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Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Reed Carter. Wednesday, January fourteenth,
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twenty twenty six, Day five of the Uvaldi trial. The
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most devastating testimony yet. A fourth grade teacher described being
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shot in the arm, then lying on the floor pretending
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to be dead while the shooter murdered every single one
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of his students. None of the children in room one
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hundred eleven survived, the teacher did. He has to live
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with that forever. Plus sometimes justice takes twenty seven years,
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sometimes the killer is already dead, and sometimes one monster
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is responsible for more horror than anyone realized. Linda Marie Rutledge,
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forty three years old, November seventh, nineteen ninety eight, Lexington, Kentucky.
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Firefighters responded to a structure fire at the Nixon Hearing
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Aid Center found her body in the back back hallway,
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multiple gunshot wounds to the head. Case went cold. Twenty
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seven years of nothing until now Lexington police have identified
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her killer, Robert Eugene Brasher's You might not know that name,
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but you know what he did. December sixth, nineteen ninety one, Austin, Texas.
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The I can't believe it's yogurt shop. Four teenage girls,
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Jennifer Harbison, Eliza Thomas, Sarah Harbison, and Amy Ayers bound
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sexually assaulted, shot, and burned. One of the most notorious
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unsolved cases in American history. Brashers killed those four girls, then,
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while out on bond for other crimes, traveled to Kentucky
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and killed Linda Rutledge, same gun, same DNA, same monster,
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And day two of the Mansion murders trial in New Jersey,
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testimony begins against Paul Kniro. I'm reed Carter today. A
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serial killer exposed after devastating testimony from Uvalde and the
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question that haunts every cold case, who else did he kill?
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This is celebrity trials. Let's start with the story that's
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making headlines across the country. December sixth, nineteen ninety one, Austin, Texas,
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The I can't believe it's yogurt shop on West Anderson Lane.
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Jennifer Harbison, seventeen, was working the closing shift with her
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friend Eliza Thomas, also seventeen. Jennifer's younger sister Sarah fifteen,
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stopped by, so did their friend Amy Ayers, thirteen. Four
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teenage girls Friday night, making a few dollars at a
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yogurt shop should have been home by midnight. Around eleven
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forty five pm, someone noticed smoke coming from the shop.
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Firefighters responded found the building fully engulfed. Inside stacked near
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the back were four bodies. All four girls had been
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bound with their own clothing, All four had been sexually assaulted.
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All four had been shot in the head. The fire
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was set to destroy evidence. Austin was horrified. This wasn't
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a robbery gone wrong. This was a calculated, sadistic mass murder,
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and for years decades nobody knew who did it. The
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case became one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in
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Texas history. Four arrests were made in nineteen ninety nine,
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confessions obtained, but by two thousand and nine all charges
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were dismissed. DNA evidence didn't match the confessions were deemed unreliable.
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The case went back to square one. Then, in September
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twenty twenty five, investigators got a hit. DNA from the
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Austin crime scene matched a profile that had been sitting
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in a database for years. The profile belonged to Robert
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Eugene Brasher's Brashers was a drifter, a predator. By nineteen
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ninety one, he already had a criminal history breaking into
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women's hearse home's sexual assault. He died in January nineteen
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ninety nine, killed himself before he could be connected to
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the yogurt shop murders. But here's what makes this story
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even more disturbing. He didn't stop killing after Austin. November seventh,
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nineteen ninety eight, Lexington, Kentucky, seven years after the yogurt
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shop murders, Lynda Marie Rutledge, forty three years old, was
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working at the Nixon Hearing Aid Center on Malibu Drive
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around seven forty am. Firefighters responded to a structure fire.
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Found Rutledge dead in the back hallway, multiple gunshot wounds
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to the head. Fire set to destroy evidence. Sound familiar,
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same pattern, same method, kill burn leave. For twenty seven years,
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Lexington police worked the case, reviewed evidence, followed leads, nothing
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connected until July twenty twenty five, when they got a
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call from Austin. The National Integrated Ballistic Information Network had
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FO found a match. A point three to eight zero
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shell casing recovered from the Nixon Hearing Aid Center in
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Kentucky matched a shell casing from the Austin yogurt shop,
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same gun, same killer. The Kentucky State Police Forensics lab
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examined the casings confirmed they came from the same firearm,
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but it wasn't just ballistics. In September twenty twenty five,
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a sexual assault kit from Linda Rutledge was sent to
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DNA Labs International for testing. The profile matched the DNA
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from Austin. Robert Eugene Brashers killed the four yogurt shop
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girls in Texas, then seven years later killed Linda Rutledge
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in Kentucky. Same gun, same DNA, same monster, different states,
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different years, connected by forensic evidence that took decades to
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piece together. And here's the part that should make you furious.
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When Brashers killed Linda Rutledge, he was out on bond.
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According to the Murder Sheet podcast, which recently covered Rutledge's case,
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Brashers had broken into a woman's house in the spring
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of nineteen ninety eight, got arrested, got bonded out, then
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traveled to Kentucky and murdered Linda Rutledge. He had broken
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into another woman's house earlier that year too. The system
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kept releasing him and women kept dying. This guy was
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going all over the Place, said podcast co host Ain Kin.
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He had broken into a woman's house in the spring.
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He had broken into a woman's house earlier that year,
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got bonded out, and then came up to Kentucky and
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murdered Linda. So I think whenever this guy was not
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in prison, we need to be considering that he may
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have been doing some crimes. That's the question now. How
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many more Brashers killed himself in January nineteen ninety nine,
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weeks after murdering Linda Rutledge. He'll never face trial, never
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be held accountable, never answer questions about what else he did.
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But investigators are looking if Brashers killed in Texas in
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nineteen ninety one and Kentucky in nineteen ninety eight, what
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did he do in between? What other cold cases might
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match his DNA, his ballistics, his pattern. Margaret Brown, who
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directed an HBO documentary series about the yogurt shop murders,
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described the scope of the damage, just the ripple effect
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on so many people is so immense. The film, the
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series that I made, it was really just about how
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the trauma sort of extended outward, starting with, of course,
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the families and the people who were wrongfully accused the
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cops who worked on it, people who were making other
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films about it. It was just you would see these
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ripples of so many people affected by this one man's actions,
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wrongfully accused. That's a key part of this story. In
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nineteen ninety nine, four young men were arrested for the
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yogurt shop murders based on confessions that were later discredited.
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Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, Morris Pierce, and Forrest Wellborn. Their
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lives were destroyed. Scott and Springsteen were convicted and sentenced
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to death. It took until two thousand and nine for
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all charges to be dropped when DNA evidence excluded them.
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Eight years on death row for a crime they didn't
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commit because the real killer was already dead and nobody
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knew it. Now the families have answers. Linda Rutledge's family
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has asked for privacy as they process this news. The
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families of the Austin victims finally know who murdered their daughters.
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Lexington Police issued a statement, if Brashers were alive today,
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he would be arrested and charged with Rutledge's murder. While
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her case may be solved, it does not bring Linda back,
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but we hope that by knowing who killed her, her
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loved ones can begin to heal. The Murder Sheet podcast
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co host Kevin Greenley emphasized how law enforcement collaboration can
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help solve more cases. Once they solve a crime like
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this involving DNA, they pool their knowledge, they talk to
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one and they help other agencies solve their crimes. So
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Lexington has been helped, Lexington is going to help other agencies,
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and at the end of the day, there's going to
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be more justice for more victims because of this amount
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of teamwork. Justice twenty seven years late for a killer
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who's been dead for twenty six years. But it matters.
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It matters to know, It matters to the families, It
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matters to the four men who were wrongfully accused in Austin.
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Jennifer Harbison was seventeen years old, should be fifty one today.
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Eliza Thomas was seventeen years old, should be fifty one today.
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Sarah Harbison was fifteen years old, should be forty nine today.
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Amy Airs was thirteen years old, should be forty seven today.
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Lynda Marie Rutledge was forty three years old, should be
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seventy today. Five women, one killer twenty seven years to
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connect the dots and the question that haunts investigators? Who else?
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We'll be right back with the most devas stating testimony
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from the Uvalde trial yet, a teacher describing how he
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played dead while every single one of his students was murdered.
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Plus updates from the Mansion murders trial. Welcome back to
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celebrity trials. I'm reed Carter, Day five of the Uvalde
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trial and the most devastating testimony yet. Arnulfo Reyes taught
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fourth grade in Room one hundred eleven at rob elementary
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nine and ten year old students on May twenty fourth,
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twenty twenty two. There was an award ceremony that morning. Afterward,
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Reyes took his students back to their classroom, turned off
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the lights, put on a movie, just another day. Then
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he heard loud noises. Thought someone was dropping books, but
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the sounds got louder closer. Pieces of wall and sheet
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rock started falling from the ceiling. Reyes told his students
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to get under their tables, locked down, procedure what they'd
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been trained to do. A black shadow appeared at the door,
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A figure with a gun. The shooter shot Rayes in
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the left arm, then went around him and started shooting
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his students. Reyes laid on the floor, pretending to be dead,
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the only way to survive. The shooter taunted him, shot
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him again, then left for the adjoining classroom, Room one
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hundred twelve, and continued shooting. None of the children in
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Room one hundred eleven survived. Every single one of Arnolfo
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Rays's students was murdered while he lay on the floor, wounded,
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pretending to be dead, listening to them die. Make it
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make sense. Reyes was eventually rescued by law enforcement treated
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by EMTs. He survived, his students didn't. Texas rangers testified
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about what they found when they processed those classrooms. Ranger
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Scott Swick was assigned to document Room one hundred twelve,
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one of the two rooms where nineteen children and two
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teachers were murder. Bullet defects in the main door, in
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the closet door, empty magazines, fired, cartridge casings everywhere, in
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filing cabinets, in bookshelves, in desks, in children's backpacks. Ranger
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Terry Snyder arrived at the scene around five thirty pm
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that day, identified victims by their clothing or from a
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school roster. The next day he was assigned to mark
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cartridge casings in the hallway. Multiple photographs shown to the
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jury casings from the shooter, casings from law enforcement firearms,
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six rifle casings, two pistol casings from officers who returned fire.
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And here's the detail that keeps coming up. The door
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to Room one point one one was unlocked. That's how
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the shooter got in. The door that was supposed to
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protect those children couldn't be locked. Snyder testified about tactical considerations,
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the fatal tunnel concept, acknowledging the danger both entering and
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inside that hallway, the difficulty of identifying where gunfire is
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coming from in echoing environments. Officers testified they were trained
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not to fire blindly, to use tactical movement, but tactical
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movement takes time and children were dying. Jim Claveman, the
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retired security coordinator for Uvaldi Schools, testified about the security cameras.
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Four cameras were installed at rob Elementary. They were not
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actively monitored. Nobody was watching. The footage was only reviewed
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afterward if something happened. Something happened and nobody was watching.
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Ranger Roberto Montalvo testified about returning to the school days
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later to retrieve additional items from rooms one hundred eleven
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and one hundred twelve, including a hell fire trigger, a
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device that allows a semi automatic weapon to fire more rapidly.
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The cleaning crew found additional cartridges on May thirty first
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and June sixth, evidence scattered throughout classrooms full of dead children.
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Adrian Gonzalez is charged with twenty nine counts of child
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and in death, changement, and abandonment. Each count carries up
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to two years fifty eight years maximum if convicted on everything.
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But this trial is about more than one officer. It's
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about doors that couldn't lock, security cameras, nobody watched training
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that said go to the gun fire, and officers who
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waited in hallways four hundred officers seventy minutes while a
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teacher lay on the floor pretending to be dead as
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his students were murdered around him. Former Uvaldi Schools police
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chief Pete Aradondo faces ten counts of his own. He
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was the on site commander, made the decisions that slowed
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the response. No trial date set for him yet. Nineteen children,
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two teachers, one teacher who survived by pretending to be dead,
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and a trial asking who failed them, who's responsible and
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what do we owe those children? Now, Arnulfo Reyes survived,
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he has to live with that day forever. His students
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didn't survive, They'll never get to live with anything. Meanwhile,
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in New Jersey, day two of the mansion murders trial,
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Paul Kniro fifty seven years old, accused of murdering his
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brother Keith fifty, sister in law Jennifer forty five, and
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their children, Sophia eight and Jesse eleven, November twenty eighteen,
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shot and stabbed to death, bodies burned in a mansion fire.
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Yesterday was opening statements. Prosecutor Nicole Wallace laid out the
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state's case. Paul was stealing from the businesses he co
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owned with his brother. Keith discovered the theft sent Paul
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an email about missing money the day before the murders.
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Paul's solution kill his entire family, then set fire to
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his own house to make it look like the whole
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family was being targeted. The evidence police found clothing in
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Paul's basement with the children's DNA, a nine millimeter round
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matching the murder weapon, a latex glove all in a container.
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Paul apparently forgot about. Defense is going with an alternative
236
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suspect theory, pointing to a third Caniro brother, arguing police
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ignored other possibilities. Paul rejected a plea deal guaranteeing life
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without parole. If he loses, he faces life plus two
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hundred eleven and a half years. That's not a typo.