Deep Dive
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How are you doing tonight, Aaron? I'm doing okay, Justin. How are you? I'm doing all right. Do we have any announcements? I teamed up with Wendy and Beth from Fruit Loops podcast, and we did a two-parter about the life and death of Marvin Gaye. So if you're familiar with the singer or not, I would suggest listening because I found it to be quite interesting myself, and I had a great time talking with both of them.
Nice. And I just came across a article in the East Idaho news outlet, and it's talking about an update in the Dylan rounds case. Apparently his mother is trying to pass a law, HB three, six, six. And I'm just going to read right from it. What the bill states is if you go missing tomorrow and police think it's foul play or you're missing under extreme circumstances, then,
They'll be able to pull phone data immediately with an undeniable warrant because, you know, obviously after her son's disappearance, it took forever for them to pull phone data, which ultimately like led to a huge lead in the case. So essentially if you go missing and they suspect foul play or they suspect your life is in danger, they can pull those phone records immediately. And this is for Idaho. Yeah.
Yeah, it's really interesting how family reacts to murder. And sometimes we get some very good legislation out of it. So I'm wondering how everyone feels about this. I don't really think this is an invasion of privacy because if it's specifically written for missing persons, well, they can't just go after anyone and pull your phone records and use it against you. So I think it's hopefully written correctly and will be helpful. Yeah, it sounds like it should be. Yeah.
So, with that, we're talking about an interesting case tonight, Aaron. I think this one is, I don't know, there are some supporters out there, there are some arguments for this case, but I'm just glad that sometimes people will say too much and throw themselves under a bus. So, with that, what are we talking about tonight?
Tonight, we're talking about November 9th, 2005 in Waco, Texas, when Darlene Gentry made an 911 call to report stolen guns from her home and a potential robbery. She also said that her husband, Keith, was laying in a pool of blood in their bed.
Darlene is from Cameron. It's a small town in Texas. She had met Keith while they were in their junior year at Texas State Technical College in Waco, Texas. Keith was studying welding and drafting, and she was studying to become a dental assistant. She later admitted that she had no concrete plan of action career-wise, but she definitely was interested.
trying her best in this world and so was Keith. When asked about her career choice, the former homecoming queen said, "I hated my teeth so I thought I'd go into something dental." This is just kind of setting the stage of, you know, she was a homecoming queen and Keith is, you know, kind of a blue-collar worker. You know, these are people from humble beginnings.
And like so many other people, she would end up switching careers and started focusing on a nursing degree. Now, Keith Gentry, he grew up outside of Waco. He loved hunting, fishing, hanging out with his friends. He was known to be very sociable, described as fun-loving, a man who liked to joke around a lot.
Now, Darlene, she said she was initially attracted to him because he was handsome and a people person. By the time Darlene graduated, she and Keith had been dating for around eight months. She was ready to settle down, but it said that Keith wasn't. They decided to break up. Darlene found it so painful that she moved to Dallas for a year to work as a dental assistant at a dentist office.
She said she also found it too painful to be around his family, whom she loved and had gotten very close with. This is a tight-knit group here. But she ended up moving back to Waco in 1996 after getting her car stolen in Dallas. And of course, now they're back in Waco, which is a small town, so Darlene bumps into Keith while at a dance.
So they eventually started up the relationship again and something Keith's family were happy about as they actually really were close with Darlene and liked her. And they liked who Keith was when he was with her. So the family is very much behind this relationship and Keith falls back in love with Darlene. And three years later in 1999, Keith Gentry proposed Darlene.
And Darlene accepted. They tied the knot. They built a house next door to Keith's parents' house in Robinson, which is a suburb of Waco. It's considered to be a nice rural area with a close-knit community. And over the next four years, they had three sons. After her second child was born, Darlene began training as a nurse. Keith began working at an architecture firm as a traveling electrician.
which put a lot of stress on Darlene because she said that she was doing all the care for the children while also studying. And because of this, this couple, they started to see each other less and less, although they did continue to go out on the weekends together. Oh, this,
This is always the thing is, you know, somebody's got a job that takes a lot of their time and puts stress on the relationship. Keith will end up taking a lower paying job behind a desk in order to stay closer to home and to his family.
It was a sacrifice on his part. He didn't really like being behind a desk, but he felt he needed to be closer to his children and be more engaged with the family. And despite their finances being less than before, it's said that Darlene kept spending and maxed out multiple credit cards.
It's said that it was no secret she loved shopping and was often buying things for herself, like clothing, as well as things for the house, like new furniture and decor that it's claimed they couldn't afford. And Keith admitted to his family that he wasn't there to rein in Darlene when it came to spending, but it said that she spent it all. So this is causing a rift between the two.
Keith saying, well, I'm not going to tell her what to do and she's going to do whatever she's going to do. But obviously some resentments are going to build from that.
So according to Keith, he's getting calls at work. They're from credit card companies wanting to know when he's going to make payments. And so they're starting to argue about finances. They're also arguing about how the children are being raised. Keith said he was frustrated with Darlene because she just let the boys scream and run around the house. And several years into the marriage, this stress was taking an obvious toll on Keith.
his parents noticed that he had become unhappy and they knew that it had something to do with his relationship with Darlene. Now it seemed like Keith and Darlene weren't making any time for one another.
And in fact, it seemed like they wanted to spend their time apart. And Darlene started spending less time with the kids. She started dropping them off with Keith's parents day and night. And so the kids are with the grandparents. She's at work. And then after work, she'd go out to hang out with friends.
So when friends and family asked Keith if he would ever consider divorcing Darlene, he said he would never. In fact, Keith's sister Donna Collins remembers him saying, I'll never leave her. She'll have to leave me.
Yeah. And ultimately, I think Keith was trying to be there for the kids. Keith was trying to make things work with what he had to work with. And I think Keith was really focused on the children and parents.
I guess when you have separate lives, you start living separate lives, you're not going to be around each other as much. And this is going to cause them to have less affection towards each other and less of a connection. But we're going to go to the day of the murder.
At around 6 a.m. on November 9th of 2005, Darlene Gentry placed a call to the Robinson, Texas 911 call center to report she found her husband, Keith Gentry, badly injured. This is what she said in the call. "'I got up this morning. I was in my son's room because they didn't sleep. My back door was open. My husband's guns are all gone.'
She went on to explain that her husband was injured saying there's, um, blood on the bed and he's gurgling. He has pink foam coming out of his mouth and he's making a God awful sound. Obviously everyone sounds different on a 911 call. I listened to this call. Some people say that she sounded calm. I think she sounds pretty upset. So there's debate over that. Uh,
Other people take issue with her starting with, I got up this morning. I was in my son's room because he didn't sleep. My back door was open. My husband's guns are all gone. Then she goes on to say, there's blood on the bed and he's gurgling. So people kind of point that out going, why didn't she start with that? Why didn't she say, my husband's been injured or shot. Please come for medical help. Why is she going into details about that?
Getting up in the morning and being in her son's room and all this other kind of unimportant detail. It has you asking, why did she call 911? Is it to tell a story or to explain that she needs help immediately?
Now, she had some medical training. I mean, she does have a background in nursing, but she made no attempts to help her husband. And she would later say in an interview with Dateline that her main priority was getting the kids out of the room and not letting them touch Keith. She said she had no idea what had happened. When asked by the dispatcher if she had seen anyone in or around the home, Darlene answered that she did not, but the back door of the house was wide open.
So, of course, because of this call, police are dispatched. So at approximately 615 a.m., when officers arrived at the scene, Darlene was still on the call with the dispatcher. One officer quickly discovered a neatly piled stack of guns belonging to the gentries near some shrubs at the front corner of the house.
And within minutes, he makes a radio call to another officer saying, something stinks about this. I think she did it. Something ain't right here, man. I'm telling you. So again, is this police getting tunnel vision or is this using their gut instincts to say, I don't think this scene is what it appears like?
Yeah, it is kind of fishy, right? If all the guns are taken, but then they're just in a pile. What would be the point of breaking in in the first place? Yeah. And she's saying this man came in. I heard a noise. He shot my husband and he was in and out so fast that I didn't get to see his face. Yet he had the time to grab something.
half dozen, almost 10 guns and lay them out in the yard. It's kind of weird. Keith's dad, Wayman, had seen and heard the commotion. And so he went next door to his son's home to see what had happened. An officer stopped him and said, you can't enter the house. Darlene called her mother-in-law and explained what had happened. She said she and the children were being confined to a back bedroom of the home while police cleared the house.
Keith was found lying in his bed with his head on the pillow, hanging onto life by a thread. The bullet had entered his head at the left temporal lobe behind the ear, but had not exited. While Keith's father, Wayman Gentry, was standing outside, he heard an emergency response officer say that Keith was stable enough to transport to the hospital and
And it was only then he realized the severity of the situation. He just thought his son had been shot and was injured. And now he realizes that his son might die. He watched as Keith was brought out on a stretcher with equipment to help him breathe and
And Darlene was put into a police vehicle. When she was put in the police vehicle and they were asking her questions, those conversations were being recorded. Yeah, there was cams in the squad car to document everything. She was asked very basic questions about the event that morning, including if she had any idea who could have shot Keith, where the assailant went, and if she tried to help her husband with his injuries. She
She answered no, and that she didn't know, to all of these questions. And again, she's saying this happened so quickly. Now, another thing the police have picked up on, Aaron, is all of these guns were in a glass gun case that was locked. And obviously, this gun case has not been broken into or shattered, but all the guns have been removed.
And they're thinking, well, an intruder would come in and then you left the gun case unlocked, wide open when you have kids in the house. You know, things aren't really adding up for them. Do you say data or data? Well, at our house, we say data. And for the longest time, I thought paying a fortune on my monthly plan on my monthly data plan was just the norm.
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So it's a real question of like, well, obviously you would think if someone broke in, they would just break that cabinet. Yeah. But instead they were able to unlock it. So then, you know, was there an intruder? Yeah. Now I want to go back because I mean, earlier you said there were recordings rolling inside. I'm not sure this is worded very well, but I think we need to explain that they're really paying attention to her because they suspect her almost immediately. Yeah.
So the investigators, they're going through the house and first they find that there's no sign of forced entry to the property. Now, Darlene's statements about hearing a noise were a little, I don't know, contradictive, I guess. She was saying that she heard someone bust through the door, like break the glass door, but
But then she's saying, oh, wait, I think they just came in. Well, there's no signs of forced entry. So that's the first thing that the police are kind of like. Then Darlene says she found the back door wide open. But investigators later found that a door on the east side of the home was also open. So maybe this intruder came in one door and left out the other. But I would think an intruder would leave the same way they came in.
And as we had mentioned, the guns stolen from the cabinet had, you know, the gun case, it had been unlocked with keys. So this case had a glass front. I think an intruder would have just smashed the glass in and taken the guns. Also, how would the intruder know that there were guns in the house and then know that the key was on top of the case?
And these guns were found neatly stacked in front of the home. Why would the robber leave these items behind if he supposedly killed a man to steal them? To me, this case, we can't just gloss over this because there's no point in locking a cabinet if you're going to put the key to it right on top there. And this seems to be a real problem with this story. It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't ring true. I mean, I can understand like...
If your kids aren't big enough to reach on top of the gun case to get the key. But at the same time, the whole point of having a gun case is to prevent others from accessing it. So why would you keep the key right there? I don't know. I have another problem with this, Aaron. I come into a house to steal some guns or steal some stuff.
And there's a gun case right there when I come into the home. Okay, cool. Hey, I just found a cache of guns. I'm going to take those. Why am I going to go bedroom to bedroom and then go shoot people? The guns are there. I don't have to go into the bedroom and shoot anyone. I can just get the guns and leave. In this case, why only shoot one of the people in the house? And so the other issue the cops find is Keith was shot in his bed, his head unhooked.
Darlene had claimed that this assailant had come in and shot him, but they're finding that he was shot like at point blank, like the muzzle of the gun was right up against his head. And if assailant had come in, why would he walk over to the bed and put his gun to Keith's head and pull the trigger?
They might just shoot him from a standing position. And it doesn't look like Keith had even woken up. He didn't have any signs that like the blanket had been pulled off of him. His hands were up or anything. He was just lying calmly there when he was shot. So why would this assailant shoot him, assassinate him in his sleep? Yeah. Darlene said she didn't hear anything that morning.
And police are asking, how do you not hear a gunshot in the home that you live in? This is not a huge home.
And the murder weapon, which the police looked for, was missing. So Darlene is questioned and she's questioned that night in an interview. And her response to them was, I want to help you any way I can. So Darlene says the night before the murder, she had driven 30 miles to visit a friend and had been out that night in order to let Keith cool down because they had had a big argument about their finances.
And she returned home between 8 and 9 that evening and said that Keith had calmed down and they had a talk about various things, mainly their debts. Darlene had maxed out some credit cards resulting in these debts and they decided they would consolidate the payments going forward. In other words, we're going to take this on and try to fix it. And Keith, they said he cared a lot about his credit score. That's why he was upset because he was getting these calls at work.
And Darlene said they came to an agreement how to deal with it and then decided to go to bed, but they went to bed separately. She and Keith slept in different beds, different bedrooms. Another possible telltale sign that their marriage wasn't working out. Now, I know a lot of people do sleep separately, but in this case, I think they're sleeping separately because they're
maybe on the outs with each other. So Keith went to sleep in the master bedroom and Darlene said she went to sleep in another room with the kids whom she said had been sick. So she's saying she's taking care of them in the interview with police. She said she woke up late the next day and only got up when one of the kids was jumping on her head. She got up and said she noticed the house was colder than usual and
and noticed the back door was open. She then turned and noticed the gun cabinet was also open and empty. She said she then rushed to wake up Keith and initially thought he was snoring until she took a closer look and saw the pink foam in his mouth coming out of his mouth and heard him making a gurgling sound.
This is her quote. I flipped the light on in the bedroom and when I turned around, I could see his stomach like he was breathing with all his muscles that he had in his abdomen. And then I realized that he had foam coming from his mouth. I tried to holler at him, told him Keith, and I kind of hit him and he didn't make any other noises than what he was already making. And then I realized I saw blood on the sheet.
She said that she attempted to shake Keith's leg to wake him up, which is when she noticed the blood behind his head. Now, police asked Darlene if she had touched Keith at any point before officers arrived at the scene. She said other than his leg, she hadn't. She hadn't tried CPR. She hadn't tried to hold his head or anything. She just shook his leg.
When she was told about blood that was found in the bathroom sink, she pulled a face, shook her head and said, I don't know. So essentially the police are saying, you know, there's blood in the bathroom sink, right? And she's like, I don't know anything about that.
So she's also asked about possibly moving a gun to hide it in order to protect her husband's integrity, meaning they wondered if he had taken his own life or attempted to, and then she tried to hide the fact. But Darlene said no. When asked if she had harmed her husband, her answer was, no, I did not harm my husband.
As we said, Darlene never attempted to help Keith or assist him. And she would later say that this was due to being in shock because this question just kept coming up again and again. And that was her answer. She was interviewed for around two hours and asked.
After she was taken in for questioning, at no point did she ask how her husband was doing. Is he dead or alive? Nothing. No inquiry about this. She's not asking the cops anything about Keith, which again, if you're in shock, if you've gone through a very traumatic event, everyone behaves differently, but nothing.
they're just taking tabs on all of her behavior. At around 60 minutes into the interview, officers received a call from the nearby hospital where Keith was being treated in the ICU. Uh, they were told that he was brain dead. Friends and family, including Darlene went to his side as the machines were keeping him alive and they ended up switching them off and Keith would pass away at 5 PM. Uh,
Darlene had signed the consent form to turn off the machines. Now, this is a hard choice to make for a lot of families.
Uh, this is all gone down very quickly, Aaron. But again, the police are thinking you turn those machines off pretty quick. You know, they were thinking, wouldn't you want to keep them alive so you can say your goodbyes? Are there other family members that might want to come say goodbye? But instead she turns these machines off fairly quickly. So the police, they're expecting to be able to speak with Darlene again once she leaves Keith's bedside. Uh,
But Darlene invokes her Fifth Amendment right to be silent and her Sixth Amendment right to counsel, so they're unable to. And Darlene hires an attorney. Which, hey, that's her right, and that's what we say you should do. But in the meantime, they're searching her home. And Darlene did give them permission to search. They didn't have to go get a search warrant. And the investigators discovered a latex glove in the kitchen trash can. And
And inside that glove was a 22 caliber shell. Now the bullet that was fired into Keith, it was crushed and damaged, but they could conclude that it was a small caliber round, most likely a 22 caliber bullet.
Yeah, they know how this went down because this glove was inside out. The shell casing was in one of the fingers as if whoever had been wearing the glove, put it on, reached down, grabbed the casing and then pulled the glove off to where it was inside out. And then that glove was shoved down into the bottom of the trash can with, you know, all kinds of garbage, food and waste on top of it.
This glove is sent off to be analyzed by the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab, and a report ended up concluding that a DNA profile for Darlene Gentry was found. And these gloves are the same type that are commonly used by nurses, so it's all starting to look like maybe Darlene was involved, according to the investigators.
So here we have, we're supposed to believe that an intruder came in, stole a bunch of guns, grabbed the 22 caliber pistol, went into Keith's bedroom, executed him, ran back out, neatly laid out all the guns, and then just took off with the pistol. And during this whole thing, happened to put on a latex glove and pick up the gun.
shell casing, stuff it into the bottom of the trash can, but didn't leave any DNA on it, only Darlene's DNA is on it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's really just...
It doesn't make sense. You know, we've gone through, I don't know how many cases where we start to question if the detectives were doing the right thing. And this, it seems like they're following the evidence. Yeah. And of course, you might wonder, why would Darlene kill her husband? Well, we know she's deep in debt. Well, they both are. And he's got life insurance policies, two of them that total $750,000. That's motive-based.
Yeah, when you add up her needs and her not loving him anymore, as so it seems, then yeah, that does add up to quite a motive. So the police are going to move on Darlene. It's November 27th, 2005, just a few weeks after they requested a warrant for Darlene's arrest on suspicion of murder.
The following day, they called Keith Gentry's parents and informed them that they were going to arrest Darlene. Now, Keith's parents were shocked. They did not believe that their daughter-in-law had anything to do with their son's murder. They do not know all the details that the police have uncovered. All they know is that Darlene is being arrested. Yeah, and they arrest her on November 28th.
Now, she quickly bonded out of jail because Keith's parents raised $50,000 to get her out. Now, Darlene is saying she and the kids can't live at home, so they move in next door with Keith's parents. But she actually wanted to move out of the area, so she contacted a friend who was a contractor to look for a new property.
In order to get a formal indictment and take the case to the grand jury, the police needed to build a stronger case. They know Keith's .22 caliber pistol was missing from his collection, and he had a .22 caliber bullet in his head. So that meant they really needed to find that .22 caliber pistol for their case to move forward properly. But where do you start? You know, they searched the house, right?
They have a well behind the house, and the police took a large magnet, dropped it into the well, and fished around. Came up with nothing. They searched all the vents everywhere in Darlene and Keith's home. Could not find this .22 caliber pistol anywhere. So they have no leads. So Darlene's friend, his name was Robert Pavelka, and she had contacted him about buying a new property.
And Pavelka would later testify before court that Darlene told him she needed to move and asked him if he knew of any properties or land for sale. So Pavelka brought up some land near Axtell, an unincorporated community in eastern McLennan County, Texas.
And he explained how there was this five acre plot of land, including that it had a pond to which Darlene seemed thrilled. You know, she said Keith and her, they always wanted to take the sun's fishing. And so a pond on this land would be perfect.
And she was told, you can check out the land anytime you wanted, which she did pretty soon after. So Pavelka said he met with Darlene near the end of December, and she told him that she no longer cared about the pond and even asked him to fill it in, which made him curious because she was so excited before about the pond. They're not that common on Texas properties. Her response to him was, well, I just don't think it would be safe for the kids. Right.
Yeah, that's a big 180. And if you don't care about the pond, why are you still interested in a property with a pond? Obviously this doesn't sit well with him. So this contractor calls an acquaintance at the McLennan County Sheriff's office to express his concerns about what Darlene has just said to him. Um,
He was contacted by two Texas Rangers, Stephen Foster and Matt Cawthon. They came to his property to investigate this pond. So he's like, this woman wants this property with a pond and now she doesn't want the pond anymore. I think it's weird. And her husband was murdered.
So these Texas Rangers come in, they get a dive team and lo and behold, Aaron, they find a 22 caliber revolver at the bottom of the pond. The gun was in good condition. It had only been recently put there. The firearm was soon confirmed to be Keith's missing 22 caliber pistol.
Obviously, this weapon would be submitted as evidence to a grand jury. Now, they didn't stop there, Aaron, did they? They found the murder weapon at this pond that Darlene was interested in. So what do they do next? Well, Ranger Foster believes that Darlene may return to the pond to retrieve that firearm. So he set up a surveillance camera at the scene.
And he told Pavelka to contact Darlene and say, hey, I'm going to have to drain this pond before I fill it in. And she was like, oh, that's fine. But then she called him later and said, I would like to be there for that.
But even though he told her when he was doing it, she didn't show up that night. So Ranger Foster told Pavelka, please call Darlene back, tell her the pump broke. And so the pond isn't yet drained, but tell her you would be doing it again the following day. And when Pavelka called and told Darlene this, he said it seemed to shake her up. She seemed rattled by the news that the pond would be drained again.
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The following night, both rangers positioned themselves in some bushes near the pond, near where the gun was recovered. This is a pretty large pond, by the way. This isn't just like a 20 by 20 foot pond. This is, I don't know, the camera angle here, the pond is large. So it's not like if somebody were just to show up at this pond,
They would know where to go. You could take a whole stroll around the pond. It's wooded. These rangers positioned themselves near the pond, video camera in hand, and they watched Darlene approach the pond, clad in knee-high wading boots, wading around in the pond with a stick, poking and prodding in the exact area where the firearm was retrieved. How would she know where the firearm was?
Oh, she'll have an answer. Yeah, I know. We'll get to it. January 11th, Darlene Gentry was formally indicted for first degree murder. Now we need to say at the beginning here that Darlene had tried to file various motions against
She didn't want that footage of her at the pond to be shown in court. She also wanted to suppress any statements she made to Pavelka concerning the property. And she also had asked for a change of venue because she felt like the publicity would work against her. But the judge made the decision that these motions would be denied.
So the trial began at McLennan County Courthouse on February 6th, 2007. I'm always amazed how long it takes to bring things to trial. It's always around two years. The prosecutor said that Darlene's story did not add up, that a burglar would not quietly unlock a gun cabinet and remove the guns, place them outside, and then unnecessarily shoot the undisturbed sleeping homeowner in the bed.
and then flee, leaving the neatly stacked guns and loot behind. I agree with the prosecutor. Who does that? They said Darlene's demeanor following the murder, her detailed phone call to 911, where she did not mention her husband's injuries until the very last moment of the call, and her lack of attempt to assist him in any way, made her look very guilty. Then you have her attempts to buy a property with a pond,
And then demand to have the pond filled in is just highly suspicious, coupled with investigators finding Keith's missing gun at this said pond. And then obviously having her show up looking for that said gun.
Now, the defense accused police of not looking at any other suspects and attempting to pin the murder on Darlene since day one. And obviously, there is that radio call literally within moments of the police arriving saying, something's fishy here. I think she did it.
Yeah, they also attempted to suggest that Pavelka had gotten his hands on the gun somehow and was trying to frame Darlene. The defense did not speak to the video evidence shown in court of Darlene frantically searching in the pond exactly where the gun had been. In fact, they didn't acknowledge it at all. So Darlene, though, she wanted to introduce a third party motive in the murder of her husband, meaning someone else had a motive here.
She tried to present the medical records of both Keith Gentry and another married couple, showing all these parties had herpes. Now, these records were excluded at trial. And we'll kind of get into this when we talk about her appeal. That's weird.
We know where this is going, in other words. Yeah, yeah. I was trying to claim there's an affair. There's a lot of evidence here, and there's evidence that ties together in only a way that would suggest that it was Darlene that did this. I mean, after all, the only tie that she has to this property with the pond is her friend said, what about this property? You can go out there and visit it. And she did. And all of a sudden, that's where they find the gun.
You know, the investigators, they take the stand. They talk about all of the interrogations and questioning of Darlene and how her interviews changed. First, she says that she came out of the room, felt the house was cold, hadn't heard anything, and then discovered her husband had been injured or shot. Then she's claiming that she heard a noise.
Then she's claiming that she leaves the key out. So obviously the intruder found the key, whereas previously she said she didn't know where the key was. Another version of it was essentially saying, I was protecting my children and that's why I didn't do anything to help Keith. I just wanted to be with the children, which it's
It's like, wait a second, you didn't see the intruder or you did see the intruder. If you're with your children the whole time and then you come out, why are you protecting your children? Because you didn't even know there was an intruder there. So you can kind of see a lot of the contradictions and how her story progressed with each questioning. And that's all shown to the jury or that's all talked about to the jury. And of course, the jury sees this video evidence of her going to this pond.
So she's claiming that Pavelka has given her a call and said, we're going to look around for the gun. Whereas Pavelka is saying, I'm going to drain the pond. So you have a contradiction in the two reasons why she shows up to the pond. Pavelka, according to him, it's all about draining the pond. And according to her, it's all about going to the pond to search for this gun.
Yeah, and I also heard that she said that she had heard a rumor that the gun was in the pond, which would be another reason for her to go there, I guess. But either way, it's confusing, and it doesn't really make a lot of sense. Regardless of her being invited to the pond, this is a large pond. And if she shows up and is waiting to meet somebody there to quote-unquote look for the gun, I would just assume that you would go to a pond...
Sit in your car, wait for whomever to show up. Maybe go to the pond and walk around. But instead, she goes to the pond and goes exactly to where this gun was recovered and pokes around. How would she know to go to this exact spot?
So this is an interesting piece of evidence that she's trying to dismiss as, well, I was told to go to the pond and look for the gun, but why would she go to the pond by herself? And that's the problem here. Yeah. And again, you know, Darlene had said she had heard a rumor about the gun being there. She said that if she had found it, she would have turned it into police to help them in finding the real killer. But she also remembered thinking when she was out in the pond that
This is wrong. I shouldn't be doing this. She added that she believed she was set up by whoever did it, as well as the police. The jury has all of this other evidence that all points to her. And again, it's all very circumstantial, but this seems to be a pretty open and shut case. So it's on February 8th of 2007, after five hours of deliberation, the jury would find Darlene guilty of murder and
And she will be sentenced to 60 years, a sentence she is currently serving in the Texas State Prison. Five hours isn't very long. I would assume that they pretty much knew they just had to agree on what they're going to find her guilty on.
Now, Keith's parents, they got custody of Keith and Darlene's children. And while they supported Darlene throughout, they were eventually convinced through the evidence that Darlene was guilty of their son's murder.
Yeah. They bailed her out the first time she was arrested. They and others could not believe someone like Darlene would be capable of this. People thought that she was a very kind and generous person. They could never believe that this sort of
pretty blonde homecoming queen would be capable of murder. And a lot of them didn't know about the, I guess the depth of the financial issues that Keith and Darlene were having.
Keith obviously was frustrated with the spending, but I guess he didn't raise his voice to her. I guess he was very gentle and a caring father and didn't air his dirty laundry out to a lot of people. So it goes back and forth on how much did other family members know about all the problems this couple was having?
So Darlene Gentry filed an appeal in 2008, and she said that the trial court abused its discretion in denying her motion to suppress the evidence, that video evidence, erred in its finding of facts and conclusions of law supporting the denial of the motion to suppress, abused its discretion by denying her motion for change of venue due to the pretrial publicity, and abused its discretion in excluding medical records supporting the third-party motive
as well as erred in refusing to poll the jury regarding their knowledge of a newspaper article published on the day of punishment. So she has a lot of arguments here, and I don't know that we need to go through all of them, particularly the last one, but let's go through them. What do you think about the motion to suppress with the video evidence? I mean, she says that the trial court should have not allowed that.
I mean, obviously, this is the most damning, one of the most damning pieces of evidence. And she's claiming that this is entrapment and it was essentially illegal for them to do this. And she has a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. So therefore, suppress it. Don't let the jury see this. But I mean, she...
She's the one that wanted to buy this property with this pond. And then the gun is recovered from where the pond is. Now that to me seems like fair game. She doesn't own the property. The police had permission to be on the property to recover the gun. And how would she know exactly where the gun is located? Uh,
I don't know why this would be suppressed. It would be like you shooting somebody on the street and then claiming, oh, you can't use any of the security camera footage from all the buildings around, or you can't set up a camera, and then I commit a crime in front of that camera. You can't use that footage now. It just seems like a very odd argument here. Yeah, I get why she tried to suppress it because...
I really think it is the most damning evidence. So if she can clear that off the board, she might have a fighting chance, right? I mean, I think they'd still get her, but...
It's pretty damning. Now, she said they also aired in its finding of facts and conclusions regarding the law. But I think we kind of just covered that. I mean, you can't just claim, as you said, that they're not allowed to know about her crime. I mean, it's ridiculous. Now, the change of venue, she claims that the pretrial publicity was bad for her and
And so she wouldn't receive a fair trial. You claim it's a short trial at five hours. How do you feel about the motion to change venue being denied? I don't know. I don't know how big or small of a town this truly is. If everyone in this town knew about it and if they would be biased against her, honestly changes a venue. I don't know if I really care. I don't know if that's really a huge factor.
If it was a tiny town of like a thousand people or less, yeah, maybe change the venue. But for the most part, I think anyone can be unbiased regardless of, you know, the news outlets reporting on it because they're going to only see what they see in court. They're only going to witness that evidence that is presented to them. And I would hope and pray that, you know, people would,
be able to exclude what they thought they knew about a case from the media and only focus on what the prosecution and defense is presenting to them. Well, when the court denied this, they actually used prior examples in that same town of even larger trials. They say bigger trials, they got way more coverage and they were able to show that they weren't affected by the pretrial publicity. Yeah.
And so they just didn't see why this would be important. There's also a lot of commenting during the denial here in the appeal. And I want to move on to the fourth one now, talking about a third party motive. They said, it's important to realize that it's not just that you have some motive you're trying to introduce. The evidence needs to fit with said motive. So they didn't find any DNA evidence or fingerprint evidence from this other couple. Absolutely.
Yeah.
So that's not good for her, but that doesn't mean they get to throw wrenches into the trial just to help her out because it's not warranted. That's essentially part from refusing to pull the jury about some newspaper article published the day of her sentencing. I mean, again, this whole thing is just, she doesn't want to be sent away to prison and this is the best she could come up with. And there's really nothing here that suggests that her appeal should have been put through. And again,
Court, I think, ruled correctly. And so she probably thought she was going to get away with this. But I mean, for people who just follow true crime cases, this has to be one of the worst cover ups I've ever seen of a crime. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah.
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In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him. We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world. And the suspect... He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione. ...became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. I was targeted...
premeditated and meant to sow terror. I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law & Crime and Twist. This is more than a true crime investigation. We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever. He's awoken the people to a true issue. Hey!
Finally, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our health care system. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery+. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.