The Secret Girlfriend

and assumption feels exactly right. You're really trying to reorient and reboot really the entire investigation. Every part of me wants to believe that my son could have survived. Every part of me. It looks like they are handcuffing a suspect to bring them in for an arrest. My name is Chaparral Wells. This is a story of my on Courtney, a young black man in a fancy car who wound up with a bullet in his back in front of a Chicago police station. And it's the story of my

search for the truth. This is somebody, everybody, somebody every day, No bide, no, no, that's right. This is a video of Courtney sleeping. Babe still want to go out. It's taken a few years ago by his girlfriend at the time, Roseo. Babe, you still want to go out? Churn up. Hmm Yeah. Roseo and Courtney they were one of those on again, off again couples, but everyone knew that Rosseo was the love of his life. She always felt like a daughter to me and still does. Can you show us your tattoo?

This is it, but it's um actually Courtney's name, and the date we started officially dating. Um. It's kind of funny. It was eleven, twelve thirteen. I made him way to day to ask me out the next day so it could be eleven. Corney was very caring and for Rosseo, she received all of that. He'd make up breakfast, he'd packed her lunch. He even sometimes he watched her niece for her. He's like, oh, this is a kid I'm taking to school and babysitting her And I'm like, you're

doing what? Yeah. He just loved kids. Rosie and Courtney joining World Ventures at the same time. She also got a BMW as a sales reward. Courtney's was my room and Rossel's was Champagne. I'm kind of competitive, so as soon as Corney pulled it out, I was like, I have to go get mine too. But at World Ventures, Courtney had a lot of other female co workers. You know, Courtney really loved women. That's Maryland. She worked with Courtney.

She saw all the drama around him. There was always an incident with with something like, oh, you know, you're flaring with this girl or you're talking to this girl. She can't be playing games and having like all these different like you know, girls that you're talking to, like we're here to run a business. When I think about all these other women that it things that he had a relationship with, they were to me just filling the gap. Here I am talking to Alison from the Invisible Institute

about all of this. Don't know why he and r broke up because he was shams. Oh she found out that. I knew Courtney had a lot of little girl friends, but what I didn't know is that his love life was getting in the way of his job. I found this recording of Courtney talking about his setbacks at work. You think about me is that you know, it looks good on the outside, but sometimes it can be bad behind closed doors, and you know, and that's that's that's

the obstacles that you're gonna have to go through. You're gonna have to be able to take a punch in. Courtney's boss set him down more than once and told him he needed to stop dating people from World Ventures. They even removed him from the leadership team. But Courtney started seeing another co worker anyway, so they had to keep it a secret. Her name was Alma, and the night he was killed, Courtney was on his way to her house. When word got out that Courtney was shot,

all of his friends started calling each other. They were trying to figure out who Courtney was going to see at that hour. Eventually they landed on Alma. A lot of people were very very up that were Courtney's coworker, Maryland again, because first of all, we had no idea, like no idea that you know, they were even like talking or messing around or anything. She lives in a

really rough neighborhood. Maybe an exploit for saw something and got upset that Cortney was there, Like you know, so many things ran through our head, and of course the first thing to do is blame her, because why were you even there. A few hours after Courtney died, the police went to see out mom and they drove her to the hospital. Lots of Courtney's friends were there. Courtney's

friends were grilling Alma for information. She told them that she didn't hear anything, she didn't see anything, just that Courtney had text her saying he was outside her house and then he never showed up. I wonder if they would have blamed her if that hadn't if they hadn't been romantically involved. I feel like people do that to women. You know, you could see the pain on her face that she felt some sort of guilt, and I told her at that that very day, you can't feel guilty,

Corney Courtney. Ultimately, Cortney made the choice. He unfortunately made a choice that was deadly for him. The more I learned about Almah, the more I understood this wasn't just the hookup situation. It was starting to get serious is and he was trying to bond with her kids, and he was over there at three or four nights a week. It had been more than a year since my last meeting with police. In their latest case update in Courtney's

file just stated that they had no updates. I needed to know who shot my son and clearly the police weren't going to be any help, so Alison and I we went on without them. We kept going through Courtney's phone, trying to understand not only who he was talking to, but what was going on in his life in the exact time of his interactions that last night. We got help from this digital forensic expert, Dr Ashley Podowski, who volunteered her time to go through Courtney's phone. Hi, Ashley,

how are you. I'm doing good. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. She has these tools to scrape every bit of information off the phone and organize it so we can find any clues that were there. So I'm actually sending you something right now. I mean, she's got an email from drop box. She's based in South Dakota, so we had to send her Cordiney's phone. I was nervous that the phone could get lost, because you know, that was all that I had of him, and it

was evidence. So I was just nervous of it leaving my presence. These are precious things to me. It was about a week and a half when we received the phone back. It came back safe and sound, thank god. Plus it came back with a detail log of all Cortneys calls texts with time stamps as accurate as they can get. I calmbed through them with my family. When did he make the nine one one? Carl at one sixty three, so from one level, it had to be

about one twelve. Now after this, okay, I'm going We were looking for signs that Courtney was in trouble, that something was going on, but we didn't see anything. The only thing that we found was him goofing off with his friends and also singing and dancing and making videos. Then we looked at the day he was killed. I wanted to see exactly when Courtney and Alma were in touch. He sent her a text in top of the morning

at am. She rolled back a few hours later, and then they were texting all afternoon, lots of heart emojis. He messaged her again about ten PM from a World Venturous presentation. He was in the city training a new recruit Casey. Everybody was really happy like um. By the end of the night, we ended up listening to music and he was wrapping, which was really cool. I found the photo of Cordney circled up around a kitchen table with some friend He's wearing his favorite red hoodie and

everyone is holding Dixie cups. Corney is doing a hand gesture and basically it's the rock on sign. Corney was always doing the rock on side and pictures rock on dude. You know, right about midnight, Courtney text Alma saying I need to book a massage super sore. Then Alma text him back, I got you. Corney says when, and she wrote today. Then just before one in the morning, Corney headed to her house and Belmont Craigan. On the way there, Courtney was just being his social butterfly self. He was

on his phone. He was talking to friends and chatting on Facebook Messenger. He texts Alma, I'm outside. She texts back, what really, and he was like, yo, okay, I'm going, she said, meaning that she was headed downstairs to open the gate. From the phone records and parking tickets that we found, we know that Courtney and Alma had this

little routine. He drive down her street, cut through the alley, and parked by the church where he could leave his car overnight, right by this gold statue of Jesus arms open wide. Courtney would text Alma saying he arrived, so she go downstairs and opened the gate for him. They did this several nights a week, over and over again. Ali Park Alma, Ali Park Alma. And that night on March four, Corney sent his last text to Alma at one eleven in the morning, but he never showed up

at her door. I've been uh living in ministering here for nineteen years already. This is Father Richard Ballas. He's a Catholic priest at the church on the corner St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr. Father Ballas lives on the second floor of the church rectory. I know there was a shooting movie here right in front of the rectory between the two streets there. I remember that, and they put flowers there, and but I don't remember the name. I'm probably numb to a lot of this. And what about

that police station right there? Do you have any interaction with the police there ever? Well, yeah, the the policemen very good to us. We used to have perish carnivals every year, and of course for security we had the police at that. The previous pastor stopped it because of games the gangs in Belmont Craigan. It feels safe during the day. There's parks and schools, but at night it's a different story. I had one, two, three, four or

five six eight cameras. This is Jerry Brito. He's a mechanic who's lived in Bellmont Craigan for twenty five years. Down the street from the church where Courtney used to park to go to Alma's. Jerry's put up cameras all over his property. He says, some years are quiet, some years are really rough, like when someone moves out and some of the people move in and they start selling drugs, or they have people are joining gangs and they bring

the gangs over in Bellmont Craigan. The gangs are mostly Hispanic. You've got the stylers, the Royals, and the Patucos. Then there's the Four Corner Hustlers, a black gang. They've all got their territories. Jerry says the police come to his house all the time to pull his camera footage because the city's cameras don't always work. They even got his videos for Courtney's case. They always respectful and they'd tried to do the best they can with what they have.

And when the city's cameras don't work, the gang bangers know it. If they've been shooting. They know that they can get away with it. To the camera is not working, that's a problem, if you ask me, He's right. Broken cameras are a serious problem around Chicago. Citizens pay for them to help solve crimes, but often they don't work, like the camera on the corner by Alma's place, the most critic called camera. Courtney's police file says that camera

didn't capture anything because of a DVR error. Chapralle and I've gone over this quite a lot. She's still suspicious. It just tells me, like this whole pod cameras and all these things, I just don't trust it that camera would have shown Courtney going down that street and turning into the alleyway. We've gone out to the neighborhood several times to track down other cameras to see if police missed any. Did they get this one? I wonder if they got the better Yeah, so they have cameras too.

We don't know if they get that. We did find cameras that were not noted in their reports, but it's possible they were put up after Courtney's death, so we didn't have any footage, but we knew there had to be more information out there. I believe that somebody knows something, somebody saw something, and it just takes a lot of courage um from somebody to tell what they saw. All

the police file on Courtney's case was thin. They only documented interviews with a handful of people, So we decided to go back and reinterview everyone the detectives talked to. That meant it was time to talk to Alma, Courtney's secret girlfriend. Alma and I haven't really been in touch, but now Allison really wanted to talk to her. So almost two years after Courtney's death, I text Alma to

see if she would meet with us. As I was texting her back and forth, Alma mentioned something something that she never told me before, and I think it's totally crazy that she will withhold this information. She said she heard gunshots the night Courtney died. I asked her that question the day after Courtney was killed, I asked her did she hear anything? Did she see anything? And this girl never once told me that she heard gunshots the night that he died. Hi there your Alma. Hi'm Allison.

Very nice to meet you. Thank you for setting us side the time. This is Bill in February, I arranged a meeting. We met up with her on the North side of Chicago in Uptown, where Alma works at a cell phone shop. I remember it was freezing outside, so we used a conference room in a lawyer's office nearby. Yeah, yeah, I know, you were probably like, oh, I don't want to go out, and now we're literally right around the corner. I sat next to Alma, Bill and Allison sat across

the table. All the microphones and the fact that we were in a law office made it feel sort of like an interrogation. And Alma, she definitely looked tense. The way she was sitting. It was like she was protecting herself. I was just praying that she would finally tell us everything she knew. I was just ready to put myself in her train of thought and let her tell her story. Alma played us some videos of Courtney when we first sat down. This was like one of those good morning videos,

like he was awake, was everybody else doing? It's him? And he was always trying to make me laugh because I was always really serious. That was him all the time. He'll say the USA or not the US, that let's get it. Did the people you work with now that you guys were romantically involved. No, okay, so it was sort of on the down though, Yes, okay, how did you feel about that? Um? I was fine with that. It was it was a little bit complicated, just because

of the way that our team is set up. They've been keeping their relationship a secret for months, but Courtney had become close with her three kids. Well, I told my son that Courtney passed and he asked me what happened, and I told him that he was shot, and he just started crying. Did he ask a lot of questions? Um? No. After that, he just he didn't want to be outside. He would always tell me we had to hurry up.

Do you sense that the kids are still afraid? For a long time, they were like coming home from school, my son would say, we have to starry up because I don't want to die. We went back to that night. We asked Alma to walk us through what she remembered. H He messaged me like around close to one in the morning, and then uh, he asked me if I was home, if he could come over. She said she was in her room listening to music on her headphones and her roommate Brianna came in to tell her that

she was making a late night run to Walgreens. As she was telling me that we heard two gunshots and a car drive off. And was that before or after you'd gone downstairs to be ready to open the door. No, that was before we heard the gunshots, like as I was receiving the text message that he was there. So the text message came in and we heard the gun shots at the same time. She went downstairs to open the gate as usual, but Courtney wasn't there. What did

you think happened at that point in time. I mean, I was a little bit worried, but it's not It's not unlike him to change plans quickly. Because I almost said she heard gunshots right as she got Courtney's text saying I'm outside. It was one eleven am. But that just didn't make sense to us because we knew that four minutes after Courtney text Alma, he was still alive and well. He was messing around on his phone Facebook, messaging his friend Brandon, who had just gotten a new job.

Courtney wrote to Brandon, nice, bro, You're gonna kill it man. Courtney sent that text message to Brandon at one fifteen am. That was four minutes after he texts Alma and the Forends that expert confirmed those times. Allison showed Alma the timeline we put together, so we have if you're hearing the shots here, obviously he's not gonna be doing He's not gonna be text you know, saying to Brandon, nice bro,

you're gonna kill it man. So does this at all like revising your brain what might have happened, or like when you might have heard the shots? Does this refresh anything for you? It doesn't make sense. Okay, but you're you're pretty competent that you heard the shots before you said, okay, I'm going to go open the door. It was between here and here. My text messages were back to back. Did it sound like distance or did it sound really close? It sounded close. It was two of them pretty like

back to back. It sounded like they were either on the street or like on the block over, but they were close. It didn't sound like it was just a when you heard the shots, as you think, oh that that could be Courtney or did it not even cross your mind? It didn't cross my mind because around that time, like there was just a lot of things going on in the neighborhood, so we had heard gunshots before, you know, and it was it wasn't something that was like out

of the ordinary. We kept asking Alma to replay this moment. Was she really sure about her timing? Almost in her bedroom with her roommate, there's music on her headphones, and then they hear gunshots? How many shots too? And did you all make eye contact or acknowledge that you had both just heard shots? Or was it just so commonplace that you wouldn't even have a reaction. Really well, I had my headphones on, so I took him on off, and she was like, did you hear that? And I

said yeah, but I wasn't sure. So after that, she said that she was going to the store, and I told her that she should wait because we didn't know what was going on. She went to all grants, did she see anything not on her way there? Um, when she was on her way back from the store, she said that there were police officers with flashlights looking up and down the street like they were looking for something. So I couldn't understand why I took almost so long

to speak up about this. I specifically asked her after corney died more than once. If she had heard any shots, I was piste off and I know I'll both positive. I asked, did you hear anything? But I never recalled you saying anything like that, So I was like, when you said it, I was like, because we were we were piecing together at the timeline, we we had to figure that somebody else would have had to have heard something.

So that's why that question I posed that to you, And so I was like, okay, because that was like an important piece of information. Just at the time I wasn't sure. I felt like I had to be sure. Even if Alma wasn't sure, she still should have told me something. And she didn't even tell the detectives when they came to our house that morning, she said no. One't even asked her about the shots. Instead, they asked

her about the password to Courtney's phone. To his phone, I told him he has a kN iPhone, it's his fingerprint. He didn't never passwords his finger print. By the time that we got the phone back, the phone's on locks, so they probably had to take his finger and to lock his phone. The police got into Courtney's phone just hours after he died. They put in their report that Courtney's pass code was his birthday. Now, I know that couldn't be true because he had way too many girlfriends

to do something like that. When the police talked to Alma, they wanted to see her phone too, and they just looked at it and they said it wasn't gonna be much help, and they just handed me back my phone. How long did they have her phone far, maybe like thirty seconds, just opened it and he looked up and down. And they never asked you if you heard anything, or they didn't consider your witness. No. After that, they just gave me their business card and they said that they

were going to call me to speak with me. And after that I never heard from them. There's just a few lines and Courtney's foul about the police talking to Alma. But then there's another report about one of Alma's ex boyfriends. His name was Kevin, but he also went by Hawk. They all worked together. Alma and Courtney actually met for

the first time at a birthday party for Hawk. Alma said Hawk Kevin tried to start a fight with Courtney that now, Courtney says something to me, like, you know, we were at a birthday party, people were having drinks. Um he said something to me him and I laughed it off. Kevin overheard, and the next thing you know, there was like an exchange of words, and then Kevin tried to fight Courtney. I think he was just jealous of how Courtney was as a person and how other

people reacted to him. I think that was really it. It wasn't anything else, someone told the police. After Courtney died, Hawk posted then deleted a message on Facebook saying sorry Courtney, you can take that different ways. But then three of Courtney's friends remember another message he posted on Snapchat saying something like, Lord, forgive me because would he have even

known that Courtney was on rout to your place morning? No, that day, after I came back from the hospital, he came to my house and he asked me what Courtney was doing on his way to my house. So he was surprised to learn that you two were seeing each other. I don't think, I mean, no one knows until now. And again, you didn't feel like he could be involved in this in some way, No, like no chance or like probably probably not. Since Courtney died, I've been asking

Alma about her other ex boyfriends. She told me one was in prison. We looked it up. He was in for attempted murder. Another X was just getting out of jail when Courtney was killed. But all the way in New Jersey. We asked Alma if she had any suspicions of who killed Courtney. No, not, who might have done it. I know that um, Like down the street from where I live, there's a house that UM this guy like he's you know, he's a game member. He lives there.

We ended up getting into the conversation of what happened to Courtney, and he told me he's like, it wasn't anyone from this neighborhood. He's like, I think someone mistook him for someone else. Wait a goddamn it, Al'm waa talk to this guy and he knows something about what happened to my son. And she never told me this either. Oh my god, I had the whole my tongue. Y'all. When did you have the conversation with the guy who lives in that house about what he said happened? Um?

It was I don't remember the exact day. It was like two days after I got punched in the face, so like my eye was a little swollen, and I had like a hoodie on and um when I was walking down the street, he saw me with my eyes swollen and he asked me, you know who hit me? Said no, I got punched the face. Do you mind telling us what happened? Alma looked over at me. Bill and Alison looked at me too. I hadn't told them about this, the punching incident. It happened at my place.

A couple of days after Courtney died. I was at Chapelle's house. Uh, talking to someone there and what happen? Punched in the face? What who chappar? Can you enlighten us? Is Courtney's cousin. This was honestly pretty embarrassing for me because when I invited Alma to my house, I wanted her to feel comfortable, but then this crazy cousin of Courtney's physically attacked Alma. We were just talking. They asked

me what happened that day. I told him exactly what I remembered, and then in the middle of the conversation, they said, you killed my cousin and they punched me in the face. Why did the person accuse you of that? I don't know. That's just what he said. Everybody was trying to find out what happened to Courtney, and everybody was trying to lay blame from where because it just didn't make sense. My family was like, he shouldn't be

over in that neighborhood. That's that's the Hispanic neighborhood. Why is he over there? He's with that girl, you know. That's how they felt. This is why things were strained between me and Almas since Courtney died. Why will she cooperate with us after I let her get punched in the face. But let's get back to Alma's neighbor. The guy who seemed to know something. Do you know his name? I don't. I just you know what he looks like. Yeah, he's uh, shorter than myself. He has really long hair,

like don't pass his waist, and he has a few tattoos. Um, but he's old. Is walking around the neighborhood. The day after Courtney was shot, he said that his house was rated by him by the police. They came in searching his house. I never seen anything about this guy and the police file, no raid, no nothing. But I had a vague recollection of him too. I remember like after the shooting when we were all in Belmont Craigan passing

out reward flyers. I do remember a man with long black hair standing on his deck talking on his cell phone. Just then a bunch of kids came out on bikes to see what we were doing, as though he sent them over or something. It felt strange, but there was so much going on at the time. I just fouled it away. Thank you so much time. This was like therapy. Never talked about him right. We said goodbye to Alma and headed back into the colde. The next day, my

aunt Kim came over. Kim and I were raised like sisters because we're so close in age. I need to see the report that the police took on her. I told her all the details of our interview with Alma. Reread this stuff being I'm saying, I'm like, oh that, mommy. I told him about Alma hearing shots after all the problems with her timeline in this new story about the guy with the long hair, all the stuff the police had missed. They barely asked her anything when they talked

to her hours after Courtney died. They didn't speak to her roommate either. They just never followed up when you when you getting somebody and you interview right now, you still actually new same question, just to see if it lays up. You want to know what you are. Did you see anybody running? How many shots? None of that stuff was asked. Police hadn't given me any updates, hadn't

told me what they thought happened to Courtney. But it turns out Nurse Hawkins from the e R said police told her that very night Courtney came in what they thought happened a car jacking, and they they still want to He tried the car jacking on and he sped away. They shot into the car. He drove to the police station and asked for help, saying that he had got shot, and that's when they called the paramedics. This whole thing is just get stranger and stranger by the minute. I

have theories in my head. Who knows, but somebody covering for somebody. So when Alma told us that this long hair guy down the street said police raided his house the day after Corney died, we needed to know more. We looked, but we couldn't find a record of the raid. But we did find lots of other times police were sent to this house, including for shots fired. Police found shell cases and everything. So a few weeks after our interview with Alma, Allison and Bill took a team to

Belmont Craigan to find this guy. So I'm gonna pull up to the church and then we can look at see if there are any skid marks. Yeah, that's very close to where it's like right behind where Courtney would have potentially been shot, like you know, on the opposite side of the church. Five teller suit you. We walked up to the gate of his house. Sure enough, this guy was standing on his second floor deck and he had long hair, just like Alma described. We called to him.

We didn't record because we didn't want to scare him off. He wouldn't come down, he wouldn't give us his name or phone number, but he talked to us from the deck. He said he didn't remember Courtney shooting, but he did remember that he was asleep that particular night March four, two years before then. He told us it was a black guy who got shot. When we asked if he had any trouble with police in the area, he said he couldn't talk about that because he works with them

providing janitorial services. He wished us luck. He said we were doing a good thing for the family. We dug around and got his arrest records. His rap sheet is long. Once he was arrested for driving a car in an armed robbery, but most of the cases against him have been dropped in court. I hope you goings. Thank you for making what we were doing. A few weeks later, Alma put us in touch with her former roommate Brianna, the one she'd been living with whom Courtney was killed.

I met up with her at a dunkin Donuts. She remembers the night when Courtney was shot, but says she was the one who heard the shots, not Alma Um. So when I heard it, I went up to her and I had asked her if she had heard anything, and she let me know that she was in her room. She had her headphones on so she couldn't hear anything. So their stories didn't fully line up. But Brianna also remembered that guy who lived a few doors down. He had like longer hair, um black hair, and he um

he had a couple of tattoos. Do you know if you ever tried to talk to Alma just um, they would pass by through the neighborhood and it was just a high and by as far as I know, at the time of the shooting in Brianna was dating Christian Hernandez, the guy who co signed for Courtney's BMW. So a few days after I talked to Brianna, Chapel and I talked to Christian, he came over to Chapel's place with his new girlfriend and their baby. How old. Oh wow,

congratulations boy girl. Okay, I have a little boy too, he's nineteen months old. Can't wait, Collete. We settled in around the dining room table and started talking. Christian said that right after Courtney died at a candlelight vigil, Almah told him she had her shots. She told me when Abriel was outside right here with the candles, And I asked it, did you tell Chapel? She said he yes, but she did not tell chaparl And I talked to five of Courtney's other friends who had been in touch

with Alma in the days following. Almah didn't tell them about hearing shots either. Then Christian's girlfriend nudged him. She'd been quiet most of the interview, but it was clear she wanted him to tell us something. He seemed tentative, like he didn't want to say I had. It was about Alma and something she posted to Facebook the same night I met with Brianna. What are you going to tell them that the thea she called you that he went on Facebook and he's seen and he showed it

to me. Alma put an emoji with like the zipper face and like that. I don't know how what's a called is doing this? And I told herm like, well that's weird. Christian's girlfriend made a sign with her hands, that thing Courtney always did in photos. Alma had posted two emojis, the rock on emoji and the zipper face. Then she stopped responding to Chapelle's text messages. Her lips were zipped coming out. If Alma wasn't we need to

find someone who would so. A couple of weeks later, we met up with the World Ventures guy named June. He's a heavy set guy with a fuzzy beard, about forty years old. He's a DJ. He works at a tire shop and he also has a cigar company. He's always talking about it on Facebook. I just want to know who's ready for Rooftop Evact. It's gonna be exclusively, gonna have a hand roller. He's gonna host the show. Tell us what's in the tobacco, what the tobacco was worth,

how to savor it, how to roll it. June knows a lot of people. I got an ear to the streets. I talked to everybody, actually everybody with autmost respects. So people respect me and they'll help me whatever way you can. June wouldn't say too much about his past with gangs, but he did say this. In Chicago, if you're not you're labeled as one, and majority of time you have no choice. It's by where you live or by who your family is, and you have no choice but to

be what it is. Jim came with us the first time we went around the neighborhood a couple of days after Courtney died. So when I found out what had happened the first day there was reached out to local gangbangers. Um none of them took admitts to it, and they won't lie to me, so if something did happen, they

would tell me the truth. And I found out in the past maybe about three other murders, and I found out who it was within a week or two weeks of it happening, and I've had gang members tell me all this guy did it, such or such did it because they know the innocent should have never gone touched. After asking around, June gotta leave that Courtney's murder might have been a case of mistaken identity. He said he'd heard the Four Corner Hustlers was beefing with another gang

in the neighborhood. They had said there was some Hispanic guys running around in that neighborhood. So they had claimed as a possibility that maybe they had confused him for somebody else. So I had to follow that lead as well. It was falsible, m hmm. Before we left, June told us a bunch of rumors he heard about Courtney's murder. He heard that Courtney was killed while buying weed. He heard the police did it, and that's why the camera

supposedly didn't work by Alma's house. But we needed facts, and we needed witnesses, and soon we were going to find them. Every Body. The song by every Day No by These Noting Somebody is a co production of The Invisible Institute, The Intercept Topic Studios, and I Heart Radio in association with Tenderfoot TV. I'm chaparral Wells. This podcast is produced by Alison Flowers and Bill Heally. Sarah Guice is our story editor. Ellen Glover is our associate producer

for The Invisible Institute. Jamie Calvin is executive producer for Topic Studio. Maria Zuckerman, Christie Gressman and Leta Malod are executive producers. Special thanks to Lizzie Jacobs for the intercept. Roger Hodge, Deputy Editor, is supervising producer. Sound designed by Carl Scott and Bart Warshaw. Michael Rayphael is our mixed engineer. Our theme song, Everybody's Something is by Chance The Rapper. Original music for the podcast by Nate Fox of The

Social Experiment and Eric Butler. Additional reporting by Sam Steklow, Annie Winkhari Blackburn, Raji Sinclair, Henry Adams, Matilda Voyat, Dana Brozo's kellerher Francis McDonald, Diana Archmagian, Maddie Anderson, Andrew Fan and risa Apantaku. Translations support by Benny Hernandez Occampo and Emma Perez. Fact checking by Noah are Jenny. Special thanks to Chris Rasmussen Bennett Epstein, Matt Topic, David Brelow, and

Julie Wolf. We want to hear from you. Email us at info at somebody podcast dot com, or leave us a voicemail at seven seven three two seven zero zero one two one. To learn more about this case and for links to additional materials, go to our show page at somebody podcast dot com. You can also find a list of everyone we want to think there so many people helped us along the way.