School of Humans.
On the night of Saturday, November twenty first, twenty fifteen, Victor Collins, a forty seven year old former police officer who worked at Walmart, was hanging out with some friends, Owen MacDonald, Sean Henry, and thirty one year old James Bates. The four friends went back to James's house in Bentonville, Arkansas, to watch a Razorbacks football game.
This was a big game.
The Arkansas Razorbacks were playing Mississippi State, so this was an all day event. Now, and this is according to court documents, these four guys were drinking. They started out with beers and also had some vodka shots. They hung out and talked and kept drinking after the game ended. At some point, according to court documents, the guys went out to the back patio to have some more beers in the hot tub. At around eleven PM, Sean and James got out of the hot tub, leaving Victor and
Owen hanging out there. The night seemed to be kind of winding down at that point. Sean left first, then Owen sometime shortly after midnight, leaving Victor and James alone at the house. Now, James claimed that after that at around one am, he went to bed to crash.
He said, he left Victor in the hot tub.
In the morning, he found Victor there floating face down. Now, what really happened that night and what happened next depended on who you asked.
But one thing is for sure.
This simple Saturday afternoon that started out with four friends drinking began a multi year investigation, an ordeal that involved allegations of murder, police corruption, and sparked a national debate about what devices in our houses are listening when we think we're alone. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I have learned there is no such thing as a small
town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five. This is Helen Gone Murder Line.
James called nine to one one.
At nine thirty five am, paramedics and police got to his house and tried to put together what happened the night before. Now again, James claimed that he had gone to bed at around one am. He said he woke up shortly after nine am on November twenty second and found Victor dead in the hot tab.
James said he was asleep the whole time.
He had no idea what happened to Victor, but from the time that police got there, it did seem like. Detectives were questioning certain elements of James's story. They found some facial injuries on Victor, a black and swollen eye. They started to suspect that maybe James wasn't telling them the full truth. They wondered if the two men it had some kind of fight, and that maybe James had
tried to cover it up. Detectives also noticed blood in the water, which, according to an arrest affidavit, was tinted red and appeared to contain bodily fluids and blood. There was also blood coming from Victor's nose in his mouth, both were swollen. He also had a cut on his eyelid. Detectives' suspicions were raised further, according to the affidavit, when they began to believe that the patio and the hot tub
had been sprayed down with a water hose. They saw a hot tub cushion lying on the ground with blood spots on it. They also saw an area of blood spatter on the hot tub cover, blood that, according to the affidavit, was matched to Victor Collins. They thought that this was strange because, first of all, they were wondering if the hot tub area was sprayed down, who did it, Because who would spray down a hot tub in the
middle of the night before calling the police. And also, it was very cold that night, so they thought using a hose at all was kind of odd. Things got even more complicated once Victor's body was sent for an autopsy. The medical examiner, doctor Charles Cocus, said that in his opinion, Victor died from strangulation, with drowning as a secondary contributing factor. James told police that this was absolutely not true. He completely denied strangling his friend. He said he had nothing
to do with Victor's death. It was obviously an accident. He said he wasn't there at all, He'd been in bed by the way. To this day, James completely denies he had anything to do with Victor's death.
Victor was from Georgia.
He had been a police officer, first with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office, later with the Canton Police Department. He left that job and in twenty ten moved to Arkansas with his wife, Christine, and their family.
He took the job at Walmart.
Friends and families said he and Christine had been very happily married for eighteen years and they had five children. So for this loving marriage to end with hot tub homicide headlines must have been so incredibly sad and shocking.
The irony is terrible too, because I can imagine I don't know for sure, but I can imagine that one of the reasons why Victor probably chose to leave law enforcement in the first place and move into something like loss prevention was so he'd be in a safer place, so that he would not have to worry about getting killed on the job. The fact that he died at a friend's house while having a few beers and watching
a football game is so sad and tragic. But police wondered, was this just a tragic accident, or did something happen after hours? What really happened in that hot tub. James continued to insist Victor's death had been an accident. He and later through his attorney in a lawsuit, pointed out Victor.
Was a big guy, six foot five.
And three hundred and fifteen pounds, and they were drinking. Victor's blood alcohol level at the time had been a point three to one eight, around four times the legal limit to drive in the state of Arkansas. There were no other illegal drugs found in Victor's system, though the autopsy did fund traces of the antidepressant prozac and methyl fenidae, which is used to treat narcolepsy and is found in
the brand name Riddlin. Later, through his lawyer Jason Bates, also pointed out there were no marks on Victor's neck, no evidence that there had been anything wrapped around his neck, no ligature marks, and no evidence of damage to Victor's throat. But police seemed to be convinced that James was guilty. They executed a search warrant, looked through his phone records and found evidence that he had been texting a woman
that night. Later, according to police, James called his father and some friends, but apparently every single one of the calls were canceled before they had a chance to go through. Now, James told police those must have been butt dials and those definitely happened, especially after drinking.
But police were.
Suspicious and a lot of these calls, according to detectives, were placed after one am, So it seems like the detectives saw it as further potential evidence that maybe James had not gone to bed when he said he did. They did confirm other elements of his story. They talked to a neighbor who saw Owen walking home shortly after midnight. Owen was intoxicated, and this neighbor gave Owen a ride home. Owen's wife confirmed that Owen got home at twelve thirty am.
Owen told police that when he left everything was fine. Victor was alive and well, and the neighbor who gave Owen a lift said that other than being pretty intoxicated, he saw no sign that there had been any kind of a struggle. So now the timeframe was narrowing. It seemed like whatever had happened in that house happened after Owen left. Detectives drained the hot tub, and at the bottom they found Victor's glass that were broken. They also
found a broken shot glass and Victor's wedding ring. When I first read that, I thought that was a little bit odd because wedding rings don't normally slip off like that. But today I learned a lot of people take rings off because over time, chlorine and chemicals in hot tubs can corrode the metal. This was true, by the way,
even though James had a saltwater hot tub. I actually, because I get obsessed with these details, did some research on saltwater hot tubs and also found out that they do use chlorine generators, so technically they're not chlorine free. There is still chlorine in a saltwater hot tub. Police also got a search warrant for James's body. They took pictures of him and during that photo session they documented James had several scratches on him on his abdomen, back,
in arms. They also stated he had a large bruise. Again, this is not confirmation of anything, because yes, this could have been caused from a fight. But also, these guys were drunk. They were stumbling around, climbing in and out of a hot tub. I can see how they could
have had marks on them. There was no definitive physical evidence linking James to Victor's body, but detectives just did not believe that he had butt dialed that many times and canceled the calls, especially since they said his cell phone was locked again. This is all according to the affidavit of probable cause. They asked him about the scratches and some small cuts they said he had on his hands. James claimed they were from CrossFit classes or that they
might have been scratches from his cat. Eventually, they arrested James and he was charged with first degree murder and tampering with evidence. The judge set the bail at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He bonded out and waited for the trial to start. James was facing serious prison time ten to forty years in prison plus six years if he was found guilty of the tampering charges. So now the police had a problem because they thought something might have happened between James and Victor.
But actually it was just a he said. He said.
Because there were only two people there, Victor and James, they had no real physical evidence. There was nothing on James linking him to Victor. No one, none of the other friends who were there that night had any idea about any bad blood between James and Victor. They said they were all having fun. And also, it's really hard in general when someone is killed at a friend's house
sometimes to determine exactly what went down. It's not like DNA would necessarily be that decisive, because all of these men's DNA was all over that house. They began searching for electronic devices. There weren't any cameras in the house, but there was something else. Victor had an Amazon Echo device with an Alexa Virtual Assistant and they were playing music through the Echo with Alexa that night. So police
served multiple search warrants. They went in and took James's electronics on December second, twenty fifteen.
They searched his vehicle. They searched through every.
Electronic device he had at his house, and there were quite a few, including an iPhone, a MacBook Pro, several iPads and tablets, a Mac Minie, and a PS four,
plus some airport time capsules. Ever since I learned about this case, it has absolutely fascinated me because I think it really goes into an area that I think is going to be hugely important in investigating cases going forward, which is the role of technology and especially how technology is moving way faster than the law and how it's applied.
This was really the first case I read about where an Alexa might have potentially been a witness and a murder case, and being from Arkansas, so I say this with love. It's weird to think of Arkansas as something that's cutting edge on anything, but in some areas it is. This was the first case I ever heard of involving an Echo. The prosecutor on this case was thinking outside the box. I learned something new every day at this job, and one of the things I learned was the device
itself is called an Amazon Echo. Alexa is not the name of the device, it's just the name of the actual virtual assistant. In practice, we use Echo and Alexa pretty much interchangeably, So I'm just going to refer to the device as Alexa. So as we all know now, the way that Alexa works is you say a wake word, which is normally the name Alexa or Amazon, but you can change the name to other things. So, for example, if your name is Alexa, you won't be constantly annoyed.
Once it's triggered, Once the device here's the wake word, it starts recording. You see a little blue circle around the top. But sometimes it's triggered by accidents. Sometimes you say a word that sounds kind of close to alexa and the device will start recording.
This happens to me all the time.
By the way, Amazon has transcripts of those conversations that you're having with this device, and to be honest, it's not clear exactly what the company does with those.
And if they're ever deleted.
Amazon has said that quote the recordings are streamed and stored remotely and can be reviewed or deleted over.
Time end quote.
Honestly, that's not super reassuring. So police served a search warrant on Amazon for the content in Alexa, and it seems like their theory was the device was on and was recording, and maybe they were hoping somebody said something that sounded like the wake word and they might have gotten some inadvertent audio from that night.
How ethical is it for police to do this?
Tom Doton wrote an article for the Information that was very interesting and in depth talked about how the technology works and the implications for law, and I highly recommend reading it if you're interested in this case. Basically, the Bentonville Police Department wanted Amazon to give them audio recordings and transcripts that came from James Bates Echo device for a forty eight hour period of time that would the night when the alleged murder happened. They also wanted a
subscriber and account information. Amazon did give the subscriber information to police, which is fairly standard, but it fought to keep those recordings private. The company refused to hand them over because they felt that demand was overly brought. This blew up into a national story and an argument over First Amendment rights. Amazon refused to hand over the recordings.
They fought in court for months. According to court documents, they made the claim that data stored on the Echo device is protected by the First Amendment and privacy rights
for customers. They made a really interesting argument actually, According to the Jolt Digest, which is produced by Harvard Law School, they said that quote users communications to Alexa, which include requests for expressive materials such as music, podcasts and audiobooks, should be subject to heightened First Amendment protection, similar to the treatment of physical purchase records kept by bookstores end quote. They also argued Alexa's responses to what users say should
be covered under free speech law. I was really interested in seeing how this case played out. And here's where it gets even more interesting because the Alexa was not the only piece of tech that James had at home. He also had a smart water meter, and that smart water meter would lead later to one of the biggest twists in this case, one that no one saw coming.
Detectives went to the Bentonville Utilities department. They asked the department to give them James Bates water usage for the times after one am, after James said he went to bed.
According to the.
Affidavit, the data showed that fifty gallons of water flowed out between one and two am on November twenty second, and then ninety gallons of water went out between two and three am, so that was extremely high water usage. According to police, that residence had never used that much water since October of twenty thirteen.
Detectives believed that extra water.
Usage between one and three am happened because someone sprayed the patio down. The fight between Amazon and the Bentonville Police went on The Bentonville Police served another warrant and Amazon doubled down. According to court documents, Amazon said, quote, given the important First Amendment and privacy implications at state, the warrant should be quashed unless the court finds the state has met its heightened burden for compelled production of
such materials end quote. They also said, as a matter of course, they objected to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands. They doubled down and told the police department to see them in court. Meanwhile, national media, including Weis, was covering the story. They were talking about Alexa being put on the witness stand and making graphics of Alexa in a courtroom.
Nathan Smith, the prosecutor, was doing interviews. The case seemed to be headed to trial, but then right before it was due to go to trial, something kind of melodramatic happened.
James Bates gave his.
Consent to Amazon to have the recordings released. Apparently he and his attorney felt they would help exonerate him, and according to media reports, he was right, because the prosecutor and his team did not find anything useful in those recordings. So in November of twenty seventeen, the judge in the case dismissed the charges against James Bates. He was free, but some of Victor's friends and family were not satisfied with this. They believed they did not get justice. They
believed Victor had been murdered. Victor's widow, Christine, made it
very clear she did not agree with this decision. She felt prosecutors should have gone forward with the evidence they had, and she told CNN quote, I had to go home last night, sit down with my children and explain to them that the person who killed their father, who prevents them from Father's Days and Christmases and a regular life, is going to continue to enjoyed those things with his family without any recourse whatsoever for what he has done
to mind end quote. But the prosecutors said they really had nothing definitive. They just did not feel that they could prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.
By the way, the police and the prosecutor, Nathan Smith, were not in agreement on this. Actually.
A spokesperson for the Bentonville Police Department told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette that the police believed they had enough evidence to go to trial and they were not happy with what the prosecutor's office was doing. The tension between James Bates, Victor Collins's widow, and the police department was about to get a lot worse. Several months later, Victor's widow, Christine, filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit against James in Benton
County Circuit Court. In her lawsuit, which she started on behalf of Victor's estate, she claimed that James was at fault for his death. She said he provided the alcohol that Victor drank. She said at some point James drove Victor to the store and James bought more alcohol. The crux of her argument was she claimed that James had allowed Victor to consume to the point of extreme and obvious intoxication. She stated in her lawsuit that she believed that Victor and James had fought and it ended in
Victor's death. She also stated she thought James was negligent to leave Victor, who was extremely intoxicated in a hot tub alone. But James hit back. He claimed that not only was Christine's lawsuit. According to his lawyer Kathleen Zelner, who, by the way, side note made headlines for taking famous cases, including Stephen Avery's, which was documented on the Netflix series Making a Murder. Kathleen Zelner said that Christine's complaint had
been frivolous and completely without merit. In his lawsuit, James claimed the police department the Bentonville Police, were trying to frame him. He said that even when they realized he was not guilty, they tried to him up for murder anyway. In that lawsuit, James alleged that Bentenville police officers concealed relevant audio recordings and destroyed his phone to prevent him
from obtaining information from it. Stepping back from all this legal stuff for a minute, I think that this case is very interesting for another reason besides the tech, because it really speaks to another phenomenon that I see a lot in cases like this. Again, we don't know exactly what happened. Only two people know for sure, and unfortunately one of them is dead. I will say I do find some of James's claims credible. I don't know if
the police were maliciously prosecuting him, but it's true. There is this fine line sometimes between having an investigative theory and having tunnel vision, being closed minded, refusing to look at evidence that doesn't support your theory of what happens. It can be so easy for officers, even very experienced detectives, to get this type of tunnel vision. I think it's really important to always remember that. I say that to myself too always every day. Try to remember to have
an open mind. You can think you know everything about a case and it can turn on a dime. Another thing that's important to remember is that for family members, it is certainly understandable and natural to want to blame someone when a family member dies, especially if police have told you things. And sometimes I know people might want to hold onto these things. But the truth is, sometimes in life things happen. People have accidents, People do drown
in hot tubs. Sometimes I watch a lot of true crime and it's like I find myself thinking everyone who drowns in a hot tub or a bathtub was maybe killed by a disgruntled spouse. But that's not really the reality. There are so many accidental drownings in the United States, especially as we talked about in an episode a couple
of weeks ago, for young intoxicated men. James's suit was interesting for another reason because remember when I said, in addition to the Alexa, there were more pieces of tech in James's house.
Remember that water meter.
James claimed that police falsified those water memeats readings. He also claimed Christine wrote a letter to the prosecutor saying James was stalking her and her children in his car, but James claimed that he was able to prove he no longer owned that car during the time period of
his alleged stocking. James also filed a lawsuit against the police department, and in that lawsuit, not only did he claim that they were trying to frame him for Victor's murder, he claimed that Christine had told police she was worried about collecting on Victor's life insurance, so he alleged in his lawsuit that Christine had conspired with the police to create a story about a fight so she could collect that insurance money. The lawsuit also alleged the detectives working
the case gave the medical examiner, Charles Cocus, erroneous information. Basically, the lawsuit said, this is what motivated the medical examiner to say the manner of death was homicide. In October of twenty twenty, James dropped his lawsuit. The attorney for the police department told the Democrat Gazette that the police did not pay money or attempt to settle. He said
they had been completely vindicated. James's attorney stated they had found negligence and incompetence, but they said that they concluded that that was not enough for them to win a lawsuit. In twenty twenty two, James and Christine reportedly reached a settlement in their lawsuit. The amount was not disclosed. James did speak out. He talked to Channel five News. He said his life had been destroyed after these charges. He said, quote, it destroys every aspect of your life to be accused
of something like this. I mean, you're just everything spiritually, emotionally, financially end quote. He said that he respected the prosecutor, Nathan Smith, for doing the right thing. He said the prosecutor had integrity and that Nathan choosing to drop the charges was the correct move. He said he was speaking out because quote, I think the public needs to know that it happens, happened to you within the span of one night end quote.
James said that.
He had lost his job as a result of all this, He lost custody of his son, and you know that there are a lot of people out there in the community who probably still think, even though the charges were dropped, that he had something to do with it, or that there was something sinister that.
Happened that night.
But he's trying his best to move forward and put it behind him. What really happened to Victor Collins we will never know for sure, but I do want to introduce another possibility. As I said before, I've been looking a lot into accidental drownings lately. It turns out when someone's intoxicated, they can and do become overheated much more easily. At Victor's height and weight and blood alcohol level, this
was certainly a possibility. The one hundred and three degree water, if he sat in it for a long enough time, could have led to blood vessels dilating, His blood pressure might have dropped, and if he stood up suddenly, for example, that could have caused Victor to fame.
He could have hit his head which led to him drowning. Side note.
In my research, I found men are twice as likely to die in hot tubs as women, and about four times more likely in general to drown. Nearly eighty percent of people who drown or mail. This is according to the Cloward trial Lawyers, a law firm. They put a bunch of statistics up on their website. It reminds me a little bit of the recent case of Matthew Perry from Friends. He had ketamine in a system which he had apparently been using for a while, and he died
of an accidental drowning in his hot tub. The debate over Alexa keeps coming up. In twenty twenty three, a man in Wales named Daniel White was convicted of killing his wife Angie, after the recordings on his echo were turned over to police. He kicked open the bedroom door and cut his wife's throat with a Stanley knife, and in the recordings they could hear him sounding out of breath running down.
Police said to get his none life.
Alexa's data continues to be requested from Amazon in murder cases. It happened in a double murder in New Hampshire, and it was part of a Florida case recently as well. It even came up again in the Chris Watts case. Chris Watts, of course, was the man who killed his pregnant wife, Shanan and their two children when that FBI interrogator was in the room with Chris, I remember him saying, we know you have an Alexa in your home that
can record distress. Now, I know that law enforcement are legally allowed to light of suspects in America, so that might not have been true, but I do find myself wondering about that technology. Was that actually bs or could that be true? Are some of these devices programmed to record distress? And what implications does that have both for
murder cases but also for our privacy. So now, when I accidentally triggered the Alexa app and I don't realize it until I see that little blue ring recording, I do find myself wondering what happens if it here's a murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Katherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy
Tubbs for her research assistance. Music contributed by Ben Sale. This episode was sound designed and mixed by Noah camer. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C.
Crowley.
Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. You can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gone Pod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six ' one four or five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four or five.
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