4 | Not At This Time

Our chefe is dead. We will be the one who will burn this ship.

“These ships are no ordinary ships. They are addictive.”

They are for spawning. And no one freaks the Tardort. In the hope of Rhoen, Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson.

It's about 30 million dollars. We have our motive.

With the stem of an anchor and the base of the puzzle, Glent Kill, a chess crime. A person might know what it's key to. Please note, this podcast contains references to physical and sexual assault, and graphic to fiction's violence. Listen to discretion, is advised. The views and opinions expressed throughout this podcast are solely those of the individuals

expressing them, and do not necessarily align with the opinions or beliefs of the host or producers. Thank you for calling the office of the chief medical examiner. If you are law enforcement for medical professional reporting a death, press 1.

“Family and nurse meeting assistant, press 2.”

Human resources. Hello, you have reached out to me about office and kitchen for medical examiner. I'm unable to take your call at this time. Please leave your name. And a number and I will call you back as soon as possible. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Amanda Langston. I am the mother of Faith Ely. She was killed March 28, 2021. I have submitted three letters requesting review of the autopsy and have heard nothing. I was calling to get an update on that if you could give me a call back.

This is the second message I've left. Thank you.

Yes, I would like to speak to someone in the office of professional standards and training. Please, Mr. Davidson. Let me check. [Music] Your old Davidson.

“Can't take your call now. You can leave a message after the tone.”

Hello, Mr. Davidson. My name is Amanda Langston. I am the mother of Faith Ely. She was murdered March 28, 2021. Your OSPI agent Miles Keen was lead investigator.

And I am trying to report him as having serious misconduct in this investigation.

And I would like to know what steps I need to follow in order to get that investigated. Thank you so much. Have a great day. This is what five years of asking questions sounds like. [Music] Your calling has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system at the tone.

Please record your message. Hi, Brad. This is Amanda Langston, Faith Ely's mom. I'm sure you know my voice by now. Just wanted to make sure you knew who was calling. I still have not heard from the new lieutenant and I have been unable to get in touch with a trooper baker. If you could give me a call with that contact information or who I need to call to find that out,

I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you. Facing roadblocks that want feels like every juncture. And if it is in a roadblock, it's a duck shove or a side step. It's a whole lot of people who aren't available. A whole lot of voice mailboxes that must be getting pretty full by now. [Music] Hello.

Hi, Lieutenant. Yes, man. This is Amanda Langston, Faith Ely's mom. Huh? I was just wanting to reach back out to you and see if there's any kind of an update over the emulator or anything else on the case. There is not.

They haven't responded or anything like that. They haven't even said that they received it. Oh. So. Oh.

It's the sound of five years of asking questions. And it's also the sound of five years of getting no answers. [Music] After Amanda tells me OSPI came to the conclusion it was a hit and run before reviewing the medical examiners report.

Exhausted at the idea that Faith Case was so quickly dismissed.

I began asking questions around how the investigation was handled. And suggest we attempt to get a broader idea of what steps were taken. And she stops me pretty much mid-sentence. She asked me to give her an hour and 36 minutes later. Since me a link to a Google Drive folder.

Inside there are dozens and dozens and dozens of recordings going all the way back to 2021. It's a repository of every call she's made. Every voice mail she's left. Every conversation she's actually managed to have with the people working her daughter's case. If I want to understand what's actually happening here, she tells me. It's not what's on paper, it's not what's in the press releases.

It's in everything that's inside that folder. So, I make it cup of coffee and start listening. I'm almost but not quite surprised to find clips of my own conversations with Amanda Katelyn and Casey in the folder. Though we say like the boyfriend is the first person. But in this case, they made him the last person to look at.

Yeah, and you've got, you know, you've got Lieutenant Dan's be saying to you on the night. This, this, this, something looks hanky, right? Like this doesn't look right, something's off.

“That's the way from that fact. Yeah, I think it's not right.”

And he's always, I think that's verbatim, like his word was hanky.

You know, he used that word. Yeah. Yeah. And he was the OHB officer on the scene, right? Yeah. Lieutenant Dan's be was the most senior OHP representative on the scene the night faith was killed.

He's the guy who decided in conjunction with the Seminole County Sheriff's Office. The faith's death didn't look like a standard traffic case. Probably something that wasn't going to be within the scope of OHP. The Sheriff goes on to escalate the case to OSPI, OSPI since Special Agent Miles Keane. And with an hour's of Keane's arrival, it feels like whatever hanky feeling had brought him out to the highway.

Well, it's gone.

He appears to have made up his mind that really, this is just what it looks like on the surface of things.

I didn't run.

“But what I want to know is how, how did he get to this conclusion so quickly?”

The audio recordings of Ryan Ronica and Smurf that night. They are literally done one right after the other. And the time frame show, like they did them all in at the same time. 30 minutes, like one says they started at 0014. And it ended at 0046.

The next one will say 0047101117. So there's no time frames between. Of course, their stories are going to be consistent. If you interviewed them all at the same time in the same vehicle right there, they heard each of them. From what Keane told me, they interviewed them in their vehicle, in the OSPI vehicle one at a time.

And I guess that's probably the beginning of it. You've got three people saying the same thing. Restories that all match up. She left. We told her not to walk on the highway.

She did. Hopefully she didn't jump in front of a car. You don't have any glass or fragments of a motor vehicle or any kind of transfer. But you've got to victim on her back on the shoulder of a highway. She's got injuries in bruising, blunt force trauma, consistent with the pedestrian versus automobile incident.

Down the left-hand side of her body. The same side of car would have hit her on. So it's a hidden run.

“I guess that's how Keane started down that path, but it's not enough for me.”

So I start making calls, sending emails and submitting open records requests. With all of the different departments involved, I start at the very beginning. Ticking off the basics. Step one, which department is currently leading the investigation. Sound simple, right?

Yeah, I thought so too. I've been listening to Amanda's recordings for a few weeks now, and every time I click play, I find myself more confused, frustrated, and bewildered. But as I finish up on another recording, I become aware of the fact that I'm only seeing things from one side of it. I need to engage directly with these agencies, to understand what happened, and why. Not just based on what people have to say, but based on data and documentation.

I start by sending out three formal requests under the Oklahoma Open Records Act. One each to the public information office at OHP and OSBI, in another to the office of the chief medical examiner,

No, no, no audio, body cam footage, scene documentation, medical examiner's reports.

“And I ask knowing full well that as an open case, the information that will come back is going to be somewhat limited.”

But I ask nonetheless. I click send, and then I wait. The first response comes back from OSBI. It arrives the next morning. It's polite, it's formal, and it decides three different Oklahoma statutes.

And the bottom line is this.

OSBI investigative records are confidential. They can't and won't be released. So I write back. I ask if there's a representative who's willing to do an interview. Or, failing that, if the OSBI would like to provide a comment on face case at all. And his response is brief.

We have no comment at this time. I send one more email. I understand they can't talk about it, but can they at least just confirm they're still leading the investigation. And if so, can they give me a case number? And the next day, the answer comes through. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol is a leading investigator regarding the case.

I'd reach out to them for any further comment or information. And the timing's good, because a couple of days later, I hear back from the OHP's public information office. They direct me to an online portal to a submit my records request, which I do. And a day later, I get an email back from the records department, telling me they've cancelled my request. And if I'd like more information, I should contact their public information office.

So I email the PIO again, and while I'm waiting, managed to find a direct portal, has submitted a request to the dashcam unit for OHP. So I take full advantage and send a query to them and direct them. This time specifically asking for the 911 audio. And he'd body cam on dashcam footage, and anything else they have that is available to be released in face case.

Interestingly, the dashcam unit comes back to me before the PIO does. But what they tell me has been kind of scratching my head.

First, they chastise me for not submitting my request with an incident report number.

My bad. But they do me a favor. They find the incident report number themselves, and they attach it to the request. And then they run the search. But they hit a bit of a roadblock.

Both staff occurred more than three years ago now. And they have a three year retention policy. So unfortunately, the footage and the audio, they tell me it's all been purged. I follow up with the OHP-PIO again. This time following up on both the circle they and the records department sit me in.

As well as asking for clarity on the response from the dashcam unit. Was everything deleted? Eventually they do get back to me, but only on the initial records request. And even there, they've changed their position. Face cases still active.

They won't be releasing anything. I ask for an interview. They won't do one. They won't do one. But I ask if they'd be willing to provide a written comment on the record.

They won't.

“So I ask can they at least provide me with a case number and the best phone number for tips?”

They take a whole week to get back to me. And when they do, the response is, well, let me just read it out. They say, instead of a case number, let's just refer to this as the faith-ealy case or investigation. No case number, just call it faith's case. I haven't been doing this all that long, but in that short time I've submitted a lot of open records requests.

I've looked at a whole lot of cases, broken down a whole lot of information and data, records reports, audio files, and all of them have one thing in common. They all have some kind of reference number. A filing number, a report number, a case number. Not one of them has ever been referred to as the case.

Well, not until now, anyway. Once I regain my composure, a window HP's PIO and other email, consolidate my questions into a single chain, and I try to make them as clear and concise as possible. Can they confirm the dash cam footage has actually been purged? Can they confirm a HP is currently the lead on this case?

Can they confirm whether the case is being investigated as a homicide?

“Would they provide a written comment on the status of the case?”

And most importantly, does OHP have a case number allocated to faith's case? And if not, is there a reason why? I click send again, and then I wait. And wait. And wait.

And wait.

But I never get a response again.

Not to that email, not to the follow-up I send a month later, or the one I send after that. They just stop replying entirely. I leave it all for a couple of months. But then something comes across my disk that leaves me well and truly perplexed. It's an article shared with me by Amanda, published by NBC Dateline, about faith's case and the fact that five years had passed without any closure.

Seems that dateline went down the same path I did, ran a figure out whose case it was. They reached out to the same people I did to ask the question. Only they got a completely different response. The same person at OSBI who told me the case was with OHP, and then I should contact them with questions for this information. Told Dateline, this is an ongoing investigation for the OSBI.

Which is the exact opposite of what they told me six months earlier. So, I write to the OSBI again and ask for clarification.

“As the lead on the case changed, should tips be going to OSBI or should they be going to OHP?”

In their response, tips can be sent to the OSBI contact we provided you.

Which is curious because they'd never actually provided me any OSBI contact.

I follow up and they go on to send me the OSBI tip line. And I take the opportunity to ask one last time, and they also provide me a case number. I don't know why I'm surprised, but I am when the reply comes back. I apologize, OHP is a leading investigator on this case. So, to clarify one last time, I write, so tips should not be sent to OSBI.

They should go directly to OHP, is that right? And I get a single word back. Correct. 5 years after face death, I can't get two state agencies to agree on who owns a case. And when they lean in a certain direction, the words case number seem to send them running and screaming.

OSBI tells me it's OHP's. The OHP PIO tells me to send a request to the records department. The records department tells me to send a request to the OHP PIO. The dash cam unit tells me they deleted everything. The OHP PIO tells me, just call it faith case.

OSBI tells NBC it's their case, and then they tell me it's their case. And then, in the very same email, they change their mind, it is OHP's case. And in the meantime, in the middle of all of this, the OHP PIO decides the best course of action is to just disappear. And none of them, not once, not in any exchange across six months of correspondence, and give me a case number, you couldn't make it up.

And I can't help but wonder, why? Is it because there is no formal open case?

“Not because it's been resolved, but because it fell through some kind of juristictional gap?”

Or is it because nobody wants to give this case a number? Because the moment it has a case number, somebody has to own it. And the moment somebody takes ownership, they own every mistake they got made that first night.

And the day's sense, every interview done on the same vehicle, every house that never got investigated,

every leave that didn't get actively pursued. Say, for I guess, the simply refer to it as, the faithfully case. 28 days, this is the gap between Agent Kean telling Amanda he's made the determination that it's a hidden run. And the medical examiner releasing their report on faiths death on April 29. I call Amanda and I ask her the question I keep asking without being able to find an answer.

In the absence of the medical examiner's conclusion, how did they firmly conclude that everyone in the house could be ruled out? And then it was just a hidden run. And how did they get a green light on the whole hidden run thing? And it turns out they had some help getting there. They were not giving, given her name.

They were not giving the location. They were not even time of day. They were shown the priming photos. And a few of the, the autopsy photos of her injuries. They were informed of the physical altercation that occurred within a certain amount of time friend before her body was so cold found.

Yeah. And they simply asked, oh, Casey, signal 30 unit. Do you think this is a hidden run? And he's flat out said, he told him, it's possible.

“They, he said, OSBI asked them, does this look like it's a domestic violence?”

And he said, I told them that that too is possible. He said, why they went with hidden run, I don't know. But it was not our office that told him it was. It was not up, why didn't you ask OHP? They are the traffickers inside people.

Hello. Hi, Brad. It's Amanda. Face it. It's mom.

You doing all right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm, uh, charging the battery. It's flying a scene that got to go to the ranch.

So I was full of attention. It's a cold air in the transit between the curtain counting and the ramps. Go ahead. Oh, okay. Do you want to call battery?

Eat in the strip. A couple of chicken strips while I'm charging a little battery. It's all on the road, right? A lot to hear. In Sir Lieutenant Danesby, remote Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

He was one of the parties who responded to the call out on the night of Faith's death.

But the case was never officially theirs.

Anyway. See, though, it's me I can't say.

“And we're going to give it back to the highway patrol.”

The highway patrol never has the case.

We showed up at the scene and said, "Hey, I want to call that was the outshare." And the sheriff requests the OSBI. So, that no time does the highway patrol say, "Hey, OSBI, we're going to press these egg biscuits." And there's zero written communication to document that we requested that the sheriff is the one to call the OSBI on how to us.

After OSBI concluded their investigation and made the determination that Faith's death was traffic-related, they pushed the case over to OHP. The only problem was, OHP didn't want it, because they didn't believe it was traffic-related. When it was given to us, we didn't have any, we didn't have any, we didn't have any, we didn't have any, we didn't have any, we didn't have any. They gave it to us because they didn't have any, they exhausted all they were going to do.

So, it pretty much was given as the cold case, even though it was at the same here. I don't want the OSBI to have this case back.

They've already screwed it up the first time.

You know, I still don't understand what possible, what's the reason for them to have refused that night to investigate collect evidence from the second crime scene. I still don't understand that. Yeah, definitely, there are differences of the video there, because that would seem like something to do.

“And then, when I'm probably not supposed to sound loud that that guy, that Oklahoma City, the Signal 30 team, which that's what we used for the fatality.”

Gradient of 10 codes. The Signal 30 team didn't look at that. Yeah, it was like one guy, she consulted one guy, let's name up lead to sex, and we specialize in crashes that were open to them for the highway patrol. When we were already consulting on the crash, and then they went and consulted somebody else and said, "Oh no, y'all are wrong, y'all should take it." They say, "They even agree." The medical examiner agrees. "No, when you talk to me, he kind of based his opinion strongly upon what the investigators were saying," the witnesses were saying.

So, it was all kind of skewed in my opinion. So, let me know with you guys experts in traffic homicide. This is what you do. They met with you and argued with you about how this could have happened, and then turned right around and shoved it back on you guys. Still climbing your the experts even though they didn't take your word for it. They didn't use your expertise as part of the investigation. I don't understand that.

Now, but that's what happened. The Oklahoma City Police Department's Signal 30 unit is a specialized team of 11 investigators dedicated to investigating fatal traffic collisions. There are highly experienced team of officers who work exclusively on cases where it's suspected that a traffic related fatality has occurred. There's no question that faith's death is not within their jurisdiction, even if it was a hidden run. Traffic homicides and we woke up, they'd be under OHP's jurisdiction.

But it seems when OSPI consulted the experts under whose jurisdiction a hidden run with certain faith's case, that's OHP.

And they didn't like the answer. They turned to Signal 30 to get a second opinion.

The feeling that Hinky feeling again, Amanda calls a lieutenant at Oklahoma City Police Department to try to understand how all this went down and how Signal 30 even got involved in the first place. Today's date is March 21, 2023. This is a Tuesday. I have an appointment with Lieutenant Steiner. Let me kind of tell you first how it works and then I'll tell you what I found out. We are actually contacted by agencies all over the state to look at stuff and give our opinion. We have zero influence in what they decided to do.

We have zero influence and then decide it's homicide or then decide to hit run. All we can do is give our opinion. There are a thing in the wrong, forced to be wrong. But it's based on our knowledge and our training. And it won't be the first time that we've disagreed with OHP. But, started in sex and wasn't the officer that went to OSPI. The two officers that actually went down there were me and sex was part of it. The only time that we had anything to do with this case is we drove out there to OSPI and he showed us a bunch of pictures of our victory.

“They didn't tell us anything. They didn't tell us location. The only thing we looked at was some pictures and gave our opinion on those pictures.”

What they did with that? That's on them. We don't have any control line. It's also could've been hit run. Yes, it's possible. It could've been homicide. But we didn't go in there and say, oh my god, this is 100%. Okay, OSPI, they were informed that night that 15 to 30 minutes before she was found on the side of the road. There was a physical altercation at the house.

Another scene that the physical altercation, what would tell you it's not necessary to go down there.

Look, the other one in the where she came from, we back ours all the way up. I mean, we don't concentrate just to crack scene. I mean, if she walked off from the house, we're going to go to the house and ask the questions, but that's just the way we do think.

“If I contacted similar accounting, ADA again, would she be able to request you guys to look into this case?”

I'll be honest with you with the issues it's already caused, my command is probably in the same hope. I'm not going to lie. I don't want to give you false hopes. Does that make sense? Yes, because now it's caused that one. OK, not necessarily that one, but we also don't want to get involved in something where there's a, my opinion, a spat going on between the drovers, no, it's behind. That's very issue. We don't want to be involved in it. I know always the eye thinks it's a hit run, and I know always he thinks it is a homicide, so you got two state agencies that are for better use, not working together.

I'm March 8th, 2023. Amanda gets a callback from a guy called Gerald Davidson. Davidson works from the OSBI, and the Office of Professional Standards and Training, internal affairs essentially. He's the guy Amanda left a voicemail for the one you heard at the beginning of this episode.

She takes him through everything, the altercation at the house, the back-to-back interviews, the second scene that was never investigated.

The signal-ferty consultation that didn't appear to be what the OSBI had represented it to be. The ruling out of Ryan before the medical examiner had even delivered their report. All right. Now Ms. Langston, let me tell you what you're talking with. I'll work in what's called the Office of Professional Standards. We deal with internal investigations basically, and from everything he told me, I think we're going to send all this information, is to our investigative services division director. Would you be willing to fill out what we call a complaint form?

I've known of cases where they've been asked to review things again, where they could plan about the investigation. That's how it normally occurs here, is that the director gets involved, and then they resurrect the case, so to speak.

“So that's what the process is. Do you have any questions about that?”

No, sir. Not at this time. Okay, all right. Amanda filled out the form. She submits it and writing, exactly as requested, and then she waits.

And she never hears back from Gerald Davidson. In fact, she never hears back from OSBI at all. Something does happen, though. It's just not what she expected.

I filed a formal grievance in writing to the OSBI, and I talked to their internal affairs, if you will, and then Lieutenant Dan Smith told me that he and the OHP legal department had a set down with the internal affairs for OSBI. And he told me the whole general gist of that was they wanted to know who's been talking about about him, and then he was transferred to turnpike authority. He told me he was being transferred. This was the first part of July, and he was being transferred effective July the 14th.

That's all that comes from Amanda's formal complaint. Lieutenant Dan Smith from OHP gets transferred to another area. And the only other person from OHP who was on the same night, Trooper Baker, gets himself a new supervisor. Hello. Hi. This is Amanda Langston. I missed a call from you. Yes, ma'am. This looks it important. My name's Dustin Thornton. I'm a legend over our driver called the side unit now.

“Awesome. I'm so glad to meet you, Miss Lieutenant. How are you?”

I'm calling Dustin. I know. I'm pretty humble, so you just call me Dustin. Well, thank you, Dustin. You just call me Amanda. By all reports, Lieutenant Thornton's one of the good guys. He's doing what he can, but he wasn't there for any of the decisions that matter. And the decisions that matter, well, they got made and unmade and remade by people who were long gone by the time he took the job. Which brings us back to exactly where we started.

Hello. Hi, Lieutenant. Yes, ma'am. This is Amanda Langston, baby Lee's mom. I was just wanting to reach back out to you and see if there's any kind of an update over the Emmy letter or anything else on the case.

They haven't even said it. They received it.

Oh, so. Oh.

“And that's where things sit today. Amanda asks the same people the same questions every few months.”

The answer every time is some version of the same thing. They reaching out and they're following up. They're waiting on the medical examiner's office or they're waiting on a completely different agency. And in between all of that waiting, the only answer Amanda gets. The only answer anyone's got to give is just four words long. Not at this time. A couple of weeks back, I've put in an open records request to Grady County for anything and everything they had on the 911 call.

The came in at 829 p.m. The night faith died. The Bobby call. Hey, let's put a hand up to collect the records. We ended up going down there on a Monday, open up the envelope. And there are a couple of radio logs in there as well as a USB and all of it. And I get home. I listened to this USB, which has two recordings on it. And it looked like they were both from a reports of a fire down there to check the shape.

Right. So not the Bobby call. Right. No Bobby call. So I thought that was very interesting because it came from that number. It would have to have gone through Grady County's dispatch system and less.

Yeah, I don't even know unless it's completely fabricated basically unless all of the information on that record is is wrong.

I also thought well, maybe if if they had given the location, they would have sent it to a similar county. But I did the open record request with some of no county. And I had only gotten the two calls from the neighbor who had covered their body up. So I would have thought it would have been through there. What's the significance behind it?

Right. Right. To be.

“What's the significance behind it? Or is it really there?”

Yeah, I have a friend who is a 911 dispatcher. So I'm going to try and have a chat with her and just so I can understand the way that the

CAD system works and like whether it's possible to make someone fully anonymous by overriding information, or whether it still keeps records or I'm going to do a little digging on that front. Understand the way that, like, transfers from different counties work and that sort of thing. Once I find that out, I'll give you a call back and let you know what I've found out on that front. But that might it might help us understand it all a little better as well.

Hang up from Caitlin and contemplate it all. If there's somebody made that call and gave false details, or somebody wanted people to believe that somebody made that call. And until I can understand exactly how the CAD system works in terms of recording data and transferring calls between counties, I'm not going to know exactly what happened on the highway that night. So I pick up the phone.

I'm going to know I'm on one dispatcher I need to call. But just as I'm about to dial, my screen lights up. It's Rosemary and she's found something else. Turns out she did manage to get something through an open records request. And apparently, it's pretty explosive.

Right after you know our last message, I managed to get a copy of, say, autopsy report. And things aren't really adding up for me. I mean, I have a lot of questions and I am known medical professionals, but it just screams that something isn't right. I was wondering if you knew if the family or anybody have gotten an independent review of this.

“And I mean, I think, when you sit down and you look at that, you'll see yourself.”

I don't think this is an accident. I just don't think it's an accident. [Music] Faith's case is still open and her killer or killers have not yet been brought to justice. If you know anything about faith, her death or those who may be responsible, we'd like to hear from you.

Please visit EchoSpace.media/tips and either leave a voice mail or send us a message. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at Bluntforce Drama podcast.

where you can access to early episode drops and free episodes and bonus content across all of the echo space shows.

“If you'd like to keep up to date with progress on faith's case, please visit and follow the justice for faith-ealy Facebook page.”

You'll find a link to it in the episode notes.

Bluntforce Drama is a production of EchoSpace written in hosted by Troy Taylor.

“Executive producers of Troy Taylor, Mark Terruly and Fred Scherzer.”

Our main theme song is "Lose My Mind" by Mayor David Off.

And the show also contains audio content from movie gratis.