Seizure Or Murder: Is Sandra Melgar Guilty?

[Music] hey guys welcome back to my channel so today I am doing another true-crime video and this one is a very frustrating one it is one that I think there's going to be really varying opinions out there about what happened and who is responsible this is either one of the weirdest cases ever or it's a major Mis justice to a victim's family but before we get started this video was kindly sponsored by Skillshare if you have not heard of Skillshare you have been missing out Skillshare is an awesome platform and a way to access a ton of information and learn about pretty much anything online right at your fingertips they have over 30,000 classes in all types of subjects from business to design to photography but they have a bunch of really serious classes but they also have a bunch of leisurely classes if you just want to learn something liking their houseplant classes and that's actually called learn with the silh I already have a pretty basic knowledge of plant care and a pretty green 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actually really well-liked was considered to be really funny and charming and someone that people liked to be around and when he was in high school he met Sandra seventy-eight here's Sandra there she is she was the ROTC girls drill team commanders various gym Melgar and the two of them started dating they ended up getting married they were highschool sweethearts and they ended up forming a really amazing life together they had a daughter named Liz they were really supportive of each other they were really really close and connected to each other definitely knew what was going on in each other's lives everyone who knew them said that they were like super loving towards each other her awesome couple really loving Bob and Patsy Laurel were friends with the Mel gars oh she made the best angry of the couple's love to trade-off hosting costume parties one struggle that sandy was dealing with however was chronic pain and illness she had gone through several different hip surgeries which you know takes a huge toll on your body she also had hypothyroidism lupus and epilepsy so she was constantly dealing with health struggles and it really held her back in a lot of ways at one point she ended up becoming paralyzed on one side of her body and associated to go through a ton of treatment and Rehab however even though it's very you know draining to be a caretaker Jim really was there for sandy during everything he really understood what you know Valene to be with her in sickness and in health meant and he didn't mind taking care of her he never complained he was always willing to help in any way that he could their family said that in fact they actually became closer as her health got worse over time because he really loved taking care of her and he never resented her or showed any sign of being annoyed with her for you know having these health issues so let's fast forward to December of 2012 so it was December 23rd of 2012 and this was actually their 32nd wedding anniversary so they were celebrating so first they went to dinner at their favorite local Mexican restaurant and had a nice meal after that they decided to stop at a CVS on the way home to get some drink mixers to make some cocktails back at home they got home it was really casual they just started hanging out making drinks and they decided to take a soak in their jacuzzi tub that they had in their bathroom in their master suite so they were literally just chilling in the hot tub relaxing on their anniversary shuri and maybe you know having a little a little love session I mean who knows what was going on in there but they were having a nice time she said they were really just talking and relaxing and soaking in their hot tub but while they were sitting in the bathtub their dog started barking outside and Jim thought that was weird so he got out of the bathtub to go see what was going on and after a while he didn't come back so sandy actually decided to get out of the hot tub herself she says she got out walked to her closet and sat down and just started applying leg lotion you know like you do after you out of a bath or something and she was preparing to put clothes on and that is the last thing that she remembers so the following day the family actually had plans to be hosting kind of a family get-together Jim's brother Herman was gonna be coming over with a couple other people in his family that day they got to their house around 4:30 as they had planned and we're just knocking at the door knock on the door no answer at this point we're thinking okay they're getting ready maybe they're not even up yet the only thing that they could hear were the dogs barking so they started looking around and Herman actually found out that one of the garage doors was open as well as one of the doors to the house was just unlocked and open so he decided to go in through the door and then went and let the rest of his family in through the front door my dad's already in the living room come on come sit down you know let's make herself at home and we're like no no no this is just something doesn't feel right and then it was at that point where we hear there was just mumbling it was just and then I was finally we heard help help the family was walking through the house seeing if anyone was home and what was going on when all this and they heard someone screaming they ran upstairs hearing the screams and they went up to the master bedroom where they found the closet door with a chair propped up underneath it so that you couldn't open it from the inside okay push the door and someone was screaming on the other side of the closet door he quickly moved the chair opened the door and he sees sandy laying there tied up her arms and her feet on able to move so she tells him there are some scissors on the bathroom counter just grab those bring them in so he does he cuts her free and when they did they realized Sandra was laying in her own feces and urine now this is kind of confusing but they have two different closets they have a master bedroom closet and then they have a closet that's actually in the bathroom of the master so that's where sandy was and then they get sandy untied get her up and they start walking out to the master and that's when they find Jim in the master bedroom closet and Jim had been brutally attacked stabbed over 31 times he had damage to his skull his brain it was a horrific scene and as soon as sandy saw him she went absolutely hysterical family members had to like pull her back can you imagine walking in on that what you would think his legs were actually tied up using a telephone cord and then there was a rope around his chest he had a bunch of defensive wounds on his hand he obviously put up quite a fight at the end of his life which is just terribly sad so they called the police the police came to the house and they are trying to figure out what the hell happened here so there's obviously a very upset sandy who has also just claimed to have had a horrible seizure so she's in pain she goes like she can barely move they have Jim stabbed over 30 times in his bedroom closet on the floor and then the bathtub was still filled with water and there was strangely a white blouse floating in the bathtub and there was also a kitchen knife at the bottom of the bathtub which they think was used on Jim the house totally looked like it had been broken into and ransacked drawers were pulled out there were stuff rummaged through things thrown about the house it was a total mess Sandy's jewelry box was just wide open and there were some things missing from it Jim's wallet and Sandy's purse were also emptied out onto the bed so whoever was there was looking for something to take and in the closet that Jim was found in there was a safe with a loaded gun in it and there was some blood right around that area on the racks of the closet right where the safe was and it was really close to where his head was so they think that he was actually putting his hands up which were covered in blood to try open the safe to get the gun so the police decided that the best place to start is with Sandy I mean she was obviously with Jim all night she was the closest to this experience so they bring her in for questioning and immediately police are already starting to think that there is no way that there was actually a home invasion that this was a home invasion that was staged by Sandy in order to kill her husband for some reason and they wanted to find a motive any disagreement I had to I think I finished the second he got it once to go get ice and then came back and said he was gonna put the dogs move the dog you don't barking too much I'll sit there for a good solid two hours talking yeah dad I don't think that he was moving the dogs to the office taking awhile so I got out and was gonna get dressed remember oh by the cedar because my muscles hurt in my head just hurting real bad and usually like they have been having trouble controlling my seniors it's over hours later I woke up and realized I was tied up that I did flip over and then I kind of got stuck do that thing do I have pain my my legs were cramping and my know what like I don't know I fell or was pushed or what but like all on side this side so we are in the jacuzzi what are you wearing when you're in the jacuzzi nothing at all and then we found you today my sister what were you wearing when your sister won't found you your old man is like when I wake up I hear the the dogs crying actually and then all of a sudden I started barking and then that's when I heard their voices good yeah where are you at right this time in the closet but that was like up it's the bottom of the the door and I started yelling okay really what happened they came in and I don't remember I think I saw him first Herman her husband first and he tried to untie it and he couldn't untie what ties my hands in my feet okay and how are you Thai uh behind behind my back behind my back up in my legs I couldn't straighten them Herman shows shows up because he hears you yelling okay what's he do at that point when he find you he tries to untie me and it couldn't it's what he won't because Ronnie lost seizure in the closet warfarin in no the chair was blocking it there was a chair I usually keep that cheering inside how was it walking the door I don't know but I just saw when you moved it it like blocked the chair and then he no the chair when you when he tried to open the door the chair stop it and then he moved the chair and then opened the door and I was on the floor and I told him to please untie me I was the family members over there today and what we got planned for the future your spin jacuzzi what you want to do in the future truck we talked about trading my car in or so you know something something to travel with [Applause] so what is your understanding what has happened what's happened there was a car following us because when we came in our neighborhood it was still behind us because human drive slower was tailgating him and I tell him don't do that because you know it's dangerous but the guy turns left and we turned right so we thought it was just coincidence who else would be in the house that I know of no one but we would have left the garage door open either you were to close the garage door I never used that site I know how it looks but I was also tied up and there's I couldn't that's just you said you hadn't had much to drink you're coherent right mm-hmm tell me what what are you hearing before you said that you blacked out nothing nobody running nobody say anything shouting you know right after I sometimes I can't even tell you my name okay hey let me ask you this when I asked you before you didn't answer my question why are we here you know what has happened today I don't think it was shot what do you want hurt it what do you understand that happened yeah who told you that he was murdered I saw him you did yes when then tied me I heard hysterical screaming and I ran over there and I checked his pulse to see there's anything we could do yeah I saw him sandy claims that when all this happens while she was putting the lotion on she at some point has a seizure what did you do when you woke up the first time I had a seizure and so I usually can't move anyway often do you have seizures like that I mean getting them more lately drive anymore well I have a Maros behind us that tell me that I'm going to have one it's like I'm very forgetful more than usual I've seen seizures before I've never had one myself but it's horrific it's really scary and you totally shut down it's like the person leaves their body so I can definitely understand how if you have epilepsy and you have a seizure you would black out and wouldn't know what was going on sandy said that when she woke up she was in so much pain from her seizure that she literally couldn't move she's pretty sure that she was hit in the head which knocked her out and triggered a seizure but police insisted that it was too convenient for her to have just blacked out while her husband is being murdered in the other room so after interrogating her and pretty much breaking her down the police asked her if she want to do a polygraph test many of you probably know polygraph tests are often wrong they can really not be taken seriously as real evidence because they're so often wrong it's insane things like stress and trauma can change the results and so she decided not to do the polygraph test she said she was under way too much stress from the police from the incident that she just went through from being tied up having a seizure all these things using her husband so she flat-out said I don't want to do the polygraph test now oftentimes police will take a person deciding not to take the polygraph test as an automatic like admission of guilt and they just really start honing in on that person the police ended up not having any solid evidence that sandy was to blame here so they ended up letting her go and she was not considered a suspect for the next year and a half the case remained open they were trying to work on it but there were no serious leads or anything and meanwhile sandy was at home trying to recover trying to heal with her family and make sense of what had happened to them and just when the family is starting to think that it's kind of all you know put to rest they ended up finding out that there was a grand jury indictment for sandy Melgar for the murder of her husband Jim Miller they put out a warrant for her arrest so the family decided that the best thing to do was to have Sandy contact her lawyer and turn herself in so that's what she did she was charged but was released on bail for the next three years while they got the trial together finally in 2017 it was time for the trial to start so during her trial prosecutors ended up arguing that sandy actually wasn't really in love with Jim that they had this fake loving relationship and everyone knew them as this great couple but it was all a facade because she actually wanted a divorce one thing to know here is sandy and Jim we're Jehovah's Witnesses which is very serious I don't know too much about it to be honest but they take things like marriage very seriously so prosecutors started making an argument that maybe she wanted a divorce but she didn't want to deal with the shame that would come with that from her religion so she decided to just stage his death and he completely denied this said that she had no intention of wanting a divorce in fact they were celebrating their wedding anniversary that night the prosecutors also argued that sandy had somehow convinced Jim to tie his own feet up with the telephone cord as some type of like sexual game and they made their case that after this sandy gets up goes down to the kitchen against nice and just goes upstairs and starts absolutely wailing on her husband and they said that all of the stuff that made it seem like a home invasion were completely set up by Sandy that she pulled out all the drawers and ransacked the house and even hid belongings of hers they said when they first looked at the scene that there were a few red flags right away for example the scene of the house is really weird I mean I will say it too there are some things that you would think someone would have taken like for example they were drawers open that hadn't been emptied one of them had a camera in it there were pieces of jewelry that they could have taken that weren't taken it was like only certain things but there were bikes in their garage there were prescription medications that someone might want to steal I mean she had a lot of medication that's something that's often taken in a home invasion there were still TVs there were all these different things like if someone's gonna break in and kill someone wouldn't they want to make it worth it and you know steal everything that they can so that was really weird however they did notice that their plugs where there used to be a TV like plugged in and the TV was missing for example or a radio so it was kind of mixed there definitely were some things taken it just was strange that not every single thing that could be taken was taken but this definitely you know leave some room in the jury for reasonable doubt could this have been staged but that night deputies made this video showing how Sandra could have staged the crime scene to look like a home invasion pulling the chair against the door from inside the closet but there was no a side man that she had there was no life insurance policy there was really no reason for her to want to kill her husband on their anniversary like that another thing was sandy was completely clean when they found her not any blood on her hands or anything there was no signs of blood in the scene in the bathtub also she had absolutely no defense wounds like she didn't even have a broken nail or a scratch on her like if she was really fighting with Jim at the end of his life he had clear marks where he was fighting back but she didn't have anything one thing that the defense argued is that there was random DNA for a male and a female both unknown in different parts of the house now if you remember there was a female's blouse found in the hot tub as well one thing that was kind of sketchy though is prosecutors were able to pull Sandy's recent medical records in the last couple years and basically whenever doctors had asked her if she was having seizures she would say no during the trial the prosecution had acquired all the medical records and showed and just listed the dates up there and everything else for doctor's visits no seizure no seizure no seizure getting better you know that kind of stuff and prosecutors actually argued that even though she was tied up in everything sandy was able to prop that chair up and lock herself in the closet they basically argued that she would have been able to tie herself up and staged the entire thing however Jim's brother the one who found them believes that sandy is innocent and he said that when he found her her arms were tied up like this you know tied around her forearms not just her hand so it'd be like nearly impossible to do that type of tie on yourself another thing that they used in trial was this chair this dining room chair that was mysteriously in their bedroom they argue that sandy actually brought the chair into the bedroom and made Jim sit on it as sometime like sexual activity pretended that she was gonna give him a massage and then killed him but if you actually look at the photos from the crime scene you can see that there's a little mark where the chair was sitting indicating that that chair had been there a long time and we actually found out that they used the chair so that their Pomeranian could get up and down from the bed so I mean any pet owner understand something like that so the chair was always there and that bit of evidence is really weak none of Sandra's blood or DNA was found on Jim I don't know I don't know why there wasn't any DNA found I do know that if there had been DNA found on his body that came back to Sandra it would have been explained by the fact that they were married but there was unidentified male and female DNA found in the house and the defense team says a TV also argued during the trial that there was a potential suspect that police pretty much blew off there was a guy living down the street who had been convicted of a few crimes and had actually just been released from jail a few nights before and all police did for this man was bring a business card and put it in his door and they never heard back from him so case closed on that guy I guess closing arguments have just wrapped up in the case against a woman accused of murdering and her husband and then trying to cover it up you saw all the wounds that he had the 13 stab wounds all the other ones they had in his body in his head certainly that person intended to kill him but that person certainly tended to cause serious bodily injury which resulted in death we've proven all of those things in the Sandra Melgar case there's no physical evidence in this case that points to her at all he makes the strike straight up all the way to his neck that's what that first strike is Jamie of course gets up to trying to defend himself turns around and that's what she gets him on them on the phone the defense criticizing shoddy detective work and saying the evidence is just not there look at what remains no broken nails no problems with the hands no bruising here where you would expect it if a knife was huge Fearon verdict watching the case against 57 year-old Sandra Melgar the jury started deliberating yesterday evening continue to deliberate this morning and in fact just moments ago took a break we'll have to see what the jury decides and we'll let you know when a verdict is handed down but after 11 days of trial where most people thought there was no way that sandy was going to be guilty for this it was finally time for the jury to deliberate it took the jury two days to reach a verdict at first they were really split down the middle but over time they ended up going one way and that's when they found Sandra Mel ger guilty of murdering Jim Mel ger and sentenced her to 27 years and we figured that at that point she would be in her early 70s and maybe have a chance of seeing her grandchildren at that point so it was a humane decision frankly do we think this woman's a threat to society none of us thought that prosecutors testimony right it all made sense now with it absolutely provable no but it's the only thing that made sense Sandra told us just because her seizure condition was stable didn't mean she wasn't experiencing symptoms I believe that first for one thing people don't realize would it would have seizures or what it feels like to go into a seizure and then when you come out of a grand mal seizure you know you don't remember a lot of stuff but the things you were hearing from Sandra the jury never did she never took the stand to testify both sandy and Jim's family are completely shocked there's really no one in their families that thinks that sandy actually did this I mean really no one was expecting this you two are the only people that saw Sandra tied up is there any way in your mind she could have done that herself no no there's just no way that she could have done that to him I've lost my father and Here I am about to lose my mother supposed to be the justice system that it's just completely broken they believe that they didn't get a fair trial they were using evidence that wasn't even there and their whole family has just been left absolutely shocked by this just not even knowing what to do they got it wrong that yeah they got it completely wrong I had a lump in my head so I was hit and then I went into seizure more than likely I don't no one was there to actually see it but that's how it felt like when I woke up Sandra did you kill your husband no I did not kill my husband no and you have grandkids and my grandbabies yeah you're missing out on I know I know that really hurts me I missed them so much I think I'm just gonna keep fighting this out of here since then there hasn't been too much going on sandy is in the process of appealing the verdict the family is trying to raise funding for trying to figure out who actually did this and solve it themselves so that they can free her there's been one big piece of evidence that they feel could possibly lead somewhere and that is that that blouse that was found in the bathtub is actually a specific type of blouse that can only be found at Costco stores meaning that whoever did this was probably a Costco customer I'm going to link the fundraising effort so you guys can donate if you feel that this is a miss justice because I really do I have to really insert my opinion on this I think it's insane that she got convicted I really did not expect this I mean I'm not saying that 100 thousand percent there's no way she did this I mean there's always a possibility some of the most unpredictable people end up becoming murderers and people kill their husbands all the time even though they look like they're in love so I'm not saying it's impossible but I really think it's really unlikely and for them to have convicted her beyond a reasonable doubt it's just insane to me like this woman should not be in jail in my opinion I think this is absurd I feel so sorry for this family but of course I'm open to your opinions on this let me know what you think do you think sandy did it do you think that this is the outcome that should have happened let me know your thoughts on this one for sure you guys I'm just baffled by it if you were able to donate to the family's fundraising efforts that link will be below but that's it for me today guys I hope you're all having a great day and I will see you next time [Music]

Channel: Kendall Rae

Views: 1,143,533

Rating: 4.9530268 out of 5

Keywords: kendallraeonyt, kendallrae, kendall rae, kendall rae vlogs, kendaily, jim melgar, houston, news, true crime, investigations, interrogation, missing pieces, sandy melgar, melgar, wrongful conviction, mystery, unsolved, investigation, cold case, crime, unexplained, mile higher podcast, mysteries, dateline, mile higher, mile higher life, crime watch daily, buzzfeed unsolved, crime stories, crime alert, unsolved mysteries, paranormal, khou11, texas, truth and justice, podcast, buzzfeed

Id: M-l8BHQoAko

Length: 29min 4sec (1744 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 22 2019