Fan Favorite - "Murder and Meditation"

Once of September afternoon in 2003, a woman in Tucson, Arizona, heard a knock on her front door,

“and she answered it. And she was surprised to see a Tucson police detective standing on her front steps.”

And even more surprised, when he started asking her a bunch of questions about her next door neighbor. Now the woman tried to be as helpful as she could, but you know, she just didn't have very good answers to this detective's questions. She really didn't know much about her neighbor.

And so ultimately, the detective gave her his business card and told her to call back if she

ever heard anything or saw anything or remembered anything unusual about her neighbor. Now this woman didn't expect to ever call this detective back. That was until a few days later, when she looked out her window and saw two sweaty men jump out of a van and walk up the steps into her neighbor's house. And the woman just stood there for several minutes absolutely shocked, her heart racing, realizing what she was watching.

Moments later, the woman picked up that business card and called the detective.

“But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious”

delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast because that's all we do

and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

So if that's of interest to you, please secretly attach a harmonica to the front of the follow button's car so that everywhere they go, their car whistles. Okay, let's get into today's story. [Music] On the evening of Wednesday, September 24th, 2003, 45-year-old Michael Albert de Hacqua's

laid down flat on his back on his yoga mat in front of a room full of a students at a yoga studio and downtown Tucson, Arizona. The students all followed Michael's lead, laying down for a pose called Chavasana, which signaled the end of a long workout. Michael loved this final pose,

“because it was all about meditation and it really helped him get centered for his day.”

And after a few minutes in this pose, when he sat up and told a students to rise as well, he felt both exhausted and recharged. He got to his feet and smiled at his class as everyone else rolled up three yoga mats and got ready to leave. Although Michael was a machinist by trade, and spent his work days in his shop, tinkering with tools and small engines, he was actually a very artistic and kind of zen person. He spent his free time

giving music lessons on his guitar, and he also taught 15 different yoga classes every week in various gyms and studios all across Tucson. His genuine enthusiasm about the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of yoga were very infectious and it put many of his students at ease around him. In fact, they were so comfortable with him that they called him MAD, which was short for his three initials, Michael Albert de Hacqua's.

Michael told the sweat office face and looked up at the clock on the wall, it was almost 7pm, and his stomach was beginning to rumble. So he asked the class as they were getting ready to go, if anybody was feeling up to grabbing some food and a few drinks, which was actually a question they were all expecting, because hanging out socially was something that this Wednesday group typically did each week after their workout.

One student immediately shouted out that they would, and a few others raised their hands as well. So Michael suggested they all needed a bar on 4th Avenue, not far from where the yoga studio was located. The students that were going hauled not at their heads in agreement, and then all of them, the ones who were going, and the ones who were not, all shuffled through the studio store, and outside to the parking lot. But before Michael shut off the studio lights and followed the group

outside, he picked up a cell phone and called his girlfriend, Amber Trudelle. He'd been seeing

her off and on for about a year after first meeting her through his yoga lessons. Recently,

things have been a bit rocky between Amber and Michael, but Michael still wanted to invite her out for dinner and drinks. He figured that by having her be a part of a big group setting out at a public place, that would sort of give them a chance to have fun without the opportunity to argue. Since if they argued, it would be in front of everyone, so that was a natural deterrent. After a few rings, Amber answered her phone, and Michael told her very enthusiastically about his

plans and said that he would love it if she came out with them. But Amber hesitated, and Michael frankly knew why. In addition to the problems they were having in their relationship, Amber was just a very shy person. She preferred private lessons with Michael, rather than being a part of a big group, where you had all these other people sort of watching you stretch for an hour. But after a few seconds of awkward silence on the line, Amber said that she actually would meet up with Michael

and his students at the bar. Michael was thrilled, and told Amber he would see her there. Then he ended the call, shut off the lights in the studio, and walked out the door into the

bother Michael. It also didn't bother him when Amber teased him, about how he dressed like a hippie

“with his long hair and beaded necklace and sandals. Michael could take a joke, and above all,”

he liked to have fun. Which in his mind was what he was doing with an attractive woman like Amber, who was actually 17 years younger than he was. Their relationship really was pretty casual, and Michael intended to keep it that way. He'd been married twice already, and was a father to three kids, as well as a grandfather. At this point in his life, he did not want to be tied down anymore. Amber, on the other hand, she did want to get serious. She kept asking Michael to marry her,

and every few weeks, she'd break up with him for saying no. And so Michael knew that their relationship status would likely come up tonight in conversation. But since there were other people going out with them, he figured maybe he could dodge an argument about it. A few minutes later, Michael walked into the bar on fourth street and found five of the students already sitting at a table. He sat down, in order to drink, and shortly after that, Michael looked up to see Amber walk

“in through the front door of the bar. He stood up from the table, gave her a big hug,”

and then invited her to take a spot right next to him. From that point on, the group ordered some food, and they drank, and talked, and goofed around, until around 830 at night when folks started getting tired. At that point, they all paid their checks, and then they left. Now, most of the students were heading home at this point, but Michael, Amber, and one of the students, Michael's friend Eli, decided to continue their night, and go have a few more drinks at another bar.

So, the three of them went to another establishment, until around 10pm, and at that point, Eli decided it was time for him to call it a night. He took some cash from his wallet, put it down on the table, and then he headed home, leaving just Michael and Amber at the bar. And now that the couple was all alone, just as Michael expected, they began to fight. And so, Michael began drinking faster, and ordering more drinks for Amber, hoping that maybe

“more alcohol for both of them would mellow them out.”

Two hours later, at midnight, when the bartender turned the lights off, and then back on again, and then announced out loud, it was last call, both Michael and Amber were pretty drunk. Michael yonned, finished the rest of the drink in his glass, and asked Amber to come back to his house with him. She said she would, and so, Michael and Amber paid their tab, and then walked out the front door into the night. Shortly afterwards, the two of them stumbled

up the walkway and onto the front porch of Michael's house, at 2602 North Sparkman Boulevard. Michael unlocked the door, and then he and Amber stepped into the kitchen. A day and a half later, on Friday, September 26th, at around 630 in the morning, a woman was walking her dog along North Sparkman Boulevard in Tucson. The street was in a pretty rough neighborhood, where there were lots of burglaries and muggings,

and so most people kind of kept to themselves when they were passing through. Usually, the woman walked her dog at a fast pace, with her head down, avoiding eye contact with other pedestrians, and avoiding looking into other people's properties. However, when the woman passed in front of number 2602, something caught her attention. Just beyond some brush, obscuring the front patio, she saw a flash of something light-colored,

that was obviously not vegetation. She turned her head to look and blinked for a second in confusion,

because what she was looking at didn't make sense. It was a person's bare legs in shorts split out on the patio. Now, the weather had been excruciatingly hot and muggy and stifling for the last few days, including today, so the woman at first thought that maybe this person up on the porch had passed out from the heat. Now as soon as she thought that, her first instinct was to walk up and investigate and make sure this person was okay. But since this was not really

a safe neighborhood, the idea of just strolling up to some stranger's property seemed kind of risky. But just then, she saw another man walking on the street towards his car, and she called out to him and pointed over at the legs on the patio, and asked if he would go see what was the matter. The man looked over at the house and saw what

the woman was pointing at, sort of looked puzzled for a second, then he turned back to the woman

and gave a thumbs up, like, yeah, I'll go check it out. Then the man walked over to the porch. The woman watched, as the man walked up to the porch, and right as he got close to the legs, he called out the name Michael, and then the man who was doing this check-up, he began backing up, and then he turned and actually started running back towards the woman, and as he passed her, he just said, "I'm calling 911."

Not long after that man called 911, Detective Benjamin is of the two-song police department,

2602, but his cruiser and park and cut the engine. Around him, he saw other squad cars and ambulances doing the same thing.

“Himena stepped out of his air-conditioned cruiser into the hot muggy morning air. He took off his suit jacket”

and tossed it onto the driver's seat, and then shut the door. He rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt, who was in his tie, and then walked from the curb up to the porch of the house. Until he was standing next to the dead body of a man who was lying face up and wearing yoga pants

and a tank top. Himena's was not the first member of the Tucson PD on the scene,

and one of the other officers was already there, told him that the body he was looking at belonged to the home's resident, who was named Michael Dohaquez. The officer told himena is that the rest of the property was empty. Michael was their only victim. Himena's put on a pair of disposable gloves and squatted down next to the body. He could see there was a single bullet wound in the center of Michael's

forehead. Around the bullet wound, Himena's could see a black star-shaped gunpowder burn. There was lots of dried blood on the porch floor around the head, and more blood on Michael's

“clothes and legs. Himena's mentioned to the officer to be on the lookout for any shell casings.”

Then himena's put his hand up to Michael's exposed skin and found that it was actually still warm. The fact the body had not concold yet, suggested that Michael may have been killed only a few hours earlier, probably in the early hours of Friday morning. Himena's looked at Michael's hands and saw that they were covered in scratches, which told him that Michael very likely must have fought with his attacker.

Himena stood back up, but just as he was about to walk inside the house, he stopped. Because he noticed that some guitar and violin cases were haphazardly stacked up outside on the porch. In the struck him as odd, because nobody in this neighborhood would ever store expensive musical equipment outside, or really anything, sort of like obviously expensive outside, because it could get stolen. But regardless, Himena's stepped

through the front door and into the kitchen, and as he did, he saw more music gear.

“This time it was an amplifier and a guitar stand that had been left to the side of the door”

just inside the house. On the floor near the gear, Himena's saw broken glass from a shattered window pane. And so already, Himena's was beginning to develop a theory. He wondered if maybe Michael had interrupted a robbery. Maybe the three-four thieves had been in the process of shuffling the musical equipment out of the house onto the porch, kind of stacking it up near the door as they were doing it, when Michael came out and confronted them. The broken glass

in the kitchen suggested that the fight maybe started there, or at least in part, happened right

there, and then from there, they moved through the door onto the porch where Michael was ultimately

shot. And then when Himena's did a walk through of the rest of the property, he found in Michael's workshop that it was perfectly intact and none of the very obviously expensive tools had been taken or moved. And so to Himena's, this cement that is theory that very likely Michael had interrupted a robbery. And so very likely, at least according to Himena's theory, after the robber shot Michael, he figured that they must have panicked and then

just taken off without finishing the job. By this point, the crime scene was swarming with members of the forensics unit and also uniformed officers. Himena's new, it would take hours to process the scene for blood, fingerprints, and other trace evidence, and also officers were already out knocking on doors in the neighborhood looking for witnesses. So Himena's decided to leave and go talk to detectives in the burglary division to see if they had any similar cases

or usual suspects. Back inside of headquarters, detective Himena's walked quickly to the burglary division. He wrapped on the open door of one of the offices there and caught the attention of a detective at a desk. Himena's explained the case he just caught, laid out his theory about a home robbery gone wrong, and then asked the detective if he had any recent robberies on or around North Sparkman Boulevard.

And the second Himena's mentioned North Sparkman Boulevard, he saw this detective's eyes light up.

He shot straight up in his chair and very excitedly said that yes, he did in fact have something. Just five days earlier on Sunday, he had arrested two men, Joseph Keys, and David Wynn, for robbing a home in that exact same neighborhood. But that wasn't all. First of all, Keys and Wynn lived in a house that was just a mile away from Michael's place, and, most importantly, one of the items these two men had stolen was a guitar.

Himena's new, this was a great starting point. So he got Keys and Wynn's home address from the detective, then himena's returned to his own desk and began filling out an application for a search warrant. While he waited for a judge to approve his request, himena's his phone rang. It was one of the officers who had been knocking on doors over on North Sparkman Boulevard. The officer told himena's that nobody in the area

heard any gunshots or any unusual noises coming from Michael's house early on Friday morning.

police that on Thursday afternoon, Michael must have been working in his workshop,

“because they had heard his compressor going. So, the neighborhood canvas had not”

produced a witness to the killing, but they were starting to build a picture of Michael's final hours. Himena's thank the officer for the good work and hung up the phone, feeling satisfied. Less than one full day into his investigation, and he already had a very promising working theory, he had a search warrant application out to a judge, and he was refining, you know, his victim's final moments to really get a sense of what actually happened here. But for now,

it was late in the evening, and he knew he had a long day ahead of him tomorrow. So, he shut that his computer and left his office. The next morning was Saturday, and detective himena has arrived at his office to find that his search warrant application for the home of Joseph Keys and David Wynn had been approved. He also found a copy of the autopsy report waiting for him, along with a couple of reports from other detectives who had begun to reach out to

“Michael's friends and family. Now, himena's was very eager to go search when and keys his house,”

but first he picked up the autopsy report, slipped it open, and gave it a quick read.

The corner had found a 38 caliber bullet lodged in Michael's brain. The starship gunpowder burn around the entry wound meant it had been fired at close range, which himena has had already guessed. And also the corner noted that the wounds on Michael's hands were indeed very likely defensive wounds. The most useful part of the report focused on Michael's time of death. When himena's got to the scene and he touched Michael's body, it was warm to the touch,

and so he had assumed that very likely Michael had died recently. Himena's just didn't know exactly when. And the corner was able to confirm that suspicion. Because Michael had not yet gone through rigor mortis, the corner was able to establish an actual time of death. Michael had been shot somewhere between two and three a.m. on Friday morning.

“And so this information meant that himena's could be very specific when he was investigating”

suspect alibis. This was great news. Himena's rifle threw the other reports, which laid out a rough timeline of Michael's activities before his death. He had taught a yoga class on Wednesday night and gone out for drinks afterwards with some students and a girlfriend who Michael's friends knew only as Amber. Then on Thursday, he'd apparently spent the entire day hold up inside of a studio working. Himena's put the reports down. He'd have to work on tracking down Amber later,

but for now, that was not his priority. Instead, he gathered up a team of officers and drove over to the home of Joseph Keys and David Win. When they got there, they knocked on the door, they didn't get an answer, and so eventually they forced their way inside, and immediately they discovered that there was nobody home. However, pretty quickly, once himena's walked into the kitchen, he knew coming to this house had put him on the right track. Because in the kitchen,

there was this very random looking pile of clothes. Himena's put on his gloves, squatted down, and one by one, he picked up a bandana, a pair of pants, and some shoes. And he saw that every item in this pile was splattered with blood. Himena's was thinking that at this point, all he would need to do to close his case was get these items over to forensics and match the blood on these to the blood of his victim. But the next morning, when himena's walks into his office,

he got two pieces of bad news, one right after the next. The first piece of bad news was that

the forensics did not match. The blood found on the bandana, the pants and the shoes, was the wrong type. It didn't belong to Michael. And the second piece of bad news was that even though Joseph Keys and David Wynn appeared to be the perfect suspects on paper for this murder, robbery detectives had found one big problem. When Michael was shot early on Friday morning, keys in win were both already sitting inside of a jail cell. And so, just two days after Michael's body was found,

detective himena's found himself back at square one. Himena's sat at his desk, flipping through reports from the crime scene, and hoping he'd stumble upon a detail that maybe he missed. And after about an hour of doing that, he did find something. On a list of items found inside of Michael's house, himena saw a cell phone. At this time in 2003, not everybody had a cell phone yet. So it wasn't something police immediately

looked for when they arrived on a crime scene. Also, cell phones at this time did not contain the kind of evidence that they would today. There was no internet access on any of them, and people didn't send a whole bunch of text messages or really use them nearly as much as we do now. So, himena's got up from his desk, and walked to the evidence room to get the cell phone. And once he had it, he went straight to the single most useful piece of information the phone

contained. And that was the call log. The detective began scrolling through the list of people Michael had spoken to before he died. And at the top of that list was the phone number for a contact listed as Amber Trudell. Himena's read the name and immediately felt a jolt of excitement.

and now he was staring down at very likely her phone number. Himena's took the cell phone and went

“back to his desk. There, he used his own phone to dial Amber's phone number, but there was no answer.”

And just rang and rang and finally went to Boyce Mail, which was very disappointing.

So, himena's left a voicemail and asked Amber to please call him back at her earliest convenience. After he hung up, himena's just stared at the call history list again. And as he did, he noticed something curious. Michael had been killed on Friday morning, but his last call, which was to Amber, was made on Wednesday night. It seemed bizarre to himena's that there was this weird gap in time leading up to Michael's death. It was hard to imagine that all day Thursday,

Michael hadn't spoken to anyone. And as he thought about this, he also found it to be kind of suspicious that Amber had not already come forward to talk to the police, considering that her boyfriend had been murdered. And so, himena has began dialing numbers from Michael's contact list in his

phone, including Michael's ex-wives and his adult kids, asking about Amber, looking for any

“information he could. But it seemed like no one really had any information about who this person was,”

and what her role was in Michael's life. So, by the time Sunday came to a close, himena's had a new hunch about where he should focus his investigation on his victims girlfriend, Amber. The next morning, on Monday, when Amber still had not returned himena's phone calls, he tried her again. And this time, his call went straight to voicemail instead of bringing like it had the day before. This meant her phone had shut off.

Himena's wasn't sure what to make of this. It was possible that Amber cell phone had simply run out of batteries. In 2003, that wasn't that unusual to have your phone die and just sort of

go without your phone for a while. Also, people did periodically just turn their phone off and

not return calls. It was just a different time. But, with every hour that went by that day, without getting a call back from Amber, himena's couldn't help but get more suspicious.

“Finally, the next day on Tuesday, himena's got a phone call. When he picked it up,”

he hoped it was going to be Amber. But it wasn't Amber. It was Amber's boss, who himena didn't know and had not called. And Amber's boss, who said she had heard about the murder on TV, had a story that changed everything himena's thought he knew about this case. The boss said that Amber worked for her as a bookkeeper at a charity called Child and Family Resources. And Amber was usually very reliable. But on Thursday, so it day before the murder,

Amber had called out a work for what she said was a family emergency. She had been supposed to return a day ago one Monday, but she hadn't shown up. And so himena has scribbled all this down thinking that Amber did seem to make a pretty good suspect after all. But then, Amber's boss said there was one more thing. Amber's relationship with Michael was not a typical boyfriend girlfriend relationship. It was in a fair. Amber was married.

Less than an hour later, detective himena's walked into the air-conditioned bagel shop where Amber's boss had said that Amber's husband worked. After he had wrapped up the call with Amber's boss, himena's was left with a feeling of whiplash. Until her boss had told him about the husband, he had been viewing Amber as a possible suspect and a good one. But now he was starting to wonder if maybe she was some kind of a victim. After all, right now, she was still unaccounted for,

nobody had heard from her, and this affair certainly gave her husband a very solid motive to potentially harm her, or harm Michael, or both. All Amber's boss had known about Amber's husband, was his name, Justin Goodwin, and his place of employment, the Spagelshop. However, when himena's asked the employee at the counter if Justin Goodwin was working, the employee looked surprised and kind of nervous, and just shook his head and said no.

Then he told himena's to wait and left the counter to go into an office in the back. And then after a minute, another man walked out to the counter and introduced himself as the manager. Then he told himena's that he was sorry, but Justin had worked here, but he quit his job very suddenly just the day before. To himena's, it was sort of headspending how quickly this new theory that Justin could be involved here was picking up steam. So he asked the manager if he knew

anything about Justin's wife, Amber, and the manager made a sort of pained expression. He told himena's that all he knew was that their relationship seemed very tumultuous. In fact, Justin had once missed work because he'd been arrested for domestic violence. Himena's could barely contain his eagerness, as he asked the manager for Justin's address. Then after he got it, he left the bagel shop and sped to the home of his new prime suspect.

and nobody answered the door. And so himena's walked around to a few of the nearby houses and

“spoke to the neighbors, sweating in the heat the whole time, but they all said that they hadn't seen”

Amber or Justin for at least a few days. Disappointed himena's gave them all his card and asked them to call him if they remembered anything, or if they saw or heard anything out of the ordinary. For the next three days, himena's and his team searched for Amber in Justin and put out notifications to neighboring police departments to be on the lookout for them. But he didn't make any progress until Friday, October 3rd, exactly one week after the murder. When one of the neighbors whose

doors he had knocked on, called him back. It was a woman, and she sounded breathless and excited. She told himena's that he had to come back to Justin's house right now, because at this very moment, she was standing at her window and watching, as Justin and another man were taking all the furniture out of Justin's home and loading it into a rental van. Himena's immediately ran out of his office, hopped in his cruiser and he sped over to Justin's house. And when he got there, he saw a man

“who he instantly recognized from the mug shots as Justin himself, and just like the neighbor had said,”

Justin clearly was taking furniture from his house and putting it into this van. Himena's hopped out of his cruiser quickly identified himself as a detective and asked Justin what he was doing and where his wife was. Immediately Justin looked nervous. He told himena as he was moving, which certainly wasn't illegal, and as for his wife, he said he had no idea. He said they were getting into force when she was on her own. Then Justin did something that caught himena's totally

by surprise. It was swelteringly hot outside, and at some point Justin lifted up his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face. And when he did, himena's saw tucked in Justin's waistband was a gun. Now, himena's had no idea if Justin had a license to carry this gun, but considering the entire circumstances, it was too much to overlook. And he told Justin, he had to come down to the station and answer some questions. Once they were at the station, himena's led Justin into an interview room.

“At this point, the red flags around Justin were almost comically conspicuous. He had been arrested”

for domestic violence in the past. His wife was having an affair, and now she was missing, and her affair partner had been shot to death. Justin had quit his job and cleaned out the house where he and Amber lived, all well armed with a gun. So when himena sat down at the table inside of this interview room, he felt pretty confident that he had his killer right in front of him. Himena's handed Justin a bottle of water, and then began asking questions. Starting with,

did he know a man named Michael Dohaquess? Himena's watch does Justin took the cap off his water and raised it to his mouth before answering. And he saw that Justin's hand was visibly shaking.

After a second, Justin just said no, he didn't know anybody by that name.

When himena's followed up and said that Michael and Amber were having an affair, Justin denied knowing that too. He said that he and Amber clearly were having problems. I mean, they were getting at the vores, but those problems had nothing to do with anybody named Michael. He swore again that he really had no idea where Amber was, and insisted that all of the incriminating facts that seemed to surround him were just a coincidence.

Right as Himena's was starting to get frustrated with Justin, feeling like he was blatantly lying to him, there was a knock on the interview room door. Himena has turned around to see another officer step inside, holding up Justin's cell phone, which they had confiscated along with Justin's gun when they questioned them. The officer apologized for interrupting, but asked himena as if he could police step out of the room and speak to him for a moment. Himena's got up

and left the interview room, and the officer handed him Justin's cell phone. He explained that the

whole time Himena's had been questioning Justin, it had been ringing incessantly, and finally he

had just picked it up. The voice on the other end belonged to a woman, and she had hung up as soon as he, the officer, had identified himself as police. However, the officer had traced the phone number and found that it belonged to the extended stay America hotel right there in Tucson. Himena's could not believe his luck. Whoever that was that was calling Justin, if he could just catch them before they left that hotel, they might be able to give him some real answers

about what Justin had been up to for the past few days. So, Himena's asked the officer to keep an eye on Justin, because he was going to go track down this mystery collar. A half an hour later, Himena's was offering a pleasant but very impatient smile to the employee behind the front desk at the extended stay America hotel. The detective had no way of knowing what room the mystery calls had come from, so the employee was looking it up for him,

but it was taking forever. Finally, though, the employee looked up and said he did have a woman

Detective Himena's would take Amber back to the police station and would spend the next several

“hours untangling her story and justons. The detective's murder case was changing faster than he could”

even keep up with. First, it had looked like a robbery, and he'd had two slam dunk suspects,

but that had fallen apart in days. Then, he had Amber Trudell, the suspicious girlfriend, who he thought maybe was dodging his calls because she was guilty, but Amber had turned out to be missing, and a possible victim. That revelation had given him Justin Goodwin, the jealous husband, but just as himena's thought he was closing in on Justin for killing Michael and maybe even Amber too, Amber herself had reappeared, hold up in a hotel, and calling Justin over and over again.

Whatever Justin and Amber were a relationship wise, they apparently were not totally broken up yet. And so now, Hemena's was considering yet another theory that maybe Justin and Amber had killed Michael together. He figured he could put them both in separate interview rooms,

take each of their statements, and then grill them on the inconsistencies that he was absolutely

“certain he was going to find. But that didn't happen. To Hemena's a shock, Justin and Amber”

stories matched each other perfectly. Yes, they said they were having marital problems, and yes, they saw how suspicious all their behavior looked. Between Justin quitting his job and lying to police about where Amber was, and Amber abandoning her job and ignoring all of Hemena's calls while hiding in a hotel, but they swore they didn't kill Michael, and they had allies to prove it. Because on Thursday morning, so almost a full 24 hours before the murder,

they had left Tucson, headed three and a half hours north to a mountain town called Sholo Arizona, or Justin's mother and stepfather lived. They told Hemena's to call Justin's parents and check for himself. And so Hemena's did just that, not really sure what to expect, you know, he didn't really have high hopes here that they were going to actually be able to confirm their alibi. But it would turn out that Justin's stepfather, he was a retired police detective,

and he was very straightforward and specific about the timeline. And even though this kind of poke to hole in his whole case, Hemena has believed him. And so this meant that between the hours of two and three AM on Friday, when Michael was shot to death, Amber and Justin were almost 200 miles away. And not only that, but Justin's gun that had been such a red flag was not the same caliber as the murder weapon. And so, Hemena's best suspects were just more dead ends.

Hemena's let Amber and Justin leave the police station, and he went back to his desk, where he slumped in his chair and stared miserably at nothing. By now, he was late in the day, and Hemena's had no new ideas. This case was turning out to be much more complicated than he had initially thought, and now nothing was making any sense. And so he figured, you know, what he really needed to do now was just take the weekend, and look at the case with fresh eyes

on Monday. There had to be something he was missing, some piece of evidence that he was either misinterpreting or missing altogether. He decided he would make one more phone call and then head home. He picked up the phone and his desk and dialed the number for the coroner's office. And, like he expected, on a Friday night, nobody picked up. So, he left a voicemail asking the coroner to take one more look at all the Michael Dohaque's evidence. He explained he wasn't

totally sure what he was looking for, but something just didn't feel right. And he wanted the coroner to look really closely one more time so that he had sort of a good starting point on Monday. Then, Hemena's hung up the phone, picked up his jacket, and headed home. The tip that would break this case wide open came early the following week, but the tip didn't come from the coroner. It was a phone call from someone detective Hemena as it's spoken to already

in this investigation, and who he never expected to hear from again. This person said that Hemena's

had to come meet with them right now, and Hemena's didn't hesitate. Because with this person had to say, didn't make sense with the rest of the evidence that the detective had. But the detective no longer trusted all of his evidence. He was sure there was something wrong with his facts. He just wasn't sure what it was, and so maybe this was part of it. Hemena's drove out to meet the person who called him, and the person took him for a walk.

They said they wanted to show him a hole that they had found in the dirt. And when Hemena's got to that hole, he stood there panting in the warm air, and he realized that finally, he knew who his murderer was. He just had to figure out how this was possible. And this is where the coroner came in. Because shortly after Hemena's got back to the station, the coroner called to tell Hemena's that he had been right. They had all misinterpreted

“one very important piece of evidence. The truth had been right in front of them all along.”

They just hadn't put it together. Based on evidence collected over the course of a few weeks, and the revised results of the autopsy,

It was 130 in the morning, and Michael had just confronted his killer in the messy kitchen of his home.

“The killer was enraged, and the two of them were standing near the sink, shouting at each other.”

At some point, the killer grabbed a glass and threw it at Michael. But Michael managed to dodge it, and the glass hit a window pane near the front door, shattering glass all over the ground. Michael was about to step towards the killer to stop them from throwing anything else at him, but there was something he didn't realize. The killer was hiding a revolver. And suddenly the killer drew their weapon, and when Michael saw it, he rushed forward to try to

wrench it out of their hands. They struggled, but Michael couldn't get a hold of the gun, and they wrestled together out the front door, and then the killer fired.

Michael fell backwards onto the patio of dead. At this point, the killer looked up and down

north-sparkman Boulevard to make sure nobody was around, and when they were sure they were good,

“they took off running into the warm summer night.”

It would turn out all of him as a suspects, Joseph Keys, David Wynn, Justin Goodwin, and Amber Trudell did have alabies for Friday, September 26, between two and three AM, which was when the police thought Michael had been murdered. But law enforcement was wrong about Michael's time of death. The heat had fooled them. Michael was not shot to death early on Friday morning, September 26. He was shot to death,

early on Thursday morning, September 25. His body was warm when detective men as reached down to touch a skin, because it had been very hot and muggy outside the whole time he was lying there. The coroner thought the body temperature, combined with the flexibility of the body, meant that death had been recent, and that rigor mortists had not begun. But in reality,

“a hot and moist environment can cause rigor mortists to happen more quickly after death,”

and last for a shorter period of time. So in reality, Michael's rigor mortists had already come and gone by the time him and his touch to his body. And so the reason he was sort of flacid feeling is because he no longer was in rigor mortists. And so when the coroner had gone back over the evidence, at detective him and his request, he found something he had missed. Michael's body had larvae in its eyes, which was an indication that he had been dead for a lot

longer than a few hours. And when police went back to the crime scene, they realized that the compressor, the neighborhood heard on Thursday, which caused them to think that Michael was alive and well and working in a shop that day, was actually set to refill automatically. So that noise had not meant anything at all. It did not mean that Michael was in their work. And so the adjustment of the time of death from Friday to Thursday morning allowed him in as to make sense of that final

phone call he got from the person he had already spoken to, who called him asking to meet. That person was just in stepfather, the retired police officer. The stepfather had been telling the truth about the timing of just in an Amber's visit, and that had ruled them out of suspects when the belief was Michael had been killed on Friday. But after he had gotten off the phone with him in as, the stepfather had followed a hunch out to the back of his property where he discovered

a hole in the dirt. And inside that hole was the murder weapon. But the person who hit that gun was not Justin. It was his soon-to-be ex-wife, Amber Trudelle. On Friday, October 10th, an arrest warrant and a nationwide alert was issued for Amber, who had fled Tucson. US Marshals arrested Amber at a grandmother's house in New York. During her trial in March of 2005, Amber claimed that Michael sexually assaulted her on the night he was killed,

and that he himself was actually the one who pulled the trigger during their struggle,

which resulted in him being shot and killed. However, she was still convicted of second-degree

murder and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. On October 19th, 2016, Amber was released from prison having served out her entire sentence. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballem Podcast, strange dark and mysterious stories, is hosted and executive-produced by me, Mr. Ballem. Our head of writing is Evan Allen,

our head of production is Zach Levitt, produced by Jeremy Bohn, research and fact-checking by Shelley Shu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Kallahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephenier, audio editing and post-produced by Whit La Cassio, Jordan Stitham, and Cole La Cassio. Mixed in Mastered by Brendan Kane, production coordination by Samantha Collins,

theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugdon. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballem Podcast.

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Until next time, see ya.