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Speaker 9: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 9: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 9: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week,
Speaker 9: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 9: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 9: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 10: Good Evening, New York Times bestselling author Michael Fleeman strips
Speaker 10: away the pleasant veneer of the Silver Lakes neighborhood in
Speaker 10: California to tell a shocking story about a headline grabbing crime.
Speaker 10: Sabrina Lemon, a vivacious, blonde mother of two and part
Speaker 10: time sampleger at Costco is Handling handing out free food samples.
Speaker 10: One day when Inwok's handsome young firefighter Jonathan Hearn, shopping
Speaker 10: for the station. Their conversation leads to a flirtation that
Speaker 10: leads to a steamy affair that has them hooking up
Speaker 10: once and twice a week at her home, his home,
Speaker 10: and out in hidden spots in the vast Mojave. Sabrina
Speaker 10: finds in Jonathan's embrace the love and understanding she lacks
Speaker 10: at home. To the outside world, husband Robert is a
Speaker 10: big tattooed, teddy bear of a man, a hard working
Speaker 10: railroad mechanic. Love by all, this gregarious couple seemed matched
Speaker 10: by their love of family, friends, and good times, but
Speaker 10: the parting had gotten out of control for Sabrina. There
Speaker 10: was boozing and wife swapping in group sex. Once a
Speaker 10: turn on, it now left Sabrina feeling debased, dehumanized, spiritually adrift,
Speaker 10: Robert won't talk about it, consumed by his work, boat,
Speaker 10: truck and social life with Jonathan's showering Sabrina with poetry, gifts,
Speaker 10: religious insights, and of course, illicit sex. A devious plan
Speaker 10: is thatched. One August night, Robert Lemon is found dead
Speaker 10: of two gunshots in a pool of blood. False leads
Speaker 10: send police into dead ends until a tip arrives from
Speaker 10: a most unexpected place for Sabrina. It's a stunning betrayal
Speaker 10: that hurdles the case back to a perfect little place
Speaker 10: in the desert. With informants, undercover cops, and wire taps,
Speaker 10: investigators discover a romance fueled by lies and dangerous fantasies.
Speaker 10: But are Sabrina and Jonathan merely covering up an affair
Speaker 10: or are they hiding a conspiracy that led to murder.
Speaker 10: The book they were featuring this evening is Better Off Dead,
Speaker 10: a sordid true story of sex, sin and murder, with
Speaker 10: my special guest, journalist and author Michael Fleeman. Welcome to
Speaker 10: the program, and thank you very much for a Greenness interview.
Speaker 10: Michael Fleeman, Well, thank you for having me, Thank you
Speaker 10: very much, very fascinating story and enjoyed this book immensely.
Speaker 10: Let's start with how you came to want to write
Speaker 10: about this particular case. How did you come to be
Speaker 10: in a position to write this book Better Off Dead?
Speaker 11: Well, this was a story that took place on the
Speaker 11: fringes of the Los Angeles suburban area. And when Robert
Speaker 11: Lamone was murdered into Hatchipee, California, it made the local
Speaker 11: news down here. I'm in Los Angeles, and I followed
Speaker 11: it off and on, and it began as one of
Speaker 11: those tragic stories. Who done it? Why would this very
Speaker 11: nice man with a loving wife and a good family
Speaker 11: be murdered? Developments arrived, it became clear that there was
Speaker 11: much much more going on behind the scenes. And I'm
Speaker 11: always fascinated by stories about places we think we know,
Speaker 11: you know, the nice little neighborhoods, and the charming communities
Speaker 11: and the happy families. And when you sort of peel
Speaker 11: back those layers, you find all kinds of secrets. And
Speaker 11: in this case, it all added up to murder.
Speaker 10: Now you start this story Dahachipie, California and a man
Speaker 10: named Sean where on Sunday, August seven, twenty fourteen, he
Speaker 10: writes for an overnight shift. These are twelve hour shifts,
Speaker 10: and he senses something's wrong right away. Can you tell
Speaker 10: us set the stage of what happens that day on
Speaker 10: August seventeenth and what does he discover and set this
Speaker 10: story in motion.
Speaker 11: Sean is a mechanic for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Speaker 11: Railroad and his place of work is a workshop in Tahatchepee,
Speaker 11: which is in the high desert southern California, about an
Speaker 11: hour outside of Bakersfield, on the way to the little
Speaker 11: town of Mahave. It's a very busy stretch of track.
Speaker 11: Trains that come from the east. This is their sort
Speaker 11: of last stretch before they end up in the West
Speaker 11: and in Bakersfield. And Sean is arriving for his overnight shift,
Speaker 11: and he's what they call a rapid responder. When the
Speaker 11: train breaks down, he gets in his truck and he
Speaker 11: goes out and fixes it, and he is relieving the
Speaker 11: day shift guy, who is Robert Lamone. And when Sean
Speaker 11: arrives at the workshop, he sees Robert's truck there. He
Speaker 11: sees he sees that little office has been ransacked and
Speaker 11: as he looks on the other side of the truck,
Speaker 11: he sees Robert lyin there dead and it looks like
Speaker 11: there's a loon to his head, And of course Shawn
Speaker 11: is horrified and terrified, and he calls nine one one.
Speaker 10: Now you see he calls nine one one and they
Speaker 10: tell him to maybe he doesn't sure if he's if
Speaker 10: he's dead or not, so they say maybe try some
Speaker 10: CPR and then they tell him to get out of
Speaker 10: the building. So now so, now the police arrive. What
Speaker 10: you talk about current County Senior Department Deputy Marcus Moncur
Speaker 10: arrives first. Or what do they find in their cursory
Speaker 10: investigation right at the garage? What can they deduce immediately
Speaker 10: or not deduce?
Speaker 11: They look inside the garage and they see some of
Speaker 11: the same stuff that Shaun Waer saw the coworkers saw.
Speaker 11: They see this little office has been rand and sacked.
Speaker 11: It looks like somebody has gone through the gone through
Speaker 11: the drawers. Computer is missing. They then see the body
Speaker 11: on the ground. It's it's lying next to the front
Speaker 11: wheel of the work truck. They see some kind of
Speaker 11: a wound to the head. It could be a gunshot,
Speaker 11: it could be a blow to the head. As they
Speaker 11: search more, they see some footprints behind the building in
Speaker 11: the in the dirt, and as they get a search
Speaker 11: warrant and look inside the garage, they find a bullet
Speaker 11: shell slug rather that looks like it hit the ceiling
Speaker 11: lamp and then fallen down onto the ground. And finally
Speaker 11: they find some blood under the body, and they find
Speaker 11: some blood spatter behind the body on a little refrigerator.
Speaker 10: Now, you talk about a detective Meyer introduced this central
Speaker 10: figure in this book from Bakersfield from a detective Meyer.
Speaker 10: But you also say that they look at this what
Speaker 10: looks like a burglary with some suspicion, don't they.
Speaker 11: Yeah. They One of the other cops who arrived is
Speaker 11: a veteran robbery detective, and it just it appeared to
Speaker 11: him that the ransacking of the office was staged. He
Speaker 11: had no real evidence of that, only just kind of
Speaker 11: a gut feeling. Just looked kind of haphazard. It looked
Speaker 11: like they were trying to make it they or the
Speaker 11: singular person, was trying to make it look like a
Speaker 11: burglary that ended a murder. And he had his suspicions
Speaker 11: right off the bat.
Speaker 10: Now when they talked to Sean, where they're just getting
Speaker 10: a sort of an indication, and because they know this
Speaker 10: is the crime scene and it's a workplace, and they
Speaker 10: asked him that if Robert usually worked in to Hatchepee,
Speaker 10: and so he tells them that not necessarily. So how
Speaker 10: do they get around to in short order finding out
Speaker 10: who he is and where his wife is and speaking
Speaker 10: to her? So what's the process that they go after
Speaker 10: speaking to Sean and gaining just some basic information about
Speaker 10: Robert's whereabouts? Likely and why? Tell us how they proceed?
Speaker 11: Sure, Sean has a little bit of information. Robert actually
Speaker 11: is not the normal day shift guy there. He was
Speaker 11: filling in for somebody else, and he normally worked two
Speaker 11: hours away in a town called Barstow, and so it
Speaker 11: was sort of a last minute thing that he was
Speaker 11: even there, Which is the first sort of twist. If
Speaker 11: Robert was targeted in this, you know, it had to
Speaker 11: be somebody who knew his schedule because he wasn't normally there,
Speaker 11: or if it was random, it would have been random.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 11: Sean tells them what little he knows. They're not close friends,
Speaker 11: but he tells them, you know, he's a nice guy.
Speaker 11: Everybody likes Robert. He has no drug problem that he
Speaker 11: knew of no financial problems and and and seemed very
Speaker 11: happily married and had a couple of kids. So they
Speaker 11: get this sort of brief biologic uh, this sort of
Speaker 11: brief background on Robert. Uh. They also find his cell
Speaker 11: phone in the office, and on the cell phone are
Speaker 11: these frantic uh text messages from his wife, you know,
Speaker 11: when he coming home or worried about you. And and
Speaker 11: that's how they ultimately are able to find his wife.
Speaker 10: Now there's Sabrina, Robert, Robert's wife, and her sister. So
Speaker 10: how does Sabrina find out about this? And when do
Speaker 10: police first talk to her? And what does her reaction
Speaker 10: tell us about that?
Speaker 11: Well, Sabrina is at home now. Robert lives, oh gosh,
Speaker 11: about a two hour drive away from the crime scene.
Speaker 11: You know, part of this book is having to understand
Speaker 11: the vast nature of the landscape here. This is all
Speaker 11: one county, current county, but it's it's about the size
Speaker 11: of Connecticut, you know. It's it's a big, wide open
Speaker 11: space and there's not much in between things. So Robert,
Speaker 11: you know, he drove a couple of hours to get
Speaker 11: They lives in a high desert town called Silver Lakes.
Speaker 11: It's a development and it's about two hours north of
Speaker 11: Los Angeles, and so Sabrina is at home. This was
Speaker 11: a Sunday. She's getting her kids ready. They have two
Speaker 11: young kids, a son and a daughter, and she's getting
Speaker 11: them ready for school. The next day, they go to
Speaker 11: church and near the end of the day she's calling
Speaker 11: and texting Robert. She talked to him briefly that day
Speaker 11: when he was out on a call fixing a train,
Speaker 11: and you know, she then he didn't call back, and
Speaker 11: normally he calls from the road on his way home,
Speaker 11: and she started texting and saying, you know, we're worried
Speaker 11: about you. And you know, she's becoming increasingly frantic. According
Speaker 11: to her family, friends come over, sister comes over to
Speaker 11: the house to kind of comfort her. She tries to
Speaker 11: put the kids to bed, but you know, that doesn't work.
Speaker 11: And finally some people from the railroad, a couple of
Speaker 11: supervisors from the railroad come by, and they're the ones
Speaker 11: who inform her that her husband is dead. And they
Speaker 11: don't tell her what the cause is. She gets the
Speaker 11: impression it's an accident, some kind of a horrible accident,
Speaker 11: but she's really left in the dark. And it's not
Speaker 11: until about one o'clock in the morning. This all happened
Speaker 11: around five six seven, one o'clock in the morning. I
Speaker 11: mean that the coroner calls her and says, yeah, your
Speaker 11: your husband's been killed. And then shortly ifact she's literally
Speaker 11: on the phone with a coroner when the detective, Detective
Speaker 11: Meyer calls her and he tells her he's a homicide
Speaker 11: detective and starts answer asking her pointed questions and and
Speaker 11: that's when she finds out that it appears her husband's
Speaker 11: been murdered.
Speaker 10: What was her demeanor as reported by Detective Meyer in
Speaker 10: response to that news, Well, Meyer.
Speaker 11: Actually recorded the phone call so we could all hear
Speaker 11: her demeanor, and she sounded tired and confused and frantic.
Speaker 11: She was trying to answer the detective's questions. There seem
Speaker 11: to be a lot going on at the house in
Speaker 11: the background. You know, she kept saying, what happened, what
Speaker 11: happened to my husband? So her reaction, you know, to
Speaker 11: my mind and and definitely to detective Myers, was very appropriate.
Speaker 10: Now, the the railroad is basically quite good, and there's
Speaker 10: an insurance policy, but how do police respond to this crime?
Speaker 10: And obviously they know they have to speak to the
Speaker 10: people involved. So when do police first speak with Sabrina.
Speaker 11: Well, they talked to Detective Meyer talks to her on
Speaker 11: the phone that night at one o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 11: It's a very short phone call, about fifteen minutes, and
Speaker 11: you know, they just get the basic information about his schedule,
Speaker 11: the sort of the things we just went over, you know,
Speaker 11: was at his normal schedule? Where was he normally based?
Speaker 11: Meyer asked, you know, one of these awkward routine questions,
Speaker 11: but you know, do you have any problems in your marriage?
Speaker 11: And she says no, no, no, does he have any enemies? No, everybody,
Speaker 11: everybody loved Robert. It was a brief conversation and you know,
Speaker 11: Meyer just said, okay, here's my number. Call me. You know,
Speaker 11: we'll up later at a better time and do this
Speaker 11: in person. Meanwhile, police look into Robert's background that they
Speaker 11: look into his schedule, they talk to his you know,
Speaker 11: a number of his coworkers, and they're trying to find
Speaker 11: out it doesn't look like, aside from a laptop being missing,
Speaker 11: anything much has been stolen. There's not much there anyway.
Speaker 11: There's these big wrenches and things that used to fix trains,
Speaker 11: but no money is missing. There would be no money
Speaker 11: there to be missing. And all the friends and co
Speaker 11: workers of Robert, to a man describe him as a
Speaker 11: very very nice, friendly guy, you know, always a smile
Speaker 11: on his face, happy at work, happy in his marriage,
Speaker 11: and they're really perplexed as to what happened. The railroad
Speaker 11: also has its own little police department, and they are
Speaker 11: conducting an investigation and coordination with the sheriff's department. And
Speaker 11: Robert not only had life insurance, but you know, there's
Speaker 11: a million to two million dollars settlement that is likely
Speaker 11: in the event that the railroads somehow at faults and
Speaker 11: his death. So they take this very seriously and they
Speaker 11: they issue a big reward, you know, for any information
Speaker 11: leading leading to why he was killed. But you know,
Speaker 11: the early part of the investigation turns up a lot
Speaker 11: of zeros until they go into the office of the
Speaker 11: manager of the industrial park with this workshop is based
Speaker 11: and they ask me, you know, do you have any
Speaker 11: security footage around the grounds? And they say yes, and
Speaker 11: they review that security footage and they get their first
Speaker 11: lead in the case.
Speaker 10: Now, what is that first lead that they get? What
Speaker 10: do they see? What can they doce from there? And
Speaker 10: how do they go from that image that they get
Speaker 10: from one of the surveillance cameras, so it's a camera.
Speaker 11: There's cameras all over the facility, but this one's posted
Speaker 11: right near the entrance, and it's in the direction in
Speaker 11: the direction of where this workshop is, which is near
Speaker 11: the back of the facility. And what they see at
Speaker 11: about five o'clock PM, which is, you know, roughly the
Speaker 11: time that Robert might have been killed. Sean Waer arrives
Speaker 11: about six thirty quarter seven. They see a person walking
Speaker 11: with a limp kind of in the direction of the
Speaker 11: murder scene. It's grainy, the person is far away, looks
Speaker 11: kind of bulky, probably is a man. But they see
Speaker 11: this person walking in the direction of the workshop, and
Speaker 11: this gives police and the railroad is something they can
Speaker 11: release to the public, which they do very quickly. The
Speaker 11: next couple of days they release this footage of this
Speaker 11: limping person who is their person of interest.
Speaker 10: You will also talk about a secret witness program where
Speaker 10: anonymous tip line and they're waiting for leeds as well.
Speaker 10: And then you talk about the doctor Robert Whitmore, the
Speaker 10: forensic pathologist, and his deductions. After his examination.
Speaker 11: What they find is the well, as they're as they're
Speaker 11: getting tips from the release of this video, they conduct
Speaker 11: the autopsy doctor Whitmore, and it's a rather unusual, uh,
Speaker 11: rather unusual findings. He confirms that Robert Lemone was shot
Speaker 11: to death large caliber forty four forty five. The bullets
Speaker 11: traveled in kind of an upward trajectory, almost like the
Speaker 11: person was on the ground shooting up toward Robert, who
Speaker 11: was kind of one. The bullets traveled to different parts
Speaker 11: of his body, won the final worst one to ended
Speaker 11: up in his brain, and they were able to take
Speaker 11: the slug out. But both of the shots would have
Speaker 11: been fatal, and they were shot at very very close range,
Speaker 11: maybe even point blank. So you know, this tells the
Speaker 11: police that perhaps the killer is somebody Robert knew, or
Speaker 11: somebody he allowed to get close to him, or the
Speaker 11: killer somehow snuck up by crawling and then shot upwards.
Speaker 11: But the going theory is that this might be somebody
Speaker 11: he knew or suspected he knew. And you combine that
Speaker 11: with the fact that the killer, if Robert himself was targeted,
Speaker 11: had to have known as schedule, suggests that this might
Speaker 11: be somebody with a personal motive to kill Robert and
Speaker 11: so that's what they gleaned from the autopsy.
Speaker 10: Now you talk about detective Myers arise from Bakerfield, Bakersfield
Speaker 10: one hundred and twenty five miles away to Silver Lakes,
Speaker 10: this little suburb, little community, and there are thirty people
Speaker 10: at this home. So tell us what he encounters and
Speaker 10: experiences with thirty people friends and relatives gathered around Sabrina
Speaker 10: at the home.
Speaker 11: Sure, this is about three or four days after the murder,
Speaker 11: and he had done the quickie phone interview, and Meyer
Speaker 11: and his partner now are going to do it an
Speaker 11: in person an interview with Sabrina. And the county seat
Speaker 11: of Kerrent County is in Bakersfield, and the Silver Lakes
Speaker 11: is way across the desert. Go up a mountain and
Speaker 11: down a mountain, and all the way across here's the
Speaker 11: Air Force base with a space Shuttle land. I mean,
Speaker 11: this is like way out in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 11: and he's driving, driving, driving, driving for hours and they
Speaker 11: come across Silver Lakes. Now, this is a very unusual
Speaker 11: community in southern California. You know, once you get out
Speaker 11: of La and you're headed toward Las Vegas, it's all
Speaker 11: desert and if you turn off the freeway and you
Speaker 11: go thirty or forty miles off the freeway on the
Speaker 11: way the Las Vegas, you end up in this town
Speaker 11: of Silver Lakes, and it's as if somebody had plopped
Speaker 11: a little planned community in the middle of the desert.
Speaker 11: Is charming, little, you know, kind of neighborhood, family, neighborhood.
Speaker 11: There's a golf course, there's two lakes, and people go boating,
Speaker 11: and there's good schools and you know, a little shopping village,
Speaker 11: and it's it's kind of a surreal scene, this development.
Speaker 11: And Meyer and his partner drive up and they drive
Speaker 11: up to the lamoone house and it's very nice house. Again,
Speaker 11: it's it's near a golf course, it's near the lake,
Speaker 11: it's across the street from the elementary school. And they
Speaker 11: get there and the house is just full of people
Speaker 11: and these are friends and family and they're all there,
Speaker 11: presumably to support Sabrina during this difficult time. And so
Speaker 11: Meyer's handing out business cards and no one seems to
Speaker 11: know anything other than Robert's a nice guy. And they're
Speaker 11: very happily married. And they go off into they go
Speaker 11: off into a quieter bedroom, and this is when the
Speaker 11: first sort of real interview takes place.
Speaker 10: She is asked about the marriage. She's asked about infidelity,
Speaker 10: but she talks about as a common may maybe even
Speaker 10: lets it slip about talking about partying. And then he
Speaker 10: notes her demeanor and makes a conclusion. Tell us about
Speaker 10: some of these questions and what he concludes afterwards.
Speaker 11: Right, well, the question has become more pointed now, you know,
Speaker 11: it's been a few days. The shock, while still real,
Speaker 11: is not immediate, and it's it's just routine questioning. And
Speaker 11: I asked myer, I said, you know, why did you
Speaker 11: ask these questions? Say, we ask everybody what's what's going on?
Speaker 11: And if a husband dies, they ask the wife. You know,
Speaker 11: are there any problems in the relationship? And she said no, no,
Speaker 11: we have a very happy, happy marriage. You know, any
Speaker 11: infidelity And she said no, no, nothing that I know about.
Speaker 11: And then she kind of back pedals a little bit.
Speaker 11: She said, but you know, we do we do like
Speaker 11: to party, you know, we like to have a good time.
Speaker 11: You know, we like to have a few drinks and
Speaker 11: and make some noise. You know, this is the Silver
Speaker 11: Lakes is a is a resort kind of community. There's
Speaker 11: a there's a lake with powerboats on it, and there's golf,
Speaker 11: and you know, it's a fun place to live. And
Speaker 11: so you know, uh, Myers is a little, a little
Speaker 11: not suspicious, but he's taking note. It was the first
Speaker 11: sort of crack in the demeanor. And and and.
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Speaker 11: Excuse me. Then Meyer throws her a curve. Sorry, I
Speaker 11: spent the week in Las Vegas and I came back
Speaker 11: with a flu. Then he throws her a curve. He
Speaker 11: tells her, well, you know, we looked at your husband's
Speaker 11: phone and we found topless photos of women. Can you
Speaker 11: please explain that to us? And she is shocked, she
Speaker 11: is stunned, and she's obviously very very upset, and she says, well,
Speaker 11: maybe some of them are me, maybe some of them
Speaker 11: are friends. And that's when she talks again about the
Speaker 11: partying and about how they have such a good time.
Speaker 11: And you know, Meyer's leaving this interview thinking, Okay, maybe
Speaker 11: not everything is perfect as all the coworkers have said
Speaker 11: in this relationship. Maybe there's some room here to explore
Speaker 11: deeper in their relationship.
Speaker 10: He also notes that she talks about he asked her
Speaker 10: if if it was an open relationship, and he asked
Speaker 10: if there was any jealousy, and so to those questions,
Speaker 10: she responded seemingly sort of appropriately right with no.
Speaker 11: Yeah, you know, they see these naked pictures and you
Speaker 11: have to understand and this is what you know. Again,
Speaker 11: we could hear the conversation. He recorded the conversation, and
Speaker 11: Meyers almost embarrassed to be asking these questions. His partner
Speaker 11: is embarrassed to be asking these questions. A lot of guys,
Speaker 11: even nice guys, have been known to go on the
Speaker 11: internet and download some stuff they shouldn't be downloading him
Speaker 11: maybe that's what ended up on his phone. You know,
Speaker 11: they just had to ask, and they had to ask,
Speaker 11: you know, do you have an open marriage? Because if
Speaker 11: they did, that would that would inject a new motive
Speaker 11: into all this, which is a jealous husband.
Speaker 10: Right now, you say, August eighteenth, there's a gunsmith in
Speaker 10: to Hatchipee and he calls police a little bit after
Speaker 10: this August eighteenth to report what he experienced. We got
Speaker 10: to remember that we haven't mentioned that the slug it
Speaker 10: seems was a forty five It seemed to be a
Speaker 10: forty five caliber handgun ammunition from there. So tell us
Speaker 10: about the gunsmith and Tahachipie and what he says to
Speaker 10: police and what they have.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean Justine Meyer literally as he's driving away
Speaker 11: from silver Lights after talking to Sabrina and he's had
Speaker 11: he's had these suspicions about her, kind of worried. I'm
Speaker 11: thinking I got to circle back on this relationship. He
Speaker 11: gets a call in the car and this smith has emerged.
Speaker 11: And the gunsmith, who who lives and works not far
Speaker 11: from the crime scene, says that somebody had come into
Speaker 11: his shop right after the murder and dropped off a
Speaker 11: big caliber handgun and said I need the firing pin. Replaced,
Speaker 11: and the gunsmith thought that was kind of odd because
Speaker 11: he looked at it and the firing pin seemed fine,
Speaker 11: and you know, then he starts talking to this customer. Well,
Speaker 11: it turns out the customer works in the same complex
Speaker 11: that Robert was killed, and so, you know, Meyer is
Speaker 11: really elated. At this point. Police are, Okay, we've found
Speaker 11: the murder weapon. This is their first big break, and
Speaker 11: he almost forgets about everything that Sabrina said about topless
Speaker 11: photos and party and all that.
Speaker 10: Now they how do they proceed with this to rea
Speaker 10: that this is not their their man.
Speaker 11: Well, they interview the gunsmith. They get the story that
Speaker 11: I just went over and he's kept the gun, and
Speaker 11: they seize the gun and they run a background check
Speaker 11: on the customer. They have the customer's name, and it
Speaker 11: turns out the customer has a son who has an
Speaker 11: arrest warrant out for him. Fell in the arrest warrant,
Speaker 11: and so they're pretty convinced, pretty convinced they've got their guy.
Speaker 11: So they bring the gun back to the lab to
Speaker 11: run a ballistics check and that's where they fire bullet
Speaker 11: out of the gunsmith gun and match it to the
Speaker 11: bullet that was taken out of Robert's body, and unfortunately
Speaker 11: they did not match. That was not the gun used
Speaker 11: to kill Robert Lamone.
Speaker 10: The other thing that led them to believe that they
Speaker 10: might have their man was that this man had a limp.
Speaker 10: And then they find another man and it has a
Speaker 10: limp exactly. They go back tell us about this again.
Speaker 11: A couple interesting I mean, the gunsmith guy, the customer
Speaker 11: had a limp, and you know, he didn't quite match
Speaker 11: the little bigger than the guy in the video, but uh,
Speaker 11: you know, he still had a limp. And then they
Speaker 11: find another person who has spotted walking across a field
Speaker 11: toward toward the crime scene right around the time of
Speaker 11: the murder, who also had a limp. And he was
Speaker 11: kind of a local guy who had some problems. It
Speaker 11: looked like he'd been drinking a little bit. But once
Speaker 11: they interviewed him and they're thinking of themselves, you know,
Speaker 11: one of the odds, we have two people now with limps,
Speaker 11: and a guy in the video of the limp. They
Speaker 11: started interviewing him, they realize that he had been injured
Speaker 11: in a car accident and he was actually in the
Speaker 11: hospital at the time all this was going on, so
Speaker 11: he could in a minute. So there are two really
Speaker 11: good leads evaporate within days of each other, and now
Speaker 11: they're back at square one.
Speaker 10: Now you talk about then literally almost right after this,
Speaker 10: Meyer gets a call again. Detective Meyer gets a call
Speaker 10: from someone he had passed his card to at Sabrina's
Speaker 10: that day where the thirty people were there. And so
Speaker 10: tell us who he gets a call from. And what
Speaker 10: does that detective hear from him?
Speaker 11: Yeah, so you know, just by routine he handed out
Speaker 11: all those business cars. He even know who all those
Speaker 11: people were. And one of them, his name is Jason Bernatine.
Speaker 11: And Jason is the best friend of Robert Lamone and
Speaker 11: his wife Kelly, is the best friend of Sabrina Lamone.
Speaker 11: These are the closest people to the Lamones. And Jason
Speaker 11: has a story to tell. He says that they suspected
Speaker 11: the Bernantine suspected that, oh, a year or so earlier,
Speaker 11: Sabrina was having an inappropriate relationship with a younger man
Speaker 11: she had met at work. Now, Sabrina worked at Costco,
Speaker 11: as you had mentioned, She's one of those ladies who
Speaker 11: hands out the free food samples. And one day this guy,
Speaker 11: his name's Jonathan hearn had come into the Costco to
Speaker 11: get supplies. Now, Jonathan worked as a fireman just like
Speaker 11: Jason did. Gets a little confusing, but the two of
Speaker 11: them kind of knew each other through fire department circles.
Speaker 11: They work at different departments, different station houses. But Robert's
Speaker 11: best friend Jason sort of knew who this Jonathan was.
Speaker 11: And it seemed like this Jonathan guy was paying a
Speaker 11: little too much attention to the married Sabrina lamone that
Speaker 11: was appropriate. And several months after they had they had
Speaker 11: met at the Costco, this Jonathan shows up at at
Speaker 11: at a restaurant where Robert and Sabrina and Kelly and
Speaker 11: Jason all their friends were having a big party. It
Speaker 11: was a March madness around the football college football playoff,
Speaker 11: and you know, this Jonathan I just shows up and
Speaker 11: you know, he wraps his arm around Sabrina and they
Speaker 11: pose for a photo and it just seemed a little fishy.
Speaker 11: But then you know, Sabrino was a very very gregarious woman.
Speaker 11: She was very friendly, She was a hugger and a kisser,
Speaker 11: and you know, they didn't make too much of make
Speaker 11: too much of this, but and this is all stuff
Speaker 11: that Jason is telling the detective, and Jason then relates
Speaker 11: that not long after that, Jason is working on his
Speaker 11: house with Robert one day and Jason gets a phone
Speaker 11: call and it's Jonathan Hearn and he wants to talk
Speaker 11: to Robert. And Jason's like, what, what the heck? Why
Speaker 11: are you? You know what's going on here? Well, Robert
Speaker 11: just happened to be there. He hands the phone to Robert,
Speaker 11: and Robert Lamone and this young Jonathan Hearn, he's about
Speaker 11: twenty years old, have a very intense phone conversation. Jason
Speaker 11: can't hear what's going on, but but you know, it
Speaker 11: doesn't look good. And then Robert hands the phone back
Speaker 11: to Jason, and Jason's like, man, you know what was
Speaker 11: up with that? And he said, look, it's it's taken
Speaker 11: care of. It's over. It turns out that Robert had
Speaker 11: seen some text messages on Sabrina's phone from this Jonathan
Speaker 11: and they had gotten into a big fight, and Jonathan
Speaker 11: had had had called to apologize for at least text
Speaker 11: messages were you know, you're beautiful and you're wonderful, and
Speaker 11: Robert and his wife got into a horrible argument and
Speaker 11: and and she promised, you know, that there was nothing
Speaker 11: going on. He was just a close friend and and
Speaker 11: I won't talk to him again. And and and then,
Speaker 11: as Jonathan claims, he was reaching out to apologize to
Speaker 11: Robert for sending these text messages. And and so, you know,
Speaker 11: time had passed, and Jason and Robert, Sabraina and Kelly
Speaker 11: and that whole group there in Silver Lakes, they sort
Speaker 11: of forgot about Jonathan Herney. He faded into the distance,
Speaker 11: and whatever was going on between Sabrina Jonathan appeared to
Speaker 11: be over. And then after Robert's murder, Jonathan calls Jason again,
Speaker 11: and this time it's another long, weird, rambling apology. He
Speaker 11: just he'd heard about the murder and he just felt
Speaker 11: so badly about that time he had sent those text
Speaker 11: messages and was paying too close attention and to Sabrina
Speaker 11: and just forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. And you know,
Speaker 11: Jason just thought it was so strange and the conversation
Speaker 11: was so weird that he had to tell the police
Speaker 11: detective about it, Like, I don't think there's anything here,
Speaker 11: you know, I don't think Jonathan's this nice guy. I
Speaker 11: can't imagine he'd be involved. And I know Sabrina's not involved,
Speaker 11: but I just I can't let it go. And he
Speaker 11: passes on this whole strange story to the detective.
Speaker 10: Now you say that Jason told he told everything about
Speaker 10: this meeting. Did he also tell him about what they
Speaker 10: saw in twenty fourteen after they thought that this whole
Speaker 10: thing had died down, Well, Kelly one day walks into
Speaker 10: Costco Pharmacy.
Speaker 11: Yeah. So after they talk to the detective, the detective
Speaker 11: sort of deputizes Jason and Kelly. It makes them unofficial investigators,
Speaker 11: and he says, you know, why don't you keep an
Speaker 11: eye on Sabrina. You know, just let's see what's going
Speaker 11: on with her. This is after the murder. Now keep
Speaker 11: in mind, Kelly is Sabrina's best friend, their hairdresser, their confidants,
Speaker 11: their kids play together, they travel together, you know, birthdays
Speaker 11: and Christmas and dress up parties are Halloween. I mean,
Speaker 11: she's very, very close to Sabrina. But at the same time,
Speaker 11: she just Sabrina's been acting a little strange after the murder,
Speaker 11: and not just because her husband's been murdered, and so
Speaker 11: admire's insistence, Kelly and Jason kind of keep their eye
Speaker 11: on Sabrina. Now Sabriana just lives down the street. They
Speaker 11: all sort of work in the same area. And one
Speaker 11: day they go into Jason and Kelly go to Costco
Speaker 11: where Sabrina works, and Jason has an injury, says Kelly,
Speaker 11: you go in. He had to pick up some some medication.
Speaker 11: And Kelly goes into the costco and who does she
Speaker 11: see but Sabrina, her best friend, and Jonathan. Hearn the
Speaker 11: two of them together walking down an aisle in the store,
Speaker 11: and you know, she's just stunned. This is not long
Speaker 11: after Roberts murder. What's she doing with this guy again?
Speaker 11: It just really upsets her. She pays for her purchase
Speaker 11: and she runs out of there. She's just really mad
Speaker 11: and upset. And they relate this to Detective Meyer.
Speaker 10: Now what she also does is happens to go by
Speaker 10: the neighborhood, especially after this spots certain vehicles first it's
Speaker 10: a truck. Tell us what she does, what she sees,
Speaker 10: and then what she sees the next day and in
Speaker 10: her I guess as being enlisted unofficially to help the police.
Speaker 10: What does she see and what does she yeah?
Speaker 11: So Kelly is sort of accidentally on purpose swinging by
Speaker 11: Sabrina's house again. They lived just down the street from
Speaker 11: each other, and she sees a motorcycles, kind of a
Speaker 11: vintage looking motorcycle parked at the house one day, and
Speaker 11: then another day she sees a truck, big diesel truck
Speaker 11: parked in the driveway, which is not unusual, this is
Speaker 11: people in this area drive trucks. But then she sees
Speaker 11: the truck there the next morning, So whoever's driving that
Speaker 11: truck had had spent the night it appears, and Kelly
Speaker 11: says to Sabrina, whose truck was that? And she gives
Speaker 11: the name of some guy, a friend of theirs they
Speaker 11: used to know, and I was just just a friend
Speaker 11: of mine. And Kelly does not believe Sabrina. She is
Speaker 11: really starting to suspect that that Sabrina is hiding something,
Speaker 11: you know, between the Jonathan sighting at Costco and this
Speaker 11: truck and who's this, who's this the motorcycle? And then
Speaker 11: one day and keep in mind, as only one little
Speaker 11: road in one little road out of Silver Lakes, and
Speaker 11: you know, it's either Kelly or Jason see that same truck,
Speaker 11: and they could swear that Jonathan was driving that truck.
Speaker 11: So now Jason and Kelly formerly best friends of Sabrina Lamone,
Speaker 11: are are really starting to suspect that maybe maybe she
Speaker 11: has something or at least knows something about her husband's murder.
Speaker 11: Keep in mind, there are no other leads the police
Speaker 11: have gotten nowhere in this case.
Speaker 10: You also talk about something that's amazing as well, very visual.
Speaker 10: Jason runs into Sabrina and the children and after a
Speaker 10: short bit of conversation, what do the children say to Jason?
Speaker 10: What do they mentioned?
Speaker 11: I think they mentioned their friend Jonathan, and the children
Speaker 11: know who Jonathan is. And now Jason's got just shivers.
Speaker 11: It's like, wait a second, could this be more than
Speaker 11: Sabrina just running into Jonathan at Costco? Is he now
Speaker 11: part of their lives?
Speaker 10: Now you talk about Kelly is now active or proactive,
Speaker 10: and she and Sabrina go for a walk. This is
Speaker 10: in September, near the end of September. They're confidence, like
Speaker 10: you say, but does the conversation ever come around to
Speaker 10: anything other than Robert and any mention of Jonathan whatsoever?
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean Kelly asks her about it, and actually
Speaker 11: asked Sabrina a couple of times and says, you know
Speaker 11: what's going on here? And and Sabrina's demeanor is defensive,
Speaker 11: and she's like, look, you know you can't tell me.
Speaker 11: You know, you can't tell this guy who he can
Speaker 11: see and who he can't see. And basically, you know,
Speaker 11: butt out of my business. And and this is stunning
Speaker 11: to Kelly. They had always been closed, they'd always confided,
Speaker 11: they'd always trusted each other, and and Sabrina's given her
Speaker 11: the brush off.
Speaker 10: Now Meyer Meyer does his due diligence and he shows
Speaker 10: up that the Bernatines with Detective Kimmel. And what information
Speaker 10: does he get from extensive questioning of these people.
Speaker 11: Yeah, well they get the stuff that I had gone
Speaker 11: over before. They get a more detailed picture of Jonathan Hearn,
Speaker 11: apparently trying to first meeting Sabrina many months earlier, showing
Speaker 11: up at this at this gathering at the restaurant, trying
Speaker 11: to implicate himself into their social circle. You know, say, hey,
Speaker 11: you guys are have a good time up there in
Speaker 11: Silver Lakes by the lake and the golf course, you know,
Speaker 11: invite me over some time. And they thought that was
Speaker 11: kind of strange. You know. They get information about the
Speaker 11: truck and the motorcycle. They they Kelly writes down the
Speaker 11: licensed plates, and they come back as Jonathan Hearns and
Speaker 11: and then then Jonathan sends this long, weird, rambling letter
Speaker 11: to Jason. Again the gist of it and has some
Speaker 11: kind of religious overtones, but the gist of it is,
Speaker 11: you know, please, you know, forgive me for for you know,
Speaker 11: uh my inappropriate actions, you know, when Robert was still alive,
Speaker 11: and I feel terrible about it. Life is short, and
Speaker 11: you know, they're they're getting you know, they're just they're
Speaker 11: just getting this very strange vibe from Jonathan hearn And
Speaker 11: then with Sabrina acting so strange and the two of
Speaker 11: them apparently hooking up. Now, now meyer is is really
Speaker 11: really suspicious. And you combine this with Sabrina's comments earlier
Speaker 11: about yeah, we liked the party and have a good time,
Speaker 11: but denying that she had any infidelity in her marriage,
Speaker 11: and this is starting to look a lot like infidelity.
Speaker 11: So now we've got the beginnings of a potential love triangle.
Speaker 11: And if Sabrina was involved with Jonathan, perhaps they wanted
Speaker 11: Robert out of the picture.
Speaker 10: Now you talk about the DMV records that they look up,
Speaker 10: shows that this Jonathan has got to afford diesel pickup
Speaker 10: and a Yamaha motorbike. So from that they can proceed
Speaker 10: and they they start looking at Jonathan's cell phone records. Yeah,
Speaker 10: and at this current county address. You talk about, well,
Speaker 10: tell us about the incredible amount of medications from April
Speaker 10: to October, and tell us a little bit about this
Speaker 10: how they came about to be able to think that
Speaker 10: they could phone and not be the records not be traceable.
Speaker 11: Sure, they the information from the Bernantines gives police probable
Speaker 11: cause to subpoena phone records, Jonathan's phone records. And when
Speaker 11: you subpoena phone records, all you get is you know
Speaker 11: which number called which number, how long the phone call lasted,
Speaker 11: and whether any media was transferred, whether a photo was
Speaker 11: sent or a video or whatever. And what police find
Speaker 11: is an enormous amount of communication. But between Jonathan Hearn
Speaker 11: and Sabrina Lamone in the months before the murder up
Speaker 11: till about I guess April April before the murder. Now,
Speaker 11: for somebody who claims that you know she has no infidelity,
Speaker 11: no problems in amice, you know this was I mean,
Speaker 11: we're talking hundreds, perhaps thousands of communications between them and
Speaker 11: multimedia exchanges and you don't know what it is, but
Speaker 11: that suggests they're sending each other photos and videos. And
Speaker 11: then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, Robert,
Speaker 11: I mean sorry, Jonathan's communication to Sabrina's phones ends in April,
Speaker 11: and Jonathan now has thousands of communications with some other
Speaker 11: phone number and a new phone number, and police look
Speaker 11: up that numbers, like who's he calling now? And I
Speaker 11: mean we're talking in April, May, June, July, August. The
Speaker 11: communications with this phone on the day of the murder,
Speaker 11: around the time of you know, hours before the murder,
Speaker 11: hours after the murder, and then in the weeks after that,
Speaker 11: there's all the what's this mystery his phone call, this
Speaker 11: mysterious phone, it's not you know, listed to anybody. Well,
Speaker 11: that means it's one of those pays you go burner phones.
Speaker 11: All of a sudden, in April, the April before the
Speaker 11: August murder, Jonathan starts communicating with somebody using a burner phone.
Speaker 11: It's starting to look like whoever he's communicating with, and
Speaker 11: they have their suspicions it's somebody they're trying to hide
Speaker 11: from police.
Speaker 10: Now they have a warrant to wiretap Jonathan's cell phone.
Speaker 10: This is November seventh. So in that surveillance of those
Speaker 10: what do they discover? And again, all of these things
Speaker 10: proceed to another further warrant, But tell us what they
Speaker 10: determined from that. I know they sort of have the
Speaker 10: gist of it, but what do they further have as
Speaker 10: evidence as a result.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so all of these, all of these phone calls
Speaker 11: suggest communication between Jonathan and Sabrina before, during, and after
Speaker 11: the murder. This gives them enough to get a wire tap.
Speaker 11: Now wiretap means, as everyone knows, you can listen to
Speaker 11: the actual phone calls. You don't just get a record,
Speaker 11: You can listen and starting in November twenty fourteen August, September,
Speaker 11: October November, just a few months after the murder, police
Speaker 11: are able to listen in on what Jonathan and Sabrina
Speaker 11: are actually saying to each other. It's a major operation.
Speaker 11: It's very hard to do a wire tap because you
Speaker 11: have to listen and be ready to listen twenty four
Speaker 11: hours a day. You never know what people are gonna call.
Speaker 11: And now the investigation takes a very dramatic turn and
Speaker 11: they can actually listen to Sabrina and Jonathan hearn talking
Speaker 11: to each other about the death of her husband. And
Speaker 11: these are tapes that were played in court and that
Speaker 11: I listened to. And what you have right off the
Speaker 11: bat are two people acting very very suspiciously. People worried
Speaker 11: about what about what other people are saying, worried about
Speaker 11: how it might look if anybody ever found out they
Speaker 11: were communicating. And it turns out from these wired tats,
Speaker 11: these are two people who are deeply, deeply, deeply in
Speaker 11: love with each other. That this was a relationship that
Speaker 11: began before the murder and has now flourished after the murder.
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Speaker 11: A talk on and on and on about their love
Speaker 11: for each other and how much they need each other,
Speaker 11: and a lot of it is intertwined with with talk
Speaker 11: of religion and biblical passages and and and what God
Speaker 11: would think about their situation and and you know, it's
Speaker 11: where the title of the book better Off Dead comes from.
Speaker 11: At one point, Sabrina says, you know, it's probably probably
Speaker 11: better that that Robert died. If he ever found out
Speaker 11: about our affair, or if we ever got divorced, it,
Speaker 11: it would just crush him. And you know, the gist
Speaker 11: of it is, maybe he is better off dead. And
Speaker 11: this is just stunning to police.
Speaker 10: As a result of this wire tap too. It looks
Speaker 10: like Jonathan after she talked to Detective Myers, she's on
Speaker 10: the phone, that Jonathan telling them about what she had
Speaker 10: learned from Detective Myers or what Detective Myers had said.
Speaker 10: He suspects right along, right from the beginning, and it's
Speaker 10: in hidden his dialogue that he may believe that he
Speaker 10: doesn't want to say too much because he thinks the
Speaker 10: phones may be tapped. Now, with that very interesting, I
Speaker 10: never heard this term before. The detective says, well, why
Speaker 10: don't we tickle the wire? What does he mean by that?
Speaker 10: And how do they tickle the wire?
Speaker 11: Well, even though even though Jonathan and Sabrina are acting suspicious,
Speaker 11: even though they're they're expressing their love and making no
Speaker 11: secret of their relationship, they never admit, never admit that
Speaker 11: they murdered or conspired to murder Robert. And at times
Speaker 11: they even yeah, like you said, they raise suspicions that
Speaker 11: maybe someone's listening in on their phone. So and then
Speaker 11: they'll make kind of cryptic no, we'll talk about this later,
Speaker 11: you know, off the phone. But there's nothing damning, you know,
Speaker 11: slam dunk admissions in these things. Just a lot of smoke,
Speaker 11: but not a lot of fire. And so, yeah, there's
Speaker 11: a phrase called tickle the wire. And what happens is
Speaker 11: Meyer's listening to all this stuff. So he decides he's
Speaker 11: going to inject information into into these people's lives that
Speaker 11: will that will affect the way they talk to each other.
Speaker 11: He's gonna goose them a little bit, He's gonna he's
Speaker 11: gonna poke and prod them a little bit. And so
Speaker 11: he starts telling uh Sabrina things that aren't true. Uh.
Speaker 11: Meyer calls Sabrina and she's very friendly on the phone,
Speaker 11: and Meyer's very friendly on the phone. He says, yeah,
Speaker 11: you know, I think I think we have a DNA sample.
Speaker 11: You know, I think I think we got it from
Speaker 11: a drop of sweat. You know, this is all BS,
Speaker 11: but he's trying to see what Sabrina's reaction will be,
Speaker 11: because if there's a DNA sample, that means they could
Speaker 11: figure out who the killer was. The killer might have
Speaker 11: sweated while he was shooting Robert, and Jonathan being a fireman,
Speaker 11: you know, his information might well be on file somewhere
Speaker 11: or they can get it. So after Meyer tells Sabrina
Speaker 11: that we have this DNA sample, what does Sabrina do?
Speaker 11: She gets on the phone with Jonathan and relates everything
Speaker 11: immediately to him that the detective had just told her.
Speaker 11: So it only increases the suspicion that they're conspiring or
Speaker 11: at least talking. They just look a lot more guilty there.
Speaker 11: They're clearly in this whole enterprise together.
Speaker 10: Interesting too, at the same time that Jonathan's thinking he's clever,
Speaker 10: but yet still I racked with guilt, it seems, but
Speaker 10: still thinking he's clever because as part of his paramount training,
Speaker 10: he's also taking arson investigation, and part of that has
Speaker 10: included his basic criminal investigation. So he thinks he has
Speaker 10: a basic understanding and it's just combined with his paranoia.
Speaker 11: Yeah, you know, Robert, I mean Jonathan Rather. He grew
Speaker 11: up in a very religious household. He was homeschooled in
Speaker 11: a Christian Christian school. His mother was his teacher all
Speaker 11: through schooling. He very steeped in all things religion. And
Speaker 11: his conscience is really starting to get to him now.
Speaker 11: In the tapes, it's all about the affair of the
Speaker 11: affair of the affair. He doesn't say anything about murder,
Speaker 11: but his conscience about sleeping with the widow of this
Speaker 11: guy is really starting to get to him and he's
Speaker 11: starting to unravel at the same time. Yes, he is
Speaker 11: a fireman. He went through he's training to be an
Speaker 11: arson investigator. He has some information about DNA investigations. You know,
Speaker 11: he's he's he's no dummy. He's trying to figure out
Speaker 11: and in his conversations with Sabrina, you know, like what
Speaker 11: does this mean and what do they have? And they
Speaker 11: you know, they start kind of strategizing about what she
Speaker 11: should and should not tell police.
Speaker 10: And what is there again? You talked about the DNA
Speaker 10: because they're tickling the wire, They talk about the DNA.
Speaker 10: They also talk about the beginning of what they said was, oh,
Speaker 10: we think that this might not be ever solved. This
Speaker 10: looks like a dead end, and so that makes Jonathan suspicious.
Speaker 10: But what as they put on the pressure, what seems
Speaker 10: to get to both of them as they proceed with
Speaker 10: this and tighten their grip on and trying to get
Speaker 10: to the actual truth.
Speaker 11: Right, Well, a couple of things. First, they Meyer bring
Speaker 11: Sabrina into Bakersfield for another in person interview, and this
Speaker 11: causes a lot of concern between Sabrina and Jonathan. And
Speaker 11: again they talk for hours about what she should say,
Speaker 11: what she shouldn't say, and YadA, YadA, YadA. But the
Speaker 11: breaking point comes when and keep in mind this is
Speaker 11: over a series of weeks, but Meyer just keeps ratcheting
Speaker 11: up the pressure, he keeps feeding new information, and parallel
Speaker 11: to all this, more security footage is being pulled and
Speaker 11: Meyer just on a lark thing. So now, what's halfway
Speaker 11: between Tahatchipee and Jonathan Hearn's house. Well, it's this little
Speaker 11: truck stop in the middle of the desert. Let's let's
Speaker 11: see if anybody stopped there. Well, sure enough, security footage
Speaker 11: sees a guy on a motorcycle that looks very much
Speaker 11: like Jonathan's motorcycle go into a little mini mart there
Speaker 11: to buy some gatorade. The guy very suspiciously leaves his
Speaker 11: helmet on. But there's all this footage and the timing
Speaker 11: works out perfectly, the exact amount of time, you know
Speaker 11: that Jonathan could have ridden this motorcycle from the crime
Speaker 11: scene to this truck stop. It all matches up. And
Speaker 11: at the same time they find out from another nearby
Speaker 11: business they get more security footage. Again they see a
Speaker 11: figure that looks like the limping guy on a motorcycle
Speaker 11: going back and forth, so you know, it's all starting
Speaker 11: to look like Jonathan. And the breaking point the tickle,
Speaker 11: where the tickling becomes the strangling of the wire, is
Speaker 11: when Meyer shows some of the security footage from the
Speaker 11: truck stop of the guy on the motorcycle to Sabrina.
Speaker 11: He texts it to her and then he says to her, Yeah,
Speaker 11: we got this anonymous tip that we should be looking into.
Speaker 11: Somebody named John jo n Jonathan spells his name without
Speaker 11: the H, and you know, do you know any John's
Speaker 11: out there? And she's like, well, he worked with a
Speaker 11: guy named John Justice, and there might be another John,
Speaker 11: but she doesn't mention Jonathan Hearn. Now she and Jonathan
Speaker 11: Hearn are on the phone and they're going crazy, absolutely crazy.
Speaker 10: Now, how does it come that she gets arrested before
Speaker 10: we talk about you know, we're just starting to get
Speaker 10: into the bizarre elements of this.
Speaker 11: Well, you know, it reaches the point where you know,
Speaker 11: she's lying through her teeth to Meyer. Of course she
Speaker 11: knows that John. You know, she's sleeping with him, he's
Speaker 11: playing with her kids, he's over at the house. They've
Speaker 11: got hundreds of hours of phone call. They have all
Speaker 11: this sort of conspiratorial talk between the two of them.
Speaker 11: She lied about the not having an affair. You know,
Speaker 11: it's really starting to look like, you know, that she's
Speaker 11: that she's covering up something. And so you know, at
Speaker 11: the same time, they have not interviewed Jonathan. They just
Speaker 11: only listened to him on the phone. It's gotten to
Speaker 11: the point where they think they have all they're going
Speaker 11: to get from the wiretap, so they arrest them both
Speaker 11: on the same day.
Speaker 10: Now, surprise about what does Jonathan do we talk about again?
Speaker 10: This was incredible, This, I would say unscrupulous attorney. Here,
Speaker 10: this Campbell comes forward for Jonathan. So tell us how
Speaker 10: that case proceeds against Jonathan before we see the development
Speaker 10: that surprises a lot of people regarding Sabrina.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so he Jonathan hires a very good attorney name
Speaker 11: you know, I've just forgot his first name, Campbell in Bakersfield.
Speaker 11: He's top flight attorney. And this is somebody who's a
Speaker 11: friend of a friend of the families. He gets a
Speaker 11: really good defense attorney, and Jonathan, unbeknownst to the public,
Speaker 11: has been so wrecked with guilt and feels so terrible
Speaker 11: and feels that he has sinned so badly that he
Speaker 11: wants to confess to the murder right off the bat.
Speaker 11: And he wants to stand up in front of the
Speaker 11: judge and said, look, I you know, I shot him,
Speaker 11: I shot him. I was in love with Sabrina. And
Speaker 11: his attorney he says, no, no, no, no, let's not do
Speaker 11: that just yet. Now, that's not unscrupulous. That's you know,
Speaker 11: a lot of clients want to confess to things, or
Speaker 11: they will confess to more than what they really did
Speaker 11: or whatever. It's up to the state to build a
Speaker 11: case against a defendant. And you know, let's see what
Speaker 11: they have. Let's see what they really have on you
Speaker 11: before you go and start confessing to things. And all
Speaker 11: for all Campbell knows is, you know, his client's nuts,
Speaker 11: you know, so he's like, let's just let things kind
Speaker 11: of let's just let things kind of run its course.
Speaker 11: And so in the meantime, his attorney is sort of investigating,
Speaker 11: and this is you know, months now, we're passing after
Speaker 11: the arrests, and his attorney and their investigator go to
Speaker 11: Jonathan's house and they're kind of poking around to see
Speaker 11: what he has and what he has kind of locked
Speaker 11: up there is not good. They find a flash drive
Speaker 11: that has some photos that Jonathan had taken when he
Speaker 11: had swung By the swung By the murder scene earlier
Speaker 11: and kind of a you know, a reconnaissance mission. They
Speaker 11: eventually find other incriminating, potentially very incriminating evidence at the
Speaker 11: house that Jonathan's telling about. Now there's attorney client privileged,
Speaker 11: so you know, if the lawyer just puts the evidence
Speaker 11: back and this is stuff. Keep in mind, Jonathan's house has
Speaker 11: been searched, but Jonathan knows where he's hiding this stuff.
Speaker 11: And you know, as long as the lawyer puts it back,
Speaker 11: he's under no ethical obligations to pass on incriminating information. Fact,
Speaker 11: he's under ethical obligations not to pass on incriminating information
Speaker 11: about his client. So yeah, he's a little cagey about it.
Speaker 11: But it's starting to dawn on Jonathan's client that, yeah,
Speaker 11: he is guilty as sin. It's going to be really
Speaker 11: hard to avoid, you know, at the very least life
Speaker 11: without possibility of parole.
Speaker 10: Now, at the same time or soon after, there's a
Speaker 10: surprise in regards to the arrest of Sabrina. Tell us
Speaker 10: what happens and why people are surprised. Tell us some
Speaker 10: of the details.
Speaker 11: Well, Sabrina is arrested the same time that Jonathan is.
Speaker 11: They're both jails nearby, they're both supposed to have their
Speaker 11: both supposed to have their arrayments on the same day.
Speaker 11: And you know, Sabrina is interrogated and I'm maybe I'm
Speaker 11: not answering question, but she's interrogated by a number of
Speaker 11: different cops. I mean, really raked over the coals and
Speaker 11: in two different you know, two different stations, and overnight
Speaker 11: and she finally talks to Mire again, and you know,
Speaker 11: she kind of sort of reluctantly says, Okay, you know,
Speaker 11: I you know, she finally admits that she had this
Speaker 11: affair with him. With Jonathan, she continued used to deny
Speaker 11: that she was involved in the murder. She says, yes,
Speaker 11: they were conspiratorial on the phone, but they were trying
Speaker 11: to cover up an affair. She was very embarrassed and
Speaker 11: thought it would look really bad if people knew about it.
Speaker 11: And you know, finally, she sort of reluctantly says, yeah,
Speaker 11: I guess maybe near the end, I did sort of
Speaker 11: think Jonathan might have had something to do with it,
Speaker 11: but I didn't. I just refuse to believe it. I
Speaker 11: loved him so much. He seems so nice, and you know,
Speaker 11: it doesn't play super well with the cops. They present
Speaker 11: this information to the DA. The DA says, hold on
Speaker 11: to Jonathan, but let Sabrina go.
Speaker 10: Now, you talk about what Sabrina does. We talk about
Speaker 10: the three hundred thousand dollars. You didn't mention that other
Speaker 10: settlement from the railroad itself. But she moves because there's
Speaker 10: a bullying of her children, and she's life talking.
Speaker 11: Yeah. Life becomes unbearable for Sabrina. After she's released from
Speaker 11: jail and you know, again, this is a very small,
Speaker 11: isolated town and one school. Everyone knows everybody. But she
Speaker 11: just can't take it anymore. She's pursuing claims against the
Speaker 11: railroad that's not really going anywhere, and then she finally
Speaker 11: moves to Cameron, near the coast outside of Los Angeles.
Speaker 10: Now, meanwhile, you talk about someone from Robert's family communicating
Speaker 10: with Jonathan via a letter in prison. Yeah, what do
Speaker 10: they ask him and what do they basically get him
Speaker 10: to start thinking about seriously.
Speaker 11: Well, Jonathan has a lot of time to think. And
Speaker 11: you know, one of the things that Jonathan knew about Sabrina,
Speaker 11: and we haven't talked about it yet, but one of
Speaker 11: the reasons Sabrina was so unhappy in her marriage to
Speaker 11: Robert is one of the big secrets Silver Lakes is
Speaker 11: that she and Robert used to be swingers, old fashioned
Speaker 11: Playboy channel swingers, and they would wife swap with a
Speaker 11: spouse swap with another couple, and you know it, at first,
Speaker 11: Sabrina really kind of liked it, as Sabrina was a
Speaker 11: big drinker and they would party, and you know, but
Speaker 11: after a while she got tired of it, but Robert didn't,
Speaker 11: and she kept feeling like he was pressuring her into
Speaker 11: this lifestyle and she just she felt dehumanized and objectified.
Speaker 11: But Robert didn't want to talk about it. He doesn't
Speaker 11: want to talk about He just want to go, you know,
Speaker 11: play in his boat. And it's one of the reasons
Speaker 11: why Sabrina was so attracted to Jonathan. He was this,
Speaker 11: you know, boy scout. He was this very religious young man.
Speaker 11: He was, you know, squeaky clean, nothing, nothing bad about
Speaker 11: him at all. But Jonathan knew this about her her
Speaker 11: past life. And one of Robert's sisters starts sending letters
Speaker 11: to Jonathan in jail, and she referred to it as
Speaker 11: poking the bear. And what happened after Jonathan was arrested
Speaker 11: and Sabrina was released is that Sabrina starts seeing one
Speaker 11: of her old swinger pals again, this guy who used
Speaker 11: to be in this swinger circle with him. You know,
Speaker 11: she just dropped Jonathan like a bad habit. And if
Speaker 11: they did, you know, murder Robert in a conspiracy, Well,
Speaker 11: Jonathan's taken the fall and Sabrina is off swinging again.
Speaker 11: So so one of Robert's sisters happens to pass on that.
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, Sabrina has seen so and so again, you know,
Speaker 11: and you know how much this played into Jonathan's psyche
Speaker 11: will never know, but it probably played a little bit
Speaker 11: of a role. And Jonathan's now taking kind of a
Speaker 11: whole new look at Sabrian Lamont, and.
Speaker 10: He's also taken a whole new look at the idea
Speaker 10: of confession. And you talk about some of the players
Speaker 10: involved in this as well, if I believe, if I'm correct,
Speaker 10: Campbell shared something with his client that helped him in
Speaker 10: this case. They helped each other in this case because
Speaker 10: of that background. Tell us about that.
Speaker 11: Now, Well, Campbell is his lawyer, like Jonathan, had been homeschooled,
Speaker 11: and his lawyer was very religious. They would pray together,
Speaker 11: pray for each other, and so his lawyer, his lawyer
Speaker 11: understood sort of the the desire, the deep genuine desire
Speaker 11: by Jonathan to obtain grace and forgiveness. Yet at the
Speaker 11: same time, under the law, you're guilty, and you know,
Speaker 11: you know you're innocent until proven guilty being a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 11: So you know, these sort of religious feelings about having
Speaker 11: to confess and come clean with God conflicts with the
Speaker 11: idea that you're innoc until proven guilty. You just shut
Speaker 11: up until you know they make you go to prison. So,
Speaker 11: you know, the lawyer really understands, really understands what's going
Speaker 11: through Jonathan's head right now and this conflict between the
Speaker 11: sort of spiritual and worldly issues. The lawyer also gets
Speaker 11: wind that Robert's family, weirdly, is not that as upset
Speaker 11: with Jonathan as they are with Sabrina. Remember Sabrina's off
Speaker 11: She's in Camerillo, this beautiful little coastal community, playing with
Speaker 11: their friends, you know, totally totally free as a bird.
Speaker 11: They they think that Sabrina put Jonathan up to this,
Speaker 11: and they kind of let it slip that, Look, you know,
Speaker 11: we're not as mad at you Jonathan as we are Sabrina.
Speaker 11: So you know it wouldn't it wouldn't be bad for
Speaker 11: us if you cut a deal as long as Sabrina
Speaker 11: got punished.
Speaker 5: M hmm.
Speaker 10: So he is, Campbell agrees and sets up to negotiate
Speaker 10: a deal because there wasn't much you know, he was
Speaker 10: charged for a conspiracy murder is some very heavy charges.
Speaker 10: So he had to agree to something very very important,
Speaker 10: which is a complete, full, truthful confession. And what was
Speaker 10: the deal he was offered for this he.
Speaker 11: Was given a good deal. The DA really wanted to
Speaker 11: get Sabrina. The family, Robert's family really wanted to get
Speaker 11: Sabrina so much so that they were willing to make
Speaker 11: what would later be called the deal with the devil,
Speaker 11: and that was Jonathan. And they were gonna offer him,
Speaker 11: and I can't remember his twenty or twenty five years,
Speaker 11: twenty five thank you, twenty five years in prison and
Speaker 11: before he can make parole in exchange for it's like
Speaker 11: a voluntary manslaughter, not even a murder, not even a
Speaker 11: murder plea as long as he said everything he knew. Now,
Speaker 11: keep in mind, Campbell knows. Campbell knows that there's all
Speaker 11: this evidence still at Jonathan's house. Jonathan lives in this
Speaker 11: pig sty of a house, and he's got all this
Speaker 11: stuff socked away that the police don't know about. They
Speaker 11: searched the house, but they didn't find it. You know,
Speaker 11: he my cops don't have the gun. They don't have
Speaker 11: anything really linking Jonathan, you know, physically to the murder
Speaker 11: except for his suspicious behaviors. So you know, Campbell's gonna say, look,
Speaker 11: we will tell you where all this stuff is so
Speaker 11: that you can solve this case once and for all.
Speaker 11: Plus Jonathan and will agree to testify against Sabrina and
Speaker 11: say that she was just as much a part of
Speaker 11: all this as he was put him up to it,
Speaker 11: that she wanted Robert dead just as much. And in exchange,
Speaker 11: we will take twenty five years in prison. Now that's
Speaker 11: a long time, but Jonathan's in his twenties, early twenties.
Speaker 11: He will have a lot of life left after he
Speaker 11: gets out of you, a man of his in his fifties.
Speaker 11: If he takes this deal, and the lawyer talks to Jonathan,
Speaker 11: and Jonathan agrees.
Speaker 10: And you talk about that when they speak to him,
Speaker 10: he really does talk. They say, he talks and talks
Speaker 10: and talks. And he also tells him about something that
Speaker 10: there later results in other charges about another attempt at murder.
Speaker 10: Tell us a little bit about.
Speaker 11: Jonathan's the man who finally and yeah, get all this
Speaker 11: off his chest. And he also tells them that this
Speaker 11: wasn't the first time they attempted to kill Robert. They
Speaker 11: were going to poison him by lacing his Noah Wafer pudding,
Speaker 11: which was his favorite dessert, with this cyanide trioxide. And
Speaker 11: and Jonathan is able what he was going to make
Speaker 11: the pudding and then Sabrina was going to give the
Speaker 11: pudding to Robert. Last minute, they call off the idea,
Speaker 11: but Jonathan's able to point a lot of evidence, point
Speaker 11: them to a lot of evidence, the vile of the poison,
Speaker 11: the silencer that was used in the killing. That remember
Speaker 11: that bulky clothing that the person was wearing on the
Speaker 11: security video. He shows me that is, you know, all
Speaker 11: kinds of all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 10: He also shows him the silencer for the weapon.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it's a silencer he made himself. He tells him
Speaker 11: where to find that.
Speaker 10: You talk about dramatic opening of the trial now September eleventh,
Speaker 10: twenty seventeen, and you talk about the da Smith talking
Speaker 10: about rob Robert being removed as husband to be replaced
Speaker 10: as father to their two children. This was their plan
Speaker 10: and their purpose and her attorney's Richard Terry, and condition
Speaker 10: of this deal is that he testifies against a trial.
Speaker 10: Tell us how this proceeds, and as you do some
Speaker 10: of the more interesting moments during this trial.
Speaker 11: Sure, what's interesting is that even though Sabrina stood to
Speaker 11: get millions of dollars, that was all theoretical, you know,
Speaker 11: as if she successfully sued the railroad. The motive here
Speaker 11: was never really alleged to be money. Primarily it was
Speaker 11: just to get Robert out of the way, to be
Speaker 11: replaced by the nicer, cleaner, more religious and hern Jonathan
Speaker 11: would then become the father to the children and they
Speaker 11: would live happily ever after up there in the desert.
Speaker 11: And so the trial faced, you know, dramatic kind of
Speaker 11: showdown between these former lovers who were so close and Jonathan.
Speaker 11: Well before that, you know, Kelly Bernatine takes the stand,
Speaker 11: Jason Bernatine takes the stand, you know, the best her
Speaker 11: best friends set there in court and said, you know,
Speaker 11: we think you're a we think you're a killer. It was,
Speaker 11: it was heartbreaking. And and then Jonathan takes the stand.
Speaker 11: Over several days of testimony, and it goes over in
Speaker 11: excruciating detail, how they had this affair before the murder,
Speaker 11: how they had the affair after the murder, and how
Speaker 11: they plotted to kill Robert. And I think the most
Speaker 11: chilling day of the trial was was when Jonathan talks
Speaker 11: about how he went to the railroad show up and
Speaker 11: he had the gun with the silencer. It was in
Speaker 11: a backpack and he was wearing an old man's mask,
Speaker 11: and he walks up to Robert. And but right before that,
Speaker 11: Jonathan had to get his courage up and he actually
Speaker 11: prayed to God for strength to kill this man. And
Speaker 11: he walks into the garage. He's wearing this mask. He's
Speaker 11: got the gun in a backpack, and it was kind
Speaker 11: of down at his side, and the gun either misfired
Speaker 11: or he fired it too soon, and that sort of
Speaker 11: explains why the bullet went up, because the gun was
Speaker 11: down low and it fired through the backpack and puts down,
Speaker 11: puts down Robert, and he says, I thought I heard
Speaker 11: a noise from Robert. So he goes back and delivers
Speaker 11: the coup of garage shot to Robert just to make
Speaker 11: sure he dies, and flees the scene. And you know,
Speaker 11: all along he says, you know, Sabrina knew about every
Speaker 11: single aspect of this.
Speaker 10: What was Sabrina's reaction. I know you talk about that
Speaker 10: her she was well certainly not flamboyant at trial before this,
Speaker 10: but what what was her reaction to that testimony from Jonathan?
Speaker 11: Yeah, she was. Now keep in mind, Jonathan was an
Speaker 11: odd duck and he was weirdly robotic on the witness
Speaker 11: stand and he had intellectualized a lot of this, and Sabrina,
Speaker 11: you know, did not react emotionally very much. I didn't.
Speaker 11: I never saw her cry. I never you know, she
Speaker 11: was shake her head, she would roll her eyes, but
Speaker 11: she didn't, you know, even even hearing this just horrible testimony. Uh,
Speaker 11: it just it just never seemed to elicit much of
Speaker 11: an emotional reaction from her, and the jury jury noted that.
Speaker 10: What was the key point in Jonathan's testimony sort of
Speaker 10: the again the death punch will will say or death yeah,
Speaker 10: death strike that he gave in his testimony.
Speaker 11: I you know, I think it was the cumulative effect,
Speaker 11: but it was it was really talking about why they
Speaker 11: wanted Robert dead, and just how and how cold it was,
Speaker 11: and just how they had so rationalized and justified everything
Speaker 11: by saying he would be better off dead. You know,
Speaker 11: it's probably probably better for Robert that he's out of
Speaker 11: the way. You know, he'd be so upset if if
Speaker 11: we ran off together. It's probably better even for him
Speaker 11: that he would be dead. And that was another point
Speaker 11: that the jurors clung to.
Speaker 10: It's rare, but defendants usually don't testify. They get advice
Speaker 10: from their attorney. Did Saverena testify?
Speaker 11: She did, and you saw why defendants don't usually testify.
Speaker 11: She was terrible on the stand. She was emotionless. She
Speaker 11: couldn't answer questions, just simple questions. She kept saying, well,
Speaker 11: it's kind of hard to explain. It's kind of hard
Speaker 11: to explain. It's like, well, if there was ever a
Speaker 11: time to explain, now is it? You know she was
Speaker 11: facing not twenty five years maximum, but twenty five years
Speaker 11: to life. She made a very bad impression on the
Speaker 11: witness stand. She was not very emotional. She couldn't really
Speaker 11: explain why she constantly lied to police. She can't say, well,
Speaker 11: it just would have looked really bad if people knew
Speaker 11: about our affair. Well, people did know about their affair,
Speaker 11: and besides, after their friends were swingers, so you know,
Speaker 11: what would they care? She just made a very very
Speaker 11: bad impression on the witness stand.
Speaker 10: Do you think Richard Terry had much choice with this though?
Speaker 10: Given the overwhelming evidence, now that Jonathan was going to
Speaker 10: testify and all of the again you say circumstantial, but
Speaker 10: a mountain of circumstantial evidence and inference, and like common sense,
Speaker 10: people would no doubt want.
Speaker 11: To I do think, well, there's two issues. I do
Speaker 11: think he had a choice. Keep mind, in California, as
Speaker 11: in other states, it's up ultimately up to the defendant
Speaker 11: whether to testifies. Not a lawyer, certainly, but I do
Speaker 11: think he had a choice, and I think he made
Speaker 11: the wrong one. It was a circumstantial case. Never in
Speaker 11: hundreds of hours of wire taps did she ever admit
Speaker 11: to killing her husband, or conspiring to killing or even
Speaker 11: knowing that Robert Jonathan killed him. It looked bad, it
Speaker 11: looked bad, it looked terrible. But that's the basis of
Speaker 11: a reasonable doubt case. You know, didn't have the slam dunk.
Speaker 11: This is the reason why they let her go to
Speaker 11: begin with, all they really had was Jonathan on the
Speaker 11: witness stand, trying to save his ass implicating her. And
Speaker 11: if the jury did not believe him, and like I said,
Speaker 11: he was strangely detached in his testimony. He was a
Speaker 11: weird guy. And if they did not believe him, then
Speaker 11: she they could have found sufficient reasonable doubt. So that
Speaker 11: was number one. Number two. In just some breaking news today,
Speaker 11: she has appealed her case, seeking a new trial, claiming
Speaker 11: claiming that her counsel, Terry was ineffective and ineffective counsel of course,
Speaker 11: and alleging that he did not properly prepare her for
Speaker 11: her testimony, and that's why she couldn't answer simple questions
Speaker 11: because she hadn't been prepared. She even alleged that on
Speaker 11: the weekend before her testimony, rather than being prepared by Terry,
Speaker 11: Terry went off to a jazz festival. So she's blaming
Speaker 11: her attorney for not properly preparing her. But in the end,
Speaker 11: it's her decision, and she might have said something at
Speaker 11: the time. I think, you know, it's hard to say
Speaker 11: it was not the strongest case that I've ever seen.
Speaker 11: Anyone who's ever watched the oj trial would know that,
Speaker 11: you know, you never know what a jury's going to do.
Speaker 11: Probably was not a good idea to put her on
Speaker 11: the stand.
Speaker 10: It's probably not a good idea if you want to
Speaker 10: at least have a chance at appeal as well. Like
Speaker 10: you say, a lot of people do the ineffective council idea.
Speaker 10: But there also was the idea that certainly Jonathan had
Speaker 10: a motive to be able to want to testify with
Speaker 10: the lesson sentence. So that sometimes is an issue that
Speaker 10: at least they try to make an issue an appeal.
Speaker 11: Exactly exactly, and you know, it was it was more
Speaker 11: of a fifty to fifty case I would say if
Speaker 11: she did not testify, but I think it leaned more
Speaker 11: kind of seventy to thirty when she did. And I
Speaker 11: just don't think it helped that she testified. You know,
Speaker 11: I understand that they had a lot of explaining to do,
Speaker 11: but her explanations didn't really help.
Speaker 10: You talk about the cameras were allowed in the courtroom
Speaker 10: despite objections from Terry, But you also say that in
Speaker 10: the trial it seemed that through testimony that the reputation
Speaker 10: and sort of the humanity, not the sort of the humanity,
Speaker 10: the real the goodness of Robert was expressed in that trial,
Speaker 10: especially by Well tell us about that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it you know, Robert, it was not a perfect man,
Speaker 11: and none of us are, and it was it was,
Speaker 11: it was you know, it was interesting that it was
Speaker 11: the prosecution that that did not want to get into
Speaker 11: all the swinger stuff and which could have easily been
Speaker 11: used as a motive. You know that she was angry
Speaker 11: over the swinging and that's why she wanted to kill.
Speaker 11: It was it was brought up by the defense, which
Speaker 11: I found also kind of strange. But his you know,
Speaker 11: it was he was a flawed man. He he he was,
Speaker 11: you know, And as I researched his background, he came
Speaker 11: from a you know, his family, his parents were divorced,
Speaker 11: he came came from a kind of a tougher life.
Speaker 11: And you know, you can understand why he didn't want
Speaker 11: to confront certain issues and why he didn't wanted to
Speaker 11: party and kind of just just always focus on the
Speaker 11: fun and the good and and and not dwell on
Speaker 11: the bad because he had had so much bad and
Speaker 11: so much hard times in his life. And I think
Speaker 11: a lot of that came through and uh, you know,
Speaker 11: but there was a lot of humanity on all sides.
Speaker 11: And I think that's what, you know, going back to
Speaker 11: your first question, what drew me to the case is that,
Speaker 11: you know, it's and I'm not a family member of
Speaker 11: the victims, so it's easy for me to say, but
Speaker 11: you know, you can find a lot of humanity in
Speaker 11: everybody here. And and Jonathan certainly was a very tragic figure.
Speaker 11: Near the end, he really wrestled with his faith, He
Speaker 11: really wrestled with some demons, and through much of the trial,
Speaker 11: I was. It was a tough up to me whether
Speaker 11: Sabrina was even guilty, you know, whether she was just
Speaker 11: so dumb that she went along with this thing and
Speaker 11: got hoodwinked by the charming Jonathan, or whether she was
Speaker 11: an actual conspirator. And and and then you think of
Speaker 11: their children, you know, or their father's dead and their
Speaker 11: mother's in prison for the rest of her life, and
Speaker 11: all these awful secrets are bared for the world to see,
Speaker 11: and and you can't help it kind of feel badly
Speaker 11: for everybody. And and it's like, you know, there were
Speaker 11: so many other ways, so many other ways to solve
Speaker 11: these problems without having to resort to a gun.
Speaker 10: One of the things that we didn't talk about was
Speaker 10: very interesting is that the very very religious people that
Speaker 10: these were, these Christians, and also that there had been
Speaker 10: something that Jonathan had been taught and his other siblings
Speaker 10: about a story from the Bible that other people were familiar. Again,
Speaker 10: I don't know if it was Campbell or one of
Speaker 10: the detectives was in this story, was familiar with this
Speaker 10: biblical story of a Bouthsheba. And David tell us a
Speaker 10: little bit about that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So David and Bathsheba, and maybe you know, we
Speaker 11: all learned it in Sunday school. But David, of course,
Speaker 11: king and commander of the troops, he saw Bathsheba's beautiful
Speaker 11: woman bathing or anointing herself on the roof, and one
Speaker 11: day and fell in love with just in lust with
Speaker 11: bath Sheba, and David arranged to have Bathsheba's husband sent
Speaker 11: off to the front to be killed so that David
Speaker 11: could have Bathsheba for himself. And you know, much of
Speaker 11: the psalms are David's laments for what he had done
Speaker 11: and trying to get right with God. And at one
Speaker 11: point on the wire taps a couple of points on
Speaker 11: the wire taps, Jonathan says to Sabrina, you know, we're
Speaker 11: very much like David and Bathsheba. And he even directs
Speaker 11: her to read some of the psalms and coming clean
Speaker 11: with God and and and you know, it's a chilling parallel.
Speaker 11: And the one of the cops who was listening in
Speaker 11: on the wire tap had been a religious scholar in
Speaker 11: college and immediately made the connection. It's like it's almost
Speaker 11: an admission.
Speaker 10: And the idea too, that Bethsheba. One of the interesting
Speaker 10: parts of this was did Bathsheba know that David had
Speaker 10: killed her husband because they got together and had children afterwards,
Speaker 10: So did she know? And that was central to this too.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, I mean most Biblical scholars will tell you no,
Speaker 11: beth Sheba didn't know, and that's the difference that Sabrina
Speaker 11: was no beth Sheba.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we talked about her in prison. What was her sentence?
Speaker 10: You mentioned that there was an appeal.
Speaker 11: Just yeah, she hasn't actually been sentenced because just today
Speaker 11: I think her new attorney filed for a new trial
Speaker 11: claiming ineffective counsel, so sentencing has been put on hold.
Speaker 11: She would theoretically get twenty five to life under the statute,
Speaker 11: which means that Sabrina would theoretically get more time in
Speaker 11: prison than Jonathan, who actually pulled the trigger.
Speaker 10: Still, there is eligibility for parole possible even with the sentence,
Speaker 10: isn't it.
Speaker 11: Yeah? There is? But Kay, it's California, the conspiracy. It's
Speaker 11: twenty five minimums, so she would be looking at a
Speaker 11: long time. She's ten years older than Jonathan, so you
Speaker 11: know she may never come out of prison.
Speaker 10: Yeah, fascinating. And update on Jonathan.
Speaker 11: Jonathan is last I heard he's teaching Bible study in prison.
Speaker 11: He's he's still wrestling with his conscience and his faith.
Speaker 11: At his sentencing, it was a formality because he'd already
Speaker 11: agreed to it, but it was a it was a
Speaker 11: difficult thing to watch the remorse, and he was no
Speaker 11: longer mister robotic. He he, he is a guy I
Speaker 11: think really trying to figure out what went wrong in
Speaker 11: his brain. You know what, why did he do this?
Speaker 11: I don't think he can even answer that question himself.
Speaker 10: Well, incredible, incredible. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 10: Michael for coming on and talking about Better Off Dead,
Speaker 10: a sort of true story of sex, sin and murder.
Speaker 10: It's been fascinating for those that might want to look
Speaker 10: at other material that you have done. You have a
Speaker 10: website Facebook. Tell us about that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so you can go on Michaelfleman dot com. M
Speaker 11: I C. H. A. E. Lfleman dot com. If you
Speaker 11: go on Amazon and punch in my name, all my
Speaker 11: books come up. Go on Facebook. It's called true Crime
Speaker 11: page on Facebook. I love to hear from people, and
Speaker 11: I will definitely respond to you. I just send over
Speaker 11: links and updates and about what I'm doing, and you
Speaker 11: can go on the publisher's website, Wild Blue Press wildbluepress
Speaker 11: dot com and look for my name under the authors,
Speaker 11: and I have a page there and you can list comments.
Speaker 11: But if you want to get in touch with me,
Speaker 11: get on Facebook or go on my website Michael Fleeman
Speaker 11: dot com and there's a contact me button and I
Speaker 11: promise I'll email you back.
Speaker 10: Sounds great. Thank you again, Michael Fleeman for coming on
Speaker 10: and talking about better off Dead. It's my pleasures. Thank you,
Speaker 10: good night, good night, m