Speaker 1: I didn't even know.
Speaker 2: I God, every frog begins with a promise.
Speaker 3: Howard Patrol was immediately suspicious that this horrible accident was
Speaker 3: not an accident.
Speaker 2: A quick fortune, easy money, or a life transformed overnight.
Speaker 4: She's bleeding profusely, can't get the bleeding stop.
Speaker 2: But behind these illusions, like calculated deceptions, carefully hidden in
Speaker 2: plain sight.
Speaker 5: They're absolutely worre whispers in the community about her dad.
Speaker 2: Sometimes these criminals are backed into a corner and feel
Speaker 2: their only way out is to kill.
Speaker 1: He wanted his wife, he wanted a girlfriend, and when
Speaker 1: those things were threatened, he was unwilling to use it.
Speaker 6: H Yeah, you touched a N one one, You ran
Speaker 6: off the group, you ran off the bridge. This I
Speaker 6: don't even help my wife.
Speaker 7: I don't.
Speaker 6: This is crazy, all right, she tripped in the vehicle.
Speaker 6: Brow her out, Help me.
Speaker 8: God, you worth thousands of cases, and then there are
Speaker 8: certain cases that just with you forever. Miss gugis On
Speaker 8: being one of those cases that I don't think anybody
Speaker 8: in this area has ever forgotten it.
Speaker 5: Chester is a community where, for the most part, people
Speaker 5: still know each other. People know their neighbor and know
Speaker 5: their neighbor's neighbor. I'm Travis Jenkins. I grew up in Chester.
Speaker 5: I've worked with Chester News and Reporter full time since
Speaker 5: two thousand and three, so twenty two years.
Speaker 2: In the tight knit community of Chester, Judy Orr was
Speaker 2: a much loved figure.
Speaker 9: Judy loved her family.
Speaker 5: She was a very kind and giving person and just
Speaker 5: a very sweet natured lady.
Speaker 3: I'm Candice Lively. I'm the Deputy solicitor in Chester County.
Speaker 3: Judy was a very important woman in the community because
Speaker 3: she was involved with her church. She knew a lot
Speaker 3: of important people in the community just because of her kindness.
Speaker 3: She would volunteer. She was just someone that most people knew.
Speaker 3: Judy did have quite an affinity for the motorcycle groups
Speaker 3: that she was involved with.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and four, tragedy struck when Judy's husband, Todd,
Speaker 2: was killed in a motorcycle accident.
Speaker 3: Her husband, when he unfortunately passed away, she really missed
Speaker 3: that part of her life of.
Speaker 7: Being connected with that community.
Speaker 2: After the death of her husband, Judy continued playing a
Speaker 2: part in the Christian biker group and around twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: she met fifty two year old fellow biker James Baldwin.
Speaker 3: James Baldwin is someone that Judy medical when he was
Speaker 3: a dispatcher for Chester County Sheriff's Office, and he had
Speaker 3: also had some experience as a police officer in a
Speaker 3: neighboring county that would be York County.
Speaker 1: My name is doctor VICKITHA Corda's Deci and I'm a
Speaker 1: consultant forensic psychologist. Judy became a widow. It's only natural
Speaker 1: for somebody to want companionship and someone to love again
Speaker 1: in their life, and she made the decision to move
Speaker 1: on after a substantial period of being single. She was
Speaker 1: loving and caring and she wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: share that with a partner. She wanted to be able
Speaker 1: to enjoy companionship once again and felt like she could
Speaker 1: move on from her loss.
Speaker 2: While Judy was financially secure after the death of her husband, Todd,
Speaker 2: James Baldwin was an ex deputy and Local nine one
Speaker 2: one operator.
Speaker 3: Judy was definitely better off financially whenever she met James Baldwin.
Speaker 3: She had the house that her husband left her, she
Speaker 3: had plenty of money from everything she received from the
Speaker 3: proceeds of her husband's passing. Jamie is not financially in
Speaker 3: the same situation, he was always filing insurance claims. He
Speaker 3: was always looking for ways that he could make money
Speaker 3: because he just didn't make much money doing what he
Speaker 3: was doing as a dispatcher.
Speaker 1: James Baldwin was somebody who was looking for opportunities, opportunities
Speaker 1: to further themselves in their own wealth. There is evidence
Speaker 1: of him trying to defraud insurance.
Speaker 3: He's actually waiting for financial money to come in from
Speaker 3: some motorcycle accident he had where he was claiming that
Speaker 3: Department of Public Safety was at fault for having electrical
Speaker 3: box in the wrong place on a street and he
Speaker 3: ran into it and damaged his bike and he was hurt.
Speaker 10: My name is Fiona Hotston Moore and I'm a forensic
Speaker 10: accountant and expert witness. In my experience of fraud, they
Speaker 10: do tend to be serial forwards. This so they do
Speaker 10: it once and they get away with it. They perhaps
Speaker 10: in their mind don't tend to do it again, but
Speaker 10: then circumstances are such that they do do it again.
Speaker 10: And I think you need to bear in mind the
Speaker 10: Ford triangle, which means there needs to be motive, opportunity
Speaker 10: and rationalization and if those three factors are in place,
Speaker 10: then quite often affords that will repeat the previous fraud.
Speaker 2: James Baldwin's background as a nine to one one operator
Speaker 2: and ex deputy meant he was quickly embraced by the
Speaker 2: Chester community.
Speaker 5: I definitely think that James Baldwin's background and law enforcement
Speaker 5: would have made other people trustful of them, and I
Speaker 5: think that that probably just grew because again, so many
Speaker 5: people knew Judy and so many.
Speaker 9: People loved or liked her. She had a lot of friends.
Speaker 9: She was very well known in the community.
Speaker 2: In March twenty twelve, Judy and James married, and Judy
Speaker 2: was happy to spend lavishly on her new husband.
Speaker 3: Judy really did enjoy spending money on Jamie. He was
Speaker 3: very charismatic and at the time she's just such a console.
Speaker 3: I think she just loved all the attention. It had
Speaker 3: been a long time since she had had a serious relationship,
Speaker 3: and so she did. They actually went and bought a
Speaker 3: beautiful new Harley Davidson motorcycle for him, and anything and
Speaker 3: everything he wanted for it, she paid for it. She
Speaker 3: basically set him up in this house and paid for
Speaker 3: and did anything that he wanted. He was living the
Speaker 3: kind of life that he wanted to live, but because
Speaker 3: Judy had the money and not him.
Speaker 2: In June twenty sixteen, James Baldwin persuaded Judy to take
Speaker 2: out a twenty five thousand dollars life insurance policy.
Speaker 3: James Baldwin did take out the accidental life insurance policy.
Speaker 3: It just seemed like a normal thing to do, and
Speaker 3: she had unfortunately lost her husband in her lifetime, and
Speaker 3: she understood the importance of having money whenever you have
Speaker 3: an unfortunate loss like that. Jamie had been in some
Speaker 3: motorcycle accidents in the past and he said, you know
Speaker 3: these are Having an insurance policy is important.
Speaker 10: An accident only life policy only pays out if the
Speaker 10: person dies in an accident, so it does not pay
Speaker 10: out if they die of natural causes or some terminal illness, etc.
Speaker 10: It's much cheaper and easier to obtain and therefore potentially
Speaker 10: more liable to food forty link claims when someone actually
Speaker 10: dies in an untowards circumstance.
Speaker 2: In December twenty sixteen, Judy and James Baldwin were getting
Speaker 2: ready for an event with their Christian biker group.
Speaker 3: Jady Baldwin loved Christmas that was our favorite time of year.
Speaker 3: They would go with their group, their Christian biker group,
Speaker 3: on different trips to raise money for charities.
Speaker 7: They had one that was their biggest.
Speaker 3: One each year, which was around Christmas, where they would
Speaker 3: collect toys for children who were in need. They were
Speaker 3: going to go to Kentucky actually for the twenty sixteen Christmas.
Speaker 7: That's whenever things fell apart.
Speaker 2: At eleven four pm on the evening of December fourteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, Chester Police receive a nine to one to
Speaker 2: one distress call.
Speaker 6: We ran off the group, He ran off the bridge.
Speaker 6: I don't even help from my wife now, just explasively, alright,
Speaker 6: she trapped in the vehicle, threw her out. Oh God.
Speaker 2: Highway Officer James Calvin Riker Junior was asked to respond.
Speaker 8: My name was James Calvin Riker Jr. We enforced all
Speaker 8: traffic laws and crashes in South Carolina and we would
Speaker 8: get called out to work more complex collisions.
Speaker 9: The early hours of the fifteenth, I was at home.
Speaker 9: I was sleeping.
Speaker 8: Got a call from my supervisor and stated that the
Speaker 8: troop here in Chester, South Carolina was needing assistance with
Speaker 8: one of the cases that they had responded to.
Speaker 2: The supervisor, explained jeep had crashed on old Richburg Road
Speaker 2: just outside of Chester.
Speaker 8: It's a two lane road, but it is dark. There's
Speaker 8: no really ambient lighting out in that area. You are
Speaker 8: as we would say, in the country at that point.
Speaker 2: The couple traveling in the jeep were Judy or Baldwin
Speaker 2: and her husband, James Baldwin.
Speaker 4: I'm Randy Newman, sixth Circuit Solicitor. So according to James Baldwin,
Speaker 4: some parent car comes into his lane or truck runs
Speaker 4: him off the road and he says that he blacked
Speaker 4: out at some point. When he comes to, he reaches over,
Speaker 4: doesn't feel her in the seat, crawls out of the
Speaker 4: vehicle and finds her lying in a creek, not underwater,
Speaker 4: just in a couple of inches of water. Unable to
Speaker 4: get her, come to and calls nine one one.
Speaker 2: Judy or Baldwin was pronounced dead at the scene. James
Speaker 2: Baldwin was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
Speaker 5: The news of her death actually got to was the
Speaker 5: next day, but even at that point there were already
Speaker 5: sort of whispers in the community that there was more
Speaker 5: to the story.
Speaker 8: I felt like there was something different about this case.
Speaker 8: But I got the internal nudge that I needed to
Speaker 8: go actually to the hospital and talk to mister Balwin
Speaker 8: as soon as possible. When I first had a conversation
Speaker 8: with the unseen supervisor, what he was saying that mister
Speaker 8: Baldwin had told him at the scene was not matching
Speaker 8: up with what the damage was or the lack of damage,
Speaker 8: so pretty close early on in the investigation, I felt
Speaker 8: like something wasn't adding up with what he was saying
Speaker 8: and what was being presented at the scene itself.
Speaker 3: James Baldwin at first when he called nine one one,
Speaker 3: he claimed that there was a car accident he swerved
Speaker 3: to miss a truck that had come into his lane,
Speaker 3: that he went off the road and must have lost
Speaker 3: consciousness because he kind of comes to when the jeeps
Speaker 3: stopped and realized that his wife was not next to
Speaker 3: him in the passenger seat of the vehicle.
Speaker 2: While James Baldwin was taken to the hospital with minor injuries,
Speaker 2: officers began to notice inconsistencies between evidence of the scene
Speaker 2: with James Baldwin's version of events.
Speaker 8: I knew the story that was being told did not
Speaker 8: line up with what was being presented at the scene.
Speaker 8: I spoke with the onseen supervisor. He was telling me
Speaker 8: that he had some concerns with what mister Baldwin had
Speaker 8: told him. The on scene supervisor was saying that mister
Speaker 8: Baldwin had told him he felt like miss Judy was
Speaker 8: ejected out of the vehicle and that's what caused her death.
Speaker 8: I asked him if he could send me a couple
Speaker 8: of pictures of the vehicle. He showed me those pictures
Speaker 8: and I knew that was not the case from the
Speaker 8: lack of damage to the vehicle.
Speaker 2: Officer Riker decided to go straight to the hospital to
Speaker 2: interview James Baldwin.
Speaker 8: He did say that he tried to get her up
Speaker 8: the embankment, but also said that he found her in
Speaker 8: the front of the vehicle, which would have been in
Speaker 8: the water, and she was basically.
Speaker 7: Pulled towards the driver's side of.
Speaker 8: The vehicle, which would not be in the direct path
Speaker 8: to try to get her to the top of the embankment.
Speaker 8: So that was a little strange, but you know, maybe
Speaker 8: he was disoriented. I was trying to give him, you know,
Speaker 8: the benefit of the doubt at that time when he
Speaker 8: is telling me this story.
Speaker 2: During the interview at the hospital, James Baldwin's story what
Speaker 2: happened that evening began to change.
Speaker 8: He started adding more stuff to it to try to
Speaker 8: fill in those gaps and those questions that he was
Speaker 8: being asked. So his story was that back at the
Speaker 8: house there was an incident there where miss Judy had
Speaker 8: fell off of a ladder while trying to decorate a
Speaker 8: Christmas tree. He was outside at that moment. When he
Speaker 8: came back inside, he saw that she was laying on
Speaker 8: the floor, was bleeding a lot, and decided that she
Speaker 8: needed to go to the hospital to get stitches.
Speaker 4: So, according to James Baldwin, they are decorating for Christmas.
Speaker 4: She is on a step ladder decorating the tree. James
Speaker 4: Baldwin said, she fell and bumped her head. She's bleeding profusely.
Speaker 4: Can't get the bleeding stop. Gotta take her to hospital.
Speaker 8: And as he was traveling down Old Richburg Road, a
Speaker 8: vehicle was in his lane of travel where he took
Speaker 8: evasive action, ran off the right side of road, kind
Speaker 8: of overcracked it and went off the left side of
Speaker 8: the road, down in abankment and into a creek, where
Speaker 8: he said that he doesn't remember really what happened after that,
Speaker 8: except when he woke up that Miss Judy was not
Speaker 8: in the vehicle and then he found her outside of
Speaker 8: the jeep itself.
Speaker 2: Officer Riker noticed a lack of emotion from James Baldwin.
Speaker 9: I knew he was a police officer.
Speaker 8: I knew he was in public safety, and maybe that
Speaker 8: was just the way somebody actually responded to that behavior.
Speaker 8: I asked him point blank that night if he did
Speaker 8: anything to hurt Miss Judy. That was the only time
Speaker 8: that I saw emotion out of him during this interview
Speaker 8: is when I was accusing him of doing something to
Speaker 8: Miss Judy.
Speaker 2: After interviewing James Baldwin at the hospital, Officer Riker joined
Speaker 2: his colleagues at the scene of the accident.
Speaker 8: This is a rule two lane road out in the country.
Speaker 8: There's a bridge there that covers the creek itself. But
Speaker 8: I was able to see the path of travel that
Speaker 8: mister Baldwin went off the right side of the road,
Speaker 8: and even when I got there, he should have stayed
Speaker 8: in a straight path, which would have taken him straight
Speaker 8: into the woods. And so when he goes off the
Speaker 8: left side of the road, he has to make a
Speaker 8: control movement to straighten up the vehicle, drive down the embankment,
Speaker 8: get to the creek bottom, and then kind of angle
Speaker 8: it back to the right, And so it does not
Speaker 8: add up with what he is telling us.
Speaker 3: Highway troll was immediately suspicious. They see accidents all the time.
Speaker 3: Number One, They didn't see damage to the vehicle. They
Speaker 3: thought that that was very suspicious. And the fact that
Speaker 3: the windshield was intact, nothing was really damage except for
Speaker 3: just the front little grill piece on the jeep. There
Speaker 3: was no indication of a huge turn or some type
Speaker 3: of movement by the vehicle to avoid a truck coming
Speaker 3: into his lane, which he claimed.
Speaker 8: I can see the fresh marks in the dirt off
Speaker 8: the right side of the roadway, and I'm like, this
Speaker 8: doesn't happen when you're traveling at normal highway speeds of
Speaker 8: fifty to fifty five miles an hour. So just seeing
Speaker 8: the jeep, its location, the path of travel that it
Speaker 8: took to get to its location, the amount of blood
Speaker 8: that was in the vehicle and on the outside of
Speaker 8: the vehicle.
Speaker 7: Just did not.
Speaker 8: Add up with her getting ejected out of the vehicle.
Speaker 2: Despite the concerns of the officers at the scene. James
Speaker 2: Baldwin's background as a deputy and nine to one to
Speaker 2: one responder meant local officers were quick to believe his
Speaker 2: version of events.
Speaker 3: Here in Chester County, with it being such a small county,
Speaker 3: people are in the community who work in law enforcement.
Speaker 3: It's hard to look at them and think that they
Speaker 3: could have had anything to do with injuring a family member.
Speaker 3: I think that there's just that inherent small town field
Speaker 3: that there's just no way Jamie bard One could have
Speaker 3: done something to hurt this wonderful woman that everybody worked.
Speaker 1: It is highly likely that when James called nine one
Speaker 1: one and his colleagues responded to that that they would
Speaker 1: have quite quickly believed his version of events. He was
Speaker 1: a trusted colleague, he had worked within the profession for
Speaker 1: as long as he did, and that unconscious bias that
Speaker 1: would have been present which would have rationalized their decision,
Speaker 1: which was, well, actually, he's one of us. He should
Speaker 1: be telling the truth. He is telling the truth, and
Speaker 1: therefore there's no need to question this any further.
Speaker 3: On the night when the jeep went off the road,
Speaker 3: the share Sophie did send an investigator to the home.
Speaker 3: He looked in the window, and you could immediately see
Speaker 3: there was blood on the floor. In the main area
Speaker 3: was a huge, wide, open main area. There was a
Speaker 3: ladder and a huge Christmas treek. Unfortunately, he only took
Speaker 3: about forty pictures, not that anymore, but looking at the
Speaker 3: scene without having anybody else come in there, he went
Speaker 3: and reported back that what he saw, and based on
Speaker 3: what mister Baldwin had told him, he believed that Judy
Speaker 3: had fallen from the ladder and hit her head on
Speaker 3: the mantle or somewhere in that area, and that's what
Speaker 3: caused her head injuries.
Speaker 7: So that fit with what he believed.
Speaker 3: At the time Jamie Baldwin was telling everyone.
Speaker 2: Satisfied with James Baldwin's story that there had been an
Speaker 2: accident at the home, the investigator allowed the scene to
Speaker 2: be cleaned up.
Speaker 3: The only person who had walked into that home that
Speaker 3: was law enforcement was the investigator from the Sheriff's office,
Speaker 3: and he also told a friend of Jamie Baldwin, you
Speaker 3: can go ahead and clean up. I'm sure you don't
Speaker 3: want it to look like this. Whenever mister Baldwin gets
Speaker 3: back to the house, he gave a card to this
Speaker 3: female by the name of Terry Keane, who said, you
Speaker 3: can call these people, they'll clean up the blood.
Speaker 2: On the morning of December fifteenth, the community of Chester
Speaker 2: learned of Judy or Baldwin's death and there was immediate
Speaker 2: suspicion around what happened.
Speaker 5: We found out about it the next day. Gets around
Speaker 5: very quickly in the town as small as Chester.
Speaker 3: Law enforcement had two different versions of what could have happened.
Speaker 3: Highway patrol was thinking, this is not a car accident,
Speaker 3: and then you had law enforcement with the Sheriff's office saying, well,
Speaker 3: it looks like it was possibly an accident from a
Speaker 3: fall that happened at the house.
Speaker 4: They took his statement, They went to the house and
Speaker 4: they did I guess the bare minimum. And this guy
Speaker 4: was a former dispatcher at the Sheriff's office. They never
Speaker 4: at any point thought that he's not being truthful.
Speaker 2: A local pathologist performed an autopsy to try to confirm
Speaker 2: the cause of death.
Speaker 3: The biggest issue happened whenever the autopsy was done. The
Speaker 3: findings of the pathologist was that she had died from
Speaker 3: a blunt force trauma to the head, but in their
Speaker 3: opinion that it was probably because of the fall.
Speaker 5: There're absolutely were whispers in the community about her death.
Speaker 5: There were just questions about I guess Hol's and Jamie's story,
Speaker 5: his I guess connection to.
Speaker 9: The law enforcement community.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of those things were brought up
Speaker 5: his question students that people had about whether or not
Speaker 5: this was being looked into as thoroughly as it should
Speaker 5: have been, and whether or not there was more to
Speaker 5: the story, which most people seem to think that there was.
Speaker 2: While local law enforcement were quick to believe James Baldwin's
Speaker 2: version of events, the coroner, who knew Judy personally had doubts.
Speaker 3: Terry Tinker our Corner and the family, after hearing everything,
Speaker 3: strongly believed that it didn't fit with what they were
Speaker 3: actually seeing from the pictures that were taken at the home.
Speaker 7: That this didn't make sense how she could have such.
Speaker 3: A severe head trauma falling from basically a three step ladder.
Speaker 3: So there were just a lot of questions.
Speaker 4: I think it was just he was taken out his word.
Speaker 4: They felt like they didn't have anything to show otherwise,
Speaker 4: and so they weren't moving along the way the family
Speaker 4: wanted them to or the way the coroner wanted them
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 5: I mean to be honest, there were a lot of
Speaker 5: people who said that he had killed her, that they
Speaker 5: believed that Jamie had murdered Judy.
Speaker 2: In early twenty seventeen, the investigation into the death of
Speaker 2: Judy or Baldwin was still ongoing, with a coroner and
Speaker 2: the sheriff still in disagreement about what happened.
Speaker 4: I started getting calls early on from the community, Hey,
Speaker 4: this isn't right. Somebody needs to do something.
Speaker 3: This case was very tricky, simply because we had an
Speaker 3: initial disagreement or kind of this impasse between investigating agencies.
Speaker 2: The fact that key people investigating the case knew both
Speaker 2: James Baldwin and Judy or Baldwin personally complicated Matt.
Speaker 3: So initially that was hard to get over that hump
Speaker 3: of thinking, we've got to look at this as investigators
Speaker 3: and not as friends of one another. We've got to
Speaker 3: dig into this and do it's fair for this family.
Speaker 1: When you're emotionally involved with anyone, whether that's the victim
Speaker 1: or the perpetrator, it is hard to detach yourself, especially professionally,
Speaker 1: when you are being asked to offer an opinion.
Speaker 2: And therefore the whole town.
Speaker 1: Was impacted and in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 4: Then we get a call from the judge, local judge.
Speaker 4: He wants to meet with the coroner and the sheriff's office.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of like those two guys are getting
Speaker 4: called to the principal's office.
Speaker 2: After meeting with the judge, the coroner continued the investigation
Speaker 2: with the help of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Vision
Speaker 2: known as SLED.
Speaker 7: SLED is a.
Speaker 3: Multi jurisdictional investigative agency. So most places like Chester, who
Speaker 3: you know, we're small rural community. We don't have our
Speaker 3: own drug testing labs. We don't have a DNA testing lab.
Speaker 3: So whenever we have a complex case, then you want
Speaker 3: to bring in someone who has all of these individuals
Speaker 3: who have specialized training.
Speaker 2: SLED began by re examining the photos taking at Judy
Speaker 2: Orr's home where James Baldwin had told police she fell and.
Speaker 7: Hit her head.
Speaker 3: We basically went back through every little inch of every
Speaker 3: photo that was taken by that sheriff investigator to try
Speaker 3: to break things down. They tried to find the ladder,
Speaker 3: so he's saying, oh, I don't have the ladder anymore.
Speaker 7: I took it to this attorney.
Speaker 3: That I was going to have sue because it was
Speaker 3: a defective model of the ladder. We wanted to measure
Speaker 3: how high would Judy have been from the ground if
Speaker 3: she fell from the ladder and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: he's just well, it's just I can't find it.
Speaker 2: The sled team also decided to examine the data from
Speaker 2: the jeeps internal control system, known as the black box.
Speaker 8: So the black box has been termed kind of referencing airplanes.
Speaker 8: The black box in a vehicle is designed to analyze
Speaker 8: certain components, certain data, and the sole purpose of it
Speaker 8: is to deploy airbags. It does give us a lot
Speaker 8: of information in regards to vehicle speed, breaking, acceleration, temperature,
Speaker 8: oh Domino reading.
Speaker 2: The black box data records any unexpected changes of speed
Speaker 2: that would occur in a car accident, which are recorded
Speaker 2: as events.
Speaker 8: There has to be a change in velocity for five
Speaker 8: miles an hour over a certain time frame, which I
Speaker 8: think was one hundred and fifty milliseconds for an event
Speaker 8: to even occur, and in this case there was no
Speaker 8: events recorded. If there was any speed involved.
Speaker 9: An event would have occurred.
Speaker 8: And when it told us nothing was on that module,
Speaker 8: to us, that was a red flag.
Speaker 2: The data from the black box, along with other evidence
Speaker 2: collected on the road, began to cast even more doubt
Speaker 2: on James Baldwin's story that he swerved to avoid an
Speaker 2: oncoming vehicle.
Speaker 8: There's no doubt that they were traveling down Old Richburg Road.
Speaker 8: We have high impressions where they ran off the right
Speaker 8: side of the road. But if somebody's traveling off the
Speaker 8: roadway at fifty five miles an hour, that there's going
Speaker 8: to be some tearing into that land that dirt, especially
Speaker 8: as soft as it was, and that was not the case.
Speaker 2: As well as showing James Baldwin was not driving fast
Speaker 2: on the road, the damage to the car suggested it
Speaker 2: was driven down the embankment at a very controlled slow speed.
Speaker 3: They were able to pull all of this data out
Speaker 3: of there to determine that he was not going that fast,
Speaker 3: that he never had an impact that would have caused
Speaker 3: the airbags to go off. That was immediately apparent to
Speaker 3: them if all this horrible accident, he runs off the road.
Speaker 7: So the black box ended up.
Speaker 3: Being super critical for highway patrol to basically say this
Speaker 3: was not an accident. I mean they felt comfortable saying
Speaker 3: it looked like it was a very intentional act by
Speaker 3: the driver to pull off the road and down into
Speaker 3: the ravine in a very slow manner.
Speaker 2: While SLID continued their investigation, James Baldwin moved out of
Speaker 2: Judy Orr's family home and in with his female friend,
Speaker 2: Terry King, and police had allowed to clean up the
Speaker 2: blood the night Judy died.
Speaker 3: Whenever we learned that Jamie Baldwin had moved in with
Speaker 3: Terry King, it was right after we started really really
Speaker 3: investigating the case with SLID, and Judy's family were pushing
Speaker 3: him to get out of the family home or getting out.
Speaker 7: Of Judy's home.
Speaker 3: So he moves in with Terry and at first I
Speaker 3: think he just used it as, oh, I have nowhere
Speaker 3: else to go, But of course I was thinking, obviously
Speaker 3: this is his girlfriend. Of course that's where he's going
Speaker 3: to go. But that's how he kind of played it
Speaker 3: to everybody else.
Speaker 2: After James Baldwin left the family home, SLED had an
Speaker 2: opportunity to re examine the potential crime scene.
Speaker 4: We were very fortunate in this case that we were
Speaker 4: able to go back to the family home after a
Speaker 4: year or so. Ms Baldwin's son had actually taken over
Speaker 4: the family home luckily he had not painted or any
Speaker 4: that thing. They found blood spatter over the top of
Speaker 4: the fireplace consistent with someone thrusting or hitting someone with
Speaker 4: something in blood flying off of the object, so.
Speaker 3: That shows that it was more of a blow or
Speaker 3: something of that movement that would have caused her blood
Speaker 3: to be that high. We had the DNA tested and
Speaker 3: it was her blood and there's no reason why four
Speaker 3: foot nine woman would have blood almost twelve feet up
Speaker 3: in the air.
Speaker 2: After finding forensic evidence that contradicted James Baldwin's story of
Speaker 2: Judy falling from a ladder, sled made another crucial discovery.
Speaker 3: One of the items that was very critical that was
Speaker 3: taken from the scene was a Santa stocking holder. It's
Speaker 3: one of these iron stocking holders, very heavy. We took
Speaker 3: that to our forensic pathologist, doctor Ross.
Speaker 4: When she saw it, she immediately said, that's it. We asked,
Speaker 4: you know, okay, he said, she fell off the ladder.
Speaker 4: Could she have fallen off the ladder and hit this,
Speaker 4: because it's a stockingholder, it would hang off the mantle
Speaker 4: and she said, absolutely not. This was blunt forced trauma.
Speaker 4: She was hit with this item.
Speaker 2: In June twenty seventeen, six months after Judy's death, police
Speaker 2: were called to the home of Terry King.
Speaker 3: I get a call from York County Sheriff's office telling
Speaker 3: me that Terry King's residents had burned out. I learned
Speaker 3: that there had been other problems going on between Terry
Speaker 3: and Jamie at that time. Terry had actually called the
Speaker 3: police after she told him to leave. Then a knife
Speaker 3: ends up stuck in her tree that actually had carved
Speaker 3: into it the letters bitch. She was terrified. She called
Speaker 3: the police. They came and took pictures of it. They
Speaker 3: suggested police put up some type of like a deer
Speaker 3: camera or a camera so we can see maybe who
Speaker 3: it is. She felt it was Jamie Baldwin, but of
Speaker 3: course she got to have proof. She did put up
Speaker 3: these deer cameras. She went out of town for a weekend.
Speaker 3: While she was gone, she gets a call that her
Speaker 3: house is on fire. They look at the camera. You
Speaker 3: can see a man coming into the property. Then he
Speaker 3: walks back out, gets in his vehicle and leaves. The
Speaker 3: house goes up in flames, and they were able to
Speaker 3: determine that this person was Shames Baldwin, so he was
Speaker 3: arrested for arson and fraud because he was going to
Speaker 3: try to sue the insurance company for his contents that
Speaker 3: were still inside of her home.
Speaker 10: It might experience in cases such as James Baldwin, people
Speaker 10: undertake small fords, whether that's an insurance ford or some
Speaker 10: other ford. They get away with it, they become bolder
Speaker 10: and they didn't undertake another ford, and so on. So
Speaker 10: when insurance companies are looking at paying out on claims,
Speaker 10: they will look at previous claims to see if there
Speaker 10: is actually a history and therefore where they need to
Speaker 10: go back and review previous claims.
Speaker 2: While James Baldwin was out on bond for second degree
Speaker 2: arson and burning personal property to defraud insurers, he was
Speaker 2: indicted for the murder of Judy or Baldwin.
Speaker 3: By that time, it was clear throughout the community that
Speaker 3: everyone believed that this was not an accident. As a
Speaker 3: matter of fact, because of other community involvement in Facebook
Speaker 3: and social media, we knew that we're probably going to
Speaker 3: have getting a jury pool that wasn't going to be
Speaker 3: biased in favor of Judy, So we actually had to
Speaker 3: change venue to another county so we could try the case.
Speaker 2: In October twenty nineteen, James Baldwin stood trial for the
Speaker 2: murder of his wife, Judy or Baldwin.
Speaker 9: We were there for every day of it.
Speaker 5: I know there were a lot of other media, TV
Speaker 5: and newspapers that were there. There was obviously a lot
Speaker 5: of interest in that case for a lot of reasons,
Speaker 5: Partly I think because people knew Judy, but also because
Speaker 5: the arrest took so long. The investigation felt like to
Speaker 5: a lot of people that dragged on for so long,
Speaker 5: longer than it should I have, so that kind of
Speaker 5: built a lot of intrigue.
Speaker 4: The thing I remember most is is the family Judy's friends.
Speaker 4: They showed up every day. It's his heartbreak breaking for them.
Speaker 5: The atmosphere was interesting because one side of the courtroom
Speaker 5: you have the family and friends of the victim, and
Speaker 5: then on the other side of the courtroom you have
Speaker 5: the family and friends of the accused.
Speaker 9: And I distinctly remember just being struck by the fact
Speaker 9: that the.
Speaker 5: Side where Judy's family and friends were sitting was filled,
Speaker 5: I believe to overflow, like they literally had to bring
Speaker 5: chairs in and sat it in the back of the
Speaker 5: courtroom to accommodate all of her friends and family that
Speaker 5: attended and they were there every day.
Speaker 9: I didn't attend a trial.
Speaker 8: There was a full gallery side of miss Judy every
Speaker 8: day of the trial. So again I think they goes
Speaker 8: back to what kind of person she was in what
Speaker 8: the community thought of.
Speaker 5: Her, and the most people I recall sitting on Jamie's side.
Speaker 9: Of the courtroom was one one person.
Speaker 2: After an intense eighteen month investigation, the prosecution knew they
Speaker 2: had to convince the jury that Judy's death was not
Speaker 2: an accident.
Speaker 3: Whenever you have a start of a case, it's an accident,
Speaker 3: and then you learn as you're going on with the
Speaker 3: evidence that an accident completely does not fit the scenario.
Speaker 3: Then you have to really take your time to make
Speaker 3: sure that you go back and explain away or explain
Speaker 3: to some extent why it was missed on the front end.
Speaker 5: But the most compelling part was when the SLID investigator
Speaker 5: was brought in and unveiled the findings of the black box.
Speaker 5: Jamie's story was she following I'm taking her to the
Speaker 5: hospital and they will run off the road by a
Speaker 5: truck and they swerved wildly and plowed down an embankment
Speaker 5: and hit something hard. But when SLID got the results
Speaker 5: from that black box. It demonstrated that the car came
Speaker 5: to a stop, it slowly turned and drove five miles
Speaker 5: an hour down the embankment, and at that point his
Speaker 5: story completely fell apart.
Speaker 2: For the prosecution, one of the most challenging aspects of
Speaker 2: the case was addressing the conflicting opinions of law enforcement.
Speaker 3: The worst part about the case for me was having
Speaker 3: to cross examine or treat hostily individuals who were typically
Speaker 3: on my side, but the bottom line is they didn't
Speaker 3: do their job. The worst part was having to ask
Speaker 3: that investigator, oh, you actually handed the girlfriend of mister
Speaker 3: Baldwin a card letting her know that this cleanup company
Speaker 3: will come and clean up the blood from the crime scene.
Speaker 7: That was not good. That was a moment where I
Speaker 7: could feel the jury beside me going what he did what?
Speaker 7: It was just kind of a very uncomfortable moment.
Speaker 2: The relationship between James and Terry King was a key
Speaker 2: argument for the prosecution.
Speaker 7: That was very important.
Speaker 4: I think it leads us to motive, although there's several
Speaker 4: other things that lead us to motive, but somebody who's
Speaker 4: got a girlfriend and is in a marriage, that becomes
Speaker 4: an automatic issue.
Speaker 3: The relationship between James Baldwin and Terry King was a
Speaker 3: really big piece of our case because it showed the
Speaker 3: intentions of the defendant and why he would have wanted
Speaker 3: Judy gone, So it was a big motive. Also, the money,
Speaker 3: the twenty five thousand dollars insurance policy was a key
Speaker 3: argument for the prosecution.
Speaker 5: I definitely remember the act only insurance policy that was
Speaker 5: taken out before Judy's murder that was prominently mentioned during
Speaker 5: lead your trial as a possible motive.
Speaker 3: You know, you think of twenty five thousand, you're like, wow,
Speaker 3: you know, that's not a whole lot. But for someone
Speaker 3: like Jamie, who at the time was getting ready to
Speaker 3: possibly be out on the street without a house, without
Speaker 3: a motorcycle because everything had been bought for him by Judy,
Speaker 3: any money was going to be critical to him.
Speaker 2: The prosecution argued, control was another key factor in the case.
Speaker 3: James Baldwin was definitely someone who always wanted control. Judy
Speaker 3: was someone who he was able to manipulate and control
Speaker 3: from the beginning. Because it had been years since she
Speaker 3: had been in a relationship, she desperately wanted to have
Speaker 3: someone who loved her and that she could spend the
Speaker 3: rest of her days with She actually confronted Jamie about
Speaker 3: this friendship he was having with Terry King and told
Speaker 3: him absolutely this has to stop.
Speaker 7: And if not, then you're gonna have to leave.
Speaker 3: And we believe that's what probably led to the huge
Speaker 3: argument that happened on the night that she ended up dying,
Speaker 3: was he wanted to go to Kentucky. She did not
Speaker 3: want him to go, and she knew Terry King was going,
Speaker 3: So we believe that's whenever Jamie felt he was losing control,
Speaker 3: Judy was finally standing up for herself and she wasn't
Speaker 3: going to let it happen, and that's whenever the argument
Speaker 3: and her eventual death took place.
Speaker 1: James Baldwin wanted to have it all. He wanted his wife,
Speaker 1: he wanted a girlfriend, and when those things were threatened,
Speaker 1: he was unwilling to lose it. So he used whatever
Speaker 1: means necessary to get what he wanted so that he
Speaker 1: could stay stable, unsustained.
Speaker 4: I think he felt like that was all his life
Speaker 4: as he knew it was getting ready to change because
Speaker 4: Judy wasn't gonna put up with that. She wasn't going
Speaker 4: to allow him to live in her house and have
Speaker 4: a motorcycle and all the stuff that she's buying him
Speaker 4: and have a girlfriend, so he was going to have
Speaker 4: to make some changes. He kind of saw his golden
Speaker 4: egg going away, so to speak.
Speaker 2: On November fifth, twenty nineteen, after a week long trial,
Speaker 2: the jury retired to consider their verdict.
Speaker 4: It's always nerve wracking. That's something that you never get
Speaker 4: used to. You're sitting there and you look at the
Speaker 4: family and they're on pins and needles waiting to hear
Speaker 4: She really got to think about what the family's going
Speaker 4: through and what they're thinking during that time, because we
Speaker 4: know it could go either way.
Speaker 7: I was so nervous because you just never know what
Speaker 7: a jury's going to do.
Speaker 2: When the jury returned, James Baldwin was found guilty of
Speaker 2: the murder of Judy or Baldwin.
Speaker 7: We all break down. We could hear them crying behind us.
Speaker 3: Tears came to my eyes from just overwhelming emotion and
Speaker 3: also just feeling like it was the right thing.
Speaker 7: It was definitely the right verdict.
Speaker 4: I don't think he really reacted a whole lot. There
Speaker 4: was a lot of relief from Judy's family and finally
Speaker 4: it's over and we can breathe.
Speaker 8: I think back now like, I'm just so grateful and
Speaker 8: thankful for miss Judy's sake and her family's sake that
Speaker 8: I went straight to the hospital was able to get
Speaker 8: that statement, lock him down in what his events were,
Speaker 8: what he was saying happened that night. I think that
Speaker 8: help in the court proceedings during his trial in ultimately
Speaker 8: with him being found guilty for her death.
Speaker 2: James Baldwin's exploitation of Judy for financial gain, which eventually
Speaker 2: resulted in her murder, led to him being sentenced to
Speaker 2: life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 7: Greed was a.
Speaker 3: Huge motivation for him, and it was something that had
Speaker 3: driven him for a long time, and so when you
Speaker 3: look at his decision that night to take Judy out
Speaker 3: of the equation, he clearly was thinking about the fact
Speaker 3: that this is going to put me in a situation
Speaker 3: where I'm going to be set. He was going to
Speaker 3: have the house, he was going to keep his bike,
Speaker 3: he was going to get twenty five thousand dollars, and
Speaker 3: he was going to have his girlfriend.
Speaker 1: James has always been in a position of powace, so
Speaker 1: to have been confronted by Judy would have represented.
Speaker 7: A level of threat for him. He stood to.
Speaker 1: Lose everything, everything that he'd managed to gain within the relationship,
Speaker 1: which wasn't his.
Speaker 7: It was her.
Speaker 1: House, her finances, and so he stood a lot to lose.
Speaker 1: He wanted to have it all his way.
Speaker 5: I think you actually go beyond greed when you're willing
Speaker 5: to kill somebody to collect money, especially a person that
Speaker 5: you purport to love and take care of. I think
Speaker 5: you've actually gone beyond greed at that point, and you've
Speaker 5: veered into either being manly, unwell or evil.
Speaker 2: The murder of Judy or Baldwin by her husband, James
Speaker 2: Baldwin was not only devastating for Judy's family, but a
Speaker 2: traumatic experience for the people of Chester.
Speaker 3: Whenever I've looked back on this case, I'll be honest,
Speaker 3: Initially I was shocked. I was like, what have I
Speaker 3: gotten myself into coming to Chester Dawny, because I was
Speaker 3: completely blorn away by the fact that the share of
Speaker 3: him the corner or having these issues.
Speaker 5: Not every deputy solicitor like Candice Lively, and not every
Speaker 5: corner like Terry Tanker, would have been willing to buck
Speaker 5: the system a little bit because they thought there was
Speaker 5: more going on there than they were being told there
Speaker 5: was more to the story than what was written on
Speaker 5: incident reports.
Speaker 9: They knew that there.
Speaker 5: Was something else going on, and that they didn't just
Speaker 5: accept the pad answer and say, Okay, well he's not
Speaker 5: guilty or it was an accident or whatever.
Speaker 4: So you know, I'm a firm believer everything happens for
Speaker 4: a reason. So have we not had a corner and
Speaker 4: a sheriff pumping heads, and have we not called and slid,
Speaker 4: We may have never known what really happened to you.
Speaker 6: In books,