GUILTY: Surgeon Tomasz Kosowski Convicted in Steven Cozzi Murder, Won't Fight for His Own Life, Caleb Flynn's Mistress Reads the Texts

0:09 Good morning. This is Daily Crime and Justice from Calaroga Media, powered by AI. I'm Garrett Fisher. It's Tuesday, September 29th, 2026. The surgeon is guilty. After two weeks of covering it every day, Tomasz Kosowski has been convicted of murdering Stephen Causey. He fired his lawyers, waved a jury, put on no defense, and then stood up and talked to a judge for 20 minutes. The judge convicted him. And then the judge asked. Him one more time whether he wanted an attorney for the part where his life is on the line. He said no. And he said he will not present a single piece of evidence arguing that he should be allowed to live. In Ohio, the woman Caleb Flynn was having an affair with sat in a witness box and read their text messages out loud to a jury. Asked how she feels about him now, she said she hates him. And in Lake County, Florida, a jury decided a woman who stabbed an elderly couple to death should not be executed because she was psychotic and off her medication when she did it.

1:06 Hold that last one against the first one. We will come back to it. And today is the day in Plymouth County. Lindsay Clancy is back before Judge Sullivan. Let's get into it. Stephen Cozy was 41 years old. He was an attorney in Largo, Florida, married to a man named Michael Montgomery. On March 21st, 2023, he stepped into the bathroom at his law firm and was never seen again. His body has never been found. Last Wednesday, Judge Joseph Ballone found Tomasz Kosowski guilty of first-degree murder. The state put on its case over six days. Surveillance video, DNA, Kazi's blood in Kosowski's vehicle, a vial of a surgical paralytic and a syringe, a ballistic vest, $ 280, 000 in cash. Evidence that Kosowski had researched Kozy, photographed the car belonging to Kozy's husband, and hid in a utility closet at the law firm a week before. Prosecutors described a malicious and personal obsession and said he planned it methodically and systematically. Kosowski put on no defense at all, no witnesses, no evidence. What he did was stand up and speak to the judge for about 20 minutes in a soft voice, leaning into the microphone. And the argument he made was that the state's story is physically impossible.

2:30 He walked the judge through it in the first person, sarcastically. He said, Now, I committed this murder in a common area, in a bathroom, in the middle of a busy office complex. Nobody heard a thing. Nobody saw anything with people 10 to 20 feet away. Then I cleaned that bathroom. I load Stephen Cozy's body onto a cart. I roll it out and I lift it onto a truck with superhuman strength and I drive off. His point was that it is not possible for one person to do that. and that it makes no sense in the time available. He also raised the possibility that evidence had been planted. I want to be careful with those quotes because they are going to get clipped. He was not confessing. He was describing the state's theory in the first person to argue it was absurd. That is a rhetorical move lawyers make all the time. And underneath it, that was always his best argument. We said so on this show a week ago. The physical plausibility of moving a body out of an occupied office building in daylight is a legitimate thing to attack, but he could never actually make it. He asked a prosecutor to climb into a trash bag. He asked a medical examiner to get into a cart so a prosecutor could try to drag it across the.

3:43 Courtroom and lift it. The judge said no to both because that is not how you do this. You do it with a biomechanics expert and measurements and a demonstrative exhibit. And you need a lawyer to know that. Then Boulogne did something that I think will stay with me a long time. He noted out loud that normally the jurors would go back, deliberate, reach a verdict, check the appropriate box, and it would be done. But in this case, it was up to him, and he convicted. Michael Montgomery, Stephen Cozzi's widower, was in that courtroom, comforted by Cozzi's mother, Lois. Now the part that matters most. After issuing the verdict, Ballone asked Kosowski again whether he wanted attorneys for the penalty phase. He turned it down, and he said he declines to present any mitigating evidence at all. Understand what that means. The penalty phase of a capital case is not about guilt. It is entirely about whether a person should live. It is where the defense puts on the history, the trauma, the mental health, the family, the whole life. In most capital cases, it is the single most important thing the defense ever does.

4:52 Tomasz Kasowski is going to put on nothing. And back in August, he withdrew his former attorney's motions challenging. The death penalty. So when Judge Boulogne decides next month whether this man lives or dies, there will be essentially nothing in front of him arguing for life. Robin Maher, who runs the Death Penalty Information Center, told CNN what the record shows. She said most examples of pro-SE representation in capital cases have ended with convictions and death sentences. That is where this has landed and nobody should be surprised because the man chose every step of it and the court asked him repeatedly whether he was sure. Stephen Cozy went to work on a Tuesday morning in a red sweater. Three and a half years later, there is a conviction and still no body to bury. Someone has to say his name.

5:44 When we come back, 107,000 text messages. Read out loud. Ashley Flynn was 37. She was a middle school volleyball coach and an educator in Tip City, Ohio, and the mother of two young daughters. On February 16th, she was shot twice in the back of the head as she slept. Her husband, Caleb Flynn, has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. He faces charges including aggravated murder, murder, felonious assault, and tampering with evidence.

6:24 Last week, the woman he had been having an affair with took the stand. Aaliyah Botner is 24. She was a worship leader at their church. She testified that she met Flynn when she was 20 and interning for the main worship leader and that at first she did not know he was married because he never wore his wedding ring. She said she did know by the time it turned physical in March of 2024, and she said plainly that it was completely wrong and she should not have. Over that affair, they exchanged more than 107,000 text messages. And she read them out loud to a jury. Prosecutors have highlighted several. One sent exactly one year before Ashley died, said he needed her to die. Another said that if he could literally kill her and not go to hell, he would do it in a heartbeat. Another said that unless she dies, cheats again, or they find a way to get rid of her, she will be around. And on August 22nd of last year, he wrote that he had stayed up until four in the morning thinking of ways to kill her and not going to jail. Asked how she feels about Caleb Flynn now, Botner said she hates him. Asked why, she said because she believes he murdered his wife. Now, here is the part that complicates this witness enormously, and the defense is going to spend a long time on it. Botner did not just receive those messages. She participated. She read the jury one of her own texts, in which she asked him to hire someone to take his wife out, using a derogatory nickname

7:56 they both used for Ashley. She wrote that she needed him in her life. He replied, so tempting. She also testified that she and Flynn discussed using a burner phone and deleting messages. That she initially lied to the FBI about the affair. And as we reported last week, that she lost her phone and her work laptop just weeks before Ashley was killed. In fairness, she also testified that when he talked about killing his wife, she at times told him to get a divorce instead. In one message, she wrote that she was not asking him to take Ashley's life, that it was not what he should do, and that she knew he actually would not. So which is she? A witness who got in far too deep with a man she loved and is now telling.

8:39 The truth about him? Or a participant with her own exposure who lost the devices, lied to federal agents, and now has every reason to put all of it on him? That is the jury's problem, and it is a real one. Two more things from last week. An FBI forensic examiner who has looked at roughly 2,000 items for tool marks testified that there were tool marks on multiple parts of the interior of that garage side. Door, the trim, the door jamb, and the doorknob. She compared them against 20 test marks made with prying tools recovered in the case and found the comparison inconclusive. I want to refine what I told you last week. The BCI agent testified there was no damage consistent with forced entry from the outside. and that wood chips were inside the garage. The FBI examiner now says there were tool marks, but on the inside components, and she cannot tie them to a specific tool. So the state's position is consistent. The damage happened from the inside. What it has not proven is which tool made it. And investigators have testified they found no evidence that Ashley Flynn was cheating.

9:45 That matters because Botner testified Flynn justified the affair by telling her his wife had cheated on him two years earlier. Ashley's sister Kayla Keet testified about how the two girls reacted when they learned their father had been having an affair before their mother died. She said they were mostly brokenhearted for mommy. Caleb Flynn sobbed through the first two days of this trial. He sat stone-faced through most of Botner's testimony and shed a single tear as she read their messages. The gun has never been found. Ashley Flynn was 37. Someone has to say her name.

10:26 Darryl Getman was 83. His wife Sharon was 80. They were retired and living at a place called Waterman Village, a retirement. Community in Mount Dora, Florida. On New Year's Eve of 2022, a woman they had never met knocked on their door and asked for help. She asked if she could take a shower. They let her in. Vicki Lynn Williams killed them both. She took a kitchen knife from their own kitchen. Prosecutors described stab wounds and head trauma. She took their car and police tracked it using the GPS on Sharon Getman's phone to a train station parking lot in Georgia, where she was arrested. Her DNA was on the weapons. Her fingerprints and bloody footprints were in that house. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Her attorney conceded she was there and conceded she did it. His argument was that she was suffering from schizophrenia and hallucinations, and that her delusions had convinced her the Getmans were going to harm her children. On September 22nd, a Lake County jury rejected that defense. After about 30 minutes, they convicted her of two counts of first-degree murder and grand theft auto. Then came the penalty phase, and this is why the segment is here. The state argued five aggravating factors. The defense called Dr. Yannis Castillo, who testified that Williams has schizophrenia and has experienced hearing voices, paranoia, and delusions. And her attorney, Mario Carranza, made an argument that I think is one of the more honest things I have heard a.

11:53 Defense lawyer say. He told the jury that by convicting her, they had already guaranteed her future. That the only way Vicki Williams leaves the Florida Department of Corrections is in a coffin. So the question in front of them was not whether she will die, he said, but when. And then he told them she was psychotic, that she was hearing voices, and that those voices were sending her from house to house looking for her children. The jury recommended life without parole. Judge Kerry Rada imposed it. Now, hold those two Florida cases next to each other. In Lake County, a woman presented her severe mental illness as a reason to spare her life, and 12 people agreed. In Pinellas County, a man whose former attorney told the court he refuses to sign consent forms for a medical evaluation said, and who does not want evidence presented in his defense, has withdrawn every challenge to the death penalty and will offer nothing at all. And I want to be precise about the legal distinction here because it is the one people mix up constantly, including in the Lindsay Clancy coverage. Insanity and mitigation are two different doors. Insanity is about guilt. It asks whether at the moment of the act the person could understand what they were doing or that it was wrong.

13:07 It is a very hard standard and juries reject it most of the time. Vicki Williams raised it and lost in half an hour. Mitigation is about punishment. It asks a completely different question. Given everything about this person's life in mind, should the state kill them? You can lose the first question badly and still win the second, and that is exactly what happened in Lake County. which is what makes what is happening in Pinellas County so strange. Kosowski is not arguing he was insane. He is not arguing anything. He has walked away from the one proceeding that exists specifically to answer whether he should live. Daryl Getman was 83. Sharon Getman was 80. They opened their door to a stranger who said she needed help because that is who they apparently were. Someone has to say their names. That's the show for Tuesday, September 29th. If you listen on Apple, there is a button at the top of the screen that says, listen uninterrupted. $ 5 a month, no ads, and it covers thousands of shows across Calaroga media.

14:13 30 days free if you want to try it first. Everybody who already subscribes, thank you. And on Spotify, drop a comment on the Florida surgeon. A judge asked him repeatedly whether he wanted a lawyer for the part where his life is decided, and he said no every time. Should a court be able to force representation on someone at that point, or is that his choice to make? Today is Plymouth County. Lindsay Clancy is back in front of Judge Sullivan with a motion to dismiss her case entirely on double jeopardy grounds on file, and a second motion seeking to hold out jurors' phone records. We will have all of it tomorrow. I'm Garrett Fisher. Do better. A few notes on sourcing on the Florida murder conviction.

14:57 Tomasz Kosowski was convicted of first-degree murder by a judge after waiving his right to a jury. The remarks quoted from his closing argument were made rhetorically, describing the state's theory in order to argue it was implausible and should not be understood as an admission. He retains the right to appeal. Sentencing is expected next month. On the Ohio trial, Caleb Flynn has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent, and the trial is ongoing. Reporting has listed his charges differently across outlets, and we have described them in general terms. The messages described were read into the record by a witness. The defense disputes the state's interpretation of them. Aliga Botner has not been charged with any offense. On the Lake County case, Vicki Lynn Williams was convicted and has been sentenced to life without parole. Her insanity defense was rejected by the jury at the guilt phase, and her mental illness was considered as mitigation at the penalty phase. Accounts have differed on Sharon Getman's age, reported as both.

15:58 80 and 83. This episode discusses homicide, domestic violence, and severe mental illness. If you are struggling, you can call or text 988 in the United States to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifelines.