Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: What happened, It's okay, it's okay. Get it off your chest.
Speaker 4: I didn't do anything.
Speaker 3: You're a liar.
Speaker 5: You danced around in her blood and blah blah, yay me,
look at me. Here's to you, Satan.
Speaker 3: Here's to you, my first sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Life is hard, but it is wonderful, isn't it? And
every day is a gift. So thank you for sharing
yours with us today. This is episode three hundred and
thirty of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals it
the worst monsters are really tucked into the no their
an edge of Saint Joseph, Missouri. Krug Park spans one
hundred and sixty three acres of meticulously landscaped grounds, Renaissance
style architecture, and winding walking trails.
Speaker 2: Sounds nice, not.
Speaker 1: For its rose gardens, quiet lagoon and even whimsical Italian castle.
The park draws families and joggers alike, especially when it
transforms into a glowing spectacle during the holidays. But beneath
its tranquil charm and seasonal cheer, Krug Park holds a
dark memory, one that shattered it's peaceful Facade's take a
number one.
Speaker 4: Where here emergency?
Speaker 6: I'm not out running the trails to Krug Pork and
I'm pretty sure I just ran right across.
Speaker 2: The dead body.
Speaker 4: Why do you think that there's a dead body there?
Speaker 6: I wasn't sure there's a mannequin like Halloween or not,
but because it's just sitting there still. But I just
stood there, you know, for two minutes, trying to check
everything in and it's real.
Speaker 7: I didn't touch it.
Speaker 8: I didn't know it.
Speaker 9: Does she have any injuries or anything like that?
Speaker 10: You know?
Speaker 6: I came up to the front, but it looked like
a whole woman over chest and then cut by her neck,
like where her neck was. Okay, can you describe the
person Tomy young waiting completely like her close girl rips office.
Speaker 8: She was right next to her.
Speaker 9: Did you see any hair, eye color on the female?
Speaker 8: The wider wide open the ground.
Speaker 1: On the morning of October sixteenth, twenty sixteen, a young
man was walking through Crug Park when he made a
discovery that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
He found the body of a teenage girl lying exposed
on the jogging trail. She had been stabbed repeatedly, her
throat slit. This was no accident. It was a brutal
and deliberate killing. When investigators arrived, the details were as
strange as they were disturbing. The girl was naked, her
clothes tossed nearby in plain sight. No attempt had been
made to hide her or the clothing. There were no
signs of sexual assault, and no form of identification was found.
A search of the surrounding area turned up only a
few broken and seemingly useless pieces of a cell phone.
A medical examiner later concluded that the murder had taken
place recently, likely within twenty four hours of the body
being found. It was ultimately determined that the teenage girl
was killed the night before. The investigator's first priority was
to identify the girl. Until they had a name, she
was referred to only as krug Park Jane. Hoping for
a lead, detectives examined her discarded clothing and found a
logo on a T shirt, one belonging to a nearby
high school. They visited the high school, where the principle
provided a tentative identification. A seventeen year old student named
Caitlin Root. Your book photos confirmed it the victim was Caitlyn.
Detectives then reached out to her family and continued the
investigation by interviewing her father.
Speaker 11: Now, is Caitlin the only child you guys have together?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 8: Okay?
Speaker 11: And when was the last time you saw Caitlyn?
Speaker 12: It was actually in person?
Speaker 13: It was probably around the I think probably the seventh okay.
Speaker 1: Caitlyn's parents were divorced and she wasn't living with either
of them at the time, which partly explained why no
missing person's report had been filed before her body was found.
Speaker 11: And when was the last time that she stayed with you?
It's been about a year and by a year through.
What's Caitlin's lifestyle? Like Jesus, let's follow her friends, okay,
do whatever they do?
Speaker 9: Okay.
Speaker 1: A few months before the murder, Caitlyn's mother was preparing
for an out of state job transfer. At the time,
Caitlyn was living with her, but the prospect of leaving
her friends behind didn't sit well. She was determined to
stay in Saint Joseph. Looking for another option, Caitlyn reached
out to her best friend's mom and grandmother to ask
if she could move in with them. They didn't hesitate
and welcome to Caitlyn with open arms. They had known
Caitlyn for years and already thought of her as family.
Speaker 8: How do you feel about Caitlyn before this all happened?
Speaker 13: You, what'd you think about her?
Speaker 14: She's my daughter, She's not my biological No, But from
the moment she walked in the door met me, I
was mom.
Speaker 15: That was that.
Speaker 1: Caitlyn was welcomed by a loving family who offered her
care and support. But the home was considerably chaotic and
very crowded.
Speaker 3: Hula lives there with her.
Speaker 8: There's a list.
Speaker 2: There's my buddy Pablo, and then Tabitha and her two daughters,
and then grandma Grandpa and then basically they're nurses.
Speaker 4: Don't care people take care of it.
Speaker 16: Okay, yeah, but.
Speaker 3: They also are trying to living at the residence.
Speaker 2: Oh really, Yeah, there's actually two houses right next to
store to each other. Okay, Grandpa has one and the
grandma eyed the other.
Speaker 3: And so where does Caitlyn stay? She stayed in Gremls.
Speaker 1: Despite the crowded living situation, everyone in the house was
glad to have Caitlyn move in. They genuinely liked her.
In fact, Caitlin was well liked by many. Her cheerful
personality and charm made people naturally gravitate towards her.
Speaker 17: Caitlyn has she's crazy because it's a good crazy.
Speaker 13: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 18: Like, I she's kind of my personality, which is a
bubbly which and Kaitlyn's she's fine to be wrong.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Tragically, Caitlyn's life was cut short at just seventeen years old,
and investigators were faced with the heartbreaking duty of informing
her family and friends that the young woman found in
Krug Park was Caitlin Root.
Speaker 11: You know, there's really no.
Speaker 19: Easy way to say this or do this.
Speaker 11: We do believe it is kit And and that was
stunned up in crud Park. We're really probably pretty certain
it is.
Speaker 3: We do have a couple of pictures that.
Speaker 20: If you'd be willing to take a look out to
say for sure. Yeah, you know, there's really no easy
way to prepare yourself for this. No, I'll just you
know when you're ready, if you just want.
Speaker 11: To Yeah, that's fair, relatively certain or one hundred percent or.
Speaker 8: How can you be so sure?
Speaker 13: There's too about a picture.
Speaker 11: I'm so so very sorry for your loss.
Speaker 3: Ye, Sanna says, you do that, Jar.
Speaker 11: We're going to do everything in our power, you know,
to be able to answer all the questions for you.
Speaker 1: Naturally, everyone who knew and loved Caitlyn were desperate for answers.
They wanted to know who had done this to her
and why.
Speaker 11: I just want to know who, so would we, And
we're working on I just can't figure out why.
Speaker 8: Even if we figure out who.
Speaker 3: Why, hopefully they'll be able to explain it. Caitlyn.
Speaker 19: Who would be that mad at her?
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 1: For a time, the case was a classic who'd done it?
Caitlyn was an extremely well like teenager, making the brutal
nature of her murder all the more perplexing. Investigators and
loved ones alike were left asking the same haunting question,
why would anyone want to kill her? Adding to the confusion,
no one could explain why Caitlin had even been at
Kirk Park in the first place.
Speaker 19: So, as far as you do, you think it's out
a character for her to be walking in the park.
Speaker 8: Yes, she enjoyed nature at all, but.
Speaker 16: She's never been to the park krug Park ever.
Speaker 8: Okay, and the time even owners didn't like to be.
She hasn't been there since I've known her about a
year or two. I don't think she would go to
the park unless it was a cohercion.
Speaker 1: In their efforts to unravel the mystery, investigators spoke with
several of Caitlyn's family members and everyone she'd been living with.
All were cleared as suspects, and no one could shed
light on why Caitlyn had gone to Krug Park that
night the night she was killed. With those leads, exhausted,
detectives shifted their focus to another group of people, Caitlyn's boyfriends.
Speaker 14: She has dated several people. He has she was a
very promiscuous, a little oh really, yes, And I'm not
saying that.
Speaker 19: To inspect disrespect her character, but she was.
Speaker 14: And the week before this all happened, and she and
I had gotten into an argument over it. I said, Caitlyn,
I wouldn't have to do that to be liked.
Speaker 8: Do you think she was doing to be liked?
Speaker 21: I think she was doing it to be liked to.
Speaker 3: Fit in.
Speaker 1: Caitlyn had been through many short lived relationships, but at
the time of her murder, she wasn't dating anyone.
Speaker 3: So who's Caitlin dating at the time? She was dating nobody? Okay,
who was she seeing somebody before?
Speaker 19: Not that I knew, Like I knew there's somebody named
Kevin at the time.
Speaker 8: Okay.
Speaker 3: If I were saying to give me somebody that would
want to hurt her, who would come.
Speaker 8: To your mind?
Speaker 9: Mmm?
Speaker 19: I would have to say Kevin.
Speaker 3: Why would you say Kevin?
Speaker 19: From what she was telling me before that she has
put hands on her.
Speaker 1: During the initial round of interviews, one name surfaced repeatedly,
Kevin Whitmer. It quickly became clear that there had been
some recent tension or drama between him and Caitlyn.
Speaker 12: I know she was getting threats from Kevin Allan Whittmer.
Speaker 22: She sent you about the guy who hit her? Yeah,
who's this Whitmer? Apparently he hit her on Friday. She
sent him a message saying, hey he hit me and
stuff like that. Well, then other people started putting on
was she putting on Facebook public?
Speaker 23: Right?
Speaker 13: Publicly?
Speaker 11: Then all these other people started commenting on that.
Speaker 2: What was it about?
Speaker 3: Any idea what that was about?
Speaker 24: No?
Speaker 19: I had no clue.
Speaker 1: Rumors started to swirl after a Facebook post and a
string of comments beneath It suggested that Kevin Whitmer had
recently gotten violent with Caitlin, but before investigators had a
chance to find Kevin, he contacted them and voluntarily came
to the police station for an interview.
Speaker 8: How did you win it with her?
Speaker 25: She is a friend of my old buddies. How long
actually knowing her for? Probably maybe three weeks? When's the
first time you gotta started talking or hanging out or whatever?
Speaker 21: Actually talking? It would have been profotly three weeks ago.
Speaker 13: That's just you know, conversation.
Speaker 19: But when did you guys start hanging.
Speaker 21: Out, hanging out dating? I think the first time we
hung out was like a week and a half ago.
Speaker 8: What did you guys do?
Speaker 21: Just drove around?
Speaker 12: Are you guys hanging up?
Speaker 19: Its friends?
Speaker 21: Yeah, friend looking into engaging in a relationship with her.
She wanted to, but she's seventeen. I'm twenty one. That's
my thing.
Speaker 25: She wanted to, and I was like, I'm cool with friends,
but that's as far as it's going to go. She
tried to kissing me. I mean we kissed.
Speaker 8: That's about it.
Speaker 21: That's the end of it.
Speaker 1: Twenty one year old Kevin told investigators he had only
known Caitlyn for a short while and insisted he had
no interest in a romantic relationship with her. According to him,
that was Caitlyn who had wanted something more.
Speaker 21: And then we finally got to hang out Thursday, and
then she stayed the night with me.
Speaker 12: You guys watch movies.
Speaker 21: He wasn't sitting there on Facebook and talking.
Speaker 19: Did she stay the night that night?
Speaker 8: Okay? Anything going on that night? Now, here's the deal.
Speaker 25: We've already talked about this seventeen twenty one, right, illegal,
So I just want to make sure that you're telling
you please. And later, the most she and I did
talk to her about, you know, having sex. I just
and she told me that she's had sex with multiple people,
and I'm like, that's not going to happen. So we
just cuddled and when we got up next morning, we
laid in bed until probably, like I said, twelve thirty
one o'clock, and then I took her ound and dropped
her off.
Speaker 1: Kevin explained he was put off by Caitlin's age and
her alleged promise scuity, so he chose not to sleep
with her or pursue a relationship. He also claimed the
last time he saw her was three days before the murder,
when he dropped her off at home. The following day,
he received a strange and threatening phone call.
Speaker 25: Six eight nine number called me and I was like,
are you Kevin Whitmer? And I was like, who's this
and he's like, don't worry about it.
Speaker 21: Just know that you're a woman beat and if you're
gonna beat on a woman and you can beat on me.
Speaker 25: So I called Kitlyn and I was like, what the
hell is going on? And she's like, you know, you
hit me twice and gave me two bloody noses. And
I was like, the fuck ever, I don't put my
hands on women. She's like, you know what you did
and fuck off or whatever, and she hung up on me.
So I made a status after that and put it
on Facebook. I have all the screenshots of all the
comments up today to last night. Whenever I went to sleep,
I woke up this morning like thirty plus people will
comment on it.
Speaker 8: So I just went and deleted it.
Speaker 1: According to Kevin, Caitlyn had told someone you hit her.
This was an allegation that he firmly denied.
Speaker 26: Was her claiming that he punched her in the face
and gave her a blighty nose and all that.
Speaker 3: Why do you think that she would say that? What
does she get out of it attention?
Speaker 21: I don't know honestly.
Speaker 1: With this new information, investigators were faced with possibilities, neither
of which was easy to prove. Either Caitlyn upset over
being rejected or falsely accused Kevin of violence, or Kevin
was lying to cover up something far more sinister. Without evidence,
both scenarios seemed frustratingly out of reach, and this was
just the beginning. As the investigation unfolded, detectives encountered a
growing list of unusual suspects, each one adding new layers
of confusion. More often than not, interviews ended with more
questions than answers, and investigators were left asking the one
question that continued to haunt them. Who killed Caitlin Root.
On October sixteenth, twenty sixteen, seventeen year old Caitlin Root
was found murdered in Krug Park. She had been stabbed,
her throat slit, her naked body left in plain sight.
With no witnesses and a few leads, investigators struggled to
piece together why she was there, who she was with,
and what went so horribly wrong. Suspicions swirled around a
young man named Kevin Whitmer, but nothing could be proven,
and the deeper investigators dug the stranger the case became.
During their conversations with Kevin, investigators learned about another young
man who was reportedly eager and maybe even desperate to
start a romantic relationship with Caitlin.
Speaker 21: What exactly did she tell you about her?
Speaker 8: This guy has the.
Speaker 25: Biggest crush on her, going to be with him as
messenger suicidally.
Speaker 21: He wants to cut his health, He wants to kill
his hell without on.
Speaker 1: A Police were already familiar with the name Adam Brown.
He was one of Caitlyn's closest friends. They'd known each
other for years and were often seen together. To those
who knew them, the dynamic was clear. Adam wanted something more,
but Caitlyn had firmly placed him in the friend zone.
Speaker 19: Adam hen always had a thing for it just never
worked out.
Speaker 14: Yeah, that's the way I would interpret it, just being
by actions.
Speaker 8: What do you mean by his actions?
Speaker 4: He was always trying to impress her in somewhere.
Speaker 3: She thought of him as a brother.
Speaker 21: Nothing.
Speaker 11: He he wanted more, He wanted more.
Speaker 8: Do you think he was jealous of the attention neither
young man got from her.
Speaker 4: If he was, he never let a show.
Speaker 27: And technically he's the last person we really know was
seen with her right by his own mission.
Speaker 1: Right after gathering some background information on Adam's relationship with Caitlyn,
investigators brought him in for questioning.
Speaker 28: WHOA.
Speaker 3: I believe it was like fifteenth Saturday.
Speaker 2: So I message Kitlyn and I asked her if she
wanted to hang out for a little bit and I
can come by because she was where she was staying
was like right up the street from me.
Speaker 4: Frinish just set over on the other portrait Grandpa.
Speaker 3: So we were just talking and talking.
Speaker 2: And talking, kissing up and we were just sitting there
and then she like jumps off the fortune was like
I gotta.
Speaker 3: Go meet to Amanda. And I'm like, Amanda who.
Speaker 2: And then she said, Amanda mix and I'm like, I
wouldn't even just stay home.
Speaker 19: It's late.
Speaker 3: Told you get hurt.
Speaker 1: Adam freely admitted he was with Caitlyn on the front
porch of her home the night she was murdered, and
that he was the last person to see her alive.
He claimed that during their final moments together, Caitlyn abruptly
decided to leave and meet up with someone else, Poor Adam.
Adam said he I had to warn her not to go,
but she ignored his advice.
Speaker 9: She listened.
Speaker 2: She went down to the corner on fifteenth and Olive
got into the car that I couldn't even actually recognize.
It looks like a sub ish kind of lookod thing,
and it's last heard from her.
Speaker 1: Adam told investigators that Caitlin stepped off her front porch,
walked down the road, and climbed into a mysterious black suv.
If you've heard enough Sword and Scale, you know that
this kind of story immediately raises some red flags. Investigators
wondered why someone would pick her up down the street
instead of at her house. What were they trying to
avoid or hide? Did this even really happen or was
it just a whole story that Adam was making up
just to cover his tracks.
Speaker 3: So you guys just aw sitting there chatting on the
front porch. So when does take a leave?
Speaker 19: She left about like in between like ten thirty and eleven.
Speaker 3: So how did she tell me? Started how she's up
the leaves?
Speaker 19: She was messaging Amanda on Facebook, and.
Speaker 29: Uh, what's the relationship between her and Amanda as far
than ano, They're just friends and.
Speaker 3: That's Amanda Mix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have they have had any trouble with each other
before or no? But I've had my doubts about Amanda,
and I don't really trust her. What do you mean, Patrick,
Donton Like, to me, she's just not the kind of
the right kind of people really be hanging out with
personal nitpicking things that meet her.
Speaker 3: We just don't click, don't make a long run.
Speaker 23: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So basically, yeah, they were texting on Facebook. That's whenever
she was like, I gotta ry to get down here,
She's about to pull up and everything.
Speaker 19: I'm like, oh, you should not go.
Speaker 3: Did you say what she's gonna go do?
Speaker 2: She said that they were gonna go sit at Hyde
Park and they were gonna basically be hanging out and
everything else, just basically doing girl stuff.
Speaker 1: Adam identified the person who picked up Caitlyn as someone
named Amanda Mix. This was a name that caught investigators
off guard. Until this moment, no one else had mentioned
her in connection with this case.
Speaker 3: So, actually, when Caitlyn laugh, you were the only one
I truly see her leave. Pretty much I was sitting
on the fort on the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Investigators were clearly wary about him. There's something a little
shady about him. They questioned both his account of that
night and how he characterized his relationship with Caitlyn.
Speaker 2: There was a brief moment where I we thought me
and her need to eat together. But no, I'm sorry,
I'm not gonna date my best friend for twelve years.
Speaker 15: No.
Speaker 3: So basically I was just so, how long did you
guys date or how long did not work out?
Speaker 30: We pretty much we were together for us six hours
to really, uh, guys at repsacks, do you have any
idea who might have done something to her?
Speaker 2: I mean I can only pretty much like start where
basically the first person I knew about that she was
gonna be with, which would be a Manda, Like That's
what That's why I think.
Speaker 3: About first all the heck would I get in touch
with Amanda?
Speaker 2: That's a very good question that I haven't been able
to get hold of.
Speaker 3: Her all day.
Speaker 1: Despite their doubts about Adam's story, investigators decided to look
into Amanda mix. What they found was intriguing. Amanda, as
it turns out, was once Caitlin's best friend.
Speaker 31: You said that Amanda Mix and her were friends, but
they had a falling out and recently.
Speaker 13: And that person she was last thing with at time?
Speaker 28: How do you know that?
Speaker 22: From everybody who's told me that she came over to
the house at fifteen to get Caitlyn And.
Speaker 1: Before long, Amanda's name started coming up repeatedly in the investigation.
Some even claimed that the former best friend of Caitlyn's
had confessed to murder and the.
Speaker 32: Next day that the candle lighting, My brother came up
to me crying. I mean he was like shaking and crying,
and he's like, hey, dude, he said, I'm glad I
found you.
Speaker 19: He's like, I'm scared shitless right now. He's like, she
admitted it. He was like, admitted, who who come down
and tell me what was going on? He sat there
and told me, he's like, she admitted it.
Speaker 8: I was like, who, mid what?
Speaker 19: He's like Amanda?
Speaker 32: She admitted that she, her and several other people would
beat that ship out of that root girl.
Speaker 19: Did they You said earlier that they did.
Speaker 16: You referred to them as they had jumped her.
Speaker 19: I don't know who they are, okay. He just said
Amanda and several other people.
Speaker 1: Eventually, investigators brought Amanda Mix in for questioning, but her
situation was a bit different from the other potential suspects.
Unlike the rest, Amanda had not come willingly. She was
picked up on an unrelated outstanding warrant. What you know
is always a good sign.
Speaker 16: Do you know a girl?
Speaker 13: My name paper Root?
Speaker 27: Yes?
Speaker 8: How do you know?
Speaker 13: Do I have to say all this?
Speaker 12: Well, I'm I'm just asking questions.
Speaker 13: I'm just curious how we know work?
Speaker 12: Well, she's your best friend?
Speaker 11: Oh, she's a best friend?
Speaker 24: Was tip.
Speaker 12: I don't really, I don't hang on anyone.
Speaker 10: What happened?
Speaker 3: Which you too?
Speaker 11: I mean that you guys aren't friends anymore.
Speaker 12: Well somemore like we didn't be like just when our
suzing this, I don't have any turn.
Speaker 1: This from a man that told investigators there was no
bad blood between her and Caitlyn. They had simply grown
a part over time, which is why they were no
longer as close as they once were.
Speaker 11: You never had a falling out as Caitlin than anything
a while back, while, you guess, I mean because I haven't.
I've got friends of that girl now for a long time.
Was everything that ever happened between you two that he
was kind of lost track of each other.
Speaker 12: They're just I haven't I've lost off friends because I don't.
I don't want thing in the rock people.
Speaker 11: Are you are even really mad or passed off a
Caitlyn or anything?
Speaker 12: Okay, this is about I'm messing about Caitlyn.
Speaker 23: Okay, So why is I mean?
Speaker 13: Why, Well, she's missing what she's missing?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 12: When did miss the other day?
Speaker 11: I'm not quite sure what they's the last time you
saw her?
Speaker 12: Oh, I've just seen her.
Speaker 23: I mean I went to a fuck. I don't know
the day. It was like some day last week, because
there's I love Caitlyn, I really do, and I don't
know anything.
Speaker 12: I haven't the last time I've seen her but that
when we have a ride.
Speaker 1: Amanda appeared genuinely unaware that Caitlyn was dead. She told
investigators the last time she saw her was more than
a week before the murder. According to Amanda, she and
her boyfriend were walking past Caitlyn's house when they spotted
her sitting on the front porch. Amanda asked if anyone
inside could give them a ride home, and Caitlyn found
someone willing to help. Since that day, Amanda had no
seen or heard from Caitlyn, or so she claimed her Facebook.
Speaker 12: Talked about Yeah. Yeah, not recently.
Speaker 19: No recently.
Speaker 12: It hasn't been recently at all.
Speaker 11: I have, don't somebody something you guys talked the other
day on Facebook?
Speaker 8: Is that not true?
Speaker 23: That's not true.
Speaker 12: I have talked to Caitlyn on Facebook that I mean,
Facebook accounts.
Speaker 23: To you one.
Speaker 18: I just feel like there's something You're just one does
I promise I'm not keep me anything from.
Speaker 1: Amanda also claimed she had not communicated with Caitlin through
texts or social media in quite some time. If true,
that directly contradicted Adam Brown's statement. He told police that
Caitlyn was messaging Amanda the very night she was killed.
Speaker 3: I don't be honest.
Speaker 11: We talked with somebody said that you were with her
Saturday night?
Speaker 13: Are you serious?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 12: Okay, I wouldn't for Saturday Night's no big deal.
Speaker 11: Why something would lie and say that you were with
her on Saturday.
Speaker 12: Exactly unless they don't want to get somebody else in trouble.
I could get a serious trouble. Was whatever the fuck's
going on?
Speaker 13: What's going on?
Speaker 12: Whatever the situation is. I don't know what's going on, saying.
Speaker 11: So, you mean tell me you didn't know that Kitlan
has been missing?
Speaker 23: No, I didn't know, shouldn't No, Now, so.
Speaker 20: What would you say, I said, if somebody saw you
leaving with her about ten o'clock Saturday night.
Speaker 12: I laugh, actually, because it's true ten o'clock that I
was under my roof.
Speaker 1: Amanda insisted she was home the night of the murder,
and she was adamant about it. She even claimed she
could back it up. At the time, Amanda was living
in a group home, and she told investigators that the
house manager could confirm her whereabouts.
Speaker 12: That's hilarious, did.
Speaker 23: Kissing me off?
Speaker 17: But if we called Tina right now, we get us
all verified.
Speaker 12: But I don't know if you called her, we'll get
around to calling her, said, I try to get to
cant with all this. Okay, she all ship because I
didn't leave with her at ten o'clock. Pena, I mean,
very very I don't know, y'all.
Speaker 23: This is a full ship. That's why I would like
you to call her around.
Speaker 3: So let's see if I'll get somebody to call Tina.
Speaker 12: Yeah, exactly, she didn't even tell you I was there.
Speaker 23: Saturday night.
Speaker 1: Amanda urged investigators to contact her house manager to confirm
her alibi, and she grew increasingly impatient as the questioning continued.
Speaker 12: I have not hoped, Caitlyn, I try to repeating myself. No,
I want to know the whole story. That's what I
want to know.
Speaker 18: That's exactly what I want to know, because I'm telling you, guys,
what the fuck I.
Speaker 12: Did Saturday night ten o'clock.
Speaker 11: Yeah, well, I'm telling you that people are telling me
you the last person that.
Speaker 12: Well, that's hilarious. Call Tina please when because I want
to hear her.
Speaker 17: Tell y'all you know this sounds like one of the
mysteries fucking TV shows does so this is Cartina, Please
give us your figure it.
Speaker 12: Out like this is ridiculous. If y'all just call, y'all
know the fucking truth. I'm not totally enjoy cartoon.
Speaker 13: It's one of those things.
Speaker 12: It's one of those things where you can't get that
fucking bird right now?
Speaker 23: Is that not make sense?
Speaker 12: You can go give my boyfriend and he'll tell you
the same exactly ship.
Speaker 16: Why are young?
Speaker 12: Because he's I'm really doing something to Kaitlyn. I don't
really fucking talk to Kaitlyn anymore. Anything happened to face? Okay,
she's missing. Oh so something obviously has happened.
Speaker 11: Maybe she's in Cansteady. Maybe Calen.
Speaker 10: How do you know that?
Speaker 12: I've been friends with her for a while. So but
I know, Okay, just because I'm no, I will go. No,
I'm done, I don't want to talk.
Speaker 10: I'm not talking.
Speaker 12: I'm gonna be silent. I just will go, That's all.
Speaker 1: Amanda took a firm stance with investigators and ultimately chose
to remain silent, which is of course her right. When
they followed up with their house manager, the story she
gave them seemed to check out. Amanda had signed in
early that evening, but the alibi wasn't airtight. Nothing would
have prevented her from slipping out unnoticed. Later that night,
once again, investigators were faced with two conflicting stories. Either
Adam Brown had lied about Caitlin messaging and leaving with
Amanda Mix or Amanda was lying about her whereabouts on
the night of the murder. Now's a good time to
test your slothing abilities. And I ask you who do
you think was responsible? Out of these two? I wonder
if you'll get it right, because what came next was
a revelation that no one expected. Neither of them had lied. Yeah,
how about that the person who had actually misled the
investigators and did not tell the truth was the most
unlikely person of all, the victim, Caitlin Root. In October
of twenty sixteen, homicide investigators in Saint Joseph, Missouri, were
deep into the investigation of seventeen year old Caitlin Root's
brutal murder. Caitlyn's body had been found in Krug Park.
With a few clues to follow, investigators chased down leads,
questioned family and friends, and attempted to unravel conflicting stories,
but nothing was adding up. Then came a stunning theory.
Perhaps the person misleading them wasn't a suspect. Perhaps it
was Caitlin herself. You see, Caitlyn's close friend Adam Brown,
told investigators that the last time he saw her, she'd
said that she was going to meet up with Amanda Mix.
Maybe she told him the truth, or maybe it was
a lie. It was entirely possible that Caitlyn had plans
with someone else that night and just didn't want anyone
to know. With answers still elusive, investigators returned to the
crime scene and expanded their search of the area. This
decision led to a crucial breakthrough. While the initial sweep
had uncovered only broken fragments of Caitlyn's cell phone, the
extended search turned up even more pieces. FORENDSIC specialists managed
to reassemble the phone, giving detectives access to Caitlyn's texts
and social media. This was a game changer. The recovered
messages revealed that Caitlin had been planning to meet someone
named Amanda that night, but not Amanda Mix. It was
another teenager who had gone to high school with Caitlin.
Her name was Amanda Bennett. These messages revealed that Amanda
Bennett had invited Caitlin to hang out with her and
her boyfriend, and had even told her not to tell
anyone who she was with. Armed with this discovery, investigators
quietly surveiled Amanda Bennett and her boyfriend for several days
before making their move. Both were arrested. Amanda's mom was
also brought in for questioning.
Speaker 16: So, Amanda and Sebashian both live with you, correct? And
how long has you been.
Speaker 12: Living with you?
Speaker 4: He's been there at least over a year.
Speaker 16: Where's Amanda working at right now?
Speaker 4: She worked at and Morpholt Pizza Hut with me.
Speaker 16: And how about Sebastian whores?
Speaker 4: She work at the McDonald's down on the interstate.
Speaker 16: What do they do for the fun besides that the house?
What kind of things do they do?
Speaker 4: I don't really do much, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 9: Said.
Speaker 4: I have internet and netflips and all that, so they
very much to stay in their room and watch TV
or they play video games.
Speaker 16: They ever going where and hanging out? Not really, No
anyone ever come to the house hang out.
Speaker 4: And that's been a lot of Amanda's problems. She don't
have very many friends, so she doesn't have any friends,
and she'll tell you that she doesn't hang out with anybody.
Speaker 1: Investigators learned that seventeen year old Amanda Bennett and her
eighteen year old boyfriend Sebastian Dowell were living with Amanda's mom.
The couple was reclusive, with no known friends or social connections.
What they did have was a newborn son who was
just a few months old. The soft cooping heard in
the background of this interview belongs to their baby.
Speaker 26: I don't keep trying Sebastian honestly, because I can care
less about Sebastian.
Speaker 8: What's with that?
Speaker 4: Well, he's lazy pretty much. There's always an excuse why
he can't get up there to work, or you know,
he doesn't want to do any tours around the house.
He's just not a good dad. She's usually up with
the baby all night.
Speaker 26: She's been trying to go to school and then working,
and he does nothing, and it makes me mad.
Speaker 4: And I was to the point, I've been talking to
my son. I said, you know, she's been talking.
Speaker 26: About moving out with them, and if that's the case,
I'm giving attorney.
Speaker 4: And get CASTI ah Siler because.
Speaker 26: From what it sounds, and he also has a two
year old little girl, and I know that he doesn't
ever see her.
Speaker 4: More page old sport doesn't do anything for a man.
Speaker 1: His mom shared some background with investigators about her daughter
and Sebastian. She confirmed that both were high school dropouts,
with Amanda working at Pizza Hut and Sebastian at McDonald's.
What a pair. She also admitted she wasn't fond of Sebastian,
describing him as a lazy, inattentive, and irresponsible father. When
asked about the night Caitlin Root was murdered. She recalled
that Amanda and Sebastian had gone out, supposedly to see
a movie. They returned home very late. And you work together,
so you're together all day until nine pm. You so
when you come home nine pm, does she ride home
with you?
Speaker 12: Yes?
Speaker 4: Okay, so we came home.
Speaker 26: Sebastian was home with the baby, and I'm going to
watch on my phone because I want to say that
that was the night they went to the movies.
Speaker 4: As far as I know, they went to the movies,
is what I was told.
Speaker 16: Okay, I'm going to take your car. Yes, And what
time do you think they text you to tell you
that they're going over to Jermys.
Speaker 33: Well, they didn't actually text me to tell me that
it's where they were going. I text her and asked her,
I said, where are you guys at? Because I don't
think the movie lasts no three hours, so it was
like ten, I'm on twelve thirty.
Speaker 4: She said, oh, we came over to Jeremy's house.
Speaker 1: After their conversation with Amanda's mom, investigator sat down with
Amanda herself, who appeared remarkably unfazed by the situation, showing
little concern or emotion as the questioning started.
Speaker 19: You're seventeen, okay today birthday?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 19: What was the last grade level?
Speaker 24: And sto?
Speaker 19: When you completed? I finished sophomore year and you're working
anywhere Northville? Any idea why you're here?
Speaker 24: M hmm.
Speaker 3: I'll be honest, I find it hard to believe you
don't know why you're here. We have a lot of information,
we have a lot of evidence, and I know you
know why you're here.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 30: I don't believe that your involvement is done on your own.
I know that you know as somebody else was there,
and we don't think you're a bad person, not at all.
Speaker 23: When do I ask for a lawyer?
Speaker 19: You can ask for a lawyer any time you want,
if that's.
Speaker 2: What you want to do.
Speaker 9: Do you guys think I did something?
Speaker 3: So what do you think we think you did?
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 8: Then I would think you would.
Speaker 19: Want to find out what you're supposed.
Speaker 9: To tell me? What do you think I do?
Speaker 1: Amanda claim she had no idea what was going on,
and it quickly became clear that a confession wasn't coming
anytime soon. Shifting tactics investigators eased into a gentler line
of questioning, focusing instead on her relationship with Sebastian.
Speaker 19: Does he stay anywhere else now? Even occasionally every night?
At you the thumb on that right? Make sure he's
very supposed to be.
Speaker 17: Yep, he's pretty.
Speaker 4: You got to keep a lock on that.
Speaker 19: He's pretty. Yet, do you guys ever go out separate?
Do you guys ever do separate things?
Speaker 2: You go?
Speaker 19: He goes where he goes, you go.
Speaker 8: Huh?
Speaker 19: Except for work, of course?
Speaker 9: Yeah. I'm usually at his work too, But except for
when I work.
Speaker 8: Who do you guys run around with? I mean, who
do you guys do stuff with? Other than you know,
when you guys go through something friends? You guys don't
run around with anybody. You don't hang out with anybody.
It's just you two exciting and we just don't have friends.
We don't have any Sebastian didn't.
Speaker 19: Have any friends.
Speaker 9: No, I don't. I don't let him.
Speaker 1: Amanda was pretty open about her relationship with Sebastian and
admitted to being a very controlling presence in his life.
Let's put it that way.
Speaker 9: I shaved his legs.
Speaker 3: What he lets you shave his legs?
Speaker 19: Like with a razor shave, like all the way up
top all the way down.
Speaker 8: Why's that I.
Speaker 23: Wanted to get rid of his masculinity?
Speaker 8: Okay, now you're gonna have to explain that one to me.
Speaker 19: You got me scratched, Well you do too.
Speaker 1: Apparently, investigators also questioned Amanda about her religious beliefs, particularly
her views on the devil. Their curiosity stemmed from a
search of her bedroom, where they had found books related
to Satanism. In her basement, they also found a journal
penned by Amanda that was full of bizarre writings about demons,
sacrificing souls and controlling fire with one's mind. How about that?
Speaker 19: So, what do you think about the devil? Do you
think the devil is this? Have you ever looked into
other forms of religion? Have you ever considered of the
forms of religion a sparimn with a that, or any
Satanic step or anything like that.
Speaker 8: So you have faith in God, but you've questioned it.
Speaker 10: Well, I've grown up believing that, Like ever since I
was born, I was in a church environment.
Speaker 1: After gaining more insight into Amanda, her relationship with Sebastian
and her beliefs, investigators turned to a crucial question, where
was she in Sebastian on the night of October fifteenth,
twenty sixteen, the night Caitlin Root was murdered.
Speaker 10: We were gonna go to the movies because I got
two for like free tickets, you know how they use
free tickets.
Speaker 23: But we watched The.
Speaker 9: Girl in the Train.
Speaker 8: That is that good?
Speaker 9: No, most scary movies nowadays are good.
Speaker 19: They stayed for the whole movie.
Speaker 8: The movie and.
Speaker 10: Weird, just weird.
Speaker 9: It was all like a mystery about like a murder.
Speaker 3: Who did the murder?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 23: Pay in session.
Speaker 9: It was a boring movie, and then we went to
a specialist dad's house.
Speaker 1: Amanda told investigators that she and Sebastian had gone to
see the movie The Girl on the Train that night,
but when asked about the plot, she couldn't recall a
single detail. Pro tip, if you're gonna use a movie
as an alibi, make sure you've actually seen it. Also,
that movie was fantastic, So if you say it was boring,
then you're either lying or you're extremely unintelligent, or most
likely both. Amanda went on to say that after the movie,
the two of them headed to Sebastian's dad's house and
spent a few hours there. But Amanda didn't know that
investigators had already done their homework. You see, this is
the kind of person that doesn't do homework, so she
assumes no one else does either. The police had reviewed
surveillance footage from the theater, and neither Amanda nor Sebastian
appeared in any of it. Her story was obviously a lie.
Speaker 8: Why would you tell me that you were at the
movies when you.
Speaker 21: Weren't at the movies?
Speaker 4: Were the movies.
Speaker 8: At the late? Movie was started at ten ten of
Girl on the Train?
Speaker 9: Then?
Speaker 8: Why, I mean, are you guys like invisible or something?
Or I mean, why won't you be on the video
and you're not there?
Speaker 27: Well, hey, you got to be there. If you were there,
you had to go up to the window and get
exchange your passes for tickets. Right, Neither one of you
are on video getting the tickets there. They've got the
videos on thumb drives. They're gonna bring them back here,
you know, and you can't be there if you're not there.
You know, all the cameras don't lie.
Speaker 8: So tell me why you wouldn't be on on video?
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 27: I would suggest it's because you weren't there, And I
would suggest you were somewhere else.
Speaker 8: And you don't want to tell me about that.
Speaker 4: We were of the movies.
Speaker 8: What would you say if we had Sebastian on videos
somewhere else?
Speaker 9: I'd say you were a liar?
Speaker 19: Are you afraid to tell us the truth?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 8: I went to the movie other than the movie.
Speaker 19: Are you afraid to tell us the truth?
Speaker 3: Are you afraid us to know everything?
Speaker 8: But for us to know everything that happens Saturday nine?
Speaker 23: I told you everything that happened.
Speaker 1: In addition to the theater footage, police had surveillance from
another location that placed Sebastian across town, alarmingly close to
Kruk Park. A street camera captured him sitting in the
passenger seat of Amanda's mom's car, presumably Amanda was behind
the wheel.
Speaker 8: So how do we explain that?
Speaker 27: How do we explain your car with Sebastian in it
being at a completely different location.
Speaker 3: The time the movie was going on. Are you scared
right now?
Speaker 10: M M?
Speaker 8: I would be because you're not telling it's the truth.
Speaker 3: I would be looking for a chance to help yourself
and stop lying.
Speaker 9: I mean, if you think I did something wrong.
Speaker 17: Either way, I'm going down.
Speaker 8: No, that's not true. If you didn't do it, you
wouldn't have anything to worry about. You wouldn't need to
be scared. Right now, I'm not scared, but you should
be because.
Speaker 4: I know you did it, and I know see you
think I did it.
Speaker 8: No, I know, I understand. It's not It's not a matter.
Don't get upset.
Speaker 27: I'm talking to you, I mean a person being really.
I told you I would not lie to you. I
will not tell you that I can prove something that
I can't prove. You know, this is not our first rodeo.
Speaker 8: We've had a.
Speaker 9: Tens seven homicides in Sant Joe in the past year. Yeah,
at least that you found a body for it, right,
it's probably more.
Speaker 8: But is well? Who said anything about the homicide?
Speaker 4: Google?
Speaker 8: But I mean, we didn't say anything about a homicide.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, the first mention of murder during this interview didn't
come from investigators. It came from Amanda herself. Oops, I
guess you're not the criminal mastermind you thought you were.
I ain't that right, Amanda?
Speaker 8: He says, this is a homicide we're talking about. Is
there something we need to know about a homicide.
Speaker 9: Well, you're investigating the homicide.
Speaker 8: We're investigating hundreds of crimes.
Speaker 9: Well that's the only one in the news, so I'm assuming.
Speaker 8: So what do you know about the homicide? Then? Since
you talking about it, what do you know about.
Speaker 23: It the stuff in the news.
Speaker 1: For a while, Amanda stuck to her flimsy story about
going into the movies on the night of the murder,
even though it had already been disproven, so investigators decided
to leave her alone in the interrogation room and shift
their focus to her boyfriend, eighteen year old Sebastian Dowell.
Speaker 21: Saturday, did you work last Saturday?
Speaker 12: A week ago today?
Speaker 28: Well it's not good for sure?
Speaker 9: Was off that? Okay?
Speaker 13: So would you guys do anything Saturday?
Speaker 34: No, we just stay home.
Speaker 13: Stayed home the whole time.
Speaker 12: It's Saturday.
Speaker 35: High note, no daylight, No, just watch TV and watch Netflix.
Speaker 1: For investigators, it was clear that Amanda and Sebastian hadn't
coordinated their story very well. Amanda said they were going
to a movie on the night of the murder, while
Sebastian insisted they had stayed home the entire time.
Speaker 13: So who's that the domin hearing the one in the house,
probably her. There's nothing wrong with that. It's the same way, right,
the same.
Speaker 23: Way she jealous one.
Speaker 13: She doesn't time my ass, damn like majorly majorly tell
me about that almost just like me.
Speaker 8: Efficient.
Speaker 28: If she thinks I did something.
Speaker 31: Wrong, she'll yell and so, what's so a violent thing
she's ever done?
Speaker 8: Over jealous him?
Speaker 9: She uh.
Speaker 13: Freshened my ribs.
Speaker 28: I think she tried to stab me at one point.
Speaker 17: Wow, how does she break your ribs?
Speaker 13: She did me and punched me.
Speaker 11: Ain't try to stab you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's scary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but she has always been controlling.
Speaker 11: I have to ask if I can move in the house.
Speaker 36: I have to.
Speaker 28: Ask her anything if I want to do anything.
Speaker 1: Sebastian confirmed the control nature of his relationship with Amanda
and added a disturbing layer. He claimed Amanda's dominance over
him was enforced through violence, alleging that she had once
fractured his ribs and even tried to stab him. While
the rest of the interview offered deeper insight into their
toxic and abusive relationship, much of the audio was difficult
to make out, with Sebastian muttering barely above a whisper,
like a little kid. Still, he revealed that both he
and Amanda were deeply involved in Satanism and considered themselves
devoted followers. As for Caitlin Root, Sebastian claimed he barely
knew her. According to him, the only time they met
was on the day his son was born, when Caitlyn
visited Amanda in the hospital and get this, started flirting
with him right there, right in the hospital, right in
front of Amanda.
Speaker 11: Again, I was lot there, but she'd being disrespectful, like.
Speaker 3: In her face, like Jolman and Anna's face that.
Speaker 28: She's who was kind of disrespectful as saying.
Speaker 2: I guess what I'm kind of missing here is she
are not really friends, but she shows up at the
hospital and starts hitting on the father of the child.
Speaker 3: I mean why, I mean, listen.
Speaker 2: I have no idea.
Speaker 1: According to Sebastian, during the hospital visit, Caitlin implied that
Amanda's newborn son wasn't his, but rather a child of
Amanda's ex boyfriend. This suggestion infuriated Amanda. Hooe's mad as
they say. Finally, after two hours of questioning, Sebastian requested
a lawyer bringing the interview to a close. Investigators then
shifted their attention back to Amanda, returning to the interrogation
room where she'd been waiting.
Speaker 8: What happens at the homicide?
Speaker 4: She did, Well, you know you've seen you saw.
Speaker 27: Too with your own eyes mm hmm and at your
hands mm hmm. She did, honey, mm hmmm. Your phone
tells a different story, your messages.
Speaker 29: And if you want to sit and continue to lie
and say no, no, no, and when you go to
court and we prove this, this, this, this, this and
this that we have and you sit there and say
I don't know anything, show no remorse, say you didn't.
Speaker 8: Do it, and the reason is gone.
Speaker 2: I mean we know.
Speaker 3: It's not a threat.
Speaker 10: Going to do that.
Speaker 8: No, don you get convicted, honey, I'm going away forever.
And you don't do anything to.
Speaker 19: Help yourself to explain and be raised by somebody else
to to.
Speaker 8: Explain why this happened. Don't you think that everybody deserves
to at least know why? Sure didn't tell us why?
Speaker 9: Why?
Speaker 24: What?
Speaker 8: Why? You guys killed this girl?
Speaker 17: We didn't kill anyone.
Speaker 3: That's not true, and.
Speaker 9: You know it.
Speaker 1: This time, investigators adopted a much tougher approach with Amanda,
and it quickly revealed the very cold and callous side
of her personality.
Speaker 27: There's only two people that were there, you and Sebastian.
So you're telling me he did it all.
Speaker 4: He didn't do anything that who did?
Speaker 9: Then?
Speaker 37: Bear?
Speaker 8: You know what I'm beginning to think. What I'm beginning to.
Speaker 37: Think is you are a very cool, hard person that
you can sit here and have no emotion and make
funnies about all this stuff to say, maybe she was
killed by a bear.
Speaker 15: I don't know, Oh you know exactly what she was
killed by, but yeah, you sit here and make light
of it like it's no big deal, taking a human line.
It's you don't physically scare me that it's just spooky
that you just have no emotion about it.
Speaker 1: Possibly recognizing that they were dealing with someone who was
deeply detached and sociopathic, investigators abandoned any pretensive gentleness and
doubled down on their hard line approach with Amanda.
Speaker 3: You killed her, I don't know. You're a liar. You
like the fact that you killed Caitlyn Rutin. You can't
wait to do it again.
Speaker 8: You're a killer, and you like that.
Speaker 9: You don't care.
Speaker 8: Less than a week ago.
Speaker 3: You killed somebody and you don't care. You probably went
home and had a great time. Oh wasn't that fun?
Wasn't that great?
Speaker 8: I can't wait to do again.
Speaker 19: Man, we should do it to silent.
Speaker 9: You're sick.
Speaker 3: You're sick. I've never killed anyone neither. You're a liar.
You're a liar. You watched her die and you got
off on it.
Speaker 10: What was it like?
Speaker 3: Were you looking in her eyes the whole time she's dying?
Did she say anything to you? Do you replay it
when you close your eyes at night. You and Sebastian
are killers.
Speaker 10: And you like it.
Speaker 19: You like to be You want to be known as
the people who kill people.
Speaker 5: You're getting off on the fact that you know that
you guys killed somebody together and you'll kill again because
you're killers. You probably rubbed your blood all over your
body and probably, I don't know, probably had some weird.
Speaker 3: Second yeah shouting you did so. Did you say what happened?
It's okay, it's okay, get it off your chest. You're
a liar.
Speaker 5: You danced around in her blood and probably yay me,
look at me. Here's to you, Satan, here's to you
my first sacrifice or is it my first sacrifice to you?
Speaker 1: Despite their best efforts, investigators did not get a confession
from Amanda, and eventually they had to call it quits.
Amanda remained in the entireation room, waiting to be booked
for murder. While she sat there, a different officer kept
her company, and the two engaged in a surprisingly casual
conversation about favorite TV shows and other everyday topics. During
the course of that seemingly harmless chat, Amanda revealed some
unsettling things about herself.
Speaker 24: Nothing really bothers me because I've interacted with the supernatural.
I've seen demons, I've so nothing really scares me anymore.
Speaker 16: You ever do any of like the ghost hunting kind
of stuff before.
Speaker 19: I have an interested in that I.
Speaker 9: Like to do.
Speaker 24: I want to think I'm crazy, but I've been to
Hell before, so once you cross over that border, you
can see everything from a spiritual point of view, well,
if they want you to see them. Hell's way more
complex than what everyone says. Like there's no fun. For one,
it's not hot, it's normal, and there's like it's.
Speaker 9: Kind of like an office building.
Speaker 24: There's different sections and each demon has like a secretary
who goes out and collects like debts and souls from people.
It's like corridors like that, and you get to decorate,
you get to like design it however you want. Like
the secretary for ahmadeir as a room exactly like this.
Speaker 4: It's great, that's it.
Speaker 1: As a man that continued to ramble on about are
bizarre and quite frankly retarded beliefs, something unexpected was unfolding
in the other interrogation room. Sebastian had waived his right
to an attorney and asked to speak with investigators again.
After a week long investigation and countless hours of interviews
with friends, family, and suspects, the moment they had been
waiting for had arrived. One of Caitlin's killers was finally
ready to confess. On October twenty sixteen, teenagers Amanda Bennett
and Sebastian Dowell were arrested for the brutal murder of
Caitlin Root. At first, both denied any involvement, but investigators
knew it was only a matter of time before one
of them cracked. They were right. During a second interview,
Sebastian finally began to open up, revealing not just pieces
of the truth, but also the disturbing details about his
belief about himselfiopath.
Speaker 28: For stars like that'll roost was so calm, I had em.
I have my own religion, which is polytheis. There is
an exactual name for our religion, nurs especially based on
the myths now, but we have a patriarch gods mar religion.
Speaker 13: Mine is our eighties, the.
Speaker 8: Lord of the underworld.
Speaker 1: In case Sebastian's low, muttered voice is hard to make out,
he told investigators that he considered himself a sociopath and
claimed to worship Hades, the Greek god of the underworld.
I have my own religion, he says, matter of factly.
To be clear, Amanda and Sebastian weren't dark mystics or
vessels of some supernatural evil. They didn't have their own religion,
as he says. What they did have was way too
much time on their hands and a lack of cognitive skills.
They were delusional and deeply out of touch with reality.
They fancy themselves connected to something sinister, but that's what
losers do. They spend their lazy asses online building up
delusions of grandeur to feed and protect their own egos
from coming to the realization that they are utterly useless trash,
leeching off the goodwill of others and contributing absolutely nothing
to society other than misery and death. In truth, they
were nothing but at just a couple of high school
dropouts working part time fast food jobs, living in a
cluttered bedroom in Amanda's mom's house, barely managing to care
for their newborn son, and they were responsible for the
murder of an innocent seventeen year old girl.
Speaker 19: That's it.
Speaker 1: That's the end result of too much coddling, too much sheltering,
and no actual parenting. Where the fuck is the father?
Where are the rules? Where's the goddamn discipline? You're an
adult with a child, still living at your mom's house
because that's all you can afford. Jesus Christ, where's the
fucking shame. As this interview continued, Sebastian revealed another bizarre
detail about himself. He claimed to have a second personality
of all names Drake, who would sometimes take control of
Sebastian's body. He said, so, here we go with all
that bullshit, and when.
Speaker 8: You're Drake, do you feel I mean, you can you.
Speaker 13: Like the Sebastian love back on the.
Speaker 31: Third person of you and see Drake talking and doing
or times sometimes it's just fun.
Speaker 28: I like the eyes it's over, and then sometimes it's just.
Speaker 11: Watching, watching what's happening.
Speaker 1: After setting the stage with claims of memory loss and
blame for his alter ego, started recounting his version of
what happened on the night Caitlin Route was murdered.
Speaker 8: You rolled in her head.
Speaker 12: She was holding her head, So did maybe Amanda hit.
Speaker 21: Her with something to knock her down or suppose.
Speaker 36: And so this was part of the satanic part that
she had kind of off rid of you because she says,
with doing a sacrifice, is.
Speaker 1: It's not nice ya as expected. Sebastian claimed he couldn't
remember much about the murder because Drake had taken over
his body. Still, he told investigators that Amanda had struck
Caitlin over the head, and once she was unconscious, the
two of them cut off her clothes and carried out
what he described as a satanic human sacrifice, stabbing her
multiple times and slitting her throat. Sebastian emphis that Amanda
was the mastermind behind all of this. According to him,
she'd planned the entire thing and taken the lead. While
he didn't deny participating, he painted himself as a passive accomplice.
Despite the outlandish claims of memory loss and a second personality,
investigators had what they needed, a confession, and it wouldn't
be the only one. Just two days later, Amanda requested
another meeting with investigators.
Speaker 24: I was.
Speaker 10: Just messaging people to see if anyone wanted to hang out,
because I never do. My message a girl named Haley,
Mouey Girl, another girl named Haley, and a girl.
Speaker 23: Named Ali and asked them. I was like, Hi, how
are you guys?
Speaker 13: So are you the same age as all these girls?
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: During her next interview, Amanda revealed that on the night
of the murder, she had sent Facebook messages to several
teenage girls asking if they wanted to hang out with
her and her boyfriend Sebastian. The first to respond was
Caitlyn Root.
Speaker 34: Then Caitlyn talked to me like, oh, you wanna hang
out or something? She said yeah, and that'd be cool.
I was like, do you smoke, cause I know she hangs.
Speaker 23: Around that crowd that does. She hangs out with weed.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 23: I told Sebastian that we were gonna go to park
and he's like okay.
Speaker 10: And then we left and then we like I asked
her where she was at and then she told me,
and I was like, well, can you just walk up
to like the corner of the street so I.
Speaker 23: Didn't have to look for your house.
Speaker 1: Amanda and Sebastian drove to Caitlyn's neighborhood. As they got closer,
Amanda told Caitlyn to meet them at the nearby street corner.
After picking them up, the two drove around for a
bit before ending up at Krugg Park, where they walked
the wooded trails and paused for a while to smoke
some weed.
Speaker 38: And then Sebastian sat out next to me and he
said they wanted her for a sacrifice. They wanted her specifically,
and that she fit the criteria and that they wanted her.
Speaker 39: I told him that we were having the boodless her
and that she was becoming my friend, and so they
didn't want it.
Speaker 17: They they didn't want it to be her, and he
said that it had to be her because they wanted her.
Speaker 38: So we kept walking and then Sebastian like she was leading,
so Sebastian pulled me aside and said they'd hited me
a stick and said hit her.
Speaker 39: You need to hit her, and I told him I
didn't want to, and he said hit her now, So
I hit her with a steak and then I after
I hit.
Speaker 17: Her, Sabatini joked off top of her and started choking her.
Speaker 13: So she went to the ground.
Speaker 23: No, he ran past me, she.
Speaker 40: Imagine, ran past me and knocked kick to the ground,
started choking her.
Speaker 17: She was laying right here and he had a hole
of her like that and was choking her. And then
she was trying to say, help me, please stop. I
can't breathe. And then he said can you help me?
And and I just stood there.
Speaker 23: He didn't know what to do.
Speaker 17: And then he took a strange out of his pocket,
what a syringe, and he stabbed her in the neck
with it. And I asked him what that lesson?
Speaker 39: He said it was supposed to maker going to sleep,
so she didn't feel anything.
Speaker 17: So then she cut her clothes off and pulled her
pants off.
Speaker 1: Hold On, I thought that once you'd been to hell,
nothing scared you anymore. Why are you crying? Amanda?
Speaker 12: What happen?
Speaker 1: As you can tell? Amanda's version of events differed quite
a bit from Sebastian's. She was just a reluctant bystander
and an unwilling participant in a satanic ritual that Sebastian
alone wanted to carry out. It was all him, It
wasn't her. She was just an innocent little girl female accountability?
Speaker 16: Am I right?
Speaker 17: And then he had me and knife and said to
stab her. And I told him I couldn't do it.
I told him that I couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: He said that I had to.
Speaker 40: I told him that he couldn't, and he said, we
have to do it now. So he took it back
and and he stabbed her in the ship and I
covered my eyes and ears, and I stirred around. When
I turn around, she was standing up. I knew he
had stabbed her, though, but she was sitting and starting to,
you know, and walk away.
Speaker 23: And he'd he looked surprised, so I don't think it
was supposed to happen.
Speaker 39: He'd light knocked her back down and jumped on top
of her, like on pumper within the legs, like he
was choked drinking.
Speaker 17: After a while, he.
Speaker 39: Said that she didn't have bolts anymore. He looked at
me and he said he was proud of me. He
said he was proud of me for being there.
Speaker 1: Amanda claimed that after Caitlin was killed, Sebastian smashed her
phone and scattered the pieces throughout the park. He then
coached Amanda on what to say if they were ever
questioned by police.
Speaker 17: He doesn't in Cardiff, and he broke into half and
put it somewhere. He don't me to look at it,
and he'd call me that if we were caught, to
tell him the police that we were at the movies.
Speaker 1: Amanda also insisted that any evidence linking her to Satanism
or human sacrifice was entirely Sebastian's doing. It's always the
man who's to blame, isn't it. She claimed he had
forced his beliefs onto her and that she had simply
gone along without taking any of his beliefs.
Speaker 38: Seriously, I thought, you guys found the books as you
were talking to me about.
Speaker 23: Rituals, and the stuff that was in the books is
the stuff that he told me. Yeah, in the black book?
Speaker 9: Who wrote it?
Speaker 23: I wrote what he told me.
Speaker 1: Amanda explained that Sebastian had mentioned performing a human sacrifice
more than once, but she never actually believed he would
do it. How many times have we heard that shit before?
She claimed that when they picked up Caitlin that night,
she had no idea what Sebastian intended to do.
Speaker 19: There's a part of you.
Speaker 11: Thinking and yeah, this is gonna happen, right, he was kidding.
Speaker 17: I didn't think he was really gonna do it. That's
why I thought when we got to the end that
we were just.
Speaker 23: Gonna take her home.
Speaker 17: I thought he was joking.
Speaker 16: I thought it was just all Ay telling him.
Speaker 13: I've got somebody that you can sacrifice.
Speaker 12: I found her.
Speaker 13: I found the one that you can sacrifice.
Speaker 24: Because he said that he needed to do it, and
I didn't want him to kill a random person.
Speaker 23: If he was gonna do it.
Speaker 1: Amanda's story was riddled with inconsistencies, and after listening to
her for several minutes, investigators started pushing back with pointed
questions and rebuttals. It was clear she was still lying
and trying to protect herself by shifting all of the
blame onto Sebastian.
Speaker 13: I mean, when we talked the other day, you talked
about how you control him. You're the domineering person in
the relationship.
Speaker 31: How you keep him locked down because he's pretty he
had a lot of shit.
Speaker 13: Dow say what he told me.
Speaker 38: I don't want him talk to anybody like his Poe
isn't on and I read all of his messages because.
Speaker 23: He's had jealous Yeah.
Speaker 13: I mean you basically, you made it pretty clear that
you were the boss in the family.
Speaker 23: About some things.
Speaker 31: But then now we're at where he's controlling you and
one of the other thing is all honestly, and I'm
just being straight with you. I mean, you showed no remorse,
no emotion what server matter fact, laughed a couple of
times when.
Speaker 13: We were talking about the situations.
Speaker 31: And now there's this complete mood and demean and change
in these crocodile tiers stuff.
Speaker 13: I mean, I mean, with your demeanor the other day, I.
Speaker 31: Have a hard time believing that, all of a sudden,
now complete opposite you were.
Speaker 13: Just as cold and soulless as you can possibly be.
Speaker 1: A man who interviews with investigators painted a picture of
two entirely different people. In the first she came off
as a cold, arrogant, and detached sociopath, but after two
days in a jail cell, she returned as a tearful,
self proclaimed victim. You know, female privilege.
Speaker 8: So why if this is a story.
Speaker 31: We would believe now that he's this evil person and
you're just kind of a I guess you're kind of
saying you're a victim in this.
Speaker 13: Why didn't you tell us all this or not? Why
did you act so cold?
Speaker 3: Why did you not care?
Speaker 13: Why did you laugh?
Speaker 8: Why did you tell us to prove it?
Speaker 13: Why did you How did you possibly have no with
the emotions you're.
Speaker 31: Having today, How could you possibly set there as I'm
describing this homicide?
Speaker 23: It didn't affect me because it wasn't true. I mean,
I knew what he was telling me wasn't true.
Speaker 9: That's why.
Speaker 41: Enough fact, you said you went threw up, you said
you had to cover your eyes in your ears so
you wouldn't hear her screen and you wouldn't see it.
But you had no emotion in the end of the day,
not a single tear, not even a sad face.
Speaker 35: Because he said, in jail for forty eight hours now,
because you realize that you guys aren't going to get
away with this, because you realize you've been charged and
you're in a little prison.
Speaker 33: Is that why?
Speaker 23: It's because he told me that no matter what, it
would be okay. And obviously, since we're getting.
Speaker 31: Charged for something, so if you want to got charge everything,
it would have been okay.
Speaker 24: Well, I wanted to tell you guys what happened, but
I knew it would probably be worse.
Speaker 1: Amanda's Facebook messages to Caitlyn erased any chance of plausible deniability.
She lured Caitlin to krug Park and specific told her
not to reveal who she was meeting, asking her to
keep it a secret under the pretense of hiding her
marijuana use. Tragically, Caitlyn honored that request when she lied
about her plans that night. In return, Amanda repaid her
trust by slitting Caitlyn's throat and stabbing her to death,
all in the service of some twisted, delusional beliefs in
the supernatural.
Speaker 31: Everything you're saying now is exactly what he said about you.
Speaker 13: You know, he's saying that that that you.
Speaker 31: Said, it had to be Caitlin, that had to be
an unclean soul, someone was condemned. Said that you've been
talking about the sacrifice for some time, that he's kind
of squashed it. But when you said it, he's you know,
said he.
Speaker 2: Went along with it.
Speaker 27: He said, he held her down. Why you stabbed her
and cut her throat? How many of the wounds were
from you on Caitlin. Let's be honest, now, what about
the stabbing or cutting and.
Speaker 13: Cut her through? He said, you did it all. He
held her down by the shoulders.
Speaker 23: It's not true.
Speaker 8: I believe that you were both equally on board with it.
Speaker 13: I believe that you picked her. I believe that you
lured her out, just like the text messages show. And
I believe that what you need to do is be
responsible for your actions.
Speaker 1: What makes this case even more chilling is the fact
that Caitlyn wasn't Amanda's only target. She was just the
first to respond. By her own admission, she reached out
to four different teenage girls that night. Any one of
them could have ended up as the victim to this brutal,
senseless murder. Caitlin Root was just unfortunate and friendly accepted
Amanda's invitation to hang out, which was her undoing. Investigators
would later uncover on even more disturbing detail, Amanda and
Sebastian had created a twisted mandate for themselves to kill
two people per year. Had they gotten away with Caitlin's murder.
There's little doubt they would have struck again.
Speaker 31: I'd be curious to know what your feelings are on
these other three girls, maybe all four of these girls.
Speaker 13: Really, he didn't really care that much for the first
person who would have went with you would have been
a person, and she's just the one and left.
Speaker 1: Following Amanda's confession, which was filled with contradictions and obvious lies,
investigators sat down with Sebastian one last time to confront
him with what she had said. He denied most of it,
falling back on memory lapses and claiming he couldn't recall details.
It's funny how amniesia hits after you do something really bad,
much like Amanda. This follow up interview revealed a drastically
different version of Sebastian. The cold, stoic follower of Hades,
Lord of the Underworld, had vanished. He was replaced by
a frightened, trembling young man who looked nothing like the
supernatural villain he claimed to be.
Speaker 13: You seem perfectly fine. You didn't seem like you had
these you know, kind of like now the shades and
having a qualt being called.
Speaker 42: It doesn't seem even it seems like more you're acting
more than anything right now, and I know that's nerves
and you don't want to become off as this this
terrible animal or whatnot.
Speaker 23: You know, and I don't think you are.
Speaker 8: I think you guys got.
Speaker 25: Caught up in a.
Speaker 42: Kind of romany, a notion that this was something neat
or cool, and now that the realism set in, and
it's really not so romany, cause it sound so neat.
You know, it's of the Twilight Saga. You know, it's
real life, and it's affected both you guys and your
families and Caitlin and her family. You know, you're kind
of looking for an hour in a sense of trying
to bury yourself behind this persona I do.
Speaker 12: I think you got wrapped up in this ship.
Speaker 13: Mentally, physically, emotionally.
Speaker 42: And then when it happened, you know, and now they
have to face their realism of it. I think the
realism has hit home, you know, and.
Speaker 8: It's a mess.
Speaker 1: Indeed, this situation was a disturbing mess, and it was
now up to the justice system to sort it all out.
On that note, Amanda had an unusual suggestion for how
she thought the system should deal with.
Speaker 7: Her you guys are involved in this, Kaitlin's dead, what
do you think the for replenishment would be.
Speaker 10: I mean, honestly, for me, was there and I didn't
tell anybody anything happened, So I mean I should be
put in jail for some time. But I do have
a baby that's two months old, and that's a vital
part of his life because he's gonna be crawling soon.
He's gonna have his first Halloween without me there already,
he's gonna start talking, and he's grown out of all
of his clothes that I got for him and stuff,
and I'm never gonna get to see him and those
and I'm not gonna get to dress him and stuff
like that.
Speaker 24: I don't know.
Speaker 23: I mean, I mean, there's house rooms.
Speaker 1: A man has suggested that as a mother house arrest
would be an appropriate form of punishment. Fortunately, a prosecutor
and judge saw things a little differently. I hate to
keep beating this drum because Jesus Christ talk about female privilege,
but yeah, that's what every baby needs. A psychopathic, maronic,
devil worshiping loser of a mom with bad taste in men,
abandoning them to go kill innocent young women sure, Amanda.
In the end, both Amanda and Sebastian accepted plea deals,
but not the kind they wanted. They pleaded guilty to
second degree murder and were each sentenced to life in
prison with the possibility of parole.
Speaker 13: I would leave you with this.
Speaker 7: Caylin will never have a baby, her parents will never
see her get any older, her friends will never see her,
her grandparents, she'll never know.
Speaker 23: I've listened to all of them things that people have said.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this is me saying that you know, when we care,
when we when we compare.
Speaker 13: The things that you're gonna miss.
Speaker 9: That sucks.
Speaker 13: But but you you have a chance in sunlight in
the future. Do you have a chance of parole?
Speaker 2: You will.
Speaker 31: I mean, as young age you are, chances are you'd
probably come out of prison a young woman yet and
get to remain the rest of your life for the better,
I hope.
Speaker 13: But Caitlyn will never have that opportunity.
Speaker 1: The murder of Caitlin Root wasn't the result of a
sudden outburst or tragic misunderstanding. It was a calculated act
fueled by delusion, detachment, and a warped sense of purpose.
Amanda Bennett and Sebastian Dowell had isolated themselves from the world,
living in a bubble of dysfunction and feeding off one
another's twisted beliefs. Seemingly with Mom's approval, they spiraled deeper
into a fantasy where they weren't just ordinary teenagers, where
they weren't just the losers that we all know them
to be, but in their own minds they were powerful,
dark figures, fulfilling some higher unholy calling what a bunch
of fucking losers. In truth, they were nothing of the sort.
They were deeply troubled, profounding immature high school dropouts, clinging
to half baked ideas about Satanism and sacrifice, desperate to
inject meaning into their otherwise aimless lives. Their belief system
wasn't just stupid, it was deadly, and Caitlin Root paid
the ultimate price for their stupidity. She was a kind hearted,
free spirited, and trusting seventeen year old who wanted to
hang out, have a good time. Her life, her future,
and her relationships were stolen in a brutal, senseless act
committed by two people who confuse cruelty for purpose. What's
most haunting is how random this all was. Caitlyn wasn't
targeted because she was part of a love triangle or
a bitter betray She was just the first person to
say yes to a Facebook message. That's it, that's all.
It took one moment of trust, one response to an invitation,
and her life was over. As if making friends isn't
already hard enough, these losers go around killing people who
want to be their friend. If nothing else, this case
is a stark reminder of how dangerous isolation can become,
how toxic delusions confessed her, and how easily the innocent
can be pulled into someone else's madness. This show was
written and produced by Michael Stabeel, hosted by Yours truly
Mike Bude. Thank you so much for joining us. If
you like the show, check out our website swordscale dot com.
You'll find our TV show on there, which is pretty good.
I might want to check that out. So available at
only twenty bucks a month, you can cancel at any time.
Thanks for sporting and stay safe.
Speaker 21: Hey Mike, my name is Nicole.
Speaker 36: I have been listening since twenty seventeen.
Speaker 21: Tell everybody about the show.
Speaker 1: It is my favorite thing.
Speaker 21: Your storytelling is unmatched. Dude, listen. Not like you need
the advice from me, but screw the shit talkers.
Speaker 4: You're incredible.
Speaker 12: Keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 3: Love the show, Thank you, it