Show full transcript 0:51 your banking needs. 0:52 Yep, even on weekends. 0:54 That's pretty much all he talks about. 0:55 in a good way. 0:57 What's in your wallet? 0:59 Terms apply. See capitalone.com 1:01 slash bank guy. Capital One 1:03 N.A. member FDIC. 1:06 I said, is it Jesse? 1:09 I mean, he was my 1:11 whole life. 1:13 I never dreamed that 1:15 he was going to die that way. 1:20 We believe he was headed to a 1:21 friend's house to get help. 1:23 And his assailant chased him, caught up 1:25 to him, attacked him. 1:27 Yes. 1:27 Everyone was just so shaken. 1:30 We had several suspects. 1:34 I mean, the guy was coming by on duty. 1:38 He would stop off, they would have sex, 1:39 and then they'd go back to work. 1:40 Yeah. 1:41 He wouldn't say his name. 1:42 He only referred to him as Columbia's finest. 1:45 She looked at me, she goes, you're not going to believe this. 1:49 Had you ever investigated a helicopter before? 1:51 Not for homicide, no. 1:53 I think I was just in shock. 1:54 I want to shout it from the rooftops that this is not right the wide lied and lied and lied about sex sex and sex 2:02 There are a lot of people that cheat it doesn't make them a murderer, and we will follow the truth 2:07 My first thought was we need to get this right. That's the second thought the first thought. Oh my god 2:13 He could have been sunbathing here in the grass 2:22 Naked but for a pair of blue shorts 2:24 His face, turned up toward the June sky, was beautiful. 2:33 It was afternoon by the time someone noticed him, though he'd been lying here still silent 2:38 since before daylight. 2:40 Here among the old rooming houses in Columbia, where University of Missouri students were 2:46 winding down their school year, it was June 5th, 2004. 2:51 Back then we were on pagers. 2:53 Sure. 2:53 I, of course, I knew my boss's phone number, and it had a 911 behind it, and I was ordered 2:58 to come to help investigate. 3:02 By the time the news got to Detective John Short, uniformed cops had strung up their 3:07 yellow tape, were taking their pictures. 3:10 What did they see? 3:12 It was obvious to them at that point that this was a homicide. 3:15 The medical examiner arrived. 3:18 That's her there, sitting on the left, Dr. Valerie Rowe waiting for her turn. 3:23 When I got to the scene, there were a lot of people watching what was going on. 3:28 Even then, as she took it all in, the crowd, the yellow tape, the young male body lying 3:34 there on the grass. 3:35 It was quite obvious to Dr. Rao this was a deliberate, determined killing. 3:41 He had a gaping wound on his neck and the blood was oozing out from there onto his neck. 3:49 She looked closer. 3:51 The cut across his throat was deep and not quite smooth, as if it had been made perhaps 3:57 by a serrated knife. 3:59 When we turned the body I could see that the grass adjacent where he lay was blood soaked. 4:06 So much blood, but not exactly where the medical examiner expected it to be. 4:13 There was no blood on the front of his body at all. 4:15 Meaning what? 4:18 Had to be a reason. 4:20 She'd work on that. 4:22 But who was he? 4:24 No idea at all. 4:26 Just this slender young man with 4:29 unseeing eyes. 4:32 There wasn't a lot known at all. 4:34 We just know that we had a deceased individual. 4:37 We were trying to garner information. 4:40 They sent officers around the neighborhood 4:42 with a picture of the body. 4:43 Did anyone know who he was? 4:47 As a shocked afternoon deepened in the evening, 4:50 someone did know exactly who he was. 4:54 The whole time, all day long, I kept having a funny feeling. 5:01 Far away, in Kentucky, over the rural hills and down country roads, 5:07 was a mother named Linda Valencia. 5:09 She was eating dinner with her sister and fretting about her son, Jesse. 5:14 I told my sister, I said, it's so weird that he's not calling me. 5:20 And she said, well, he's probably okay. 5:22 She just said, you know Jesse. 5:26 After dinner, Linda's sister dropped her off at her house and then it seemed. 5:30 Just a few minutes later. 5:32 I saw her headlights coming back up the hill to my house. 5:36 So I went to the door and I opened it and I remember laughing and I asked her if she 5:50 had missed me so much that she had to go back. 5:55 But her sister wasn't smiling. 5:58 I said, is it Jesse? 6:01 And she just, she never answered me and I remember just backing away and I just 6:09 wanted to run. But of course there was no running, not from this. The police wanted to talk to her. 6:17 They said that they were sorry to inform me that my son had been killed and I basically called him 6:27 a liar and I said it's not true. What's a person to say, to do, deny, deny? Her world collapsing 6:39 around her, Jesse's mother fainted. In Columbia that June night, crime scene texts busyed themselves 6:50 behind the yellow tape, while more cops scoured the neighborhood. They'd noticed a nearby apartment 6:57 door propped open, and so they walked through it into a mystery that would turn their world upside 7:06 died down. 7:10 From the time Jesse was six or seven years old, he told me, Mom, I'm not going to live 7:16 to be very old. 7:18 Did he tell you where that thought came from? 7:20 He never did. 7:21 A surprising relationship would stun the city. 7:25 Did it lead to murder? 7:26 He said, Mom, guess who showed up on my doorstep? 7:44 When he was about seven years old, Jesse Valencia asked his mom to sit down. 7:51 And he said, Mom, I'm not going to live to be very old. 7:57 He said, I'm going to die at a very young age. 7:59 Did he tell you where that thought came from or why he thought that? 8:02 He never did. 8:04 He just said he knew that he was going to die young. 8:08 And now at the age of 23, Jesse's awful prediction had come true. 8:13 His half-naked body found lying in a lonely patch of grass, so far from home. 8:18 I never dreamed that he was going to die that way. 8:25 Whatever happened to him, the investigators figured, must have started here, behind this 8:30 open door down the block from the crime scene. 8:33 It was the door to Jesse's apartment. 8:36 Looked like Jesse may have flung it open, fleeing his killer. 8:40 We believe he was headed to a friend's house to get help. 8:43 And his assailant chased him, caught up to him, attacked him? 8:48 and showed no mercy to tales Linda could not bear thinking about she was just 9:05 21 when she had Jesse the two of you kind of grew up together right yeah 9:10 pretty much from the time he was born I took him everywhere with me just the two 9:17 of them and then a stepdad and two sisters in a family farm in Paraville 9:23 Kentucky, a one-stop light town. Every store went into everybody knew him. Everybody was 9:31 hollering, hey Jesse, how are you? Even three and four years old, and he would just talk your 9:37 head off about everything. Read about everything, knew about everything, and his nickname for 9:43 Jesse was College Prep. Kristen Aravello met Jesse on the school bus in high school. 9:49 I think bright is a really great word to describe Jesse because of his 9:56 intellectual brilliance but also he just was a real bright light. 10:05 Irrepressible sort of kid who if it was raining would dance in it or with 10:11 Kristen squirrel graffiti under the town bridge. Jesse just had this real 10:18 and pure love of life. 10:21 I can just remember thinking like, 10:23 this guy is gonna do something big, 10:25 like he's gonna do big things. 10:27 Aaron Bailey met Jesse at a school dance. 10:30 They talked about movies and music. 10:32 Jesse told her he wanted to get out of Paraville one day. 10:36 He tried modeling after high school, 10:38 proud he could do that. 10:40 But said Aaron, he was always down to earth, 10:43 always attentive. 10:45 He'd get me to sing for him. 10:46 Um, Ave Maria was his favorite, and, um... 10:51 How did he do that? 10:53 There were times he would call me, like, at night in the middle of the night and be like, 10:56 will you sing to me? 10:57 And I'm like, it's 1.30 in the morning. 11:00 But she didn't mind. 11:02 Not really. 11:04 Back then she was a little bit in love with Jesse, even though she knew. 11:09 She wasn't his type. 11:11 Jesse was gay and proud of it. 11:14 He loved who he wanted to love, and that's a brave way to be in life. 11:22 He was the type of boy that would tell you exactly what he thought. 11:27 Didn't hold back. 11:27 No, he didn't. 11:30 And Linda certainly thought he was brave when Jesse packed up the modeling 11:34 and decided to go to college, first in his family to go. 11:37 He ended up at the University of Missouri, 11:39 which seemed as far away from Paraville as could be. 11:44 I was happy and excited that he wanted to do that, 11:49 but I did not want him to go out of state. 11:52 And I just kept emphasizing to him 11:57 that it was not going to be a good thing for us to be so far apart. 12:03 No. And now the worst of her premonitions had come true. 12:07 That lovely son of hers, that promise, horribly snuffed out. 12:13 I mean, he was my whole life and I just couldn't believe that he was gone. 12:24 Can you remember what it, what was it like for you? 12:27 It was just dread. Like, I just wanted, whoever did this, I wanted, like, them to immediately be apprehended. 12:35 Like, it just was like this feeling of... 12:37 Urgency. 12:38 Yeah, of panic. 12:40 But this one wasn't going to be quick or easy. 12:44 Although, cause of death was perfectly obvious of the medical examiner, the gaping knife wound 12:49 in his neck. 12:51 But other things were harder to explain. 12:55 Usually, with knife injuries, one tends to get defense wounds on the hands, so you 13:00 get knife injuries on the hands. 13:04 But Jesse's hands were unmarked, which made the Emmy wonder, maybe Jesse hadn't 13:09 been conscious when his throat was cut. They found him flat on his back. If he was that 13:15 way when the killer cut him, it would explain the lack of blood on his body. 13:20 If he was standing, then the blood would run down the front of him or the back of him. 13:26 And if he walked after he sustained the injury, then there would be blood on the bottom 13:32 of his feet. There was none of this. 13:34 There was still one puzzling thing, a pattern of angry bruises across Jesse's 13:40 chest and back and under his jaw. We had to think of all the possibilities of how 13:46 this came about. So she sent his fingernail clippings and blue shorts off 13:51 to the lab for testing and waited. And the detectives? Jesse was was kind of a 13:58 free spirit from what I from what I understand it. Know your victim, 14:01 investigators like to say. So they started digging, especially into Jesse's life in 14:07 Columbia. And what they discovered was not so much a long list of enemies, but 14:14 rather a long list of lovers. Ed Bradley admitted that him and Jesse had had 14:22 sex on the day before the body was found. Eric said something to the effect of 14:27 I wouldn't care if he was dead or I don't care if he's dead talking 14:30 about Jesse. There was this other kid named Zev. One of the questions was, well, can you get out 14:36 of the house without your parents seeing it? And he said, yeah, I can't. Whoever says saving money 14:44 is hard doesn't know that the new customers who bundle and save with progressives save hundreds 14:50 because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes 14:55 you love. Switch your home and auto to progressive and see if you could save and keep sipping 15:01 away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive 15:04 Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. 15:11 They say higher education is outdated, irrelevant. But at Grand Canyon University, 15:16 they don't settle for the status quo. They shatter it. GCU empowers learners of every 15:21 generation, offering on-campus, online, and hybrid learning environments. 15:25 Hands-on classes are designed to prepare you for skills for industry. 15:28 and online programs have a supportive community 15:31 from all over the country. 15:33 This is purpose-driven education. 15:34 Take action, find your purpose. 15:37 Grand Canyon University. 15:38 Visit gcu.edu. 15:40 Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. 15:42 I don't know if you knew this, 15:43 but anyone can get the same premium wireless 15:46 for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. 15:49 It's not just for celebrities. 15:50 So do like I did and have one of your assistance 15:53 assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. 15:55 I'm told it's super easy to do 15:57 at mintmobile.com slash switch up front payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 16:03 per month required intro rate first three months only then full price plan options available taxes 16:08 and fees extra default terms at mintmobile.com the murder of jessie valencia sent a nasty jolt of 16:26 anxiety around columbia missouri everyone was just so shaken 16:33 Barry Bumgarner, a local college professor and crime novelist, was like a lot of people 16:38 here, full of questions. 16:40 There were several articles about did this happen in broad daylight, why didn't anyone 16:45 see anything, and people wanted answers. 16:48 So the Columbia Police Department worked with all deliberate speed on the few leads they 16:53 could find. 16:54 According to Jesse's phone records, the last call he'd made was around 3.15 in 16:58 the morning. 16:58 His neighbor, seen here on NBC affiliate KOMU, said not long after that, he heard arguing 17:05 coming from Jesse's apartment. 17:07 Just bumping, just like somebody stumbling and kind of bumping in the wall, like, uh, 17:12 stop it, you know. 17:14 Police found another witness who told them he'd seen something odd during the night. 17:20 A young man walking barefoot near the crime scene. 17:23 Was he the killer they were looking for? 17:27 It was about a block or so away, maybe two, from the victim's house. 17:31 Some guy called in and said this kid was crying inconsolably. 17:37 But who was he? 17:40 Wasn't a lot to go on. 17:42 So investigators started tracking down Jesse's friends, trying to piece together a portrait 17:46 of his life in Columbia. 17:49 He was a junior at Mizzou. 17:51 Books on history piled up around his apartment. 17:54 He had a lot of friends. 17:55 You talk to a lot of them? 17:56 Talk to a lot of them, you know. 17:58 He liked to party, like almost every other college student. 18:03 Jesse loved to dance. 18:06 And one of his favorite places was a local nightclub, 18:09 where, just a few days before he died, 18:13 he met someone new on the dance floor, 18:15 an aspiring chef named Ed. 18:18 Police asked Ed to come down to the station. 18:21 He readily admitted that him and Jesse had had sex the day before the body was found. 18:28 And Jesse's friends said they saw Jesse and Ed leave a party together just a few hours 18:32 before Jesse was killed. 18:34 So Detective Short watched Ed very closely in the police interrogation room. 18:39 When he swore he'd left Jesse alive and well on the street outside the party before heading 18:44 on home. 18:45 Ed said his roommate had seen him coming in. 18:48 What did you think about him? 18:50 He was an emotional mess, is how I would describe him, constantly crying, very upset, very scared. 18:57 The fear of, why am I here? 18:59 Did he have something to hide? 19:02 It was a knife that killed Jesse. Ed was a chef. 19:05 He owned a whole bag of very sharp knives. 19:09 But it was Ed's roommate, a man called Eric Thurston, who really got to investigate his attention. 19:15 Eric had his own shady past, a rap sheet for drug possession, 19:21 a stealing, and fighting words about the murder. 19:25 Eric Thurston, in his interview, actually said at one point, 19:28 I could kill somebody, but I have too much faith in humanity 19:31 or something to that effect. 19:33 When he talked to police, Eric didn't even try to hide his dislike for Jesse. 19:37 He said something to the effect of, 19:39 I wouldn't care if he was dead or I don't care if he's dead, 19:42 talking about Jesse. 19:43 Why would he say that to the police? 19:47 Even more suspicious, Eric told them he'd left 19:49 Ed at home that night to go out on a date. 19:53 That would have been around the time Jesse was killed. 19:56 So investigators searched the men's home, 19:59 took DNA samples, and waited. 20:02 There was this other kid named Zev, I think. 20:05 Zev fine too. 20:08 Another lead, Zev. 20:11 A rabbi's son, just 19. 20:15 Jesse's friend said he called Zev his boy toy. 20:20 Police asked him to come down to the station. 20:23 You know, Zev was a very quiet, very low-key, 20:26 and he did not appear to be a violent person at all. 20:29 Uh-huh. 20:30 You know, not that that can't be hid. 20:33 Zev told him he wasn't even gay. 20:36 He and Jesse were just friends, not lovers or anything. 20:39 So, he had no reason to be jealous or angry. 20:42 And anyway said Zev, he was at home all night. 20:47 He said that he got up the next morning to have breakfast with his parents. 20:50 He lived in his parents' house. 20:51 He lived in his parents' house, yeah, the only, you know, the only, one of the questions 20:54 posed to him was, well, can you get out of the house without your parents seeing 20:57 it? 20:57 And he said, yeah, I can. 20:59 Phone records showed that Zev had tried to call Jesse several times that night. 21:03 And Zev failed a voice stress test, indicating he might be lying about something. 21:10 Not admissible in court, mind you, but certainly curious. 21:14 At this point, just a few days into the investigation, detectives had three persons of interest. 21:20 But it didn't feel like they were any closer to solving the murder. 21:24 So every day we would have what's called a week we nicknamed it the round table. 21:29 All the detectives would sit down and discuss the leads they had followed the day before, 21:33 where we're going, what we need to do. 21:35 Sometimes those roundtables get a little heated. 21:40 You know, when you end up working 20 hours a day and taking three-hour naps for days in a row, 21:44 people get a little edgy. 21:46 But, a hundred miles away from the hurly-burly of the police investigation, 21:51 way off in St. Louis, it suddenly dawned on a friend of Jesse's. 21:56 he had a clue for the police. 21:59 Something that might actually help crack the case. 22:03 Jesse and I chatted two, three times a week at least. 22:07 Patrick Rogers had met Jesse before he went to college. 22:11 They'd bonded over indie bands and politics, 22:14 but mostly chatted online. 22:16 Which allowed you to keep a record of these chats, right? 22:19 Yes. I realized that I have these chat logs 22:23 and that the chat logs say everything. 22:28 It's time-stamped. 22:30 I knew it was all right there. 22:32 What was all right there? 22:35 Well, Jesse had revealed a secret. 22:39 A secret lover. 22:41 He had not revealed a name, 22:43 but this was something bigger than a name. 22:46 How would the Columbia Police Department react 22:49 once they heard that Jesse's secret lover was one of their own. Jesse's late 22:58 night visitor. He was excited about it. Excited? I mean the guy was coming by on 23:06 duty. Linda Valencia was quite familiar with all of her son Jesse's 23:26 relationships. She was rare among mothers. She knew things, intimate things 23:31 that mothers don't often get to hear. 23:35 Jesse told her everything. 23:37 We talked about anything and everything. 23:40 Jesse, sometimes Jesse would talk to me about things I didn't want to talk about. 23:46 He had no filter on his mouth when he was talking to me. 23:51 So Linda had her own ideas about who police should be talking to 23:55 and it wasn't the aspiring chef or his roommate or the rabbi's son. 24:01 The detective called me on the phone. 24:04 She was asking me if I knew of anybody that had anything against Jesse. 24:11 And I told her, yes, I do. 24:13 And I said, he's a cop. 24:16 Linda said she didn't know the officer's name. 24:19 But she told the detective that two months before the murder, 24:21 she got a call at two o'clock in the morning. 24:23 Jesse was on the other end. 24:26 Excited. 24:28 He said, Mom, I've been arrested. 24:30 And I said, oh my God, and he said, well I was at a party, and it got too noisy and the cops came. 24:39 Jesse, outspoken as always, protested. Didn't go over well. 24:44 And he told me if I opened my mouth again he was going to arrest me, and I said, do what you got to do, and he arrested me. 24:52 At the police station, said Jesse, the officer wrote him a ticket. Told him he'd have to appear in court later. 24:58 and then released him. All of which would have made for a memorable story but then 25:05 few hours later Jesse called Linda again. And he said mom guess who showed up on 25:11 my doorstep and I just said who and he said that cop that arrested me last 25:18 night and I said so what's going on? It was the beginning of Jesse didn't 25:26 know what exactly. It was personal, intimate, and secret. The sort of 25:32 relationship you instant message one of your best friends about. In all of the 25:37 time he spoke with me he wouldn't say his name. He only referred to him as 25:41 Columbia's finest. He was excited about it. Excited? He was. I mean the guy 25:50 was coming by on duty. He would stop off, they would have sex, and then he'd 25:55 go back to work. Yeah and Jesse found all that exciting and I'm seeing this as a 26:02 bunch of red flags. Oh yes. Linda said she saw those two. Jesse kept talking 26:08 about how when I ask him where he lives he kind of dances around it or if I ask 26:16 him anything about family or anything he said he's constantly wants to talk 26:20 about my personal life, but he never wants to talk about his. 26:24 And then, Linda said, Jesse discovered why. 26:28 Why his secret policeman lover wouldn't reveal anything about his own life. 26:34 He was married. 26:36 He said he's married, he has a child, and it's wrong, and he said, I'm not gonna, 26:43 I'm not gonna see him anymore, I just want him to stay away. 26:47 So he tried to cut it off. 26:48 Yeah, he tried to cut it off then. 26:49 He wouldn't be party to someone cheating, and I remember his exact words to me were, 26:56 I'm not going to be someone's other woman. 26:59 And he was mad, and he had every right to be mad. 27:04 And Patrick had proof Jesse felt that way. 27:08 It was all there in their online chats. 27:11 Patrick printed them out, brought them to the Columbia Police headquarters. 27:15 What was their first reaction when you said, I think this is a cop? 27:18 they didn't seem surprised it I would have expected a bigger reaction that's 27:27 because just a couple of hours after they identified Jesse's body before they 27:32 talked to Patrick or Linda police had gotten an anonymous tip about the affair 27:36 had you ever investigated a fellow cop before not for homicide no yeah do you 27:43 remember the first thought that came into your head when you realized I'm 27:47 going to have to do that. 27:49 I think my first thought was, we need to get this right. 27:52 That's the second thought. 27:54 The first thought was, oh my god, it's going to look bad. 28:03 A new witness at the police station. 28:05 He was nervous about me being in the interview room. 28:07 And a surprise encounter with a suspect. 28:10 He goes, I passed him in the hallway 28:11 when you walked me over here. 28:31 On the brow of a hill on the family farm, 28:34 Linda Valencia visits her son, visits the memory still so very raw of the 28:40 bright spark he was in her life, of the day they told her he was dead, of the day 28:46 of his funeral, the day they put him in the ground here. I just sat there and 28:52 just held on to the casket handle and I wouldn't turn it loose and there were 29:01 so many people that came. I mean look how many people love Jessie. And I had a 29:08 letter that I wrote him with a picture and I asked Linda if I could just put 29:14 that in the ground with him and she said of course. And so my heels were sinking 29:19 into the mud and I couldn't stand up and I was watching one of the most 29:26 important people in my life be covered up with dirt. And she sang his 29:37 favorite song for him one last time. How do you measure a loss like this? The 29:55 gap it tears in the lives of people and in the history of things that might have 29:59 been had he been around. In Columbia Missouri Detective Short was measuring 30:07 not loss but an explosive new lead a phantom cop who was he? And then he got 30:15 word that one of Jesse's college lovers a guy named Andy had seen Jesse 30:19 with the mystery cop up close. 30:22 They were at Jesse's apartment. 30:25 He says they're in bed together and he hears a knock at the door. 30:27 Guy walks in and puts a flashlight on him. 30:29 He said when he saw the flashlight come on he could see that it was a police officer 30:32 and then he attempted to have sex with Andy and Andy was like, no, I don't want no part 30:42 of this. 30:43 According to Andy, Jesse and the officer had sex anyway, and when it was over, the cop had a warning. 30:52 He looked at both of them and says, you don't talk about this. Don't tell anyone. And he left. 30:59 Surely Detective Short figured this Andy would be able to identify the officer, 31:03 so the detective and his partner brought Andy into the precinct and showed him a book of photos, 31:08 the entire Columbia Police Department. 31:12 But this was weird. 31:14 Pretty obvious he's not really looking at the pictures. 31:16 He's just kind of thumbing through them, 31:17 and it was pretty apparent to me that he was nervous 31:19 about me being in the interview room. 31:21 So I just got up and walked out. 31:23 Leaving Andy alone with the detective's female partner. 31:26 Kind of looks through the pictures again. 31:28 She says, you're really not looking at him. 31:29 He goes, I don't need to look at those pictures. 31:31 I passed him in the hallway when you walked me over here. 31:37 When she came out of that room, what'd she say? 31:39 She looked at me and she goes, 31:40 you're not gonna believe this. 31:42 It's Steve Rios. 31:44 Stephen Rios, a police officer two and a half years 31:48 on the force and up and comer, 31:49 active in several police charities 31:51 with what looked like an exemplary record. 31:55 And of course, Rios was married. 31:57 His wife had given birth to a baby boy just four months 32:01 before. 32:02 Detective Short checked Jesse's arrest record. 32:06 And, yes, it was Stephen Rios who took him in and issued the ticket. 32:12 That wasn't all. 32:14 Stephen helped guard Jesse's murder scene. 32:17 When he got to the police department the afternoon when the body had been found, he saw one 32:22 of the sergeants writing Jesse's name down and he says, hey, I know that guy arrested 32:25 him about a month or so ago. 32:28 Well, the sergeant told him to go down there and identify the body. 32:30 So after identifying the body, he actually volunteered according to the supervisor to guard the crime scene. 32:38 And he would have known he shouldn't be there. 32:40 Oh, sure. Just having the relationship alone with him, he should have never been involved in the case. 32:45 It didn't mean that he killed him. 32:46 That's correct. 32:48 So Steve and Rios joined a list of people police wanted to take a hard look at. 32:53 Nobody was ruled out. 32:55 And you were preparing the background before you actually brought him in the car? 32:58 sure try to get as much information as we can to confront him with what we knew. 33:02 Detective Short figured he'd get a couple of days to gather information before Rios got 33:07 wind he was a person of interest in a murder investigation. But for the first of many times 33:15 things didn't quite work out as expected. Stephen Rios denies an affair. 33:25 When I confronted him that there was a relationship he said what sex? 33:28 You already knew that was a lie. 33:30 Yes, I did and his wife gets a visit from the police an officer of the law 33:35 He's having his house searched by other officers of the law. It was alarming for sure 33:45 Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that the new customers who bundle and save with progressives save 33:52 Hundreds because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love 33:58 Switch your home and auto to Progressive and see if you could save and keep sipping away. 34:03 Get your quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, 34:08 Affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. 34:12 All of us trans are in real danger. And whatever it is, it's closing in. 34:17 It started with just a few lost hairs here and there. 34:20 But now, more and more of us are disappearing every day. 34:23 But listen, the shedding. Pantene abundant and strong. 34:34 It's a three-step system that reduces hair loss by 85 percent. 34:39 Only the strongest will survive the shedding. 35:01 upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required, 35:06 intro rate first three months only, then full-price plan options available, 35:09 taxes and fees extra, default terms at mintmobile.com. 35:24 It was three days after the murder of Jesse Valencia. Detective John Short had just found out 35:29 that the murdered man's secret lover was an ambitious, married, up-and-coming cop named 35:35 Stephen Rios. So, next thought? The hope that this was just an affair, that the cop 35:48 was not the killer. 35:50 I mean, I wasn't personal friends with him. 35:52 I was a co-worker, knew who he was. 35:55 Nobody wants a bad cop. 35:57 Nobody wants a bad cop. 35:58 That's a perfect statement. 36:01 But just as Detective Short was trying to figure that out, 36:04 who walked in the door? 36:06 Steven Rios himself. 36:08 He just shows up, says, 36:10 I need to talk to you guys. 36:12 Steven said he'd heard rumors a police officer was involved, 36:15 so he'd come to clear things up. 36:17 said he once arrested Jesse, but that's all there was to it. 36:22 When I confronted him that there was a relationship, he said, 36:25 what, sex? And I said, yeah. And he denied it. 36:29 You already knew that was a lie? 36:32 Yes, I did. I confronted him with that lie. 36:35 He breaks down, kind of cries, says, yeah, but only once. 36:41 And you knew that was a lie? 36:42 And the problems that I was having at that point personally was, 36:45 Okay, is he upset in the crime because we've just outed him as having a homosexual relationship and he's married and got a child? 36:53 Or is he lying because he did this? 36:56 Stephen told the detective he had plenty of witnesses who could prove he wasn't anywhere near Jesse the night he was murdered 37:02 Where was he? 37:04 He clocked in at 6 p.m. That evening. It was a busy shift 37:08 He made a traffic stop. That's him on the dashcam video 37:13 Then helped out on a shooting investigation across town 37:17 Said he finished a little after 3 a.m. and joined some other officers for a beer up on 37:23 the roof of the station, then went back inside to go to the bathroom. 37:29 His entry into the building prior to his departure was at 4.37 a.m. 37:33 So that's the only thing that we can confirm without a doubt. 37:35 That's solid evidence, obviously. 37:38 But Stephen told Detective Short he didn't leave just then, but instead went back 37:42 up to the roof for a few minutes and drove out finally around 5 a.m. and then went straight home. 37:49 Talk to my wife Libby, he said. So they did. They don't announce these things, of course, 38:00 they just knock on the door. And there was Libby. Surprised? Imagine. 38:09 Most people an officer shows up at your house. You're immediately 38:12 I'm pretty high alert as one would be. 38:17 Stephen had already told Libby someone he'd arrested had been murdered. 38:21 But as for the rest of it, the affair, the fact he was being questioned as a person of 38:26 interest and a murder, she didn't know a thing. 38:29 And the cop at the door said nothing about any of that, instead. 38:34 She reassured and said, anyone that had contact with the victim, we're talking 38:40 to all of their spouses, no big deal. 38:44 So Libby thought for a minute, then told the officer that Grayson, her four month old 38:48 baby, started crying early that morning, woke her up. 38:52 I remember 5.15, I remember looking at the clock, I remember 5.15, it's in my head. 38:58 Libby didn't know, of course, had no idea how her groggy memory would be poked and 39:03 prodded and parsed, how crucially important those precise minutes would turn out to 39:08 be. 39:11 No, she just told the officer that anywhere between five and ten minutes after waking 39:16 up she was in the kitchen warming up a bottle for the baby when her husband walked in. 39:22 We made eye contact. 39:23 I think I said something like, long night, and you know, he said, yeah, and he immediately 39:31 walked to Grayson's room and picked him up, and then he handed off Grayson and I started 39:34 feeding him. 39:35 So she told the story, and the cop laughed. 39:39 She expected Stephen would come home then, but he didn't. 39:44 Instead, more cops showed up to search the house. 39:48 An officer of the law is having his house searched by other officers of the law. 39:52 It was alarming for sure. 39:57 She wondered, was her husband a murder suspect? 40:00 And he certainly searched the house as if he was. 40:03 They even examined the shower drain, looking for what, blood? 40:07 Other evidence of murder? 40:09 But the drain didn't come up with anything? 40:11 No, it didn't. 40:11 From a crime scene? 40:12 No. 40:13 No blood? 40:13 No. 40:14 No nothing. 40:16 No blood in his car? 40:17 No evidence on his clothes? 40:19 Nothing. 40:20 No sign of a struggle on Rios' body, because you looked at him, right? 40:25 Yeah, they took pictures of him and everything. 40:28 There was no injuries. 40:30 Nor could they find any possible murder weapon in his possession or in his house. 40:36 They administered a voice stress test, same one they'd given the rabbi's son. 40:41 Stephen passed. And he said, you know, they looked at everything. They cleared me as a suspect. 40:46 I'm good. So I think even though I was alarmed, I thought, gosh, this was a bad day. 40:54 Yeah, but it's, but it's done. 40:57 It's over. 40:57 Yeah, I mean I had no idea it was coming. 40:59 No, she did not. 41:04 A frightening call from Stephen Rios. 41:07 My sister-in-law ran out of the house 41:09 and she said, Steve's on the phone and he's got a gun. 41:12 She dropped it floor and, you know, she's hysterical. 41:15 And a possible motive for murder. 41:18 He said, distinctly, I'm going to out him 41:21 to the police chief. 41:22 It didn't take long for Stephen Rios' scandalous affair to hit the headlines. 41:43 There it was in the morning newspaper. 41:45 The day after he told his wife Libby he'd been cleared as a murder suspect. 41:49 His own police chief telling reporters about his personal relationship with victim Jesse 41:54 Valencia. 41:58 Back home with Libby, Stephen finally came clean. 42:03 I think his exact words were something like, what was in the paper. 42:07 He said, it's true. 42:10 Do you remember what you said in reaction to it? 42:12 I don't think I said much. 42:14 I think I was just pretty quiet 42:17 and in shock about it. 42:19 She was just 21 years old. 42:21 She just had their baby. 42:23 And then, in an instant, it dawned on her. 42:26 Everybody knows. 42:28 You know, we didn't get to 42:30 handle that the way a normal 42:31 married couple would get to handle 42:33 infidelity. 42:36 Stephen took a temporary leave of absence. Four days after the murder, he told police he was 42:41 going to visit his father in Virginia. They gave him permission to go, but to his surprise, 42:47 made it clear he wasn't out of the woods yet. He was certainly a little agitated, 42:53 and I think it was then that he really knew they were still looking at him. Something was 43:00 still going on. So he left and I went to the grocery store and when I came home 43:07 my sister-in-law ran out of the house and she said Steve's on the phone and 43:14 he's got a gun. He didn't go to Virginia. He went to a Walmart near the 43:19 airport in Kansas City, bought himself a shotgun. He was threatening to kill 43:24 himself. And I just ran in the house and grabbed the phone and said you know fight 43:31 this this is you know your son needs you fight this this is this is crazy. You 43:36 thought he'd do it. What comes with that panic? I don't know about panics right word 43:41 just sadness. Libby felt helpless. Less than 24 hours earlier her life was 43:51 full of promise and now was I just gone? She drops to the floor which I've never 43:57 seen any of my children do and you know she's hysterical. Libby's parents 44:02 Suzanne and John were there when Stephen called. And we had called the 44:07 police department on the other line and so they knew what was going on so then 44:12 they arrived and they took over talking to him. Police managed to talk some 44:17 sent into Stephen persuaded him to drive back to Susanne and John's house though 44:21 he still had that gun which is why as cops waited in the driveway they were 44:27 armed and ready just in case. To have police officers in your front yard with 44:32 guns drawn is not any part of our life so it was all pretty traumatic and 44:39 pretty overwhelming for us. Yeah we're in the back of the house waiting to 44:45 He's here gunfire. 44:47 But instead, the police led Stephen into the living room 44:51 and into John and Suzanne's arms. 44:54 And we gave him a hug. 44:56 He's part of our family. 44:58 And until that changes, that's what you do. 45:02 The respite was short-lived. 45:05 Investigators had talked to the cops, Stephen, 45:07 had joined for a beer on the roof, Night of the Murder. 45:10 And they said Stephen left the building earlier 45:12 Then the 5 a.m. time he claimed police hold him back to the station minutes mattered a lot 45:20 Now as far as what time he got home initially he said he got home around 5 25 30 45:24 That's what Libby had told the police to 45:27 So detectives wondered did Stephen have time to stop off at Jesse's apartment before he got home? 45:35 We wonder that same thing 45:36 All right, so we're leaving the police station. 45:44 First we drove from police headquarters to Jesse's house. 45:52 Now, this trip from the police station with some traffic, mind you, has taken us just 46:00 over four minutes. 46:05 Then from Jesse's house to Stephen and Libby's home. 46:08 We kept it under the speed limit, stopped at some lights along the way too. 46:14 And there is the Rio's house. 46:15 our total drive time just under 15 minutes, which leaves 20, 25 minutes for 46:24 whatever may or may not have happened. 20, 25 minutes for Stephen to confront 46:30 Jesse, then chase him maybe as far as 200 yards, choke and subdue him, cut his 46:35 throat, rush back to his car and drive home. You are content that he had enough 46:41 time to go and commit this offense. 46:43 If he got home at 5.30, yeah, I do. 46:45 5.25? 46:47 Sure. 46:48 5.20? 46:50 Titer the time guess, the harder it would be to pull it off, that's for sure. 46:53 I don't deny that. 46:55 But even if he could do it, why would he do it? 47:00 Well, maybe the answer was in those online messages between Jesse and Patrick Rogers. 47:07 He said, distinctly, I'm going to out him to the police chief. 47:12 And if Steven knew that, what would he do to stop it? 47:17 Given his suicide threat, he was taken to a mental health center for observation. 47:22 But when doctors went to check on him, he was gone. 47:27 A quick manhunt, and there he was, at the top of a nearby parking garage. 47:31 As they closed in, Steven Rios moved to the ledge. 47:35 And as television cameras were trained on him, 47:38 a police negotiator talked him down. 47:41 I just thought his behavior just reeked of guilt, 47:44 to be honest with you. 47:45 And it was just, an innocent man doesn't act like that. 47:48 Not in my opinion. 47:49 One of the common allegations people will throw at homicide 47:53 detectives is that they got tunnel vision. 47:55 As soon as that man got up on that roof 47:57 and threatened to kill himself, 47:59 after that they just didn't think about 48:01 any other possibility. 48:02 It was done. 48:03 That's not true. You know, we could have ignored the rest of the leads from there on out and said now we got our guy 48:07 But you didn't know never 48:10 In fact detective short set his boss made sure to remind the investigative team that Stephen was just one suspect among many 48:20 He used to tell us every day. Don't don't put on your blinders 48:23 Even if this guy looks like this is the person we got to still clear everybody else or not 48:28 like Ed the aspiring chef police interrogated him several times found no 48:36 motive and besides kind of felt for the guy to be honest with you a little bit 48:41 because he just wasn't an emotionally strong person at all was that enough to 48:46 clear Ed what about his alibi his tough guy roommate Eric he'd gone out that 48:52 night remember around the time of the murder so we found the individuals 48:57 that he had gone to and they confirmed that during that entire time frame we 49:01 could account for his for his whereabouts. 49:03 What about Zev, the son of Columbia's highly respected rabbi? Zev who denied he 49:09 was Jesse's lover but failed the voice stress test. Police wondered was he the 49:16 person the eyewitness had seen crying near Jesse's house? 49:20 So you took this kid's picture out and showed it to the apparent eyewitness 49:24 So what did that person say? 49:27 I think he said that he wasn't sure. 49:29 Was there a chance it was it? 49:31 I find it hard to believe. 49:32 To me, it came down to motive that I 49:35 couldn't see where there would be motive on his behalf 49:37 to do anything. 49:39 A full week into the investigation, 49:41 police did not have enough evidence 49:44 to arrest anyone for the murder of Jesse Valencia. 49:48 But that changed when Detective Short got the DNA 49:52 results from Jesse's body. 49:58 I packed up his things, sold our house, did all the things that you would do if somebody 50:04 dies. 50:04 A wife moves on, still convinced of her husband's innocence. 50:09 He wasn't covered in blood, there wasn't anything in our house, there wasn't anything in his 50:13 vehicle. 50:14 It does not make sense to me. 50:20 Investors obsess over return. 50:22 But the return that ultimately matters is what you keep after taxes. 50:26 Before selling a company, commercial property, concentrated investment, or another appreciated 50:31 asset, examine the tax structure before the transaction becomes irreversible. 50:37 Congress uses the tax code to create economic incentives for investment and growth, and 50:42 sophisticated planning can materially change the amount of capital you retain. 50:46 Taxwealth works with clients and their existing CPAs and attorneys to evaluate advanced 50:51 strategies that may reduce, eliminate, or defer taxes, depending on the facts. 50:57 In completed tax-wealth case studies, strategies have produced up to a 96% reduction in effective 51:02 tax rate and an average of 31% increase in net proceeds. Individual results vary. 51:09 Before you write a six- or seven-figure tax check, get a second opinion. 51:13 Start at taxwealth.com slash SiriusXM. 51:21 Brands are in real danger, and whatever it is, it's closing in. 51:25 It started with just a few lost hairs here and there, but now, more and more of us are 51:29 disappearing every day. 51:31 They'll have a plan, a way to stop the shedding. 51:36 Pantene abundant and strong. 51:38 Go now. 51:40 Pantene abundant and strong. 51:42 It's a three-step system that reduces hair loss by 85%. 51:46 Only the strongest will survive the shedding. 51:49 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's premium wireless is $15 a month 51:55 But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have 52:00 No stores 52:02 That means no small talk 52:04 Crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream 52:09 Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch 52:13 Up-front payment of $45 for three month plan $15 per month equivalent required new customer offer first three months only then full price 52:31 One month after Jesse Valencia's murder, Steven Rios was again being held at a secure mental 52:38 health facility. 52:40 Libby went to see him now and again, but it was over for them, and she knew it. 52:48 I packed up his things, sold our house, sold his vehicle, did all the things that you 52:55 would do if somebody dies, because it was as if that person that I knew was gone. 53:07 And then Detective Short got the DNA results. 53:11 Remember, the medical examiner sent Jesse's fingernail clippings to the lab, and under 53:17 one of them, there it was. 53:19 Just a miniscule speck of it, but unmistakable, Steven's DNA. 53:25 DNA. Problem was it wasn't the only DNA the lab found. Ed's DNA was under that same fingernail 53:33 too. We were not surprised to find Ed in McDevitt's DNA. Ed readily admitted that there was sexual 53:40 contact between him and Jesse. Steve said he had not had any contact nor had he seen 53:44 this individual since like the 28th or the 29th of the prior month. So we're talking 53:49 in a full week. 53:50 At least, yeah. 53:52 For police, the DNA results settled it. 53:56 They charged Stephen Rios with the first degree murder 53:59 of Jesse Valencia. 54:01 And 10 months later, he stood in the Columbia courtroom, 54:04 not in uniform, but in handcuffs. 54:08 The trial lawyers should read the classics, 54:11 Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, 54:13 because a good trial lawyer is a master storyteller. 54:18 So, didn't it hurt that the prosecutor brought in from a neighboring county to avoid any 54:22 whiff of partiality? 54:24 Just happened to be a novelist on the side. 54:27 His name? 54:29 Morley Swingle. 54:31 You need to make sure that every one of those jurors is confident in their soul that this 54:36 guy has proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. 54:39 Of course, Swingle told the jury about that dot of DNA under Jesse's fingernail, 54:44 but there was more. 54:45 Several of Stephen's hairs were found on Jesse's chest. 54:50 The expert said that every hair on Jesse's chest that had a root, they had tested. 54:57 They all came back being Stephen Rios DNA. 55:00 Yes, the kind of hair it was wasn't the sort that tends to just fall out. 55:07 They were limb hairs, LAMB hairs from your arm. 55:11 and here the prosecutor went out on a limb. 55:15 He argued Stephen must have rubbed off those hairs 55:18 when he used a common police chokehold 55:20 called the unilateral neck restraint. 55:23 That is how Stephen rendered Jesse unconscious, 55:27 said Morty Swingle, before killing him. 55:30 I've been a police defensive tactics instructor 55:32 for about 30 years, and I was the academy instructor 55:35 that Stephen Rios went through. 55:37 I'm going to move in and get underneath his armpit. 55:39 But this is Todd Burke. 55:42 The prosecutor called them to the stand to demonstrate the chokehold to the jury. 55:46 We asked him and Detective Short to do the same for us. 55:50 Okay, so I'm underneath his arm on this side. 55:53 I've got him locked up on this side. 55:55 And then I'm going to push my head into the back of his head and basically shut 56:00 down most of the blood supply in and out of his head. 56:03 And remember the bruises the medical examiner found on Jesse's chest and back? 56:08 If this was not done properly, or he didn't get a grip, or Jesse was able to fight his 56:12 way out of it, the first thing that people do is try to shove the person back into the 56:17 hold, or even striking this way, and that's where the bruising was. 56:23 So then he goes down on his back, throws cut at that point. 56:27 That is the theory, yes. 56:29 But cut his throat with what? 56:31 a knife just like this said the prosecutor a clip-on knife with a partly 56:37 serrated edge which just happened to be quite popular with cops the prosecutors 56:43 had Stephen lied when he claimed he never owned one multiple officers had 56:48 seen him with a clip knife and I put several of them on the stand why use 56:53 such a knife on his young lover the prosecution called to the stand one of 56:57 Jesse's close friends. 56:58 And she told the same story Jesse's online buddy, 57:02 Patrick Rogers, did. 57:04 I believe that this police officer I've 57:06 been having an affair with must be a married man. 57:09 And the next time he comes over, I'm 57:11 going to confront him about it. 57:12 And the friend testified out him to the police chief. 57:17 There it was, said prosecutor Swingle, a motive to kill. 57:22 Jesse had confronted him, and Rio's 57:24 chased him and caught him, choked him in his consciousness, 57:26 and cut his throat, and then hurried home 57:29 and got rid of the knife somewhere along the way. 57:32 But prosecutor Swingold did not persuade Libby 57:34 because she said she saw Stephen with her own eyes 57:38 when he came home, walked calmly through their front door. 57:42 And so when she was asked to take the stand 57:44 in Stephen's defense, she did. 57:48 I've seen him upset before, 57:51 where he was clearly anxious, you know, or agitated, 57:57 He was none of those things. 57:58 He wasn't covered in blood. 58:00 I know that there wasn't anything in our house. 58:03 There wasn't anything in his vehicle. 58:04 And I just do not understand how somebody could 58:09 in that timeframe, not only commit the crime, 58:11 but clean up after themselves, 58:13 not leave a trace behind, 58:15 come home to their wife like everything was normal. 58:18 It does not make sense to me. 58:20 After Libby testified, Steven did too. 58:23 He was emotional, impassioned. 58:25 Swore he didn't own the kind of knife that killed Jesse, never choked anyone. 58:30 And time discrepancy or not, he simply drove straight home that night. 58:36 Jesse's mother, Linda, didn't buy it. 58:39 He's staring at the prosecutor and trying to look him in the eye and answer his questions, 58:45 but then he averts his eyes. 58:47 And my daddy always told me that if somebody can't look you in the eye and tell you something, 58:51 then they're lying to you. 58:53 It was up to the jury now. Who would they believe? 59:02 A verdict. 59:03 There was never a doubt in my mind. 59:05 There are a lot of people that cheat. It doesn't make them a murderer. 59:24 On the third floor of the Boone County Courthouse, jurors were holed up, 59:29 deliberating the fate of disgraced cop Stephen Rios. 59:32 Hours passed. Linda and Libby waited on opposite sides of the courtroom. 59:37 There are a lot of people that cheat every day, unfortunately, but it doesn't make him a murderer. 59:46 I knew he was the one that killed him, and there was never a doubt in my mind. 59:51 And nine hours later, the jury agreed with Linda. 59:57 Stephen was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. 60:03 Libby was devastated. 60:05 the jury came back and said guilty what was that like for you I mean I don't know 60:11 there's another word for it but shock and that was when local crime novelist 60:24 Barry Bumgarner got a call from a friend on the police force she kept saying you 60:29 know you really ought to look into this this you can't make this stuff up you 60:33 just can't make this up so or on a whim than anything Barry who read about 60:38 the trial and the local paper decided to send Stephen Rios a letter. See if he'd give her 60:43 an interview. And he said, yes. 60:47 So I was having these visions of I want justice for Jesse, I'm going to interview Rios and 60:53 get Rios to confess to me. 60:55 But he didn't. Anything but. In fact, what Stephen said persuaded Barry to start all 61:02 over to investigate the facts of the case herself. 61:05 So what what is all of this here? What do we got here? This is a binder of 61:10 interviews which I also have on recorders, police reports, police reports, police 61:17 reports, police reports. Something like 400 interviews, a wealth of information 61:23 about Jesse and about Stephen that the jury mostly never got to see. And 61:29 somewhere in all that, said Barry, she saw a pattern in the lover's 61:33 liaisons. She said Stephen would usually show up at Jesse's during his shift 61:38 sometime after midnight. Never as late as the time prosecutors said he did on the 61:44 night of the murder. Why would he go up on the parking garage and have a couple 61:48 of beers and wait until 4 45 a.m. when he had never gone over there and he had 61:53 no Jesse was asleep and his wife's at home waiting for him. And remember how 61:58 Jesse talked about confronting Stephen said he'd expose him? Some of Jesse's 62:02 friends told Barry he enjoyed shocking people a bit and those stories he told 62:07 them about confronting Stephen about outing him to the police chief could 62:11 have been just that stories which Moore said Barry despite what Jesse had told 62:17 his friends she could find nothing no voicemail no text no phone call even to 62:22 prove the men talked that week at all so it wasn't like there was a phone 62:27 call that said hey you better get over here make right with this where I'm 62:32 going to out you. There wasn't any of that. So for me the motive and opportunity 62:36 it's just it's just missing. And when she talked to the jurors it did not 62:43 reassure her about their verdict. Several of the jurors, five different jurors 62:47 said well I just couldn't wrap my head around if not Rios then who. Weren't the 62:52 police right though when they said you know nobody else had a motive? I would 62:57 To say the young man with a rabbi father who didn't know his son was gay 63:03 I think you maybe had a similar motive for him 63:07 Zev the rabbi son had always denied being gay let alone sleeping with Jesse 63:13 But Barry said Jesse's friends told her he'd joked about outing Zev to his dad 63:19 So was that just a joke? 63:22 Barry wondered if Zev might have been that unidentified young man spotted crying in the street 63:27 middle of the night. 63:29 The eyewitness was shown a photograph of Zev 63:33 and said, no, I don't think that's the guy. 63:35 He has shown a high school yearbook picture 63:38 is what they showed him. 63:40 He did not look like the same young man. 63:42 I saw his picture from when he was 19, 63:44 from when he was in high school 63:46 and he looked nothing like that picture. 63:48 I asked her how many times has she interviewed Stephen? 63:52 More than a hundred, she said. 63:54 But is it possible that you've spoken to him too much, that you see the world through his 63:59 eyes maybe more than is comfortable? 64:02 I don't think so. 64:03 Do you think he's innocent? 64:05 I don't think he should have been convicted. 64:07 He won't go to innocence. 64:08 I don't think he did it. 64:11 I don't. 64:12 I don't think he had time. 64:14 That was just her opinion after all. 64:16 And then, an amazing thing happened. 64:18 Two years after Steven's conviction, an appellate court ruled that the jury should not have been allowed to hear testimony from Jesse's friend about what he had told her. 64:29 The business about outing Steven. That, said the appeals court, was hearsay. Didn't count. 64:37 Steven Rios would get a brand new trial. 64:41 Did you think they were just going to release them, let them go? 64:43 I didn't know what they were going to do. 64:45 I had so many people tell me that, oh, he'll get out of it, 64:50 because he's a cop. 64:51 He's going to get out of it. 64:52 And I said, not as long as I live, he will not. 64:57 You're going to hear that this bank committed this murder 65:01 out of lust and blind ambition. 65:03 Was Stephen Rios on trial for murder or morality? 65:07 The prosecution in this case was based around several things. 65:10 One of them was the fact that Rios lied, 65:12 lied and lied and lied about sex sex and sex the deadlines pressure the 65:25 tension you may just brush it off as stress but is your hair I got to tell 65:29 you it's eating us alive weakening our very roots breaking us apart and the 65:35 more you stress the more we slip away now please take a deep breath there's 65:40 something you can do Pantene abundant and strong system strengthens your 65:44 hair against stress. Reducing hair loss by 85%. Only the strongest will survive this 65:49 shedding. Pantene abundant and strong. 65:52 For a limited time, you can get a Big Mac Mule for just $8. That's a burger, fries, 65:58 and a drink. They don't call it an extra-value meal for nothing. Get a Big Mac Mule only 66:03 at McDonald's. 66:04 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. 66:07 Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone 66:11 can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not 66:16 just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistance assistants switch you to 66:21 Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. 66:26 Upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. 66:31 Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, 66:34 taxes and fees extra, default terms at mintmobile.com. 66:37 There was a chill in the air and a hint of some sacred thing unspoken. 66:54 The day we climbed up from the hollow to Jesse's hill, the place where he is buried on the family farm. 67:01 What did this area mean to Jesse, this hill, this spot? 67:06 This was the, he would walk out the path from our house and come out here 67:13 and climb over the fence and then go over to my mom and dad's. 67:17 Which was over that one. Yeah, over that one. 67:19 It was the place Linda came to find her courage 67:23 for the second trial of Stephen Rios. 67:26 She was gonna need it. 67:28 Yes, at A-Sex with Mr. Bronson. 67:37 Stephen Rios had a brand new defense attorney, 67:40 a man not interested in winning any prizes for sensitivity. 67:45 His name, Gilles Leonard. 67:47 I like to think I'm sort of like Jimmy Stewart 67:49 an anatomy of a murder, just a good old down home lawyer that just likes to drink down and then 67:55 and just likes to do well five people. The defense attorney faced no big surprises. 68:02 The prosecutor's case was mostly a replay of the trial three years before. 68:06 Ambitious cop, desperate to keep his secret, kills gay lover. 68:10 You're going to hear that this bank committed this murder out of lust and blind ambition. 68:16 Science, the prosecutor promised the jury would prove it. 68:20 Who else but the murderer would leave DNA under Jesse's fingernail or hairs on Jesse's 68:25 chest? 68:27 And the crime lab had unmasked who that murderer was. 68:30 The profiles from the three hairs are consistent with each other as well as with 68:35 the profile from Stephen Rios. 68:37 But, this time around, the prosecutor's case was hobbled by that appellate court ruling. 68:44 This time, the jury would not get to hear what Jesse told his friends about his plans 68:49 to expose Stephen. 68:52 And that was the motive, I believe, and so the jury didn't get to hear that the second 68:57 time around. 68:59 Still, the prosecutor drove home the essentials, a timeline that fit the murder and the 69:04 behavior of a guilty man. 69:05 That threat of suicide and all those lies. 69:10 The prosecution in this case was based around several things and one of them was the fact 69:14 that Rios lied, lied and lied and lied about sex, sex and sex. 69:21 Instead of hiding from the lies, Leonard said, so what? 69:28 He was a married man with a small baby at home having an illicit affair with a young 69:33 boy. 69:33 Well, young man. 69:34 And so, yes, your first inclination is to lie. 69:37 That doesn't make you a murderer. It makes you a liar. 69:40 One of the investigating officers said, 69:41 when he got up on that rooftop, he was going to kill himself. 69:46 Yes. 69:46 I knew then for sure he was the killer. 69:50 So apparently, God, the Holy Ghost, or Jesus Christ, 69:53 was in a police uniform and was able to look into Stephen's heart 69:56 and know that that's why he was jumping off. 69:58 The defense attorney hoped that if the jury could look past Stephen's lies in adultery, 70:03 they'd begin to see holes in the prosecution's evidence. 70:07 Like, the timeline police worked out. 70:09 Sheer fantasy, said the defense. 70:12 Look at all that he would have had to accomplish. 70:15 He would have had to chase this boy down. 70:17 I don't know whether you've been out to the scene yet. 70:18 I have. 70:19 But it's not a short little across the street. 70:21 You gotta go up and over. 70:23 He had to quote Sedum with what I used to refer to 70:25 as the secret ninja chokehold. 70:28 Execute him, get rid of the clothes, clean up. 70:30 What the defense asked the jury to do was think of the prosecution's theories as something 70:36 like a work of speculative fiction. 70:39 Consider the neighbor, said Leonard, the neighbor who said he heard a commotion in Jesse's apartment. 70:46 Do you recall telling police officers that you believe that there was any time between 70:53 3.30 and 4.30? 70:55 I gave him a guesstimate and that was what I had told them at the time. 71:01 Between 3.30 and 4.30 a.m., the defense pointed out at least four people saw Stephen drinking 71:07 beer on the police station roof, a gathering that broke up around dawn, according to this 71:14 detective. 71:14 I remember making a comment about day-breaking in the far, I guess, northeast sky. 71:21 I believe the sky started to lighten up. 71:24 But hang on a moment. 71:26 When the defense got to question the medical examiner, she told him the crime happened before 71:31 daybreak. 71:32 You believe now that the sun had not come up when Mr. Valencia had met his end. 71:40 It was dark. 71:41 That's correct. 71:43 If that was true and Stephen was on the roof until dawn, would that mean he didn't 71:47 kill Jesse? 71:49 Just as fantastical, said Leonard, was the prosecution's theory of how Stephen would 71:55 have killed Jesse. 71:57 He showed the jury that dash camp video from the traffic stop Stephen made the night of 72:01 the murder. 72:02 It may be hard to see, but the defense attorney said it showed there was no knife on Stephen's 72:06 belt. 72:07 In fact, Stephen said he never owned a serrated clip knife. 72:12 As for what he called the secret ninja chokehold... 72:16 Now, when it's done correctly, how quickly can you render a person in practice? 72:21 In about three to seven seconds. 72:25 Todd Burke had demonstrated the chokehold for the jury in the courtroom on the prosecutor. 72:31 Why use yourself? 72:33 Well, what could be more dramatic than the prosecutor's choked-in unconsciousness 72:36 right in front of the jury? 72:37 But defense attorney Leonard had his own dramatic demonstration. 72:48 He wanted the jury to see Jesse would have been able to fight back, to scratch whoever 72:54 was attacking him. 72:55 How do you do that and not leave a scratch, not leave some more skin under the fingernails, 73:00 not leave some kind of mark? 73:02 Again, there were no marks on Steven. 73:03 And of course there'd be a bit of Steven's DNA under Jesse's fingernails, argued Leonard. 73:10 They'd had sex a week earlier, sure, but maybe DNA was left over from that encounter. 73:16 Sex could explain the hairs on Jesse's chest too, he said. 73:20 The crime lab had found several hairs belonging to Steven on Jesse's comforter. 73:25 His bed, Lenin's, were days old, so he could have easily gotten those hairs rolling 73:32 around in the bed that him and Steven had rolled around in a few days before. 73:37 And there was one final piece of scientific evidence the defense wanted the jury to consider. 73:43 Remember, Steven was not the only person whose DNA was under Jesse's fingernails. 73:48 That aspiring chef, Ed McDevitt, one of the last people who had seen Jesse alive, his 73:55 DNA was there too. 73:58 And here was a central theme of the defense. 74:02 Police may have gotten the wrong man. 74:07 I know that that clock was set fast. I know that. 74:11 Libby takes the stand with a twist to her testimony. 74:15 Do you feel like you're being called a liar when you're on the stand? 74:18 Oh, I certainly think I was. 74:35 It had been harder than Linda expected to sit through another trial. 74:39 She hated listening to the lawyer's score points over her son's most intimate secrets, 74:44 words, his lovers, even his bed sheets. 74:48 I'd laugh at some of it and then I would get mad because I did feel like Jesse was on trial. 74:55 You can't say anything about it. 74:56 And you can't do anything. 74:57 You can't say anything. 74:59 Defense Attorney Gillis Leonard aggressively poked holes in the prosecution's case. 75:04 He argued Stephen was the victim of a witch hunt. 75:08 I firmly believe that the Columbia Police Department, once they focused on Steven, 75:15 they didn't even bother to go anywhere else. 75:17 Of course, the detectives took issue with that. 75:19 Remember their vow to guard against tunnel vision? 75:23 Well, that was just spin, said Leonard. 75:26 It was obvious from the way investigators had handled their search of Ed McDevitt's apartment. 75:31 Jesse's new lover, the wannabe chef. 75:33 Did you find a bag of knives in that apartment? 75:36 No, sir. 75:37 Did you just hear any? 75:38 So you didn't find a bag of knives in the apartment? 75:41 I didn't. 75:42 And yet, Ed himself said he kept the knives in his bedroom 75:46 in plain sight. 75:48 Leonard called that half-hearted, sloppy detective work. 75:52 Equally sloppy, according to the defense, 75:55 was investigators' failure to follow up 75:57 on what Ed's roommate, Eric Thurston, had told them. 76:01 Did you tell Detective John Stewart 76:12 Remember, Eric was the one who'd given Ed his alibi, said he'd seen him come home. 76:19 Nonsense said the defense attorney. 76:21 How could he? 76:22 Eric had been out on a date at the time. 76:33 I don't know at this point. 76:35 I'm not sure at this point. 76:37 I'm not. 76:37 I'm not going to give you one way or the other, I'm sorry." 76:42 The jury got to hear from Ed himself when the prosecutor called him to the stand. 76:46 If I didn't put him on, then he'd be the big phantom that the defense was trying to make 76:51 sound so terrible. 76:53 There is no video of Ed's testimony, but he told the jury he had never been violent 76:59 toward Jesse or anyone else. 77:02 So here comes this phantom, and this phantom turns out to be kind of a shy, soft, spoken 77:08 guy. 77:09 Very, very, very clean cut, shy young man who was devastated. 77:14 Ed did not agree to an on-camera interview, but he told us he did not kill Jesse. 77:19 He had nothing to do with it, and he grieves for him to this day. 77:24 But of course, there was someone else investigators had considered a person of interest, wasn't 77:30 there? 77:31 Zev, the rabbi's son. 77:34 His vehicle may or may not have been seen in the area. 77:37 Jesse's friends told me that he was breaking up with him, 77:41 and this was his kid's first gay love affair. 77:45 And he was deeply hurt. 77:48 The defense attorney grilled Zev about his relationship with Jesse. 77:52 Just to find out if it's true that Jesse was your first... 78:04 You mean my first gay friend? 78:06 No, the first time that you had a gay relationship. 78:11 No, that's not true. I never had a gay relationship. 78:14 Zev did not deny trying to call Jesse, night of his death. 78:18 You called him at 12.01. 78:22 Yes. 78:24 Then you tried again at 1.07. 78:26 Yes. 78:28 Then it's your testimony you went to bed. 78:30 Yes. 78:31 Didn't you really just drive over to Justin's apartment about 3 a.m. in the 1996 green building? 78:40 No. 78:41 Did you not get out of the... 78:47 No, I didn't do that. 78:49 So I've denied it all. 78:51 He lived at his parents' basement, and if he had taken that car out in the middle of the night, 78:55 the garage door would have gone up, they would have heard it, and, you know... 78:58 Well, how would we know if they heard it? 79:00 What, the parents were going to come in and go, 79:02 Hey on the morning of the murder our son who was having an affair with him 79:05 We heard the garage door go up and the car leave 79:08 On the witness stand Zev's mother was adamant. She swore Zev never left the house at all that night 79:21 Yes 79:23 About 130 79:24 There's always that mystery man defense 79:27 Detective John Short listened to the defense attorney call his investigation 79:32 sloppy, incompetent, blinkered. The real story he said was far from that. 79:39 This case file turned out to be almost 1,300 pages. We interviewed a lot of people. 79:45 Every lead was followed up on and completed. 79:48 Nothing and no information or evidence led us to anybody else. 79:52 But what would the jury believe? 79:54 The defense attorney had one more ace up his sleeve. 79:59 Libby. By this time, Libby was Stephen's ex-wife, 80:03 she was in a new relationship, 80:05 and she wasn't happy to be back in court. 80:08 I was angry about it. 80:10 I remember fighting with my parents about it 80:14 and just being, I was, I wanted to move on. 80:17 She told her familiar story, 80:19 waking up at 5.15 a.m. to baby Grayson's cry. 80:22 seeing her husband walk through the door without a scratch, 520 or so, then she 80:29 volunteered a detail. She had told others for years but did not bring up at the 80:34 first trial. I know that that clock was set fast. I know that. Libby testified 80:40 that Steven must have arrived home even sooner than she first told police. So you 80:46 set your own clock fast. Right. So you wouldn't be late for work. Mm-hmm. 80:50 Absolutely. 80:51 How fast? 80:51 It was, I would say, it was probably seven minutes fast, usually. 80:57 Which said the defenseman, Stephen, got home even earlier than police thought and had even 81:01 less time to commit the murder. 81:04 Prosecutor Morley Swingle was skeptical, didn't exactly accuse Libby of lying, but close. 81:12 I just wanted to point out what her previous statement had been so the jury would see 81:17 that, well, she's tried to shorten that time frame a little bit. 81:20 Do you feel like you're being called a liar when you're on the stand? 81:23 Oh, I certainly think I was. 81:25 For me, it was important to set that record straight. 81:29 Because you believe it to be true. 81:30 I 100% believe it to be true. 81:32 You don't think it's your memory as adjusting and editing? 81:36 Libby's revised timeline. 81:38 Attorney Leonard's attack on the police investigation. 81:42 Linda Valencia, grieving mother, hated it. 81:44 Stephen Rios, one's convicted cop, saw possibilities and the jury went out and closed the door. 81:56 Two families await the verdict and Stephen Rios speaks. 82:01 Some people think I might kill you, some people think I am not. 82:04 What will the jury think? 82:19 The jury will now retire to liberate Greece. 82:23 Stephen Rios watched the 12 strangers who would be deciding his fate file out of the courtroom. 82:30 jurors who had not heard his story, not from him anyway. 82:34 He had chosen not to testify. 82:37 Some people think I'm a killer, some people think I am not. 82:41 Yeah? 82:41 You know, I know I'm not.
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