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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening, New York Times bestselling author Michael Fleeman strips away the pleasant veneer of the Silver Lakes neighborhood in California to tell a shocking story about a headline grabbing crime. Sabrina Lemon, a vivacious, blonde mother of two and part time sampleger at Costco is Handling handing out free food samples. One day when Inwok's handsome young firefighter Jonathan Hearn, shopping
for the station. Their conversation leads to a flirtation that leads to a steamy affair that has them hooking up once and twice a week at her home, his home, and out in hidden spots in the vast Mojave. Sabrina finds in Jonathan's embrace the love and understanding she lacks at home. To the outside world, husband Robert is a big tattooed, teddy bear of a man, a hard working railroad mechanic. Love by all, this gregarious couple seemed matched by their love of family, friends, and good times, but
the parting had gotten out of control for Sabrina. There was boozing and wife swapping in group sex. Once a turn on, it now left Sabrina feeling debased, dehumanized, spiritually adrift, Robert won't talk about it, consumed by his work, boat, truck and social life with Jonathan's showering Sabrina with poetry, gifts, religious insights, and of course, illicit sex. A devious plan is thatched. One August night, Robert Lemon is found dead
of two gunshots in a pool of blood. False leads send police into dead ends until a tip arrives from a most unexpected place for Sabrina. It's a stunning betrayal that hurdles the case back to a perfect little place in the desert. With informants, undercover cops, and wire taps, investigators discover a romance fueled by lies and dangerous fantasies. But are Sabrina and Jonathan merely covering up an affair or are they hiding a conspiracy that led to murder.
The book they were featuring this evening is Better Off Dead, a sordid true story of sex, sin and murder, with my special guest, journalist and author Michael Fleeman. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for a Greenness interview. Michael Fleeman, Well, thank you for having me, Thank you very much, very fascinating story and enjoyed this book immensely. Let's start with how you came to want to write
about this particular case. How did you come to be in a position to write this book Better Off Dead?
Well, this was a story that took place on the fringes of the Los Angeles suburban area. And when Robert Lamone was murdered into Hatchipee, California, it made the local news down here. I'm in Los Angeles, and I followed it off and on, and it began as one of those tragic stories. Who done it? Why would this very nice man with a loving wife and a good family be murdered? Developments arrived, it became clear that there was
much much more going on behind the scenes. And I'm always fascinated by stories about places we think we know, you know, the nice little neighborhoods, and the charming communities and the happy families. And when you sort of peel back those layers, you find all kinds of secrets. And in this case, it all added up to murder.
Now you start this story Dahachipie, California and a man named Sean where on Sunday, August seven, twenty fourteen, he writes for an overnight shift. These are twelve hour shifts, and he senses something's wrong right away. Can you tell us set the stage of what happens that day on August seventeenth and what does he discover and set this story in motion.
Sean is a mechanic for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad and his place of work is a workshop in Tahatchepee, which is in the high desert southern California, about an hour outside of Bakersfield, on the way to the little town of Mahave. It's a very busy stretch of track. Trains that come from the east. This is their sort of last stretch before they end up in the West and in Bakersfield. And Sean is arriving for his overnight shift,
and he's what they call a rapid responder. When the train breaks down, he gets in his truck and he goes out and fixes it, and he is relieving the day shift guy, who is Robert Lamone. And when Sean
arrives at the workshop, he sees Robert's truck there. He sees he sees that little office has been ransacked and as he looks on the other side of the truck, he sees Robert lyin there dead and it looks like there's a loon to his head, And of course Shawn is horrified and terrified, and he calls nine one one.
Now you see he calls nine one one and they tell him to maybe he doesn't sure if he's if he's dead or not, so they say maybe try some CPR and then they tell him to get out of the building. So now so, now the police arrive. What you talk about current County Senior Department Deputy Marcus Moncur arrives first. Or what do they find in their cursory investigation right at the garage? What can they deduce immediately or not deduce?
They look inside the garage and they see some of the same stuff that Shaun Waer saw the coworkers saw. They see this little office has been rand and sacked. It looks like somebody has gone through the gone through the drawers. Computer is missing. They then see the body on the ground. It's it's lying next to the front wheel of the work truck. They see some kind of a wound to the head. It could be a gunshot,
it could be a blow to the head. As they search more, they see some footprints behind the building in the in the dirt, and as they get a search warrant and look inside the garage, they find a bullet shell slug rather that looks like it hit the ceiling lamp and then fallen down onto the ground. And finally they find some blood under the body, and they find some blood spatter behind the body on a little refrigerator.
Now, you talk about a detective Meyer introduced this central figure in this book from Bakersfield from a detective Meyer. But you also say that they look at this what looks like a burglary with some suspicion, don't they.
Yeah. They One of the other cops who arrived is a veteran robbery detective, and it just it appeared to him that the ransacking of the office was staged. He had no real evidence of that, only just kind of a gut feeling. Just looked kind of haphazard. It looked like they were trying to make it they or the singular person, was trying to make it look like a burglary that ended a murder. And he had his suspicions right off the bat.
Now when they talked to Sean, where they're just getting a sort of an indication, and because they know this is the crime scene and it's a workplace, and they asked him that if Robert usually worked in to Hatchepee, and so he tells them that not necessarily. So how do they get around to in short order finding out who he is and where his wife is and speaking to her? So what's the process that they go after speaking to Sean and gaining just some basic information about
Robert's whereabouts? Likely and why? Tell us how they proceed?
Sure, Sean has a little bit of information. Robert actually is not the normal day shift guy there. He was filling in for somebody else, and he normally worked two hours away in a town called Barstow, and so it was sort of a last minute thing that he was even there, Which is the first sort of twist. If Robert was targeted in this, you know, it had to be somebody who knew his schedule because he wasn't normally there, or if it was random, it would have been random.
You know.
Sean tells them what little he knows. They're not close friends, but he tells them, you know, he's a nice guy. Everybody likes Robert. He has no drug problem that he knew of no financial problems and and and seemed very happily married and had a couple of kids. So they get this sort of brief biologic uh, this sort of brief background on Robert. Uh. They also find his cell phone in the office, and on the cell phone are these frantic uh text messages from his wife, you know,
when he coming home or worried about you. And and that's how they ultimately are able to find his wife.
Now there's Sabrina, Robert, Robert's wife, and her sister. So how does Sabrina find out about this? And when do police first talk to her? And what does her reaction tell us about that?
Well, Sabrina is at home now. Robert lives, oh gosh, about a two hour drive away from the crime scene. You know, part of this book is having to understand the vast nature of the landscape here. This is all one county, current county, but it's it's about the size of Connecticut, you know. It's it's a big, wide open space and there's not much in between things. So Robert, you know, he drove a couple of hours to get They lives in a high desert town called Silver Lakes.
It's a development and it's about two hours north of Los Angeles, and so Sabrina is at home. This was a Sunday. She's getting her kids ready. They have two young kids, a son and a daughter, and she's getting them ready for school. The next day, they go to church and near the end of the day she's calling
and texting Robert. She talked to him briefly that day when he was out on a call fixing a train, and you know, she then he didn't call back, and normally he calls from the road on his way home, and she started texting and saying, you know, we're worried about you. And you know, she's becoming increasingly frantic. According to her family, friends come over, sister comes over to the house to kind of comfort her. She tries to put the kids to bed, but you know, that doesn't work.
And finally some people from the railroad, a couple of supervisors from the railroad come by, and they're the ones who inform her that her husband is dead. And they don't tell her what the cause is. She gets the impression it's an accident, some kind of a horrible accident, but she's really left in the dark. And it's not until about one o'clock in the morning. This all happened around five six seven, one o'clock in the morning. I mean that the coroner calls her and says, yeah, your
your husband's been killed. And then shortly ifact she's literally on the phone with a coroner when the detective, Detective Meyer calls her and he tells her he's a homicide detective and starts answer asking her pointed questions and and that's when she finds out that it appears her husband's been murdered.
What was her demeanor as reported by Detective Meyer in response to that news, Well, Meyer.
Actually recorded the phone call so we could all hear her demeanor, and she sounded tired and confused and frantic. She was trying to answer the detective's questions. There seem to be a lot going on at the house in the background. You know, she kept saying, what happened, what happened to my husband? So her reaction, you know, to my mind and and definitely to detective Myers, was very appropriate.
Now, the the railroad is basically quite good, and there's an insurance policy, but how do police respond to this crime? And obviously they know they have to speak to the people involved. So when do police first speak with Sabrina.
Well, they talked to Detective Meyer talks to her on the phone that night at one o'clock in the morning. It's a very short phone call, about fifteen minutes, and you know, they just get the basic information about his schedule, the sort of the things we just went over, you know, was at his normal schedule? Where was he normally based? Meyer asked, you know, one of these awkward routine questions, but you know, do you have any problems in your marriage?
And she says no, no, no, does he have any enemies? No, everybody, everybody loved Robert. It was a brief conversation and you know, Meyer just said, okay, here's my number. Call me. You know, we'll up later at a better time and do this in person. Meanwhile, police look into Robert's background that they look into his schedule, they talk to his you know, a number of his coworkers, and they're trying to find out it doesn't look like, aside from a laptop being missing,
anything much has been stolen. There's not much there anyway. There's these big wrenches and things that used to fix trains, but no money is missing. There would be no money there to be missing. And all the friends and co workers of Robert, to a man describe him as a very very nice, friendly guy, you know, always a smile on his face, happy at work, happy in his marriage, and they're really perplexed as to what happened. The railroad also has its own little police department, and they are
conducting an investigation and coordination with the sheriff's department. And Robert not only had life insurance, but you know, there's a million to two million dollars settlement that is likely in the event that the railroads somehow at faults and his death. So they take this very seriously and they they issue a big reward, you know, for any information
leading leading to why he was killed. But you know, the early part of the investigation turns up a lot of zeros until they go into the office of the manager of the industrial park with this workshop is based and they ask me, you know, do you have any security footage around the grounds? And they say yes, and they review that security footage and they get their first lead in the case.
Now, what is that first lead that they get? What do they see? What can they doce from there? And how do they go from that image that they get from one of the surveillance cameras, so it's a camera.
There's cameras all over the facility, but this one's posted right near the entrance, and it's in the direction in the direction of where this workshop is, which is near the back of the facility. And what they see at about five o'clock PM, which is, you know, roughly the time that Robert might have been killed. Sean Waer arrives about six thirty quarter seven. They see a person walking with a limp kind of in the direction of the murder scene. It's grainy, the person is far away, looks
kind of bulky, probably is a man. But they see this person walking in the direction of the workshop, and this gives police and the railroad is something they can release to the public, which they do very quickly. The next couple of days they release this footage of this limping person who is their person of interest.
You will also talk about a secret witness program where anonymous tip line and they're waiting for leeds as well. And then you talk about the doctor Robert Whitmore, the forensic pathologist, and his deductions. After his examination.
What they find is the well, as they're as they're getting tips from the release of this video, they conduct the autopsy doctor Whitmore, and it's a rather unusual, uh, rather unusual findings. He confirms that Robert Lemone was shot to death large caliber forty four forty five. The bullets traveled in kind of an upward trajectory, almost like the person was on the ground shooting up toward Robert, who
was kind of one. The bullets traveled to different parts of his body, won the final worst one to ended up in his brain, and they were able to take the slug out. But both of the shots would have been fatal, and they were shot at very very close range, maybe even point blank. So you know, this tells the police that perhaps the killer is somebody Robert knew, or somebody he allowed to get close to him, or the killer somehow snuck up by crawling and then shot upwards.
But the going theory is that this might be somebody he knew or suspected he knew. And you combine that with the fact that the killer, if Robert himself was targeted, had to have known as schedule, suggests that this might be somebody with a personal motive to kill Robert and so that's what they gleaned from the autopsy.
Now you talk about detective Myers arise from Bakerfield, Bakersfield one hundred and twenty five miles away to Silver Lakes, this little suburb, little community, and there are thirty people at this home. So tell us what he encounters and experiences with thirty people friends and relatives gathered around Sabrina at the home.
Sure, this is about three or four days after the murder, and he had done the quickie phone interview, and Meyer and his partner now are going to do it an in person an interview with Sabrina. And the county seat of Kerrent County is in Bakersfield, and the Silver Lakes is way across the desert. Go up a mountain and down a mountain, and all the way across here's the
Air Force base with a space Shuttle land. I mean, this is like way out in the middle of nowhere, and he's driving, driving, driving, driving for hours and they come across Silver Lakes. Now, this is a very unusual
community in southern California. You know, once you get out of La and you're headed toward Las Vegas, it's all desert and if you turn off the freeway and you go thirty or forty miles off the freeway on the way the Las Vegas, you end up in this town of Silver Lakes, and it's as if somebody had plopped a little planned community in the middle of the desert. Is charming, little, you know, kind of neighborhood, family, neighborhood.
There's a golf course, there's two lakes, and people go boating, and there's good schools and you know, a little shopping village, and it's it's kind of a surreal scene, this development. And Meyer and his partner drive up and they drive up to the lamoone house and it's very nice house. Again, it's it's near a golf course, it's near the lake,
it's across the street from the elementary school. And they get there and the house is just full of people and these are friends and family and they're all there, presumably to support Sabrina during this difficult time. And so Meyer's handing out business cards and no one seems to know anything other than Robert's a nice guy. And they're very happily married. And they go off into they go off into a quieter bedroom, and this is when the first sort of real interview takes place.
She is asked about the marriage. She's asked about infidelity, but she talks about as a common may maybe even lets it slip about talking about partying. And then he notes her demeanor and makes a conclusion. Tell us about some of these questions and what he concludes afterwards.
Right, well, the question has become more pointed now, you know, it's been a few days. The shock, while still real, is not immediate, and it's it's just routine questioning. And I asked myer, I said, you know, why did you ask these questions? Say, we ask everybody what's what's going on? And if a husband dies, they ask the wife. You know, are there any problems in the relationship? And she said no, no,
we have a very happy, happy marriage. You know, any infidelity And she said no, no, nothing that I know about. And then she kind of back pedals a little bit. She said, but you know, we do we do like to party, you know, we like to have a good time. You know, we like to have a few drinks and and make some noise. You know, this is the Silver Lakes is a is a resort kind of community. There's a there's a lake with powerboats on it, and there's golf,
and you know, it's a fun place to live. And so you know, uh, Myers is a little, a little not suspicious, but he's taking note. It was the first sort of crack in the demeanor. And and and.
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Excuse me. Then Meyer throws her a curve. Sorry, I spent the week in Las Vegas and I came back with a flu. Then he throws her a curve. He tells her, well, you know, we looked at your husband's phone and we found topless photos of women. Can you please explain that to us? And she is shocked, she is stunned, and she's obviously very very upset, and she says, well, maybe some of them are me, maybe some of them
are friends. And that's when she talks again about the partying and about how they have such a good time. And you know, Meyer's leaving this interview thinking, Okay, maybe not everything is perfect as all the coworkers have said in this relationship. Maybe there's some room here to explore deeper in their relationship.
He also notes that she talks about he asked her if if it was an open relationship, and he asked if there was any jealousy, and so to those questions, she responded seemingly sort of appropriately right with no.
Yeah, you know, they see these naked pictures and you have to understand and this is what you know. Again, we could hear the conversation. He recorded the conversation, and Meyers almost embarrassed to be asking these questions. His partner is embarrassed to be asking these questions. A lot of guys, even nice guys, have been known to go on the internet and download some stuff they shouldn't be downloading him
maybe that's what ended up on his phone. You know, they just had to ask, and they had to ask, you know, do you have an open marriage? Because if they did, that would that would inject a new motive into all this, which is a jealous husband.
Right now, you say, August eighteenth, there's a gunsmith in to Hatchipee and he calls police a little bit after this August eighteenth to report what he experienced. We got to remember that we haven't mentioned that the slug it seems was a forty five It seemed to be a forty five caliber handgun ammunition from there. So tell us about the gunsmith and Tahachipie and what he says to police and what they have.
Yeah, I mean Justine Meyer literally as he's driving away from silver Lights after talking to Sabrina and he's had he's had these suspicions about her, kind of worried. I'm thinking I got to circle back on this relationship. He gets a call in the car and this smith has emerged. And the gunsmith, who who lives and works not far from the crime scene, says that somebody had come into his shop right after the murder and dropped off a
big caliber handgun and said I need the firing pin. Replaced, and the gunsmith thought that was kind of odd because he looked at it and the firing pin seemed fine, and you know, then he starts talking to this customer. Well, it turns out the customer works in the same complex that Robert was killed, and so, you know, Meyer is really elated. At this point. Police are, Okay, we've found
the murder weapon. This is their first big break, and he almost forgets about everything that Sabrina said about topless photos and party and all that.
Now they how do they proceed with this to rea that this is not their their man.
Well, they interview the gunsmith. They get the story that I just went over and he's kept the gun, and they seize the gun and they run a background check on the customer. They have the customer's name, and it turns out the customer has a son who has an arrest warrant out for him. Fell in the arrest warrant, and so they're pretty convinced, pretty convinced they've got their guy.
So they bring the gun back to the lab to run a ballistics check and that's where they fire bullet out of the gunsmith gun and match it to the bullet that was taken out of Robert's body, and unfortunately they did not match. That was not the gun used to kill Robert Lamone.
The other thing that led them to believe that they might have their man was that this man had a limp. And then they find another man and it has a limp exactly. They go back tell us about this again.
A couple interesting I mean, the gunsmith guy, the customer had a limp, and you know, he didn't quite match the little bigger than the guy in the video, but uh, you know, he still had a limp. And then they find another person who has spotted walking across a field toward toward the crime scene right around the time of the murder, who also had a limp. And he was kind of a local guy who had some problems. It
looked like he'd been drinking a little bit. But once they interviewed him and they're thinking of themselves, you know, one of the odds, we have two people now with limps, and a guy in the video of the limp. They started interviewing him, they realize that he had been injured in a car accident and he was actually in the hospital at the time all this was going on, so he could in a minute. So there are two really good leads evaporate within days of each other, and now they're back at square one.
Now you talk about then literally almost right after this, Meyer gets a call again. Detective Meyer gets a call from someone he had passed his card to at Sabrina's that day where the thirty people were there. And so tell us who he gets a call from. And what does that detective hear from him?
Yeah, so you know, just by routine he handed out all those business cars. He even know who all those people were. And one of them, his name is Jason Bernatine. And Jason is the best friend of Robert Lamone and his wife Kelly, is the best friend of Sabrina Lamone. These are the closest people to the Lamones. And Jason has a story to tell. He says that they suspected the Bernantine suspected that, oh, a year or so earlier, Sabrina was having an inappropriate relationship with a younger man
she had met at work. Now, Sabrina worked at Costco, as you had mentioned, She's one of those ladies who hands out the free food samples. And one day this guy, his name's Jonathan hearn had come into the Costco to get supplies. Now, Jonathan worked as a fireman just like Jason did. Gets a little confusing, but the two of them kind of knew each other through fire department circles.
They work at different departments, different station houses. But Robert's best friend Jason sort of knew who this Jonathan was. And it seemed like this Jonathan guy was paying a little too much attention to the married Sabrina lamone that was appropriate. And several months after they had they had met at the Costco, this Jonathan shows up at at at a restaurant where Robert and Sabrina and Kelly and
Jason all their friends were having a big party. It was a March madness around the football college football playoff, and you know, this Jonathan I just shows up and you know, he wraps his arm around Sabrina and they pose for a photo and it just seemed a little fishy. But then you know, Sabrino was a very very gregarious woman.
She was very friendly, She was a hugger and a kisser, and you know, they didn't make too much of make too much of this, but and this is all stuff that Jason is telling the detective, and Jason then relates that not long after that, Jason is working on his house with Robert one day and Jason gets a phone call and it's Jonathan Hearn and he wants to talk to Robert. And Jason's like, what, what the heck? Why are you? You know what's going on here? Well, Robert
just happened to be there. He hands the phone to Robert, and Robert Lamone and this young Jonathan Hearn, he's about twenty years old, have a very intense phone conversation. Jason can't hear what's going on, but but you know, it doesn't look good. And then Robert hands the phone back to Jason, and Jason's like, man, you know what was up with that? And he said, look, it's it's taken
care of. It's over. It turns out that Robert had seen some text messages on Sabrina's phone from this Jonathan and they had gotten into a big fight, and Jonathan had had had called to apologize for at least text messages were you know, you're beautiful and you're wonderful, and Robert and his wife got into a horrible argument and and and she promised, you know, that there was nothing going on. He was just a close friend and and
I won't talk to him again. And and and then, as Jonathan claims, he was reaching out to apologize to Robert for sending these text messages. And and so, you know, time had passed, and Jason and Robert, Sabraina and Kelly and that whole group there in Silver Lakes, they sort of forgot about Jonathan Herney. He faded into the distance, and whatever was going on between Sabrina Jonathan appeared to be over. And then after Robert's murder, Jonathan calls Jason again,
and this time it's another long, weird, rambling apology. He just he'd heard about the murder and he just felt so badly about that time he had sent those text messages and was paying too close attention and to Sabrina and just forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. And you know, Jason just thought it was so strange and the conversation was so weird that he had to tell the police detective about it, Like, I don't think there's anything here, you know, I don't think Jonathan's this nice guy. I
can't imagine he'd be involved. And I know Sabrina's not involved, but I just I can't let it go. And he passes on this whole strange story to the detective.
Now you say that Jason told he told everything about this meeting. Did he also tell him about what they saw in twenty fourteen after they thought that this whole thing had died down, Well, Kelly one day walks into Costco Pharmacy.
Yeah. So after they talk to the detective, the detective sort of deputizes Jason and Kelly. It makes them unofficial investigators, and he says, you know, why don't you keep an eye on Sabrina. You know, just let's see what's going on with her. This is after the murder. Now keep in mind, Kelly is Sabrina's best friend, their hairdresser, their confidants, their kids play together, they travel together, you know, birthdays and Christmas and dress up parties are Halloween. I mean,
she's very, very close to Sabrina. But at the same time, she just Sabrina's been acting a little strange after the murder, and not just because her husband's been murdered, and so admire's insistence, Kelly and Jason kind of keep their eye on Sabrina. Now Sabriana just lives down the street. They all sort of work in the same area. And one day they go into Jason and Kelly go to Costco where Sabrina works, and Jason has an injury, says Kelly, you go in. He had to pick up some some medication.
And Kelly goes into the costco and who does she see but Sabrina, her best friend, and Jonathan. Hearn the two of them together walking down an aisle in the store, and you know, she's just stunned. This is not long after Roberts murder. What's she doing with this guy again? It just really upsets her. She pays for her purchase and she runs out of there. She's just really mad and upset. And they relate this to Detective Meyer.
Now what she also does is happens to go by the neighborhood, especially after this spots certain vehicles first it's a truck. Tell us what she does, what she sees, and then what she sees the next day and in her I guess as being enlisted unofficially to help the police. What does she see and what does she yeah?
So Kelly is sort of accidentally on purpose swinging by Sabrina's house again. They lived just down the street from each other, and she sees a motorcycles, kind of a vintage looking motorcycle parked at the house one day, and then another day she sees a truck, big diesel truck parked in the driveway, which is not unusual, this is people in this area drive trucks. But then she sees the truck there the next morning, So whoever's driving that truck had had spent the night it appears, and Kelly
says to Sabrina, whose truck was that? And she gives the name of some guy, a friend of theirs they used to know, and I was just just a friend of mine. And Kelly does not believe Sabrina. She is really starting to suspect that that Sabrina is hiding something, you know, between the Jonathan sighting at Costco and this
truck and who's this, who's this the motorcycle? And then one day and keep in mind, as only one little road in one little road out of Silver Lakes, and you know, it's either Kelly or Jason see that same truck, and they could swear that Jonathan was driving that truck. So now Jason and Kelly formerly best friends of Sabrina Lamone, are are really starting to suspect that maybe maybe she has something or at least knows something about her husband's murder.
Keep in mind, there are no other leads the police have gotten nowhere in this case.
You also talk about something that's amazing as well, very visual. Jason runs into Sabrina and the children and after a short bit of conversation, what do the children say to Jason? What do they mentioned?
I think they mentioned their friend Jonathan, and the children know who Jonathan is. And now Jason's got just shivers. It's like, wait a second, could this be more than Sabrina just running into Jonathan at Costco? Is he now part of their lives?
Now you talk about Kelly is now active or proactive, and she and Sabrina go for a walk. This is in September, near the end of September. They're confidence, like you say, but does the conversation ever come around to anything other than Robert and any mention of Jonathan whatsoever?
Yeah, I mean Kelly asks her about it, and actually asked Sabrina a couple of times and says, you know what's going on here? And and Sabrina's demeanor is defensive, and she's like, look, you know you can't tell me. You know, you can't tell this guy who he can see and who he can't see. And basically, you know, butt out of my business. And and this is stunning to Kelly. They had always been closed, they'd always confided, they'd always trusted each other, and and Sabrina's given her the brush off.
Now Meyer Meyer does his due diligence and he shows up that the Bernatines with Detective Kimmel. And what information does he get from extensive questioning of these people.
Yeah, well they get the stuff that I had gone over before. They get a more detailed picture of Jonathan Hearn, apparently trying to first meeting Sabrina many months earlier, showing up at this at this gathering at the restaurant, trying to implicate himself into their social circle. You know, say, hey, you guys are have a good time up there in Silver Lakes by the lake and the golf course, you know, invite me over some time. And they thought that was
kind of strange. You know. They get information about the truck and the motorcycle. They they Kelly writes down the licensed plates, and they come back as Jonathan Hearns and and then then Jonathan sends this long, weird, rambling letter to Jason. Again the gist of it and has some kind of religious overtones, but the gist of it is, you know, please, you know, forgive me for for you know, uh my inappropriate actions, you know, when Robert was still alive,
and I feel terrible about it. Life is short, and you know, they're they're getting you know, they're just they're just getting this very strange vibe from Jonathan hearn And then with Sabrina acting so strange and the two of them apparently hooking up. Now, now meyer is is really
really suspicious. And you combine this with Sabrina's comments earlier about yeah, we liked the party and have a good time, but denying that she had any infidelity in her marriage, and this is starting to look a lot like infidelity. So now we've got the beginnings of a potential love triangle. And if Sabrina was involved with Jonathan, perhaps they wanted Robert out of the picture.
Now you talk about the DMV records that they look up, shows that this Jonathan has got to afford diesel pickup and a Yamaha motorbike. So from that they can proceed and they they start looking at Jonathan's cell phone records. Yeah,
and at this current county address. You talk about, well, tell us about the incredible amount of medications from April to October, and tell us a little bit about this how they came about to be able to think that they could phone and not be the records not be traceable.
Sure, they the information from the Bernantines gives police probable cause to subpoena phone records, Jonathan's phone records. And when you subpoena phone records, all you get is you know which number called which number, how long the phone call lasted, and whether any media was transferred, whether a photo was sent or a video or whatever. And what police find is an enormous amount of communication. But between Jonathan Hearn and Sabrina Lamone in the months before the murder up
till about I guess April April before the murder. Now, for somebody who claims that you know she has no infidelity, no problems in amice, you know this was I mean, we're talking hundreds, perhaps thousands of communications between them and multimedia exchanges and you don't know what it is, but
that suggests they're sending each other photos and videos. And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, Robert, I mean sorry, Jonathan's communication to Sabrina's phones ends in April, and Jonathan now has thousands of communications with some other phone number and a new phone number, and police look up that numbers, like who's he calling now? And I
mean we're talking in April, May, June, July, August. The communications with this phone on the day of the murder, around the time of you know, hours before the murder, hours after the murder, and then in the weeks after that, there's all the what's this mystery his phone call, this mysterious phone, it's not you know, listed to anybody. Well, that means it's one of those pays you go burner phones.
All of a sudden, in April, the April before the August murder, Jonathan starts communicating with somebody using a burner phone. It's starting to look like whoever he's communicating with, and they have their suspicions it's somebody they're trying to hide from police.
Now they have a warrant to wiretap Jonathan's cell phone. This is November seventh. So in that surveillance of those what do they discover? And again, all of these things proceed to another further warrant, But tell us what they determined from that. I know they sort of have the gist of it, but what do they further have as evidence as a result.
Yeah, so all of these, all of these phone calls suggest communication between Jonathan and Sabrina before, during, and after the murder. This gives them enough to get a wire tap. Now wiretap means, as everyone knows, you can listen to the actual phone calls. You don't just get a record, You can listen and starting in November twenty fourteen August, September, October November, just a few months after the murder, police are able to listen in on what Jonathan and Sabrina
are actually saying to each other. It's a major operation. It's very hard to do a wire tap because you have to listen and be ready to listen twenty four hours a day. You never know what people are gonna call. And now the investigation takes a very dramatic turn and they can actually listen to Sabrina and Jonathan hearn talking to each other about the death of her husband. And these are tapes that were played in court and that I listened to. And what you have right off the
bat are two people acting very very suspiciously. People worried about what about what other people are saying, worried about how it might look if anybody ever found out they were communicating. And it turns out from these wired tats, these are two people who are deeply, deeply, deeply in love with each other. That this was a relationship that began before the murder and has now flourished after the murder.
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A talk on and on and on about their love for each other and how much they need each other, and a lot of it is intertwined with with talk of religion and biblical passages and and and what God would think about their situation and and you know, it's where the title of the book better Off Dead comes from. At one point, Sabrina says, you know, it's probably probably better that that Robert died. If he ever found out about our affair, or if we ever got divorced, it,
it would just crush him. And you know, the gist of it is, maybe he is better off dead. And this is just stunning to police.
As a result of this wire tap too. It looks like Jonathan after she talked to Detective Myers, she's on the phone, that Jonathan telling them about what she had learned from Detective Myers or what Detective Myers had said. He suspects right along, right from the beginning, and it's in hidden his dialogue that he may believe that he doesn't want to say too much because he thinks the phones may be tapped. Now, with that very interesting, I
never heard this term before. The detective says, well, why don't we tickle the wire? What does he mean by that? And how do they tickle the wire?
Well, even though even though Jonathan and Sabrina are acting suspicious, even though they're they're expressing their love and making no secret of their relationship, they never admit, never admit that they murdered or conspired to murder Robert. And at times they even yeah, like you said, they raise suspicions that maybe someone's listening in on their phone. So and then they'll make kind of cryptic no, we'll talk about this later,
you know, off the phone. But there's nothing damning, you know, slam dunk admissions in these things. Just a lot of smoke, but not a lot of fire. And so, yeah, there's a phrase called tickle the wire. And what happens is Meyer's listening to all this stuff. So he decides he's going to inject information into into these people's lives that will that will affect the way they talk to each other. He's gonna goose them a little bit, He's gonna he's gonna poke and prod them a little bit. And so
he starts telling uh Sabrina things that aren't true. Uh. Meyer calls Sabrina and she's very friendly on the phone, and Meyer's very friendly on the phone. He says, yeah, you know, I think I think we have a DNA sample. You know, I think I think we got it from a drop of sweat. You know, this is all BS, but he's trying to see what Sabrina's reaction will be, because if there's a DNA sample, that means they could
figure out who the killer was. The killer might have sweated while he was shooting Robert, and Jonathan being a fireman, you know, his information might well be on file somewhere or they can get it. So after Meyer tells Sabrina that we have this DNA sample, what does Sabrina do? She gets on the phone with Jonathan and relates everything immediately to him that the detective had just told her. So it only increases the suspicion that they're conspiring or
at least talking. They just look a lot more guilty there. They're clearly in this whole enterprise together.
Interesting too, at the same time that Jonathan's thinking he's clever, but yet still I racked with guilt, it seems, but still thinking he's clever because as part of his paramount training, he's also taking arson investigation, and part of that has included his basic criminal investigation. So he thinks he has a basic understanding and it's just combined with his paranoia.
Yeah, you know, Robert, I mean Jonathan Rather. He grew up in a very religious household. He was homeschooled in a Christian Christian school. His mother was his teacher all through schooling. He very steeped in all things religion. And his conscience is really starting to get to him now. In the tapes, it's all about the affair of the affair of the affair. He doesn't say anything about murder, but his conscience about sleeping with the widow of this guy is really starting to get to him and he's
starting to unravel at the same time. Yes, he is a fireman. He went through he's training to be an arson investigator. He has some information about DNA investigations. You know, he's he's he's no dummy. He's trying to figure out and in his conversations with Sabrina, you know, like what does this mean and what do they have? And they you know, they start kind of strategizing about what she should and should not tell police.
And what is there again? You talked about the DNA because they're tickling the wire, They talk about the DNA. They also talk about the beginning of what they said was, oh, we think that this might not be ever solved. This looks like a dead end, and so that makes Jonathan suspicious. But what as they put on the pressure, what seems to get to both of them as they proceed with this and tighten their grip on and trying to get to the actual truth.
Right, Well, a couple of things. First, they Meyer bring Sabrina into Bakersfield for another in person interview, and this causes a lot of concern between Sabrina and Jonathan. And again they talk for hours about what she should say,
what she shouldn't say, and YadA, YadA, YadA. But the breaking point comes when and keep in mind this is over a series of weeks, but Meyer just keeps ratcheting up the pressure, he keeps feeding new information, and parallel to all this, more security footage is being pulled and Meyer just on a lark thing. So now, what's halfway between Tahatchipee and Jonathan Hearn's house. Well, it's this little truck stop in the middle of the desert. Let's let's
see if anybody stopped there. Well, sure enough, security footage sees a guy on a motorcycle that looks very much like Jonathan's motorcycle go into a little mini mart there to buy some gatorade. The guy very suspiciously leaves his helmet on. But there's all this footage and the timing works out perfectly, the exact amount of time, you know that Jonathan could have ridden this motorcycle from the crime
scene to this truck stop. It all matches up. And at the same time they find out from another nearby business they get more security footage. Again they see a figure that looks like the limping guy on a motorcycle going back and forth, so you know, it's all starting to look like Jonathan. And the breaking point the tickle, where the tickling becomes the strangling of the wire, is when Meyer shows some of the security footage from the truck stop of the guy on the motorcycle to Sabrina.
He texts it to her and then he says to her, Yeah, we got this anonymous tip that we should be looking into. Somebody named John jo n Jonathan spells his name without the H, and you know, do you know any John's out there? And she's like, well, he worked with a guy named John Justice, and there might be another John, but she doesn't mention Jonathan Hearn. Now she and Jonathan Hearn are on the phone and they're going crazy, absolutely crazy.
Now, how does it come that she gets arrested before we talk about you know, we're just starting to get into the bizarre elements of this.
Well, you know, it reaches the point where you know, she's lying through her teeth to Meyer. Of course she knows that John. You know, she's sleeping with him, he's playing with her kids, he's over at the house. They've got hundreds of hours of phone call. They have all this sort of conspiratorial talk between the two of them. She lied about the not having an affair. You know, it's really starting to look like, you know, that she's that she's covering up something. And so you know, at
the same time, they have not interviewed Jonathan. They just only listened to him on the phone. It's gotten to the point where they think they have all they're going to get from the wiretap, so they arrest them both on the same day.
Now, surprise about what does Jonathan do we talk about again? This was incredible, This, I would say unscrupulous attorney. Here, this Campbell comes forward for Jonathan. So tell us how that case proceeds against Jonathan before we see the development that surprises a lot of people regarding Sabrina.
Yeah, so he Jonathan hires a very good attorney name you know, I've just forgot his first name, Campbell in Bakersfield. He's top flight attorney. And this is somebody who's a friend of a friend of the families. He gets a really good defense attorney, and Jonathan, unbeknownst to the public, has been so wrecked with guilt and feels so terrible and feels that he has sinned so badly that he wants to confess to the murder right off the bat.
And he wants to stand up in front of the judge and said, look, I you know, I shot him, I shot him. I was in love with Sabrina. And his attorney he says, no, no, no, no, let's not do that just yet. Now, that's not unscrupulous. That's you know, a lot of clients want to confess to things, or they will confess to more than what they really did or whatever. It's up to the state to build a case against a defendant. And you know, let's see what they have. Let's see what they really have on you
before you go and start confessing to things. And all for all Campbell knows is, you know, his client's nuts, you know, so he's like, let's just let things kind of let's just let things kind of run its course. And so in the meantime, his attorney is sort of investigating, and this is you know, months now, we're passing after the arrests, and his attorney and their investigator go to Jonathan's house and they're kind of poking around to see what he has and what he has kind of locked
up there is not good. They find a flash drive that has some photos that Jonathan had taken when he had swung By the swung By the murder scene earlier and kind of a you know, a reconnaissance mission. They eventually find other incriminating, potentially very incriminating evidence at the house that Jonathan's telling about. Now there's attorney client privileged, so you know, if the lawyer just puts the evidence
back and this is stuff. Keep in mind, Jonathan's house has been searched, but Jonathan knows where he's hiding this stuff. And you know, as long as the lawyer puts it back, he's under no ethical obligations to pass on incriminating information. Fact, he's under ethical obligations not to pass on incriminating information about his client. So yeah, he's a little cagey about it. But it's starting to dawn on Jonathan's client that, yeah,
he is guilty as sin. It's going to be really hard to avoid, you know, at the very least life without possibility of parole.
Now, at the same time or soon after, there's a surprise in regards to the arrest of Sabrina. Tell us what happens and why people are surprised. Tell us some of the details.
Well, Sabrina is arrested the same time that Jonathan is. They're both jails nearby, they're both supposed to have their both supposed to have their arrayments on the same day. And you know, Sabrina is interrogated and I'm maybe I'm not answering question, but she's interrogated by a number of
different cops. I mean, really raked over the coals and in two different you know, two different stations, and overnight and she finally talks to Mire again, and you know, she kind of sort of reluctantly says, Okay, you know, I you know, she finally admits that she had this affair with him. With Jonathan, she continued used to deny that she was involved in the murder. She says, yes, they were conspiratorial on the phone, but they were trying
to cover up an affair. She was very embarrassed and thought it would look really bad if people knew about it. And you know, finally, she sort of reluctantly says, yeah, I guess maybe near the end, I did sort of think Jonathan might have had something to do with it, but I didn't. I just refuse to believe it. I loved him so much. He seems so nice, and you know, it doesn't play super well with the cops. They present this information to the DA. The DA says, hold on to Jonathan, but let Sabrina go.
Now, you talk about what Sabrina does. We talk about the three hundred thousand dollars. You didn't mention that other settlement from the railroad itself. But she moves because there's a bullying of her children, and she's life talking.
Yeah. Life becomes unbearable for Sabrina. After she's released from jail and you know, again, this is a very small, isolated town and one school. Everyone knows everybody. But she just can't take it anymore. She's pursuing claims against the railroad that's not really going anywhere, and then she finally moves to Cameron, near the coast outside of Los Angeles.
Now, meanwhile, you talk about someone from Robert's family communicating with Jonathan via a letter in prison. Yeah, what do they ask him and what do they basically get him to start thinking about seriously.
Well, Jonathan has a lot of time to think. And you know, one of the things that Jonathan knew about Sabrina, and we haven't talked about it yet, but one of the reasons Sabrina was so unhappy in her marriage to Robert is one of the big secrets Silver Lakes is that she and Robert used to be swingers, old fashioned Playboy channel swingers, and they would wife swap with a spouse swap with another couple, and you know it, at first, Sabrina really kind of liked it, as Sabrina was a
big drinker and they would party, and you know, but after a while she got tired of it, but Robert didn't, and she kept feeling like he was pressuring her into this lifestyle and she just she felt dehumanized and objectified. But Robert didn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to talk about He just want to go, you know, play in his boat. And it's one of the reasons why Sabrina was so attracted to Jonathan. He was this, you know, boy scout. He was this very religious young man.
He was, you know, squeaky clean, nothing, nothing bad about him at all. But Jonathan knew this about her her past life. And one of Robert's sisters starts sending letters to Jonathan in jail, and she referred to it as poking the bear. And what happened after Jonathan was arrested and Sabrina was released is that Sabrina starts seeing one of her old swinger pals again, this guy who used to be in this swinger circle with him. You know,
she just dropped Jonathan like a bad habit. And if they did, you know, murder Robert in a conspiracy, Well, Jonathan's taken the fall and Sabrina is off swinging again. So so one of Robert's sisters happens to pass on that. Oh yeah, Sabrina has seen so and so again, you know, and you know how much this played into Jonathan's psyche will never know, but it probably played a little bit of a role. And Jonathan's now taking kind of a whole new look at Sabrian Lamont, and.
He's also taken a whole new look at the idea of confession. And you talk about some of the players involved in this as well, if I believe, if I'm correct, Campbell shared something with his client that helped him in this case. They helped each other in this case because of that background. Tell us about that.
Now, Well, Campbell is his lawyer, like Jonathan, had been homeschooled, and his lawyer was very religious. They would pray together, pray for each other, and so his lawyer, his lawyer understood sort of the the desire, the deep genuine desire by Jonathan to obtain grace and forgiveness. Yet at the same time, under the law, you're guilty, and you know, you know you're innocent until proven guilty being a reasonable doubt.
So you know, these sort of religious feelings about having to confess and come clean with God conflicts with the idea that you're innoc until proven guilty. You just shut up until you know they make you go to prison. So, you know, the lawyer really understands, really understands what's going through Jonathan's head right now and this conflict between the sort of spiritual and worldly issues. The lawyer also gets wind that Robert's family, weirdly, is not that as upset
with Jonathan as they are with Sabrina. Remember Sabrina's off She's in Camerillo, this beautiful little coastal community, playing with their friends, you know, totally totally free as a bird. They they think that Sabrina put Jonathan up to this, and they kind of let it slip that, Look, you know, we're not as mad at you Jonathan as we are Sabrina. So you know it wouldn't it wouldn't be bad for us if you cut a deal as long as Sabrina got punished.
M hmm.
So he is, Campbell agrees and sets up to negotiate a deal because there wasn't much you know, he was charged for a conspiracy murder is some very heavy charges. So he had to agree to something very very important, which is a complete, full, truthful confession. And what was the deal he was offered for this he.
Was given a good deal. The DA really wanted to get Sabrina. The family, Robert's family really wanted to get Sabrina so much so that they were willing to make what would later be called the deal with the devil, and that was Jonathan. And they were gonna offer him, and I can't remember his twenty or twenty five years, twenty five thank you, twenty five years in prison and before he can make parole in exchange for it's like a voluntary manslaughter, not even a murder, not even a
murder plea as long as he said everything he knew. Now, keep in mind, Campbell knows. Campbell knows that there's all this evidence still at Jonathan's house. Jonathan lives in this pig sty of a house, and he's got all this stuff socked away that the police don't know about. They searched the house, but they didn't find it. You know, he my cops don't have the gun. They don't have anything really linking Jonathan, you know, physically to the murder
except for his suspicious behaviors. So you know, Campbell's gonna say, look, we will tell you where all this stuff is so that you can solve this case once and for all. Plus Jonathan and will agree to testify against Sabrina and say that she was just as much a part of all this as he was put him up to it, that she wanted Robert dead just as much. And in exchange, we will take twenty five years in prison. Now that's a long time, but Jonathan's in his twenties, early twenties.
He will have a lot of life left after he gets out of you, a man of his in his fifties. If he takes this deal, and the lawyer talks to Jonathan, and Jonathan agrees.
And you talk about that when they speak to him, he really does talk. They say, he talks and talks and talks. And he also tells him about something that there later results in other charges about another attempt at murder. Tell us a little bit about.
Jonathan's the man who finally and yeah, get all this off his chest. And he also tells them that this wasn't the first time they attempted to kill Robert. They were going to poison him by lacing his Noah Wafer pudding, which was his favorite dessert, with this cyanide trioxide. And and Jonathan is able what he was going to make the pudding and then Sabrina was going to give the
pudding to Robert. Last minute, they call off the idea, but Jonathan's able to point a lot of evidence, point them to a lot of evidence, the vile of the poison, the silencer that was used in the killing. That remember that bulky clothing that the person was wearing on the security video. He shows me that is, you know, all kinds of all kinds of stuff.
He also shows him the silencer for the weapon.
Yeah, it's a silencer he made himself. He tells him where to find that.
You talk about dramatic opening of the trial now September eleventh, twenty seventeen, and you talk about the da Smith talking about rob Robert being removed as husband to be replaced as father to their two children. This was their plan and their purpose and her attorney's Richard Terry, and condition of this deal is that he testifies against a trial. Tell us how this proceeds, and as you do some of the more interesting moments during this trial.
Sure, what's interesting is that even though Sabrina stood to get millions of dollars, that was all theoretical, you know, as if she successfully sued the railroad. The motive here was never really alleged to be money. Primarily it was just to get Robert out of the way, to be replaced by the nicer, cleaner, more religious and hern Jonathan would then become the father to the children and they would live happily ever after up there in the desert.
And so the trial faced, you know, dramatic kind of showdown between these former lovers who were so close and Jonathan. Well before that, you know, Kelly Bernatine takes the stand, Jason Bernatine takes the stand, you know, the best her best friends set there in court and said, you know, we think you're a we think you're a killer. It was, it was heartbreaking. And and then Jonathan takes the stand.
Over several days of testimony, and it goes over in excruciating detail, how they had this affair before the murder, how they had the affair after the murder, and how they plotted to kill Robert. And I think the most chilling day of the trial was was when Jonathan talks about how he went to the railroad show up and he had the gun with the silencer. It was in a backpack and he was wearing an old man's mask,
and he walks up to Robert. And but right before that, Jonathan had to get his courage up and he actually prayed to God for strength to kill this man. And
he walks into the garage. He's wearing this mask. He's got the gun in a backpack, and it was kind of down at his side, and the gun either misfired or he fired it too soon, and that sort of explains why the bullet went up, because the gun was down low and it fired through the backpack and puts down, puts down Robert, and he says, I thought I heard a noise from Robert. So he goes back and delivers the coup of garage shot to Robert just to make
sure he dies, and flees the scene. And you know, all along he says, you know, Sabrina knew about every single aspect of this.
What was Sabrina's reaction. I know you talk about that her she was well certainly not flamboyant at trial before this, but what what was her reaction to that testimony from Jonathan?
Yeah, she was. Now keep in mind, Jonathan was an odd duck and he was weirdly robotic on the witness stand and he had intellectualized a lot of this, and Sabrina, you know, did not react emotionally very much. I didn't. I never saw her cry. I never you know, she was shake her head, she would roll her eyes, but she didn't, you know, even even hearing this just horrible testimony. Uh, it just it just never seemed to elicit much of an emotional reaction from her, and the jury jury noted that.
What was the key point in Jonathan's testimony sort of the again the death punch will will say or death yeah, death strike that he gave in his testimony.
I you know, I think it was the cumulative effect, but it was it was really talking about why they wanted Robert dead, and just how and how cold it was, and just how they had so rationalized and justified everything by saying he would be better off dead. You know, it's probably probably better for Robert that he's out of the way. You know, he'd be so upset if if we ran off together. It's probably better even for him that he would be dead. And that was another point that the jurors clung to.
It's rare, but defendants usually don't testify. They get advice from their attorney. Did Saverena testify?
She did, and you saw why defendants don't usually testify. She was terrible on the stand. She was emotionless. She couldn't answer questions, just simple questions. She kept saying, well, it's kind of hard to explain. It's kind of hard to explain. It's like, well, if there was ever a time to explain, now is it? You know she was facing not twenty five years maximum, but twenty five years to life. She made a very bad impression on the witness stand. She was not very emotional. She couldn't really
explain why she constantly lied to police. She can't say, well, it just would have looked really bad if people knew about our affair. Well, people did know about their affair, and besides, after their friends were swingers, so you know, what would they care? She just made a very very bad impression on the witness stand.
Do you think Richard Terry had much choice with this though? Given the overwhelming evidence, now that Jonathan was going to testify and all of the again you say circumstantial, but a mountain of circumstantial evidence and inference, and like common sense, people would no doubt want.
To I do think, well, there's two issues. I do think he had a choice. Keep mind, in California, as in other states, it's up ultimately up to the defendant whether to testifies. Not a lawyer, certainly, but I do think he had a choice, and I think he made the wrong one. It was a circumstantial case. Never in hundreds of hours of wire taps did she ever admit to killing her husband, or conspiring to killing or even knowing that Robert Jonathan killed him. It looked bad, it
looked bad, it looked terrible. But that's the basis of a reasonable doubt case. You know, didn't have the slam dunk. This is the reason why they let her go to begin with, all they really had was Jonathan on the witness stand, trying to save his ass implicating her. And if the jury did not believe him, and like I said, he was strangely detached in his testimony. He was a weird guy. And if they did not believe him, then she they could have found sufficient reasonable doubt. So that
was number one. Number two. In just some breaking news today, she has appealed her case, seeking a new trial, claiming claiming that her counsel, Terry was ineffective and ineffective counsel of course, and alleging that he did not properly prepare her for her testimony, and that's why she couldn't answer simple questions because she hadn't been prepared. She even alleged that on the weekend before her testimony, rather than being prepared by Terry,
Terry went off to a jazz festival. So she's blaming her attorney for not properly preparing her. But in the end, it's her decision, and she might have said something at the time. I think, you know, it's hard to say it was not the strongest case that I've ever seen. Anyone who's ever watched the oj trial would know that, you know, you never know what a jury's going to do. Probably was not a good idea to put her on the stand.
It's probably not a good idea if you want to at least have a chance at appeal as well. Like you say, a lot of people do the ineffective council idea. But there also was the idea that certainly Jonathan had a motive to be able to want to testify with the lesson sentence. So that sometimes is an issue that at least they try to make an issue an appeal.
Exactly exactly, and you know, it was it was more of a fifty to fifty case I would say if she did not testify, but I think it leaned more kind of seventy to thirty when she did. And I just don't think it helped that she testified. You know, I understand that they had a lot of explaining to do, but her explanations didn't really help.
You talk about the cameras were allowed in the courtroom despite objections from Terry, But you also say that in the trial it seemed that through testimony that the reputation and sort of the humanity, not the sort of the humanity, the real the goodness of Robert was expressed in that trial, especially by Well tell us about that.
Yeah, it you know, Robert, it was not a perfect man, and none of us are, and it was it was, it was you know, it was interesting that it was the prosecution that that did not want to get into all the swinger stuff and which could have easily been used as a motive. You know that she was angry over the swinging and that's why she wanted to kill. It was it was brought up by the defense, which I found also kind of strange. But his you know,
it was he was a flawed man. He he he was, you know, And as I researched his background, he came from a you know, his family, his parents were divorced, he came came from a kind of a tougher life. And you know, you can understand why he didn't want to confront certain issues and why he didn't wanted to party and kind of just just always focus on the fun and the good and and and not dwell on the bad because he had had so much bad and
so much hard times in his life. And I think a lot of that came through and uh, you know, but there was a lot of humanity on all sides. And I think that's what, you know, going back to your first question, what drew me to the case is that, you know, it's and I'm not a family member of the victims, so it's easy for me to say, but you know, you can find a lot of humanity in everybody here. And and Jonathan certainly was a very tragic figure.
Near the end, he really wrestled with his faith, He really wrestled with some demons, and through much of the trial, I was. It was a tough up to me whether Sabrina was even guilty, you know, whether she was just so dumb that she went along with this thing and got hoodwinked by the charming Jonathan, or whether she was
an actual conspirator. And and and then you think of their children, you know, or their father's dead and their mother's in prison for the rest of her life, and all these awful secrets are bared for the world to see, and and you can't help it kind of feel badly for everybody. And and it's like, you know, there were so many other ways, so many other ways to solve these problems without having to resort to a gun.
One of the things that we didn't talk about was very interesting is that the very very religious people that these were, these Christians, and also that there had been something that Jonathan had been taught and his other siblings about a story from the Bible that other people were familiar. Again, I don't know if it was Campbell or one of the detectives was in this story, was familiar with this biblical story of a Bouthsheba. And David tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah, So David and Bathsheba, and maybe you know, we all learned it in Sunday school. But David, of course, king and commander of the troops, he saw Bathsheba's beautiful woman bathing or anointing herself on the roof, and one day and fell in love with just in lust with bath Sheba, and David arranged to have Bathsheba's husband sent off to the front to be killed so that David could have Bathsheba for himself. And you know, much of the psalms are David's laments for what he had done
and trying to get right with God. And at one point on the wire taps a couple of points on the wire taps, Jonathan says to Sabrina, you know, we're very much like David and Bathsheba. And he even directs her to read some of the psalms and coming clean with God and and and you know, it's a chilling parallel. And the one of the cops who was listening in on the wire tap had been a religious scholar in college and immediately made the connection. It's like it's almost an admission.
And the idea too, that Bethsheba. One of the interesting parts of this was did Bathsheba know that David had killed her husband because they got together and had children afterwards, So did she know? And that was central to this too.
Yeah, yeah, I mean most Biblical scholars will tell you no, beth Sheba didn't know, and that's the difference that Sabrina was no beth Sheba.
Yeah, we talked about her in prison. What was her sentence? You mentioned that there was an appeal.
Just yeah, she hasn't actually been sentenced because just today I think her new attorney filed for a new trial claiming ineffective counsel, so sentencing has been put on hold. She would theoretically get twenty five to life under the statute, which means that Sabrina would theoretically get more time in prison than Jonathan, who actually pulled the trigger.
Still, there is eligibility for parole possible even with the sentence, isn't it.
Yeah? There is? But Kay, it's California, the conspiracy. It's twenty five minimums, so she would be looking at a long time. She's ten years older than Jonathan, so you know she may never come out of prison.
Yeah, fascinating. And update on Jonathan.
Jonathan is last I heard he's teaching Bible study in prison. He's he's still wrestling with his conscience and his faith. At his sentencing, it was a formality because he'd already agreed to it, but it was a it was a difficult thing to watch the remorse, and he was no longer mister robotic. He he, he is a guy I think really trying to figure out what went wrong in his brain. You know what, why did he do this? I don't think he can even answer that question himself.
Well, incredible, incredible. I want to thank you very much Michael for coming on and talking about Better Off Dead, a sort of true story of sex, sin and murder. It's been fascinating for those that might want to look at other material that you have done. You have a website Facebook. Tell us about that.
Yeah, so you can go on Michaelfleman dot com. M I C. H. A. E. Lfleman dot com. If you go on Amazon and punch in my name, all my books come up. Go on Facebook. It's called true Crime page on Facebook. I love to hear from people, and I will definitely respond to you. I just send over links and updates and about what I'm doing, and you can go on the publisher's website, Wild Blue Press wildbluepress dot com and look for my name under the authors, and I have a page there and you can list comments.
But if you want to get in touch with me, get on Facebook or go on my website Michael Fleeman dot com and there's a contact me button and I promise I'll email you back.
Sounds great. Thank you again, Michael Fleeman for coming on and talking about better off Dead. It's my pleasures. Thank you, good night, good night, m