Unspeakable

This is the story of the one. As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Grainger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs. from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers, all so that he can help students, staff, and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

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He's throwing a knife at a wall above the baby's head and sometimes, you know, seeing how close he could get to the baby. I'm Yardley. And I'm Zibby. And we're fascinated by true crime. So we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave, to sit down with us and share their most interesting cases. I'm Dan. And I'm Dave.

We're identical twins, and we're detectives in small-town USA. Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse. Dan investigates violent crimes. And together, we've worked on hundreds of cases, including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse, and child abuse. Names, locations and certain details of these cases have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

The true story you're about to hear describes a horrific case of physical and sexual child abuse, torture, and ultimately murder. Though we begin at the point when law enforcement was alerted to this case, it's important to remember that most of the crimes committed against the three-year-old victim had been going on for much longer than the six months we cover here.

It should also be noted that this particular case became the impetus for changing the way this small-town police department handled child welfare checks going forward. Needless to say, this is not an episode for young listeners.

Jay was a 20-year-old male with a history of drug and alcohol abuse as a teenager. He exhibited violence at home as a teen and often ran away. He was such a problem child that while he was growing up, he was sent to live with various friends and family members throughout the country, including California, Texas, and South Carolina.

But due to his violent, threatening behavior towards his female guardians as well as their children, he was always sent back to his parents' home after only a few weeks. Jay's history of crime and violence as an early teenager included vandalism, theft, electrocuting animals, and sexually abusing multiple children. He was fascinated with torches, lighters, electricity, and knives. He had a daughter whom he was prohibited from seeing by the state's Child Protective Services Agency.

because he'd been abusing her, too. Anne was a 21-year-old female who was a junior high school dropout with a heavy methamphetamine habit. She had two children of her own, a son... Clyde, and a daughter, Lindsay, both of whom she was physically and verbally abusive to. When Lindsay was three years old, Anne decided to move to a new state.

She took Lindsay with her, but left Clyde behind with his father. It was in her new town that Anne began a romantic relationship with Jay. Within a few months of meeting, they moved in together. This is when the life of three-year-old Lindsay became one of unspeakable suffering and abuse. Today, our guest on Small Town Dicks is retired Detective Don, who was the lead investigator on this case.

Welcome, Don. Thanks for being here. Thank you. My pleasure. This case came to attention of law enforcement when a relative of Ann told a co-worker that she had helped bury a baby that had died that belonged to one of her relatives, his co-worker, was quite concerned about that and came to the police and reported what she'd heard. We, in turn, went out and contacted this family member who pretty much just offered up that a relative of hers had a three-year-old.

baby that had died and she had been asked to help get rid of the body. She explained that they had buried the body out in a forest rural area and that the reason they didn't Report the death was because the child had suffered some recent injuries and The family member and her boyfriend were afraid that law enforcement

would blame them for the death, and they would get in trouble. So, and how long between this family member who contacted police who had helped bury this child, who I'm assuming is Lindsay, yes? Yes, it is. how long between the burial and her contacting police? Well, there were several days that went past before we were notified. So we're...

sort of behind the curve in trying to, you know, put the facts together on this case. It's a pretty outlandish story to begin with. And that whole... kind of family and family members were involved in drugs so at first our first concern is well we need to verify that this even happened but the family member agreed to

show us where the body was buried, and we responded as a group to that area, and we found the gravesite. Now, when the family member came to you... To give you this information, she was implicating herself, was she not? I mean, was this as much a confession on her end? Did she have that awareness? You know, she did in a way, but it was like we had to go to her.

Because, yeah, she had told a co-worker at a fast food restaurant, oh, yeah, you know, the other day I had to help bury my relative's baby, and it's like... So the co-worker came to you? The co-worker came, and then also Ann's mother eventually came to us too because she had heard the same information. But then we had to seek out the family member who told this. And then she willingly came down to the police department and said, oh, yeah, I helped bury the baby. And it was like...

Not a real big thing to her. So she was quite casual about it. Very casual. Was she also on drugs frequently? You know, you said this particular family. had a history of drug use was she one of those i mean i'm trying to wrap my mind around the type of person who could be so cavalier about that information you know i i think she did have a history and i think that was one of our concerns to try and figure out just the validity of her story but

During the Casey investigation, she wasn't wrapped up with them in their drug activity. I think she had a history of it, but it really wasn't one of the controlling factors in her participation. Okay, so you guys get this information. You have to verify the validity of it, and she takes you to the actual burial site, and this is where your investigation really kicks in. Is that correct?

Correct. And it's difficult to find. This is out like in a rural area, heavily timbered. They're like the roads really aren't marked. They're like, you know, logging road this or... Bureau of Land Management, road number, whatever. And so she had some difficulty locating it. But once she did, we were able to verify the...

Baby was in this grave. What did that grave look like? Well, it was up off the road somewhat. There were some items in the... gravesite with the baby, like a little pinky ring that was of some significance. We didn't know what at the time. And a few other little items, like maybe they had

placed them in there with the baby sort of ceremonially. But then to top it off, they threw the spare tire of the car on top of the baby before they... covered it with dirt to keep the wild animals from digging her up so to keep her from being discovered oh my god so and now the child had been in the grave about three days when we recovered but the temperatures had been fairly cool and with being in the ground and covered up luckily

the body was in pristine condition so we were able to conduct an autopsy and there was very little if any decomposition. which was very valuable in this case, and so we could figure out cause of death and document various injuries. In the opening narrative, I... say based on notes and things that we got from you guys about this case, that this ultimately changed the way your town did welfare checks on children. So that leads me to believe.

or perhaps not, that had you encountered this child before? Had there been any concerns about child abuse prior to the death of Lindsay? Yes. What that refers to is approximately a week. before the child died, there had been an anonymous report of a citizen. Someone called in anonymously and said they were concerned for the welfare of Lindsay.

at a particular apartment complex in the city and we sent patrol officers to the location to check on her they found the front door nailed shut which is an obvious from the inside yeah well it was nailed shut from the inside they couldn't get anybody to come to the door so they went around to the back And there's no lights in the apartment. But eventually they were able to contact an individual who identified himself as Jay. And they asked to see...

Lindsay, and looking through an open window in the back of the apartment, because that's where they were able to make access, they saw the baby. She had a... diaper on partially clothed but she was alert she was awake and she said hi to the police officers and they verified that she was okay, and they left. But they didn't get a good look at her. She was somewhat at a distance when they...

Sort of she said hi and waved to them and said, I'm okay, more or less. Correct. And it was also because they weren't getting full cooperation from Jay. There's, you know, a balance of what you can do. Do you have a crime? If you don't, how far can you push, you know, your contact? And there was actually a supervisor. at the scene and he felt that they had contacted the baby, they had established it was okay, and they really couldn't push their contact any further.

So they cleared with no further investigation. Were the officers who went to the welfare check aware of who Jay was? Because we know that he had a history of... sexual abuse and physical abuse of his own daughter, did they go into that situation knowing who they were dealing with? Or does that not happen on a general welfare check?

In this particular case, none of that information would have been available to the officers just from the criminal history in the computer they would have had access to. I see. Reading the case file, reviewing the notes, a lot of these instances or these incidents with sex abuse or physical abuse had happened out of state. And so we're talking about years ago, not just...

We're talking about 10 plus, 20 years ago now, where we didn't have the sharing of information like law enforcement agencies have nowadays. we wouldn't be aware of a pending investigation that was happening in a separate state. And when we run someone's criminal history, it's only going to show... convictions and arrests so unless he's been arrested for it that's not going to show up on our computers even now now all we'll see is that he was arrested or he was convicted but

Right, but nothing pending. Yeah, if it's pending, we're never going to get any visibility into that. Just a welfare check is not going to prompt a police officer to run somebody's CCH. And what's CCH? Computerized criminal history. Oh, got it. So Don, take us through, or Dave, because I know you as a detective of sex abuse and child abuse, you often have used this case as a...

to give presentations, so you're quite well-versed in it also. Take us through what the autopsy revealed and what ultimately you found out about what Anne and Jay had been. inflicting on this poor three-year-old girl? Sure. Once the body was recovered, the crime scene was processed. The body was taken for autopsy. And, of course, in this case... As in all cases, timing is so essential because we have suspects, clearly, already named. We have Jay and we have Ann. We know they're involved.

we don't know what killed the child but clearly this child has multiple injuries and the the one injury that is virtually impossible to describe or explain properly is a massive burn infection to her vaginal anal area of her body and it's been described to me a hundred times. It was described to me many times right then during the investigation and I still had no concept. of how bad it was and then once seeing photographs you know I realized but at the time if if the officers would have demanded

Jay take the diaper off of Lindsay two weeks earlier. Clearly that injury was there then. This wasn't something that occurred. a few days before her death. This was an ongoing injury that just kept getting worse and worse and contributed primarily to her death because it was infected. And she died of shock, basically, from this wound, which was just like burnt raw hamburger, the size of the palm of my hand. How does that?

How does that happen? I'm afraid of the answer, but that sounds like some insane kind of torture, and I can't wrap my mind around what was done to her. Well...

You have to understand the culture of someone like Jay. He's a dope addict. The only thing that matters to him is scoring methamphetamine, getting high. The typical, he has this new girlfriend. She's getting state aid to get an apartment and live, so he's grabbed onto her for, you know. that type of support. And, of course, she has a child from a different daddy, and that child is an irritant to him. He resents the child.

hates the child, and the process of his discipline. If you take his examples and his explanation of how this happened. at face value and he of course minimized what his actions were. How it started was he started disciplining the child and he has no sense of how to discipline a child. two-and-a-half to three-year-old baby. So what's he do? He starts spanking her on the bare bottom with a spatula or a wooden spoon, and oh gee, the spatula broke.

And so now it's got a jagged edge, but I kept using it. Oh, the next thing that happens is it opens wounds on the babies. buttocks area. Gee, I have to do something to treat the wounds. So first of all, baby is picking at the wounds. So what do I do? I tie the baby up. I tie her hands up behind her head, then take her legs and tie her feet up behind her head. No. And that way she can't touch the wound. And that's how I put her to bed.

Oh, my God. Well, how long do you leave her like that? Oh, no, only maybe eight to ten hours at a time. And that way she can't pick at the wound. Well, it's not getting better because we live in such a shithole. that we go to and I steal a bottle of rubbing alcohol because you know I'm going to treat the wound. So then I've got her tied up like this and I pour pure rubbing alcohol.

on this wound to heal it. Well, you know, that's not working. It's getting worse. So, you know, I have a blowtorch that I use to smoke meth. And I thought, well, maybe I should cauterize the wound. Oh, no. So while in that same position, I would take the flame. and put it over and try to dry out the pus and stuff by using the blowtorch. And gee, none of those things work.

And one day I walk into the bedroom and she's dead. So then I try lifesaving by taking a lamp cord, cutting it, fraying the two ends. plugging it in and then sticking the two wires on her chest, you know, trying to revive her. And gosh, that didn't work either. She's dead. Although there's a manned fire station directly across the street from the complex, it has a paramedic unit there 24 hours a day. I didn't want to call them because people would think because of her.

terrible condition that I might have done something to her and so I didn't want to get in trouble. So we decided to get rid of the body and tell everybody that The baby went to live with relatives in another state. This is the story of the one. As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Grainger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

All so that he can help students, staff, and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger. For the ones who get it done. It's never too early for Lowe's Black Friday deals. Snag some of our biggest savings of the season right now, like 25% off select pre-lit artificial Christmas trees.

And get yourself free selector wall, cobalt, or craftsman tools when you buy a select battery or combo kit before the Black Friday rush. Because everyone loves free stuff, right? Lowe's. We help. You save. Valid through 12-3, while supplies last. Selection varies by location.

Where Ann was and why was she okay with that? To my understanding, she gave him full disciplinary rights over the daughter. Where was she? When we talked to Ann... She was upset on one hand that her baby was dead, but on the other hand, well, you know, Jay was the one that I let discipline. He would get angry with me. You know, I tried to intervene and I thought he was spanking her too hard, but, you know, I didn't really say anything. And then I saw the injuries and...

I went along with him on trying to treat him. I didn't take her to the doctor because, you know, she was bruised and she was... injured and I was afraid that I would get in trouble and my dear lover Jay would get in trouble for her condition. So we tried to treat it ourselves. And she didn't really think there was anything wrong with tying this baby up in such a position. And so much of this stuff they told us.

We verified. They had cleaned the apartment after they had gotten rid of the body, and in the dumpster were all kinds of cords, you name it, shoestrings, torn bits of pillowcase.

that they had used repeatedly to tie the baby up, and it had sections of the baby's hair still in the knotted areas because he would tie her up in such a fashion that when it was time to... release her for the day or whatever they would just cut it away from her and so they had to find more items to use so we had just a big bundle of ligatures that had been used with

The baby's hair all entwined in it. We found, of course, the alcohol bottle. We found the torch. There were holes all over the wall. in the apartment because when Jay would get high, his favorite thing was to take a knife and throw it and stick it in the wall over and over. And there were people we interviewed that had gone over to that apartment and would hang out with Jay and Ann. And they said that many times the baby would be in a chair or the sofa.

directly under where Jay was throwing and practicing sticking the knife in the wall. So this idea that all he was trying to do was first discipline the child and then treat. the unfortunate uh injury you know is not the case i mean he's throwing a knife at a wall above the baby's head and that sometimes you know seeing how close he could get

to the baby. So he has a demented factor and he doesn't really explain too well what those actions, what positive nature those actions have. How could he? Do we know if he... physically abused Anne because I'm still trying to figure out to what degree was she frightened of him was she afraid he'd just be mad at her and that was an emotional deterrent or was she afraid that he would torture her as well because again

Where is the motherly instinct when you see your child hogtied with life-threatening wounds to not intervene? There was no indication that he had been physically... threatening to her I think she was infatuated with him he was a new love in her life I remember when we were preparing for this

case to record this story, hearing about how Lindsay had waved to the patrol officers. And it's curious to me that she was not just a zombie from the abuse. both verbal and obviously horrendous physical abuse. Is that battered child syndrome that she's experiencing? I think in this particular case, there is some of that in that... Lindsay was injured at that time. Clearly she was. But not to the point where her body was starting to fail her, you know, because she died of...

Continuous battering and then the shock that goes along with it. The shock killed her from just the continuous battering. And I describe it as battering. Jamie described it as... But when you pour rubbing alcohol on a giant burn injury like that, you can only imagine what your body physically does. Sure. when that happens, the pain. I mean, people pass out from that level of pain. So I think in this particular instance, when those officers were there, the treatments hadn't gotten that far yet.

But also when she waved at the police, because at that given point in time when she's laying there, she's not being abused. So everything's okay. Oh, my. The monster's not, you know, using a wire brush on my injuries or not pouring that fire medicine on my burn. And so everything's fine. And every minute of their day, if they're not getting pounded, punished, starved.

This is a great moment in my life. Hi, I'm fine. In their little minds, they're not saying, I'm little and I really need help because of... monster man there because at that very given point in time everything's okay and she didn't know anything different from what i understand she was around abuse her whole life even prior to relocating to this new town with... She was used to being hungry, thirsty, tied up, confined.

um in in that position that she was tied up in all the time eight even he admits eight to ten hours it was probably much longer at times because when tweakers are tweaking times relative, and if he's estimating those hours, it's probably double that, more than that. And one of the things that I heard, you know, Dave and I have discussed this case before, because Dave has done so many presentations on it.

When they did the welfare check in, Jay stonewalls the police at the door. And you're not coming in. He's not cooperative. They're trying to talk their way in. And he... disappears from the door for a little bit correct right and there's some speculation that he uses that time to go cut her free from these restraints so she looks like situation normal

that everything's fine, she's just in bed. So there's some speculation. Who knows what happens in that house in that period of time that he is away from the door and not engaging with the officer. There's also speculation that the girl waves at the officers out of relief, like, hey, somebody's finally here to help me. I kind of tend to side with Dawn that right now I'm not being abused, that I'm fine.

Was Ann also on drugs? She was a meth addict. And, you know, part of this apartment, I mean, you can't really describe how filthy it was. There's no lights. I mean, there's power on. But there's no lights because these people took every single light bulb in the place and smoked meth out of the light bulb. And that's more important than even being able to see. So how did Ann and Jay get their money to get meth? Well, a lot of the money came from Ann's, you know, welfare, social services.

They used that. They also had family that helped them out. They didn't come, especially the mother. from a horrible, horrible family life. And some of the relatives would routinely give money, bring food, clothing, as much as they could. They also were kept on the outside, you know. Jay wouldn't let the grandmother in to see the baby. You know, he would take what she had.

bring over but then it was like all right get out of here and stuff like that so they just kept the child isolated and but they had all kinds of resources and you know is this

case progressed and we learned the information but we hadn't recovered the body, we conducted surveillance, 24-hour surveillance on Jay and Ann. Because we had so many questions still about cause of death, details in that respect. We really didn't want to take them on, so to speak, until we had more information. It's so critical to just...

get as much intel as you can before you take on people like this and interview them about crimes like this. So during that 24 hours of surveillance, they were frolicking around the apartment. complex. They had a bicycle and they were riding double. And it took me back to the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were the love interest, I think, for both of those men.

There's a scene where they're on a bicycle and they're just, you know, riding around. That's exactly what the scene reminded me of, of Jay and Ann. They were... Giving each other piggyback rides and riding double on this bike just around the parking lot. And it was like a big total burden had been lifted. And this is within 24 hours of them. burying a three-year-old baby. I remember in researching this case, yet another lie Jay and Ann were planning to tell authorities, which was that...

Lindsay had been kidnapped. By complete strangers. Yeah. Instead of having been sent away to relatives somewhere out of state. And just picturing them coming up with all the various... ways to dodge any responsibility whatsoever. It's so, it's... It's dark. It's so dark. So you've been led to the body, and the autopsy, even at first glance, obviously reveals that there's been a tremendous amount of physical abuse inflicted on this child. How...

How long then does an investigation like that take when you have two pretty good suspects and the body and obvious wrongdoing? What's the protocol? How does that go? Well, every case is different. You have to balance all those things. And timing is so key to these cases because... You know, so many times if we would have been there two hours earlier, you know, a key part of this or a key piece of evidence was still there and we missed it. Or, gosh, it's a good thing we waited because...

You know, the bad guy went and told somebody else. And so it's just timing. And sometimes it's just total luck on how that falls together. In this case, we do. We have murder suspects. free out roaming around but we really don't know what killed the baby and the info we're getting from the family member is Oh, the baby, you know, just died. And the only thing, you know, was we got rid of the body just because people would think something bad happened. So that was the only...

wrong, bad decision we made was that we got rid of the body. Yeah. And this is the third party talking about it. And so it's like, well, we have to figure this out. We have to know before we go into these people and start. pressing him because in interviews, especially the severity of a crime, you have one chance, one chance at these people. And if you screw it up, you live with that. And a year down the road.

If you're not successful in the interview, those people, the worst possible thing could happen, and they could walk out of a courtroom free. So there's huge pressure to...

conduct these interviews and be successful. So our plan, as we're moving along, everything is so fluid, is, hey, we've found out that Ann has an appointment with her. at the welfare office, you know, that Monday morning. We've got the baby, sending it for the autopsy. It's going to happen Monday morning. We'll take Ann off.

on the bus, bring her down to the police department, and interview her as we're getting info from another detective who's at the autopsy. And we'll build our case so then we can head for... And, you know, it worked. She luckily got on the bus to go to the meeting. We stopped the bus away from the apartment. So Jay wouldn't know. So you pulled the bus over. Pulled the bus over. An entire public bus. Badass. Snagged her. Got her down.

To the police department. Sorry, can I interrupt one more time? Sure. What is that like snagging someone off a public bus? Was she willing? Was she surprised? What was she like? She was surprised. But, you know, how surprised can she really be? She knows what she did. Cops are here. I'm going to act surprised. But, oh, boy, you know, there's problems in my future. What do you say to her? Hi.

We're the police. You need to come with us. How many people were on the bus? Well, no smattering. I mean, they didn't, you know, it's probably not the first time this happened to some of those other folks, you know? So you get on the bus, and do you handcuff her, or you just put her in the car? Didn't handcuff her. She was wanted on a misdemeanor warrant, something small. failure to appear on some misdemeanor. So we had an advantage in that. You didn't have to take her into custody for murder.

We didn't even want to broach that particular subject at that time. So we were able to take her into custody on a warrant. That was pre-existing? Pre-existing. And you found that out? once you came upon this case or I don't understand warrants like if there's a warrant out for somebody's arrest doesn't that mean they just instantly are arrested or that can sort of exist.

Yeah, the warrants can exist for quite some time, especially a misdemeanor low-level warrant. People aren't actively looked for when warrants like that happen. And they happen so regularly, you'd be wanted. get arrested on the warrant, get released from jail. Then you still don't show up when they tell you to come back on the original case, and so there's a warrant again, and it's pretty much routine. I see.

we had that uh you know in our pocket we were able to take her into custody because if we don't have that and we don't know her that well and she stands up on the bus says i'm not going with you what do you mean you know i'm not going with you then she's called our hand. And if we don't have that warrant, we can't just get her in a headlock and drag her down there. We have to arrest her. What crime? We have to arrest her in some crime related to the baby.

And then we're laying out our case. And then maybe some tweaker on the bus gets off the bus and runs back to the apartment and tells Jay they just got her. something about the baby and our whole case now has changed dramatically so a lot of it has to do with luck and timing and in this particular case we were lucky she had a warrant for arrest.

And the timing was they were separated by time and space, and we could take her off first because, you know, we've already determined, based on what we know so far, you know, Jay's the main culprit. So we get her down to the police station. She minimizes. She denies. First she tells us that Lindsay's with family members and, you know, with the babysitter somewhere else, you know.

And that doesn't last too long. Finally, she admits to participating in burial. The baby died. Sorry, excuse me. That doesn't last long because... Do you show your hand at that point to the degree that you go, well, we know she's not alive? Do you show photos of the autopsy or anything or no? No. Because it's going on simultaneously. It's going on, and it's going on in another city.

a hundred and some miles away so and this is before a lot of electronic media where we can get stuff sent to us immediately and that does come into play later on that day when we when we get Jay and because we have a detective up there at the autopsy and he's checking in with me regularly because we want all this data all this information we need to gather it so when we take these folks on the one-time opportunity we get we need to be as close up on the curb.

as we can. But when this detective would call me, he was one of the most low-key individuals I've ever met. He never got excited about anything. Al was a very good detective, very thorough, but he was just so low key. You could never, he never got upset. He never got excited. He was just the same old Al all the time. So he would call me and give me updates, and he would say things like, this is pretty bad. Okay. Why? What do you have? She had...

a burn, pretty good sized burn in the area of, you know, her crotch area. Okay. Well, what killed her? We're not sure yet. She's got a lot of bruises. She's got some other injuries, but, you know, Dawn, it's pretty bad. Okay, Al. All right, thanks. And I would... get these updates from him. But nothing really very specific. Well, that was, to Al, what that meant was, this is the most horrid thing I've ever seen in my life. But...

I had no idea based on the way he was explaining it because of his personality. And it wasn't until days later when I got the pictures, it was like, fuck out. What do you mean this is pretty bad? I mean, I have, you know, seasoned cops that look at these pictures and would literally drop to their knees. I had media folks that wanted to see the photos and one guy, a veteran reporter, collapsed.

And broke into tears. I mean, fuck, Al. This, come on, you know? So in hindsight, it was probably one of the important things. Important why? Well, it's important to have Al at the autopsy because he's providing information. And one of the things you're going to want when you're going in to talk to Jay about how this child died is...

What's the cause of death? And that's what you learn at the autopsy. And is Jay going to say that there's a medical reason why this child died? Was it an infection? Was it septic? things like that? Or are you seeing signs of homicidal violence, torture, things like that? And Al is able to give those things to Don, and Don can direct his interview.

Because of that information. Right. Those photos tell a serious story. Absolutely. Later in the day, we went and picked up Jay. He was still in the apartment. He had no idea that Ann had been... taken into custody so you know that part of our plan worked he uh he

He also said that, to his knowledge, the child was with family members, babysitters somewhere else. But he was willing to come down to the police station and talk to us about it because we were concerned that... there might be some type of issue with the baby. And did you say we're concerned, we think maybe Anne has something to do with it, we're hoping you can help us out with that so that maybe you were going to shift the blame to somebody other than himself, or you don't even go that deep?

to your mislead? Well, you only go as deep as you have to keep all of your options available. And with him, we had the... the information we provided him was we had gotten a report something had happened to the baby and we were asking for his help and pretty vague um he agreed to come with us And when we got down to the police department, that's when the interview really started. And how does that interview go? Can you take us through the sort of cliff notes of that? Sure.

When I conduct an interview, I never go into the interview consciously thinking of the way I'm going to handle it, the techniques I'm going to use. If you sort of pre-plan or pre-prepare for something like that, and you go in, and after the first couple questions, you realize the person's not going to respond to that plan, then...

You're on the defensive. You're back on your heels. So I've had a lot of folks that I've worked with, other detectives, and maybe they've joined an investigation where they'll want to... talk before the interview on how are we okay what's the plan how are we going to go in and do this and i brush them off it's like don't don't get me into that mindset i don't want to formulate a plan until i walk through the door and make eye contact

these folks they so desperately want to try and steer these interviews anyway that I want all the power I want all the information I want the advantage every possible way because they have the ultimate advantage. They know exactly what happened and they have the power to end that interview at any time. So your approach is quite intuitive in that sense.

You get a read on the room and the individual, and you're on your toes, it sounds like, from the get. It's a dance, and we call it that a lot of times. Who's going to go in and dance with this person? And it's like... That's my favorite part, is dancing with these people. Because I like to try these cases in my mind as I'm interviewing them. When I walk in that door...

I'm trying my case right then because you can do all the hard work, work these cases to the bone, do great jobs like so many of our detectives do. But if they walk out free a year later because a jury fined about guilt, it does not matter at all what you did. Period. None of that counts as anything. So the ultimate goal.

this conviction in court. So you go into these cases, you go into that interview room, and it's a dance, and you're drained when you're done. How long does the interview take, and then do you arrest him for murder after that one interview?

Yes. We interviewed him. I interviewed him for most of that morning, and then he agreed to put it on a videotape confession. In that, I think the tape itself maybe took about an hour. Wow. And after it was done, he was informed that he was being arrested for the murder of Lindsay and was taken away. And was Ann arrested for murder as well? She was. The ultimate goal is for them to be convicted. What is it like for you on a human level? And then... Where does it go? Where does it go?

That's an interesting question because I've always sort of wondered with all the different cases and all the pathetic situations and crimes that I've seen. you know, school shootings, multiple dead children. Where does that go? And I think there's a couple of ways that I... probably unconsciously deal with that. And one is I don't get too close to the victim's family on these cases.

And, you know, they're really the ones that we're trying to provide closure for. And I've found that I always keep them a little bit at arm's length, and I justify that by... rationalizing that to do a professional job, I need to not let any kind of emotion take over and being tight or close. with the family, you'll feel their emotion and want to help them out more so than I think I'm really prepared to do.

Although, you know, I understand I'm working for them and I feel terrible for them, I try and keep them a little bit at arm's length. Sure. The other thing that I do is on a case like this, it's like... Okay, this case is done. He's been charged or he's been convicted. I got to be ready to go for the next one. You know, law enforcement is a job where really anybody can do it 90%.

percent of the time i mean it really is you just you know you're you're doing your job nothing really big happens and you know it's it's pretty easy it's that 10 of the time that when shit hits the fan, that you have to be prepared. And so I'm a little bit critical of some cops, especially nowadays cops, that, you know, they...

Everything's fine when they do the 90%, but when they do the 10%, then they need a lot of comforting and counseling. That's really what you sign on to do. It's that part of it. really most anybody else can do the rest right plus you see so much of it that you do a little bit get numb to it i mean you really do i mean

A normal person might see a dead baby once in their life, if ever. And these guys, me, we see them all the time. We hear about these things all the time. So, you know, you never get used to it. And if you do get used to it, you ought to get out of the profession. One of the things I always remembered is this stupid saying from a guy that really wasn't pro-law enforcement. Hunter Thompson was...

I wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But he had a saying that I actually had printed up and posted on my desk for many years that said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Both Jay and Anne were brought to trial for the death of three-year-old Lindsay. During the final arguments, one of the female jurors began to weep uncontrollably and repeat over and over again, God, that poor baby.

She was removed and replaced by an alternate. After deliberating for only four hours, the jury found Jay guilty of murder. He received the death penalty. Ann was also found guilty of murder and received life in prison without the possibility of parole. Small Town Dicks is produced by Zibby Allen and Yardley Smith for Paperclip Limited, with editing from Logan Heftel and Yardley and Zibby.

Music for the show was composed by John Forrest. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever else you like to listen to your podcasts. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at SmallTownDicks. Also, visit our website, SmallTownDicks.com, for more information and to leave questions and comments for the team.