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Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, and welcome to Daily Crime
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and Justice. I'm Garrett Fisher and it's Tuesday, June ninth,
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twenty twenty six. Here's where things stand this morning. In
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Fairfax County, Virginia, Brendan Banfield, the former federal agent convicted
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of murdering his wife Christine, and a man named Joseph Ryan,
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has been sentenced to life in prison with no possibility
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of parole. In Juno, Wisconsin, the trial they're calling the
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Tooth in the Ashes is now in its second week,
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and the forensic evidence against Zachariah Rash is stacking up.
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And just outside Boston, a former police officer accused of
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killing a young woman named Sandra Birchmore has been told
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he will stay behind bars until his trial is fall.
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Three cases, let's get into them. Look, I'm gonna be
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honest with you. There is a threat running through all
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three of today's stories, and once you see it, you
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can't unsee it. In every one of them, a woman
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is dead and the man accused of killing her has
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an explanation ready to go. An intruder did it. The
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gun went off by accident. She did it to herself,
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there's a playbook for this, for taking a death you
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caused and handing the blame to somebody or something else. Today,
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we watch that playbook get tested in three different courtrooms.
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In one, it already failed, and on Friday a judge
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handed down the only sentence Virginia law allows. In another,
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it's being argued in real time this week with the
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evidence piling up. And in the third a judge looked
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the man in the eye and said, you are staying
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locked up until a jury hears all of it. We
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start in Fairfax County, Virginia with a case some of
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you have been following with us since the dead of winter.
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The o pair a fair murder, and on Friday it
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reached the only ending Virginia law allows for what Brendan
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Banfield was convicted of doing. If you were with us
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back in January, you know the shape of this one.
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But let me bring everybody up to speed, because the
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two people at the center of it deserved to be
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more than a lurid headline about a fetish website. Christine
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Banfield was a pediatric intensive care nurse. Think about what
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that job is. She spent her working life keeping the
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most fragile patients in the building, sick children, alive through
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the night. She had a four year old daughter of
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her own, and on the morning of February twenty fourth,
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twenty twenty three, in the family's home in Herndon, she
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was stabbed to death. The other person who died that
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morning was a man named Joseph Ryan. For a long
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stretch of this story, Ryan was treated as a footnote,
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the stranger, the intruder, the body on the floor. He
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was not a footnote. He was a man with a family,
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and his mother said it better than I can, so
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I'll borrow her words. He had a face, he had
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a name, He had alive. Hold on to that because
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the entire scheme depended on the world seeing him as disposable.
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Here's the story Banfield handed police that morning. He said
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he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife with a knife,
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and he shot Ryan to save her. A tragic home
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invasion in an affluent suburb. A husband who tried and
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failed to rescue the woman he loved, tidy, sympathetic, and
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according to a Fairfax County jury, completely false. Because investigators
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kept pulling threads. Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law
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enforcement officer had been having an affair with the family's
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Brazilian aau pair, Juliana Paris Magelaies. Prosecutors say the two
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of them created an account on a fetish website impersonating
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Christine and used it to lure Joseph Ryan to the house,
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telling him he was coming for a consensual encounter. They
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left the door open, and when Ryan walked in, prosecutors
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say he walked into a setup designed from the start
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to make him the fall guy for Christine's murder. And
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the cruelest detail of the staging, the Banfield's four year
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old daughter was in the basement of that house while
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it happened, physically unharmed, but in the building. That's a
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separate conviction all by itself, child endangerment, and we'll come
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back to it now. Magalayes pleaded guilty to manslaughter and
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testified against him, and the defense did what the defense
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always does with a cooperating witness. Attorney John Carroll argued,
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you can't trust her. She's only talking to save herself,
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and look, that's a fair argument to make cooperating witnesses
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cut deals. But prosecutor Jenna Sans told the jury they
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didn't have to take Maggle Heins's word for any of it.
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She called it a plethora of evidence. The most damning piece.
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An expert testified that the blood on Joseph Ryan's hands
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looked like Christine's blood had been dripped onto him from above,
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not the smear of a struggle placed staged to make
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a dead man look guilty. Banfield took the stand in
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his own defense and called the allegations his word, absolutely crazy.
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The jury deliberated for nearly nine hours across two days.
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On February second, they convicted him two counts of aggravated murder,
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using a firearm in the commission of a felony, and
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that child, which brings us to Friday. Here's something worth
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understanding about Virginia. After the death penalty was abolished there
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in twenty twenty one, aggravated murder became the most serious
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offense on the books, and it carries a mandatory life sentence.
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There was no real suspense about the number. The question
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was whether Banfield would show a flicker of anything. He didn't.
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Before the sentence came down, the family spoke. Christine's sister,
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Danielle Hawker, told the court her sister's death changed her
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life in an unimaginable way. Joseph Ryan's mother appeared and
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reminded everyone again that her son was a p and
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not a prop and Banfield to the very end insisted
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he was innocent. Judge Penny Ascarate wasn't moved. She sentenced
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him to life in prison, without the possibility of parole,
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no good conduct credits, no conditional release, and then stacked
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on three more years for the firearm count and five
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more for endangering his own daughter, all to run consecutively.
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Earlier that week, she'd already denied a motion to throw
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out the conviction. The judge's words about the case, it
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reflected a level of cruelty, calculation, and inhumanity that went
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deeper than anger or impulse. And that's the word that
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sticks with me on this one. Calculation, because this wasn't
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a man who snapped. This was a plan. Prosecutors laid
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out the preparation that went into it. An affair, a
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fake online persona built to impersonate his own wife, A
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stranger researched and recruited and lured to a house, a
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scene so the blood would tell the wrong story. That
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is not a mistake. That is a choice made over
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and over on one hundred different days by a man
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who decided his wife was an obstacle and another human
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being was a tool. There was a photo investigators found
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in that house, a frame picture of Banfield and the
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au pair sitting on the night stand in the master bedroom.
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Not Christine, the woman he was planning a future with.
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That's who he wanted, and rather than file for divorce
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like a person, he built a machine to kill the
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mother of his child and frame an innocent man for it.
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He thought he was smarter than everyone in the room.
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He found out on Friday that he wasn't. Now he's indicated,
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he'll appeal and he's entitled to. His trial lawyer won't
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be the one handling it, But an appeal doesn't undo Friday.
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As of this morning, Brendan Banfield will die in prison,
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and the two names that should outlast his Christine Banfield,
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Joe Joseph Ryan. From a case that just ended, we
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moved to one that is happening right now this week
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in a courtroom in Juno, Wisconsin. We brought you day
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one of this trial on last Thursday show, and I'll
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be straight with you. The days since have not been
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kind to the defense. Before I get into what's new,
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a reminder of who we're talking about, because her name
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is the whole point. Crystal Rash, thirty seven years old.
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She was going through a divorce from her husband, Zachariah Rash.
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Her four kids had been removed from the home and
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placed in foster care, and the state was moving to
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terminate parental rights. A hard, painful chapter of anybody's life.
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And here's what the prosecution wants the jury to understand.
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She wasn't giving up. This date's prosecutor, Sean Waller, told
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jurors she was still fighting to stay in her children's lives,
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working to line up her own apartment, optimistic about a
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fresh start. She was, not, in his phrase, a woman
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phasing out of her own life. She was a woman
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trying to hold onto the parts that mattered most. She
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was last seen alive on June eleventh, twenty twenty four.
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And then the part that gives the case its name,
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a tooth and a fragment of skull turned up in
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a burn pit on the property. The tooth matched her
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dental records. The bone match her DNA. So let me
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walk you through the week because the state has been
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building this brick by brick. It started with the people
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who knew Crystal best. A friend of twenty four years
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testified that while she was actually sitting with investigators about
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Crystal's disappearance, she started getting Facebook messages from a brand
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new account claiming to be Crystal, and the messages were wrong,
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the wording was off, and whoever was behind that account
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would not do the one simple thing that would have
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proven it was really her, get on a video call
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and show her face. Crystal's divorce attorney testified to the
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same eerie pattern. She had been in constant contact with
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him about her divorce and her kids, and then suddenly,
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after early June, nothing except one email supposedly from Crystal
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trying to fire him. It went to the wrong address.
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He said. She never gave any sign she wanted to
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let him go. Then the state turned to the machines,
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which don't have feelings and don't forget. License plate readers
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showed Crystal's own car barely moved after she vanished, while
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a silver Mitsubishi tied to Zachariah Rash was getting picked
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up by cameras all over Wisconsin. Inside that Mitsubishi. A
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forensic scientist described significant reddish brown staining throughout the front
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passenger area, the seat, the seat belt, the console. A
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DNA analyst testified that the blood matched Crystal rash And
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then there's the phone. Prosecutors say, a dump of Zachariah Rashih.
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His phone showed a progression their word, and you can
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hear why they chose it. Jurors heard that before Crystal disappeared,
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the searches were about things like fatal gunshots to the
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head and how long you can collect widows benefits if
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taxes were never filed. And after she was gone, the
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state says the search has changed shape cleaning bones, sulfuric acid,
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replacing parts of a vehicle, how quickly police can get
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a warrant, how missing person's alerts work before, how does
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someone die after? How do I make it disappear? That's
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the story the state is telling. With that timeline, the
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forensic week kept going. A forensic dentist matched a recovered
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tooth and a mirror image tooth from the other side
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of the mouth to Crystal's dental records. A consultant brought
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in ground penetrating radar, the kind of technology you use
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when you suspect the earth itself is hiding something. And
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excavated a burned area on the property. He found human remains,
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a charred fragment of the temporal bone, the bone that
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forms the side and base of the skull, and a
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detective testified that when he confronted Zachariah Rash about the
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inconsistencies in his account, Rash conceded he should have told
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the truth. Asked why he'd been buying drain cleaner, the
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detective said, Rash told him it was for squirrels. Now
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the defense gets its case too, and here's their version.
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Defense attorney Zaki Zahawi told the jury the prosecutors have
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it all wrong, that Crystal Rash tragically killed herself while
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handling a gun in front of his client, and that
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Zachariah Rash, knowing it was his firearm and that a
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divorce was pending, was terrified he'd be blamed, so he panicked.
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The defense concedes openly that Rash lied to his friends,
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lied to his family, lie to law enforcement. But lying
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out a panic, they argue, is not the same thing
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as murder. Their account of the moment itself, a nine
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millimeter in the vehicle that discharged while he was driving.
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And I want to be careful and fair here because
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this case is still in front of a jury and
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Zachariah Rash has pleaded not guilty, he is presumed innocent,
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and twelve people in juno, not me, not you, are
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going to weigh whether that panic story holds up against
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that pile of forensic testimony. That's their job and it's
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the right way for this to work. But there's a
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detail from day one I haven't been able to shake,
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and it belongs to Crysteal. Her stepmother testified that Crystal
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had been afraid of firearms since childhood, that she never
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owned a gun, never used one. I'm not going to
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tell you what that proves. I'm going to let the
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jury do that. I'm just gonna say her name because
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she was a woman trying to claw her way back
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to her children when she vanished. Crystal Rash will keep
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watching this one as it goes to verdict when we
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come back. A name that went by fast on yesterday's
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show and the young woman behind it, a former police officer,
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a youth program that was supposed to protect kids, and
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a judge who just decided he's too dangerous to let out.
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Stay with me before this last story a warning. It
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involves the sexual exploitation of a child. I'm going to
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handle it the way it deserves to be handled, carefully,
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and I'm not going to give you details that don't
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belong on the air. But if there are young ears
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in the room, this is your moment to turn the
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volume down. Yesterday on this show, we spent the whole
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hour on police misconduct, and somewhere in the middle of it.
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Inside that lawsuit Karen Reid filed against the Massachusetts State Police,
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one name went by fast, a young woman named Sandra
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Birchmore mentioned in connection with an officer from a completely
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different department. I told you we'd come back to her,
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So here we are, because Sandra Birchmore deserves a lot