Who killed Abby & Libby, the Delphi murders; Grandpa sentenced in tot's cruise ship death - TCDPOD

a word of warning this podcast explores graphic and disturbing stories and includes some strong language it therefore may not be suitable for our young listeners or other folks who may find it disturbing hello and welcome to true crime daily the podcast covering high profile and under the radar cases from across the country every week we are recording this on february 10 2021 i'm your host anna garcia and joining us today is hln anchor and journalist susan hendricks susan i'm so excited you're here welcome to the program and it's such a pleasure to be here i'm very excited to talk about delphi and how the public can still help believe it or not it's been almost four years and it's still unsolved and that's why you're here because hln you and the incredible team have been working not only on a two-part television documentary on the fourth anniversary of the murder of these two little girls but you've also have a podcast series that really is i love the way the podcast is structured in the sense that each chapter is like a call to action because it is still unsolved and because the anniversary is coming up on february 14th valentine's day and because of your special we're so excited that you're here and that your team that you work with um will also be joining us which i think is is incredible what pains me though susan is that given the level of detail meaning you have video of a potential killer you have audio there's dna fingerprints evidence from the crime scene but yet it it appears that there are no leads on the killer i think another player in all of this in the sad story of the brutal murder of abby libby just 13 and 14 years old day off from school decided to go down to the mona high for age which kids did back in the day is the town of delphi which is just 3 000 people of max very small town so the innocence of that small town i think worked against them in terms of solving this because the search was called off that night by the sheriff sheriff top lesbian who has spoken to several times that he said that he has some regrets and part of his regrets are calling that off because he thought oh the girls will show up they will and then once the bodies were discovered he called off the bloodhounds meaning he never anticipated that this would go on the way it has and four years later someone possibly could be roaming free still in the small town of delphi because you see the man walking on the bridge you hear his voice down the hill it's jarring to here you know that libby was a hero and that she was well aware enough to hit record on her cell phone and that she knew something was off that day they recorded still no justice knowing that they knew something was wrong and still unable to solve it but the authorities and everyone in that town say they believe one day it will be solved i i love the frankness with which you tackle this this issue of the sheriff basically saying oh that night i think the girls are just lost because what was lost was precious time absolutely and in a sense of the town you know where you grow up right i grew up in new jersey and you know what you know so i thought i grew up in a small town because i knew my neighbors my mom and dad knew every one in the on the block but i had no idea no idea what a small town really was until i got to delphi none i'm talking so tight and so small that everyone knows everyone um but yet the homes are far apart because of farmland it's just a unique setting of kind of mayberry innocence you know tobe we've become friends barbara will talk to it as well and drew and he said to me susan it used to be mayberry nobody locked their doors and now no one trusts anyone yeah i never believed that until i traveled the country as a crime reporter that no one locks their doors like i don't get that okay i am doing this podcast with the door open but it's right in front of me okay you really think that can't happen but it does it does yeah it is now not only has hln and the team that you all work with done an outstanding job of documenting this crime over the last few years we also covered it on crime watch daily as well i think every major news organization and crime organization did now we're going to talk more about this double murder but we want to let everyone know that a little later we're also going to have an update on a criminal case against the grandfather who accidentally dropped his 18-month old granddaughter from the window of a cruise ship while i was docked in puerto rico the toddler died we have an update on that case that we've been following here on true crime daily but first let's get back to the case that we're talking about this is the fourth anniversary of the delphi murders now this happened on february 14th valentine's day is when the girls were found so four years ago two eighth graders best of friends thirteen-year-old abigail williams and fourteen-year-old liberty german were found murdered now they have there have been no arrests susan as you said is this being treated as a cold case no and the authorities there absolutely to be frank despise the term cold case because they believe it means they're not working on it and the new prosecutor says look we're working every day um everyone is so involved with the tip line as an example no matter what tip is called in and you could go down a rabbit hole online um and everyone's a suspect which even the sheriff said look i know i am mike libby's grandfather said i know i am at crime con and they're willing to say look we didn't do it and be interviewed but they follow up on every tip and of course when you don't give out the cause of death you don't give out exactly anything really just the condition of the bodies okay susan yeah that to me is very unusual obviously police always hold back information for a lot of excellent reasons comes to mind with jonbenet ramsey so you want to avoid that okay so susan why do you think that they have not told us what the method of murder was in this case how they were killed because honestly my mind says did they fall from the bridge did someone push them well depending on where you have tuned into this case and if you know that their bodies were discovered um down the hill on this plot of land um and i'd be living more next to each other we do know that and we do know that some sort of signatures were found near the body but the cause of death we don't know but you know when you say signature what do you mean by signature susan and barbara can talk to this as well the um prosecutor at the time ives robert arrives he said that there are signatures left at the scene meaning something unique that you would walk up on and say this is odd this one wow that's all the information though and barbara can talk to this that we have in terms of exactly what is it it's is it something he collected so it leaves a lot of room for speculation right but they say look we are keeping this close to the best for a reason because we not only want to rest we want a prosecution so we're holding this we'll give you bits of information we'll give you the audio saying guys down the hill we'll give you the video we'll give you the still shot we'll give you the two sketches um but we won't give you any more than that and it's frustrating to a lot of people thinking what are they doing are they not doing enough because as time goes on you think i don't know is this ever going to be solved they have dna they wonder if it's enough will genealogy solve this we don't know we only get bits and pieces of information and they say by design so in a little bit we're going to be joined by the podcast hosts and producers barbara mcdonald and andrew iden who really have done a stellar job of reporting this as well and and i love how you all are doing it in this multimedia way with the television documentary in the podcast and just attacking the conversation from from all these different perspectives but before they join us susan let's talk about the case the murders maybe i i always love to do things chronologically because i think it really helps people get into the place and the time and things sometimes reveal themselves in real time so let's do that and see how things were revealed and and figure out where the red flags are in the holes so back to february 13th so the day before is when the girls went off to this bridge it's a popular hiking spot they were driven there by libby's older sister kelsey again we're talking about the two girls abby and libby so they were going to take a hike and they were also going to take some photographs i understand of the bridge and it is really a spectacular looking old bridge it's an abandoned railroad bridge it's what like 100 years old or close um and it's very high up and we will be while we're having this discussion for those of you who are watching and not listening will have uh pictures and video of the bridge in the area that will give you an idea of why people are drawn to it but at the same time i'm scared to death because i just look at it and i look at those railings i'm like who in their right mind is going to walk across this thing same thing and uh when i first got to the town of delphi my first trip there i've been there several times and gotten to know the family and kelsey was nice enough to drive us there in her car a couple minutes away and she said to me i felt guilty because my sister libby kept asking can he drive us here can he drive us there and she'd always say no so she thought um i really don't want to drive him to the bridge just a few minutes away i should i'm guilty i should do it i feel guilty as an older sister so she said all right on the way to work come in my car so i'm going to be getting a car the windows are down it's a day off from school a makeup snow day and it's abnormally warm like 60 degrees so picture that in indiana they're excited to go out not much to do again small town sure so uh libby's grandma says why not get you away from the screens she drops them at the bridge and says to libby don't forget your sweater what grandma said and she waves goodbye and that was the last time she saw them so they walked to the bridge and based on the snapchat photos they are on the bridge and libby takes a picture of abby and after that we can only so that was so susan that was at 207 because that gives us not only a um a timeline right it tells us they are still alive at this time it also confirms libby was the only one who had right libby is the one who had the cell phone yes so one of them at least had a cell phone the other thing that that photo did was it gave authorities a picture specifically where the girls were right so you could match up the photo and say okay we know at two o'clock the girls were here yeah and it looked like they were having fun so dropped off i'd say around 1 30 1 35 pictures taken snapchat a little after two then libby they deciphered from her phone took a still picture and mike her grandfather said to me i believe that at that particular time libby took the original picture thinking i might go home and say grandpa look at this creepy guy we saw on the bridge that's what so that so that's so you're saying that libby with the one with the cell phone took a picture of this guy on the bridge yeah and that's in addition to the video of the guy and what they're saying is in terms of the video and i'm walking it's grainy because that's the best they can get meaning there's a lot of still shots right in the video and the audio so there's a lot that authorities have had to edit if you will it's uh at the press conference in april of 2019 they released more audio which was just guys then it paused down the hill so we've got so susan the first the when the girls well let's get back to the girls and then we'll get to the details again of these videos and the audio because even though it sounds like oh you have audio and video it's really very tiny pieces right so um at 3 15 the girls were supposed to meet at the same location that they were dropped off right and it dad was picking them up okay yeah and they didn't show up no libby's not answering the phone right so libby's dad calls becky his mom libby's grandmother she's not here i don't know where she is what do you mean she's not there well she's not here okay so then the grandmother calls kelsey older sister have you heard from her no we haven't panic doesn't set in yet it doesn't set in yet because it's not dark and we do know that libby's afraid of the dark and that's when becky told me she started to panic once she knew it got darkly this wouldn't be happening they just don't lose track of time so they got injury a lot of people in the town becky said to mike we need to get on this might call the police and a surgeon suit at that particular time let's say four so um by 5 30 they are officially reported missing and as we mentioned at the top of the program that the sheriff called off the search that night saying that he didn't believe that they were in danger he just thought they were lost which really and i think in hindsight he he was concerned about um the safety the safety of the searchers right right because it's so dense and it's so dark and he spoke about the bridge earlier i meant to mention this when i was first there and i decided to walk ahead from the photojournalist and i kept walking and walking and walking and it was freezing it was february 2019 and it was freezing and i'm alone and my mom said to me be careful there i said mom i'm fine it's i'm covering a story and her voice in my head and i thought this is really isolating this is different than i thought i played in the backyard i played in the woods this is different it's dark and it's deep and it's isolating and it was daylight and i thought if anyone screamed would anybody hear i don't think so so i start i turn around and run back the photographers then we all go and i can't even put not one foot i had no fear maybe 10 11 12 like they didn't my age i couldn't even step on that i'm talking almost 70 feet high with huge gaps so i could see how some of the locals would think oh maybe they slipped if someone fell they're not recovered from they're not so when you're out there and you say oh my gosh so when you see that video of this man strolling on the bridge you know immediately he's a local you know for some right and you like casual and you can see him kind of bouncing around he's wearing a blue jacket and blue jeans and it's a very he's stepping weirdly because of the gap so he may but he's casually doing it he's moving ahead he doesn't look fearful he looks like he has there's a mission and we do hear you know a little bit about down the hill when it's unclear whether in the video whether he is saying to go down the hill there's something down the hill it's really hard to figure out um it is very important that that video was actually taken by libby herself and the question is did she have the forethought to say oh my god something's not right here and i'm going to videotape this authorities say absolutely and whether it was in her pocket at the time whether uh down the hill was muffled they called her a hero kelsey also told me uh libby's sister that she calls abby hero for staying with lindy now we do know that the family members who chose to listen to more of that cell phone footage have done that um [Music] we believe it's about two minutes maybe a little under they're not releasing any more because they say we don't believe it can solve the crime so are they shielding the family from what you're going to hear on there the girls being in duress possibly probably which is why they're not including that it's not to say this is what we're giving you it's saying this is all we got and uh we believe that this guy is is part of society at least that's what they said at the presser in april 2019 saying he could be in this room we know it's power to you in hindsight i look back at that press conference i was there it was jarring to say he's in the room i couldn't believe it now in hindsight i'd feel like maybe he's baiting him it was open to the public everyone was invited were they inviting him to possibly probably and uh but they need they say that extra tip that one more tip and uh it hasn't come yet so it was the next day around noon that the girls bodies were found on the north bank of deer creek not that far from where they were dropped off so the key piece of evidence that we've been talking about here would be this video of a man on the bridge and also a little bit of the audio that goes with it where we hear the audio clip of a man saying down the hill and we're going to play that for everyone and we're going to play it throughout this so you can hear it and you can see this video of the man you know with the with the blue jacket and the blue jeans who works yes like every man yes every man which is right because it's it's grainy enough and you don't really see much but they added at the press conference again in april 2019 something i've never heard of or seen of so barbara and i are sitting front row and thinking okay there's something draped over like an easel with red and i i was doing live shots saying i don't know what's behind me is this pertinent information yeah it was pertinent it looks completely different than the first sketch so the family members are thinking wait a minute we just spent two years sending out flyers in the first sketch and then this guy is what we're looking for what's going on here they also had us listen to what sounded like a young guy saying guys and i talked to my kids that way hey guys come on it was friendly but they said uh superintendent doug carter said guys and down the hill same guy same person and i believe he was trying it was edited meaning it's from chunks of the cell phone but it showed guys down the hill guys downhill i don't think it was in that order they won't say but when you hear it it sounds very different and something that stood out to me that i think is worth mentioning it's becky um libby's grandmother said i was so distraught looking at the new younger guy in the sketch and then she said and then it dawned on me i had an epiphany that when you're young very young 12 13 everybody looks old right yes you see the sketch look like the older guy and when you're old everybody looks young [Music] everybody looks in so maybe it's it's a combination of people who saw what they saw based on their age range does it equal that guy it's amazing that it was two years after the girls were discovered murdered that they released a second sketch so two years into this investigation there are two sketches then they release the additional audio where you hear the man say guys down the hill let's just pause a second and make sure that everyone can hear the video we're going to play the clip now susan do you think that in that audio do you think that he's instructing the girls to go down the hill or do you think he's suggesting something down the hill or frankly whatever it is we read into it it's it's anybody's guess my personal opinion based on the reporting based on the comments spent there is that it comes from two different times at that day that guys was earlier in the day could be wrong and down the hill came it could be moments later but down the hill was more instructive did he show a weapon did they scream we don't know were they scared of what he showed them because if you look in the pockets and he can analyze can't really tell was he holding something his hands are in his pockets again 70 feet down seems to have no problem with his hands and his pockets so did he scare them enough downhill was instructed guys may have been on approach that's my opinion so now we're going to play a clip from the hln documentary that is coming out this weekend and right after the clip we will be joined by the podcast hosts and producers here's the clip by the spring of 2019 the public had at least a handful of leads that might help in identifying the killer we had two sketches we had four words we had a very short video clip in the still images that could be pulled from that video i pressed carroll county sheriff tobe lesenbee to see if i could extract any more information about other key pieces of evidence that the police might be holding back is there more audio from him on the tape than what's been released not that i am aware of could you release more of the video um i i think people anticipate that there's something if you will earth shattering that's going to jump out and they go hey it's phone's up that all of you guys watching it every couple of weeks haven't noticed yet right i asked him about fingerprints there were some fingerprints collected do you know if that those fingerprints belong to the killer that i do not know and same with dna you have dna yes do you have his dna yeah we don't know how helpful has that video been i know there are still items within that video that are still being studied and considered and so i still considered a positive key piece of of evidence that eventually will be used in the courtroom is it fair to say it's several minutes long it's not as long as what you would think to say several minutes now so now we're bringing on barbara mcdonald and andrew eiden the producers and the hosts of the podcast welcome to the program you two outstanding work oh thank you thank you for having us thanks for having us absolutely barbara um i gotta hand it to you you're trying every which way to get information out of the sheriff you are extricating everything you can so it sounds like there's a little bit of dna some fingerprints it's astonishing to me that you have that plus this pretty clear video i mean it's grainy but you do get a sense of the body shape right you do get clearly the clothes and all of that even if you can't really make out the face so you have video you have audio dna fingerprints barbara how is it possible that we don't know who killed these girls it's it's so frustrating and so surprising to so many people not only those of us who are watching it and reporting on this story but to the families and to even law enforcement uh you would think that somebody would know who this is recognize that voice recognize that outfit or him walking on that bridge and call it in and that hasn't happened yet i i don't think that there's one name that law enforcement has that they're all just waiting for enough evidence to prove that one person i think that a lot of the investigators have different ideas about maybe who is responsible here a lot of our profilers have said that this person is probably not committing crimes he's probably living a very normal life in between these big crimes and so he's not somebody who's drawing attention to himself but what i was going to say is i think that sometimes you do have somebody who knows who this person is and for whatever reason they're not motivated enough to come forward yet whether they're scared or whether they think it's not their place or whatever is going on in their own head they don't come forward and sometimes it takes a long time for that person to finally be willing to go i do know something and here it is barbara and andrew can you give me any sense of i find it astonishing that police have not said how the girls were killed that is fairly rare in the world of crime generally we're told some detail of the manner of death but they've been really tight-lipped on this and so that's why i said my my head races to all these different thoughts it's like did they fall off the bridge did they trip did something happen but you all say you know for sure that without question that they were murdered any ideas how they are so certain of this andrew uh you know it's it's it's a difficult question to answer because you know we you know we have pushed these investigators and we've used this metaphor of you you said tight lipped i would say that's a bit of an understatement based on the information they've given um it's almost like we've walked up to kind of this wall and we've gotten as far as we can get and we're just trying to chip away at that and get through and get some more details um i do think you know obviously it's a situation where you know you can also do the reverse engineer of what didn't happen and you know there has been discussion and conjecture about were they pushed was their fault i don't think that's the case uh based on just the way the investigators characterize what they saw at the scene you know they use adjectives like horrific brutal can't unsee this so we know that whatever you know and this is just from from what they've said i think the assumption is whatever the the way that they were killed or the manner of death was something that goes far beyond what most investigators are used to which is you know kind of your genera and there's no such thing as a run-of-the-mill murder obviously but of course it's just something that goes beyond above and beyond kind of what we're all kind of used to and so if the manner of murder was so horrific and so violent based on your reporting and dna and fingerprints have been left behind plus video and audio what do you think is is the is the hold up here why do you think this one is so hard to crack especially in a small town where everybody knows each other i think it's possible that this is somebody who hasn't committed a crime before or or hasn't been caught for committing a crime before so he's not in the system um this could be his first crime we don't really know um but i also think that this is somebody who put a lot of effort and planning into this and and took steps to make sure he wasn't caught and we talked about sorry barbara we talked about small towns drew was from a small town like delphi so he could speak to that yeah i mean you know when we were there it was funny because susan being from jersey there were some things about the small town dynamics that i don't think susan necessarily understood and i had to say susan wait i gotta tell you i'm from a town about the same size in virginia this is how things work the chief the fire chief is not like a paid position he's you know this is a thing where he spends all his time here it is there's a very fraternal element to it everybody knows everybody the police the fire department the sheriff's office that they all you know there's you know so-and-so's brother-in-law's on the sheriff's you know is a sheriff's deputy while his sister-in-law is with the fire department so everyone does know each other and if you don't know them you know their brother or their wife or their sister or the football player is now a detective exactly right exactly so cab driver and there he is and that's why you know daryl stared who's the chief of police has known mike patty for you know virtually his entire life so like fire chief fire chief i'm sorry and mike patty is because some people may be hearing this for the first time mike mike patty is libby's grandfather and we're going to we have a clip that we're going to play in a little bit from crime watch daily um because like i said we covered it extensively as well and and we do want to hear from the family and a shout out to mike he's just a wonderful wonderful guy i mean to think about the hell he's been through back and what he's been willing to give us and open his home to us and go and feed a spaghetti with his life but i mean you can't ask for a more generous person in terms of oh you need to interview this person let me give them a call i mean that open and that nice and that he didn't get solved and and you know mike patty is kind of the uh the lead dog in this thing in terms of a relentless pursuit of figuring this out but you know and mike he's a he's a tough you know uh midwestern guy who likes to you know clear snow off of his driveway and tend to you know work in his shop and it and i always think about you know we were there last summer i believe it was labor day we were at their home and they were having a cookout and mike and i were just kind of talking in the garage and he kind of let his guard down and he was like drew i got to tell you man we had plans becky and i we had plans to retire we had a whole life ahead of us of you know the girls going away to school going off to college like they had they had plans and mike is a planner and he and he's very detail-oriented and the the honesty when he said that to me of like i had a whole thing going here that after february 14th that's all gone that's off the map and his entire life has now taken a complete hard left turn that i don't think he ever anticipated this is another example i'm sorry i texted him this morning just say hey i'm going this shows anything you want to say he said i just want to say thank you to everyone um involved for keeping the story out there that's what we need and uh tell drew he's got to get the shovel when he's here he's gonna go my walkway so he's able to keep the joy in it to live to because he knows he has to continue living he has other kids it is a wife so but he's able he's he's relentless in terms of justice barbara okay no we've got to hear from him now because since we've got a clip right you clearly love him um sounds like an amazing man so this is a clip um and it's narrated from chris hanson it's going to show a little bit of the area and these are the interviews with libby's grandparents it's a story crime watch daily has been following since day i one one that has touched the hearts of millions of americans libby's heartbroken grandparents mike and becky patty just spoke this week to us alexis mcadams from our partner station fox 59 in indianapolis interviewed them every morning i wake up and come down the hallway and say good morning libby because there's a picture right there and then every day when i drive to work i go right past where it happened you know and i say good morning again this is where it happened just beyond the moninhai bridge an old abandoned railroad track turned into a hiking trail in delphi is there anything that you would want to say to abby and libby's killer i've thought about that a lot and you can plan you can play him you can rehearse you can think you'll know exactly what you're going to say to him if he was face to face with him but until you're standing there i don't think anybody would ever know what they'd say to him it's so heartbreaking to hear that that that in your mind you're having a conversation it's like what will i do when you finally arrest the killer and you all have spent time with this family with both families it has got to take a toll after four years to feel the frustration and this sense of helplessness no matter how close the community is at the end of the day we still do not know and i will kill these two girls exactly and i think right now you know seeing life sort of move on i mean this is the year that the girls both abby and libby would be seniors in high school so they'd be going to prom they'd be getting college acceptance letters they'd be making plans for their future and their life and mike and becky and anna williams and diane and eric erskine are watching the girls friends go through all of that and their girls aren't um and like becky said you know one of the things that weighs heavily on on these families is what if we know the person when he's arrested this is a small town if he is somebody who's from here the chances are good that when he's caught we're going to know him and that adds a whole nother level of horror to the story you know i've covered some cases where um for years the unsolved murder everyone was focused on it had to be someone in town it had to be someone in town and then all of a sudden we find out it was not it was actually rather random and i think all of a sudden there's this sense of oh my god we've been looking in the wrong direction this entire time so i want to toss out the possibility that it may not be someone in town right that's entirely possible and law enforcement says that i mean it could be somebody who is familiar with delphi from his childhood from spending summers there with his grandparents or or whatever you know maybe he went to school there for a short time worked there for a short time but it does seem pretty obvious that the person must have had some familiarity with the area because it's a strange area to just study on the internet and go there and and wander around and try to figure out where victims might be you know the profilers we've interviewed say this is somebody who planned this for a long time had this spot picked out and went there and hunted and so he must have known that there's a pretty good chance that he's going to find what he's looking for there and so that tells me that he's he's at least familiar with the area and a clown con sorry drew mike was knowing that look we just can't focus on delphi so we gotta get the flyers out i mean this has got to be you know statewide if you know him and he's passing through or he's from there and since moved we have to get it out above and beyond alpha it's it's funny because you know barb and i uh and susan to a certain extent spent nearly a year in a conference room writing the podcast together and uh you know we have literally discussed every conceivable theory as it relates to this case and we got into some heated discussions about whether this guy is local or not and one of the things i throw out and it kind of harkens back to what you said anna which is it perhaps the guy isn't from there and you know what if the investigative strategy is to give whoever did this a false sense of security that they've gotten away with it by uh appearing as though they are honed in and focused on someone local well if it's someone who's not from the from the area and is living in seattle well they might just slip up and you know because they think they're getting away with it you know is that an investigative strategy we don't know but it's worth considering um but also there are the things that do lead us back to you know maybe there there is probably some familiarity with the area so i do have a question for you andrew excuse me for interrupting but if in the very beginning susan really talked about this at length about if the police handled this not as they should have and called off the search the night before do you feel that this being a smaller town that this police department is up to this or do you have the indiana state police also involved are there other agencies because this is you know i'm i i'm not trying to say anything negative about the local police department but sometimes a bigger agency not only has more resources but a level of experience with this type of crime i do want to preface it was called off but there were still hundreds of people we're talking yeah i mean i i do think and this was one of the things we talked about a lot which is you know uh the sheriff's department did call off the search that you know that night but you know we have to think about the context of what is call off you know we we had discussions and it was like you know i feel like that was a situation where the sheriff basically said i have to call this off from an official capacity yeah because i can't pay the overtime i don't have it in my budget right i can't pay the insurance if somebody's hurt but in a town that size that could have been all it was and everybody continued searching i mean it's not like there's just this mass exodus of shrug your shoulders against liability technically right i mean so so i think we have to you know we really have to consider you know calling off the search and what that really looked like i mean anna williams talks about being out that night long past the the point where the search was called off and there were people on atvs and people out you know searching like this was not just a up flip the switch close the shop and go home and again the small town may have been their detriment because the crime scene had some right kidding sorry urinating i mean everyone was in the woods looking and so the contaminated crime scene was such a huge spam because it was such a small town so everyone was invested so was it always at a con i would also say that because of because of the area that it you know is the is the uh sheriff's office prepared to handle a murder investigation that is of this scope i don't know is the sheriff's office the most qualified to search the area in carroll county yes i would say probably so more so than the fbi or the indiana state police this is their backyard they know this area better than anybody i think all three of these agencies would tell you are there things we would have liked to have done differently sure that's the case in any one of these any investigation like this but does it rise to you know negligence or some sort of you know investigative malpractice that i don't know what was the impact of the the police pulling some resources that night is it possible that the girls were already dead they just hadn't been found do we know when they were killed we don't know for sure but um from the investigative sources that we've talked to we do believe that um it wasn't too long after the encounter that things probably happened pretty quickly um so yeah by the time the search was official um that evening yeah we probably are talking about a recovery mission and not a search and rescue um i'm not sure that they had the equipment because they were such a small jurisdiction they didn't have the equipment the first night to fully search the entire area around that bridge they were able to search a lot of the areas but for example i don't believe that they were able to thoroughly search the area where the bodies were ultimately found that first night interesting okay so andrew and everyone but andrew can you explain to me why these two sketches released two years apart are so radically different and the age of the potential killer is such a span that frankly it could be anybody well yeah and uh you know i'm glad you kicked this to me barbara this was one of the debates we had is i would pound the table and say these guys don't look anything alike and barb and our other producer dan would say no no no i think there's some similarities and i was like i would just scratch my head but um to answer your question you know those sketches came from you know from witnesses that were on the trail that day we haven't been able to speak to those witnesses they've been very very tight-lipped and they're not speaking about their experiences at all but you know it does it does beg the question why they're so different i mean you know were there two different people involved in this crime we don't know i mean if you look at those sketches there's there's you know enough of an age gap that there could there's generational possibilities there um but you know that those two sketches are yet another element of this case that as i have said to barb a million times and she's gonna roll around when i say this you can see whatever you really want to see right like anybody can be convinced of anything like you know it was it was two on one in our writer's room with barb and dan arthur's producer were like no no there's some similarities here look at the chin look at the eyes etc and i was like you've got a point there but i would be like wait a second one's got facial hair one doesn't one's got curly hair the other's got a hat like there's no similarities similarities at all so those two sketches are just another layer of baffling confusion about what do we have here because it doesn't seem to clear up anything yeah and and frankly the strongest evidence is always going to be the physical evidence the dna the fingerprints um more so than anything else and then matched up with the video and then you already have to decipher the video you think physical evidence what could be better than video but as i was in the war room and we're sitting shot by shot it's blurry enough that it's gonna be like wait a minute his hood's up his hood's down that's hair that's a hat that's hair that's hat it's so frustrating and you can see whatever you want to see mr was saying or even the brown thing sticking out of his jacket was that some sort of a leather kit tools in it is that just part of the brown hoodie that he's wearing is it part of his shirt that's sticking out from under his accidental perfect bun because of the town what's what's the white thing around his neck like you know we've right that you know frankly i didn't think it was anything until you know susan was like what's that and i'm like oh oh whoa this is the first time i'm even noticing that and it was like damn it this can be anything it's it's madness one of the points though that i i go back to a lot we had an fbi um agent on one of the specials that we did i think right after the new direction press conference in april of 2019 and um we were talking about the video that was released the just it's a minute or a second and a half of video of him taking like a step and a half on this bridge but what this fbi agent saw in that was that he was thinner than he appears in the still image that the still image makes him look like he might have what could be a typical body for somebody in their 40s or 50s with you know more of a gut a little bit more weight on them but she was saying no if you look at the video that they released of him taking those steps you can see that the legs are thinner the arms are thinner and that she believed that was all stuff he had in the jacket for what he was going to need for what he was planning can i add just one other thing about the sketches and that is we've had conversations with law enforcement who have said uh the important thing to remember about a sketch is it's not it's necessary necessarily for people who don't know the goal is not to show a sketch and someone to go that's john the goal is for someone who sees the sketch who already thinks it might be john and the sketch is the last kind of piece that they go i knew it so the sketch is for somebody who kind of might already have you know 75 of their suspicion and the sketch is kind of meant to be that last 25 percent hold on not for comparing against facebook profile pics yeah they say obviously people are doing you know and and i see that in a lot of the the facebook groups that discuss this case somebody will go oh it's this person and you look at them and go yeah i could make a case that person's photo looks like the sketch absolutely but you need a whole lot more to accuse somebody of a double murder something authorities pointed out and i don't know i have to test this out but they said that you would know your family members walk i don't know if i would know my dad's walk coming towards me if i couldn't tell you know what he was wearing or maybe i would so i asked my husband would you know my walk and he said yeah and i thought okay i have to pay attention to people's walks like can you tell on the bridge because remember the uh doug carter said watch his gate his walk he would know him would we maybe has anyone um has anyone looked into the possibility that this was like one of those railroad enthusiasts fanatics because that bridge is very unique and anyone who's into railroads you know i know a lot of people most of them former news writers from television who were always obsessed right right and that they would travel the country just to look at bridges trestles all of this stuff and that could explain the familiarity with this structure i don't know about archaeology didn't we i mean we looked into everything yeah i've been in corners of the internet i didn't know existed we do same yeah i want to point out that we talked about libby's family a lot um you know i do want to point out with what i saw in the special with anna and how resilient she's been and what she's had to go through that she really because we we can tend to talk in sound bites the news right that it's wanting to be solved but the day to day that she has to live and she said i feel like saying what are you doing today oh we're working on it every day how what are you doing today specifically are you calling the tips are you working with fbi like because imagine if it was your family member or your daughter or your cousin or your niece wouldn't you four years in you're thinking what is going on so that's the most frustrating part as i feel for them feeling that they all yeah and uh we've had a couple conversations with anna we talk a lot about mike and becky patty because they're so outward and you know front-facing on this anna has chosen a bit of a different tact and you know it's it's up to anybody to kind of determine how they would do this but we've gotten to know anna a little bit too and she's a tough woman and you know she is uh you know dealing with a lot uh obviously in everything that's gone on and she told barb and i in the first conversation we had with her you know she was incredibly open and candid with us from the jump uh in our first interview for the podcast and um but she told us at the end she said you know you guys are going to leave and have have this interview and she's like but this takes me a couple days to kind of recalibrate myself so you know just know that and so you know we we were keenly aware after that of what this kind of thing has done to her life and then to continue this dogged pursuit of justice through doing interviews and having conversations about her daughter like i mean she she's living hell after she does those because she has to live through this again but she knows it's necessary and this was her only child abby was her only child who she lost well you all have done a remarkable job it's clear that it's your passion your passion project and i'm so grateful that you won't let go of it because it's it's keeping the spotlight on these crimes and the conversation going that somehow eventually leads to a lead one way or another and that's why this is so important the anniversary is important because it jogs everyone's memory on that day you know it's it's not a random thing there's a reason and i know there's a tip line so we want to remind everyone that you can watch hln investigates down the hill the delphi murders on february 14th and 15th and catch up with the podcast thank you so much we so appreciate your efforts on this it's been a pleasure having you all but we're going to keep susan for a little bit longer all right well thank you so much for inviting us it's been an honor to talk about this absolutely susan thank you so much for helping us to get the whole team on here um that's an incredible case thank you for that but we've got another case that we want to update everybody on this is an update on a tragic death that we featured here i mean it is tragic no matter how you look at it salvatore anello he is the man whose 18 month old granddaughter chloe weigand she fell to her death outside of a cruise ship window on july of 2019 he's finally been sentenced and he's been sentenced to three years probation so salvatore who's from indiana we're keeping all the crimes in indiana right now was on a family cruise in july and he was on the royal caribbean the freedom of the seas when his granddaughter died she slipped from his hands he there's the surveillance video from the cruise ship where you see him holding her up to look at the window the initial reports were that she slipped from his hands he says that he didn't know that the window was open that he used to do this thing with his granddaughter where she'd like to knock on the glass it apparently was the only window that was open which is very unusual so no matter how you look at it he feels horrible obviously he was trying to do something um special for his granddaughter and it ended very very tragically no matter how you look at this yeah on the surface when i first looked at this you think of a grandfather i think of my dad i have kids and that how a grandfather would never want to hurt their grandchild but authorities in puerto rico decided look this is negligent homicide so they felt like there was something here and apparently the surveillance footage shows him looking over lifting the 18 month old granddaughter chloe holding her they went to the brothers hockey games like you said so she was used to touching the glass he apparently thought there was glass ahead of the bar a little bit ahead so over the bar and it does look different than the rest of the boat which had the glass turns out which is what got me to understand the perplexity here he's colorblind and he didn't just say that that the medical record showed that he's colorblind so what you and i see everything looks a little dark there's a clear opening oh he saw that but what would be the malice there and little chloe's mom doesn't want charges and so i would think if there was inviting in the family and something was awry there maybe but this this grandfather appears heartbroken the medical records show he's color blind why would he want to do this nothing in the past showed anything that would lead to this right you study as you know in crime the past is there a history of this is there a history of anything nothing and just the heartbreak to me alone is punishment for life he said look um he was interviewed on cbs and the the reporter said look the comments say everyone believes you and he said that's great but i still don't have a granddaughter so i'm heartbroken either way yeah yeah they they really did the authorities felt that they had to charge him with something because a child has died here so he entered into a plea deal he at first was going to fight the charges and then he said okay i will plead guilty and then um they came to an agreement that he would get three years probation so he wouldn't have to do any prison time and that probation will be supervised in indiana even though the crime took place in puerto rico so the grandfather said you know i just want to take this plea deal so we can end at least this part of the nightmare for the family and the family is still suing royal caribbean there's a civil lawsuit and they claim the cruise ship allegedly destroyed some surveillance video and they also blame royal caribbean for um the risky situation as they describe it for making this accident possible and they could have according to the family they feel that the royal caribbean could have prevented this accident and royal caribbean says there's only one person responsible for this and that's the grandfather so the case as far as the civil case continues but at least the criminal case that's that's done but nothing brings back chloe i was listening to the grandfather's attorney who said look there was no signage you know if you go to a park or you know a public place it says do not sit here do not um and then in certain hotel rooms the windows only open four inches so the attorney is saying that the cruise line could have done at least that according to his attorney so that hence the lawsuit meaning if someone's color blind or doesn't know there's no warning or anything that would prevent this and you know in hindsight everything changes after the fact doesn't it so hopefully you know nothing will bring back this 18 month old but i hope that uh safety precautions i don't know i haven't been on a cruiser in place on other cruise lines too if not already they should absolutely it is time now for our comment section these are the crime stories you all are talking about okay this one help me with this one this is just pure insanity a explodes at a baby shower one of those gender reveal things in michigan and it kills one of the guests no it's unbelievable i mean you can't make this stuff up susan a 26 year old man from heartland was killed saturday when a cannon backfired and exploded during this gender reveal party the cannon was purchased at auction and was designed to emit like a flash a loud noise and some smoke it's not meant to kill people i mean it's more you know it's a little bit of a show thing okay well instead it blew up and by doing so there was metal and shrapnel that just flew it flew so far it hit three parked cars and this guest killing him that's how sharp and dangerous this explosion was our thoughts go out to his family but we've seen other tragedies but the gender reveals with the wildfires in california people died there i say less is more and let's let's get rid of the gender reveals i mean what or just do a cake with a really dull knife right so nobody can be injured cutting the cake it's too much it's competing with each other and tragedy can occur you can assume that this is just all funny let's grab the cannon if it was you know you can't assume you know what you're doing a cannon i mean who buys a cannon okay i get it but still a cannon i i'd you know so although the cannon did not have any projectiles inside it is suspected that gunpowder may have at some point have been loaded in the device uh and that's maybe what caused the failure that's maybe someone used this cannon inappropriately if it was bought at auction it's possible that whoever had it before maybe used it inappropriately we don't know that's according to the police so about four or five guests were outside at the time of the explosion and the victim was standing 10 to 15 away 10 to 15 feet away from the cannon when it exploded i mean the force of that is incredible so michaela d writes these baby showers are getting out of hand i'm with you michaela paula h writes whatever happened to the old-fashioned way of being surprised right or just show a sonogram or a cake as i say what is and are we really in the moment are we just ready to post it and see how many likes we get like are we willing to just like oh let's see i'll i'll do this to one up people i know i mean at my baby shower we just we played a game how well do you know the mother and the father in their relationship you know that's it but bright side that i didn't know so it was a surprise but i don't want anyone like what do i know about their relationship they don't know how to do audio and test g writes some of these gender reveals that people come up with are so crazy and dangerous so very sad absolutely agree with you without question all right well that wraps up our program for this week susan thank you so much for coming on it's been such a pleasure to talk with you and hear the details of this case where can people find you on social media when do you host your show on hln well i want to say thank you and i've been a fan of yours for some time so i appreciate you having us on it's talking about this crime which we are hoping and it's the closest i've ever gotten you cover crimes you know um that we cover them on the set and i do interviews but to be there in person and be embedded with this family with drew and barb and to really have them open their doors to us it's not easy i mean if they could what do they want from us are they really here for the right reasons what do they want and it's tough for them and i i just want to say thank you to abby and libby's family and uh you know it's not about me so i don't want to get upset but uh on weekend express you can tune in and the special is uh february 14th the 15th and it's the four-year anniversary so i'm hoping they find the person who did this please don't cry i'm sorry you know susan the thing is um i think a lot of people forget about the amount of compassion and humanity that goes into being a crime reporter because these families let you into their lives they open up their homes they stay in touch with you and um you're guarded on the set you're it's your armor it's a little it's a lot different and but you know susan i'd rather have you sitting there and holding my hand than someone who didn't feel anything and um i'm always grateful to all the families the survivors of these crimes because their graciousness i people always ask me why do you cover these horrendous crime stories like how do you manage and i always say i walk away with a piece of inspiration and hope because someone who is struggling lets me in and teaches me yeah how to cope and how to heal and i take that as a lesson and i get strength from that and so that that is a gift there is strength on that my mom even said can you tell him you have kids and he can't cover murders anymore i said mom nice try this is the business i'm in but it's the resilience it's why i brought up anna and mike and becky but anna's out there alone and she doesn't have a husband she doesn't have what mike and becky had that together because it's still devastating but right the resilience of you guys lead i gotta pick myself back up and learn one foot in front of the other and especially this year with covenant and everything everyone's going through it's a lesson learned to us isn't it it's perspective yeah absolutely and i i think it's very important and and um i thank god you all are so emotionally connected to the families of these girls you know because it's i always say it's a crime family it really is it's a crime family all right so where can we so we know that the program is on on the 14th and the 15th what about you what if anybody wants 7 a.m to noon eastern time you can tune in along with my mom my one and only viewer okay no no no thank you so much i'm anna g anna gene news on all social media that's hannah with 1n and i want to do a little shout out to our fans from the philippines trinidad and australia i love hearing from all of you and a big shout out to mama be ranting therapists on youtube one of her comments made me right one of her comments made me laugh so hard she says she watches this podcast while she cleans the house so thank you i love it we we love our 4.3 million subscribers on youtube we are grateful to you our crime family make sure to catch down the hill the delphi murders on hl end february 14th and 15th and as always you can find our content on spotify apple podcast stitcher and google podcast and of course on youtube and get updates by subscribing to our newsletter on truecrimedaily.com until next week this is true crime daily the podcast i'm your host anna garcia and as we always say don't do crime you

Channel: True Crime Daily

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Id: HqsNaZyFte0

Length: 62min 56sec (3776 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021