Shownotes Transcript
Top reasons your career wants you to move to Ohio. So many amazing growth opportunities, high-paying jobs in technology, advanced manufacturing, engineering, life sciences, and more. You'll soar to new heights, just like the Wright brothers, John Glenn, even Neil Armstrong. Their careers all took off in Ohio, and yours can too. A job that can take you further, and a place you can't wait to come home to. How?
Want the same expert advice you get from the pros in the store while shopping online at DiscountTire.com? Meet Treadwell, your personal online tire guide that matches you with the perfect tire for your vehicle. Get your best match in one minute or less with Treadwell by Discount Tire. Let's get you taken care of.
This episode is brought to you by Progressive, where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. Plus, auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Quote now at Progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive.com.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary, discounts not available in all states and situations. This is episode 11, Switch.
In November 2007, four and a half years after John Wells was killed, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime lab packaged up all of the evidence related to the case and sent it back to DeSoto County Sheriff's Office for storage.
The stuff in the boxes and bags included John's Ruger revolver, DNA extracts from previous testing done in 2004, the unfired 17 caliber bullets, the one spent shell casing, the holster, the belts, and all the other stuff that investigators had taken or swabbed from the crime scene or suspects. Around that same time, the wrongful death lawsuit Helen had filed against Pat and Skip was in full swing.
with the exception that Skip was no longer named in it because he died of a heart attack shortly after it was filed. So that left Pat and Helen to duke it out in court, over $15,000 in damages that Helen wanted. That legal fight would still be a few years from resolution, which meant DCSO detective Kurt Mays still couldn't get access to Pat, a suspect who had never fallen off his radar.
Kurt was left with really only one option: to continue submitting case evidence to forensic labs, hoping new advances in technology would provide him with more clues. And because FDLE had sent everything back to DeSoto County, Kurt could easily get items of evidence to labs for further testing. But he didn't do that right away. Instead, he waited two more years.
In December 2009, Kurt sent John's revolver to DNA Labs International, a private forensics lab in Deerfield Beach, Florida, about a three-hour drive from Arcadia.
The lab was asked to perform touch DNA extraction from the grip of John's gun and the cylinder, areas that a person holding it would have had to press their skin close to if they fired it. Those little nooks and crannies could have held traces of DNA that prior tests had been unable to pick up. People say touch DNA in air quotes a lot of times, like it's not real, but it is real. We've been testing it. We've been getting touch DNA results for the past 16 years.
That's Allison Nunes, chief operating officer of DNA Labs International. When I called to ask if she'd be willing to talk about her company's work on the John Wells case, she agreed, with the exception that we talk in generalities, not case-specific details.
She also invited her Director of Research and Quality Assurance, Rachel A. Flynn, to join us. The lab has a policy of not disclosing information about specific cases they've worked on, unless the investigation into those crimes has been resolved in the courts. From reading through the case file, I knew that by early 2010, DNA Labs International had been unsuccessful in retrieving DNA from John's revolver, despite their best efforts.
According to a report submitted to DCSO on January 12, 2010, lab techs with DNA Labs International said they didn't find any DNA profile on the gun or the cylinder after running multiple tests.
Allison and Rachel told me that back then, most touch DNA requests that came in were worked as thoroughly as they could be. However, due to technology limitations at the time, DNA extraction was harder to do on a piece of evidence, like a firearm, that had already gone through fingerprinting, several prior rounds of DNA testing by another lab, and then sat in storage for years.
Sometimes there's mistakes that are made that could contaminate the evidence so that you cannot use it. Sometimes, depending on, you know, someone might have, they might have lost a chain of custody at some point, which is detrimental to the case if you're ever going to go to court. So there's just various challenges when it goes from lab to lab, but there's so many things we can do now that it's common to see that.
I'll get into those things that Allison just mentioned they can do now in a future episode, but for the time being, back in 2010, DNA Labs International being unable to find any genetic profiles on the grip or cylinder of John's revolver left Kurt Mays with yet another dead end. He'd taken his shot in the dark and got nothing in return.
To add insult to injury, Kurt spent months spinning his wheels investigating a tip from a prison inmate in the Florida Panhandle named Richard Estes. Richard claimed to have knowledge about John's murder. Richard's story was that he'd been at a party in a motel in Arcadia in 2007 and overheard a person talking about the murder. But he refused to provide authorities with the name of the alleged killer until he got a reduced sentence.
Kurt eventually determined Richard's story wasn't credible. In early 2010, Pat and Helen's wrongful death lawsuit came to a close, and the judge did not side with Helen. For the rest of 2010 and most of 2011, Kurt tried to talk to Pat a few times, but got nowhere.
Then he moved on and conducted a few more interviews with John's friends and even drove to re-interview Ralph Strader, Pat's brother-in-law, who law enforcement knew Skip had called the day John died. According to transcripts from that interview, Ralph told Kurt that he couldn't recall anymore whether or not Skip had specifically told him on July 8th that John had been shot.
Ralph said it might have been the day after, or even a few days after, when word got out that the M.E. had found a bullet in John's head. Ralph told Kurt that his fading memory just wasn't strong enough, and he ended the interview saying, regardless of what he remembered or didn't remember, he felt confident that Pat and Skip were not involved.
After that interview, nothing really happened in the case until May of 2011. That's when DeSoto County Sheriff's Office sent John's right boot back to the FDLE lab to have touch DNA extraction done on the heel. If you remember, John's right boot heel had been the only thing not submerged in water when he was found. Law enforcement's theory was that John had been dragged to the water, possibly by his feet with his shoes still on.
But unfortunately, no DNA was found on the boot heel. For the next five years, nothing happened with the case. It stayed dormant until 2016, when Kurt Mays retired and the investigation got reassigned to a new detective, James Kurty, a newcomer to the DeSoto County Sheriff's Office who'd previously worked for other law enforcement agencies in southwest Florida.
Within a matter of months, James made up his mind as to what he believed really happened to John. According to what he wrote in his reports, James spent the first six months of 2016 reviewing the case evidence and re-interviewing key witnesses. By the end of his evaluation, James determined that John was responsible for his own death.
In a six-page summary of his findings, James explained that he believed John was carelessly playing with his revolver cocked while at the trash pile, and it fell out of his hands or out of his holster, which caused it to accidentally discharge several feet from his body.
In his opinion, James felt certain that after John's gun went off, the teen didn't realize he'd been shot, and in a disoriented panic from the burning sensation flooding his eye socket, John stumbled off the ATV and crawled roughly 40 feet from the four-wheeler to the water-filled ditch to try and wash his eye out. According to James, John died in the water, and then his body floated to where it ultimately came to final rest.
To help back up his theory, James hired a third-party private forensics firm called Beville Gardner & Associates to corroborate his accidental shooting scenario. Now, Beville Gardner & Associates advertises itself as a forensic education and consulting group that does forensic analysis, crime scene 360-degree mapping, and training. It's not a law enforcement entity. Their staff are experts for hire.
The firm's final determination about what the evidence in John's case pointed to lined up with James' theory. Tom Bevel, the group's founder, wrote in a five-page report he provided to DCSO, quote,
Suicide is eliminated. Homicide is not the best explanation to comport with all of the physical evidence. The best explanation to comport with the physical evidence is that there is an accidental discharge when a cocked weapon fell or was thrown impacted the ATV or the ground. The projectile struck the deceased's face while the deceased was looking toward the weapon as the weapon fell.
The stunned and disoriented shooting victim was able to walk from the ATV toward the water while dripping blood, dropping the holster and then the belt, and falling into the water where his head struck metal objects in the water. Unless additional information is forthcoming, I would rule this an accidental discharge." There's a lot to unpack with that theory, so let's start at the very beginning.
the assumption James made about why he thinks John's revolver went off accidentally. James stated that he believed John was playing with his revolver or carrying it cocked. He wrote that more than likely, while John was messing around with it, it had fallen out of his holster, then ricocheted off the ATV, and eventually landed in the sand and went off. I think I know where James got this idea from that John wasn't being safe with his firearm.
You see, according to a July 2003 interview DeSoto County Sheriff's Office conducted with Mack Wells, John's father, there's this short statement Mack made regarding how John liked to sometimes practice drawing his gun from his hip, like in the old Western movies they'd watch together. Here, I'll just let you listen to what Mack told detectives back in 2003.
In case you didn't catch that, while answering the detective's question of how John liked to carry his gun, Mack responded, quote, he liked to play with it. He liked to gunsling, end quote.
What's interesting is that later, during his 2003 interview, Max stated multiple times that John was well-trained in firearm safety and never messed around with a loaded gun.
In fact, Mack had drilled gun safety into his two sons so adamantly that when he bought the .22 Ruger revolver for John for his birthday in May of 2001, they'd specifically chosen that Ruger model because John was most familiar with .22s, and that particular model was known to be very safe.
Why James Curdy, in 2016, ignored Mack's later comments and only focused on the fact that Mack briefly mentioned his son liked to gunsling is really odd to me.
When I interviewed Mack for this show, I wanted him to clarify if John was as safety conscious as he should have been, because I was seeing some contradictions between what James Curdy seemed to take away from Mack's 2003 testimony and what Mack, more than likely, meant to say. Here's Mack. John was not, he was not careless. I was very proud of the way he handled that weapon. I took him to a gun safety course.
And he passed out. You had stated in one of your previous interviews that sometimes John would kind of like to gunsling with his gun. What did you mean by that when you said that to law enforcement? Pretty much about every kid that's got one wants to do it. Just as, you know, they've seen Westerns and they wanted to see if that's something that they could do.
And that was not a general practice. We could have been taught them maybe once. It just didn't happen every day. It didn't happen every weekend. It didn't happen every month. It was a non-issue for us. I was concerned. And it started out for a weapon that you can learn on, that is extremely safe. That .22 Magnum was a good choice.
And he was a very easy child to school on that. He got it immediately. Never made any mistakes, like taking it out when there was people around and he would never take it out of his holster. He didn't make mistakes. There wasn't any jumping outside and running around the yard with it and dropping it. He would go to pieces if that would have happened.
So, in 2003, when Mack told investigators that John liked to play with his revolver and gunsling, he says what he was referring to was John practicing drawing the revolver from his hip, unloaded, and pretending to be a cowboy. Not twirling it around his finger or swinging it over his shoulder or grabbing it with his whole hand out of his holster.
And just to be extra sure that Mac wasn't just defending his son because he didn't want to be wrong, I independently verified John's gun safety conscientiousness with his mother, Helen, his aunt Laura Wells, and Patrick Skinner. Three people who knew John, but did not associate with one another on a regular basis.
The kid had gun safety classes. He was raised around guns. Nobody in their right mind is right around with a gun cocked. No way. His dad had taught him all about firearms. He was, as far as a safety nut, he was very, Mac was very hard on him as far as being safe with a rifle or a pistol. He taught him from the beginning.
He was very good with a gun, very safety conscious. Another person who knew very well how John normally carried his revolver was his ex-girlfriend, Beth Flowers.
My family wasn't really into, you know, the hunt and the guns and this and that. But when I was around him, I felt safe that he knew how to use it and understand it. And, you know, he always, you know, just kept it. He had a holster that he kept it in sometimes as well. It's not like he just throw it around like he knew what to do with it.
When Beth spoke to DeSoto County investigators on record in July 2003, she told them in crystal clear detail how John carried his gun on the four-wheeler. And what she said contradicts James Curdy's assumptions.
Do you want to set your child up for success? IXL Learning is an online learning program for kids covering math, language arts, science, and social studies. IXL is designed to help them really understand and master topics in a fun way. Powered by advanced algorithms, IXL gives the right help to each kid no matter the age or personality. IXL is used in 95 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S.
There's one site for all the kids in your home, pre-K to 12th grade. Kids can even access IXL on the go through the app or on your phone or tablet. No more trying to figure out how to explain math equations or grammar rules yourself. IXL has built-in explanation videos.
And look, my son is only two and a half right now, but I can already tell by the time he is in school, he is going to appreciate having someone explain why something is the way it is. He doesn't like just to be told. So those explanation videos are going to be super helpful. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now. And CounterClock listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at ixl.com slash clock.
Visit iXL.com slash clock to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.
This message is sponsored by Greenlight. A new school year is starting soon, and if you're a parent, you want to make this school year an opportunity for your kids to learn important life skills and continue building independence. For that, there's Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit card and money app for families where kids learn how to save, invest, and spend wisely, and parents can keep an eye on kids' new money habits.
There's even Greenlight's Infinity Plan, which includes the same access to financial literacy education that makes Greenlight a valuable resource for millions of parents and kids. Plus, built-in safety to give you peace of mind. My son is only two and a half, but already he knows what a card is and what it does. He actually took it up to a vending machine the other day, swiped it, and, well, let's just say he's going to be a spender when he's older.
And so Greenlight is the perfect thing for him. There's even a chores feature that lets you reward your kids for honoring their responsibilities around the house. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free when you go to greenlight.com slash counterclock. That's greenlight.com slash counterclock to try Greenlight for free. greenlight.com slash counterclock.
He had his gun on me, he had his holster on his right side with the gun in it, and he'd point it, he'd turn it so if it was laying across his lap flat, it would be pointing to the left, and he'd just lay it there whenever we were riding the four-wheeler. And then whenever we got off, he'd take it off, take the boat off and lay it down on the four-wheeler.
That's the voice of 16-year-old Beth Flowers telling DeSoto County Sheriff's Office Detective Kurt Mayes exactly how John wore his gun and holster while riding on the four-wheeler. The audio of the cassette tape is not the best quality, but what Beth says is that John always holstered his revolver before getting on the ATV.
And he would actually situate the holster on his lap so that the muzzle of the gun was facing left, not angled backwards towards his calf or leg. And then when he dismounted the ATV, John would remove his belt, holster, and gun and lay them all together across the racks of the four-wheeler.
What Beth's testimony means is that if John was carrying his gun the same way when he was alone, as he did all the other times, then that indicates he was safety conscious and probably wasn't improperly holding it on July 8th.
Now, there's no way to know for sure because I wasn't in the woods with John that fateful day. But just based on the fact that I found five people who knew John well, who say that he was very safe when it came to firearms, just makes me really doubt James Curdy's assumption that John was carelessly swinging around his revolver.
The next big thing you have to accept regarding James' accident theory is this idea that John would have been able to physically walk or drag himself to the ditch, a distance listed in police reports as being anywhere from 30 to 50 feet, while he was bleeding from his eye and having a bullet lodged in his brain.
This is the detail I'm hung up most on, which is why I asked forensic pathologist Dr. Kent Harshbarger to weigh in with his professional opinion. It's hard to imagine or wrap science around being able to walk 30 feet with a gunshot wound that bruises the base of your brain and goes through the temporal lobe.
The midbrain is very close to this pathway, so it's hard to imagine that the midbrain is not also suffering trauma, which means you're going to be incapacitated. The death may not occur immediately, but it is hard to wrap my mind around active, purposeful movement.
That being said, it is sort of a downhill pathway. He's on where the ATV and wagon is. There's trash everywhere. And it is sort of downhill. So I could envision unconscious, unaware sort of movement where you're stumbling, falling down this hill. And he does have abrasions on his arm and his forehead. So theoretically, in my mind, I square that. Not that he's purposely moving, but he could have started momentum down and then roll down that trash and sort of ended up in the pond. But...
If their measurements are true, which also I don't necessarily agree with, that is really 30 feet from where he was found. That's hard to... I have it difficult to wrap my head that he's moved in, fallen, actively got to the pond on his own or the creek. So that I agree on the gunshot wound as the cause of death. I agree that this weapon and all the accidental circumstances, the law enforcement crime scenes trying to square with the autopsy is possible because
But that wasn't the case for James Curdy. In his mind, despite having no physical evidence to support his theory, James was 100% convinced John died as a result of an accident.
In February of 2017, he took his theory in a neatly-binded brief to the 12th District Medical Examiner in Sarasota and convinced the chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Russell Vega, to review the initial autopsy findings and consider changing John's manner of death. Thirteen days later, Dr. Vega completed his review and decided to relabel John's manner of death from homicide to undetermined.
Vega laid out his reason for making the change in a two-page report, which I was able to get a hold of. And just to forewarn you, there are clear inaccuracies in this document. I have no idea where Vega came up with some of this information or who told it to him, but it is pretty wild. He said in part, quote,
The initial law enforcement investigation and continuing investigation that ensued failed to identify any suspects, and in fact suggested that it was unlikely any other individuals could have or would have found their way to the location where the decedent was shot. The decedent was known to carry his weapon in a makeshift holster without any means of securing the weapon in a holster.
Given that investigative background, the scene, and other information is, in my opinion, consistent with the potential described accidental mechanism." Now, here's the real kicker.
Even though Vega clearly sided with James Curdy, he couldn't ignore the two massively important things that do not line up with an accidental shooting theory. And that's the downward trajectory of John's wound path and the seemingly impossible scenario that he would have been able to physically get to the ditch on his own after being shot. Regarding these two things, Dr. Vega wrote in his report, quote,
The trajectory is not impossible based on the described accidental discharge scenario. However, a more upward trajectory would have been expected. Additionally, the gunshot track through the brain would typically be expected to render incapacitation very quickly.
And that was that. Vega issued a new death certificate for John on March 9th of 2017. James Curdy filed his final report, which indicated his department considered the case closed.
But Vega's undetermined ruling had serious repercussions. It meant that law enforcement was no longer obligated to investigate John's death as a crime. Last year, when I interviewed Dr. William Anderson, the initial M.E. on the case, he was unaware that Dr. Vega had changed John's manner of death in 2017. In fact, when I broke the news to him, he was pretty surprised. I've never had it in my career for this to happen.
In fact, I don't remember any time really where it was changed, but sometimes you'll get calls on older cases, you know, to discuss them with and so forth. But no, not usually changed. Well, undetermined is basically a wastebasket. Really don't know what the manner of death is. So it usually happens in decomposed bodies or skeletonized remains, that sort of thing where you really just can't tell.
Well, I'm very surprised that it was changed without... We have two, myself and Dr. Spitz, both have agreed on the basic, on the manner of death as a homicide shot by another person.
So I had not been contacted by anyone at the ME's office. I don't know whether Dr. Spitz has been or not, but I think it would be a good idea always if you're going to make a change like this to consult with the people that actually did the initial examination if they're available. It was his last comment, the one about Vega not contacting him before making the change on John's manner of death, that caught my attention.
I asked Dr. Anderson to explain why that was unusual to him. Technically, under Florida death certificates, the only way it can be amended is if the treating physician actually signs the death certificate, makes the amendment. You. That would be me. So I don't know if there's an exception for the medical examiner or he just changed it. As far as I know, it's...
So the fact that Dr. Vega did not contact you and have you change it or sign off on it really is unusual.
But you're available. Sure.
I've learned three languages in my life, English, Spanish, and French. And I can tell you the most difficult part for me at times was when I was doing the classroom work. And even though I was having conversations with people in those languages, it wasn't the same as being immersed in that language. But with Rosetta Stone, I get the best of both worlds.
Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program, and it's available on desktop or can be used on an app on your phone or tablet. The big thing for me when it comes to learning a language or sprucing up on one I already know is to have that immersive experience, like I said, and really naturally try and pick up the language, first with words, then phrases, and then sentences. And something that's been really helpful with that is Rosetta Stone's True Accent feature. You get feedback on how well you're pronouncing words.
It's like having a personal trainer for your accent. Don't put off learning that language. There's no better time than right now to get started. For a very limited time, CounterClock listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. Visit rosettastone.com slash counterclock.
That's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at rosettastone.com slash counterclock today. All right, so for a long time, I was completely unaware of like what was good wine and what was bad wine. In fact, I used to drink a lot of wine.
I usually just didn't even buy it because I was worried I was gonna take too much of a risk. And when I did, I usually let myself down. But now that's completely changed thanks to First Leaf. It's a wine club that's not your average wine club. It's better.
With each shipment, you get a personalized selection of wines from all over the world, handpicked just for you. First Leaf has this great questionnaire on their website that helps me a lot because it asks me questions like, what kinds of foods do I like? Sweet or salty or nutty or oaky?
And all of those things created results that had wines paired perfectly for me. You can tailor your membership to your needs, and you can choose between six or 12 bottles, decide how many reds or whites you want, and select a shipping window that works for your schedule. So get wines to sip and share all summer long with First Leaf. Go to tryfirstleaf.com slash counterclock to sign up, and you'll get your first six hand-picked bottles for just $44.95.
That's T-R-Y-F-I-R-S-T-L-E-A-F dot com slash counterclock. Tryfirstleaf.com slash counterclock. This was a wow moment for me. Why had Dr. Russell Vega never contacted Anderson? They worked just a few hours away from one another in Florida.
Vega is the chief medical examiner in Sarasota, and Anderson works out of his private practice in Orlando. They're practically neighbors. I contacted Dr. Daniel Spitz as well, and even though he didn't want to do a recorded interview for this show, Spitz told me over the phone that he has never been contacted by Vega either.
I had Dr. Anderson read through Dr. Vega's reasoning for changing the manner of death, and he's completely baffled by Vega's conclusions from a medical and logical standpoint. Incapacitation at the site of injury would have been more probable. Well, okay, if he's incapacitated at the site of the injury, which we've determined by the blood spatter is on the bike, the vehicle, how does he get to the creek? Dr. Vega in his report says,
incapacitation would have been more probable. Well, so I expected to see at the bottom that he agrees with Spitzanach. Just seems odd. Well, it's inexplicable. I don't know if they went through all the De Soto cases, homicides, and decided they were going to make them all undetermined or not. I mean, it's sort of strange that this would be picked out 17 years later and made undetermined.
To put it simply, Anderson wholeheartedly disagrees with Vega's findings. It's a homicide. Always will be to you? Sure. There's no statute of limitations on homicides. The fact that the police haven't discovered anything in 20 years, I mean, we've had cases where 30, 40 years later, people have been charged with crimes. In fact, it just was on the news the other day that it was what happened. So the problem with making it undetermined is the police are going to stop. There's not going to be any more investigation.
You don't do cold cases on undetermined deaths. They've got enough cold cases as it is to... So they're not going to... It's a medical examiner essentially saying, well, we can't determine. Well, then there's no way you're going to be able to take it to court because it's undetermined.
What I think is probably far worse than not making the original medical examiner on the case aware of this important switch is the fact that DeSoto County Sheriff's Office also didn't make anyone in John's family aware of the change either. They also never followed up with Beth Flowers or Patrick Skinner to let them know John's case was no longer considered a murder.
Helen Huff didn't even learn the news until October of 2020 when she decided to go by the sheriff's office and ask if she could offer an updated reward amount in her son's case. The reason for me to go up there in October 2020 was I was in a position where I could offer some money. And that's when I went up there to say, look, I'm fixing to do this campaign and blah, blah, blah. And I started talking about it. And that's when Kim says, well, you know, we really can't figure out why you're up here.
And I thought that was the strangest thing for her to say to me because for the longest time his picture was in the lobby there. You know, they have the TV screen and it flashes this, that, and the other. And that's when she dropped the bomb.
So when they tell you, "This is our theory, we think he accidentally shot himself and crawled 30 feet to the creek," I mean, when you hear the, and read the sequence of events that they think occurred, what is your thoughts? Well, that's when it kind of went south in there. I said, "Are you f---ing crazy?" And I stood up. I said, "You've lost your mind?"
And I started saying something about this, that, and the other. I didn't mention the, because by this time, she was so adamant that they were so sure. And that unless somebody comes in and confesses, it's going to stay closed. And I asked about getting the gun back. Oh, no, that's going to stay because, you know, whatever. And I said, well, I don't want the gun. But I said his daddy bought it. And if the gun goes anywhere, it needs to go back to his dad. Well, that's not going to happen and blah, blah, blah.
For half an hour, Helen went back and forth with Kim Lewis and James Curdy, trying to understand why no one had contacted her to tell her John's death had been relabeled. She also had to hear details that disturbed her to her core. Details like how James believed John had clawed at his eye while bleeding out and stumbled to the ditch, and how he probably agonized for minutes, confused, disoriented, and in complete shock.
It clicks over just like, "Oh my God, he suffered?" I was told he didn't know anything and now he's suffered all this time? It's like, I wonder, did he know he was drowning? I mean, because I read the autopsy, I don't know how much water was in the lungs and how much his liver weighed and everything. Stuff I shouldn't know, stuff I shouldn't have looked at, but you know, I was all in, still am.
Despite the painful and confusing emotions Helen experienced in that meeting with James and Kim, she left unconvinced that DCSO's theory was right. Do you think that the sets of facts that they claim are in any way possible? No. No. No. No. And I'm not going by anything but the evidence, the scientific evidence and the crap that they gave to me from the sheriff's office. And the fact that they don't look at the details properly.
Why is the belt off the holster? Why is the knee tie off the holster? Why are there three pieces of a holster instead of it all put together? And the gun in the dirt. They're saying a bunch of stuff in there indicating that Mac, his daddy, said that John rode around with that gun cocked. I don't know how big a pile of bull that can be, but it's pretty big.
She struggles with reckoning how Dr. Vega came to his conclusions despite two prior medical examiners ruling John's death a homicide. I am furious. It's an insult. If I was Dr. Anderson and spit, oh my God, I'd be calling for his license or saying, what did you get paid? What did you get out of this?
It wasn't until I contacted Patrick Skinner and Beth Flowers for interviews and told them about the relabeling of John's case that they found out he was no longer considered a murder victim. I just figured it would always be an unsolved homicide, but I didn't know that it was changed. And, like, it just doesn't make sense. Like, why you haven't messed with this case? Why are you messing with this case now? Like, more investigations should have been done. Like, when did you just decide to, okay, we're not going to solve this?
During my sit-down interview with Patrick, I walked him through James Curdy's findings and Dr. Vega's report and let him read the documents for himself. He doesn't think any of it makes sense. If that did, in fact, happen and you shot yourself accidentally and your eyes on fire, are you going to be thinking to start taking off your holster and your belt and all this crap to run down to the water and throw your... It just doesn't add up to me. It doesn't seem plausible to me.
It just doesn't. If you're in a hurry to get to water to wash your eye, I don't think you're necessarily thinking about stripping off. Like, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I remember a drum on top of him. There was no accident there. He didn't do that himself. Someone had to do that. Someone killed him. Someone shot him. Someone drug him down to that water and put him in the water and put that barrel over his back.
Why John's case was changed from a homicide to undetermined has become the focal point of my investigation. The case James Kurdi made is fraught with issues, one of which is the information he shared with Dr. Vega regarding the functionality of John's revolver. James said in his report that John's gun was a Ruger model that had a recall warning issued for it advising owners not to carry it or store it in the cocked position.
This statement, though short and seemingly unimportant, is critically important to the chain of events that led to John's manner of death being changed. And thanks to some firearms experts, I can prove it's just flat-out wrong. So if you were to drop the gun under normal circumstances, it shouldn't go off. It's a homicide. I would have ruled it a homicide, still would rule it a homicide. If the weapon is not known to malfunction,
That's on the next episode of CounterClock Science. Listen right now.
The National Sales Event is on at your Toyota dealer, making now the perfect time to get a great deal on a dependable new car like a legendary Camry. Built for performance and available with all-wheel drive, you can count on your new Camry to get anywhere you need to go. Or check out an affordable and reliable Corolla with a trim for every lifestyle. From the hip sedan to the sporty hatchback, there's a Corolla built just for you. Check out more National Sales Event deals when you visit buyatoyota.com.
Toyota, let's go places.
in the heart of it all. Dive into the data at callohiohome.com.