxication and ordered a psychological evaluation, which found him unstable. Which I could have told you that.

Yeah.

So he was arrested in 2004 on the weapons charges and sent to federal prison. And it was at that time where they had just started collecting the DNA of all federal felons into the national database. As of 24, or as of 1984, he was 26 years old, six foot tall, lean with dark hair and a beard.

Uh-huh.

Photos from the era showed him looking exactly like the drawing.

26 years old, looks 30.

Looks exactly because he had a big beard. So the DNA charges, the match comes in, so they charge him and that's it. That's the crime.

We got you. Yeah.

So first degree murder and the state is seeking the death penalty as well.

Yeah.

Because this is a particularly brutal robbery, homicide. It checks all the boxes to seek it. So November 3rd for them anyway. November 3rd, 2005. What about Wade, the guy that the mom mentioned? Was he involved? Because the cops think there was more than one person doing this.

Yeah.

Now Griffin won't talk here. And Lee, the brother, said it would have taken more than one person to overpower Brad. It wasn't just this guy. Because especially he was smaller than Brad. He's not going to happen.

Buy a couple inches, yeah.

So detectives chase leads all around looking for the accomplice. They go through Arizona, Nevada, Detroit. Finally, they end up in Spokane, Washington. And that's where they find Wade, who they found in their notes as somebody that Arlene Pyle, Griffin's mother, had mentioned.

Back then, yeah.

Well, not back then, but now, after Wade, after Griffin came up in this whole thing. So basically, they told him he's a witness in an unrelated case and said, we're bringing you in. They tell Wade. Then they show him crime scene photos and they said he averted his eyes and said, oh my God. He first denied taking part in it and then they said, look, we knew Griffin didn't do it alone. And basically, he's going to get out of prison if we can't build a case.

Yeah.

So they also lie and tell him that Griffin had named him and he named you and you could be facing the death penalty too, just like him, which is perfectly legal to do in an interrogation room.

Yeah.

So he gave a statement. He bought the bluff. He gave a written confession as a matter of fact. He wrote two written confessions here. He had, I guess, not long after the murder, he moved to Spokane. And that's where he had been forever. And there's a couple of friends of his too that we'll talk about and his girlfriend as well. Now, until all this happened, they had no connection with him in this. So he makes a statement. He said, Glen and I had been partying in Brigham City.

Right. Over coins.

This is over, yep. They said that it was described as an argument over $10. This is.

Oh.

So in this Maugen's written account, he said that Brad, he said, quote, "The attendant was going to call the police. He was reaching for the phone and Glen hit him with the phone. I was so afraid of Glen. I've never seen him so violent before." And he said that after he did that, he started hitting him. Glen said, "I'm going to kill you if you don't help me with this." Which he believed was what.

Glen was likely wrong.

Well, yeah. What was likely wrong?

About the money. About how much he was supposed to.

Oh, yeah. He was all fucked up too. He was drunk and fucked up. Yeah, he was probably fucking up.

He thought he gave him a 20. He probably gave him a 10.

Who knows? Yeah, I feel like Brad would be more on top of that shit than a drug addict. So anyway, he said Griffin grabbed the screwdriver and started stabbing Brad.

Oh.

But Brad's a big guy and he fought back. That's why this guy's got scratches and bruises all over him. And the evidence shows also that the struggle moved throughout the store. A potted plant was knocked over at the arcade area. Shelves had been torn down. This was two grown men having a brawl.

Yeah.

There's a large pool of blood near the front, shoe tracks in it, and a smeared trail leading toward the back where Brad's hands were bound behind him with electrical cord. And Wade Maugen said his part was holding Brad's legs.

Oh, Jesus.

Yep. And the sergeant here of the police force said he claimed he was there and blamed most of it on the other guy. And the other guy will probably do the same thing. So when the college students arrived in Maugen's version, they saw headlights. Brad was still alive at that point. He was bound by then, but badly hurt, but alive. So rather than just hiding in the store or running, Griffin went outside and pulled a Mitch Blood Green and was like, "I work here now."

Works.

Yeah, how you doing? We'll get rid of these people and whatever. He pumped the gas. He blocked the guy from coming in. He gave him back the change as we know. Wade Maugen said that they had Brad in the back room and they started stabbing him. And that's what it was. They said they hit him with the screwdriver was about a foot long and went through his upper chest. And there's also a knife as well that he stabbed him with. So the base of his skull was fractured, which is horrifying.

Yeah.

So then they were going to charge him with other things. Witness tampering as well here. And they were also, I guess they told other people not to say anything. So then they get charged with witness tampering, his friends. That ends up being dropped though. Now, they also have informants. They have a couple of informants too. They have Benjamin Britt, who said what he heard Griffin say there. Now, the moms are the most remarkable part of this. Arlene Pyle, Griffin's mom, and Claudia Perry meet in person.

Oh boy.

And they hugged and cried.

Yeah, they both lost a kid.

Arlene told Claudia she had also lost a son in a different way. On Mother's Day, Claudia went to Arlene's house and brought her a card.

Oh, that's nice.

Because she's a wonderful person. Glen's trial, the parents talk before the trial. According to Brad's dad, Newell, Arlene, Griffin's mom, told the Perry family that she believed her son was guilty.

Oh.

She said, "I'm sorry." She said, quote, "I know he's guilty. I know he's guilty." She knew from the very beginning. And the two mothers held hands through the trial. This is, yeah, they're good people. That's all you can say about them. They're nice fucking people. So Griffin's explanation, or his defense's explanation, is, sure, there could be blood on stuff. He stops at gas stations and he's a sheet metal worker. His hands bleed all the time.

That is a fact. Yeah.

Which is a decent argument. They said his.

Could have just been change.

Yep. His blood could have gotten onto a dollar bill on any given day at any point in the ordinary course of handling money. He didn't even have to be at the gas station. He could have given it to somebody else who then money circulates.

Could have gone through the bank. We don't know.

Problem is the two witnesses had watched their bill go from not having blood on it to having wet blood on it.

And not having blood on it. Yeah.

And wet blood, not even dried blood. So Brad's fiance testifies also, this poor woman too. She said she couldn't have imagined dating anyone after his death. She said Brad was the love of my life. She didn't remarry for 14 years. Or she didn't get married for 14 years after that.

Oh.

Which is crazy. Now, Wade Maugen takes the stand. And basically, they thought he would plead the fifth that they made him go up there. So they gave him immunity. But his lawyer argued that the Utah Immunity Act was unconstitutional and would not fully protect him. The judge overruled that and ordered him to testify, warning that if he refused, he could face extra charges.

Yeah.

He takes the stand, including asking about the immunity that he'd been granted. And he answered every question with, "I choose not to answer any questions at this time."

Oh my God.

So Benjamin Britt, by the way, they bring him in and they're like, "Can you point out the guy? It was your cellmate or whatever, blah, blah, blah." He couldn't. He didn't know what Griffin looked like.

What?

The problem is they all said Griffin looked much different when they were in prison together.

Oh.

So that's the problem. He looked much different. So they said, "Hey, can we use an older photo lineup and he can pick him out that way?" And they did that and he picked him out that way.

Okay.

So that's how that worked. But he went directly in front of the defense table and looked closely at him and couldn't pick him out. But he picked out an older picture. So he was allowed to testify. In the defense's closing, they said Griffin had poor eyesight and he wore glasses since childhood. That's why we mentioned that. And that neither student ever described the man at the pump as wearing glasses. Which also, if he was just in a physical fight with.

Maybe they're broke.

They could be broke or he could be the type of guy who knows to take his glasses off when he's going to throw down. And they said, "You are going to have no other alternative than to find Mr. Griffin not guilty." Well, before the verdict, by the way, Arlene said that no matter how hard the trial turned out, neither of us are going to win this one to the mom, to Claudia. The jury deliberates for 12 hours.

That's pretty quick.

12? On this case with DNA?

That's not that bad.

That's a long time. That's a.

You think so?

Fuck yeah.

That's two days, isn't it?

A DNA case? What are we talking about? Are they really going over maybe it was a sheet metal wound that got on the bill? What other things do they even talk about?

Maybe they're going over nobody can identify him the way he sits.

Possibly. There could be a lot of things to talk about, I guess. Either way, he's found guilty here.

Yeah. Because the DNA is a problem.

It's a problem. And also his background and everything else. And the identification from the two students and all that. So sentencing comes, death penalty on the table.

Yeah.

Two hours of deliberation from the jury on that one. You said, "May fuck off life without parole."

Is that right?

That's it. And the family's happy with that. Lee says this decision today is what Brad would have voted for. So it's really Brad's verdict.

We're never talking to him ever again.

Yeah, he's going forever.

Yeah.

The dad, Newell, said it's done, but closure isn't a good word because that's not going to bring Brad back. It won't bring our boy back.

Right.

And Claudia said his mom and family don't deserve this either, meaning Griffin's.

Right.

Yeah. And Arlene said, "I appreciate the way the Perrys have treated us. The Perry family has been very good to us." Now, Wade Maugen here, he's still hanging in there.

Yeah.

So they're talking about him because he has written statements that he's recanted, but he has two written statements that are confessions.

Yeah, what the fuck?

But his defense attorney said there's no physical evidence of any of this stuff. So what are we talking about?

Mm-hmm.

Nobody putting him in there. So they put him on trial. And they said that also there's been a bunch of false confessions from other people in this case.

All right.

In June 2010 is his trial. After six hours of deliberation, a jury of eight women and one man, nine-person jury.

Yeah.

Found him not guilty.

Oh.

So not enough proof he was there because there's no DNA.

No DNA, right.

So that's that. And yeah, the defense attorney said, "We never thought Wade was guilty from the beginning and we're happy the jury returned their verdict."

Okay.

There is a whole bunch of things going with his obstruction cases and all that, but who gives a shit? That doesn't matter. Griffin appeals. Nothing works. He's still in prison. Brad's case was featured on On the Case with Paul Lazan in 2015, Cold Case Files.

All right.

Episode titled Night Shift in 2017. The family agreed to the Zan program because it offered something that doesn't always come out of trial, a chance to thank the people who made the conviction possible.

Oh, wow.

Brother Lee from 2011 to 2020 served in the Utah House of Representatives where he pushed to expand DNA testing, clear backlogs, and improve mental health care for police officers.

All right.

All good things. So that Lee is a fucking gem, boy. He's a good guy.

My God.

So there you go. Nice people, bad things happen to nice people is what this episode should be called. This fucking paradigm.

And that guy's in there forever.

Yeah. He's in there forever. Never getting out. The Griffin guy, which is best for everybody, I think. So.

And he's locked up, taking the rap for everybody if there was more than one person involved.

Wade was there, allegedly, because he hasn't been convicted. But he admitted to it like three different times, so.

But this guy just acceleratingly grabbed higher stakes weapons as he.

Yep. Screwdriver not working.

Destroyed this man?

Here's a knife. Here's a big thing.

Here's a big fucking bell.

I think Brad didn't want to go down.

Yeah.

And so he had to keep going at him. Brad was a tough kid. So there you go. Crazy case out of Utah this week. If you enjoyed the case or just had a good time watching or listening at all, definitely get on whatever app you listen to and give us five stars. It helps so much. If you're on Netflix, double thumbs up is the way to do that.

And it's true.

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