The Fitbit Alibi

It's a homicide. Absolutely. The blame game in this family went round and round. This is bloodesticker, the Ferris wheel.

I would don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy. Follow and listen to bloodesticker, the Ferris wheel, on the free Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts. [Music playing] To most Wisconsinites Green Bay is the magical place. It's where the packers play. It's a fun town and everybody knows everybody.

Drinking is part of the Wisconsin tradition. Green Bay is a great downtown pulse and I feel it's relatively safe.

Nobody would ever think that something like this would happen in our community.

Continuing coverage tonight of a death investigation in the village of Bellevue. When I had gotten the news, I just shook. I just shook. Ferris police activity in a field. I was a good friend of Nicole Vanderhydens. She was my neighbor. We watched each other's kids. She just was a ball of fire.

Nicole Vanderhydens was 31 years old. She was living with her boyfriend, Doug Ditchie, and they had just had a baby together.

It was Friday, May 20, of 2016. Doug and Nicole decided to go out that night.

This was an opportunity for them to go out and have a great time. The night didn't end in a great time. It ended in a nightmare. Nikki walked off into the darkness that night. She just walked off. She vanished. That was the last anyone to saw her. That where was she found?

Right down this in banquet. When we arrived at the end of this one, you kind of knew right away it was probably going to be different. But at the scene, that was the most apparent thing. Is the trauma to the left side of the face.

“When you came here, there was a way to identify. Do I know why I do hoochie for us?”

Not right away. No. Doug Ditchie, we woke up in the morning. Eventually later that afternoon, he had called the sheriff's officer, and I won't want to report that. His girlfriend did not come home from the night before. I'm here for a missing person before. We sent some officers over to her residence to take

the missing person report. So this is not normal behavior for her role. And this is where Nicole was living. Correct. And you believe that she was killed here. Correct. Across the street, in the roadway, a large quantity of blood that was determined to be Nicole's. Everything's pointing to Doug Ditchie's. Yeah, so then Monday night. Right now I'm going to be taking you in custody. We felt we had

“probable cause to arrest Doug Ditchie. I'm a decent guy. I think people were shocked.”

People are wondering, could he have done it? Did Doug do it? His alibi was his fitbit that he had been wearing all night and that supposedly proved that he was asleep at the time of her murder. The technology is really what drew me to this case. We had this evidence wanted to check out how tested at the lab. The DNA of it and starts to come back. And it belonged to an unidentified male.

Subjected outside on the porch. That was our goal. It's figured out who is this mystery person. It's definitely a who done it. There's lots and twists and turns to it. And it's hard to know who's telling the truth. Green Bay is supposed to be a really safe place. You know, mothers don't go missing and police don't find their bodies in farm fields. February 2018. Friends and family of Nicole Vanderhide and gather in a packed brown county

courtroom seeking justice for her brutal, senseless murder two years earlier. What happens in this case could definitely come down to the technology.

“Cape Brickleck covers crime for the daily beast. Who would do this? Who would do this to Nikki?”

I was just, it's not real, you know, they can't be. Tiffany Hoffman was a close friend of Nicole's, who everyone called Nikki. They had been friends for years and shared a love of

Light, spirit, a verb and a zestan zeal. She was close with her family and loved her children.

Nikki was a mom to three. Michaela and Tyler from a previous marriage and six-month-old Dylan, whose father was her boyfriend, Doug D3. The two had met in January 2015 and soon moved in together. She was really, really happy when she talked to me. She said they both were excited. Yeah, they both were excited to have a baby. On the night of Friday, May 20, 2016, Nikki and Doug make last-minute plans to get a baby

sitter and join friends at a bar called The Watering Hole to see a steel panther concert.

“I think Nikki was really looking to let loose and have a good time.”

As the concert is ending, Nikki decides to go with Doug's friends to another bar called the Sardine Can and leave him. Doug agreed that he would finish his conversation he was having and find her at the next bar. As seen on the Sardine Can security camera, Nikki appears to be having a great time talking and dancing with friends. But as the night wears on and Doug still hadn't shown up here at the Sardine Can,

she gets upset and begins sending him angry taps. They were scorching and they were all bit accusing him of infidelity. Sometime after 1130 pm, Nikki tries calling Doug but he doesn't answer. So another friend calls Doug and he answers and this enrages Nikki. And so she gets up and leaves the bar.

“One of Doug's friends runs after Nicole begging her to come back to the bar but she refuses.”

Instead, Nicole walks down this street, turns left and vanishes into the night. When Doug finds out that Nikki is left, he and his friend Greg drive around looking for. When they can't find her, they go into the Sardine Can where Doug seen here in long pants has more to drink before the two of them head out. For our coming number one, what is the answer? We just found the human body late in the week.

Okay, so early the next afternoon, Farmer Richard Van D'Huy makes a gruesome discovery over this hillbite over here.

Yeah, first I thought it was a deer because of the rust color in her hair.

Then I realized it was like young lady. She was naked, rather than socks that were on her feet and a pink wristband. More than that, we had no form of identification. Brown County Sheriff's Sergeant Rick Lop now is among the first to respond to the scene. There was a lot of blood. There was obvious injury, trauma on the side of her face.

Obviously, the first step of the investigation is to identify who the person is. Sergeant Brian Slinger is the lead detective on the case. That in itself was difficult due to the severity of the injuries. Brown County is all like safety in the history.

Deputies get their first lead at 430 that afternoon when Doug D'Huy calls 911 to report Nicky as missing.

In her date of birth, March 29th 1995. Her description matched what we had found in the field as far as age, approximate size here at color. Slinger sends officers with a hidden camera to D'Huy's home. Which is just a little over three miles away, from where the body has been found.

“So you left this remaining kennel in for over another 30 to 40 minutes?”

Yeah, she didn't get back to her, you know, with kind of lessons that was laid to 30. Doug tells deputies that after Greg dropped him off, he fell asleep around 3 a.m. and except for getting up to check on the baby, he was asleep until after 6. That night, Doug's parents watch Baby Dillon, while Doug is further questioned at the station. It's here they tell him that Nicky has been murdered.

As D'Huy has been questioned, detectives get a warrant to search his and Nicky's home. They find blood on the floor of the garage and in Nicky's car.

They also discover a pair of air Jordans in the garage that appeared to match the

shoe print found on Nicky's back and seemed to have blood smudges on the bottom. For his office, it's adding up, okay, this is our guy. Just before dawn, an off-duty patrolman reports items scattered along a highway ramp, less than two miles from where Nicky's body has been found. There's a purse as well as her cell phone and items that she was wearing that night.

And there are more damning clues found in a neighbor's yard who lives across the street from Doug and Nicky. And what was found here? A large quantity of blood that was determined to be Nicole's as well as some clumps of blonde hair and then there was also a cord, which I would describe as like a phone-chord charging cord. This was a huge discovery.

Now they had a murder scene and it was 118 feet from Dacharies front door. More than 70 pieces of evidence are sent to the state crime lab. Students. Now, detectives had a theory about how Nicky had died. There was some sort of argument between her and Doug maybe when she got home.

Somehow it ended up over in the street. Right now I'm going to be taking you in custody. Sheriff deputies are recording when they arrest Doug Dietrich, who quickly becomes emotional. Oh, it's what it really is!

Dietrich isn't charged with murder, but deputies hold him on a $1 million bond

while they wait for DNA results.

“Is there DNA in the bottom of the shoe? Is that blood on the bottom of the shoe?”

18 days later, investigators are stunned. Crime lab tests show the blood in the car isn't Nicky's. The blood in the garage isn't human and tests on the shoe stains are inconclusive, but appear not to be blood at all. We had nothing on Doug, so he was released.

What's more on the night Nicole disappeared. Doug just happened to be wearing a Fitbit, a personal tracking device. It goes on your wrist just like this, like a watch, and it tracks your activities.

The steps you take, your heart rate, even your sleeping patterns.

When the Fitbit data stored in Doug's phone is examined, it corroborates his story. He had a few footsteps throughout the night, getting up to court of the bathroom, check on the baby, whatever. His story that he told us was absolutely 100% true. So who killed Nicole Vanderhiden?

“Will more high-tech forensics blow this case wide open?”

For one, the dining-line shop with shopping-fine and business, and Knuck Umsatz recorded, with him checked out with their world-felt best in conversion. The legendary checkout from shopping-fine, is just the shop of your website, a bit to social media, and over-either. That's a music for your ears.

Videos are also released on Wendys with shopping-fine, as it can be a real help to a real help. Start your tests for one of your promo. On shopping-fine.de/record. [Music] Nicole's mother and her brother Brandon struggled to understand how anyone could murder their beloved

Nikki. There's a horrendous thing, and it's just so hard to let that out of your heart. What do you miss the most? I'm waiting for her to come along and through my door again. You know, I'm sure of the most.

I miss her. 'Cause I have a picture of me and her, and I want to be younger. You look bad every night, and... That's from all the time.

“Remember, the evidence appears to clear Doug D.Trey,”

so in June of 2016, his focus turns to raising his son Dylan. When it calls two older children, live with their father. The case torments, sergeants, fry and slinger, and Richard Lopp now. They are back at Square One with no idea who did this. Two of you have this horrific murder on your hands.

What are you feeling at that moment? We needed to figure out how Nicole got home. We pulled video cameras from every single bridge in the city of Green Bay,

They re-interview witnesses, re-examine phone logs.

“It was getting to the point where we had looked at each other and said,”

"Well, I really hope this isn't a cold case." Their first big break comes over the course of the summer. DNA results trickle in and they are tantalizing. The investigators learn that many of the samples taken from Nicole's clothing and from the neighbor's yard have DNA from an unidentified man.

On dozens of samples, the same partial profile, but never enough for a positive ID.

We had this one consistent mystery guy, I guess you'd call it. And our job was to try and find out who that was. It was just a very confusing time. Nobody knew who would've done this to Nicky. And then finally, that August, almost three months after Nicole disappeared,

the investigators get a call from the crime lab. One of the softs in Nicole have been wearing has enough DNA to run through the national database, and they get a name. The excitement was amazing. The DNA belongs to a man named George Stephen Birch.

I was a hit-over to the state of Virginia. Virginia. Yeah, Virginia.

“So I was like, okay, who is George Birch and why is he in green Bay of Wisconsin in all places?”

Yes, we have a name now. But now we need to start digging on who this person is. Birch moved from Virginia to Green Bay on March 1, 2016, looking for a fresh start. A long time friend gave him a place to stay and helped him find a job.

He also loaned him a car, a red Chevy blazer.

That red blazer would provide crucial evidence.

It had been involved in a hit-and-run accident and destroyed in a fire a few weeks after Nicole's murder. So when detectives run Birch's name to the local police database, up pops the accident report, which leads them to an address for George Birch. Swear to God, drive by the first time, who stand out in front of the house,

smoking cigarette, George Birch. My hair stood up on the back of my neck. I had goosebumps, it was like, oh my God, there's a guy. They videotape his movements and keep their suspicions to themselves, and they learn that when Birch was questioned about the hit-and-run,

he handed over his cell phone and on it, a high-tech treasure trope. He gave them consent to search his phone. They extracted the entire thing. So I requested a copy of that.

It's an Android phone that had a Gmail account associated with it. We were recently made aware of the Google Dashboard data that could potentially give us GPS data. You may not know this, but chances are, if you have an Android device with a Google account, your exact location gathered via cell phone towers, local Wi-Fi hotspots,

and GPS locators is constantly tracked and stored within Google servers. The information could be viewed with a tool called Google Dashboard. The investigators obtain a warrant to view Birch's Google Dashboard, what they get back is astonishing. Birch started the night that Nicole disappeared at Richard Craneams,

a bar a half mile from the Sardine Can. The data tracks Birch at 23 AM, leaving Richard Craneams, and driving to Nicole's house, the crime scene, where he stayed for nearly an hour. It was very obvious that, here's our guy. He is next track to the field where Nicole's body was found.

Then near the off-ramp, where her bloody clothes were discarded, and then it forced 22 AM back at his home.

“Hey, when you saw that he was right there, what would you react?”

I mean, it's a huge piece of evidence, obviously.

Finally, enough for an arrest captured on police Dashboard cameras.

We sent one guy out to the house a little bit earlier to get Eisen and he called me. And he's like, oh my god, he's on the move, we got it to go now. We all had a rally up, getting our cars and drive. On a drizzly September day, four months after Nicole's murder, George Birch is arrested and charged with first degree intentional homicide.

The reason you're near is I'm reference to homicide investigation into Nicole Vaynerheaded. So, every year Vaynerheaded rates, you know, on top of me. So, for a lawyer, okay.

I had no clue who he was or where this guy came from, but I was just happy to hear that they had they had someone. Nicole's family and friends have a new anguish, waiting for a trial.

In March 2017, on what would have been Nicole's 30-second birthday,

they came together on Lake Michigan to release lanterns in her honor. It was so cold, so cold, but remember, you know, warmed us. We all went out on that fact on that period and let our lanterns and sent them off

“until you know her memory. Why lit lanterns? Why was that?”

Used to honor her. The light. Her light. She was a light for so many in this world. All right. Nearly one year later, on February 19, 2018, George Birch goes on trial for Nicole's murder. The prosecution has a strong case. Mr. Birch must be held accountable. But according to the defense, prosecutors have the wrong man.

You will know that Douglas D. Tree, Nicole's boyfriend, murdered Nicole. For Nicole, Van der Heiden's family, every day of George Birch's murder trial is agony. Vicki, how did you get yourself to go every day to that courtroom? I don't know. God, we must just take an air hand and let us there because, I mean, we wanted answers.

Friends say it's agonizing for Doug D. Tree too, especially once he learns that George Birch's defense team is planning to blame Nicole's murder on him. He was nervous and I would be too, you know, you were accused of a murder and it's so many things going through your head.

And now, Doug D. Tree's testimony is critical to the prosecution.

Kind of interesting that the man who you first thought might have killed his girlfriend

“is going to be one of the most important witnesses at this trial, right?”

He will be very important. Just as important would be the technology evidence. Data collected from both Doug D. Tree's Fitbit and George Birch's phone. Prosecutors say that D. Tree's Fitbit shows he couldn't be the killer. The autopsy results, the DNA identification, the Google Dashboard data, the records from Fitbit. That is the evidence that will drive you. You will follow that evidence

and you will find the truth. Doug's Fitbit is seen here in this video, captured by officers on their very first interview. The day he reported Nicole missing. Prosecutors say downloaded data showed Doug barely moved in the hours they believed Nicole was

“killed and left in the field. Is that based on the data that you obtained directly from Fitbit?”

Yes, it is. Everything that I could do directly on the device and lined up with what it previously been stated. Did you ever during this trial or have you thought much about it that how lucky it was that Doug happened to be wearing a Fitbit that night the next morning? Yeah, that was huge in this case. I think right there, pretty much said he wasn't there when this all happened. On day three of the trial, D3 takes the stand.

Prosecutors aim to present him as a normal guy, not the best boyfriend maybe, but an unlikely killer.

Tell us about your family. My mother, my father, my amazing little son Dylan.

D3 tells the jurors he and Nikki dreamed of getting married one day and early on in the night she disappeared. They were having fun. Nikki didn't usually drink he says, but that night they were both parting hard. What was the pace she was drinking that night? Pretty quickly. I think she like 2 down and I was still on my first one. Once they got separated, and Nikki went ahead to the sardine camp with friends, Doug continued drinking and smoke some marijuana. Before long, Nikki

And she accused him of being with other women. At any point in response to those messages

“did you get upset with Nikki? No, I didn't. The tax kept coming.”

Doug said he offered to pick her up, but her phone died. Were you concerned that Nikki was missing at that point in time? I was not concerned that she was missing. I was kind of concerned like why she upset. Do you have absolutely any involvement in Nikki's disappearance or death? No, I did not. Under cross-examination George Birch's attorney Lee Schucker pushed Doug on whether things at home were really as good as he said they were. Birch's lawyer shows Jersey text Doug sent to his mom

10 days before Nikki died saying, "I'm very seriously thinking about telling Nikki in the kids. They have to move." So in May of 2016 though, there were times where you were seriously

considering breaking up with Nikki and the kids. I never really like seriously thought about it

like it made plans or anything like that. It's just a lie to your mom. What the jury would never here is that several of DJ's past girlfriends accused them of being jealous, abusive, and controlling. One girlfriend claimed that he put a tracking device on her phone so he'd always know where she was. In her barrage of angry text to Doug that night, Nicole also accused him of being abusive. Did you hurt Nikki that night? Do you mean physically or what? I

know, I mean. Did you physically beat her in the past? No, I didn't ever physically beat Nikki. Had you cheated on her in the past? No, I have not. You know Doug is not an angel.

Isn't that going to be a problem in this jury? Doug Dietrich's not on trial.

George Birch's on trial. Defense attorneys asked the baby sitter who took care of Dylan that night to recount an odd conversation she had with Dietrich the day after Nicole died. I just asked what happened? You know, like what happened? And he just replied, "I don't know, she hit her head and then she just wanted to walk home." So specifically when you had asked him what happened, he said, "I don't know, she hit her head." Correct? It came out of his mouth

of that comment. Would the questions raise about Doug make jurors wonder if the right

“man was on trial? And would they buy George Birch's stunning version of what happened that night?”

It's fairly dark. I saw someone who was standing behind me. Who was it? Who's that B3? But what I wanted to do was not to be a student. The master of the club's laptop is soft, the internet. So it's a master's real name. I said, "You can do it, you can do it." You're a master of the club, right? But you don't understand. Exactly. The man was jealous. He just made a joke with Viso Stoyer. And when he then

works, he says, "Catchin." "That's right." "Safe." Viso Stoyer. He said, "You can do it." Yet it's almost impossible. For years, gone south has been a podcast about crime in the American South. But for our new season, we're widening the lands. Through deeply reported narrative-driven stories, we're digging into the myths, scandals, and power structures that still shape the South. In in a lot of ways, the country itself.

Follow and listen to gone south season 5, an Odyssey podcast, available now on apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows. It's day 8 of the George Birch murder trial. Judging this time, the defense calls George Stephen Birch to the stand. And with it comes the testimony everyone has been waiting to hear.

George Birch's version of what happened the night, Nicole Vanderhiden was murdered. Let's start from the beginning. Okay. Prombed by his attorney, Birch tells jurors he's a hard-working family man with an easy-going nickname. Most people call me big country. Public defender Scott Stephens takes Birch back to the night of the murder.

Birch claims he ran into Nicole at the local bar called Richard Craneans.

“"How were you acting towards her?" Oh, slurring. And how was she acting towards you?”

Some of the same pretty much slurring back and forth with each other. According to Birch, they continue flirting until closing time, around 230.

and pulled up to the curb across the street. "We sat there and talked for a few minutes. What happened after that?"

“Started pulling around messing around a little bit. Are you kissing?”

Birch then detailed what he says was "consensual sex." Nicole was in the back seat and Birch too big to fit in the back seat with her, stood just outside the rear passenger door. "That was having outside the blazer." Nikki's family and friends had to sit there silently and listen.

"Anyone who knew Nicole knew that there was nothing that she would ever do that was not her." But it's what Birch says happened to him. While he says he was having sex, that was perhaps the most difficult to accept. He says he was knocked out. "The next thing that I remember apart from us having intercourse was literally waking up on the ground outside the truck. Did you hear anything?"

“The first thing I heard was "don't even f***ing think about it."”

Birch said he turned and saw someone standing behind him holding a gun. "At that point did you know who that individual was?"

"Never seen him before my life." "Do you know who that individual is now?"

"No, I do." "Who was it?" "Who's that beatery." Birch says he saw Nicole laying on the pavement. "I didn't know she was alive. It was a lot of blood." "The six foot seven, two hundred and fifty pound birch said Dietrich told him to put Nicole's body in the blazer and then drive to the field." Dietrich said ordered him at gunpoint to carrying Nicole's body down an embankment.

"That's when I turned and everything I had, I lunged at him and pushed him as hard as I possibly could." Birch said he ran back to the blazer and he headed for home. Throwing Nicole's clothes out the window on the way. The next day, he met up with friends and went fishing. "You didn't call 911. No, sir." "But he didn't tell anyone else, either." "You don't tell them people. People get killed all the

time while from for that." As Birch told his story, two women were in the courtroom listening to every word. They have traveled more than 1,000 miles to be here every day. We just wanted him to

see our face every day. I know that we haven't forgotten what he did and we've never forgotten Joey.

"Joey is Joey White." "It's Joey and Audrey." In 1997, he was murdered in Newport, Newport, Newport, Newport, Virginia, the man accused of killing him, neighborhood rival, George Birch. But this jury will never hear about it. He was out on bond when he killed Joey. Sheen to Stowe was Joey White's Beyoncé and the mother of his child. "I'm 16, Joey's 22 there. He was my first love. He was it."

Carla Rhodes is Joey's sister. "Amism, a lot." Birch testified that trial too. "He looked at us, laughed at us the whole time. Smirked." "I want to happen. Not guilty." "It was shocking when they said not guilty." Neither was the surprise that Birch had been accused of another murder. "I'm not shocked at all. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he's killed other people. Look what he did. I mean, it's brutal."

When it was finally District Attorney David Lesseye's turn to cross-examine Birch,

he had one thing in mind. "To show how ridiculous his story was." And he says he had plenty to work with, like Birch's claim that Nicole would have agreed to have sex in the car. "So Nicole would rather have sex with you in front of her neighbor's home with your butt hanging out the door of the car than asked the babysitter to go home?" "Shut up, I don't know. I wasn't the one making decisions."

And if Birch was hit hard enough to knock him out,

“why didn't anyone see bumps or bruises on his head when he went fishing the next day?”

"I'm six foot seven, so it's hard for someone to see the top of my head." "And why would D-Tree murder Nicole and let Birch get away?" "So rather than just beating you or killing you in the middle of the street, he decided to enlist you a total stranger to help him dispose of the body of his girlfriend." "I don't know what his plans were."

At one point, Lesseye pushed his birch on a possible motive. "What really happened was you drove

go when you get there and it becomes clear that Nikki isn't going to have sex with you.

“When she attempts to go into her house and leave your vehicle, that's when your mood changes, right?”

"No sir, that's when things get aggressive, don't they?" "Not at all." "That's when you grab that cord and strangle her, don't you?" "No sir, not at all." "That's when Nikki gets slammed on the ground repeatedly when she's trying to run toward her house."

"No, that is true."

"And birch loses his cool when Lesseye presses him on an inconsistency in a story."

"So clear this up for me, you're backing down the embankment with Nicole's body in a fireman's carry position, right? No. What are you doing? I told you before and I would say it one more time for you sir. I was carrying her over to this area."

“"I think there was a big term when you saw him lose his temper."”

"I think we both said well, there's the real Steve Burch coming out, not George, not big country. This is how we know him." "If you're assaulted, you're held at gunpoint. You carry the mangled body of a woman to her final

lesson in place. In the next day, you're going fishing with your body with a smile on your face

and not a care in the world. I wouldn't say not a care in the world. That would definitely be something I would say." "Who will the jury believe?" "No further questions." "Morning everyone to be seated. It is the state of any rebel witnesses." The prosecution got one last chance to present witnesses to rebut the story George Burch told the jury. During George Burch's testimony, he specifically said, in a fiery call, that they're having sex.

Her pants were off already at that point. So during the rebuttal, we brought those pants to enter into evidence and make sure they were viewed. She had been disrobed in her car. How did those clothes get not just bloody, but dirty and hairy? Those clothes are filthy and they're demonstrative of being worn during a struggle." Carafoli and respectfully, sergeants Brian Slinger and Rick Lop now unrapped and displayed the

pants that Nicole wore the night she died, found blood soaked and muddy on the highway. It goes to Georgia's credibility, which is zero that this was not a consensual act. She fought, escaped the vehicle. He bludgeoned her, strangled her, and with her clothes on, and then transported her body to the scene, his story was a lie. He disrobed her at the scene and forgot her socks. And then the final arguments. "Great ahead. Thank you."

The prosecution reminded jurors of the weight of evidence against George Birch.

“"Who's DNA is on her sock? Who's with Nikki at the four key areas of Brown County?”

Their explanation is ridiculous, it's insulting to your intelligence." While the defense hoped to plant doubt. "Justice for Nicole is not going to be delivered by a wrongful conviction of George Birch. Doug Dietrich had the motive, the opportunity, and the connection to this crime." Man, that met this woman in a bar, admitted, admitted by his own account to dumping her body in that field, looks like this the next day. Who does that?

Ladies and gentlemen, the bill is will escalate you to the jury room. Good luck. What was the feeling in the courtroom as the case went to the jury? It was very tense. And I was surprised that I think 45 minutes later, I mean, not even an hour later, the jury had a question. The jury asked to see the bloody wire used to strangle Nicole, as well as cords found in Doug Dietrich's garage to see if they were possibly a match. "You know, the fact that they're

thinking about that is telling me, okay, are they actually believing George Birch's story here?" "It really made me wonder where this was going to go." After a nine-day trial and more than 50 witnesses, the jury took just over three hours to reach a verdict. I just had this horrible feeling it was coming back, not guilty. It just was really

George Steven Birch, guilty of first degree, intentional homicide is charged in the information

and it is signed by our fourth person in the data as a first day of March. 2000." Everybody was just like, "Oh my God, thank God, he was guilty, thank God." "Let's take some of my mind was the gas, hearing that from the family and knowing the relief that they had at that moment. That'll stick with me." "And you could buy it, right?" "Absolutely." "I know Joey was there for this. It's just 20 years later, it was his 20 year anniversary,

it was a death in October. It's just trying to get upset."

“Could you see Doug D-Tree? Doug D-Tree, I think, was relieved. Doug D-Tree was holding his mother.”

Doug wasn't even on trial in this case, but he was finally free of any suspicion. So what you've found from this case is that this technology can do more than connect so into a crime, it can actually exonerate a person. "Absolutely, yeah, I feel bad that he sat in jail for 18, 19 days. Technology is very important, and our goal is to exonerate people just as it is to find them guilty." "If we didn't have these Google data locations on George's

phone, if we didn't have the Fitbit, would it be Doug D-Tree sitting in prison as opposed to George Purch? Back in court, two months after the verdict, the judge speaks to George Purch before sentencing him while Doug D-Tree and his mother look on. "This family is destroyed. It's cruel to

never be like this again." In a state with no death penalty, the sentence is as harsh as

possible, life without parole. "This is a crime that I believe merit the death penalty and

“for that you have to die in prison." "It is what the family's wanted, and yet this is no time”

for celebration." "To Vicki, to the D-Tree family, prayers and support of this community with you." "Good luck and God bless. This court is in recess." "Why?" "The only comfort for Nicole's family is that George Purch can never destroy lives again." "When they're convicted, George has been guilty, I'd still like it was a feeling of happiness, but yet still, like, somewhat of a realization that he's actually gone now." "What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think

of your daughter?" "I'm a big smile. I'm a big gorgeous smile. She just radiates. She just does.

Always happy." "What do you all tell her children?"

Nicole is looking over him all the time, and in that she loves him, and she'll see him again, and every night, I know Tyler and Michele always say a prayer and talk to her mom and say good night. We gained an angel. We lost, brought our fresh air. The memory lives on through the stories we share,

“things we never forget, and she's okay. She's okay. "I should have passed him for life,”

for living, should good morals. My more than mom asked for him." "In 2021, there was contents of Supreme Court's upheld George Purch's conviction. When beloved family patriarch Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property, until they came across something horrifying." "It's a homicide." "Absolutely." The blame game in this family went round and round. This is bloodesticker, the Ferris wheel. I would

don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy. "Follow and listen to bloodesticker, the Ferris wheel, on the free Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcast."