May 4, 2026

Mackenzie Cowell

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Mackenzie Cowell was seventeen years old — a dancer, a cosmetology student, and a young woman with her whole life mapped out in front of her — when she stepped out of her beauty school in Wenatchee, Washington one February afternoon and never came back. Four days later, her body was found partially submerged in the Columbia River, twenty miles from where she had disappeared.

What followed was one of the stranger murder investigations in recent Washington state history. Investigators chased a months-long dead end involving drug dealers, a supposed snuff film, and an informant whose story kept changing. Meanwhile, the real answer had been hiding in plain sight — in the classroom where Mackenzie spent her afternoons, and in an apartment where a piece of carpet held a secret that luminol would eventually reveal.

Mackenzie had survived a difficult childhood, a contentious home life, and the relentless schedule she had set for herself. She made it through all of that. She didn't make it through one ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

Today’s snack: Quick and easy apple tart with buttermilk caramel syrup

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WEBVTT

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Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina.

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If there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years

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of marriage, it's.

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That some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and.

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Some days you'll feel like killing your wife.

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Welcome to Love Mary Kill.

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Hey you, Tina, Hey Rich. How are you today?

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I'm good? How are you?

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I am doing good. I'm happy to be in the

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recording studio here with you for the next two or

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three hours.

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Yeah, it takes longer than people think.

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It's fun, though we could spend quality time together.

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I haven't seen you yet today. You look good. You're

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looking good, you have good color.

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Thanks, you look good.

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At your face. Light blue shirt on.

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Well, I really like your yellow shirt. You're looking very

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bright and spring like, even though it's not that spring

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like outside.

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It's a nice no, it's a lovely spring day. Yeah

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sixty three. Yeah, you're right, yesterday was a little dreary.

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But before we go any further, we've and remiss in

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congratulating the champions of our Love Mary Madness NCAA tournament.

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It was done a while ago. We talked about it.

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It was fun.

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It's May.

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Yeah. Yeah, but we should give a shout out to

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our winners. Our women's bracket winner was Jennifer H. Men's

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bracket winner was Zachary M and our overall winner. The

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best overall score for both the men's and women's was

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Philip A. Congratulations.

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Truths that we have some male listeners or were these

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husbands of our email listener? I don't know, I know

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we Well, how about the worst bracket? They deserve a

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call out too, Okay.

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I didn't. I didn't want to embarrass anybody, but the.

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Most anyone has anything to be embarrassed.

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The most disastrous bracket for the women's was Luisa L.

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And the most disastrous bracket for the men's was Brittany H. Congratulations.

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We went on a little adventure yesterday to Irish Hills, Michigan.

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So on the bonus episode that we recorded a few

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days ago, we talked about Irish Hills because the couple

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involved were from there. It's about forty five.

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Minutes from us, exactly forty five minutes from yes.

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Little kind of touristy sort of town. I used to

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go there all the time as a kid, and it

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was a lot of fun. They had like miniature golf

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courses and kind of these cheesy roadside attractions. It's kind

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of become a little bit of a ghost town over

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the last several years. But we talked about the mystery

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spot and how you had never been to a mystery spot.

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And because every time we drive by a mystery spot,

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you're like, oh, we don't need to stop, we need

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to keep we need to keep going.

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Exactly, we've got time to make it to our destination.

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But our dear friend Adrian sent us a note and

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said the mystery Spot in Irish Hills is for sale. Yeah,

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and we were like, well, we got to go, we

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got to go check it out. Maybe we should buy it.

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Right, you were very serious about potentially buying the mystery Spot,

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which is not called the Mystery Spot, it's.

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Called the Mystery Hill. Yeah, there is mystery spot is

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the one up in northern.

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Michigan, but by Mechanos City.

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So we drove out there and it was closed.

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Yeah, but we broke in. Yeah, here's a question for you.

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Would you have broken And if I didn't insist we

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broke in, I think.

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I would have because it was pretty like there weren't

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a lot of people around. There was it wasn't hard

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to get out, it was just walking, stepping over a

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you know chain across the gate, you know, of the

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parking lot. And it wasn't like an indoor attraction. It

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was sort of most of it was kind of outdoors.

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So we walked through it, and.

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We did walk through the Mystery Spot, which was really fun.

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I was kind of surprised how fun it was. It

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only it only takes like literally five minutes. But there

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was a museum of curiosities.

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We didn't get to go.

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We didn't. I peeked in and it looked kind of

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like what you see a lot and.

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But the but the house itself was like you know,

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it's like built all like tilted, and it gives you

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this weird sense of like you're you can't stand up straight. Really,

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it was cool.

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I think it's because we're old, but I was. It was.

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We were laughing a lot because we literally could not

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see straight and stand up straight. Yeah.

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I don't think we're going to buy it.

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I don't think we're going to buy it, sadly, I mean,

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if it was a good investment, it was actually in

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pretty good shape. But yeah, it was a fun little detour. Yeah,

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and then we went to the Big Boy for dinner.

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Yeah, we had a dinner at the Big Boy.

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Yeah, I think that's about all. I don't We did it.

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It was a fun day. Was glad that we did that.

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I have a snack for you. Would you like my snack? Yeah?

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Of course?

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All right. Well, today where our case is takes place

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in Wenatchi, Washington, which is the apple capital of the world,

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So of course I had to make something with apples

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in it. I found her a little recipe on the

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Pioneer Woman website for basically an apple tart but made

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with a puff pastry. Really, it's super simple.

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Okay, I love It's Reed Drummond, right, I don't know,

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I don't know.

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It's Pioneer Woman.

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Yeah, I love the Pioneer Woman. She's a redhead.

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Oh okay, cool? And so I made that, and I

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made some caramel sauce, some butter milk carme yep, I

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made the one that you make all the time.

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And so that's one of my favorite recipes. So sure

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if you've never made it's like the buttermilk syrup. Is

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that what it is? The exact same recipe.

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We'll post the recipes, Okay.

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Yeah, I highly recommend you make it.

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All right, should we give this a try. Yeah, how

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did you like the apple tart?

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It was quite tasty. Oh good, I'm glad you kind

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of apples did you use?

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I used the honeycrisp apple for it. Super simple recipe.

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It's just a frozen puff pastry, an apple, some brown sugar,

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and some lemon juice.

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I would probably give it like a seven and a

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half out of ten. It doesn't have a ton of flavor,

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but the caramel syrup I would give a ten out

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of ten. Yeah, that's my favorites. Thank you so much. Sure,

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you're such a good little cook.

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I do my best. Today. We're going to tell the

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story of Mackenzie Cowl. Before I start. This episode contains

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descriptions of violent crime, including graphic details of the murder

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of a minor. Please listen with care and this is

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a recommendation from Sarah from Sioux Falls. Thank you Sarah

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for the recommendation. On the afternoon of Tuesday, February ninth,

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twenty ten, a seventeen year old girl named Mackenzie Cowl

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told her classmates at the Wenatchi Academy of Hair Design

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that she was stepping out for a fifteen minutes. She

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gathered her things, walked out to the parking lot, got

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in her car, and drove away. She never came back.

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What followed was one of the more disturbing cases in

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the recent history of Washington State. A murder that was

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brutal even by the standards of violent crime, an investigation

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full of dead ends and false leads, a mysterious informant

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whose story was almost too strange to believe, and a

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suspect who had been hiding in plain sight for years.

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Mackenzie Cowell was born in April nineteen ninety two, the

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youngest of three children, and by every account, a young

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woman who packed more into a day than most people

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could manage in a week. That year, her schedule would

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have exhausted most adults. High school until noon, cosmetology classes

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until five, dance rehearsals, and workouts squeezed into whatever time

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was left. Her father, Reid, described her as driven, vibrant,

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a strong young woman who was on the verge of

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being a grown up, and then she vanished. I want

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to start by talking about the city of Winatchee, Washington.

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It's a small city, only about thirty two thousand people.

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At the time of Mackenzie's disappearance, but the years before

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Mackenzie's disappearance saw a number of events that led the

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Los Angeles Times to call it the little town of

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Horrors in a nineteen ninety five article, So I thought

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it was worth going down a little bit of a

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rabbit hole. Whenachie sits at the geographical center of Washington State,

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in a valley carved out by the Columbia River, flanked

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on both sides by the Cascade Mountain Range, It's apple country.

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In fact, it's referred to as the apple capital of

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the world, with orchards running up into the hills. Many

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of the same families have farmed the same land for generations.

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There's a main street and a diner, and a brick courthouse,

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and a feeling that things don't change much here. In

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nineteen ninety a publication called The Raiding Guide to Life

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in America's Small Cities named Wanatchi the fourth best micropolitan

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area in the entire country. A few years later, it

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was on the cover of USA Weekend magazine as the

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winner of Make a Difference Day. Hundreds of volunteers painting buildings,

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picking up trash along the river, lawyers rolling up their

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sleeves alongside service club members. The Chamber of Commerce printed

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up tourists brochures. The slogan they landed on was Winatchi

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Land of Dreams. Sounds pretty idyllic, right, But then in

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the summer of nineteen ninety four, a series of events

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hit the valley so fast and so hard that the

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local paper eventually ran a headline that said, simply bad

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news beyond imagination. First, a wildfire burned nearly two hundred

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thousand acres of the Wenatchee National Forest and destroyed thirty

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nine homes. Then eleven people were killed in a single

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highway collision two miles north of town. Then two twelve

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year old boys shot and killed a migrant farm worker

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on the banks of the Columbia, firing eighteen rounds into

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his body after he threw a rock at them. Soon

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after that, Rita Huffman and her fifteen year old daughter

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Mandy were brutally stabbed, killed, and mutilated in East Winatchie

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by a man who was obsessed with werewolves.

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Obsessed with werewolves? Does this have anything to do with Twilight.

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Not that I know of. I think it's just a

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sick man who he said he wanted to be the

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world's greatest serial killer. And I think he just killed

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those two people and then he got caught. But he

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saw himself. He said he saw himself as a werewolf

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stalking his prey.

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Well, that is crazy.

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And then in the spring of nineteen ninety five, what

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would become one of the most controversial criminal investigations in

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Washington State history came unraveling into the open. It started

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when a detective named Robert Perez drove his thirteen year

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old foster daughter around town in his patrol car while

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she pointed out houses and buildings where she claimed children

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had been abused. Perez had recently been assigned to investigate

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sex crimes after a brief training course. He had a

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prior performance review noting that he likes having power over people.

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On their drive around town, which locals would eventually call

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the Parade of Homes, Perez's foster daughter identified twenty two

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locations where she said that children had been abused. What

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followed was a catastrophe. Forty three adults were arrested on

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nearly thirty thousand charges involving sixty children. The accused were

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overwhelmingly poor, many with intellectual disabilities. Confessions were later found

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to have been coerced. A pastor who publicly criticized the investigation,

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was arrested five days later, accused of hosting child sex

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orgies in the church basement. He was eventually acquitted, with

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one juror saying it wasn't a difficult decision at all.

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Dona Perez ultimately recanted, saying her foster father had pressured

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her convictions were overturned. The last person imprisoned was finally

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freed in two thousand and the city paid out millions

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in settlements.

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So there was no voracity whatsoever to that claim.

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Apparently not Wow. A forensic psychologist later called it perhaps

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the worst example ever of a state coercing children into

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falsely accusing their parents and neighbors of crimes that they

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didn't commit. So this is crazy, and this town is

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you know, like I said, thirty some thousand people. All

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of these things had happened in the last fifteen years

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before this case. But it just seems like an overwhelming

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amount of tragedy and horrific crimes.

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That reminds me of the McMartin preschool trial that we

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talked about. In the Susan and Felix Polk case, a

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couple of years ago. That's a wild episode first off,

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if you haven't listened to that one. But just the

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preschool trial was insane, one of the longest trials in

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US history, and it went on for years and years.

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But I'm similar to your case.

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Winacchi had been through things before, and with Mackenzie's disappearance

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00:11:34.200 --> 00:11:35.559
it would go through things again.

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Mackenzie Nicole Cowell was born in April first, nineteen ninety two,

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the youngest of three children. She grew up splitting her

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time between two homes, her father, Read's place in Rondo,

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a small community just north of Winatchi on the Columbia River,

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and her mother, Wendy's home in Winnatchi itself. That arrangement

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was the result of a difficult divorce when Mackenzie was

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seven years old, contentious enough that her pa parents had

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00:12:00.480 --> 00:12:03.639
taken out restraining orders against each other at one point.

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It wasn't an easy childhood dynamic, but by all accounts,

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00:12:07.320 --> 00:12:10.360
Mackenzie didn't let it define her. She was a kid

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who threw herself into things. She danced seriously, not just

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00:12:13.960 --> 00:12:16.720
as a hobby. She was a member of the Appaulettes,

255
00:12:17.080 --> 00:12:20.120
the dance team at Winachi high school, and she trained

256
00:12:20.159 --> 00:12:23.320
on top of that at two independent dance studios. She

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00:12:23.399 --> 00:12:26.559
also modeled and worked out regularly at the gym. She

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started dating her boyfriend, Joaquin Vilasano. Do you think that's right?

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00:12:31.399 --> 00:12:31.559
Nop?

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00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:34.559
When he was fifteen when she was fifteen. Her father Reid,

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00:12:34.639 --> 00:12:37.799
described her as driven and vibrant, a strong young woman

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00:12:37.879 --> 00:12:40.759
who was at seventeen, just on the verge of figuring

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00:12:40.759 --> 00:12:43.320
out who she was going to be. That sense of

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00:12:43.320 --> 00:12:46.480
purpose showed up in her schedule too. She had enrolled

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00:12:46.480 --> 00:12:49.480
in a voccasional cosmetology program that let her earn high

266
00:12:49.480 --> 00:12:52.080
school credits through real job training, which is how she

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00:12:52.159 --> 00:12:55.600
ended up spending her afternoons at the Weinachi Academy of

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00:12:55.639 --> 00:12:58.919
Hair Design. A typical day started with high school classes

269
00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:01.759
at seven thirty in the morning, running through noon, and

270
00:13:01.879 --> 00:13:05.519
then continued at the salon until after five. After that

271
00:13:05.600 --> 00:13:08.000
there was dance, the gym, and everything else she had

272
00:13:08.039 --> 00:13:11.559
going on. It was a lot, deliberately so. Her home

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00:13:11.600 --> 00:13:15.080
life had one significant source of tension. Her mother, Wendy,

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00:13:15.360 --> 00:13:20.039
had a boyfriend named Joey Fisher, and Mackenzie couldn't stand him,

275
00:13:20.159 --> 00:13:23.360
and the feeling was mutual. The night before she disappeared

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February eighth, twenty ten, the two of them got into

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00:13:26.720 --> 00:13:30.679
a massive argument. Mackenzie gave her mother an ultimatum it

278
00:13:30.799 --> 00:13:33.799
was him or her. The next afternoon, she went to

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00:13:33.879 --> 00:13:38.960
cosmetology class and never came home. Tuesday, February ninth, twenty ten,

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00:13:39.200 --> 00:13:42.279
was a normal afternoon at the Wenatchee Academy of Hair Design.

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Students were at their stations working hard. Mackenzie was there

282
00:13:45.919 --> 00:13:48.960
doing what she did every weekday, putting in her hours

283
00:13:48.960 --> 00:13:52.480
towards a cosmetology license. In a future she had already

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00:13:52.480 --> 00:13:56.000
started planning out. So she planned to be a hair stylist,

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00:13:56.159 --> 00:13:58.879
I believe so. At around three o'clock, she told her

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00:13:58.879 --> 00:14:01.480
classmates that she was staidy upping out for fifteen minutes.

287
00:14:01.679 --> 00:14:04.639
She didn't give any reason. She gathered her things, walked

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00:14:04.639 --> 00:14:06.679
out through the front of the building to the parking lot,

289
00:14:06.799 --> 00:14:09.519
got in her car, and drove away at three oh

290
00:14:09.559 --> 00:14:12.559
one pm. All of that was captured on surveillance video.

291
00:14:12.919 --> 00:14:15.200
The only sign of Mackenzie that came after that was

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00:14:15.200 --> 00:14:17.879
at three twenty six pm when she sent a text

293
00:14:17.960 --> 00:14:21.559
to her boyfriend Joaquin. It just said hey, he replied.

294
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At three forty two with the same and that was

295
00:14:24.440 --> 00:14:27.840
the last recorded activity on her phone. By early evening,

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00:14:27.960 --> 00:14:30.960
a rancher noticed a red Sedan sitting abandoned near his

297
00:14:31.080 --> 00:14:35.000
driveway in the remote Pitcher Canyon area, several miles outside

298
00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:37.759
of town. He didn't think too much of it at first,

299
00:14:37.840 --> 00:14:40.840
but by eight o'clock the rancher called the police. So

300
00:14:40.919 --> 00:14:44.159
it's February, so by eight pm it's probably quite dark.

301
00:14:44.759 --> 00:14:45.639
Yeah, definitely.

302
00:14:45.919 --> 00:14:48.639
A little before ten, an officer ran the license plate

303
00:14:48.679 --> 00:14:51.960
and contacted Reid Cowell, who said that his daughter was missing.

304
00:14:52.279 --> 00:14:55.600
Reid and Joqueen drove out to the scene together. Mackenzie's

305
00:14:55.600 --> 00:14:58.240
purse was in her car, along with her gym, clothes,

306
00:14:58.360 --> 00:15:01.679
her keys and cell phone were gone. On investigators noted

307
00:15:01.720 --> 00:15:04.519
something else at the scene, a single set of footprints

308
00:15:04.600 --> 00:15:08.159
leading away from the vehicle and heading down Pitcher Canyon

309
00:15:08.279 --> 00:15:11.039
Road in the direction of town. I should have mentioned

310
00:15:11.039 --> 00:15:13.720
this earlier, but when you were talking about Joey Fisher,

311
00:15:13.759 --> 00:15:16.720
that was the name of her mom's boyfriend, right. Was

312
00:15:16.799 --> 00:15:20.000
Joey ever violent with Mackenzie or Wendy, Not.

313
00:15:19.919 --> 00:15:23.320
That I read about. I never read about any incidents

314
00:15:23.360 --> 00:15:25.480
where the police came out or anything like that. From

315
00:15:25.480 --> 00:15:28.320
what I could gather, it was just that Mackenzie and

316
00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:30.840
he just hated each other and kind of went at it,

317
00:15:30.879 --> 00:15:32.600
But I don't think there was any violence.

318
00:15:32.919 --> 00:15:36.559
For four days, nobody knew where Mackenzie was. Search efforts

319
00:15:36.559 --> 00:15:40.519
got underway, and Mackenzie's disappearance rippled through Wanatchi the way

320
00:15:40.600 --> 00:15:44.440
these things do in smaller cities. People talked and they worried.

321
00:15:44.679 --> 00:15:48.399
Her family was frantic. Read Cowell and Joaquin were out looking,

322
00:15:48.600 --> 00:15:51.799
and the police were following the few leads they had. Then,

323
00:15:51.840 --> 00:15:55.600
on the afternoon of February thirteenth, a passerby walking along

324
00:15:55.639 --> 00:15:58.879
the banks of the Columbia River near Crescent Bar made

325
00:15:58.879 --> 00:16:02.600
a horrible discovery. Crescent Barr is a small resort community

326
00:16:02.679 --> 00:16:06.039
near the city of Quincy, about twenty five miles southeast

327
00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:09.399
of Winatchi. It sits right on the river. The passerby

328
00:16:09.480 --> 00:16:12.879
spotted a body in the shallow water near the shoreline.

329
00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:17.120
It was Mackenzie, fully clothed, still wearing her beauty school uniform,

330
00:16:17.360 --> 00:16:20.559
her feet in the water. Her body was partially submerged

331
00:16:20.720 --> 00:16:23.480
roughly fifty to seventy five yards from a vacant house

332
00:16:23.519 --> 00:16:26.919
that was listed for sale. The autopsy told a brutal story.

333
00:16:27.080 --> 00:16:30.720
Mackenzie had been manually strangled, she had suffered blunt forest

334
00:16:30.759 --> 00:16:33.360
trauma to the head, and her throat had been slashed.

335
00:16:33.559 --> 00:16:35.639
The official cause of death was determined to be a

336
00:16:35.639 --> 00:16:39.240
combination of manual strangulation and the deep stab wound to

337
00:16:39.399 --> 00:16:42.360
her neck. And if that wasn't bad enough, whoever killed

338
00:16:42.360 --> 00:16:45.080
her had attempted to amputate one of her arms after

339
00:16:45.159 --> 00:16:48.879
she was dead, an effort that was unsuccessful. The murder weapon,

340
00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:52.200
a kitchen knife, was found lodged in her shoulder. The

341
00:16:52.240 --> 00:16:55.519
autopsy confirmed that she had not been sexually assaulted and

342
00:16:55.600 --> 00:16:58.000
that there were no drugs or alcohol in her system.

343
00:16:58.480 --> 00:17:02.399
Near her body, Investigators collected several items, including a piece

344
00:17:02.399 --> 00:17:05.680
of duct tape containing blood matching Mackenzie's, as well as

345
00:17:05.720 --> 00:17:10.160
an unidentified male DNA profile and a second kitchen knife,

346
00:17:10.279 --> 00:17:12.640
part of a limited cutlery set sold at a store

347
00:17:12.640 --> 00:17:16.559
in Whanatchi called stans Mary mart. Police quietly held the

348
00:17:16.640 --> 00:17:19.559
murder weapon information back from the public, keeping it in

349
00:17:19.599 --> 00:17:22.799
reserve to help weed out false confessions. There was also

350
00:17:22.839 --> 00:17:27.240
a plastic bag that ultimately yielded nothing useful. Mackenzie's keys,

351
00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:30.680
cell phone, and debit card were never found. That is

352
00:17:30.720 --> 00:17:34.119
such a brutal, heartbreaking crime. And to take place in

353
00:17:34.200 --> 00:17:36.759
the city where it sounds like it was like where

354
00:17:36.759 --> 00:17:40.519
we live, a nice, quiet town, and I can't imagine

355
00:17:40.519 --> 00:17:42.119
how devastated the community must have been.

356
00:17:42.279 --> 00:17:44.920
Absolutely and just you know, a young girl seventeen, I

357
00:17:44.920 --> 00:17:47.680
think she was close to being eighteen, and just you know,

358
00:17:47.720 --> 00:17:50.680
on the verge of adulthood and starting out her life

359
00:17:50.839 --> 00:17:52.039
just so so tragic.

360
00:17:52.279 --> 00:17:54.279
It sounds like Mackenzie had a really good head on

361
00:17:54.319 --> 00:17:56.839
her shoulders and she knew what she wanted out of

362
00:17:56.880 --> 00:17:59.319
life and was willing to work hard to get it.

363
00:17:59.440 --> 00:18:00.920
We'll be bad after a break.

364
00:18:08.359 --> 00:18:12.319
The investigations started close to home. That's just statistics. The

365
00:18:12.319 --> 00:18:14.519
people most likely to have harmed her are the people

366
00:18:14.640 --> 00:18:17.160
already in her life. So in the days and weeks

367
00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:20.799
after Mackenzie's body was found, police turned their attention to

368
00:18:20.920 --> 00:18:24.559
the men closest to her. The first was Joaquin Villisano,

369
00:18:24.680 --> 00:18:27.640
her boyfriend of nearly two years. He was interviewed and

370
00:18:27.759 --> 00:18:30.880
at some point he was polygraphed twice. In fact, he

371
00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:34.440
failed one specific question on the second test, whether he

372
00:18:34.559 --> 00:18:37.359
knew who had killed Mackenzie or knew what had happened

373
00:18:37.359 --> 00:18:40.400
to her. That's not a small thing, and investigators took

374
00:18:40.440 --> 00:18:43.480
it seriously. But when they dug into his alibi, it

375
00:18:43.559 --> 00:18:46.599
held up completely. Joaquin had been at work all day

376
00:18:46.640 --> 00:18:50.079
on February ninth. His coworkers confirmed it, and so did

377
00:18:50.079 --> 00:18:53.559
his phone records. Police cleared him one hundred percent. I

378
00:18:53.640 --> 00:18:56.279
wasn't able to learn a lot about Joaquin and his

379
00:18:56.400 --> 00:18:59.400
relationship with Mackenzie. All I know is they were dating

380
00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:01.440
for about two years, going back to when they were

381
00:19:01.480 --> 00:19:04.759
like fifteen or sixteen. He was in the forty eight

382
00:19:04.799 --> 00:19:06.720
Hours episode that I watched for the show, and he

383
00:19:06.759 --> 00:19:10.240
seemed like a very nice young man. He seemed like

384
00:19:10.319 --> 00:19:12.880
he really was worried about her when this happened, and

385
00:19:12.960 --> 00:19:15.720
was really doing everything he could to try to find her.

386
00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:19.599
The failed polygraph question is kind of interesting. We do

387
00:19:19.680 --> 00:19:22.160
know that live detectors aren't one hundred percent accurate, so

388
00:19:22.200 --> 00:19:24.240
it's possible that he was just nervous.

389
00:19:24.519 --> 00:19:26.319
You said he had to take it twice, but you

390
00:19:26.559 --> 00:19:29.559
only mentioned a failed question on this second test, So

391
00:19:29.640 --> 00:19:31.359
why did he have to take it twice?

392
00:19:31.480 --> 00:19:34.200
You know, I would imagine they still had doubts and

393
00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:36.519
that he, you know, he was the closest person to her,

394
00:19:36.599 --> 00:19:39.480
so I'm sure they were very suspicious of him in

395
00:19:39.519 --> 00:19:40.319
the beginning, or.

396
00:19:40.319 --> 00:19:42.359
Maybe the first test was inconclusive.

397
00:19:42.519 --> 00:19:44.720
That could be as well. Yeah. The next person on

398
00:19:44.759 --> 00:19:48.000
the list was Joey Fisher, the boyfriend of Mackenzie's mother,

399
00:19:48.240 --> 00:19:51.000
the man that Mackenzie had told her mother she couldn't

400
00:19:51.079 --> 00:19:54.400
stand the argument the night before her disappearance. Made him

401
00:19:54.440 --> 00:19:57.359
an obvious early candidate, and he did have a minor

402
00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:00.759
criminal history, which didn't help his case. The police searched

403
00:20:00.799 --> 00:20:03.519
his home in Winatchi and took some items in for testing,

404
00:20:03.920 --> 00:20:07.400
but Fisher, like Joaquin, had a verified alibi. He had

405
00:20:07.400 --> 00:20:09.920
been at work miles away on the day that Mackenzie

406
00:20:09.960 --> 00:20:13.079
was murdered. There was no physical evidence connecting him to

407
00:20:13.119 --> 00:20:17.119
the crime, and three independent witnesses had reported seeing a thin,

408
00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:21.000
dark haired man walking away from the area where Mackenzie's

409
00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:24.839
car was abandoned that afternoon. Fisher was light complexed with

410
00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:27.960
blonde or reddish gray hair, he didn't come close to

411
00:20:28.079 --> 00:20:32.680
matching that description. Mackenzie's other family members, her parents, her brothers,

412
00:20:32.880 --> 00:20:35.680
were looked at briefly and ruled out just as quickly.

413
00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:40.400
Their whereabouts confirmed by alibis, phone records, and witness statements.

414
00:20:40.759 --> 00:20:43.839
By the time Spring arrived, the people closest to Mackenzie

415
00:20:43.920 --> 00:20:47.720
had all been cleared. Investigators had a body, a brutal

416
00:20:47.759 --> 00:20:50.799
crime scene, and no real suspect. They were going to

417
00:20:50.880 --> 00:20:54.160
need something else, and that something else arrived in the

418
00:20:54.160 --> 00:20:57.359
form of a woman named Liz Reid, identified in court

419
00:20:57.440 --> 00:21:01.920
documents as confidential Informant One's zero zero two. Reid was

420
00:21:01.960 --> 00:21:05.240
a college student, a self described former drug dealer and

421
00:21:05.359 --> 00:21:09.119
prescription pill user, and notably a police informant with a

422
00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:12.759
track record. She had previously helped the DEA take down

423
00:21:12.880 --> 00:21:16.559
four narcotics traffickers in the Seattle area. When she came

424
00:21:16.640 --> 00:21:20.839
forward with information about Mackenzie Cowle's murder, investigators had reason

425
00:21:20.920 --> 00:21:24.880
to take her seriously. Her story was detailed and specific.

426
00:21:25.240 --> 00:21:29.759
She claimed that two local drug dealers, Emmanuel Buddha Seros

427
00:21:29.799 --> 00:21:33.240
and Sam Kuavs, had killed Mackenzie in a case of

428
00:21:33.400 --> 00:21:37.640
mistaken identity. According to Reed, the men believed that Mackenzie

429
00:21:37.680 --> 00:21:40.440
was a police informant from the drug world and had

430
00:21:40.480 --> 00:21:44.599
decided to silence her. She described the attack in granular detail,

431
00:21:45.079 --> 00:21:49.119
four men overpowering Mackenzie, getting into her car driving away

432
00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:52.480
while others followed in a green jeep Cherokee. She said

433
00:21:52.519 --> 00:21:55.720
they took her to a bluff overlooking Crescent Bar, choked

434
00:21:55.720 --> 00:21:58.200
her and put her body in the river, and then

435
00:21:58.440 --> 00:22:01.759
she mentioned the snuff film. Reid claimed the men had

436
00:22:01.759 --> 00:22:05.319
filmed the murder and that she had personally seen the footage.

437
00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:08.720
That alone would have been extraordinary, but what really got

438
00:22:08.759 --> 00:22:12.599
investigator's attention was something else. Reid was able to describe

439
00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:15.720
the murder weapon before that information had been released to

440
00:22:15.799 --> 00:22:19.200
the public. She also led police to a secluded bluff

441
00:22:19.279 --> 00:22:21.759
near Crescent Bar, where she said that she had found

442
00:22:21.839 --> 00:22:25.359
a silver ring that she claimed had belonged to Mackenzie.

443
00:22:25.680 --> 00:22:27.920
She said that Saros had sent her to the murder

444
00:22:27.960 --> 00:22:29.079
site to find the ring.

445
00:22:29.640 --> 00:22:33.720
So where to believe that four drug dealers killed Mackenzie

446
00:22:33.880 --> 00:22:37.359
using knives from Stan's marry mart yep.

447
00:22:37.400 --> 00:22:39.559
That is Liz Reid's story in a nutshell.

448
00:22:40.319 --> 00:22:43.279
And you said that there was one eyewitness who saw

449
00:22:43.319 --> 00:22:45.920
a man with dark hair, but only one man with

450
00:22:46.039 --> 00:22:46.480
dark hair.

451
00:22:46.559 --> 00:22:50.359
There were three witnesses who saw somebody walking on the

452
00:22:50.440 --> 00:22:53.680
road like away from where her car had been found.

453
00:22:54.200 --> 00:22:56.519
We don't know if that person was connected or not,

454
00:22:57.160 --> 00:23:00.240
but that yes, they saw one person walking away and

455
00:23:00.319 --> 00:23:03.079
there was one set of footprints coming from her car

456
00:23:03.240 --> 00:23:06.359
as well. So yeah, the story that Liz told was

457
00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:09.960
on the surface, a remarkably compelling tip, but it didn't

458
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:13.839
hold up. Detective John Cruse said, I personally took that

459
00:23:13.960 --> 00:23:16.240
ring that she found. I showed it to Read Cowl,

460
00:23:16.400 --> 00:23:18.440
I showed it to Wendy Cowell. I showed it to

461
00:23:18.559 --> 00:23:22.039
Mackenzie's boyfriend. None of them recognized that ring at all.

462
00:23:22.400 --> 00:23:26.000
Testing found no DNA on the ring. Saros and Kuavis

463
00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:30.400
both produced solid alibis phone records and witness statements, placing

464
00:23:30.440 --> 00:23:32.880
them at work in Winatchi at the time of the murder.

465
00:23:33.240 --> 00:23:36.759
Investigators tapped their phones that had Reid call them repeatedly,

466
00:23:37.079 --> 00:23:40.839
fishing for anything incriminating, but they got nothing, and Reid

467
00:23:40.920 --> 00:23:45.000
herself began to unravel. She recanted the snuff film story.

468
00:23:45.200 --> 00:23:47.480
Then she said her story about the murder was true,

469
00:23:47.480 --> 00:23:50.319
but the film didn't exist. Then she changed her mind

470
00:23:50.319 --> 00:23:53.000
again and said it did exist. Within a few months

471
00:23:53.039 --> 00:23:56.599
of coming forward, her credibility was in tatters. There was

472
00:23:56.680 --> 00:24:00.720
one odd footnote. Investigators collected cigarette button at the bluff

473
00:24:00.759 --> 00:24:03.440
where Reid had led them, and the DNA on those

474
00:24:03.480 --> 00:24:07.720
butts did match Sam Quavis. That was never explained, But

475
00:24:08.079 --> 00:24:10.680
a man smoking at a spot near a river isn't

476
00:24:10.759 --> 00:24:13.480
evidence of murder. And by the summer of twenty ten,

477
00:24:13.720 --> 00:24:16.599
the police had moved on. They were back to square one.

478
00:24:17.240 --> 00:24:21.160
And then six months after Mackenzie's murder, a letter arrived.

479
00:24:21.599 --> 00:24:25.039
The cigarette butt seems like hard evidence to dismiss.

480
00:24:25.519 --> 00:24:28.039
I agree, But at the same time, it was not

481
00:24:28.279 --> 00:24:30.880
at the site of Mackenzie's body. It was on a

482
00:24:30.920 --> 00:24:34.599
bluff overlooking the river, so it was nearby, but it

483
00:24:34.680 --> 00:24:36.480
wasn't right at the site. And I'm sure this is

484
00:24:36.480 --> 00:24:39.720
an area that people would hang out at and smoke cigarettes,

485
00:24:39.759 --> 00:24:42.880
and Liz led them to that site, saying that, you know,

486
00:24:43.039 --> 00:24:45.920
it might have had some importance to Liz, like maybe

487
00:24:45.960 --> 00:24:48.079
she had been there with these guys before or something

488
00:24:48.119 --> 00:24:49.920
like that. So that's the only thing I can think of.

489
00:24:49.960 --> 00:24:53.000
But you're right, it is a little bit pausible. The

490
00:24:53.079 --> 00:24:55.640
letter that gave police a break in the case came

491
00:24:55.680 --> 00:24:58.799
from Oregon. It came from a man named Theodor Keys

492
00:24:59.039 --> 00:25:01.519
THEO to the people who knew him. He was serving

493
00:25:01.559 --> 00:25:04.200
time in an organ prison when he decided to write

494
00:25:04.240 --> 00:25:07.519
to investigators working the Cowl case. He had a former

495
00:25:07.599 --> 00:25:10.599
friend that he thought they should know about. That friend

496
00:25:10.759 --> 00:25:15.400
was Christopher Scott Wilson. Keyes had several things to tell them. Wilson,

497
00:25:15.440 --> 00:25:18.240
he wrote, had been attending the Winatchee Academy of Hair

498
00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:21.519
Design at the same time as Mackenzie. He had a deep,

499
00:25:21.759 --> 00:25:26.400
consuming fascination with death, dead bodies, and serial killers. Not

500
00:25:26.519 --> 00:25:29.400
the casual, morbid curiosity that a lot of people have,

501
00:25:29.759 --> 00:25:33.119
but something more intense and more deliberate than that. And

502
00:25:33.160 --> 00:25:35.240
then there was something that had happened at a party

503
00:25:35.400 --> 00:25:39.599
a few weeks before Mackenzie disappeared. Wilson had, without warning

504
00:25:39.680 --> 00:25:42.960
or apparent reason, grabbed a female friend by the throat

505
00:25:43.000 --> 00:25:45.680
and choked her. Then he let her go and acted

506
00:25:45.759 --> 00:25:49.240
as if nothing had happened. Investigators took the letter seriously,

507
00:25:49.400 --> 00:25:53.000
in part because the choking incident could be verified. They

508
00:25:53.039 --> 00:25:57.319
tracked down the woman who confirmed the story. That corroboration mattered.

509
00:25:57.440 --> 00:26:00.680
It meant that Keyes wasn't just spinning a tail. When

510
00:26:00.680 --> 00:26:03.240
they went back through their files, they found something else.

511
00:26:03.559 --> 00:26:06.759
Earlier in the investigation, an anonymous tip had come in

512
00:26:06.799 --> 00:26:09.880
from an employee at the beauty school. That tipster had

513
00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:13.279
told police that Wilson once said he had enjoyed working

514
00:26:13.279 --> 00:26:16.279
at a funeral home because, and this is a direct quote,

515
00:26:16.319 --> 00:26:19.440
he got to cut people up. At that time it

516
00:26:19.480 --> 00:26:22.039
hadn't risen to the top of the pile, but now

517
00:26:22.279 --> 00:26:27.119
read alongside Key's letter, it landed differently. In August twenty ten,

518
00:26:27.240 --> 00:26:30.480
investigators brought Wilson and a number of other beauty school

519
00:26:30.519 --> 00:26:33.960
students in for interviews. They said it was routine. They

520
00:26:33.960 --> 00:26:37.319
were just talking again with everyone who may have known Mackenzie.

521
00:26:37.559 --> 00:26:41.119
Wilson was cooperative. He sat down with detectives and, at

522
00:26:41.160 --> 00:26:45.440
their request, provided a voluntary DNA swab. The swab went

523
00:26:45.480 --> 00:26:48.400
to the state crime Lab, and when the results came back,

524
00:26:48.559 --> 00:26:52.440
they found that Wilson's DNA profile was consistent with the

525
00:26:52.519 --> 00:26:56.039
unidentified male DNA that had been recovered from the duct

526
00:26:56.039 --> 00:26:59.880
tape found near Mackenzie's body. Six months after McKenzie was

527
00:27:00.079 --> 00:27:04.160
found in the Columbia River, investigators finally had a suspect.

528
00:27:04.920 --> 00:27:07.440
Was this Wilson guy at the beauty school on the

529
00:27:07.519 --> 00:27:10.960
day of Mackenzie's disappearance. He sure was, But did he

530
00:27:11.079 --> 00:27:12.279
leave when Mackenzie left?

531
00:27:12.440 --> 00:27:14.440
We will talk about that inn just a minute.

532
00:27:14.640 --> 00:27:17.200
Christopher Scott Wilson was twenty nine years old at the

533
00:27:17.200 --> 00:27:19.640
time of Mackenzie's murder. He had grown up in the

534
00:27:19.720 --> 00:27:23.759
Seattle suburbs, the son of a single mother named Kathleen Zornz,

535
00:27:23.920 --> 00:27:26.680
who worked as a flight attendant, a business owner, and

536
00:27:26.759 --> 00:27:30.559
a hairstylist. His biological father was never in the picture.

537
00:27:30.960 --> 00:27:33.440
When Chris was young, his mother married a man named

538
00:27:33.519 --> 00:27:36.519
Rick Wilson, who adopted him. By all accounts, it was

539
00:27:36.559 --> 00:27:40.440
a stable, loving arrangement. Then, when Chris was around sixteen,

540
00:27:40.720 --> 00:27:44.039
Rick died in an accident. Kathleen would later say that

541
00:27:44.279 --> 00:27:47.519
it was seeing his stepfather's body that first sparked Chris's

542
00:27:47.559 --> 00:27:51.160
interest in the funeral industry. Whether that's the whole explanation

543
00:27:51.279 --> 00:27:53.400
or just part of it, something seemed to shift in

544
00:27:53.480 --> 00:27:57.799
him around that time. He spent his teenage years in Shellan, Washington,

545
00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:00.640
a small town on the lake of the same name,

546
00:28:00.839 --> 00:28:04.319
about thirty miles from Wenatchee. His mother owned a local

547
00:28:04.440 --> 00:28:06.839
skate and bike shop, and Chris was deep in the

548
00:28:06.880 --> 00:28:10.519
skateboarding scene. In his early twenties, he joined the military,

549
00:28:10.640 --> 00:28:13.880
but received a medical discharge not long after. A period

550
00:28:13.920 --> 00:28:16.480
of his life that he didn't talk about warmly. He

551
00:28:16.599 --> 00:28:19.640
drifted through jobs, spent time working at funeral homes in

552
00:28:19.680 --> 00:28:23.000
the Wenatchee area, and by his own admission, didn't really

553
00:28:23.039 --> 00:28:25.759
know what he wanted to do with himself. He dreamed

554
00:28:25.880 --> 00:28:29.319
somewhat vaguely of being in a band. His colleagues at

555
00:28:29.359 --> 00:28:32.960
the funeral homes remembered him as unsettling. At least one

556
00:28:32.960 --> 00:28:36.160
employer let him go for what he described as inappropriate

557
00:28:36.200 --> 00:28:38.799
behavior that made people uncomfortable.

558
00:28:39.119 --> 00:28:42.119
I should say that this funeral director said that Wilson

559
00:28:42.160 --> 00:28:46.400
didn't do anything explicitly really bad, but obviously he made

560
00:28:46.440 --> 00:28:48.920
him uncomfortable enough that he let him go.

561
00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:51.640
Is there any implication there that it had something to

562
00:28:51.680 --> 00:28:52.839
do with the bodies?

563
00:28:53.359 --> 00:28:55.160
Yes, I believe so.

564
00:28:55.240 --> 00:28:57.839
Then there was an anonymous tip that had come into

565
00:28:57.880 --> 00:29:01.359
police early in the investigation that Wilson had told a

566
00:29:01.359 --> 00:29:04.200
coworker he enjoyed the funeral homework because he got to

567
00:29:04.240 --> 00:29:06.559
cut people off. Whether he said it as a joke

568
00:29:06.680 --> 00:29:09.440
or meant it seriously, it wasn't the kind of thing

569
00:29:09.480 --> 00:29:12.680
that was easy to forget. His interest outside of work

570
00:29:12.839 --> 00:29:16.640
ran in a consistent direction. He spent significant time on

571
00:29:16.720 --> 00:29:20.559
Internet forums dedicated to serial killers. He loved dark art,

572
00:29:20.680 --> 00:29:24.799
and horror films, and was devoted to the television show Dexter,

573
00:29:25.240 --> 00:29:28.400
a show about a forensic blood spatter analyst who moonlights

574
00:29:28.440 --> 00:29:31.440
as a serial killer. Chris also had a tattoo of

575
00:29:31.480 --> 00:29:35.079
a fictional serial killer, Hannibal Lecter on his forearm. What

576
00:29:35.359 --> 00:29:37.279
is a disturbing set of facts, isn't it?

577
00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:40.359
It is? I think his family In the episode of

578
00:29:40.440 --> 00:29:42.720
forty eight Hours I watched, they tried to portray him

579
00:29:42.759 --> 00:29:44.680
as just, you know, someone who didn't fit in with

580
00:29:44.799 --> 00:29:47.160
kind of the small town someone who's a little more

581
00:29:47.279 --> 00:29:50.079
like Emo maybe, and just you know, he was just

582
00:29:50.160 --> 00:29:51.720
kind of an odd guy that didn't fit in. But

583
00:29:51.920 --> 00:29:54.079
a lot of these things are pretty seen when you.

584
00:29:54.079 --> 00:29:56.200
Grab them all together. But sure, there's plenty of people

585
00:29:56.240 --> 00:29:58.799
who have Sure, I was going to say tattoo of

586
00:29:58.799 --> 00:30:00.799
Hannibal Lectu, that's.

587
00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:02.079
Probably that's a choice.

588
00:30:01.960 --> 00:30:05.640
Yeah, we watched Dexter and we liked it. There were

589
00:30:05.640 --> 00:30:09.000
two incidents involving mannequins that people who knew him tended

590
00:30:09.039 --> 00:30:12.640
to remember. While working at a good will store in Ellensburg,

591
00:30:12.839 --> 00:30:16.279
he retrieved a discarded mannequin from a dumpster, took it home,

592
00:30:16.559 --> 00:30:19.519
dismembered it, painted it to look like a murdered body,

593
00:30:19.720 --> 00:30:23.359
and posted photographs of it online. Some friends offered a

594
00:30:23.359 --> 00:30:26.240
different version of events. They said he had found it

595
00:30:26.319 --> 00:30:29.319
already in that condition and called the police. Bought the

596
00:30:29.359 --> 00:30:32.519
story stuck to him regardless. Why would he call the

597
00:30:32.559 --> 00:30:33.799
police if he found a mannequin?

598
00:30:34.359 --> 00:30:35.880
I don't know, you know, I hadn't thought of that.

599
00:30:35.880 --> 00:30:37.039
That's a really good question.

600
00:30:37.559 --> 00:30:40.440
The second incident happened at the Academy of Hair Design

601
00:30:40.559 --> 00:30:44.599
during a Halloween styling contest. While other students decorated their

602
00:30:44.599 --> 00:30:48.000
mannequin heads with creative hair and makeup, Wilson used a

603
00:30:48.039 --> 00:30:51.440
straight razor to peel the skin off his mannequin's face.

604
00:30:51.680 --> 00:30:54.839
A classmate who witnessed it said it deeply disturbed her.

605
00:30:55.160 --> 00:30:57.319
I'm not sure what the mannequins that you use in

606
00:30:57.400 --> 00:31:00.799
hairstyling school what they really look like. If it feels

607
00:31:00.839 --> 00:31:04.599
like real skin, I'm picturing my Barbie head that I had, yeah,

608
00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:07.240
you know, back in like third grade. But do you

609
00:31:07.240 --> 00:31:09.640
think it must be kind of like real skin if you.

610
00:31:09.839 --> 00:31:12.079
I really don't know. It must have some sort of

611
00:31:12.160 --> 00:31:14.640
layer on it that could be peeled off. But whatever

612
00:31:14.680 --> 00:31:17.799
it was, it was disturbing to his classmates. Understandably.

613
00:31:17.839 --> 00:31:20.920
So. Yeah. By his late twenties, his mother had bought

614
00:31:20.920 --> 00:31:24.200
a hair salon in Wanatchi, and Wilson had enrolled at

615
00:31:24.200 --> 00:31:26.920
the Academy of Hair Design, one of only three male

616
00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:29.480
students in the program. That was how he ended up

617
00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:32.559
in the same classroom as seventeen year old Mackenzie Cowell.

618
00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:35.599
His interest, as you've described them, seem like he's more

619
00:31:35.640 --> 00:31:38.759
interested on like the funeral side of things and working

620
00:31:38.799 --> 00:31:42.279
in a funeral parlor. Was his interest in doing hair

621
00:31:42.480 --> 00:31:44.960
to do them of the deceased?

622
00:31:45.240 --> 00:31:46.799
You know, it's a good question. It could be, but

623
00:31:46.880 --> 00:31:49.559
it sounds to me more like his mom bought a

624
00:31:49.559 --> 00:31:52.519
hair salon, and so it sounded to me like he

625
00:31:52.559 --> 00:31:54.720
had been a little bit lost and sort of drifting

626
00:31:54.759 --> 00:31:58.799
without direction. So this maybe he saw this as an opportunity, like, Hey,

627
00:31:58.799 --> 00:32:01.720
my mom's got this hair salon. If I graduate and

628
00:32:01.799 --> 00:32:04.640
become a hairstylist, I could work at her. Swan So

629
00:32:04.680 --> 00:32:06.759
that would be my guest, But it's a good point.

630
00:32:06.759 --> 00:32:08.799
He may have envisioned that for himself as well.

631
00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:12.279
When Christopher Wilson sat down with investigators in August twenty

632
00:32:12.319 --> 00:32:17.279
ten and handed over a voluntary DNA swab, he was calm, cooperative,

633
00:32:17.319 --> 00:32:20.039
even there was nothing in his demeanor to suggest that

634
00:32:20.079 --> 00:32:23.440
he was particularly worried about what that swab might show.

635
00:32:23.759 --> 00:32:26.880
In September twenty third, twenty ten, the State Crime Lab

636
00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:31.200
delivered its findings. Wilson's DNA profile was consistent with the

637
00:32:31.400 --> 00:32:35.079
unidentified male genetic material recovered from the duct tape found

638
00:32:35.119 --> 00:32:39.440
near Mackenzie's body at Crescent Bar. It wasn't a definitive match,

639
00:32:39.480 --> 00:32:42.680
as the profile was partial, but it was pretty close.

640
00:32:43.200 --> 00:32:47.200
One out of every one forty seven Caucasian men possessed

641
00:32:47.240 --> 00:32:50.799
the profile that was found. Christopher Wilson was now the

642
00:32:50.799 --> 00:32:53.319
prime suspect in the murder of Mackenzie Cowell.

643
00:32:53.480 --> 00:32:56.480
So there's one out of every thousand or so men

644
00:32:56.880 --> 00:33:00.119
Caucasian men in a city of thirty thousand, So that

645
00:33:00.200 --> 00:33:03.400
means there were at most thirty people that could have

646
00:33:03.519 --> 00:33:05.880
matched that profile in that town. Obviously could have been

647
00:33:05.920 --> 00:33:08.279
somebody from outside, but that gives you an idea of

648
00:33:08.319 --> 00:33:08.960
the odds.

649
00:33:08.759 --> 00:33:10.680
Untill there were thirty people that could have matched that

650
00:33:10.799 --> 00:33:14.039
DNA profile, Investigators went back and looked at everything they

651
00:33:14.119 --> 00:33:16.920
knew about his movements. On the afternoon of February ninth,

652
00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:20.559
with fresh eyes. What they found was troubling. Wilson had

653
00:33:20.599 --> 00:33:23.599
been at the Academy of Hair Design that afternoon. Surveillance

654
00:33:23.640 --> 00:33:26.839
footage showed him leaving the building at three o two pm,

655
00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:30.079
just seventy two seconds after Mackenzie had walked out to

656
00:33:30.119 --> 00:33:33.319
the car. He had exited through a different door, which

657
00:33:33.359 --> 00:33:36.799
is why it hadn't initially raised any flags. A traffic

658
00:33:36.799 --> 00:33:40.160
camera had captured Mackenzie's car heading west on Kitta Tasks

659
00:33:40.440 --> 00:33:44.599
towards Wilson's apartment. After three o two. Wilson never returned

660
00:33:44.599 --> 00:33:47.359
to class. His whereabouts for the rest of the afternoon

661
00:33:47.440 --> 00:33:51.039
were entirely unaccounted for. His mother tried to fill in

662
00:33:51.119 --> 00:33:53.759
part of the gap. She told investigators that Chris had

663
00:33:53.759 --> 00:33:55.839
swung by her house that afternoon to pick up a

664
00:33:55.839 --> 00:33:58.759
plate of cupcakes, But that was over six months ago,

665
00:33:59.039 --> 00:34:01.400
and it accounted for all only a few minutes at most.

666
00:34:01.559 --> 00:34:04.240
It didn't come close to constituting an alibi for the

667
00:34:04.319 --> 00:34:07.119
hours that followed. Between three h two and three thirty

668
00:34:07.119 --> 00:34:10.559
three that afternoon, Wilson had sent four text messages to

669
00:34:10.679 --> 00:34:14.280
his on again, off again girlfriend, Tessa Shyloman, and from

670
00:34:14.360 --> 00:34:17.639
three thirty three to three point fifty his phone went unanswered.

671
00:34:17.760 --> 00:34:20.199
It's unclear who was actually trying to call him during

672
00:34:20.199 --> 00:34:23.320
this time, but the articles I read said that, you know,

673
00:34:23.440 --> 00:34:25.519
people had tried to call him and he didn't answer

674
00:34:25.599 --> 00:34:26.280
during that time.

675
00:34:26.599 --> 00:34:29.079
Shortly before four o'clock, he called a friend to ask

676
00:34:29.119 --> 00:34:32.400
if he could borrow their car starting at four pm,

677
00:34:32.440 --> 00:34:35.079
despite the fact that he had his own vehicle. The

678
00:34:35.159 --> 00:34:37.400
friend said that he could borrow his car until five,

679
00:34:37.599 --> 00:34:40.639
but Chris said he needed it longer than that. Ultimately,

680
00:34:40.679 --> 00:34:43.599
it's not clear whether he actually borrowed the car or not.

681
00:34:44.159 --> 00:34:46.840
None of that proved anything on its own, but taken together,

682
00:34:46.920 --> 00:34:48.920
it painted a picture of a man who had left

683
00:34:48.920 --> 00:34:52.440
the same building as Mackenzie within seventy two seconds of

684
00:34:52.519 --> 00:34:55.639
her departure. He had no alibi for the hours that followed,

685
00:34:55.880 --> 00:34:59.679
and had behaved in ways that were difficult to explain innocently.

686
00:35:00.159 --> 00:35:03.280
On October sixth, twenty ten, police to ask Wilson to

687
00:35:03.280 --> 00:35:07.159
come in for another interview. They asked him a direct question,

688
00:35:07.599 --> 00:35:10.400
had he ever been to Crescent Bar. He said no.

689
00:35:11.079 --> 00:35:14.519
They arrested him on the spot. Detective John Cruz noted

690
00:35:14.599 --> 00:35:17.400
that Wilson showed no emotion when the cuffs went on.

691
00:35:17.760 --> 00:35:21.280
He stared blankly and said quietly that he needed a lawyer.

692
00:35:21.679 --> 00:35:24.800
He was charged with second degree murder and held on

693
00:35:24.800 --> 00:35:28.199
one million dollars bail. Why second degree murder and not

694
00:35:28.320 --> 00:35:29.360
first I.

695
00:35:29.320 --> 00:35:30.880
Don't know for sure, but I think in a lot

696
00:35:30.880 --> 00:35:34.119
of cases that police start with a lower charge because

697
00:35:34.400 --> 00:35:37.079
you only need probable cause to make an arrest, whereas

698
00:35:37.119 --> 00:35:40.000
you need reasonable doubt to have a conviction. So they

699
00:35:40.079 --> 00:35:42.159
might have started with just second degree murder while they

700
00:35:42.239 --> 00:35:45.360
continued to investigate to see if they had enough evidence

701
00:35:45.440 --> 00:35:48.159
to really raise it to a more serious charge.

702
00:35:48.239 --> 00:35:50.559
Gotcha, we'll be back. After a break.

703
00:35:57.960 --> 00:36:01.519
With Wilson in custody, investigation turned their attention to the

704
00:36:01.559 --> 00:36:04.280
people around him, and the person who kept coming up

705
00:36:04.480 --> 00:36:08.199
was Tessa Shyloman, is on again, off again girlfriend twenty

706
00:36:08.239 --> 00:36:10.880
two years old, who had been woven into the events

707
00:36:10.880 --> 00:36:13.679
of February ninth in ways that were hard to ignore.

708
00:36:14.039 --> 00:36:17.199
The phone records alone were striking between three h two

709
00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:20.920
and six pm on the afternoon Mackenzie vanished. Tessa and

710
00:36:20.960 --> 00:36:24.519
Wilson had been in contact eight separate times, calls and

711
00:36:24.559 --> 00:36:28.239
texts back and forth during the precise window when Mackenzie

712
00:36:28.280 --> 00:36:32.679
had disappeared and Wilson's whereabouts were unaccounted for. That evening,

713
00:36:32.760 --> 00:36:36.360
at around nine ten pm, Tessa called her current boyfriend,

714
00:36:36.639 --> 00:36:39.519
not Wilson. She was seeing someone else at the time,

715
00:36:39.639 --> 00:36:42.119
a man who lived in Quincy, not far from the

716
00:36:42.119 --> 00:36:44.880
Crescent Bar, and she called him. She was in a panic.

717
00:36:45.239 --> 00:36:48.360
Something really, really bad has happened. She told him, please

718
00:36:48.360 --> 00:36:51.239
pray for me. In the days that followed, people who

719
00:36:51.280 --> 00:36:55.280
saw Tessa noticed something off about her. She briefly visited

720
00:36:55.320 --> 00:36:58.199
an ex boyfriend's home to pick up some belongings, and

721
00:36:58.280 --> 00:37:02.199
he described her as agitated and fidgety. She left after

722
00:37:02.239 --> 00:37:06.599
twenty minutes without actually taking anything. When investigators later interviewed

723
00:37:06.639 --> 00:37:09.320
her about all of this, Tessa told them she had

724
00:37:09.360 --> 00:37:12.960
no memory whatsoever of anything that had happened between February

725
00:37:13.079 --> 00:37:16.960
ninth and February thirteenth. But the most disturbing evidence involving

726
00:37:17.000 --> 00:37:20.599
Tessa didn't come from interviews or phone records. It came

727
00:37:20.639 --> 00:37:24.840
from Wilson's computer. When investigators examined the hard drive, they

728
00:37:24.880 --> 00:37:28.440
found photographs and videos that stopped them cold. There was

729
00:37:28.480 --> 00:37:31.920
a photo of Tessa lying on the floor of Wilson's apartment,

730
00:37:32.199 --> 00:37:35.519
posed as if she were dead, positioned right next to

731
00:37:35.599 --> 00:37:38.679
a brownish stain on the carpet. When asked about it,

732
00:37:38.800 --> 00:37:42.880
she gave two different explanations at different times, once saying

733
00:37:42.960 --> 00:37:46.159
she had passed out drunk, another time saying that Wilson

734
00:37:46.239 --> 00:37:48.719
had simply asked her to lie there for the picture.

735
00:37:49.199 --> 00:37:53.239
Then there were the videos recorded in late June twenty ten,

736
00:37:53.599 --> 00:37:57.280
several months after mackenzie's murder, around the time that Wilson

737
00:37:57.360 --> 00:38:00.400
was moving out of his apartment. The footage showed Tessa

738
00:38:00.440 --> 00:38:04.079
and Wilson walking through the empty space together, the camera

739
00:38:04.239 --> 00:38:07.400
periodically zooming in on the stain on the carpet. At

740
00:38:07.440 --> 00:38:11.599
one point, Wilson asked if the room looked clean. Tessa's response,

741
00:38:11.760 --> 00:38:17.679
caught clearly on the recording, was clean for considering what's happening, Yes,

742
00:38:17.760 --> 00:38:21.559
I think it's clean. In December twenty ten, Tessa Shilman

743
00:38:21.719 --> 00:38:26.760
was arrested in Tumwater, Washington, and charged with misdemeanor criminal assistance,

744
00:38:27.119 --> 00:38:31.760
making false statements, and obstructing a public officer. However, the

745
00:38:31.840 --> 00:38:35.519
charges weren't related to McKenzie's case. It was a completely

746
00:38:35.599 --> 00:38:39.239
separate case in neighboring Grant County. When she came in

747
00:38:39.320 --> 00:38:43.199
for her initial police interviews, she arrived, accompanied oddly by

748
00:38:43.280 --> 00:38:46.880
Wilson's grandfather. I wasn't able to find details about this

749
00:38:47.039 --> 00:38:50.280
other case, but whatever was going on in Tessa's life,

750
00:38:50.440 --> 00:38:53.159
this was apparently not her first time being on the

751
00:38:53.159 --> 00:38:54.400
wrong side of the law.

752
00:38:54.960 --> 00:38:57.119
Was she a suspect in Mackenzie's murder.

753
00:38:57.519 --> 00:38:59.599
They believed that she at least had a part in

754
00:38:59.760 --> 00:39:02.679
cut it up, but they didn't really have enough evidence

755
00:39:02.760 --> 00:39:05.079
to prove anything, which is I think why they arrested

756
00:39:05.079 --> 00:39:07.239
her on this other charge, which again I don't have

757
00:39:07.280 --> 00:39:09.440
the details of, but I think they had enough to

758
00:39:09.519 --> 00:39:12.039
at least bring her in so that they could question her.

759
00:39:12.199 --> 00:39:17.039
Gotcha with Wilson arrested and Tessa arrested on an unrelated case,

760
00:39:17.239 --> 00:39:21.159
investigators needed to build their case. The partial DNA match

761
00:39:21.159 --> 00:39:24.320
on the duct tape was significant, but it wasn't airtight.

762
00:39:24.599 --> 00:39:27.760
They needed more, and they believed that Moore was sitting

763
00:39:27.800 --> 00:39:32.159
in Wilson's former apartment at the Burkhill Complex, the studio

764
00:39:32.280 --> 00:39:34.440
he'd been living in at the time of the murder,

765
00:39:34.719 --> 00:39:37.880
and that he had quietly vacated in June twenty ten,

766
00:39:38.280 --> 00:39:41.599
right around the time he and Tessa were filming those videos.

767
00:39:41.920 --> 00:39:45.280
There was a problem, though, When investigators first executed a

768
00:39:45.320 --> 00:39:49.039
search warrant after Wilson's arrest, they went to the wrong address.

769
00:39:49.400 --> 00:39:52.760
Wilson had since moved into the basement of his mother's salon,

770
00:39:53.119 --> 00:39:56.159
and that's where they searched first. They found blood in

771
00:39:56.199 --> 00:40:00.280
a stairwell, which briefly raised hopes until testing reveal that

772
00:40:00.320 --> 00:40:02.760
it belonged to a painter who had cut his hand

773
00:40:02.800 --> 00:40:05.320
on the job. It had nothing to do with Mackenzie.

774
00:40:05.639 --> 00:40:09.239
They realized their mistake, regrouped, got a new warrant, and

775
00:40:09.280 --> 00:40:13.360
went to the Burke Hill apartment. When forensic investigators sprayed

776
00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:16.400
the carpet with luminol, the stain lit up the same

777
00:40:16.480 --> 00:40:20.360
brownish patch that had appeared in the background of Tessa's photographs.

778
00:40:20.599 --> 00:40:23.400
The same stain the camera had slowly zoomed in on

779
00:40:23.679 --> 00:40:27.880
in those June videos was glowing under the light. Investigators

780
00:40:27.880 --> 00:40:29.920
cut out a section of the carpet and the pad

781
00:40:29.960 --> 00:40:32.840
beneath it, and sent both to the state crime lab.

782
00:40:33.199 --> 00:40:36.440
The results came back conclusive. The blood in the carpet

783
00:40:36.480 --> 00:40:41.280
of Christopher Wilson's former apartment belonged to Mackenzie Cowl. It

784
00:40:41.320 --> 00:40:45.000
was a significant development. Mackenzie had bled in that room

785
00:40:45.519 --> 00:40:48.719
whatever had happened to her, whatever the first terrible thing

786
00:40:48.800 --> 00:40:51.320
that had been done to her, some part of it

787
00:40:51.480 --> 00:40:54.639
had happened there. The blood evidence was enough to bring

788
00:40:54.679 --> 00:40:59.039
Tessa back into focus too, but despite the photographs, the videos,

789
00:40:59.159 --> 00:41:04.119
the panicked phone, and the convenient amnesia, investigators ultimately couldn't

790
00:41:04.159 --> 00:41:07.119
place her at the scene of Mackenzie's murder in any

791
00:41:07.199 --> 00:41:10.519
provable way. She was ruled out as a contributor to

792
00:41:10.559 --> 00:41:13.760
any of the DNA found near Mackenzie's body, and a

793
00:41:13.800 --> 00:41:17.079
thorough search of her car came up empty. Without physical

794
00:41:17.079 --> 00:41:20.519
evidence tying her directly to the crime, the DA decided

795
00:41:20.559 --> 00:41:24.519
not to pursue charges against her. Tessa walked, and as

796
00:41:24.519 --> 00:41:28.360
soon as Wilson's case was resolved, she legally changed both

797
00:41:28.400 --> 00:41:31.480
her first and last name and left the area Entirely

798
00:41:31.800 --> 00:41:36.039
where she went, nobody said publicly. In April twenty eleven,

799
00:41:36.199 --> 00:41:40.280
prosecutors upgraded the charge against Christopher Wilson from second degree

800
00:41:40.400 --> 00:41:44.760
murder to first degree murder. The argument was premeditation at

801
00:41:44.800 --> 00:41:48.360
the seventy two seconds, the borrowed car, the phone, behavior,

802
00:41:48.440 --> 00:41:50.719
the duct tape, all of it pointed to a man

803
00:41:50.760 --> 00:41:54.000
who had planned what he was going to do. Wilson's

804
00:41:54.039 --> 00:41:57.480
defense was led by John Henry Brown, a high profile

805
00:41:57.559 --> 00:42:01.599
Seattle attorney with a reputation for takeeking on difficult cases.

806
00:42:02.000 --> 00:42:06.159
Brown had defended Ted Bundy and other high profile defendants

807
00:42:06.239 --> 00:42:09.800
like Colton Harris Moore, better known as the Barefoot Bandit.

808
00:42:10.159 --> 00:42:12.719
Brown was not someone who shied away from a fight,

809
00:42:12.920 --> 00:42:16.679
and he came in with an aggressive strategy. The centerpiece

810
00:42:16.719 --> 00:42:20.719
of that strategy was planted evidence. Brown intended to argue

811
00:42:20.719 --> 00:42:24.320
that local law enforcement couldn't be trusted, that the small

812
00:42:24.360 --> 00:42:28.119
amount of blood found in Wilson's apartment was inconsistent with

813
00:42:28.199 --> 00:42:31.639
the sheer brutality of Mackenzie's murder, and that someone had

814
00:42:31.639 --> 00:42:35.119
put it there. He pointed to the local police force's history,

815
00:42:35.320 --> 00:42:38.559
including the false child abuse arrests in the late nineties.

816
00:42:38.960 --> 00:42:42.320
Brown also planned to point the finger at Emmanuel Saros

817
00:42:42.360 --> 00:42:45.599
and Sam Kuavas, the drug dealers that Liz Reid had

818
00:42:45.599 --> 00:42:49.119
accused early in the investigation. The judge ruled that the

819
00:42:49.159 --> 00:42:53.239
defense would be permitted to present evidence implicating those men

820
00:42:53.320 --> 00:42:56.599
at the trial. The judge handed the defense another victory

821
00:42:56.639 --> 00:43:00.360
that was arguably even more significant. All of the evidence

822
00:43:00.480 --> 00:43:04.639
relating to Wilson's macabre interests. The funeral home history, the

823
00:43:04.679 --> 00:43:09.039
hannibal lector tattoo, the serial killer forums, the mannequin incidents.

824
00:43:09.239 --> 00:43:13.039
They were all ruled too prejudicial to be admitted. The

825
00:43:13.119 --> 00:43:16.280
jury would never hear any of it on paper. At least,

826
00:43:16.320 --> 00:43:19.440
Wilson was going to trial as a regular person who

827
00:43:19.480 --> 00:43:21.719
happened to have his DNA on a piece of duct

828
00:43:21.719 --> 00:43:25.039
tape and the victim's blood in his carpet. The most

829
00:43:25.119 --> 00:43:28.079
damning portrait of who he was would never be painted

830
00:43:28.119 --> 00:43:28.760
for the jury.

831
00:43:29.119 --> 00:43:30.400
I don't like where this is headed.

832
00:43:31.000 --> 00:43:33.760
It looked going into the spring of twenty twelve like

833
00:43:33.960 --> 00:43:38.719
Wilson might actually have a fighting chance. Then jury selection began.

834
00:43:39.360 --> 00:43:43.199
As prospective jurors filled out their written questionnaires, Wilson and

835
00:43:43.280 --> 00:43:46.760
his lawyer read through them carefully. What they found was stark.

836
00:43:47.159 --> 00:43:50.119
Somewhere between eighty and eighty five percent of the jury

837
00:43:50.159 --> 00:43:54.119
pool either already believed that Wilson was guilty or had

838
00:43:54.159 --> 00:43:58.000
been exposed to the very evidence the judge had ordered suppressed.

839
00:43:58.360 --> 00:44:01.679
The prejudicial material had got out through press coverage and

840
00:44:01.719 --> 00:44:04.239
word of mouth, the way that these things travel in

841
00:44:04.280 --> 00:44:08.119
a community the size of winatche Chris's lawyer Brown ran

842
00:44:08.199 --> 00:44:10.559
the numbers. If they went to trial with a jury

843
00:44:10.599 --> 00:44:13.639
pool like that, Wilson was looking at a near certain

844
00:44:13.679 --> 00:44:17.719
conviction and a sentence of at least twenty years. Wilson

845
00:44:17.760 --> 00:44:21.840
had previously rejected a plea deal. Prosecutors had offered roughly

846
00:44:21.920 --> 00:44:25.119
six and a half years for first degree manslaughter, and

847
00:44:25.239 --> 00:44:27.760
he had turned it down, saying he wanted to go

848
00:44:27.800 --> 00:44:30.400
to trial so that the truth could come out. But

849
00:44:30.480 --> 00:44:32.920
the truth, as he now saw it, was that he

850
00:44:33.039 --> 00:44:35.960
wasn't going to get a fair hearing. On May twenty third,

851
00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:39.320
twenty twelve, just before opening statements were set to begin,

852
00:44:39.639 --> 00:44:43.079
he accepted a new deal. He pleaded guilty to first

853
00:44:43.079 --> 00:44:47.119
degree manslaughter, first degree robbery for taking Mackenzie's cell phone,

854
00:44:47.440 --> 00:44:51.039
and second degree assault for the unrelated choking incident at

855
00:44:51.039 --> 00:44:55.119
the party weeks before the murder. Shelan County Superior Court

856
00:44:55.199 --> 00:44:59.039
Judge John Bridges sentenced him to fourteen years and three

857
00:44:59.079 --> 00:45:02.840
months in prison. When the media asked District Attorney Gary

858
00:45:02.920 --> 00:45:05.679
Reason why he had offered what some saw as a

859
00:45:05.760 --> 00:45:09.519
lenient deal for such a brutal crime, Reason was candid.

860
00:45:09.880 --> 00:45:13.400
The case had weaknesses. There was no clear motive, and

861
00:45:13.599 --> 00:45:17.039
while Mackenzie's blood was in Wilson's apartment, and his DNA

862
00:45:17.199 --> 00:45:19.760
was on the duct tape near her body. His DNA

863
00:45:19.840 --> 00:45:22.679
had not been found on the murder weapon itself. It

864
00:45:22.800 --> 00:45:25.679
wasn't the ironclad case that it might have appeared to

865
00:45:25.719 --> 00:45:29.719
be from the outside. Wilson maintained his innocence even as

866
00:45:29.760 --> 00:45:32.719
he entered the plea. He later said from prison that

867
00:45:32.840 --> 00:45:35.280
during the hearing he had wanted to look Red and

868
00:45:35.360 --> 00:45:38.199
Wendy Cowell in the eye and tell them directly that

869
00:45:38.280 --> 00:45:40.880
he hadn't done it. But the moment passed and then

870
00:45:41.079 --> 00:45:44.760
it was over. Almost immediately after arriving at the Clllam

871
00:45:44.840 --> 00:45:48.920
Correctional Facility, he filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea,

872
00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:51.400
arguing that he wouldn't have been able to get a

873
00:45:51.440 --> 00:45:55.360
fair trial. A judge denied the motion in June twenty thirteen.

874
00:45:55.840 --> 00:45:58.280
He had made his choice. Now he had to live

875
00:45:58.320 --> 00:45:58.599
with it.

876
00:45:58.840 --> 00:46:01.679
He must have regretted that because he was originally offered

877
00:46:01.760 --> 00:46:05.440
six years, which is ridiculous. Yeah, and then I mean

878
00:46:05.519 --> 00:46:07.280
fourteen years is still ridiculous.

879
00:46:07.800 --> 00:46:11.559
Christopher Scott Wilson was freed from the Monroe Correctional Center

880
00:46:11.599 --> 00:46:15.280
on December eleventh, twenty twenty three, after serving just over

881
00:46:15.360 --> 00:46:18.800
eleven years of his sentence. He was released on parole

882
00:46:18.920 --> 00:46:23.119
with three years of reporting requirements to a community custody officer.

883
00:46:23.519 --> 00:46:26.440
Beyond that, there's very little on the public record about

884
00:46:26.440 --> 00:46:28.440
where he went or what he did next.

885
00:46:28.960 --> 00:46:31.320
To look on your head, my jaw is like on

886
00:46:31.840 --> 00:46:34.480
the desk here. But yeah, crazy to me that you

887
00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:38.840
let him out early. I know, yeah, he has a

888
00:46:38.880 --> 00:46:41.920
pittance of a sentence and then you let him out early.

889
00:46:41.800 --> 00:46:46.079
And such a horrible crime that, Yeah, it just doesn't

890
00:46:44.960 --> 00:46:49.840
it's not justice for McKenzie. When Acchi Washington was back

891
00:46:49.880 --> 00:46:52.400
in the national news just a year ago for another

892
00:46:52.440 --> 00:46:55.000
horrible crime, we talked about this yesterday, So I think

893
00:46:55.039 --> 00:46:58.000
you know that I'm referring to the murders of Peyton,

894
00:46:58.239 --> 00:47:02.199
Evelyn and Olivia Decker, ages nine, eight to five, by

895
00:47:02.239 --> 00:47:05.679
their father, Travis Decker, whose remains were later found. We

896
00:47:05.760 --> 00:47:08.800
talked about that case last summer when it was going on. Yeah,

897
00:47:08.880 --> 00:47:13.079
really heartbreaking case. Several days after Mackenzie's body was found,

898
00:47:13.280 --> 00:47:17.320
on February twenty fifth, twenty ten, eighteen hundred people gathered

899
00:47:17.320 --> 00:47:20.719
at the Town Toyota Center in Wenatchi for a memorial

900
00:47:20.800 --> 00:47:24.239
service in her honor. Eighteen hundred people in a city

901
00:47:24.280 --> 00:47:28.039
of thirty thousand. It was a remarkable turnout, a community

902
00:47:28.280 --> 00:47:31.840
showing up to support Mackenzie's family, to grieve and to

903
00:47:31.920 --> 00:47:36.400
process an unimaginable loss. Reid Cowell believed that the right

904
00:47:36.480 --> 00:47:39.719
person had been convicted, even if his sentence wasn't what

905
00:47:39.800 --> 00:47:42.760
it should have been. He told the press that Mackenzie

906
00:47:42.840 --> 00:47:45.079
was the kind of person who would never have gone

907
00:47:45.119 --> 00:47:48.760
anywhere with someone she didn't trust, which meant he believed

908
00:47:48.920 --> 00:47:51.079
that Wilson must have found a way to earn that

909
00:47:51.159 --> 00:47:54.480
trust before he used it against her. It's hard to

910
00:47:54.480 --> 00:47:57.119
say that justice was done in this case, though, A

911
00:47:57.159 --> 00:48:01.840
plea deal for manslaughter, not murder of fourteen years a

912
00:48:01.880 --> 00:48:04.440
man who walked out of prison in twenty twenty three

913
00:48:04.679 --> 00:48:07.039
and went on with his life. For a family that

914
00:48:07.119 --> 00:48:09.320
lost a seventeen year old girl in one of the

915
00:48:09.320 --> 00:48:12.960
most violent ways imaginable, it's not easy to make peace

916
00:48:13.000 --> 00:48:16.559
with that. Mackenzie Nicole Cowell would have turned thirty four

917
00:48:16.639 --> 00:48:20.400
years old last month. She was, by every account, someone

918
00:48:20.440 --> 00:48:23.840
who was just hitting her stride. A dancer, a student,

919
00:48:23.960 --> 00:48:26.920
an athlete, a young woman with a packed schedule and

920
00:48:26.960 --> 00:48:29.800
a clear sense of where she was headed. Her father

921
00:48:29.920 --> 00:48:33.039
called her driven, vibrant, on the verge of growing up.

922
00:48:33.440 --> 00:48:37.199
Sadly she never got that chance. Rest in peace, Mackenzie.

923
00:48:37.760 --> 00:48:41.639
So we already talked about it, but clearly justice not

924
00:48:41.800 --> 00:48:44.719
done in this case, and it's so frustrating. It does

925
00:48:44.760 --> 00:48:47.199
seem like they were willing to make a deal because

926
00:48:47.239 --> 00:48:50.840
the case wasn't ironclad. But it doesn't seem like it

927
00:48:50.880 --> 00:48:53.039
was a bad case either. I mean, they had her

928
00:48:53.079 --> 00:48:56.280
blood in his apartment. They had his DNA, even though

929
00:48:56.280 --> 00:48:58.719
it wasn't one hundred percent match, but they had his

930
00:48:58.840 --> 00:49:01.960
DNA at the I'm seeing, it seems like even just

931
00:49:02.000 --> 00:49:05.000
with those things, that was probably enough to get a conviction.

932
00:49:05.159 --> 00:49:06.199
But I don't know, what do you think? Do you

933
00:49:06.239 --> 00:49:08.760
think it made sense for the prosecution to make a deal.

934
00:49:09.079 --> 00:49:11.119
Well, a lot of the evidence sounded like it was

935
00:49:11.159 --> 00:49:14.960
going to be excluded, like his character and the things

936
00:49:15.039 --> 00:49:17.920
that you know, showed that he was maybe obsessed with

937
00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:20.880
death right, you know, I don't know. I feel like

938
00:49:20.920 --> 00:49:24.320
fourteen years or eleven years, it is just really sad

939
00:49:24.440 --> 00:49:28.440
because Mackenzie's life was worth more than that sentence, and.

940
00:49:28.400 --> 00:49:31.360
He's still relatively young, and he is, you know, free

941
00:49:31.360 --> 00:49:33.440
and free to live the rest of his life.

942
00:49:33.599 --> 00:49:36.239
Chilling to know that a person like that is out

943
00:49:36.280 --> 00:49:39.400
on the streets, and the likelihood that he could kill again, yeah,

944
00:49:39.440 --> 00:49:41.119
I'm sure is pretty big.

945
00:49:41.440 --> 00:49:44.360
Yeah, And the fact that the judge excluded those things,

946
00:49:44.400 --> 00:49:48.360
to me doesn't make sense because assuming he did this crime,

947
00:49:48.360 --> 00:49:51.679
which I believe he did, his motive was that he

948
00:49:51.760 --> 00:49:55.039
was obsessed with death, and so all of those elements

949
00:49:55.079 --> 00:49:58.400
to his character all seem very relevant to me, because

950
00:49:58.440 --> 00:50:00.880
that really is what his motive was is to you know,

951
00:50:00.960 --> 00:50:03.880
he wanted to experience killing someone.

952
00:50:04.159 --> 00:50:06.920
Well, I think you said seventy two seconds after she

953
00:50:07.079 --> 00:50:11.000
walked out, he walked out after her. Right, It's just

954
00:50:11.079 --> 00:50:14.639
really I mean, bad planning on his part because you know,

955
00:50:14.719 --> 00:50:16.960
he was going to be a prime suspect no matter

956
00:50:17.039 --> 00:50:19.559
what happened. So it kind of shows that he was

957
00:50:19.639 --> 00:50:23.239
that obsessed with with killing someone. It was like, you know,

958
00:50:23.440 --> 00:50:26.719
on his brain that he made that, you know, it

959
00:50:26.880 --> 00:50:30.360
kind of stupid decision. Right, What do they think happened?

960
00:50:30.719 --> 00:50:33.079
You know, it's a good question actually, because I think

961
00:50:33.199 --> 00:50:37.679
I don't know how he lured her to his apartment, Like, I.

962
00:50:37.639 --> 00:50:39.960
Don't know, so they think that she was killed in

963
00:50:39.960 --> 00:50:40.559
his apartment.

964
00:50:40.719 --> 00:50:42.679
It sort of seems that way. But even that is

965
00:50:42.719 --> 00:50:46.400
a little bit questionable because there wasn't a lot of blood, right, But.

966
00:50:46.519 --> 00:50:48.480
You said he was obsessed with Dexter, so maybe he

967
00:50:48.559 --> 00:50:51.280
had like Ezechtor style like saran wrap.

968
00:50:51.400 --> 00:50:54.320
Yeah, yeah, invest scares were speculating that that could have

969
00:50:54.320 --> 00:50:57.559
been a possibility that he had learned from watching Dexter

970
00:50:57.679 --> 00:51:01.400
how to kill someone without you know, a lot of blood.

971
00:51:01.440 --> 00:51:05.000
But we'll never know, unfortunately what actually happened, but it

972
00:51:05.119 --> 00:51:07.800
is Yeah, it does make you wonder how how did

973
00:51:07.840 --> 00:51:10.280
he actually you know, pull this off?

974
00:51:10.320 --> 00:51:12.519
Did he just think it was a crime of opportunity?

975
00:51:13.320 --> 00:51:14.199
Were they friends?

976
00:51:14.519 --> 00:51:16.119
That's what I don't know. I don't know if they

977
00:51:16.159 --> 00:51:18.719
were or not. You know, I wasn't able to find

978
00:51:18.760 --> 00:51:21.679
any information about whether they had any kind of relation.

979
00:51:21.639 --> 00:51:24.119
And obviously they went to the same hair academy, but

980
00:51:24.239 --> 00:51:26.880
I don't know beyond that if they had a friendship.

981
00:51:26.880 --> 00:51:28.960
But it seems like there must have been something there

982
00:51:29.440 --> 00:51:32.440
that caused her to go to his apartment without you know,

983
00:51:32.559 --> 00:51:33.320
questioning it.

984
00:51:33.440 --> 00:51:37.039
And we don't know why McKenzie left class that day, right,

985
00:51:37.159 --> 00:51:39.559
And there were no text messages between those two that

986
00:51:39.639 --> 00:51:40.840
you know of, No.

987
00:51:40.519 --> 00:51:43.639
No, really nothing One interesting thing about this case is

988
00:51:43.760 --> 00:51:46.400
this whole Liz Read story. This is the young woman

989
00:51:46.400 --> 00:51:49.719
who came forward said that she knew the two guys

990
00:51:49.760 --> 00:51:51.880
that did this, and in fact, that they had filmed

991
00:51:52.280 --> 00:51:55.320
the murder and that she saw the film. It's just

992
00:51:55.400 --> 00:51:58.039
such a strange thing because they, you know, they ended

993
00:51:58.119 --> 00:51:59.960
up not believing her at all, although there was a

994
00:52:00.280 --> 00:52:03.320
little bit of evidence. Right, So she said that she

995
00:52:03.440 --> 00:52:06.360
knew the knife that was killed, like she recognized it

996
00:52:06.480 --> 00:52:09.159
or was able to describe it. And they also found

997
00:52:09.440 --> 00:52:12.199
a cigarette butt with DNA from one of these guys,

998
00:52:12.519 --> 00:52:15.119
you know, on a bluff overlooking the river, not far

999
00:52:15.159 --> 00:52:17.360
from where the body was found. But what do you like,

1000
00:52:17.400 --> 00:52:19.760
what do you make of that whole story. It seems

1001
00:52:19.800 --> 00:52:23.920
pretty clear to me that Christopher Wilson did this. But

1002
00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:25.639
why did this person come forward?

1003
00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:26.199
Why?

1004
00:52:26.280 --> 00:52:28.559
I don't understand why someone would do that if it

1005
00:52:28.599 --> 00:52:30.599
wasn't there wasn't some truth to it.

1006
00:52:30.639 --> 00:52:33.360
Maybe it was a rumor. Maybe you know, it was

1007
00:52:33.400 --> 00:52:35.840
just something that was floating around town. Because she sounds

1008
00:52:35.840 --> 00:52:38.639
like she had a pretty established relationship with the police.

1009
00:52:39.199 --> 00:52:42.280
They trusted her in these drug cases. Yeah, so maybe

1010
00:52:42.360 --> 00:52:43.480
she did hear a rumor.

1011
00:52:43.719 --> 00:52:45.800
Yeah, It's just so strange that she would come forward

1012
00:52:45.840 --> 00:52:47.639
and say, oh, I saw it. I saw a film

1013
00:52:47.840 --> 00:52:48.840
of this, I saw them.

1014
00:52:49.400 --> 00:52:54.639
Yeah. Maybe she has an addiction problem and maybe she

1015
00:52:54.760 --> 00:52:55.599
thought she saw something.

1016
00:52:55.679 --> 00:52:57.719
Yeah I don't I really could. Yeah. I mean, there's

1017
00:52:57.760 --> 00:52:59.480
no way to know. But it's just an odd sort

1018
00:52:59.480 --> 00:53:00.000
of footnote.

1019
00:53:00.199 --> 00:53:02.800
Yeah, this whole and that's a good point. That did

1020
00:53:02.840 --> 00:53:05.559
distract from the investigation for several months.

1021
00:53:05.639 --> 00:53:08.440
Yeah. What do you think about Tessa Shiloman So? She

1022
00:53:09.280 --> 00:53:13.920
was on again, off again girlfriend of Christopher Wilson. There

1023
00:53:13.960 --> 00:53:18.000
was obviously communication going on between them that afternoon. She

1024
00:53:18.039 --> 00:53:21.159
had called a boyfriend at the time and said, you know,

1025
00:53:21.199 --> 00:53:24.599
it sounded like she was panicked, like something crazy had happened.

1026
00:53:24.800 --> 00:53:26.519
Do you think they should have let her off the

1027
00:53:26.559 --> 00:53:29.079
hook or do you think that there just wasn't enough

1028
00:53:29.119 --> 00:53:30.400
evidence there to do anything.

1029
00:53:30.639 --> 00:53:32.800
I think if there was enough evidence, they would have

1030
00:53:32.880 --> 00:53:35.519
arrested her to right. Well, you said that she changed

1031
00:53:35.519 --> 00:53:36.719
her name and left town.

1032
00:53:36.800 --> 00:53:37.199
Mm hmm.

1033
00:53:37.400 --> 00:53:40.000
Do you think that's some sort of admission of guilt there.

1034
00:53:40.320 --> 00:53:42.280
I'm not sure whether it was an admission of guilt,

1035
00:53:42.360 --> 00:53:44.840
but certainly her name was tied to this case. In

1036
00:53:44.880 --> 00:53:47.639
this relatively small town, So I'm sure in her mind

1037
00:53:47.679 --> 00:53:50.000
it was just like, yeah, I can't. I can't stay

1038
00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:52.320
here anymore. I can't be the same person. The last

1039
00:53:52.360 --> 00:53:53.880
thing I wanted to ask you about is we talked

1040
00:53:53.880 --> 00:53:56.920
at the beginning about when ATCHI it's had. It seems

1041
00:53:56.920 --> 00:53:59.280
to me like way more than its fair share of

1042
00:53:59.639 --> 00:54:04.159
really horrific crimes and other events. I'm reading the book

1043
00:54:04.239 --> 00:54:06.320
yet right now by Stephen King. I'm right in the

1044
00:54:06.360 --> 00:54:08.280
middle of it, and it's sort of about a town

1045
00:54:08.360 --> 00:54:11.280
that is kind of cursed, like it has like the

1046
00:54:11.320 --> 00:54:14.000
town itself has sort of evil built.

1047
00:54:13.719 --> 00:54:15.760
In And I don't it take place in Dairy.

1048
00:54:16.000 --> 00:54:18.719
It takes place in Dairy, Maine. But I just you

1049
00:54:18.760 --> 00:54:20.719
hear about stuff like this, and you're like, is this

1050
00:54:20.800 --> 00:54:23.800
city like cursed? Does it have? Is there something about

1051
00:54:23.840 --> 00:54:26.440
it that causes things to happen like this?

1052
00:54:26.840 --> 00:54:29.920
Well you described this as the town, but do they

1053
00:54:29.920 --> 00:54:32.599
have like a math problem right now? Like is it

1054
00:54:32.639 --> 00:54:35.840
a town where you know, like the apple industry is there,

1055
00:54:35.920 --> 00:54:38.559
but the apple industry is shrinking, and you know people

1056
00:54:38.599 --> 00:54:40.360
are having a hard time because a lot of time

1057
00:54:40.519 --> 00:54:44.039
that's what happens. Yeah, when you know a place has

1058
00:54:44.159 --> 00:54:47.599
their economy is going downhill. You know, that's when a

1059
00:54:47.599 --> 00:54:49.519
lot of problems happen. Is that the case in.

1060
00:54:49.599 --> 00:54:51.840
What I I don't get that sense. And I don't

1061
00:54:51.840 --> 00:54:54.400
think like any of the incidents we talked about don't

1062
00:54:54.440 --> 00:54:57.280
seem like any of them were driven by like any

1063
00:54:57.400 --> 00:54:59.960
kind of you know, meth addiction or anything like that.

1064
00:55:00.159 --> 00:55:02.840
So I don't know, maybe just coincidence. But I do

1065
00:55:02.920 --> 00:55:05.480
also feel like in the Pacific Northwest it seems like

1066
00:55:05.559 --> 00:55:07.320
there are a lot of serial killers.

1067
00:55:07.440 --> 00:55:10.440
Talk about this before. I believe it's linked to, you know,

1068
00:55:10.480 --> 00:55:15.039
the lack of the sun and thermware crimes in places

1069
00:55:15.119 --> 00:55:17.159
where it's somewhat dreary.

1070
00:55:17.400 --> 00:55:19.559
Yeah, I don't know what causes that, but it's just

1071
00:55:19.679 --> 00:55:22.519
it's a strange thing that this town of Winacchi has had.

1072
00:55:22.559 --> 00:55:26.199
That said, I think the Pacific Northwest is a beautiful

1073
00:55:26.920 --> 00:55:29.599
We're not implying that, you know, it's not a lovely

1074
00:55:29.639 --> 00:55:32.719
place to live. I just seemed like this, this Winacchi

1075
00:55:33.199 --> 00:55:36.079
has had its unfair percentage of crimes.

1076
00:55:36.159 --> 00:55:36.519
Yeah.

1077
00:55:36.559 --> 00:55:39.280
So do you think that Christopher's motive was just that

1078
00:55:39.360 --> 00:55:41.280
he wanted to kill someone?

1079
00:55:41.320 --> 00:55:43.440
I believe so, just based on what we know of

1080
00:55:43.519 --> 00:55:47.559
his background, his obsession with death, some of the allegations

1081
00:55:47.559 --> 00:55:50.400
about his funeral home behavior. It sure seems like that

1082
00:55:50.639 --> 00:55:52.800
is the only motive I can I can think would

1083
00:55:52.840 --> 00:55:53.360
make sense.

1084
00:55:53.639 --> 00:55:55.800
I haven't said this in a while, but I believe

1085
00:55:55.840 --> 00:55:57.280
that one of the ways that you can keep your

1086
00:55:57.320 --> 00:56:00.320
family safe is to check the sex offender registered in

1087
00:56:00.320 --> 00:56:02.960
your area every six months, especially if you have young

1088
00:56:03.039 --> 00:56:05.480
kids that might be walking or taking the bus or

1089
00:56:05.519 --> 00:56:09.719
whatever that they're out of your eyesight. But this Christopher

1090
00:56:10.199 --> 00:56:13.760
is we know that he has this fixation on murdering

1091
00:56:14.440 --> 00:56:17.800
and death. There's no registry for like people that have

1092
00:56:18.039 --> 00:56:22.079
committed a first degree or secondargrey murder or even you know,

1093
00:56:22.360 --> 00:56:23.119
assaulting st.

1094
00:56:23.159 --> 00:56:25.480
Yeah, and are now living next door or down the

1095
00:56:25.559 --> 00:56:26.239
road from you.

1096
00:56:26.519 --> 00:56:29.480
Yeah, so your neighbor. That's kind of chilling, right, It

1097
00:56:29.519 --> 00:56:30.159
is a little bit.

1098
00:56:30.239 --> 00:56:32.280
Yeah, you would think I would. I would want to

1099
00:56:32.320 --> 00:56:34.639
know if I was living down the street from this guy.

1100
00:56:34.760 --> 00:56:36.760
I mean, people have every right to start their life

1101
00:56:36.800 --> 00:56:39.920
over and you know, yeah, but in this case, I mean,

1102
00:56:39.960 --> 00:56:42.400
he was convicted of a pretty gruesome murder.

1103
00:56:42.480 --> 00:56:43.880
Yeah, pretty disturbing.

1104
00:56:44.159 --> 00:56:46.920
You talked a little bit about the judge, or not

1105
00:56:47.000 --> 00:56:49.840
the judge, but the jury and how when they were

1106
00:56:49.920 --> 00:56:52.360
polled was it like eighty percent of them or whatever

1107
00:56:52.679 --> 00:56:57.199
had a preconceived notion of Christopher. Yeah, because it's a

1108
00:56:57.239 --> 00:56:59.760
small community and they'd read the newspapers, and you know,

1109
00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:02.360
they they thought that he was already guilty. Do you

1110
00:57:02.440 --> 00:57:05.960
think in that situation, if there was a trial here

1111
00:57:06.440 --> 00:57:08.400
and you were serving as a jur that you would

1112
00:57:08.440 --> 00:57:11.599
be able to separate what you'd heard in the news

1113
00:57:11.679 --> 00:57:14.000
to what you would hear in the trial. I think

1114
00:57:14.000 --> 00:57:15.599
it would be really hard thing to do.

1115
00:57:15.719 --> 00:57:17.360
I think it would be a hard thing to do too,

1116
00:57:17.400 --> 00:57:20.960
if you already have a preconceived notion of somebody before

1117
00:57:21.000 --> 00:57:23.280
you walk in. I mean that's why they moved trials

1118
00:57:23.280 --> 00:57:26.440
to different locations, which I didn't read anything about any

1119
00:57:26.480 --> 00:57:29.559
motion to move the trial or anything like that, But yeah,

1120
00:57:29.559 --> 00:57:32.199
it would be hard as a juror in a small

1121
00:57:32.239 --> 00:57:33.960
town if you already heard about the case.

1122
00:57:34.239 --> 00:57:36.960
In small knit communities, you just feel closer to your

1123
00:57:37.000 --> 00:57:39.519
friends and neighbors, and even if you don't know them,

1124
00:57:39.840 --> 00:57:43.000
you would want justice or Mackenzie.

1125
00:57:43.159 --> 00:57:52.199
Right before we wrap up, I thought we would continue

1126
00:57:52.239 --> 00:57:54.760
our apple theme, and I want to you love a theme.

1127
00:57:54.920 --> 00:57:56.559
I do love a theme, but I wanted to do

1128
00:57:57.119 --> 00:58:03.239
a blind apple taste testy. So I have brought five apples,

1129
00:58:03.880 --> 00:58:07.159
and we're gonna both taste them blindly and try and

1130
00:58:07.239 --> 00:58:10.800
decide which ones we like in order and try to

1131
00:58:10.920 --> 00:58:12.840
figure out which one is which. So I brought a

1132
00:58:13.199 --> 00:58:17.920
Honey Crisp, a Fuji an Envy, a Cosmic Crisp, and

1133
00:58:17.960 --> 00:58:20.840
a pink lady. Okay, all right, are you ready?

1134
00:58:21.000 --> 00:58:21.480
I'm ready.

1135
00:58:21.519 --> 00:58:23.280
All right, we can take a little break and do

1136
00:58:23.360 --> 00:58:26.840
this off air, and then we'll come back and rank them. Okay,

1137
00:58:26.880 --> 00:58:38.239
all right, okay, so you just tried the five apples.

1138
00:58:38.280 --> 00:58:41.880
Okay, So, first of all, I have extreme testing anxiety.

1139
00:58:42.239 --> 00:58:45.400
If you say the words test or quiz, I instantly

1140
00:58:45.400 --> 00:58:48.559
get Well, there's no pressure. I'm pretty sure I got

1141
00:58:48.639 --> 00:58:49.159
none of them.

1142
00:58:49.239 --> 00:58:52.280
Right. Well, it's more about what's your favorite and least favorite.

1143
00:58:52.280 --> 00:58:55.639
But you were just quizzing me because I really wasn't thinking,

1144
00:58:55.760 --> 00:58:56.920
Oh which am I enjoying?

1145
00:58:57.039 --> 00:58:57.679
I am curious.

1146
00:58:57.760 --> 00:59:00.280
I would say, out of the ones I taste, did

1147
00:59:00.320 --> 00:59:03.320
like number three, I was like, oh, this one's really mushy.

1148
00:59:03.679 --> 00:59:05.519
So I'll tell you what. I what I I didn't

1149
00:59:05.559 --> 00:59:08.480
rank them in my preference at all. Okay, Number one,

1150
00:59:08.840 --> 00:59:12.280
I guess, Envy, two, Honey Crisp, three Pink Lady, four

1151
00:59:12.360 --> 00:59:16.320
Cosmic Crisp, and five Fuji. Okay, but here's the thing.

1152
00:59:17.880 --> 00:59:20.480
If you're taking like a taste test of something, a

1153
00:59:20.519 --> 00:59:22.360
lot of times you would use an apple as a

1154
00:59:22.400 --> 00:59:25.760
palette cleanser. Yeah, and I had no palate cleanser, so

1155
00:59:25.800 --> 00:59:28.199
it was just kind of like putting like something that's

1156
00:59:28.199 --> 00:59:30.920
slightly you know, sweet, And it really hard.

1157
00:59:31.000 --> 00:59:32.559
Which one would you say was your favorite? Though?

1158
00:59:32.559 --> 00:59:34.000
If you had one thing, I don't know if I

1159
00:59:34.039 --> 00:59:36.840
could say, because honestly, I was just trying to identify them.

1160
00:59:37.239 --> 00:59:39.920
I mean, honey Crisp is probably my favorite apple, so

1161
00:59:40.280 --> 00:59:44.920
I guess, uh, two and four might have been my preference.

1162
00:59:45.079 --> 00:59:47.159
I don't know, but none of them were I don't know.

1163
00:59:47.199 --> 00:59:48.800
So tell me how they did on the quiz.

1164
00:59:48.800 --> 00:59:51.280
You got the Pink Lady right, that was the one

1165
00:59:51.280 --> 00:59:53.039
you got right. Interesting only when.

1166
00:59:52.880 --> 00:59:54.679
I got right when you got right. So that's that

1167
00:59:54.800 --> 00:59:56.000
is my history with test.

1168
00:59:56.320 --> 00:59:59.079
Interesting that What I found most interesting here is you

1169
00:59:59.159 --> 01:00:02.039
thought the food was a honey crisp. I know you

1170
01:00:02.079 --> 01:00:04.159
love honey crisp, but you're not a big Fuji fan.

1171
01:00:04.320 --> 01:00:07.480
But the Fuji you you identified as a honey crisp.

1172
01:00:07.360 --> 01:00:11.199
Okay, I was actually the Fuji was number two. I

1173
01:00:11.280 --> 01:00:14.559
had a Fuji or Honey Crisp down actually, and then

1174
01:00:14.599 --> 01:00:16.639
I tasted it again. I said, Honey Cris'm a horrible

1175
01:00:16.679 --> 01:00:18.719
test taker. That's all I'm going to say. I hate quizzes.

1176
01:00:18.760 --> 01:00:20.840
Please never make me take another one again, because it

1177
01:00:20.880 --> 01:00:24.639
makes me instantly feel insecure in that I was a

1178
01:00:24.639 --> 01:00:26.800
fine student. I'm not saying like, you know, I, but

1179
01:00:27.079 --> 01:00:28.280
I honest.

1180
01:00:28.320 --> 01:00:30.320
I didn't really, I really really didn't mean to put

1181
01:00:30.360 --> 01:00:32.079
you on the spot. It was more about like which

1182
01:00:32.119 --> 01:00:34.440
ones do you like best and least? But yeah, I

1183
01:00:34.480 --> 01:00:36.239
guess I should have made that a little more clear.

1184
01:00:36.559 --> 01:00:39.920
Yeah, but yeah, I did horrible. That's just that's just.

1185
01:00:40.719 --> 01:00:41.199
That's okay.

1186
01:00:41.199 --> 01:00:43.000
All right. So now you were going to.

1187
01:00:43.159 --> 01:00:44.800
Yes, now you can give me a sample.

1188
01:00:45.280 --> 01:00:46.679
Would have had a heads up, and I would have

1189
01:00:46.679 --> 01:00:48.039
made this trickier in some way.

1190
01:00:48.159 --> 01:00:48.760
Oh that's okay.

1191
01:00:48.800 --> 01:00:50.679
All right, Let's take a piece of bologney in here

1192
01:00:50.800 --> 01:00:51.280
or something.

1193
01:00:51.400 --> 01:00:53.599
Let's take a quick break and I will do a

1194
01:00:53.599 --> 01:00:59.360
blind taste test. Now, I like to eat, eat, eat apple.

1195
01:01:02.679 --> 01:01:04.559
I like to eat.

1196
01:01:05.840 --> 01:01:10.280
As Okay, Well, I had a clear favorite. My favorite

1197
01:01:10.280 --> 01:01:12.480
one was number two, and I think that was the Envy.

1198
01:01:12.960 --> 01:01:16.199
You're correct, Okay, that was really good. I had number

1199
01:01:16.199 --> 01:01:16.639
one down.

1200
01:01:16.719 --> 01:01:19.760
As you know, I think, I like, we're obsessed with apples.

1201
01:01:19.760 --> 01:01:21.960
But a few months ago, it was probably in the fall,

1202
01:01:22.159 --> 01:01:25.639
you made a proclamation that Envy was your new favorite apple.

1203
01:01:25.719 --> 01:01:27.559
So that is interesting that you got that correct.

1204
01:01:27.599 --> 01:01:29.159
And I wasn't sure if I was going to stick

1205
01:01:29.199 --> 01:01:30.519
with that or not, but I really think it was.

1206
01:01:30.679 --> 01:01:33.440
I had number one down as a cosmic Crisp, number

1207
01:01:33.440 --> 01:01:36.239
three as a Fuji, four as a honey Crisp, and

1208
01:01:36.280 --> 01:01:37.320
five as a pink Lady.

1209
01:01:37.480 --> 01:01:39.760
So not surprisingly, out of the two of us, you

1210
01:01:39.800 --> 01:01:42.159
are a much better test taker. Doesn't mean that you're

1211
01:01:42.239 --> 01:01:45.440
more intelligent. I need to point out this test taking

1212
01:01:45.559 --> 01:01:49.480
is a skill, and you got one on the test. Also,

1213
01:01:49.559 --> 01:01:51.800
if you know me, I would be more likely to

1214
01:01:51.920 --> 01:01:55.159
put the apples in alphabetical order. So did you know

1215
01:01:55.320 --> 01:01:57.800
that I put the apples in alphabetical.

1216
01:01:57.679 --> 01:02:00.440
Did not occur to me until you said that.

1217
01:02:00.480 --> 01:02:02.639
But also, I'd like to plan out that that early

1218
01:02:02.719 --> 01:02:05.159
May late April is not the best time to be

1219
01:02:05.320 --> 01:02:06.280
tasting apples.

1220
01:02:06.360 --> 01:02:08.000
I thought of that too, but I was like, well,

1221
01:02:08.000 --> 01:02:11.239
we're doing a case on Winacchi. The apple capital of

1222
01:02:11.239 --> 01:02:13.280
the world. We have to do apples, so I but

1223
01:02:13.320 --> 01:02:14.760
I agree it's not the perfect time.

1224
01:02:14.960 --> 01:02:19.360
And if our voices sound very clear and really good

1225
01:02:19.440 --> 01:02:21.679
right now, it's because a lot of times if you

1226
01:02:21.719 --> 01:02:24.800
read how do I have a better voice for podcasting,

1227
01:02:25.199 --> 01:02:28.280
they will say eat apples or drink apple juice.

1228
01:02:28.400 --> 01:02:31.119
Yeah, usually they say to eat a sour apple, like

1229
01:02:31.159 --> 01:02:33.840
a green apple or something like that. But still either way.

1230
01:02:34.159 --> 01:02:38.079
Yeah, so your your favorite was the envy definitely.

1231
01:02:38.159 --> 01:02:38.480
I know.

1232
01:02:38.639 --> 01:02:41.920
Honestly, I just had to I seriously get test anxiety

1233
01:02:42.000 --> 01:02:44.519
because I don't like anything in life that makes me

1234
01:02:44.639 --> 01:02:48.159
feel stupider. I'm not a stupid You're.

1235
01:02:48.039 --> 01:02:50.159
Totally I should have positioned it a different way, because

1236
01:02:50.199 --> 01:02:52.559
really it was more about finding out what your favorite

1237
01:02:52.599 --> 01:02:53.119
apple was.

1238
01:02:53.880 --> 01:02:58.079
Yeah. Okay, well you're right. That was a fun little detour.

1239
01:02:58.280 --> 01:03:00.719
And I love doing blind taste tests.

1240
01:03:00.880 --> 01:03:03.559
Yeah, I think in general blind taste tests are are

1241
01:03:03.599 --> 01:03:04.119
really fun.

1242
01:03:04.239 --> 01:03:06.239
Sometime we're going to do a blind taste test of

1243
01:03:06.360 --> 01:03:07.559
bottled water brands.

1244
01:03:07.719 --> 01:03:11.880
Oh okay, that's all. These are really compelling for listeners.

1245
01:03:11.920 --> 01:03:14.639
People that are listening and you can't see I would

1246
01:03:14.679 --> 01:03:16.719
like to do a taste test with you with like

1247
01:03:16.880 --> 01:03:19.239
diet pepsi. You've seen like people do like, oh, this

1248
01:03:19.320 --> 01:03:22.480
diepe pepsi is from McDonald's and this one is from

1249
01:03:22.519 --> 01:03:25.360
the gas station and blah blah and whatever, because you

1250
01:03:25.440 --> 01:03:27.639
drink a lot of diet pepsi and I.

1251
01:03:27.639 --> 01:03:30.440
Have a very discerning palate when it comes to soda.

1252
01:03:30.519 --> 01:03:31.880
Do you think you would be able to tell the

1253
01:03:31.880 --> 01:03:33.960
difference between I don't think you would be able to

1254
01:03:34.000 --> 01:03:36.679
be like, oh, this one from this from McDonald's or whatever.

1255
01:03:36.760 --> 01:03:38.559
But I think you might be able to say this

1256
01:03:38.559 --> 01:03:41.000
one's from a can, this one's from a bottle, this

1257
01:03:41.039 --> 01:03:42.559
one's from a fountain drink.

1258
01:03:42.679 --> 01:03:44.800
Maybe I feel like I could say this is diet

1259
01:03:44.800 --> 01:03:47.599
pepsi and this is diet coke. Beyond that, yeah, I'm

1260
01:03:47.599 --> 01:03:49.400
not so sure. Oh, by the way, did you get

1261
01:03:49.440 --> 01:03:50.320
the mail yesterday?

1262
01:03:50.840 --> 01:03:52.639
Yeah? We hadn't gotten it a few days. There was

1263
01:03:52.679 --> 01:03:54.440
a lot of stuff in there.

1264
01:03:55.039 --> 01:03:59.880
No, it wasn't for Taylor's. We wasn't. Oh that's disappointing.

1265
01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:00.880
Thought it would come by now.

1266
01:04:00.920 --> 01:04:03.599
So we know that Taylor Swift is listening to our podcast,

1267
01:04:03.639 --> 01:04:05.320
of course, and I think that that would be I

1268
01:04:05.320 --> 01:04:08.880
would be okay with doing a face reveal for Taylor

1269
01:04:08.920 --> 01:04:11.400
Swift's wedding, Like we could go as the hosts of

1270
01:04:11.519 --> 01:04:16.880
Love Mary Kill, Taylor Swift's favorite podcast. So you're listening, Taylor,

1271
01:04:16.920 --> 01:04:19.400
don't feel like you can't invite us because we don't

1272
01:04:19.400 --> 01:04:21.800
want to show our faces. But it's not that we

1273
01:04:21.880 --> 01:04:24.400
are ugly. We just you know, have chosen to keep

1274
01:04:24.440 --> 01:04:26.239
our faces private. And I think that would be a

1275
01:04:26.239 --> 01:04:28.039
great time to think if you.

1276
01:04:27.880 --> 01:04:30.440
Use your wedding as a face reveal for the Love

1277
01:04:30.480 --> 01:04:32.960
Mary Kill host that would really get your wedding on

1278
01:04:33.000 --> 01:04:34.920
the map, Like people would really start to pay attention

1279
01:04:34.960 --> 01:04:35.159
to it.

1280
01:04:35.320 --> 01:04:37.480
Yeah, but then that would take away from the bride,

1281
01:04:37.599 --> 01:04:40.639
and we don't want to take away from them. Maybe

1282
01:04:40.679 --> 01:04:43.480
that's why we haven't gotten to save the day. Yeah, probably,

1283
01:04:43.559 --> 01:04:46.079
So we're just kidding. I don't think we're going to

1284
01:04:46.119 --> 01:04:49.320
care and invite, but I would go.

1285
01:04:49.719 --> 01:04:52.639
I would totally go. And Taylor, if you are listening,

1286
01:04:52.760 --> 01:04:54.239
we're happy to have you as a listener.

1287
01:04:54.280 --> 01:04:56.559
You never know who's listening, you never know, you never know.

1288
01:04:56.679 --> 01:05:00.559
And maybe wait, what's his name? Her husband from Travis.

1289
01:05:00.559 --> 01:05:02.360
So that's why you're not going to get us invited

1290
01:05:02.519 --> 01:05:05.079
because Travis Kelton. Maybe Travis is a listening he's a

1291
01:05:05.159 --> 01:05:09.360
foot like seriously, yeah, probably, I'm a little ashamed of

1292
01:05:09.400 --> 01:05:09.960
you right now.

1293
01:05:10.400 --> 01:05:12.039
I got I came up with it. It just took

1294
01:05:12.039 --> 01:05:14.320
me a couple of seconds. I get him and his

1295
01:05:14.360 --> 01:05:15.519
brother mixed up. That's why.

1296
01:05:15.599 --> 01:05:16.599
Well, what's his brother's name?

1297
01:05:16.760 --> 01:05:17.159
Jason?

1298
01:05:17.280 --> 01:05:19.400
Okay, all right, I'll give you that. Have you ever

1299
01:05:19.440 --> 01:05:20.760
listened to their podcast?

1300
01:05:21.559 --> 01:05:23.360
Of course, I'm a regular listener.

1301
01:05:23.440 --> 01:05:25.639
You don't listen it. You listen to zero podcast. I'm

1302
01:05:25.639 --> 01:05:26.960
pretty sure. Tell me if I'm wrong.

1303
01:05:27.320 --> 01:05:29.360
It's rare. Every once in a while. I will listen

1304
01:05:29.360 --> 01:05:31.199
to something, but not very often.

1305
01:05:31.400 --> 01:05:34.280
Usually it's because I force you to. Sometimes we're when

1306
01:05:34.320 --> 01:05:37.639
we're on a road. Might but I listen to a

1307
01:05:37.679 --> 01:05:40.719
lot of podcasts, not really true crime, although I do

1308
01:05:40.840 --> 01:05:42.880
listen to datelines sometimes to go to sleep.

1309
01:05:43.000 --> 01:05:45.639
Yeah, I listen to our own podcast enough that I

1310
01:05:45.679 --> 01:05:47.239
don't have room for other podcasts.

1311
01:05:48.079 --> 01:05:51.079
You have listened to our own podcast. Nothing beats it

1312
01:05:51.360 --> 01:05:51.760
that the.

1313
01:05:51.719 --> 01:05:54.360
Bar is set so high that it would be hard

1314
01:05:54.360 --> 01:05:57.320
for me to really enjoy and appreciate another podcast.

1315
01:05:57.679 --> 01:06:02.920
Speaking of our podcast, it was such an eloquence segue,

1316
01:06:03.000 --> 01:06:05.519
wasn't it, Yes, very much, So I just wanted to

1317
01:06:05.559 --> 01:06:09.320
thank anyone who has commented on Reddit and shouted us out,

1318
01:06:09.400 --> 01:06:13.000
because that really is so kind and generous and it

1319
01:06:13.039 --> 01:06:15.119
really does help new listeners find the show.

1320
01:06:15.320 --> 01:06:16.039
Yeah, it really does.

1321
01:06:16.079 --> 01:06:18.239
We appreciate you so much. I think you said the

1322
01:06:18.320 --> 01:06:22.760
other day that on the house cleaning subreddit someone shouted

1323
01:06:22.840 --> 01:06:24.760
us out. So it just makes me happy when I

1324
01:06:24.800 --> 01:06:28.280
know that people are listening to us while they're working. Yeah,

1325
01:06:28.320 --> 01:06:30.320
maybe we're making keeping them entertained.

1326
01:06:30.400 --> 01:06:32.400
And well, there was another one. I think it was

1327
01:06:32.440 --> 01:06:34.119
just yesterday. I didn't tell you about it yet, but

1328
01:06:34.159 --> 01:06:37.199
it was on some subreddit about like relationship advice, and

1329
01:06:37.239 --> 01:06:40.519
someone was talking about how their boyfriend cheated on her

1330
01:06:40.679 --> 01:06:42.639
and then he wanted her back and she didn't know

1331
01:06:42.679 --> 01:06:45.039
what to do. And somebody comment and said, oh girl,

1332
01:06:45.039 --> 01:06:47.480
I've read about that. I've heard too many stories on

1333
01:06:47.519 --> 01:06:51.079
Love Mary Kill that don't end well, so please be careful.

1334
01:06:51.440 --> 01:06:53.159
So it is nice when people.

1335
01:06:53.000 --> 01:06:55.960
That makes me happy, because if there's one mission that

1336
01:06:56.239 --> 01:06:59.639
I personally have during the podcast is making not just

1337
01:06:59.679 --> 01:07:02.400
women but people, you know, more informed about red flags

1338
01:07:02.400 --> 01:07:05.480
and relationships. And totally, I know it's easy to say

1339
01:07:05.599 --> 01:07:07.760
end that relationship, and I know not everyone can walk

1340
01:07:07.800 --> 01:07:11.280
away that easily, and cleanly, but you know, by educating people,

1341
01:07:11.840 --> 01:07:14.199
it just makes me happy if we can even save

1342
01:07:14.280 --> 01:07:16.000
one person from a bad relationship.

1343
01:07:16.119 --> 01:07:19.440
Well, thank you all so much for listening. Please rate, review,

1344
01:07:19.559 --> 01:07:22.880
follow and subscribe, find us on social media, or send

1345
01:07:22.960 --> 01:07:26.000
us an email at Lovemarykill at gmail dot com.

1346
01:07:26.239 --> 01:07:28.280
So the other day I made a playlist of all

1347
01:07:28.320 --> 01:07:31.239
of the songs that we have on Patreon. When we

1348
01:07:31.239 --> 01:07:33.480
start our Patreon episodes, we do it a little different

1349
01:07:33.480 --> 01:07:35.800
because I think you were throwing me a bone because

1350
01:07:35.840 --> 01:07:37.480
I don't like our theme song and you do. So

1351
01:07:37.800 --> 01:07:40.159
when we do our Patreon episodes, we just play a song.

1352
01:07:40.800 --> 01:07:43.000
And I made a playlist and it made me realize

1353
01:07:43.039 --> 01:07:46.519
that we have like thirty five episodes full length episodes

1354
01:07:46.559 --> 01:07:50.039
over on Patreon. So please consider supporting us on Patreon.

1355
01:07:50.119 --> 01:07:53.239
Go to patreon dot com slash Love Mary Kill for

1356
01:07:53.320 --> 01:07:56.719
five dollars a month you get early and help me

1357
01:07:56.760 --> 01:08:02.920
out earlier episodes, and a monthly benne a monthly until

1358
01:08:02.960 --> 01:08:05.360
next time. Don't kill your husband and don't kill your wife.

1359
01:08:13.480 --> 01:08:13.519
M