Show full transcript 0:56 Capital One NA member FDIC. 0:59 Good morning, everyone. 1:01 You're listening to the Dateline Morning Meeting. 1:04 Is today definitely the closings? 1:06 Yes. 1:07 Our producers are swapping tips and story ideas. 1:10 Is this best friend still around? 1:11 Is the mom still alive? 1:13 Even the dentist, we have a pretty prominent person 1:15 in the community. 1:15 How does this suburban mom meet this killer? 1:20 Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. 1:23 I'm Andrea Canning. It's October 1st, and here's what's on our docket. 1:28 A dramatic new chapter in the case of the two young girls found murdered beneath an abandoned bridge near Delphi, Indiana. 1:35 Lawyers for the man convicted of killing them are demanding a new trial. 1:39 This behavior stops here. This should never happen to another Hoosier again. 1:43 In Dateline Roundup, an update on what's next in the Lindsey Clancy case. 1:48 and questions hang over Cornell University 1:50 as prosecutors reopen their investigation 1:53 into a student's allegations of sexual assault. 1:56 The DA said that he'll present the case 1:58 to a grand jury within 45 days 2:00 and that the Jane Doe is expected to testify. 2:03 Plus, man's best friend. 2:05 How can dogs help police solve crimes? 2:08 A veteran canine handler gives us the lowdown. 2:11 They are picking up so many different odors, 2:13 and not just odors, but emotions. 2:16 Before all that, we are in Troy, Ohio, where a verdict has been reached in the murder trial 2:21 of a former American Idol contestant. 2:23 But not before jurors heard one bombshell witness, his former lover. 2:30 For the past three weeks, jurors have listened to the case of Caleb Flynn, a man who first 2:35 made a name for himself when he competed on Idol 13 years ago. 2:39 Now, prosecutors have accused him of murdering his wife, Ashley, as she lay sleeping in 2:44 their bed, and then staging the scene to make it look like a home invasion. 2:48 His alleged motive? 2:49 He wanted to start his life over with his 24-year-old lover, Aliyah Botner. 2:55 Caleb denied that and pleaded not guilty. 2:58 But in over six hours of emotional testimony, jurors got to hear from Aliyah herself 3:02 as she detailed the affair and Caleb's spiral into talk of murder. 3:07 How would you describe your feelings for the defendant today? 3:10 I hate him. 3:11 Why the change from love to hate? 3:16 Because I believe that you like it as well. 3:19 On Tuesday morning, the prosecution and defense 3:22 made their case to the jury one last time in closing arguments. 3:26 By the end of the day, a verdict. 3:28 Here to fill us in on the final days of the trial 3:30 is Dateline Field Producer, Justin Ratchford. 3:33 Welcome back, Justin. 3:34 Hi, Andrea. Thanks for having me. 3:35 So we first heard about Aliyah 3:37 in the prosecution's opening statement. 3:39 She is central to their case, of course, 3:42 when it comes to motive. And her testimony was highly anticipated. What was the atmosphere like 3:48 in court, Justin, when she took the stand? I'm sure you could hear a pin drop in there. 3:53 Right. So everyone at that time had already heard about allegations of the affair. So from the 3:58 moment that Aliyah sat down, there was a real sense of uneasiness and I guess morbid curiosity 4:03 of what would be revealed. What did she tell the court about how she and Caleb first met? 4:08 Where did this all start? 4:10 This started in the church. 4:11 Aliyah said that she was a 20-year-old intern 4:13 when she and Caleb first met at their Ohio church, 4:16 Christian Life Center in 2022. 4:18 Aliyah said that at first the relationship 4:20 was purely professional, 4:21 but things changed in March, 2024. 4:24 Eventually, that relationship became romantic and sexual. 4:27 She is a key witness, as we said, for the prosecution, 4:30 but she also had to admit to a relationship 4:32 with a married man and father of two kids. 4:36 How did the state handle that? 4:38 The prosecution pressed Aaliyah pretty hard on the fact that she knew that Caleb was a married man. 4:42 If you knew the defendant was married, how did you morally justify a sexual relationship with the defendant? 4:50 He was completely alone and I shouldn't have. At first I was strong and I said 4:54 this isn't okay. We shouldn't do this. And then he kept pursuing and 5:00 it just started with little things and then it grew like cancer and I found myself in a place I never thought it would be. 5:05 Aliyah told the jurors they were talking about getting married and having a family? 5:09 Yeah, and she even showed the juries that she and Caleb had gotten matching tattoos. 5:15 It was a lightning bolt from Harry Potter. 5:17 She had gotten it on her arm and she said that Caleb actually got his underneath his 5:21 armpit so his wife, Ashley, wouldn't find out. 5:24 And that wasn't the only attempt, right, to keep the affair a secret, she said? 5:28 Right. 5:28 According to Aliyah, they had communicated on several different apps like WhatsApp, 5:33 Group Me, and regularly deleted their messages so they wouldn't be caught. 5:36 But prosecutors say that just on group me alone, they had been messaging over a hundred 5:42 seven thousand times over the course of a year. 5:45 And on average, that's about 300 messages a day. 5:48 That's a lot. 5:48 Prosecutors got Aliyah to read some of those messages to the jury. 5:52 Right. 5:53 According to prosecutors, the text that Caleb wrote to Aliyah really showed what he was 5:57 feeling about his wife, Ashley, in his own words. 6:00 And Caleb constantly told Aliyah how much she wanted her gone. 6:03 If I could literally kill her and not go to hell, I would do it in a heartbeat. 6:07 That's how dark and how hateful I feel. 6:10 Justin, what are some of the responses the court heard from Aliyah? 6:13 Based on the messages we heard, Aliyah agreed with him pretty much throughout the relationship 6:18 that we're having. 6:19 She talked about wanting Ashley dead and calling her names, and there were just 6:23 times throughout her testimony when she became emotional reading those texts, saying 6:27 that she's regretful and at one point whispering, I'm so sorry. 7:03 According to prosecutors, the affair with Aliyah may have pushed Caleb into actually carrying 7:08 out his threats to kill his wife. 7:10 This goes to the heart of what the state says is the motive. 7:14 Right. According to these messages, Aliyah was pressuring Caleb to end his marriage and finally be with Aliyah for good. 7:21 Eventually, Aliyah gave him a final deadline, January 11th of this year, and when Caleb didn't divorce Ashley that time, Aliyah said that she was really done. 7:31 How did Caleb handle this breakup? 7:32 Caleb continued to try contact Aliyah, even sending her songs that he wrote for her. 7:37 He wrote the lyrics, but the music and the vocals were generated by AI. 7:41 Let's take a listen to some of that music. 7:43 How did Caleb and other people in the courtroom react to this 8:03 music? 8:03 Caleb looked at best somber and maybe trying to disassociate himself from the moment. 8:10 Okay, so back to our motive. The prosecution suggests that Caleb killed Ashley to get Aliyah back. 8:17 Right. So the prosecution said that just days before Ashley was murdered, 8:21 Caleb had reached out to Aliyah again and told her that this time was for real and he was 8:26 is finally gonna leave Ashley. 8:27 Aliyah finished up her testimony 8:29 by talking about what Caleb told her 8:31 just a few hours before Ashley was killed. 8:35 And this is really a pivotal moment for the state. 8:38 In his final message to Aliyah that night, 8:40 he said, I choose you, Aliyah, 8:42 you're more than enough, good night. 8:44 The prosecutor asked Aliyah to read the jury 8:47 what she wrote to Caleb 8:48 right after she heard that Ashley was killed. 8:51 Let's take a listen. 8:52 The next message was, Caleb, I just saw the news. 8:56 Someone told me to pray for Mrs. Flynn and all caps, what is going on right now? 9:01 Were you behind this? 9:03 I deleted that message. 9:05 I said, what is going on? 9:07 Is this real? 9:08 How did the defense handle Aliyah, Justin, on cross-examination? 9:12 The defense tried their best to really attack Aliyah's credibility. 9:16 They also put more context around Caleb's messages, showing that Aliyah often sought 9:20 reassurance from Caleb that he hated his wife. 9:23 Did you at the time not believe that Caleb actually hated Ashley? 9:28 There were a lot of times that I questioned it. 9:30 Why? 9:32 Because we shared location and I would see, I would see him at a restaurant or a movie 9:39 theater and later find out that they were there together and then I would see text messages on 9:46 his phone from her saying that she loves him and she always seemed to, you know, be very 9:56 loving towards him, so that made me think that he was also loving towards her. 10:01 In your opinion, at the time that he is saying that he hates Ashley, is he saying that as 10:07 a lie to make you feel better? 10:11 He might have been. 10:13 The prosecution rested on Monday, and it was the defense's turn. 10:16 they did not call any witnesses, Justin. 10:19 So technically, the defense doesn't have to prove anything. 10:22 So not calling a witness may be a signal 10:25 that the defense believes that the prosecution 10:27 did not prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. 10:30 Closing arguments happened Tuesday morning, 10:32 and this did not take long on Tuesday 10:34 for the jury to deliberate. 10:37 Yeah, not long at all. 10:38 Really, the jury started deliberating 10:40 right around the lunch break, 10:41 and it just took them about two and a half hours 10:43 to return a verdict. 10:44 That's a verdict to count one, aggravated murder. 10:48 We, the jury in this case, being duly impaneled and sworn, 10:52 find the defendant, Caleb C. Flynn, 10:54 guilty of aggravated murder, 10:56 as charged in count one of the indictment. 10:59 Caleb was found guilty on all nine counts, 11:01 including multiple murder and weapons charges. 11:04 Justin, I watched the verdict live. 11:06 It started with Caleb kind of lightly shaking his head 11:11 and then transitioned into this sort of what I would describe as almost dry sobbing. 11:17 Right. He just started sobbing. 11:18 He was breaking down in front of everyone in complete agony. 11:22 And right behind him, you could see his father in the gallery, 11:24 and he was just looking just as somber. 11:27 On the other hand, Ashley's family and friends, 11:29 they remain calm through it, but you can definitely see them view this as a victory. 11:34 They were hugging each other. 11:35 They were overjoyed by the verdicts. 11:37 And you can really tell it was an emotional moment for everyone. 11:39 Yeah, very small courtroom, I could see a couple of people in there wiping away tears. 11:45 What is next for Caleb now? 11:47 He's awaiting sentencing. 11:48 That's right. 11:49 The judge scheduled a sentencing date for October 5th, and it seems like Caleb could 11:54 be facing up to life without the possibility of parole. 11:56 Okay, we will keep an eye out for that and bring you the latest. 11:59 Thank you for bringing us the verdict, Justin. 12:02 Thanks, Andrea. 12:03 Coming up, two years after a man was convicted in the Delphi double murder trial, his 12:08 His defense attorney urges a panel of judges to throw out the verdict. 12:17 With the seasons changing, now is the perfect time to get ahead of the cold and flu season. 12:23 But staying prepared shouldn't mean overpaying for your prescriptions, and that's where 12:27 GoodRx comes in. 12:28 GoodRx makes it easy to take control of your health and your budget, with savings on preventative 12:34 cold and flu medications and your everyday prescriptions. 12:37 GoodRx is free, super easy to use. 12:39 You just search for your medication on their website or app, compare prices, and bring 12:45 the free coupon to show your pharmacist. 12:47 Check GoodRx to save at over 70,000 local pharmacies nationwide, or get prescriptions 12:53 delivered right to your front door. 12:55 Remember, GoodRx is not insurance, but it works whether you have insurance or not, 13:00 and it could beat your insurance copay price. 13:03 So save time and money in your prescriptions this season. 13:05 Check out GoodRx at goodrx.com. 13:12 They say higher education is outdated, irrelevant, but at Grand Canyon University, they don't 13:18 settle for the status quo, they shatter it. 13:21 GCU empowers learners of every generation, offering on-campus, online, and hybrid learning 13:26 environments. 13:27 Hands-on classes are designed to prepare you for skills for industry. 13:31 And online programs have a supportive community from all over the country. 13:35 This is purpose-driven education. 13:36 take action, find your purpose. 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It is how a system fails. 14:59 Here to tell us what this all means is dateline producer Marianne O'Donnell 15:03 who's been covering this case for us from the beginning. 15:05 Marianne, welcome back to the podcast. 15:07 Thanks for having me, Andrea. 15:09 Yeah, so, Mary Ann, it's been a while since we talked about this story, 15:13 but there was a time when you and I were talking almost every week 15:17 about the ins and outs of this case, 15:19 and together we aired a Dateline episode called A Walk Through the Woods. 15:23 So, we spent a lot of time on this. 15:26 Remind us what exactly happened to these two girls in 2017 in those woods. 15:33 Sure. Well, the account goes like this. 15:35 these two girls, Abigail Williams and Libby German, 15:41 they were best friends in eighth grade 15:42 and they had the day off from school. 15:44 So the two said, you know what? 15:46 Let's take pictures outside. 15:48 And the place to do it in town was this Monon Bridge, 15:52 which is an old railway bridge. 15:55 It stands, I think, 60 feet over this creek. 15:58 It's really scary looking. 16:00 It is, it is, because we went up there 16:02 and when you look down and you see 16:06 it's just not put together, this bridge. 16:08 It looks like you could- 16:10 It's rotted through. 16:11 Right. 16:11 So the girls are dropped off roughly around 130, 16:15 and they're supposed to meet up 16:17 with one of the girls' dads at around 330. 16:20 Well, the dad appears, but the girls don't show. 16:23 And immediately the fam is like, 16:25 wait, where are they? 16:26 They call police and really to Delphi's credit, 16:29 police, fire, they got involved right away 16:32 and they started searching for those girls all through the night. Citizens did, too, 16:38 but it wasn't until around noon the next day that they finally were found and not far from 16:43 the bridge from which they disappeared. Yeah, and Mary Ann, it was a very gruesome scene. 16:49 The girls had been stabbed to death. And of course, one of the things that our listeners 16:54 may remember about this case is that chilling video footage that one of the girls captured 17:00 captured on her phone right before they were killed. 17:04 It was remarkable and it was a remarkable act of quick thinking in a moment of distress. 17:12 These two girls are at the far end of the bridge and one of the girls sees this man 17:19 coming across the bridge toward them and that girl takes her phone, she hits record. 17:26 What she does is she catches a glimpse of this man coming toward them and then the 17:32 garbled words he utters to the effect of down the hill. 17:41 This mystery suspect at the time you know became known as bridge guy. That's 17:46 right. Because you know you couldn't you just couldn't quite tell who it was. 17:53 He could be any guy USA any guy in Indiana. 17:55 All right, so we go forward five years. 17:58 Investigators arrested a Delphi man named Richard Allen. 18:01 Allen worked at a local CVS. 18:03 He had no apparent connection to the girls. 18:06 And Marianne, we remember this very well. 18:09 Allen was a lead that they had early on 18:13 that unfortunately fell through the cracks. 18:16 It was a remarkable twist in an investigation. 18:20 A twist that probably never would have come about. 18:22 Had it not been for an eagle eye volunteer five years after the fact, she's clearing 18:28 out a drawer, she comes upon this old police report, a man named Richard Allen had stepped 18:34 forward in the days after the girls were found to say, hey, I was there at the bridge and 18:39 I don't remember seeing any girls. 18:42 And then that was never followed up. 18:45 Now five years later, this clerk looks at it and she says, oh my God. 18:50 A member of law enforcement, we interviewed, said, 18:53 this is our guy. 18:54 And Richard Allen, I mean, even though, again, 18:55 you can't perfectly see who this person is in this video, 19:00 he did have a lot of those characteristics of a bridge guy. 19:05 So, Marianne, the ballistics evidence in this case, 19:08 it becomes really important. 19:10 Critical. 19:11 This is what ostensibly gets him arrested. 19:14 At the scene of the crime, there was an unspent bullet. 19:19 They do a search warrant on Allen's house, low and behold, he has many guns, but he has 19:24 one gun in particular, and the bullet is a match to the ammunition that would be used 19:31 for that gun. 19:33 He finally went to trial in the fall of 2024, and you know, something that really took 19:38 center stage at the trial were these statements or confessions that Richard Allen made in 19:44 custody after his arrest, tell us about them and how they factored into everything. 19:49 So what's unusual here is when a suspect is arrested for a violent crime, they're usually 19:55 detained at a county jail. 19:58 Not so in this case. 19:59 From day one, he is housed at a prison in solitary confinement. 20:04 Well, while Richard Allen is incarcerated, he makes a series of phone calls, confessions 20:10 that he, in fact, did kill these girls. And he even confesses to his prison psychologist and says, 20:18 yeah, I did this. So those become critical evidence in the prosecution's case against him. 20:25 And so Alan's defense team at the time said that those confessions were coerced, 20:30 that they happened because he was in solitary confinement. 20:33 And his state of psychosis is really what they were saying. They even had a UN 20:37 an expert on these kind of situations that said solitary confinement like this, you don't 20:42 do this because you can't trust a confession that comes out of a situation like that. 20:46 Right. 20:47 And they said he was speaking incoherently, oh, he was eating his own feces, so disturbing. 20:53 In the end, after 19 hours of deliberation, the jury found Richard Allen guilty of murdering 20:59 the girls. 21:00 And that brings us to now. 21:02 Years later, we're talking about this again. 21:04 and tell us about what the defense is trying to accomplish 21:08 for Richard Allen in 2026. 21:10 Well, the defense obviously filed an appeal 21:13 and recently a three judge panel heard the defense appeal 21:19 and heard from the prosecution. 21:21 And really the defense boiled down to a couple of things. 21:25 Obviously those confessions. 21:28 For the first time in Indiana's modern history, 21:30 the state took a pre-trial detainee 21:33 directly to a cell known as the hole kept him there as he descended into 21:37 psychosis and became gravely disabled treated him worse than anyone else in 21:41 his situation and procured statements by exploiting his 21:45 decompensation. The defense is saying the judge should never have allowed 21:49 those confessions into the trial. What did the prosecutors have to say about 21:53 that? The prosecution says listen when he made several of these statements he 21:58 He sounds rational. 22:00 He sounds put together. 22:02 There's no coercion. 22:03 If you listen to the phone calls that he makes to his wife, he is completely lucid, completely 22:08 coherent, completely rational in those calls. 22:10 There's no evidence of psychosis in them at all. 22:12 And from day one, when he was incarcerated, prosecutors said he is in solitary for his 22:19 own protection. 22:20 That was why he was in solitary confinement all that time. 22:24 Our case law is clear that those ordinary conditions are not coercive state action that renders a statement involuntary. 22:31 You protected him into psychosis. 22:33 The judge seemed to get a little testy with the prosecution saying you protected him into psychosis. 22:41 That's right. It was a dramatic moment when she seemed to indicate just a little bit of impatience, disgust. 22:50 everyone might infer something different, 22:52 but it was a dramatic moment. 22:54 The defense went on to talk about another big mistake 22:57 they think the trial judge made 22:58 when she ruled that Allen's defense attorneys 23:00 could not tell the jury about alternate suspects. 23:04 The trial court systematically barred Allen 23:06 from proving that he was not the man on the bridge, 23:09 not the man in the woods killing the girls, 23:11 and not the man who left that bizarre and deliberate scene. 23:14 So Marion, who else did the defense say 23:17 that this man could be? 23:18 Did they bring up a name? 23:20 They did. 23:21 The name they brought up was Brad Holder. 23:23 The defense is saying he had known ties to odinism and his son was friendly with one of 23:30 the victims. 23:31 Odinism, an old Norse mythology religion, enters this case because sticks placed on the 23:40 body of one of the girls. 23:41 Almost resemble runes, old Norse runes. 23:45 And the defense is saying these girls were sacrificed 23:48 as some part of blood ritual in the name of Odinism. 23:51 And by the way, our defendant has no history 23:55 of being related to this at all. 23:58 Brad Holder has never been charged with anything, 24:01 and he has denied having anything 24:03 to do with the murders of the girls. 24:07 But you said Marion, according to the defense, 24:10 Brad Holder, he had these ties to Odinism, 24:12 and they feel the jury should have been allowed 24:16 to hear that evidence. 24:17 But Rad Holder's employer said, 24:19 oh no, no, no, we have the punch card. 24:21 You know, he was still working that day 24:23 at the presumed time the girls were killed. 24:25 The recent hearing lasted about an hour. 24:28 What is next in the process, Marianne? 24:29 Well, we wait for a decision, a ruling. 24:33 That will be next. 24:34 And their ruling would either be the conviction stands 24:37 or we set it aside. 24:39 And there's a new trial 24:40 and a new day in court for Richard Allen. 24:43 And these things we know can take months, even a year. 24:47 That's right. 24:47 All right, thank you very much, Mary Ann, 24:49 for revisiting this case with us. 24:52 Happy to do so. 24:53 Thanks, Andrea. 24:55 Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. 24:59 Lindsay Clancy is back in court, 25:01 and a student's family raises questions 25:03 about how one of the country's top universities 25:05 handled allegations of sexual assault. 25:08 Plus, a canine handler on working with dogs 25:11 at a crime scene. 25:17 Whoever says saving money is hard 25:20 doesn't know that the new customers 25:22 who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds 25:25 because switching your home and auto insurance 25:27 is better than cutting down 25:29 on those iced lattes you love. 25:31 Switch your home and auto to Progressive 25:33 and see if you could save and keep sipping away. 25:36 Get your quote today at Progressive.com. 25:38 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, 25:40 affiliates and other insurers, 25:42 not available in all states. 25:46 Three o'clock, kids are home. 25:48 Your to-do list isn't done. 25:50 New Kraft Mac and Cheese Power Mac 25:52 was made for days like this. 25:54 Kraft Mac and Cheese Power Mac packs 25:55 the same irresistible creamy, cheesy flavor you love, 25:58 now with 17 grams of protein and six grams of fiber. 26:02 Fuels you up, keeps you going, 26:04 because your day doesn't stop. 26:07 Kraft Mac and Cheese Power Mac. 26:09 Find it at your favorite retailer. 26:11 The best thing ever keeps getting better. 26:14 The deadlines, the pressure, the tension. 26:18 You may just brush it off as stress, but is your hair, I gotta tell you, it's eating 26:22 us alive. 26:24 Weakening our very roots, breaking us apart. 26:27 And the more you stress, the more we slip away. 26:30 Now please, take a deep breath, there's something you can do. 26:34 Pantene abundant and strong system strengthens your hair against stress, reducing hair 26:38 loss by 85%. 26:40 Only the strongest will survive this shedding. 26:42 Pantene, Abundant and Strong. 26:50 Welcome back. 26:51 Joining me for this week's roundup is 26:53 Dateline Field Producer Alex LaRae. 26:55 Alex, thanks for coming on. 26:57 Hey, Andrea. 26:58 Thanks for having me. 26:59 So, up first, Alex, Lindsay Clancy. 27:02 She was back in a Plymouth County, Massachusetts 27:04 courthouse this week. 27:06 This is the first time since jurors 27:08 deadlocked 11-to-1 at her murder trial 27:10 and a mistrial was called. 27:13 Lindsay, a former labor and delivery nurse, 27:15 admitted to killing her three young children, 27:17 but she pleaded not guilty at her trial. 27:20 Her defense said she wasn't in a right mind 27:23 due to postpartum psychosis. 27:26 Prosecutors, however, argued that Lindsey 27:27 knew exactly what she was doing and planned the whole thing. 27:31 So, Alex, this case continues to make headlines. 27:33 There are so many issues that need to get sorted out 27:36 in court with regard to what comes next with this case. 27:40 Yeah, a lot has been going on in court. 27:42 Lindsey's defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, 27:44 filed several motions ahead of this week's status hearing. 27:47 One of his motions argues that Lindsey can't be retried on the same charges, saying that 27:52 it would amount to double jeopardy. 27:54 Another motion is calling for an investigation into the holdout juror in the case, but the 27:59 motion that got a hearing in court on Tuesday is perhaps the most surprising. 28:03 Reddington is arguing that the charges should be dropped because of a lack of evidence 28:07 that Lindsey killed her children. 28:09 Where's the evidence that she did this? Where is the admission? 28:13 Where does she say that she did this? 28:16 Alex, what did he say is the basis for that? 28:18 Reddington argued during the trial that Lindsay admitted to killing her children 28:22 but shouldn't be held criminally responsible. This is the complete opposite of that. 28:26 Yeah. Reddington didn't really elaborate much. 28:29 It was a pretty quick argument, only about 10 minutes. 28:32 But he did say that Lindsay never admitted to investigators that she killed the children. 28:37 He argued there is not enough evidence to charge her with three counts of murder. 28:41 Okay, so how did prosecutors respond to this? 28:44 It was a surprise at first, and then they pointed to all the evidence that they did present a trial. 28:50 Remember, they called over 70 witnesses over weeks of testimony. 28:54 For the first time, the defendant is arguing that there's no evidence that she did this. 28:58 I suggest to you that the entire record is voluminous as to the information supporting the fact that she did this. 29:06 Did the judge make any rulings on the motions that were presented this week? 29:11 He did not. He said that he's taking them under advisement and scheduled another status 29:15 conference for November 2nd. He said that this next hearing, a trial date, will be discussed as 29:20 well. The DA said that he hasn't decided whether to retry Lindsay's, so we'll be keeping an eye 29:26 out for that. We're going to continue to do our job to make sure that we do what's best for 29:29 the interests of justice and the interests of those three children. 29:31 Up next, Alex, we've got the latest on a disturbing story that broke in upstate New 29:39 York earlier this week. The district attorney in Tompkins County announced he is reopening 29:44 a criminal investigation into an incident that allegedly took place at a Cornell University 29:50 fraternity house back in 2024 that led to allegations of sexual assault. Alex, why this 29:57 new interest from the DA into this case. 30:01 Yeah, so two weeks ago, a former Cornell student filed a civil lawsuit against seven students 30:07 who she says sexually assaulted her. 30:09 The former student filed the lawsuit under the name Jane Doe to protect her privacy. 30:14 She says she was 20 years old at the time that this happened. 30:18 Yeah, that's right, Andrea. 30:19 She says that she was applied with alcohol and drugs to the point of intoxication 30:24 by some members of the Fraud House 30:26 and was then assaulted by the seven students she's named. 30:30 Included in the lawsuit are Snapchat messages 30:33 that Jane Doe alleges were sent in the Fraud, 30:35 encouraging other members to join the alleged gang rape. 30:39 Jane Doe is also suing Cornell, among others in the lawsuit. 30:43 What is her basis for suing the university? 30:47 Jane Doe is accusing the University of Negligence, 30:49 saying that it failed to protect her 30:51 and that it should have known the fraternity posed a risk. 30:54 She also argues in the lawsuit that the university 30:56 failed to adequately discipline the students. 30:59 She says the students were suspended temporarily, 31:02 and some of them were allowed to submit essays 31:04 to try to get their punishment reduced. 31:07 Alex, the case has caught the attention 31:08 of New York Governor Kathy Hochul, 31:10 who is calling for a transparent, 31:12 independent review of the university's response. 31:16 What is Cornell University saying about all this? 31:18 The university strongly disputes that any of the students involved were offered the opportunity to write essays as the sole consequence of their involvement. 31:29 The university said that it conducted a thorough investigation over the course of several months. 31:34 Cornell says several of the students were expelled and some were suspended, and the fraternity chapter was barred from campus. 31:41 The big question is, Alex, did the police ever get involved in this after it happened? 31:49 According to the lawsuit, Jane Doe reported the incident to the campus police a few weeks after the alleged assault. 31:55 The university told NBC News that the campus police conducted an investigation and consulted with the DA. 32:01 Which brings us back to the district attorney. 32:04 We mentioned that he was reopening the criminal investigation. 32:07 that suggests there was an investigation in 2024, 32:11 but nothing came of it, so what has changed? 32:14 Earlier this week, the DA told NBC News 32:16 that the Jane Doe initially described the encounter 32:19 as consensual, but given what she's alleging 32:22 in her civil lawsuit, he'd be open 32:24 to looking into this further. 32:26 Now that this lawsuit has been filed, 32:29 that raises the question that Jane Doe 32:32 believes there's additional evidence. 32:35 We want to talk to her. 32:36 we want to flesh out with her what that additional evidence is. 32:41 After the DA gave that interview, CBS News reported that according to the transcript of Jane Doe's 32:46 interview with Campus Police back in 2024, she said, quote, I can say with 100% confidence 32:53 that I was raped, end quote. NBC News has yet to see a copy of that transcript. 33:00 The DA told NBC News he was not aware of that specific quote and it wasn't included in the 33:06 written statement he received from campus police when he was 33:08 weighing whether to bring charges two years ago. For its 33:12 part, Cornell University says its police department passed on 33:15 all investigatory information to the DA. Alex, what is the 33:20 DA said about where the case goes from here? 33:23 He said he's going to present the case to a grand jury 33:25 within 45 days and that Jane Doe is expected to testify. 33:30 NBC News has reached out to all seven students named in the 33:32 lawsuit. And at the time of this taping, we had heard 33:35 back from two of their attorneys, they deny her allegations. 33:39 Have we heard from Jane Doe herself since the news broke? 33:44 In a written statement, Jane Doe says she hopes to, quote, recover from this trauma, but it 33:50 is extremely difficult. 33:51 It affects every aspect of my life. 33:54 It will haunt me and be part of me for the rest of my life. 33:58 All right. 33:59 Thank you, Alex. 33:59 We will see how this story develops. 34:02 Thank you for coming on. 34:03 Yeah. 34:03 thanks for having me Andrea. For our final story this week we wanted to find out more about the 34:11 use of canines at crime scenes. It's something that came up in the Caleb Flynn trial. A canine 34:17 handler told the jury that his dog had not been able to pick up the scent of an intruder at Caleb's 34:22 home which undermined Caleb's story of a home invasion. So I wanted to be able to 34:29 confirm that we didn't have a suspect that flood and so I have him walk around the house 34:41 How do handlers work with police dogs to investigate crimes? 34:45 And what exactly can they do? 34:47 Here to walk us through it is retired Sergeant Doug Roller, a veteran police canine expert 34:52 with over 25 years of experience and the former chief trainer for the Los Angeles Police 34:57 Department's canine platoon. 34:59 Welcome to the podcast, Doug. 35:01 Thank you. 35:01 I appreciate it. 35:02 So interesting to talk to you about the subject because dogs can be very, very important when it comes to crime fighting and you know, we think of law enforcement these days as being high tech, you know, you think of AI, the latest forensic tools, but you know, I love how these dogs fall into the old 35:22 fashioned crime fighting bucket, right? 35:24 Definitely. And nothing's out there yet that can replace them. I mean, they've tried 35:28 different mechanical devices that could pick up certain kinds of odor, but 35:31 so far nothing comes close to what a dog can do. The right dog can do. 35:35 We are talking about dogs that can help investigators dug mainly through their noses, 35:41 because their sense of smell is just so powerful. 35:45 We use dogs for so many things in the police world, you know, searching for criminals and 35:50 bad guys, the true value is not so much the ability of a dog to stop somebody, but to 35:55 find somebody with their nose or to find an item or a drug or what have you. 36:00 I mean, a dog's sense of smell, depending on what expert you're talking into, it could 36:04 be anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 times better than a man. 36:08 Wow. 36:09 Incredible. 36:10 So, Doug, I actually put it to the test. 36:11 I did a web extra for a date line story I was working on in Connecticut years back. 36:15 So I left a personal item on the road for a Connecticut state police K-9 named Rocky who did not see me drop this item 36:23 Take a listen to this. I'm gonna leave my makeup bag here on this little road and 36:28 Disappear and we'll see if Rocky can find me a few minutes later Doug Rocky was very easily 36:35 able to find me hidden in the woods I 36:41 Could tell you story after story where a dog might hit on somebody usually what we do in my field is 36:47 We set up a containment like you see on the news and they bring in the canines and sometimes 36:51 that dog would pick his nose up and he's hitting odor about a block away. 36:55 Sometimes we'd be searching because the guy was just there maybe 15, 20 minutes ago.
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