Carol Kennedy and Steve DeMocker - Part 2

0:00 Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina. And if there's one thing we've learned, and over twenty years of marriage, some days. You'll feel like killing your husband. And some days you'll feel like killing your wife. Welcome to love, Mary Kill. Hey Tina, Hey Rich. How are you today? I'm good? How are you? I'm good. I'm getting a little tired of this air quality. We've been an air quality alert it's like every day for a few weeks now. Yeah. Yeah, it's affecting us both a little bit.

0:41 I think it is. Yeah, I'm slightly asthmatic and it just I don't know. You can just see sort of a haze in the air and you just feel kind. Of like disoriented. Yeah, a little bit. When we're on vacation in Illinois and Wisconsin, it followed us there too, Yeah, from the Canadian wildfires. I was looking at a map today and it's pretty bad. There's a lot of fires all over Canada. Not good. Yeah. The whole Upper Midwest I think is a fact. So it's not just you know, like Michigan and Illinois, but you know, even further east. Yeah. And to make matters worse, I've had a song stuck in my head for three days. Yeah, and I can't get rid of it. And I just figured out what it was. I didn't know what it was. I just had this song in.

1:21 My head that happens to you a lot. And I figured out it's a video. It was a song. It's a Chapel Roane song. But what I have in my head is this little kid did a video, a spoof of this Chapel Roane song, and it went viral and it's it's called hot Dogs Are the Stinkin' Best, Stinkin' Best. Yes, okay, so little kid did and he goes a jo tdogs hot Dogs are the stink and Best. And I've had that in my head for three. Days, serenading us. It was very nice. You're welcome. It's just a glimpse inside my brain. Rich does sing pretty well? Oh yes I do. Not. I don't think I do either, but think.

2:02 No, you do. Really. Before we started recording, I went and got some ice and refilled the ice trays, and it cracked me up. A couple of weeks ago when we talked about that, because our content is so riveting, how many people comment and we're like dummies, just go get like you know, an external ice maker. Yeah, and there's a reason why we haven't done that. It's because I just don't want to put something on the counters. But then I feel really bad about getting a new refrigerator because what happens to your old refrigerator. I don't think anyone would want it with a broken ice maker, And I feel bad about putting a big refrigerator in a landhouse. It's a big quandary. It It's really not. There's people with bigger problems in the world, but yeah, it's it's I don't know.

2:44 I did notice you filled up the ice tray again, so when I went and got my water, So thank you for that. I try, and you're a very considerate person, and you do it sometimes too, so sometimes yeah, yeah, no you. I think we're fifty to fifty almost, not quite, not that I'm keeping score, all right. Do you have a snack for us? I do. It's not the most exciting snack because we were on vacation. I didn't have a lot of time to plan. Last time, we had the great snack that are listener Carlos sent, So this time I just have a gas station snack. I went to the gas station and I picked out a couple of things, and one of them is. Why I see they're open. Well, yeah, I hate some These are cheese curls, but they're alipeno flavors. I know you don't love halopeno, but I know you like cheese curls, and they're actually much more cheesy than they are halopenia. Yes, then I'm sorry I dropped the other one. And then I have these Buddy Muddy bites. These are waffle cones.

3:40 I have had those before, okay, but not in a while. I think I got them at like TJ Max. You know, when you a TJ Max and you're waiting in line, they always have some random snacks there. Yeah, so all right, I'll give them a try. All right, Well, how did you enjoy the halopenno poppers and the body bites? Before I answer, I'm going to tell you about a report I read today about how ultra processed foods are really shortening your life expectance. And both of these I think are ultra processed. You know, I kind of like the jalapeno poppers. You were right, they were kind of cheesy, and it's like the fat cheetos, not the crunchy Cheetos. Yeah, they're good. I give them up. I don't know, six and a half out of ten, and the muddy Bites.

4:24 I like the filling, but I have this weird I don't like ice cream cones. You know this, don't you know? Okay, we'lly been together for four hundred years, but you don't know that. I don't like to go get ice cream. I always get in a dish, and I. Just thought that's because you didn't like, you know, the ice cream cone. It's kind of it can drip and it can get messy. I thought it was more that. Would listen to me. I don't like ice cream cones, and I don't like Fortune cookies. I think there are similar taste, So anyway, I like the chocolate, but I didn't really love the ice cream cones. I came six out of ten. Okay, that's about it as good as I could hope for with that snack. Yeah, No, I appreciate it. Appreciate your effort. Should we get back to the case of Carol Kennedy and Steve Democher, Absolutely, would you like to give us a recap?

5:07 No? Why don't you go ahead and do that? No, I'll do it last time. We introduced you to Carol Kennedy, a devoted mother, artist, yoga instructor, and counselor who spent years trying to hold together a marriage that was slowly breaking her down. Her husband, Steve Democher, was once an adventurous, idealistic man she believed was her solemate, but over time that image unraveled. He became very materialistic and cheated on her repeatedly, including with students, coworkers, and his longtime assistant, barb Onnon. He racked up enormous debts while living a lavish lifestyle, all while accusing Carol of being the one who was financially irresponsible. Carol finally filed for divorce in two thousand and seven, and after a long, painful negotiation, the marriage was officially over in May of two thousand and eight, but the fighting didn't stop. Steve was behind on alimony, Carol was worried about money. Intentions remained high, especially as their teenage daughter Charlotte sided with her father.

6:05 Then on July second, just ten days before Carol was set to visit a new romantic interest in Maine, she was found dead in her home. The scene appeared staged a ladder, a toppled bookshelf, and a fatal head wound that was far too severe to be accidental. Her mother, Ruth, had been on the phone with her when it happened. The last thing she heard was Carol saying oh no, followed by silence. So you mentioned Charlotte, But there was another daughter too, Katie. Katie was their oldest daughter. She was in college. She had just left for a trip abroad. She was going to study in South Africa, and she had left maybe three or four days before Carol was killed. On the day that Carol was killed, Wednesday, July second, her sixteen year old daughter Charlotte, was spending the day with her boyfriend Jake Janisek. Just the day before, Jake had temporarily moved into Steve's condo. He had been having problems at home with his parents, and Steve offered to let him see while things cooled off. That afternoon, Charlotte and Jake had Launch then stopped it Safeway to pick up some cookies, delivering them to Steve's office at UBS Financial Services at four thirty eight pm. Steve logged off his work computer.

7:14 By four point fifty two he was back at his condo, opening the security gate with his remote. He told Charlotte and Jake that he was heading out for a long bike ride and he changed into his workout clothes and left just after five o'clock. And just a reminder that Carol's phone call with her mom ended right around eight o'clock PM, and presumably that's when she was killed. Okay, since we've returned from vacation, our cats have been they've been having a separation. Leave ye a long Cosmo is in the room and he's making some loud mewing noises. You hear that. Don't be alarmed, all right? So Steve left for his long bike ride just after five. At five thirty six, he turned off his cell phone as the sun began to set, and eight pm came and went.

7:58 Steve still wasn't home. Charlotte wasn't too worried at first, they often ate dinner after eight, but it started to feel strange that he hadn't returned. She tried texting and calling him, but got no answer. She even called Renee Gerard, Steve's girlfriend, to ask if she knew where Steve might be riding, but Renee didn't know Charlotte and Jake eventually dozed off for a bit, then woke up around nine forty pm. Steve still wasn't home. It had been dark for nearly two hours. They tried calling again, but still there was no response. At ten pm, they decided to head to safeway to grab ingredients for a late night stirfry. This kind of cracks me up. The two sixteen year olds.

8:39 Their dad is missing for like four and a half hours, and they're like, oh, let's go get food, let's go, let's go make a stirfry. Well, he had so many women that he was seeing, so yeah, it probably happened a lot where he just didn't come home sometimes. Yeah, that's probably true. Charlotte's sixteen. Yeah. Soon after Charlotte and Jake left for a safeway, Steve turned his phone back on at ten oh eight pm. He now had eleven missed calls and three texts, but he didn't listen to any of the voicemails. Instead, he called Charlotte, who was still that safeway, and he explained that he had gotten a flat tire and his phone had died. A minute later, at ten oh nine, he used his remote to open the gate at his condo.

9:19 Then he called Renee and told her he couldn't come over that night. He was tired, dehydrated and needed a shower. She was annoyed not because he wasn't coming over, but because it sounded like he was making excuses. They hadn't even planned to see each other that night. Her first thought was that maybe he had been with another woman. Steve added another detail to Renee. He said he was bleeding. He said he had scraped his leg on a branch during the bike ride, and that his arms were scratched from walking the bike after he got the flat tire. Meanwhile, Carrol's brother, John Kennedy, had been trying to get in touch with Steve. Ruth, still deeply unsettled by the way her call with Carrol, had ended, had shared what had happened, and John had been calling around trying to figure out what was going on. Steve finally picked up at ten thirty, but before John could explain much, Steve cut him off, saying, quote, hey, look, I'm standing here, dripping wet, just stepped out of the shower, adding that he had been on a long mountain bike ride.

10:16 John finally managed to explain the situation that Ruth had heard something alarming during her call with Carrol and was worried. John asked if Steve would drive over and check on Carroll. Steve said no, I will not they were divorced. He explained it wouldn't be appropriate for him to check on her, what if she had someone over After the call. Steve emerged from his bedroom wearing only a towel and asked if Charlotte or Jake had any laundry. He then started a load with just his workout clothes, something he later told investigators was completely normal for him. Jake noticed that Steve's scratches were bleeding and asked if he was okay. Steve said he was just tired. He'd had to walk over four miles back to his car after his tire blew out. Steve got dressed, ate dinner with Charlotte and Jake, and then casually mentioned the call from Carroll's brother. At ten forty eight pm, Charlotte texted her mom's phone saying she was worried. She tried calling both her cell and her landline and got no answer. That was unusual because Carol always answered the landline if she was home.

11:19 And then Ruth, Carroll's mom calls Charlotte, she tried, She ignored the call and never called her back. Yeah, nice, Charlotte, I know. Then, just before eleven o'clock, Steve told the teens that a coworker had called to say that he had left his computer logged in at the office. That was a big no no in financial services. He also claimed that he needed to grab something that he had forgotten at work, so he left again for a short trip into his office. While he was gone, Charlotte and Jake grew more concerned about Carol. They started calling around to local emergency rooms, wondering if maybe Carol had taken Jim Napp in for some type of medical issue. Jim Napp, just a reminder, is Carol's friend who was living in her guest house. When Steve returned, the kids told him someone needed to go check on Carol, but again Steve refused, saying what if she has someone over?

12:11 The teens pushed, and finally Steve relented. He said they could go, but he asked them to call him as they got close so that he could make sure that they were safe. As they left, Steve called Carol's cell and left a voicemail quote, people are really worried. If you wouldn't mind calling, I mean, if you're on a date or whatever, it's totally okay. We don't want to intrude, but you're not answering anybody's calls. I'm sure everything is fine, but if you could even text to let us know you're okay, that would be great. I think your mom and John are up back East worried and waiting to hear, so please call somebody bye. Remind us how long ago had Steve tried to get back with Carol. It was only a few days before that he had had coffee with her and told her he wanted to get back together. At eleven fifty five pm, Charlotte called Steve from the car just as they were pulling on to Bridle Path, the road that Carol lived on, But before they could even reach the driveway, they saw it, a sea of red and blue flashing lights up ahead.

13:09 Still on the phone, Charlotte rolled down her window and asked an officer what had happened. She told him, I'm her daughter. The officer told her, your mother is dead. Charlotte dropped the phone onto the floor of the car and burst into tears. After Charlotte dropped the phone in shock, Jake picked it up and relaid the devastating news to Steve. On the other end, Jake could hear Steve breathing heavily, as if he were crying. Steve asked to speak with the officer on the scene. When the officer got on the line, Steve asked what had happened, but the officer could only say that Carol had passed away. He didn't have any further details. Steve got in his car and headed toward Carol's house. On the way, he called his girlfriend, Renee Girard and told her the news. He asked if she could come to the house as well, but Renee was watching her grandson and couldn't leave. Next, Steve called John Kennedy, Carroll's brother, without emotions, Steve said, quote, John, you need to call your mom and tell her that Carrol is gone. John, stunned, tried to ask questions. Steve simply repeated, she's gone. She's dead. John later recalled Steve, adding apparently she suffered a fall. After that, Steve tried calling Barbo Nan, his longtime assistant and lover, but she didn't pick up Steve arrived at Carroll's house at twelve twenty three am and tried to comfort Charlotte. Outside the house, Police Commander Scott Masher spoke with Steve. As they talked, Masher quietly passed his flashlight up and down Steve's body, noting several fresh cuts on his left arm and leg.

14:40 One gash above the ankle was still bleeding. Steve asked Masher what had happened. Masher declined to give details, saying they wouldn't know anything for sure until the medical examiner arrived. Then Steve asked, am I a suspect? That question, along with the visible injuries, immediately raised red flags for Masher. He decided to begin recording the rest of their conversation. Steve told Masher that the divorce had been difficult, but insisted that things had been improving. He said they had even had coffee together that past Sunday and were talking about dating again. Eventually, Masher asked Steve, Charlotte, and Jake to come down to the station for a more formal interview. They agreed, though Steve continued to ask if he was a suspect and even wondered aloud whether he should have a lawyer present. They arrived at the station around one thirty am.

15:28 It turned into a long night at the Presscott Police Department. Steve, Charlotte, and Jake were all interviewed separately by detectives who were working to piece together everyone's timeline and movements leading up to Carrol's death. Steve from the start didn't seem eager to talk. He told one detective he was tired and would really rather continue the next day. I'd prefer not to be up all night, he said. The detective replied, yeah, I'd prefer not to be up all night either, and kept going with his questions. As the interview unfolded, Steve's story began to shift. He gave more than one explanation about his cell phone, and one version, he said he had turned it off and left it in his car during the ride, a ride he estimated would normally take two to two and a half hours but ended up lasting four because of the flat tire. In another version, he said the phone had died when he didn't realize he had a spare battery until he got back into town.

16:21 I was wondering about that, because he told Charlotte his phone died but then he was calling around his phone. Steve also told them he didn't mountain bike that often. He usually ran, but on this particular night, he decided to ride a trail that was twenty to twenty five minutes from his condo. Coincidentally, that same trail happened to be just a mile or so from Carroll's house. He admitted it didn't look good. I wish I'd chosen a different trail, He'd said. Detectives pressed further, was there any reason his DNA fingerprints or blood might be found at Carroll's house. No, Steve said, absolutely not, any reason bike tracks might be found or behind her property. Again no.

17:03 At one point, the detectives gave him an opportunity to come clean, to admit that maybe things had gotten heated that there had been an argument that something had gone wrong. Now would be the time to say, you know what I went over, We argued, she threw something at me, I got upset and I but Steve cut them off. No, he said, I was not there. Police documented and photographed the numerous cuts and scratches on Steve's arms, legs, and torso. Some of the wounds, they noted looked consistent with barbed wire, like the kind that separated the back of Carroll's property from the open ranch land behind it. Charlotte and Jake were finally released around five am. Renee came to pick them up. Steve stayed much longer, eventually leaving the station around ten am.

17:47 So later there would be some criticism and Steve's lawyers would basically accuse the police of having tunnel vision and only focusing on Steve and not people like Jim Knapp and potentially other suspects. But you have to think about the circumstances. So Steve had disappeared for four hours, his cell phone was turned off, he had cuts on his leg and arm. I mean, it seems pretty natural that you would focus in on Steve at that point. Right, absolutely, And I think it's okay to start with the husband and then eliminate him just questioning someone. It's not like they arrested him right away, right right. Meanwhile, back at Carroll's house, Jim Napp was still on the scene. Around one am, he asked if he could grab his medications from the guest house before heading to a hotel for the night. A deputy escorted him inside at one oh four, am after that, Jim checked into the Mariotte spring Hill Suites. Steve's defense team would later raise questions about this. Why they asked, was Jim napp allowed to simply walk away after just a few brief questions at the scene while Steve was taken in for hours of interrogation, and why did it take nearly ninety minutes for Jim to reach the hotel when it should have taken him less than twenty. Back at the crime scene, investigators began sir reaching the area around Carroll's house, including the trails behind the property. It had rained the day before, so any tracks left behind would likely still be fresh, and they did find something a set of mountain bike tracks with shoe prints beside them, as if someone had been walking the bike. The tracks stopped at a bush. From there,

19:19 the shoe prints continued alone, crossing over a barbed wire fence and leading straight to Carroll's back patio. On the way out, the same tracks crossed the fence again, circled around some thick brush, and returned to the spot where the bike had originally stopped. Photos were taken of the prince, but crucially, no measuring stick or scale was included, which is standard procedure. Even more concerning, no plaster casts were made, so when it rained again, the tracks were washed away, gone for good. Oh boy. These mistakes would later come back to haunt the prosecution. Police seized Steve's mountain bike and brought it to the scene. When they rolled it next to the tire tracks, it appeared to be a match, but as Steve's lawyers would point out later, about ninety percent of mountain bikes at that time used the same type of tread, and the gravel was much too coarse to capture fine details. No unique defects, no definitive match.

20:16 They also found no shoes during the search of Steve's condo, vehicle or office that matched the shoe prints at the scene. Oh did they find any cycling shoes? Uh? Not that I am aware of. Then there was the matter of Steve's work computer. Remember, Steve had told Charlotte and Jake that he had to return to the office that night because a co worker had called to say that he'd left his computer logged in, a major security issue for someone working in finance. But when police spoke with that coworker, he said that he'd made no such call, and a check of Steve's computer confirmed that it had been logged off at four thirty eight PM, right when Steve left work, several hours before Carroll's murder. Aside from the tire and shoe tracks behind Carroll's house, police found no physical evidence linking Steve to the crime scene. None of Steve's DNA or fingerprints were found in or around the house. None of Carroll's blood was found on his bike, in his car, or at his condo. One stain in Katie's BMW, the car that Steve had texted Carol about picking up that evening, looked suspicious and was sent for testing. It turned out to be chocolate.

21:22 That's exactly what would happen to me if anyone had to search my vehicles. That looks like blood. Now it's chocolate. Will be back after a break. The autopsy confirmed what investigators had already suspected. Carol's death had been brutal. She had been struck at least ten times with a blunt object. At least seven of those blows were to her head. Her skull had been shattered, broken into more than two hundred fragments. Horrible. She also had multiple defensive wounds bruising on her right hand and forearm clear signs that she had fought back. No murder weapon was ever found, but based on the shape and pattern of the wounds, the medical examiner believed the most likely weapon was a golf club, specifically a wood.

22:11 The wide, rounded head of a wood matched the crushing injuries found on Carol's skull. Later, her body was transported to a forensic anthropologist in Phoenix for a more specialized examination. That expert came to the same conclusion without ever consulting the medical examiner. Based on the fracture patterns of Carol's skull, she also believed the weapon was likely a golf club. That sounds so brutal and so aggressive and angry. Right to destroy someone's skull with a golf club? How many times, you know, would the person have had to swing at their head? Yeah, it's definitely a sign of overkill, and you know, kind of a crime of passion. You think about that, right that somebody.

22:54 Is I hate that term. Yeah, it's not a good term. There was one more potentially important piece of evidence. Under the fingernails of Carol's left hand, Investigators found a small amount of foreign material It was tested and found to contain male DNA, but it didn't match Steve. When detectives heard the medical examiner's opinion that Carol may have been killed with a golf club, they immediately recalled seeing something during the initial search of Steve's condo, an empty Callaway golf club headcover sitting on a shelf in his garage. They checked the photos from that day to be sure, and there it was a Callaway headcover, but no club in Steve's bag that was missing one that raised red flags. But by then Steve's condo had already been turned back over to him, so investigators had to secure a second search warrant to return and look again. When they did, the headcover was gone.

23:47 They would later learn what happened to it. Steve had given the headcover to his lawyer, John Sears. He knew the police were interested in it, but since the specific item hadn't been listed on the original search warrant, Sears wasn't sure if he was legally obligated to turn it over. He consulted the Arizona Bar Association, who told him that neither suspects nor their attorneys are required by the constitution to help law enforcement build their case. The burden, they said, is on the government. Sears placed the headcover in a safe and left it there until investigators specifically asked for it. So there wasn't a golf club missing. There was no golf club that didn't have a cover on it, so they had an extra cover, but no golf club that it went to. But we don't know if a golf club was missing or now golf club sets can have different numbers of golf clubs in them.

24:35 I did not know that. I thought there was like a standard number of like there was thirteen clubs in a background. I mean, there are rules about how many you can carry, but a lot of people have more or less club gotcha. Eventually, detectives learned that Steve had a custom callaway seven would made five years earlier, a club that would have matched the missing headcover, but that club was never found. When questioned, Katie told police she thought her dad made They have given a golf club to Carol to sell in a garage sale at one point, but no one knows if that was the same club or where it ended up. Katie Demacher was still in Europe when she learned the devastating news about her mom. She hadn't yet left for South Africa, so she booked the earliest flight home and arrived on July fourth. That evening, she had dinner with her dad, Charlotte, and Jake. At the dinner table, the conversation turned to who could have possibly killed Carol, and it was Steve who floated a theory maybe Barbo Nan, his former assistant and longtime on again, off again girlfriend, had something to do with it. He pointed out that Barb never liked Carol, she had seen her as competition, and now, after splitting their book of business at ubs, Barb had walked away with only thirty percent, not the fifty percent she felt she deserved. If Steve went down for Carroll's murder, Barb could potentially scoop up the rest of his business, a massive financial win for her. Whether Steve truly believed that or not, one thing is clear.

26:00 He planted that seed, because when Katie sat down with detectives and they asked if anyone might want to harm her mom, she brought up Barb almost word for word. She also mentioned Jim Knapp, describing him as romantically kind of interested in her mom, adding another name to the list of possible suspects. But the one person Katie couldn't fathom being responsible was her father. She told investigators that both of her parents were nonviolent. They didn't even spank the kids when they were young. To her, the idea of her dad hurting her mom was simply inconceivable. Steve wasn't the only one thinking that Barbo Nan could be a suspect. When Barb heard about Carol's murder of the day after it happened, her reaction wasn't just shock, it was fear. She immediately realized she might be seen as a suspect. She hired a lawyer right away, who advised her not to speak with police unless they could guarantee in writing that she wasn't a target of the investigation.

26:55 That refusal to cooperate raised suspicions, but eventually police did issue a letter stating that Barb was not a target, and she agreed to be interviewed on July twelfth. Her alibi for the night of the murder was confirmed through her cell phone records. She was at home, just as she had claimed. Still, Barb had some eye opening things to say during that interview. She told detectives that during Steve and Carroll's divorce, Steve had made multiple offhand comments about wishing Carroll was dead. She also shared that about six months earlier, Steve had started injecting himself with a human growth hormone and getting to testosterone shots, something that concerned her. Rob's relationship with Steve didn't end with Carroll's murder.

27:38 A couple of weeks after her murder, Steve invited her to go hiking and camping with him. She turned him down, saying she was afraid of him by that point, but later that month, when she went to La Hooya by herself to get some distance, Steve flew out and showed up at her hotel. They ended up hooking up again that night. Steve told her his version of what happened to night Carol died, how he'd gone for a long bike ride, gotten a flat tire, and how his phone had died. But Barb didn't buy it, and all the time that she'd known him, Steve had never let his phone die. He always carried a spear battery and biking it just wasn't his thing. Three months after Carroll's death in October, Steve made one final play, he asked Barb to marry him. She didn't say yes. In fact, she didn't see him again after that. If Steve was hoping to steer suspicion away from himself, Jim Napp made an awfully convenient target, and unfortunately for Jim, his behavior in the days after Carroll's death didn't help his case. On July third, just one day after the murder, Jim was overheard talking to a cashier Safeway about the crime scene.

28:43 He mentioned how much blood there was. The problem is that Jim hadn't been inside the house, and at that point police had been extremely tight lipped about the details. A concerned friend of Carroll's who overheard the conversation called the police. Later, an officer would clarify that he had spoken to Jim earlier that day to let him know that he could return to the house, and had warned him that there was a lot of blood in Carroll's office. He hadn't wanted Jim to stumble and unprepared, but by then the damage was done. The seed of suspicion had already been planted. Jim seemed genuinely shaken by Carroll's death, and he couldn't stop talking about it. He was emotional, erratic, and often inappropriate. One day, he was loudly speculating at a Mexican restaurant about Steve being the only possible killer.

29:29 Unfortunately for him, Charlotte's boyfriend Jake worked at that restaurant and messaged Charlotte about what was going on. She showed up and confronted Jim on the spot. Jim told anyone who would listen that Steve had a history of abuse. He claimed Steve had once dragged Carroll by the hair and he had beaten her while she was pregnant. The problem was Jim hadn't even known the Deamockers back then, and there was no evidence to support these claims. Despite Steve's many faults, no history of violence toward Carroll had ever surfaced. Jim also started bombarding people with emails. He shared his theories about Steve with friends, often copying Katie and Charlotte. On the email, Carol's friend Catherine told him to stop, saying it was it appropriate. In response, Jim blasted out a sarcastic apology, copying dozens of people, seemingly to embarrass her. He later apologized more sincerely, and Catherine chalked it up to grief. Well, that is very strange behavior, I.

30:27 Know, especially copying the daughters on that. That's just really cool. Katie became increasingly uncomfortable with Jim's behavior. She told detectives that he had been leaving bizarre, possibly drunken voicemails and emails, including one where he wrote, quote, I know your dad is screening these emails. That's why I can't get through. Then came the issue of the guest house. Technically it belonged to Steve, and the Democrat family told Jim he needed to move out. He refused. In August, they forcibly evicted him, leaving his belongings outside. Jim claimed his washer and dryer had been damaged by exposure and demanded five thousand dollars in compensation. As the executor of Carroll's estate, Katie had to deal with it. Jim emailed her, pleading his case and writing, Katie, I loved your mom deeply.

31:15 She was my coach, my confidant, and my friend. He made a point to clarify that their relationship had never been romantic. Eventually, Katie agreed to pay part of the damage claim if only to put an end to the drama. With suspicion mounting and knowing that the death penalty was a possibility, Steve Demacher quietly began laying the groundwork to disappear. Oh boy. Police had already confiscated his passport, but just nine days after Carroll's murder, Steve submitted an application for a new one, claiming his original was lost. On the forum where it asked for details, he wrote, quote, don't know for certain. It is simply missing from my file at home and we cannot find it. That's a felony, by the way, to lie on a passport application.

31:58 I say, well, did the please have probable cause to take his passport away? He hadn't been charged with anything yet. It's a good question. I know he was definitely considered a suspect, and so I assume that police can do that. But I don't know. I never looked into that, whether police can just take your passport away. What a crazy move that is. I know, like the police aren't going to find out about that. Yeah, and somehow, despite passports usually taking four to six weeks or even two to three weeks if you get expedited service, Steve's new passport was issued on July sixteenth. Maybe they expedite them if you're a criminal. Maybe so. Then in August, Steve had a package delivered to his ubs office. Inside were four books. You're gonna love these book titles. First one How to Be Invisible, The Essential Guide to Protecting your personal privacy, your assets, and your life. And then there was also Cover your Tracks without Changing your Identity, How to Disappear until you want to be found, and then of course the classic The International Fugitive Secrets of Clandestine Travel Overseas and finally Advanced Fugitive Running, Hiding and Surviving and Thriving Forever.

33:06 I met in one of those books, the tip was like, and don't go on hands out and buying any books about becoming invisible or becoming a survivalist. You know, that's all. They sound like great books, though, unfortunately for Steve, if you get a mail at an investment firm, a lot of investment firms have strict compliance policies, financial advisors can't open their own mail. So a coworker opened the package, saw the titles, and, knowing that Steve's wife had recently been murdered, alerted the police. I am learning so many things today I didn't I wouldn't have thought that was a thing I wouldn't have either. That same month, Steve purchased a motorcycle and outfitted it with several metal locking cases. Inside the cases, he stashed fifteen thousand dollars in cash, a loaded handgun with two extra magazines, a DVD of street maps of Mexico, energy bars and beef jerky, and a prepaid cell phone. And he gave a second prepaid cell phone to Katie.

34:02 Who does he think he is? Then he took Renee Gerard, his girlfriend, to a remote area near his golf course, where they buried a go bag with clothing, more cash, and survival gear. He told her he was thinking about fleeing to Mexico or maybe vanishing into the wilderness. He even made a plan with Charlotte if the police came looking for him at the condo, she was supposed to use a code word Raspberry to warn him. Searches of Steve Demacher's computers revealed a disturbing digital trail. Back in February two thousand and eight, months before Carol's death, Steve had installed an anonymizer application The tool was designed to mask online activity, hiding internet searches, spoofing IP addresses, and deleting temporary files like cookies and browser history. The software deleted files, but it didn't overwrite the disk space, which meant that investigators were able to recover fragments of Steve's browsing history. What they found was deeply troubling. Just three days after the divorce was finalized, on June first, Steve searched for payment of life insurance benefits in the case of homicide, tips from a hitman on how to kill someone, how to stage a suicide, how to kill and make it look like suicide, and how to make a homicide appear suicide?

35:19 What an idiot? On his computer, detectives found a folder labeled book research, a nod perhaps to Steve's claim that he wanted to become a writer, but the contents of that folder weren't creative fiction. There were eighteen files, including one that depicted a room diagram of a staged homicide scene, complete with furniture tipped over, eerily similar to how Carol's body was discovered. There was also a link to practical homicide investigation, a real crime scene textbook showing a page on how to stage a crime scene. Steve had also visited amateur writing sites like writingworld dot com, but notably, investigators couldn't find any actual writing stories, no outlines, not even a paragraph.

36:03 So it almost seemed like Steve's whole writing thing was him laying the groundwork for an excuse as to why he was googling things he shouldn't be googling. Just like us, Not just like us. Well, we google very suspicious things all the time, we do. But how long does rigor Mortis take to set in? Oh, we totally do. But in his case, it just felt like he was pretending to be a writer just so he had an excuse for googling some of these things. What if you have been making this podcast for three years is some sort of an alibi? But then play in a very long game, in the long game exactly. Then there was the matter of carbon monoxide. In March, Steve had searched for use of carbon monoxide in suicide.

36:45 Around that same time, he found a company that sold and delivered gas in bulk, but to purchase carbon monoxide, he needed to provide a federal employer ID number. He obtained one using the name doctor Stephen C. Demacher, doing business as DBD Research and Consulting, and began filling out a purchase order. He listed his home address for delivery, but when the company requested a formal gas storage plan before proceeding with the delivery, Steve dropped the effort and never followed through. Even as suspicions swirled around him. Steve Demacher wasted no time trying to collect on Carroll's life insurance policies. The couple had taken out two policies a decade earlier, totaling seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars. Despite their separation and eventual divorce, Steve remained the listed beneficiary and he had continued making the premium payments even after they split. Just weeks after Carol's death, Steve filed a claim, but because he was considered a suspect in her murder, the insurance company denied his request. That didn't stop him.

37:47 Between August two thousand and eight and January two thousand and nine, Steve submitted five separate claims. Each one was rejected, but Steve wasn't done. When the straightforward approach didn't work, he'd he began looking for more creative and more questionable ways to get his hands on the money. In early October, an article ran in the local paper with the headline police hoped to make a rest in Kennedy murder. Soon, Steve's mother saw it online and got excited. Assuming they were talking about someone else. She called Steve and he calmly told her, I think they're talking about me, mom, and he was right. Despite having no murder weapon and no hard forensic evidence linking him to the crime scene, police arrested Steve Demacher and charged him with first degree murder.

38:33 At his first court appearance on October twenty fourth, two thousand and eight, prosecutors announced that they intended to seek the death penalty. They also asked the judge to deny Steve bail and to bar him from having any contact with his daughters. This last request created an unusual legal dilemma. Under Arizona law, victims are granted special rights, including the right to meet with prosecutors and be kept in the loop about the case. But the prosecution argued that if Katie and Charlotte retained these rights, any information they received could be passed along to their father and potentially compromised the case, so the girls were forced to choose either keep their legal rights as victims or give them up in order to stay in touch with their dad. They chose their dad.

39:18 They both did, They both did. Judge Thomas Lindbergh was appointed to preside over the trial. We'll be back after a break. A bail hearing for Steve Demacher was held on December twenty third, two thousand and eight. His family was hopeful that he might be home for Christmas, but the hearing stretched over several days and was paused for the holidays and didn't conclude until January. During the hearing, the prosecution laid out a broad version of their theory. Steve, they said, was drowning in debt. He wanted out of the alimony payments he'd been ordered to make for the next eight years, and he wanted access to these seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars in life insurance still in his name. They argued that Steve had carefully planned the murder, researching how to kill someone and stage it to look like an accident.

40:12 On July second, he rode his bike to Carroll's house with a backpack containing gloves and overalls. They said he waited until she returned from her run, ambushed her during her phone call with Ruth, and bludgeoned her to death with a golf club. Afterward, he disposed of his bloody clothes, possibly in a bonfire, and later made plans to flee the country, all pointing to consciousness of guilt. The defense countered that the computer searches were nothing more than research for a novel that Steve had once talked about writing. They pointed out that the shoe prints near the bike tracks didn't match any shoes that Steve owned, and the tire treads could have belonged to nearly any mountain bike. Was that the trail behind her house did people often.

40:56 It was used quite a bit, but I think we mentioned earlier it had rained day before, and so any tracks that they found were pretty fresh. Okay. No physical evidence linked Steve to the crime. Not a drop of Carroll's blood was in his car, condo or on his bike. There was no evidence of a bonfire, and no record of Steve buying any protective clothing like gloves or overalls. And most compellingly, there was male DNA under Carroll's fingernails that did not match Steve. The defense argued this alone should exonerate him, and they claimed that this and other exculpatory evidence hadn't been properly presented to the grand jury. Judge Thomas Lindberg agreed. He ruled that the prosecution had not met the legal threshold to bind Steve over for trial. He found that they had presented misleading, incomplete, prejudicial, and erroneous information to the grand jury and ordered the case to be sent back. Prosecutors regrouped and presented the case again, this time following the judge's guidance in February two thousand and nine, and jury once again indicted Steve on the same charges. In January of two thousand and nine, Jim Knapp's ex wife and Saxead grew concerned. Jim had been scheduled to watch their sons, but he never showed up, and he wasn't responding to calls or emails. That wasn't like him. Worried, An contacted one of Jim's close friends, a man named Sean, and asked if he would check on him. Jim had been staying at a friend's condo, and Sean agreed to stop by. He brought another friend

42:29 with him. When they arrived, the scene was unsettling. The lights were off, but the front door was ajar There was broken glass on the porch, damaged to the front window, and what looked like a small bullet hole in the screen door. Cautiously, the two men entered the condo, calling out for Jim. The living room was unusually messy, with more broken glass and two spent bullet casings on the floor. The bedroom door was closed. Sean decided not to open it. Instead, he stepped back outside and called nine one one. When police arrived and entered the primary bedroom, they found Jim napp lying on the floor near the closet. He had been shot once in the chest. A nine millimeter semi automatic pistol was lying by his left hip. Gun shot residue on his shirt and around the wound indicated that the shot was fired at close range, and total investigators found five bullet casings, all matching Jim's gun. Four bullets had traveled through the condo through a chair, the walls, the window, and the screen door. All had been fired from inside. Despite the chaotok scene and the absence of a suicide note, police ultimately determined that Jim had died by suicide. What do you think about that?

43:40 I think it's probably true. I think Jim was very troubled. There were five bullet casings. Though, I think he had just randomly fired around the apartment or the condo and then shot himself. Okay. There were no signs of forest entry, no bullets or shell casings found outside, and no evidence of another It appeared that Jim had fired several rounds randomly then turned the gun on himself. Toxicology results later revealed six prescription medications in his system, including antidepressants, anxiety meds, sleeping pills, and painkillers. Jed had been spiraling in the months following Carroll's murder. He'd lost his closest friend, his health was declining, and he was nearly broke, with just one hundred and seventy seven dollars to his name when he died. He had recently told a friend that he had seen an attorney to ensure his sons would inherit what little he had in case anything happened to him. It's possible he tried to stage the scene to look like something other than suicide. A couple of weeks later, friends and family gathered for a celebration of life in true Jim knapk fashion.

44:44 The dress code was casual, a low hash shirts, shorts, and sandals instead of flowers. Guests were asked to donate to his Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the world's oceans and beaches. Steve Demacher wasn't done trying to get his hands on Carroll's life insurance money, all seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars of it. He needed the cash for his legal defense, which was expected to run over a million dollars, and after being denied five times, Steve and his legal team came up with a new plan. When you want that money to go to your children, but now not if you're Steve. Apparently. In March two thousand and nine, Steve formally disclaimed himself as the beneficiary of Carroll's life insurance policies. On paper, it looked noble like he was stepping aside so his daughters could receive the money instead, and technically he was. That move allowed the funds to be released to the contingent beneficiaries, Katie and Charlotte. But don't get the wrong idea. This wasn't some selfless act. Behind the scenes, Steve was doing everything he could to persuade Katie, who was also the executor of her mom's estate, to hand over the money to his lawyers. What followed was a deeply uncomfortable power struggle between father and daughter, a conversation captured in a record of call that we're going to partially recreate a little true crime theater.

46:05 You will be playing the part of Katie and I will be playing the part of Steve Democher. All right, I need to be sure that I can make sure that Charlotte goes to college. I understand your concern, but that is, unfortunately, at this point that has to be down the scale of priorities below bond first. Defense Second, The amount of money that I was planning to set aside for Charlotte is not going to significantly impede upon any of that. Sweetie, let me be as direct as I can, and I don't want to get into a fight, but I want to make sure we're clear with each other. We may need every penny of it for defense, and I need to make certain that you understand that there will be no impediment to that if that's what we need.

46:46 And I need to make sure you understand that I am trying to take care of my little sister. I understand that you're trying to do that. But we're going to get an acquittal here, and if we don't. You don't know that. I'm really sorry to be that harsh. Of course, that's what we all want, but you cannot say beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is what is going to happen. I'm setting aside money that I'm not just going to hand over. How what are you talking about doing? Maybe you should get your lawyer to explain it to you a little better. Hey, Hey, hey, before criticizing me and m decisions. Sweety, the only reason those resources will come under your control will be if I give them up. If you can take them for yourself, go for it.

47:26 These are resources that otherwise wouldn't come until this is all over, and we need them now for the defense. And so this is a completely legal and appropriate way that the attorneys have constructed. But we need your cooperation. And if you're going to exert control here, I'm asking you simply to step aside and don't exert this sort. Of I'm not going to do that. Oh Pumpkin. I'm counting on you. My life is in the balance. Stop saying that that's the truth. It's not true. I have some decisions to make now, and you can't always play the daddy card, Sweetie. I will make certain, first of all, well ninety nine percent probability here that if we can get me out and back to work, whether or not there's a civil suit against the county that succeeds, as long as I'm acquitted and back to work, I will take care of both of you as I always have, and if for some reason I'm not able to, my family will. But the resources we have at our disposal right now have to go to this without any interference, and I need to know that from you. As long as we're clear that if we need it it comes to my defense or my bond, I have to be out and I have to be acquitted. The two go hand in hand.

48:32 I need to get out so I can raise money so that I can help with my defense. I need to take care of my little family right now. I need you to stop to not be part of the problem here, Kate. On top of everything else, we're battling here. Don't you enter here and become something. I am not a problem. How dare you? There are some things that I'm not your daughter about anymore. When I'm the executor of this estate, I'm mom, I'm not Katie. A very tense conversation, as you can tell. Great job, as. Katie, I didn't like you very much there. You were good at being that key. Good my job. Yeah. So the conversation ended on a tense but heartbreaking note, both saying I love you before hanging up, But the damage had been done despite her resistance. A few weeks later, the money, through a maze of transfers, made its way from Hartford Life Insurance to Carol's trust, then to Katie's personal checking account, then to her grandparents, and finally to Steve's lawyers. And Steve didn't just manipulate his daughter, He also enlisted his girlfriend, Renee Gerard. He convinced Katie to step down as trustee of her mom's trust and hand it over to Renee Oh my gosh, who he was sure would carry out his wishes. That move ensured that no one would stand in his way when it came to accessing the money.

49:47 If you didn't already hate Steve. This whole thing just makes me hate him so much. A prosecution expert and trust law would later testify that both Katie and Renee had breached their legal duties as trustees trust us he is obligated to manage funds according to the trust's intent and paying for Steve's defense. The man accused of murdering Carroll was most definitely not the intended purpose of Carroll's trust. Just feeling my blood pressure rise in a moment over here, yeah, for sure infuriating. In June of two thousand and nine, a shocking twist landed in the inbox of Steve Demacher's attorney, John Sears. It was an anonymous email, and it claimed to reveal what really happened the night that Carol Kennedy was murdered.

50:32 Sears immediately contacted the County Attorney's office and said he had information that supported his client's innocence. The email read, in part, I can't tell you who I am, but I can tell you what really happened the night Kennedy was killed. Napp was running his mouth to Kennedy about a prescription drug deal. He was in Two men and one woman were sent to do them both. It was going to be a home invasion gone bad. She tried to run out a side door, but one man got her with an ASP. An ASP, by the way, I didn't know what that was. It's inexpandable baton, like the kind that police carry. She didn't stay down and there was a fight. The second man had an axe handle he got from her bedroom instead of his ASP. They tried to go back for it, but the cops were already there. Napp was not killed by any of the men or woman. This wasn't one crazed man with a golf club. The people you're looking for are major prescription drug suppliers in Phoenix, connected to Mexico, Canada, and some other offshore operation. That's all I can say. What do you make of that note?

51:31 I'm not so sure about that. The county prosecutor assigned an investigator to follow up. When the investigator met with Steve and his lawyer to show them the email, Steve reportedly began weeping. He said the message confirmed what he had already heard from a voice in the prison vent yep. According to Steve, just a few weeks earlier, a mysterious voice came through the air vent in his cell a fellow inmate who told him the same story, that Jim Napp was involved in a prescription drug ring and that Carol was killed as a result. Steve didn't know the name of the inmate who gave him this information, and when the investigator offered to interview people in the jail to try to identify who had spoken to Steve, Steve declined, saying he didn't want to be moved to protective custody. So just think about that.

52:17 Steve claims that there's someone in jail who could exonerate him, but he didn't want that person tracked down because it might mean spending some time in solitary. That seems highly improbable. I would say, so. Investigators looked into the email. It had been sent from a freshly created account at an internet cafe in Phoenix. The person who sent it paid in cash, and there was no security camera in the building. In other words, it was a dead end. But if this was part of some elaborate plot to cast out on Steve's guilt, it had the desired effect. It added just enough mystery to keep durors guessing, Or at least that was the hope. As the trial approached, prosecutors were increasingly worried that Judge Thomas Lindbergh might be biased in Steve Demacher's favor. The judge had already made several pre trial rulings that frustrated the state. He barred the prosecution from introducing evidence about Steve's extramarital affairs, his use of human growth hormone, and even complaints against him related to his work as a financial advisor, all of which prosecutors believed spoke to motive or character.

53:22 Do you know what the complaints against him were? No. I read about it in the book that I researched this case on. There wasn't a lot of detail there, but financial advisors, it's not uncommon to have complaints against you, but he did have a few. But what really raised eyebrows came during a hearing about whether the state would pursue the death penalty. Judge Lindbergh remarked, quote, I don't believe we're going to get there, implying that he didn't think the evidence justified a death sentence. The prosecutor pushed back, saying quote, I'm really really concerned that you have at least to some extent, made up your mind in this case, that you have prejudged the case to some extent, that you're no longer impartial, and that you have some bias. In response, the state filed a motion to have Lindberg removed from the case. A hearing was held on the issue, but in the end the motion was denied and Judge Lindbergh remained on the case.

54:13 Do you think he seemed biased. Just based on the comments that he made beforehand. I don't think we're going to get there. It seemed like he was sort of judging or prejudging the case a little bit. Jury selection finally got underway in May of twenty ten. Because of the state was still pursuing the death penalty at that point, the process was long and tedious. Finding jurors who could be fair and impartial and who were also open to the possibility of imposing the death sentence took weeks, and then, in a surprising twist, prosecutors announced they were dropping the death penalty. They said it was out of respect for Carroll's surviving family members who were opposed to it. Steve's defense team wasn't thrilled with this move. By the state. That's because conventional wisdom says that jurors who are willing to impose the death penalty tend to be more prosecution friendly, more likely to convict.

55:03 Once the death penalty was off the table, the defense asked the court to scrap the jury that had been seated and start fresh, but Judge Lindbergh denied the request. The same jury would stay. As the trial began, the state started stacking up circumstantial evidence. One notable moment came when an FBI expert took the stand to talk about the shoe prints found next to the bike tracks behind Carol's home. He had run the prints through the FBI's footwear database. I didn't know such a thing existed, and he found just three potential matches, all from the same brand, Losportiva. The specific models were the Ultranoord, the Imagen, and the Pike's Peak. A check of Steve's credit card records revealed that he had purchased a pair of Losportiva Pike's Peak shoes back in April of two thousand and six, just over two years before Carroll's murder, and only three hundred and forty nine pairs of those shoes in Steve's size had been sold in the US by that time.

56:00 There's so much data there in that sentence, it really is. It blows my mind that the FBI have a database. They can run a photo through it and say, yep, there's only these three shoes. Steve's attorneys pointed out that he ran regularly and wore through shoes quickly, about one pair every six months, so it was entirely plausible that those shoes had long since been discarded. Still, for the jury, it may have been one more piece of the puzzle, placing Steve near the scene. On June sixteenth, day eight of the trial, the prosecution was hitting its stride. Witnesses have been called, exhibits entered, and the state was steadily building its case. But then something unexpected happened that brought the entire trial to a screeching halt. That day, Judge Thomas Lindbergh called for an early lunch break, which struck some in the courtroom as a bit unusual. A short while later, back in his chambers, he suddenly collapsed. A nearby deputy saw what happened and rushed to his aid.

56:57 Judge Lindbergh was taken to the hospital, where doctors discovered the cause, a brain tumor. Wow. The trial was immediately suspended for weeks. Everything was on hold while a new judge could be appointed. Eventually, Judge Warren Darrow was assigned to take over. More than a month after the abrupt interruption, the trial resumed on July twenty first. One of the defense's key strategies was to undermine the credibility of the investigation, to plant the idea that police had zeroed in on Steve too quickly and then fumbled the forensics. They found a surprising ally in the prosecution's own witness, County medical examiner doctor Philip Keene. During his testimony, doctor Keene revealed that when he transported Carroll's body to Phoenix for further examination by a forensic anthropologist, he did so in the back of his personal pickup truck. The body, sealed in a body bag, had been strapped down with a bungee cord for the hour and a half ride through the Arizona heat. He admitted that the Phoenix temperatures in July often soar above of one hundred degrees and acknowledged somewhat sheepishly that This wasn't the ideal procedure for the defense.

58:07 It was a gift, an opportunity to highlight carelessness, raised questions about the chain of custody and suggest that key evidence might have been compromised. We'll be back after a break. As the trial moved forward, the prosecution continued chasing down leads tied to the mysterious anonymous email, the one that claimed Carroll's murder was the result of Jim Knapp's involvement in a prescription drug ring. The judge had ruled that the email couldn't be excluded, so investigators needed to discredit it. They sent it to the FBI's Behavior Analysis Unit in Quantico.

58:48 Their assessment the email was bogus. The scenario described didn't match what was found at the crime scene. No professional hit team would show up without weapons and improvise with a golf club or axe handle. The FBI believed the email was an attempt to exonerate Steve and likely written by someone close to him. Investigators started comparing writing styles a note something interesting. This syntax, grammar, and punctuation of the anonymous email closely resembled emails Charlotte had written to her mom lowercase letters of the beginning of sentences run on thoughts, misplaced commas, all very familiar. Meanwhile, Steve's girlfriend, Renee was reaching her limit. She had stood by him through the investigation and even acted as trustee of Carroll's estate, helping funnel insurance money to Steve's legal defense, but by now she felt used, manipulated, and done so. On September nineteenth, Renee came clean. In exchange for immunity from conspiracy and evidence tampering charges, she agreed to reveal the truth about the email. She told investigators that during a prison visit, Steve had written out the entire email and held it up to the glass partition for Charlotte to copy. He claimed the information came from a mysterious voice in the event, an anonymous prison source, and insisted it had to be shared anonymously where no one would believe it. Renee and Charlotte had been uncomfortable with the plan, but at the time Steve was facing the death penalty, they were desperate

1:00:20 to help. Now, with Renee's confession in hand, prosecutors approached Charlotte and told her they knew everything. They offered her immunity as well. And Charlotte agreed to testify. What a piece of dirt this guy is? Oh totally, I mean he uses everyone around him to his benefits. They just can't fathom putting your child in danger like that. I know, had she not gotten immunity, she could have been prosecuted. Yeah, for sure. With a revelation about the fabricated email, the trial came to a screeching halt. Suddenly there were potential new charges on the table, tampering with evidence, forgery, fraud, conspiracy, even contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Ves defense team now claimed they had a conflict of interest. After all, they had unknowingly been used to help Steve orchestrate the email hoax, and they were also involved in the convoluted insurance money transaction, another potential criminal matter. They petitioned to withdraw from the case. Prosecutors opposed the motion, but the issue escalated all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled that the defense team had to be allowed to step down. That left Judge Warren Darrow with no choice but to declare a mistrial in November twenty ten, one familiar face in the courtroom that day was Judge Thomas Lindbergh, once the original judge on the case. He had collapsed during the trial just a few months earlier due to a brain tumor. Now gaunt and visibly ill, he watched quietly from the gallery as the trial he started was officially declared over. He would pass away just

1:01:51 a few months later. At age fifty eight. Steve, now out of money and officially declared indigent, was appointed a new team of public defenders. There's a cruel irony, given the links that he had gone to in order to funnel the seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars in life insurance money towards his defense. That money was gone and the trial had to start all over. That's one of the things that a waste, I know, just such a waste like the seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars which should have gone to Charlotte and Katie. Right, it's just up in smoke. I mean, that's what I meant. I didn't mean, like, you know, it was too bad that he didn't have the money towards his defense, Just so sad that he didn't want to take care of his daughters and their education and you know, helping them start out in life.

1:02:33 After the mistrial, Steve's new attorneys interviewed nine jerors from the original trial. Five said that they were leaning toward acquittal, three toward conviction, and one was undecided. And that was before the defense had even presented its case. It gave Steve's new team reason to believe that a second trial might go their way. I don't love that these jurors had to be interviewed after the first trial. They didn't have to be these they chose to be interviewed. But I know it is a little. Bit makes me feel icky. Yeah, I mean, you're right, if you're a juror, you should be I mean, they didn't have to talk, but at the same time, they probably felt obligated to talk. And yeah, you know, it should really be your own opinion.

1:03:14 Seems very untoward to me. Yeah, there's something a little bit icky about it. One of the biggest obstacles for the prosecution was the DNA evidence, or rather the lack of it. There were no fingerprints, no hair, no fibers, and no DNA linking Steve Demcker to the scene of Carroll's murder, but What they did find under Carroll's fingernails was even more troubling, male DNA that didn't match Steve. Despite testing samples from everyone who might reasonably have come into contact with Carrol, friends, family, coworkers, even emergency responders, investigators came up empty. Whoever this was, they were unidentified and potentially a huge problem for the prosecution's case. The unknown profile came to be known as mister six's here three, named after the evidence tag number assigned to the DNA samples they prepared for the second trial.

1:04:06 Investigators had an idea one if this DNA wasn't left during the crime, but instead was the result of contamination during the autopsy, they pulled the files for the three autopsies performed immediately before Carroll's and had blood samples tested. In February twenty eleven, the crime lab called with an answer. Mister six to zero three was identified as Ronald Berman, a man who had died of natural causes and whose autopsy had taken place just before Carroll's. I don't remember the case this happened in in a different case, And. Oh, it's just so crazy, and it's crazy that they thought to do this too, that It's good that they thought to do this, because otherwise it would have been a big problem, I think with their case.

1:04:49 But so it must have been like a negligible amount of DNA, really, right, I guess it was a striking example of procedural sloppiness and and another talking point for the defense. But at least it solved the mystery of the unknown male DNA, removing what had been one of the most troubling pieces of evidence undermining the state's case. After years of delays, jury selection for Steve's retrial finally began in July twenty thirteen. This time around, the prosecution streamlined their case. They trimmed their witness list, focused on core facts, and ditched some of the more convoluted elements from the first trial. Their case was still circumstantial, no weapon, no direct evidence, no confession, but they believed the pattern of Steve's behavior before and after the murder told the story.

1:05:37 The state argued that there was a clear motive money. Prosecutors highlighted Steve's extravagant lifestyle in the months leading up to the murder. In just three months, he averaged fifteen hundred dollars per month on clothing, eleven hundred dollars in cash withdrawals every month, eight hundred dollars on restaurant meals, six hundred dollars for golf club membership, five hundred dollars for electronics, one hundred and sixty dollars for haircuts, and one hundred and twenty dollars in spa treatments. That's every month. I don't think it sounds that crazy. No, I don't think. Teen hundred dollars a month on clothing. Well, you haven't that much of like ten years. I know. I mean it's a lot, but if you're you know, a professional, I'm not saying I mean, you know, I don't spend that much. But I don't think it sounds that crazy. I don't think it's as crazy as you might think it's.

1:06:23 So maybe not, but he was spending a lot more than he was making. Yeah. He was also leasing three BMW's, one for himself, one for each daughter, and regularly splurging on trips and sports gear, all while paying alimony. At the time of Carroll's death, Steve was in the hole by nearly four hundred thousand dollars. Steve's defense stuck to its original position no physical evidence tied Steve to the scene. No trace of blood, DNA, or even fiber from Carrol's house, in his car, his condo, or his laundry. No golf club had ever been recovered. The tire and shoe prints weren't definitively matched to Steve. The investigation, they said, had been sloppy and biased from day one, full of shortcuts, oversights, and tunnel vision. With the DNA mystery resolved, the defense team leaned into an alternate theory Jim Knapp was the killer. They argued that Jim was mentally unstable, furious at Carrol for not helping him launch his Maui Wowie Smoothie franchise, and harboring romantic feelings that she didn't return. But their theory had one major flaw. The timeline phone records showed that Jim was at his ex wife Anne's home the night of the murder at seven fifty eight pm, his cell phone pinged off a tower near her house as he checked his voicemail.

1:07:39 Carrol's call with her mother was abruptly cut off just one minute later at seven point fifty nine, which was the presumed time of the attack. The defense tried to argue that the call may have ended for some other reason than that Jim could have left later and still made it to Carol's home. After all, he showed up suspiciously just as the police were arriving. But it was a long shot. I mean, the fact that he could say for sure he was at his ex wife's home the minute before that phone call ended pretty much clears him. Steve's defense also said that his post murder behavior, preparing to flee orchestrating the anonymous email telling the voice in the vents story wasn't evidence of guilt, but the desperate actions of a man terrified of being wrongly convicted. In closing arguments, prosecutor Jeff Pauport staged a theatrical moment. He wheeled in a rolled up rug from home, then dramatically beat it with a golf club in front of the jury, a vivid reenactment of the brutality of Carol's murder when dust flew everywhere. His wife, who was sitting in the audience, was horrified. Afterwards, she scolded him, if I had known you were going to do that, I would have vacuumed it first. The jury deliberated for three full days before returning with a verdict. As the courtroom filled in anticipation, Charlotte and Katie hugged their grandmother Ruth, in a moment that captured the heart wrenching divide in their face. Then the sisters quietly took their places behind their father, Steve on the defense side. Ruth sat across from them on the prosecution side.

1:09:08 That is heartbreaking. It is really sad. But at least they still maintained a relationship. That is good. Yeah. So these threats that you write in the middle of these scripts are really aggressive and not very nice. Rich, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's so he's in all caps and it's like, don't look well, look at the script, look at me. Sometimes you have to be kind of direct. What do you think the verdict is going to be? Because I know you haven't looked ahead. I'm sure he was guilty. Well, you are positive he was guilty because I did look ahead. What are you going to do about it? Wow, it's pretty rude. Yes, the verdict was guilty on all counts. Though the case was built on circumstantial evidence, the jury found the puzzle pieces compelling Steve had a clear financial motive and emotional motive and no credible alibi.

1:09:54 Sentencing was scheduled for January twenty fifteen, three months after the conviction. Outside the courtroom that day, Steve's mother, Jan approached Carol's mother Ruth. She pressed a small medallion into Ruth's hand. It said peace. Jan told her quote, I'll never believe that Steve killed Carol. Ruth didn't respond, she understood if their roles were reversed, she might feel the same. At the sentencing hearing, prosecutors pushed for the maximum possible sentence. They said Steve should never be allowed to walk free again, and demanded more than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in restitution to return the stolen insurance funds to Carol's trust. Justice, they argued, wouldn't be complete without financial accountability. Ruth couldn't attend the hearing in person. Her health had declined and she was no longer able to travel from Nashville, but she wrote a letter to the court and asked that Carroll's photo be displayed as her words were read aloud.

1:10:50 On Steve's behalf, his mother, several siblings, and both daughters spoke. Katie now twenty six, described her father as loving and kind, someone who had taught her com passion and forgiveness. Charlotte, twenty three, spoke through tears about the pain of losing her mother and the added devastation of potentially losing her father to missing her wedding, never meeting her future children. Steve addressed the court himself. He said, quote, I did not kill Carol. We loved each other for more than twenty years. Our marriage was over, but not our affection for each other. I'm incapable of violence against her. He pleaded for leniency, insisting that locking up an innocent man would not serve justice, but the court disagreed. Steve was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murder, plus twenty one additional years for the related charges.

1:11:41 He was also ordered to pay more than seven hundred thousand dollars in restitution to Carroll's trust, which I'm sure he'd probably never paid because he was indigent. By that point, justice, at least in the eyes of the court, had finally been served. Steve's attorney filed a notice of appeal in February twenty fourteen, with the formal appeal submitted a year later in March twenty fifteen. The case was reviewed by the Arizona State Supreme Court, which ultimately denied the appeal in July twenty seventeen. Today, Steve Demacher is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Douglas, five miles from the Mexico border and two hundred and seventy miles from the town of Prescott, where his life once looked very different. Despite the devastating events they endured, Katy and Charlotte have both gone on to build impressive lives for themselves. Katie graduated from Berkeley Law School in twenty fifteen. She clerked for the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of California, then was selected for the prestigious Department of Justice Honors Program in twenty seventeen. She worked as a trial attorney for the DOJ for nearly eight years, and as of June twenty twenty five, serves as the Senior Assistant Attorney General for the State of Colorado. She also got married in twenty seventeen. Charlotte was in space inspired by her father's career in wealth management, and earned a finance degree from Arizona State University. After working for several years at a boutique investment bank, she went on to found a financial literacy app called Penny, later rebranded as a Sender.

1:13:15 She also co founded a company called Refresh Data, providing real estate insights in Colorado, and currently serves as chief operating officer for a company that offers e contract solutions for real estate transactions in the state of Colorado. Carol Kennedy was many things, a mother, an artist, an educator, a counselor, a psychotherapist, and a mentor to many. Her life was full of creativity, compassion, and quiet strength. She was taken far too soon at the age of fifty three. Rest in peace, Carol, Rest in peace. Do Charlotte and Katie see their dad? I don't know that, and I don't know if they believe he is innocent. Still. They obviously stood behind him through the entire trial, But in the I watched to dateline and forty eight hours for this case, and some of Steve's family members appear in it basically defending him.

1:14:07 They don't appear in anything, so I assume they just don't want to talk. About Yeah, and I don't blame them for that at all. No, I don't blame them either. Do you I think I know the answer to this. But do you believe that Steve killed Carol? And maybe the harder question is do you believe there was enough to convict him. I believe that he killed Carol, And yeah, I think there was enough evidence. I think there was too, even though there was no DNA, you know, all the physical evidence, but there was so much circumstantial. Evidence, and circumstantial evidence is evidence. Absolutely, Steve was in a significant amount of debt, but he also had the means to get himself out of that debt. Yeah he had it. Sounds like he was pretty good at what he did.

1:14:49 He had a great career, he had a good life, and. Yeah, he had great earning potential. I mean, his problem with debt was that he spent too much. If he had just you know, scaled back a little bit on spending, he could have gotten out of debt easily and had a you know, successful career and then fine financially. And Carol had every right to move on with her life and forget about Steve and just the fact that he ended her life so selfishly, and. Yeah, it's just well, I do wonder you know about the motive. I was going to ask you about that because I think the prosecution their theory was that his motive was primarily financial. But I'm not so sure about that because of what you just said. He could have gotten himself out of debt. He was making a lot of money. So what do you think his motive was.

1:15:34 I think he was jealous that Carol was going to move on with her life. This is what happens in so many of these cases is you know, the man can have multiple affairs and you know, do whatever he wants, but as soon as the woman is done stands up for herself, Yeah, the man has a hard time. Yeah. A lot of people in the book that I read speculated, people that knew Steve speculated that no one had ever said no to him before, like no one had ever turned him down before. He was I mean, he was a good looking guy, He had a lot going for him. He was very persuasive, manipulative, some might say, and women. You know, he didn't have a lot of women turning him down. And I think having Carol finally say no, and she was done. I think that may have you know, tipped him over the edge. Jim Napp was kind of an interesting person in this case, kind of a tragic figure in some ways, but also, you know, not not the greatest guy, or he doesn't come off as being the greatest guy, Like he seemed to have some issues with women. But what do you think about Jim's role in this case? Do you think that do you?

1:16:36 First of all, do you think it's possible that Jim may have killed Carol? I think you did a great job telling this story, but I'm not really sure I know who Jim is. Yeah, he seems kind of like a shadowy figure in a lot of ways, and. A little bit of a paradox, like he kind of comes off as a little bit of a just an odd, kind of goofy guy, but sometimes he comes off as a little bit of a you know, a great guy. It sounds like he was taking advantage of Carol in this situation, like staying in her guest house and probably not you know, giving her anything in return. Yeah, yeah, that could be. I have read that a lot of Jim's family and friends are upset about the way he's portrayed, especially in like the TV show so Dateline forty eight hours, because I think those shows they want to they want to add dropa that they want to make things seem.

1:17:23 Like kind of try not to do that in our case. Is usually Yeah, for sure. I think you know, he was a great red Herring, right he was, Yes, And. I think he was portrayed as being maybe worse than he was in real life. Well no, thanks to Steve. I mean Steve really portrayed him like that, right with the whole you know, whisper in the prison and you. Know, oh yeah, he definitely perpetuated those those things. Yeah, and his defense I'm sure was very happy to have, you know, try to make Jim take the fall. Yeah. Before we close, I do want to mention my main source for this case. I did watch forty eight hours in Dateline and read several articles, but the main source was a book by Caitlin Rother called Then No One Can Have Her Kitlyn Rother also wrote the book Death on Ocean Boulevard about the strange case of Rebecca Zahaw that we covered way back in twenty twenty two, and I just want to say both books are really good among the best true crime books I've read, very well researched, very well written.

1:18:18 Well, I'm going to go look at her list of works really quick and get a jumpstart on my next case before you grab it. You should. I love reading a good true crime and we both kind of do it because we both really do enjoy learning about these stories and telling the stories. And I try to like let the story unfold for me, and I think you do the same. Oh, I do, definitely, I do love a good book. I try not to. I think we both do it the same way. We don't watch the TV shows until we've read the book and digested the story. Yeah, for sure. And if I was going to say, if you're interested in learning more about if you really liked this case and thought it was interesting, read her book because there was a lot of things I left out, Like, I know this was a long episode, but there were things that I thought were interesting that I just felt like, I can't I can't add more to it, but it's definitely worth a read. Yeah, Well, before we go, I know, we always like to try to end on a lighter note.

1:19:16 I have a little quiz for you. You often to. This the other day and I was like, oh boy, I mention study. They did it. You often come up with quizzes for me and it's totally fair, and you can if you're listening, you can play along at home too. I think this is going to be a fun one. I'm not a good test taker. Well, I am going to name some things and you have to tell me if these things I name are a yoga pose, a heavy metal band, or a crime novel. Yoga pose, heavy metal band or crime novel. All right, fair enough, all right? Are you ready? Yes? Okay, all right? First one corpse that is a yoga pose. That is a yoga pose. Good job. So a flower, yeah, it is a corpse, the corpse flower. Right, there is a book called Corpse Pose, but that is not that doesn't count. So you got that one right, all right?

1:20:07 All right? Second one Iron Claw that. Is a heavy metal band. Wow, very good, very impressive. They are a heavy metal band from Scotland, right of course. All right. Next one Praying Mantis. That is a insect. Also a hmmm, I think it's a heavy crime novel pose. I'm going to go with crime novel. Oh that was a metal band. I'm going to say that. But I'm okay, all right. Embryo that is a heavy metal band. No, that is a yoga pose. Oh it is an advanced yoga pose. Oh well, I'm a not a I'm not a I do yoga, but I am not an advanced yoga eve.

1:20:48 That's for sure. All right. Pentagram that is a heavy metal band. That is a heavy metal band. Good job you're. Keeping score, little hashtag. Can't do anything for fun in this house. Has to be like competitive, all right. Next one is The Silkworm. That is a heavy metal band. No, I'm afraid not. That is a crime novel by Robert Galbraith. Well, no offense, Robert, but that is kind of a bad name for a true crime book. All right. Let's move on to the next one. Raven Black that is a heavy metal band. No, once again, that is a crime novel. Okay, all right. Thunderbolt that is a heavy metal band. I thought you'd get that one. That is a yoga pose.

1:21:30 Really yeah, it's also called Vajra sana, a seated meditation pose. I don't know. Okay, all right, Four left, The Snowman. That is a true crime novel. That is a crime novel, yes, by Joe Nezbo, which I've read. It's a very good book. Wait, it's a crime novel or a true crime novel. These are just novels, crime novels, fiction. Oh I thought you meant true crime. No, okay, gotcha. Reclining Hero that is a yoga pose. Very good. Two left Running Duck that. Is a heavy metal band. That is a crime novel. All right, Last chance, Saber Tiger. That is a yoga pose. I'm afraid that is a metal band. Okay, all right, well you did Okay.

1:22:13 I didn't. That's all right. Still, I still like myself. It was a tough quiz. It was a tough quiz. So did you take the quiz? No? Because I made the quiz up so I couldn't really take it. You didn't. We all know who made this quizz up. The idea for the quiz may have come from elsewhere, but I made the choices for the quiz by doing my own research. All right, Well, thanks humiliating me in front of the world. You got five. Right, that's pretty good. Thanks for playing along. Sure, just wait till your next quiz, sir. It's not going to be pretty. I expect nothing less. Wait, I have a question. For you, okay, something in the case that maybe chuckle a little bit was the code word? Remember they had a raspberry and I was like, well, to have just a code word when it could have been like, I know, Grandma's in the hospital or something like that. You know, it would have been more a little.

1:23:03 More subtle, right, less obvious. So what should our We actually have a family code and I can't. Sorry, guys, but we can't tell you what it is. I can't tell you either because I can't remember. You can't remember it, just forget. I know. It's not good to have a code you don't remember. Should we make a new code? I don't know. We can't talk about that on our podcast because then everyone will know. The co listen are our friends except for that person that message to me last week. But we're gonna move on from that. Yeah, probably move on from that one. Well. Thank you all so much for hanging out with us. Please rate, review, follow, and subscribe, find us on social media and YouTube, or send us an email at Lovemarykill at gmail dot com.

1:23:44 Until next time, don't kill your wife and don't kill your husband. Companion with the