Sandra Melgar Case Analysis | Was She Guilty of Murder?

hello this is dr grande today's question asks if i can take a look at the case of sandra melger was she actually guilty of murder just a reminder of not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoyed this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so first i'll take a look at the timeline of the crime i'll move to the mental health and personality factors although there's really not much to talk about around that area in this particular case then i'll take a look at the trial and try to answer the question was sandra melker guilty so starting with the timeline of the crime we started december 22 2012 in harris county texas sandra melger and jim melger are at a liquor store at 3 02 pm they are preparing for dinner with jim's family the next day 8 59 p.m they leave a mexican restaurant they were celebrating their 32nd wedding anniversary 9 33 p.m they stop at a cvs drugstore jim enters to pick up soda between 10 pm and midnight they arrive home sandra's story would eventually change from midnight to between 10 and 11. december 23 at 7 am the neighbor notices that the melger's garage door is open at 4 30 pm jim's family arrives at the home the relatives find that the door is locked and no one's answering they walk through the open garage door entered the house and heard cries coming from the master bathroom closet jim's brother finds a chair wedged under the closet door inside sandra is found lying on the floor her wrists were tied behind her back with a scarf her ankles were tied as well she was wearing a bathrobe jim's brother and his wife were unable to untie the knots in the scarf they had to use a pair of scissors to cut the scarf as this was going on other family members found jim he was dead he had it nodded rope around his chest his ankles were tied with telephone cords he was cut in his neck and his torso his body was cold at that point 4 45 pm the paramedics arrive two minutes later they declared jim dead the paramedics found a few things they thought were unusual not long after they arrived at the house there was no sign of forced entry no missing property valuables were in plain view sandra was crying but did not have any tears she claimed to have no memory of what happened the previous night because she frequently had blackouts and seizures sandra was uninjured except for bruises on her arms although she did claim that her head was injured 9 42 pm sandra is interviewed by the police she refuses a polygraph sandra claimed that she and jim were in the bathtub for about two hours talking about their plans for the future she heard the family's dogs barking jim went to let them in but he failed to return she went to her closet to put some clothes on and that's all she remembered she failed to explain why she had bruises on both her upper arms the police asked her who would have killed her husband she talked about a tailgater that was angry because jim was driving slowly then she said it couldn't have been the tailgater because they turned one way in an intersection when jim turned the opposite way then she did the same thing when she was talking about one of their tenants in a rental property they owned saying that there was a history of conflict but then saying she didn't think they did it either perhaps sandra was trying to make it appear that she was as perplexed as the police thinking that it may make her look innocent her nonverbal behavior drew suspicion from the police they noticed the whole thing with crying and not having tears she was also slow to answer questions she avoided eye contact and i didn't believe she displayed enough emotion on december 24 at 4 20 am they took her home on december 25 melger's daughter liz rose returned from england december 26 liz calls the police in the afternoon and tells them she found a backpack containing an xbox in the garage so this made it seem like perhaps an assailant was there they had this backpack they loaded it with the xbox and some other materials and they dropped it on the way out it was not until july 21 2014 when sandra was charged with murder her trial began on august 7th this case was built solely on circumstantial evidence sandra was convicted on august 13 2014 the next day she was sentenced to 27 years the jury wanted her to have a chance of seeing her grandkids someday so that's why they went with a 27 year sentence instead of more they could have gone all the way up to 99 years sandra is eligible for parole in 2031 her mandatory release date occurs in 2044. now moving to the mental health and personality factors i'm not aware of anything regarding mental health or personality being brought up in this case there's really not much information about sandra melger all the video recordings of her were made after the murder so she could have been displaying some type of persona it's not clear if that's really who she is if sandra was guilty many would assume that she was cold callous manipulative and had no empathy but no one described her this way many of her family members and friends believe she's innocent the most negative description came from the police but they really do that with many suspects right the police rarely say that they like a suspect and they find them friendly and outgoing and intelligent they usually do present negative statements about suspects so was sandra actually guilty let's take a look at the factors both for and against her being guilty this will align with the case from the prosecution and from the defense starting with the prosecution the issues i talked about before with saunders behavior and the odd crime scene of course played a part in the trial there were many other items in favor of the prosecution though i'll take a look at these and then i'll move to the defense the knife that was used to kill jim was in the jacuzzi it had some of his blood on it it matched other knives that were located in the kitchen the medical examiner established that jim was alive and moving when he sustained his injuries yet the telephone cords around his ankles didn't make any marks showing that perhaps he was tied after he was dead jim's blood was only found in the master bedroom and in the master bathroom the prosecution used this in their favor like they made it seem as though if somebody committed that crime who didn't live there as they ran through the house they would have scattered blood everywhere i don't think this was a strong point in their favor i think this was more or less neutral the garage door was left open which made it look like sandra was just trying to make sure that she would be rescued and so she could explain why there was no forced entry again i don't know if this really helps the prosecution because she made it clear that jim was going to retrieve the dogs so he could have opened the door then the prosecution was able to show that sandra could have tied herself up and locked herself in the bathroom closet by wedging the chair under the outside door handle using a pillow sham they did this demonstration where they showed how that could be done so the sham goes under the two legs of the chair she enters the closet and then pulls it under the door and it pulls the chair closer into the door there was a torn pillow sham found in the bathroom so they thought okay that's how it got torn the legs of the chair ripped it sandra was not able to hear the attack that killed her husband but she was able to hear the dog sparking she tried to explain this by saying her jacuzzi was defective therefore it was quite loud so the dogs barking outside could get over that sound of the jacuzzi but someone being murdered in an adjacent room was not loud enough my understanding of murders is that they're often pretty loud right that's a distressing event and people are making a lot of noise there's the stabbing and running into things it's hard to imagine that dogs could have been that much louder than the homicide sandra's medical records showed that her seizure disorder was stable she had not had seizures for a year she told investigators that she had the prosecution couldn't come up with any plausible motive except for trying to collect life insurance or having religious beliefs inconsistent with divorce sandra was a jehovah's witness so we're supposed to believe her religion didn't allow divorce but they did allow murder that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense but the prosecution used it in their favor a 25 caliber pistol was within jim's reach did he hesitate because he didn't want to shoot his wife that's kind of what the prosecution was saying their case was really about the absence of evidence no forced entry nothing missing and no blood except in the two places i talked about now looking at the defense the defense was able to use the same trick the absence of evidence trick there was no dna under jim's fingernails similarly sandra had no dna under hers as a matter of fact none of her fingernails were broken either and she had no injuries to her hands the defense had other arguments that were also somewhat compelling sandra's physical condition was not exactly suited for hand-to-hand combat she had a double hip replacement rheumatoid arthritis and some sometime before this she broke her shoulder there were no suspicious searches on her electronic devices like how to kill your husband and get away with it friends testified that sandra did have memory problems somewhat consistent with her assertion there was no evidence of any marital or financial problems jim's brother testified that the chair wedged under the door was in direct contact with the tile floor there was no pillow sham between the bottoms of the legs and the floor the defense pointed out that the investigation was faulty among other problems they didn't follow up on a complaint about a neighbor lingering around the property after the first responders arrived this neighbor had a reputation for stealing the defense argued that the prosecution's assertion about no theft occurring was not true what about the backpack containing the xbox there is a problem with this item though the backpack belonged to sarah's daughter so we would have to believe the assailant entered without caring any way to remove items and saw the backpack and thought oh this would be convenient to put stolen items in as they fled issandra was guilty she selected an odd strategy pretending to forget everything was useful in some ways but a liability in others it did get her out of answering certain questions she didn't have to describe the attacker she didn't have to describe any sounds that she heard she was able to get out of all those really dangerous areas for someone who's guilty in a case like this her strategy was one of minimizing what she appeared to know so she could minimize what she had to say reducing her chances of making a mistake the difficulty here is this isn't really believable she conveniently forgot a very important time period it's worth noting here that later on she did say she remembered seeing a girl sometime around the time of the attack i think it was really too little too late in this case if she did do it it would make sense that she came up with the idea right before it happened the knife was a weapon of convenience she managed to kill jim without being hurt too much so she decided to capitalize on this and stage the scene if she didn't do it she was very unfortunate the memory lapse occurring at the worst possible time and we see that the attacker or attackers managed to get in or out without leaving evidence behind with all this in mind what are my thoughts based on these factors so here's how i look at this case the convenient memory loss problem is tough to get past the fact that jim was killed and she was left alive is also strange there were sex toys left under a pillow on the bed sandra said they were given to her as a joke maybe she was too embarrassed to admit that they were hers or her husbands it does make it seem like they were going to have sex and this is part of the prosecution's theory she lured jim in with sex and then killed him but then we get into items that are less convincing for me anyway i'm not convinced by the nonverbal behavior pointing to guilt i think the police routinely overvalue this as an indicator they always say the suspect did not act in the right way right they very rarely say the suspect was fully appropriate and responded in a way that was congruent with being not guilty how about the crying without tears it is rare that this would happen usually if someone cries without tears it means they do not have the underlying emotion sometimes emotions like grief and loss don't come for days or weeks after a crime like this in some cases it can even take months so she was interviewed right after the murder took place it makes sense that the feelings of grief weren't there yet so perhaps she did not have the emotion of grief but she felt like she needed to appear as though she had it so she did this fake crying thing and of course the police were not convinced by that the lack of motive is a problem for me as well and the fact that this was a close and personal attack but she only had bruises on her arms no broken fingernails no dna no damage to her hands she was able to overpower and kill her husband without sustaining significant injuries of any type doesn't really seem plausible the police wanted to charge her immediately after the interview which also makes me suspicious how could they possibly know that she was the murderer that quickly they had already excluded every other potential suspect the investigators really didn't explore other potential suspects i imagine the jury chose to disregard the fact that jim's brother said the chair was on the tile but what if he was correct it would mean one of three things there was some other method of pulling that chair in like using some type of string that the investigators didn't find there was an accomplice or sandra was telling the truth if she was guilty why didn't she just appear disoriented upon being discovered and stay that way if she was really worried about making a mistake with the police like saying something that she would later contradict she could have just pretended to be disoriented and not dealt with any of that taken advantage of her strategy why talk to the police at all or why didn't she hit her head against a hard object to make a more convincing injury and offer a brief description of a masked assailant she could have said something like there was this guy in a ski mask wearing a dark colored jacket and jeans and that's all i saw right there was this attack he hit me and i don't remember anything else it would have moved suspicion away from her much better than just saying she blacked out completely so in weighing everything i'm inclined to believe that sandra was guilty but not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt if sandra had never talked to the police she would have been found not guilty or had a mistrial the jurors that wanted to vote not guilty were swayed over to guilty specifically by her interview with the police more evidence supporting the idea that suspects should never talk to the police the police are not on their side so those are my thoughts on the sandra melger case please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

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Id: vt60JrvrFcc

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020