October 15, 2021 • 58 mins
15-year-old Leah Freeman's body was discovered near her hometown of Coquille, Oregon, in 2000, and her former high school boyfriend Nick McGuffin was convicted of the murder. However, a reexamination of the case uncovered new evidence that ultimately led to McGuffin being released to prison -- and raising a new, disturbing question: Who actually murdered Leah Freeman?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Paul
Mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. Today's story comes to us via a listener
that we're going to keep anonymous because they are connected
(00:47):
on a personal level to the case we're going to
talk about. This listener wrote to us in July, I
believe it was, And this story takes us to the
coast of Oregon, to a small town you may not
have heard of named Cokell before the year two thousand.
If you didn't live in the area, you almost certainly
were not familiar with it. It's it's just it's not
(01:09):
a place for a long time that made a lot
of national news. And that's not a bad thing. You know.
It's a close knit community. It's the kind of place
where everybody knows everyone else and you can find thousands
and thousands of quiet Bucolic towns like like this place
all across the US. What we're saying is it was
a relatively peaceful place until June of two thousand, a
(01:33):
fifteen year old child named Leah Nicole Freeman disappear. Here
are the facts. At the time. She you know, she
was like any other high school kids. She was a freshman.
Her boyfriend was a senior high school student. Uh. He
was eighteen years old, three years older. His name Nicholas
James mcguffin, or Nick to his friends. That's right. And
(01:56):
on the evening of June two thousand, Uh, he has
boyfriend dropped her off at her friend, Sherry Mitchell's house. Uh,
And there was an argument between the two girls, and
Sherry was upset and concerned about how much time her
friend Leo was spending with Nick. The age discrepancy, I
think was sort of an issue. Um. He was considered
(02:19):
to be a bit of a flirt. You know, he
was kind of like this, you know, football guy, you know,
kind of lothario type. And I think that was likely
of concern to her friend that she was gonna get
her heartbroken, especially since he was so much younger, Um,
and he had a bit of a reputation, you know,
with the ladies. The conversation turned into an argument, and
(02:40):
Leah stormed out. She left on foot just before at
nine o'clock that evening. Yeah, and there's a an episode
of you can watch that has a lot of details
in here that we're gonna be talking about today. And
within those details, one of the things you learned is that, allegedly,
(03:01):
at least according to witness statements, Leah would often want
to go on a walk at night with her friend Sherry,
but her Sherry's mother would not like her to do
that because Nick would often drive and pick up Leah
while they were on a night walk, and then Sherry
would have to walk home alone way night walk. Shout
out right, there you go. It's yeah, it's true, And
(03:23):
they're there are two investigations, so we're gonna we're gonna
talk about both of them because they take two very
different directions. I think it's safe to say, Um, that's
a great point, Matt, that you're making about the feelings
of Leah's mother, Corey Court right, because she she was
also concerned about the age discrepancy, and she was aware
(03:47):
that the couple had become sexually active. Uh. This you know,
if you've ever had a high school romance, Actually, if
you're going through a high school romance right now, good luck.
You know you've got a lot going on. And these
can often be pretty tumultuous, right, Um, in the best
of times. Uh, can you imagine being in a small town.
(04:08):
Everybody knows whom everybody's dating or married to or fooling
around with. There's there's not much of an ability to
keep things secret, so it was easy for people to
find witnesses. In a later investigation, she was cited at
a at a fast mark, someone else said they saw
(04:29):
at a restaurant, and she was also seen by the
high school. Um. The thing about the the thing about
the location, and you can you can get a sense
of this if you look at the maps. When she
leaves Sherry's house, it only takes a few minutes by
foot to get to the high school, So it's not
like she's growming all across town. This is kind of
(04:51):
a limited area where she's walking. And then some of
the last witnesses one sees Leah standing nearby or outside
to pay phone and remembers there's all I witness testimony
remembers seen two men arguing right, not too far away
from her in the vicinity. Well, let's also remember too,
(05:12):
like this is two thousand. You know, smartphones weren't a thing.
Like texting was barely a thing. I don't think it
was like as it was possible to do, but it
wasn't as like in style as its ultimately become like
the only way people communicate. So it wasn't as easy
to like track someone down or like get a check in,
you know what I mean. That's hence the payphone. Yeah, exactly,
(05:34):
And that's it's it's strange to think about that, I know,
fellow conspiracy realistic, I know this sometimes feels like a
splash of cold water whenever we point this out. But
to the year two thousand was twenty one years ago.
The year two thousand is old enough to drink if
you think about it that way. Yeah, it's not old
enough to run for president yet. So we still got that.
(05:57):
I think that's age what thirty five. I do believe
that's correct. Okay, Hey, some of us in the crowd
are eligible to run for president. Uh back to back
to this though, So Leah Freeman is sited at a
gas station and one of the witnesses reports hearing a
(06:18):
high pitched scream. They if if you look at what
they say. They don't say they saw Leah Freeman screaming.
They say they saw her and they heard a scream. So,
like like you guys said earlier, Sherry's mom is not
a fan of these night walks, like said earlier, because
(06:42):
she knows the score, she knows the pattern right. She
knows that this senior Nick mcguffin is going to come
into the picture at some point. He's gonna pick up Leah, etcetera, etcetera. UM.
Nick mcguffin goes to Sherry's house and he he goes.
He shows up with every expectation of picking up his
(07:05):
girlfriend Leah, only he learns that about this argument and
he learns that she has left. So and this is
a reasonable thing I think almost anyone would do, especially
when you can't shoot a text to people. He goes
off to look for Yeah, and it's interesting because you
see Nick talking on the record like in this UM special.
(07:27):
It's called last scene walking. Actually, like you said, Ben,
they combined footage from the original Tony twenty that was
about the kind of period we're talking about with where
it ultimately went, which we're going to get too soon.
But he's he speaks about this and about how he
was concerned and how he was driving around looking for
He talks about how he can shoot a text then
like we're saying, and he talks about all the places
(07:49):
that he went. Um, you could walk to Sherry's house
from the high school. Everything was, you know, just a
couple of minutes away on foot. Um. He can't finally there,
so he content actual Lyah's mother. Uh. He goes out searching.
He's actually stopped by the police uh twice while he's
out looking forward because he had a broken head lamp
(08:09):
on his car. Um. But he explains that he's out
looking for his girlfriend. He's aware of the problem officers,
and he'll fix it immediately, but please let me try
to find my girlfriend. I'm concerned, and they let him
go on his way with a warning. Around midnight, he
contacts a friend named Kristen Steinhoff to give him a
hand and by two am he gives up. He mentions
in the interview that he drives by Leah's house and
(08:32):
sees a reflection in the window or some kind of
like glare and he assumes that it's her TV on uh,
and then he's like, Okay, I guess she's good. I'm
not gonna you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go. But also,
I don't know, that's a little weird too, because you
think he would I don't know, maybe he didn't want
to disturb the household because he knew the mom didn't
(08:55):
like him, and he didn't have a reasonable way of
like getting her attention at that point. I guess that
makes sense. I mean, you know, at that point, what
could you do? You could like throw rocks at the
window maybe or something like that, but otherwise, you know, otherwise,
I mean imagine the perspective makes sense there because imagine
if you're the parent of some teenagers and you already
(09:16):
are a little concerned about what your kids are getting
up to, and then her boyfriend shows up at two
am to talk to her, that's not a totally good look. Yeah,
this is an important thing just to keep in your
mind as we're going on in this episode. This person, Kristen,
the friend of Nicky. They met up together on the
(09:38):
night that they couldn't find Leah. Just keep that in
minds an important important player in the story. Yes, keep
Kristen Steinhoff in your mind for the rest of the show.
She returns. Here's the thing from mcguffin's story, it sounds like,
for understandable reasons, he assumed his girlfriend had made it home.
(10:03):
He's not gonna wake everybody up at two am. He'll
just see her in the morning and when dawn comes
when she had not made it home. So the next morning,
Nick goes to the police department to file a missing
person's report, and he recalls in in several interviews that
(10:24):
police had told him she had most likely runaway, you know,
and they're thinking, well, this is it's a teenager who
knows what's going on with them. They may come back,
who knows, right, But with the nature of how she left,
right in an argument from my least the authorities understanding perspective,
(10:47):
that's how she left exactly exactly, and no one seems
to know quite where she headed off to. So Nick
says that he started distributing flyers missing flyers throughout the area.
Is just confirmed. He says it. It's interesting, I mean
(11:08):
like it seems like he yeah, from everything that I've
seen of him. He seemed to genuinely care for this
girl and be you know, it was really concerned. I
didn't find a picture of the flyer, but I did
find him saying that he had he had done this
in interviews, and the police contact him right there the
paramour of a missing person. Of course, you were going
(11:29):
to be a person of interest. That doesn't matter. And
so Nick goes involuntarily for an interview, and in the
course of the interview, according to him, he notices something off,
something he wasn't expecting. He thought the investigators were turning
his words around on him, you know, which is, by
(11:53):
the way, why people need lawyers in general. Right, even
if you were even if you are completely innocent, you
you want to have a professional with you in those situations. Still,
you can hear audio of the of the of the interview,
and they are doing that. He says something about they're
(12:13):
asking why what might have been a reason for her
to run away? He says, well, she had depression, but
he also said earlier that she was a very upbeat
kind of person. They was like, well, which is it.
Does she have depression or is she upbeat? And I
mean we all know that those things are not mutually exclusive,
and that someone might not know you're depressed unless you're
(12:33):
very close to them. And even if you seem like
the most happy, go lucky, upbeat person in the world,
that doesn't mean there isn't a darker side to that coin.
You know, absolutely, absolutely, Still he is you know, keep
in mind, he is he's young person, he doesn't have
h a ton of experience, he's he doesn't have a
(12:55):
ton of experience being questioned by law enforcement, but he's
still cooperating. He allows police to search his car, which
he was driving that evening. It's a it's a Mustang.
And later the investigation takes another turn. There's a mechanic
who works as swing shift nearby. This mechanic is driving
(13:17):
home and he finds a shoe lying in the road.
From what investigators say about this mechanic, he figured as
some kid had left their shoe there, which is kind
of unusual. Shoes are one of those things that you
typically notice when you lose them. They're not like your
keys or a wallet or something, especially if you're on
(13:38):
a night walk. Yeah, that's a good that's a really
good point. And so this mechanic picks up the shoe
and he takes it home, which I thought was interesting
because you could see that as a statement about what
a small town this is. You know, Yeah, I could
actually get this shoe back to somebody. I could get
the shoe back to someone. You know, if you if
you live in a larger town, you're not going to
(14:00):
touch a random shoe. No, you're right there. It's funny
someone gonna put out like on the like neighborhood bulletin board,
missing shoe please return. You know, um, does it feel
a little weird to you guys at all? Like, yes, yes,
I think it's super weird because think about that. When's
I mean, and this is a question for for everybody
(14:22):
listening to the show today. When is the last time
you just walking in your neck of the Global Woods?
When's the last time you just saw a shoe laying out?
Just want I've seen a shoe. I've seen shoes, but
I've I've never touched them. I would even touch it.
I would not do that. It's shoe is a very
personal thing if you know it contains uh, you know,
(14:45):
I don't know, it's just gross. Not to sound like,
not to sound like a germophobe, but I'm I'm with you.
That's one of my first concerns. Anyways, No, I'm with you,
and so to us at least that that seems a
little bit on usual. But that's that's what the investigators
are saying when they're quoting this mechanic. Uh. But the
(15:06):
mechanic came forward voluntarily. Yes, the mechanic comes forward voluntarily.
When the story of Leah Freeman's disappearance hits the news,
it's it's the it's the biggest thing that's happened in
a long long time in the town, and and everybody
(15:27):
in town is consumed with keeping up with this, with
figuring out who might know what, who can help, Like
how can we band together and find this kid, because
that's that's one of the strengths of small towns. They
can really come together in things, sometimes for good, sometimes
for ill. Anyway, this mechanic comes forward and the investigators
(15:51):
are able to confirm this shoe belongs to Leah Freeman.
They confirmed this by uh contacting her sister, and her
sisters the one who was able to say, yes, that's
my sibling shoe, So where is the other shoe? Six
days was literally a waiting for the other shoe to
drop situation. Yes, So they do find the other shoe
(16:15):
six days later, and things just look worse and worse.
It's the fourth of July. It's about ten miles away
where they find this shoe. Yeah, in a town called
Hudson Ridge, and it had blood on it. Um not
a lot of blood. It wasn't like a gory horror show,
but there was. There were some blood stains on it.
And the family insisted there was no possibility I would
(16:40):
have run away. That wasn't her style. She wasn't that
type of girl whatever. You know. They were in her
corner in that respect, and the family insisted that there
was no way that Leo would have run away. It
wasn't like her. It didn't make any sense. They didn't
see any problems and they seemed relatively close. I mean,
her mom knew that she and her boyfriend were sexually active.
(17:00):
Obviously she disapproved, but it didn't seem like she was
some sort of helicopter mom. It seemed like they maybe
her daughter trusted her to some degree and shared with
her about these things. Anyway, she knew what was going
on with her daughter, so she just didn't didn't didn't
track for her well, and it was also a legal situation. Absolutely, yeah,
(17:22):
it can be so. So, yes, they find this second shoe.
The for the entirety of the investigation, the family is
insisting that there is no chance uh Leah Freeman would
have run away. And when they, you know, they find
this shoe, separated by miles from the other shoe, law
(17:44):
enforcement logically begins to consider the worst possibilities. And there's
a whole new place to look for her. And there's
a whole new place to look. And we're going to
pause for a word from our sponsors and will return
to allow up the investigation. We're not at the park
where it gets crazy yet, We're just giving you the background.
(18:11):
We're back, so fast forward weeks and weeks. It's August.
Leah Freeman has been missing until August three of two thousand,
when her body is discovered on a steep wooded embankment
(18:31):
in Coos County, about eight miles from where she disappeared.
And according to according to people familiar with the area,
and according to mcguffn's attorney, uh, this this part where
she where her body is found, is very It's a
rural area. These are old logging roads, you know what
I mean, things like dirt roads. This is not a
(18:54):
densely populated place. And unfortunately, because it had been out there,
remember this is Ummer, her body had been out there
for weeks. It was badly, badly decomposed due to the
heat and due to the activities of animals. This complicates
the investigation. The body is so damaged that it's very
difficult to determine a cause of death. I can't help
(19:17):
but think of the Twin Peaks with this story. It really,
you know, the whole Oregon setting, the kind of small
town the body discovered kind of out in the in
the wilderness. Um, I don't know, really interesting parallel. This
is obviously after that show came out and had been
in the public conscienus for a long time. But it's
just Oregon has this kind of weird, creepy energy to
(19:40):
it in terms of like the types of crimes because
it's so isolated and it's seen as this is a
very liberal kind of bastion, you know, with places like
Portland's and all that, But there really is kind of
a crazy, seedy underbelly. A lot of you know, crimes
like this to take place out there, and we'll get
into the legal side of it later. That's interesting in
its own right. But the investigation understandably turned to Nick
(20:02):
mcguffin because they have no other leads. Uh, they had
already you know, interrogated him. He became their prime suspect
simply because the fact that he was closest to her,
and it was just kind of he was an easy target, um,
even though they had no solid proof. Um, he was
just the most likely person and had the most opportunity.
(20:23):
Let's just say, yeah, you have to start somewhere, you
know what I mean. That's that's not an unreasonable thing
to do. So, like, like we're seeing earlier, the thing
about small towns and folks. You know this if you've
ever lived in one, Uh, rumors can spread very quickly dangerously.
(20:44):
Communication is constant, and it goes through multiple channels. So
a lot of members of the town start to turn
on Nick mcguffin. They're stopping him in the street, they're
calling him a murderer. He himself recalls being hospitalized for
(21:06):
what he describes as an anxiety attack as well as
a suicide attempt in the interim, in this very dark
time in his life, as you can imagine he meets
someone else, becomes romantically involved, they have a child together,
a daughter. Fast forward years, right, the case is considered
to have gone cold. Mcguffin is at this point um
(21:28):
never arrested. He's never gone to a trial or anything.
He's working as a chef, he graduates culinary school, I think,
and he's having his daughter. A new police chief takes office,
Mark Daddles, and Mark Daddals is very much focused. Some
(21:50):
would even describe it as having tunnel vision. He's very
much focused on solving this case, on solving this crime.
And it makes sense because we have to remember this
is one of the if not the most brutal crimes
in the town's history. So he he wants to solve
the case. So they reopen it years later. And this
(22:12):
might sound odd, but it's not unusual, no, I mean,
it's like a cold case doesn't mean the case is closed.
It just means they sort of tabled it pending some
revelation they don't have. They probably don't have the staff
to continue to just doggedly investigate a case like that
when there's you know, is that about the size of it?
(22:35):
Kind of? I mean, there's no new leads, No, there's
no new action to be taken because there's nothing to
take action on. Right. That's that. But you know it
would take somebody like Daniels who made this kind of
a flagship issue. And I understand why. I mean, this
is a small town. People don't have closure. People feel like,
whoever this is that did this, if they've moved on
(22:57):
from believing that it was Nick mcguffin, is still out there.
And it's just like, you know, as a new sheriff
in town, I can understand why he would want to
like make that right and make people feel safe in
this small town. So I get it. But you're right
then about the tunnel vision. I mean, it's almost like
he was going to pin it on somebody no matter what.
And and you can tell he's he's got that energy
(23:19):
he brings in and has them like embedded with him.
He gives them full access to the point where it's
like a little weird in my opinion. It's like they're
so in the mix that they create this like sense
of you know, they're on the side of law enforcement
no matter who they're pursuing, and they don't seem to
(23:41):
be asking many uh hard questions of Daniels almost like
a quid pro quo of like, well, you gave us
all this access, so we're not going to give you
a hard time about these choices that you make. That's
just how I saw it. Well, in my eyes, it's
it's it's somebody who is aware of the pressure that
law enforcement and the media can exert on a potential suspect. Right. Um, So,
(24:05):
no matter who it is that as they reopen these
case files look at all the evidence. Again, no matter
who it is that they think is their prime suspect,
that person is going to have this pressure on them
as they then begin fully investigating. Again. I guess what
I'm just saying is like it almost felt like was
opportunistic and a little bit irresponsible with the level of
pressure they applied without seeing both sides. Yeah, this is
(24:30):
this is Yeah, this is exactly the point. So first there,
I think right about the pressure that media coverage can impart,
but we also need to consider the pressure that the
public can impart on law enforcement. Not getting this is um,
not getting this is tantamounts not doing your job right
(24:53):
in the public's mind, and the public of the town
is is divided on what the thing is going on.
And I do have some serious problems with the way
did this because they it's an active investigation, and so
from the law enforcement perspective, you could say this makes
sense because by giving full transparency, they're showing not only
(25:17):
the people of the town, but the people of the
country who are now an audience in this investigation, that
they are doing something right. So you can understand how
that's an advantage. But at the same time that brings
like if if the Internet was around and the format
is today during that investigation, can you imagine how inundated
(25:42):
social media would have been? Can you imagine? Yeah, on
every level, that's what they're what they're doing in this
twenty piece. The initial one is they're showing this investigation,
but they're also sort of feeding the flames of the
of the court of public opinion. And the court of
(26:04):
public opinion doesn't really obey loss. So so Daniels and
his team interview hundreds and hundreds of people, and they
claim and they noticed something odd. A lot of these witnesses,
or at least a significant number of witnesses that they interviewed,
(26:26):
were contradicting Nick mcguffin's story. And they would later say,
we have witnesses on record saying that they did see
Nick mcguffin and Leah Freeman together after nine pm after
she leaves Sherry's house. And that's where Kristen Steinhoff, when
(26:47):
we mentioned earlier, comes back into place. She seems too,
in particular, throws some monkey wrenches in. Uh. Well in
what this point is being considered an alibi. Yeah, the
story we knew up until this point, at least you know,
that had been told to authorities and from other witnesses,
was that she and Nick got in the car and
(27:11):
looked for Leah. Right. That that's at least my understanding
of the understanding of these witnesses up to this point. Um,
And that was it. That's all that happened. She was
just trying to help help Nick find Leah. And then
that story changes completely. Yeah, what when they were hanging
out at her house? She says they were in their bedroom,
(27:33):
she and Nick, and they were doing drugs specifically, and
you can see footage from some of these interviews specifically
that they were doing methamphetamine, uh, and that they began
kissing and things were escalating and she cut things off
because he was trying to escalate to sex, and so
(27:55):
she stopped there. And mcguffin maintains that yes, they kissed,
but they didn't like he didn't try to take it further,
and that they may have they may have smoked marijuana,
but that they were not smoking meth. And then there's
something transformative and not in the best way that happens.
(28:19):
Remember we said, unfortunately the body is so decomposed that
you cannot readily determine a cause of death. At least
that's what the law enforcement is saying here. But an
investigator is on television speaking to the public and just
speculates that Leah Freeman may have been pregnant at the
(28:41):
time of her death. There was no proof for this.
This was and to be fair, was phrased this speculation.
But when you hear something like that, you know it's
going to set a rumor mill ablaze and you can't
really retract it because people won't listen past that home.
It's an invest it's a detective that says that, like
(29:03):
speculating um and then you know that the sheriff does
I don't know, he's a little bit kind of finger
waggy about it. He's like well, that was just this
man's opinion, and they say that, um that that it
was never proven. He does say that, But you're right,
you can't put that badger back in the bag. Once
it said it gets people thinking, then immediately in your
(29:23):
mind you're crucifying. This guy is like a woman and
baby killer is like the worst. Well, you know, that
reminds me of guys that the recent Atlanta serial killer
rumors that were spreading around and that person expert that
brings necrophilia into the situation. Really, what now if that's
what we're dealing with, Okay, according to your opinion, Yeah,
(29:45):
and I you know you have to when you're conducting
an investigation, you do have to speculate because that will
lead you to the next part of your investigation. But
that speculation maybe belongs in the office TV right right,
not right before a commercial or something like that. And
(30:08):
that's and you're right, there's some finger wagging stuff there.
But but anyway, you can't as you can't rebag the badger,
you can't screw the lid back on Pandora's jars. Now
people are convinced that this is what happened, even though
this guy it was this guy's opinion. It is now
(30:28):
being treated by members of the public as evidence. At
this point, not only are these public these problematic public
statements going through, but Nick mcguffin still lives in town,
and law enforcement and the people at are on his
(30:49):
six all the time. There, you know, there following him
at home, they're following him at work. They're seeing whereas
car goes, are ringing him off the hook, trying to
get an interview with him, and he's when he doesn't
want to do an interview. Eventually, because this is the
(31:10):
kind of show this was, Eventually one of the reporters
just runs up to him when they see his car
idoling and starts, you know, firing off questions and this
guy and it's like, I'm Mike in the face moments
kind of you know what I mean, And and so
he he drives away, but this well, he what does
(31:32):
he say that that he does say one thing? They say,
like you said, I just want to know what it's like.
And then Nick says, what do you think it's like?
And how do you think I feel or something like that. Yeah, yeah,
And he obviously is responding from a like a very
emotionally upset place because he's been he's been surveiled so extensively.
(31:58):
Not only has he been surveiled, but he's being surveilled
in a very public manner. Everybody else in town is
aware of this, right it's getting reported in the news.
And then this thing is going to come out. So
August after this they have a highly publicized arrest. Is
(32:19):
still embedded. They have called in the cavalry. There are
different teams getting ready for the arrest. There's a helicopter
involved keeping track of him. Uh. The idea being that
he might try to make a run for it, so
they would need to be able to track him from
the air. Uh. He is arrested without incident. Really he's
(32:41):
not you know, he's not trying to resist arrest, he's
not fighting back, etcetera. Uh. And after this arrest he
goes to trial and legally this is where it gets
in a bizarre place. So he gets convicted, but he
doesn't get convicted of murder, which would have a life
sentence for him. He gets convicted of manslaughter in two
thousand leven and he gets a ten year sentence, and
(33:02):
not everybody on the jury is convinced. He is convicted
by what's known as a non unanimous jury ten people
guilty for manslaughter to vote innocent, and Ben you dug
up that this is a uniquely Oregonian thing, or maybe
there's a few other places, but it is definitely unusual
in the Yeah, in the United States, Oregon is the
(33:26):
only state that allows for non unanimous jury convictions for
pretty much every felony except for murder. So because two
people were against this on the jury, he gets acquitted
of the murder. That has to be a unanimous decision
of the jury, but the manslaughter charge does not. So
(33:48):
that's why it might sound really weird. Otherwise to hear
what on the face of it sounds like someone murdered
somebody and they got a ten year sentence. That's a
WTF moment. But but they have multiple charges knowing that
they might only get one, Like if it's one crime,
how come it's it's they're they're they're charging with with
(34:08):
murder and manslaughter. Well, he's eventually convicted of manslaughter. We
just know that he was acquitted of the murder charge.
And here's the thing, this is where the story actually starts, folks.
I hope you enjoyed the first forty minutes. Almost immediately,
it was clear that there were deep, profound problems with
(34:30):
this case. Here's where it gets crazy. Okay, I wrote
this kind of a messed up way. Nick mcguffin is
a freeman. Now Nick mcguffin's UH conviction was overturned. It
(34:50):
was overturned by the decision of a County Circuit judge
named Patricia Sullivan. In she says that this case, this
case won't fly. It's a violation of constitutional rights. It
turns out that Nick, who had been in prison for
nine years of his ten years sentence and maintaining his
(35:13):
innocence throughout the whole almost a decade, it turns out
that there was stuff law enforcement didn't want him, his lawyers,
or the public to know. I think that's fair to say.
I think they didn't want people to know. No, you're right.
After further examination, it was found that remember those two
shoes that were discovered Lea's shoes, UH, there was d
(35:37):
n A, not amazing samples of DNA, but d n
A that was from a male that was not Nick,
and that evidence was not presented at the trial, so
it was not known by the defense that there was
another possible suspects DNA president on major evidence in the case. Yeah,
(35:57):
I thought it was weird that we hadn't heard anything
about a bloody shoe, Like it just didn't come up right. Yeah,
the thing about the d n A in this case,
it's strange. Not all DNA samples are created equally. It's
funny because I was thinking of comparisons here, Like we
(36:18):
brought up an excellent point about resources and a lot
of a lot of these investigations are cash strapped. Like
I was speaking to someone in Louisiana recently who told
me that they were convinced they could solve some crimes
if they could just get like thirty dollars approved to
(36:39):
do some DNA tests, that they are waiting around for
like three or four separate cases, and that that seems strange.
But anyway, these these folks are struggling with what at
the time is a new technology that's not as advanced
as is now. So mcguffin gets an attorney, Janice Percale,
(37:00):
and she's working with something called the Forensic Justice Project.
They're based in Portland's their non profit entity that focuses
on either preventing wrongful convictions or correcting them, and she says,
there is no evidence against him being Nick mcguffin. He
just happened to be her boyfriend at the time. There
were no eye witnesses, there were no DNA connecting to
(37:23):
the crime, there was no other evidence that tied him
to anything that happened to her. Quick note, when she
says there's no eye witnesses, she means there's no eye
witness that like sees him engaging an act of violence
against Leah fan Freeman. And Puracal is the one who
figures out this DNA evidence. She only learns about it,
(37:46):
like again, almost a decade pass this original conviction, where
it's not brought up at all a trial. She only
learns about it because she's sorting through all the old
paperwork from that first trial. And if you read news
about this older news and like the news that comes
out when she makes this d N A request, which
(38:09):
I think is around, you'll see you'll see the same
line popping up in the news, which is something like
the DNA analysts at the time didn't disclose this information
due to an internal policy quote unquote internal policy. That's
the official reason. And this the decision that Judge Sullivan
(38:33):
makes is simply that whatever that internal policy at the
time was during the investigation, which we can talk a
little bit about, it was no longer the standard when
the case went to trial. So some policy they had
in two thousand one, two thousand two when they found
this DNA was no longer up to snuff when it
(38:53):
would have actually mattered in a court of law. That
makes sense, and you know, to be fair law enforcement.
The Department of Justice, they're still defending that decision not
to disclose that DNA. Yes, and a gentleman named Paul
yme Is with the Oregon d o J. He defended
(39:14):
that that policy, saying that the authorities were quote very
cautious back then because they didn't know about all the
DNA stuff that was out there, so they were cautious
and conservative in their report writing. Is he saying that
just DNA technology wasn't what it is today, Well, in
a way, it wasn't right and year two thousand to
an extent. But at the same time, if you've got
(39:36):
such a small sample, maybe that's a trace from a
family member. You know, she lived with people, another friend,
she goes to school. You know, she's doing volleyball and
other things. I'm I'm just imagining that if it's a trace,
like a small enough amount of DNA right that you
can't actually identify, maybe it's not worth even pursuing. We're
(40:00):
thinking about the blood though specifically there's traces of male
DNA found on both shoes, so so not necessarily the blood.
It was just, yeah, a blood stain would have one
would imagine enough, yeah, they would meet the threshold of DNA.
But this if we look at Crystal the statements of
(40:21):
Crystal Bell, who is the Forensic Service Division Director for
OSP the Oregon State Police, we'll see that Bell tends
to agree and says that the interpretation guidelines they had
didn't this is a quote from her, didn't necessarily distinguish
or discern really low levels of d n A. So
(40:44):
analysts at the time were they had personal discretion over
what they decided to report, but basically they needed to
be very very sure of what they were saying. So
Bell is stating that this analystsercent sure what they were
looking at, right, and that was how little they found.
(41:05):
But she also felled at has also claimed that, hey,
if someone had asked for this evidence to be re
examined the lab would have done. So there's a problem
with that though, because the people who would have been
the people asking would have to know that the DNA
sample existed, which they didn't until when Purakal found out
(41:27):
about it and made that request and so the judge.
So so their case to the judge was, Hey, if
the jury knew this, would it make a difference, And
the judge Sullivan eventually said yeah, I think it will,
so overturn the conviction. What does this mean for Nick mcguffin, Well,
it means that he still loses nine years of his life. Yeah,
(41:50):
he basically served his whole sentence. I mean, you know,
he obviously has ground stuff for um a lawsuit and
hopefully for some reparations, uh for that time, but you
can't get it back. Something that I feel it's been
weirdly absent from all of this reporting is we know,
because of the decomposition and the you know, um effects
(42:10):
of animals on the body, UM that that a true
cause of death was never able to be determined. But
I mean, there was nothing like strangulation, that there was
no signs of struggle, like you think that'd be the
kind of stuff that you tear reported on it was
it was her body was there for six weeks, so
(42:31):
it's more than a month. It's it's hard unless you
unless you've voluntarily looked at some of that stuff or
researched it, you don't understand the what a body looks
like after six weeks and the degree of decay. So
there's no retrial. Also, you should know, we should know.
(42:54):
Sullivan clearly explicitly in her ruling, says me, overturning this
conviction is not the same thing as me saying Nick
mcguffin is innocent. I'm saying yet his rights violated. But
there's not a retrial. The attorney at cous County, the
district Attorney, Paul Fraser, says he had several factors in
(43:18):
his decision. He said the lab report, the death of
key witnesses, and the original non unanimous jury decision all
played into his reasons for not having a retrial, and
on a personal note, he says also Leah Freeman's mother
didn't want to experience the profound strain of a second trial.
(43:40):
But that's not really the end of the story. This
leads us to two deeply disturbing questions and a lot
of us listening along at home can guess what they are. First,
who actually is responsible for the for the death of
Leah Freeman? Second? What other cases have exculpatory evidence like
(44:01):
DNA that would overturn a case? What kind of evidence
is there that, if it were revealed, could free innocent
people incarcerated today? That second question, it's tough to answer
for certain, but a case like this indicates that it
is possible that there are similar situations out there, not
just in Oregon, not just in the US, but across
(44:23):
the globe. That first question, though, is the point of
this episode. So we're gonna pause for word from our sponsor,
and then we'll ask who killed Leah Freeman. At first,
it might seem that having DNA means it's only a
(44:45):
matter of time before police do find another person, a
man somehow involved with the case. It's true, I mean
DNA has led to the reopening and even the resolution
of other unsolved murders other assaults, and will do the
same in the future. But like we said, not all
DNA is the same. This isn't enough to determine a
(45:06):
specific match. It's enough to when compared to mcguffin's DNA
determine it's not him. Whoever left this was not him.
But that's about it. Other than the fact that it's
a male, that's about it. Well, yeah, and we you know,
we we heard from a listener who's knows someone who's
(45:27):
connected to this case, and we're going to leave it
at that, but that they that there is potentially a
name associated with that sample. UM. Again, we cannot confirm this,
but that that is what we were told, and it
checks out that this person is in contact with someone
who has intimate knowledge of this case. UM. Why that
(45:50):
name was never released is very interesting. It likely has
to do with some of the thresholds that we're talking about,
or you know, the idea of um not wanting to
muddy the waters further. Maybe it's it's just it's very
odd that the name was never released all and and
yet they were willing to drag this guy Nick, you know,
(46:11):
through through the mud for for years and years and years, UM,
with all the surveillance and stuff. But this person who's
close to the case, UH made the comment that if
Nick wasn't the one who did it, that he likely
has knowledge of what actually happened. And because of the
way the investigation has gone and him being exonerated, that's
(46:34):
case closed essentially. I mean they would have to open
a new case, right or how how does that work
if someone is convicted and that's overturned. Does that mean
back to the drawing board for investigators now we're looking
for a new suspect. Or does it mean that maybe
he did do it, he served enough time that likely
all parties are satisfied. Like, I don't know, I'm just
(46:55):
wonder like, what's what's the next step. Well, the d
A seems to have it seems have indicated it was
their decision not to have a retrial, So that could
have been a possibility, um, And I think you put
that very well again to this listener. We appreciate you,
um profoundly for for reaching out with this, and we
(47:18):
do want to protect anonymity here. But there there's also
the possibility that someone associated may have died I believe,
may have passed away. Yeah, so there are other bits
of evidence as well. You will see descriptions of paint
chips found on Freeman shirt that don't match the paint
(47:40):
around mcguffin's car. But again, at this time, there is
not an easily determined cause of death been this least
of speculation. Uh, that's pretty prevalent twenty years on about
her demise. People will speculate, not prove, but speculate that
Freeman may have in struck by a car and that
(48:03):
whomever struck her with the car realized that they had
killed her and decided not to report the deaths. So
instead they took her body away to that rural area
and left it there. And if that is the case,
then they got away with it at least for now. Yeah.
(48:24):
That I that's mentioned in that and it's kind of
just thrown away, right, It's like there, you know, there
are a ton of theories. One of them said that happened,
but we decided that didn't happen. But but but but
why like again, but there's no if there's no defensive
wounds or there's no like something indicating that it was
I just never heard anybody say that it is where
the shoes were found, so far apart that does indicate
(48:46):
that maybe the body was moved or something like that.
Maybe what's the scenario where one shoe comes off in
one place and then as they're driving, another shoe comes
off ten miles away is it someone fighting and struggling
to escape a vehicle where the shoes once who comes
off as she's being put into a vehicle, and then
(49:07):
another comes off as she's being taken out of a vehicle.
I mean, I just yeah, I mean that that is
sort of the That is sort of the weird thing here,
like how why so far away? And the two shoes
and that is You're right, man, I don't understand that
scenario either, but I still think it's odd they just
discount the idea that she was hit by a car.
And not to joke, but it is, does seem like
(49:29):
this town as a history of picking up people's shoes, uh,
and you know, taking them home or maybe like taking
them elsewhere. I don't know. It's I don't know if
they have a history of that. Maybe a history, but
it's there's a history of one, a sample size of one. Um.
It's just an odd thing. It's an odd thing. Yeah,
it is, and it leads to questions that can be disturbing,
(49:52):
but they're necessary to ask. There are any number of
scenarios that could lead to is happening? Right? It could
even here's another thing that people don't point out. We
know the order in which the shoes and the body
were found, But we don't know the order in which
they ended up where they ended up, right, So I
(50:15):
think it's it's logical to assume that the first shoe
was maybe the first thing that got dropped at its location. Maybe,
but it's not for certain. We don't know the order
of operations. We don't know the timing here. And unless
you speak to the person who did this and they
admit to it, and they tell you, then it's highly
(50:39):
unlikely that people will ever know. Uh In, The rumors
will continue because regardless what you think about Oregon State Police,
regardless what you think about the innocence or the guilt
of Nick mcguffin, it is very clear that this ace
(51:00):
was botched, and it's very clear that public opinion played
an influential role in how the case proceeded. Right, And
this is not us commenting on mcguffin's innocence in any way.
This is just us saying here, you can tell where
(51:21):
things went off the rails and that DNA was important.
But for his attorneys, it goes far beyond that. The
mishandling the case, as they would phrase, it extends to
not just withholding evidence, but to accusations of officers fabricating
evidence or coercing witnesses or again, small town going around
(51:45):
and spreading rumors, you know what I mean. Like the
the implication is, this is not a specific thing, this
is just a hypothetical example. The implication is, let's say
you work on the force that's investigating this. You're hanging out,
you know, you're in a barbecue or something. It's like
one of your friends kid's birthdays. It could be something
(52:06):
that casual. And then you say, you know, I can't
say anything on the record, but I have you know,
blah blah blah stuff you could never get away with
saying in public or in court. It's very true. And
now guys, you know we have to do we have
to jump to again, but not the show or the
original show, the yes, yes last year, uh where everything
(52:33):
was clear in retrospect. Right today, Nick mcguffin is free.
He lives in the Portland area who works as a chef,
and he filed last year a federal civil rights lawsuit
against the local police, against Couse Bay, against the Oregon
State Police departments, and against the Sheriff's office, and both
(52:55):
he and his legal teams say, we consider this death
an open case, and we're also looking we're hoping for
answers to who killed Lee of Freeman, which is interesting
given from what we learned from people connected with this. Again,
like you said, Noel, one of whom stated, if it
(53:17):
wasn't mcguffin, then at least this person seems convinced that
he knows more than he's letting on. Right, was that
the sense of it? Yeah, it's it's it's an odd situation,
and it largely has to do with the It's it's
basically a technicality. You know, it does not remove him
from the list of possible people who could have committed
this crime, because his rights were certainly violated. Um. But
(53:42):
it's it's it's weird because it's it's it's like a
It leaves so many questions hanging, and it feels like
closure is never going to happen. I just have to
wonder how how this affects people who live in that town,
and how this affects the sheriff. He's obviously never gonna
claim that he did anything wrong. Um. He seemed very
right just in his actions. Um. But it's so up
(54:05):
in the air. Like, I can't imagine that anyone feels
particularly good about it, right, you know, I think it's
fair to say, I mean this. This means that it's
quite possible that law enforcement does have other suspects, but
they can't disclose their names, maybe due to a lack
of compelling evidence. And this is I know, like we're
(54:25):
talking about the dangers of speculation, but this is something
I was thinking of it. I have not been in
direct contact with law enforcement on this one. If they
were indeed incorrect their first step in solving this case,
or their first attempt to do so, can you imagine
how disastrous it would be to be wrong twice? That
(54:47):
is something I think they file under avoid at all costs.
Is it weird to think that they thought they were
right for nine straight years, or at least they convinced
themselves they were right for nine straight years, And maybe
they could just do that again, yeah, and get somebody
else innocent. Okay, sir, But this lawsuit, it does allege
(55:08):
some pretty damning stuff. The lawsuit that mcguffin is bringing
on the feral level says that they created an entire
false narrative based on quote junk science, including fabricated polygraph results,
other fabricated evidence. We already know that polygraphs are. I'll
(55:29):
say it. They're they're malarkey. Can we say malarkey? Who
has it has been saying malarkey? Joe Biden does he
own that one? Though? It is Yeah, someone took over
the word maverick to anyway. Uh but they anyway, it's
polygraphs are not solid proof of what they're often purported
(55:54):
to be proving. Right, And there's an excellent I believe
it's tech stuff is an excellent tech stuff episode about
the actual technology of polygraphs. Anyway, they also say that
police did something they're not supposed to do, which is
suppressed or tamper with, or even destroy evidence that undermine
(56:15):
the credibility of witnesses, including evidence of their own misconduct,
evidence of their violations of this guy's rights. And again
on their part, the investigators on the case maintain that
they followed procedure, you know, And they're saying, we're not
trying to cover up something. We just had this policy
(56:39):
about DNA at the time and it didn't fit our threshold.
That's that's what their perspective is, and that means the
rumors are going to continue twenty more than twenty years on.
Many people in the town of co Kill feel that
they're still gonna wait, Like you said, Matt, for closure
for justice. And rumors can be dangerous and unfounded. Speculation
(57:01):
can quickly erroneously turn into some sort of truth when
everybody just happens to agree. But at this point we
know that we know that the facts don't all seem
to add up. What do you guys think about this, Well,
it doesn't matter what I think. What matters is what
(57:22):
you think. Why don't you Why don't you write to us?
Find us on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, any of
the social media is. Let us know how you feel.
If you get any information, like the person who reached
out to us, maybe there's something we need to know.
Please find us. We are conspiracy stuff on YouTube, Twitter,
and Facebook, on Instagram or a conspiracy stuff show. If
(57:42):
you don't want to contact us that way, you can
use your telephone. That's right, you can call us are
s T d W y t K leave a message
at the sound of Ben's dulcet tones, and you will
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your question. It's all yours. Do whatever you wish with it. UM,
just please let us know if it's okay to use
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(58:04):
it on one of our weekly listener mail episodes. UM,
make sure to us know what to call you, happy
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(58:41):
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Paul
Mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. Today's story comes to us via a listener
that we're going to keep anonymous because they are connected
(00:47):
on a personal level to the case we're going to
talk about. This listener wrote to us in July, I
believe it was, And this story takes us to the
coast of Oregon, to a small town you may not
have heard of named Cokell before the year two thousand.
If you didn't live in the area, you almost certainly
were not familiar with it. It's it's just it's not
(01:09):
a place for a long time that made a lot
of national news. And that's not a bad thing. You know.
It's a close knit community. It's the kind of place
where everybody knows everyone else and you can find thousands
and thousands of quiet Bucolic towns like like this place
all across the US. What we're saying is it was
a relatively peaceful place until June of two thousand, a
(01:33):
fifteen year old child named Leah Nicole Freeman disappear. Here
are the facts. At the time. She you know, she
was like any other high school kids. She was a freshman.
Her boyfriend was a senior high school student. Uh. He
was eighteen years old, three years older. His name Nicholas
James mcguffin, or Nick to his friends. That's right. And
(01:56):
on the evening of June two thousand, Uh, he has
boyfriend dropped her off at her friend, Sherry Mitchell's house. Uh,
And there was an argument between the two girls, and
Sherry was upset and concerned about how much time her
friend Leo was spending with Nick. The age discrepancy, I
think was sort of an issue. Um. He was considered
(02:19):
to be a bit of a flirt. You know, he
was kind of like this, you know, football guy, you know,
kind of lothario type. And I think that was likely
of concern to her friend that she was gonna get
her heartbroken, especially since he was so much younger, Um,
and he had a bit of a reputation, you know,
with the ladies. The conversation turned into an argument, and
(02:40):
Leah stormed out. She left on foot just before at
nine o'clock that evening. Yeah, and there's a an episode
of you can watch that has a lot of details
in here that we're gonna be talking about today. And
within those details, one of the things you learned is that, allegedly,
(03:01):
at least according to witness statements, Leah would often want
to go on a walk at night with her friend Sherry,
but her Sherry's mother would not like her to do
that because Nick would often drive and pick up Leah
while they were on a night walk, and then Sherry
would have to walk home alone way night walk. Shout
out right, there you go. It's yeah, it's true, And
(03:23):
they're there are two investigations, so we're gonna we're gonna
talk about both of them because they take two very
different directions. I think it's safe to say, Um, that's
a great point, Matt, that you're making about the feelings
of Leah's mother, Corey Court right, because she she was
also concerned about the age discrepancy, and she was aware
(03:47):
that the couple had become sexually active. Uh. This you know,
if you've ever had a high school romance, Actually, if
you're going through a high school romance right now, good luck.
You know you've got a lot going on. And these
can often be pretty tumultuous, right, Um, in the best
of times. Uh, can you imagine being in a small town.
(04:08):
Everybody knows whom everybody's dating or married to or fooling
around with. There's there's not much of an ability to
keep things secret, so it was easy for people to
find witnesses. In a later investigation, she was cited at
a at a fast mark, someone else said they saw
(04:29):
at a restaurant, and she was also seen by the
high school. Um. The thing about the the thing about
the location, and you can you can get a sense
of this if you look at the maps. When she
leaves Sherry's house, it only takes a few minutes by
foot to get to the high school, So it's not
like she's growming all across town. This is kind of
(04:51):
a limited area where she's walking. And then some of
the last witnesses one sees Leah standing nearby or outside
to pay phone and remembers there's all I witness testimony
remembers seen two men arguing right, not too far away
from her in the vicinity. Well, let's also remember too,
(05:12):
like this is two thousand. You know, smartphones weren't a thing.
Like texting was barely a thing. I don't think it
was like as it was possible to do, but it
wasn't as like in style as its ultimately become like
the only way people communicate. So it wasn't as easy
to like track someone down or like get a check in,
you know what I mean. That's hence the payphone. Yeah, exactly,
(05:34):
And that's it's it's strange to think about that, I know,
fellow conspiracy realistic, I know this sometimes feels like a
splash of cold water whenever we point this out. But
to the year two thousand was twenty one years ago.
The year two thousand is old enough to drink if
you think about it that way. Yeah, it's not old
enough to run for president yet. So we still got that.
(05:57):
I think that's age what thirty five. I do believe
that's correct. Okay, Hey, some of us in the crowd
are eligible to run for president. Uh back to back
to this though, So Leah Freeman is sited at a
gas station and one of the witnesses reports hearing a
(06:18):
high pitched scream. They if if you look at what
they say. They don't say they saw Leah Freeman screaming.
They say they saw her and they heard a scream. So,
like like you guys said earlier, Sherry's mom is not
a fan of these night walks, like said earlier, because
(06:42):
she knows the score, she knows the pattern right. She
knows that this senior Nick mcguffin is going to come
into the picture at some point. He's gonna pick up Leah, etcetera, etcetera. UM.
Nick mcguffin goes to Sherry's house and he he goes.
He shows up with every expectation of picking up his
(07:05):
girlfriend Leah, only he learns that about this argument and
he learns that she has left. So and this is
a reasonable thing I think almost anyone would do, especially
when you can't shoot a text to people. He goes
off to look for Yeah, and it's interesting because you
see Nick talking on the record like in this UM special.
(07:27):
It's called last scene walking. Actually, like you said, Ben,
they combined footage from the original Tony twenty that was
about the kind of period we're talking about with where
it ultimately went, which we're going to get too soon.
But he's he speaks about this and about how he
was concerned and how he was driving around looking for
He talks about how he can shoot a text then
like we're saying, and he talks about all the places
(07:49):
that he went. Um, you could walk to Sherry's house
from the high school. Everything was, you know, just a
couple of minutes away on foot. Um. He can't finally there,
so he content actual Lyah's mother. Uh. He goes out searching.
He's actually stopped by the police uh twice while he's
out looking forward because he had a broken head lamp
(08:09):
on his car. Um. But he explains that he's out
looking for his girlfriend. He's aware of the problem officers,
and he'll fix it immediately, but please let me try
to find my girlfriend. I'm concerned, and they let him
go on his way with a warning. Around midnight, he
contacts a friend named Kristen Steinhoff to give him a
hand and by two am he gives up. He mentions
in the interview that he drives by Leah's house and
(08:32):
sees a reflection in the window or some kind of
like glare and he assumes that it's her TV on uh,
and then he's like, Okay, I guess she's good. I'm
not gonna you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go. But also,
I don't know, that's a little weird too, because you
think he would I don't know, maybe he didn't want
to disturb the household because he knew the mom didn't
(08:55):
like him, and he didn't have a reasonable way of
like getting her attention at that point. I guess that
makes sense. I mean, you know, at that point, what
could you do? You could like throw rocks at the
window maybe or something like that, but otherwise, you know, otherwise,
I mean imagine the perspective makes sense there because imagine
if you're the parent of some teenagers and you already
(09:16):
are a little concerned about what your kids are getting
up to, and then her boyfriend shows up at two
am to talk to her, that's not a totally good look. Yeah,
this is an important thing just to keep in your
mind as we're going on in this episode. This person, Kristen,
the friend of Nicky. They met up together on the
(09:38):
night that they couldn't find Leah. Just keep that in
minds an important important player in the story. Yes, keep
Kristen Steinhoff in your mind for the rest of the show.
She returns. Here's the thing from mcguffin's story, it sounds like,
for understandable reasons, he assumed his girlfriend had made it home.
(10:03):
He's not gonna wake everybody up at two am. He'll
just see her in the morning and when dawn comes
when she had not made it home. So the next morning,
Nick goes to the police department to file a missing
person's report, and he recalls in in several interviews that
(10:24):
police had told him she had most likely runaway, you know,
and they're thinking, well, this is it's a teenager who
knows what's going on with them. They may come back,
who knows, right, But with the nature of how she left,
right in an argument from my least the authorities understanding perspective,
(10:47):
that's how she left exactly exactly, and no one seems
to know quite where she headed off to. So Nick
says that he started distributing flyers missing flyers throughout the area.
Is just confirmed. He says it. It's interesting, I mean
(11:08):
like it seems like he yeah, from everything that I've
seen of him. He seemed to genuinely care for this
girl and be you know, it was really concerned. I
didn't find a picture of the flyer, but I did
find him saying that he had he had done this
in interviews, and the police contact him right there the
paramour of a missing person. Of course, you were going
(11:29):
to be a person of interest. That doesn't matter. And
so Nick goes involuntarily for an interview, and in the
course of the interview, according to him, he notices something off,
something he wasn't expecting. He thought the investigators were turning
his words around on him, you know, which is, by
(11:53):
the way, why people need lawyers in general. Right, even
if you were even if you are completely innocent, you
you want to have a professional with you in those situations. Still,
you can hear audio of the of the of the interview,
and they are doing that. He says something about they're
(12:13):
asking why what might have been a reason for her
to run away? He says, well, she had depression, but
he also said earlier that she was a very upbeat
kind of person. They was like, well, which is it.
Does she have depression or is she upbeat? And I
mean we all know that those things are not mutually exclusive,
and that someone might not know you're depressed unless you're
(12:33):
very close to them. And even if you seem like
the most happy, go lucky, upbeat person in the world,
that doesn't mean there isn't a darker side to that coin.
You know, absolutely, absolutely, Still he is you know, keep
in mind, he is he's young person, he doesn't have
h a ton of experience, he's he doesn't have a
(12:55):
ton of experience being questioned by law enforcement, but he's
still cooperating. He allows police to search his car, which
he was driving that evening. It's a it's a Mustang.
And later the investigation takes another turn. There's a mechanic
who works as swing shift nearby. This mechanic is driving
(13:17):
home and he finds a shoe lying in the road.
From what investigators say about this mechanic, he figured as
some kid had left their shoe there, which is kind
of unusual. Shoes are one of those things that you
typically notice when you lose them. They're not like your
keys or a wallet or something, especially if you're on
(13:38):
a night walk. Yeah, that's a good that's a really
good point. And so this mechanic picks up the shoe
and he takes it home, which I thought was interesting
because you could see that as a statement about what
a small town this is. You know, Yeah, I could
actually get this shoe back to somebody. I could get
the shoe back to someone. You know, if you if
you live in a larger town, you're not going to
(14:00):
touch a random shoe. No, you're right there. It's funny
someone gonna put out like on the like neighborhood bulletin board,
missing shoe please return. You know, um, does it feel
a little weird to you guys at all? Like, yes, yes,
I think it's super weird because think about that. When's
I mean, and this is a question for for everybody
(14:22):
listening to the show today. When is the last time
you just walking in your neck of the Global Woods?
When's the last time you just saw a shoe laying out?
Just want I've seen a shoe. I've seen shoes, but
I've I've never touched them. I would even touch it.
I would not do that. It's shoe is a very
personal thing if you know it contains uh, you know,
(14:45):
I don't know, it's just gross. Not to sound like,
not to sound like a germophobe, but I'm I'm with you.
That's one of my first concerns. Anyways, No, I'm with you,
and so to us at least that that seems a
little bit on usual. But that's that's what the investigators
are saying when they're quoting this mechanic. Uh. But the
(15:06):
mechanic came forward voluntarily. Yes, the mechanic comes forward voluntarily.
When the story of Leah Freeman's disappearance hits the news,
it's it's the it's the biggest thing that's happened in
a long long time in the town, and and everybody
(15:27):
in town is consumed with keeping up with this, with
figuring out who might know what, who can help, Like
how can we band together and find this kid, because
that's that's one of the strengths of small towns. They
can really come together in things, sometimes for good, sometimes
for ill. Anyway, this mechanic comes forward and the investigators
(15:51):
are able to confirm this shoe belongs to Leah Freeman.
They confirmed this by uh contacting her sister, and her
sisters the one who was able to say, yes, that's
my sibling shoe, So where is the other shoe? Six
days was literally a waiting for the other shoe to
drop situation. Yes, So they do find the other shoe
(16:15):
six days later, and things just look worse and worse.
It's the fourth of July. It's about ten miles away
where they find this shoe. Yeah, in a town called
Hudson Ridge, and it had blood on it. Um not
a lot of blood. It wasn't like a gory horror show,
but there was. There were some blood stains on it.
And the family insisted there was no possibility I would
(16:40):
have run away. That wasn't her style. She wasn't that
type of girl whatever. You know. They were in her
corner in that respect, and the family insisted that there
was no way that Leo would have run away. It
wasn't like her. It didn't make any sense. They didn't
see any problems and they seemed relatively close. I mean,
her mom knew that she and her boyfriend were sexually active.
(17:00):
Obviously she disapproved, but it didn't seem like she was
some sort of helicopter mom. It seemed like they maybe
her daughter trusted her to some degree and shared with
her about these things. Anyway, she knew what was going
on with her daughter, so she just didn't didn't didn't
track for her well, and it was also a legal situation. Absolutely, yeah,
(17:22):
it can be so. So, yes, they find this second shoe.
The for the entirety of the investigation, the family is
insisting that there is no chance uh Leah Freeman would
have run away. And when they, you know, they find
this shoe, separated by miles from the other shoe, law
(17:44):
enforcement logically begins to consider the worst possibilities. And there's
a whole new place to look for her. And there's
a whole new place to look. And we're going to
pause for a word from our sponsors and will return
to allow up the investigation. We're not at the park
where it gets crazy yet, We're just giving you the background.
(18:11):
We're back, so fast forward weeks and weeks. It's August.
Leah Freeman has been missing until August three of two thousand,
when her body is discovered on a steep wooded embankment
(18:31):
in Coos County, about eight miles from where she disappeared.
And according to according to people familiar with the area,
and according to mcguffn's attorney, uh, this this part where
she where her body is found, is very It's a
rural area. These are old logging roads, you know what
I mean, things like dirt roads. This is not a
(18:54):
densely populated place. And unfortunately, because it had been out there,
remember this is Ummer, her body had been out there
for weeks. It was badly, badly decomposed due to the
heat and due to the activities of animals. This complicates
the investigation. The body is so damaged that it's very
difficult to determine a cause of death. I can't help
(19:17):
but think of the Twin Peaks with this story. It really,
you know, the whole Oregon setting, the kind of small
town the body discovered kind of out in the in
the wilderness. Um, I don't know, really interesting parallel. This
is obviously after that show came out and had been
in the public conscienus for a long time. But it's
just Oregon has this kind of weird, creepy energy to
(19:40):
it in terms of like the types of crimes because
it's so isolated and it's seen as this is a
very liberal kind of bastion, you know, with places like
Portland's and all that, But there really is kind of
a crazy, seedy underbelly. A lot of you know, crimes
like this to take place out there, and we'll get
into the legal side of it later. That's interesting in
its own right. But the investigation understandably turned to Nick
(20:02):
mcguffin because they have no other leads. Uh, they had
already you know, interrogated him. He became their prime suspect
simply because the fact that he was closest to her,
and it was just kind of he was an easy target, um,
even though they had no solid proof. Um, he was
just the most likely person and had the most opportunity.
(20:23):
Let's just say, yeah, you have to start somewhere, you
know what I mean. That's that's not an unreasonable thing
to do. So, like, like we're seeing earlier, the thing
about small towns and folks. You know this if you've
ever lived in one, Uh, rumors can spread very quickly dangerously.
(20:44):
Communication is constant, and it goes through multiple channels. So
a lot of members of the town start to turn
on Nick mcguffin. They're stopping him in the street, they're
calling him a murderer. He himself recalls being hospitalized for
(21:06):
what he describes as an anxiety attack as well as
a suicide attempt in the interim, in this very dark
time in his life, as you can imagine he meets
someone else, becomes romantically involved, they have a child together,
a daughter. Fast forward years, right, the case is considered
to have gone cold. Mcguffin is at this point um
(21:28):
never arrested. He's never gone to a trial or anything.
He's working as a chef, he graduates culinary school, I think,
and he's having his daughter. A new police chief takes office,
Mark Daddles, and Mark Daddals is very much focused. Some
(21:50):
would even describe it as having tunnel vision. He's very
much focused on solving this case, on solving this crime.
And it makes sense because we have to remember this
is one of the if not the most brutal crimes
in the town's history. So he he wants to solve
the case. So they reopen it years later. And this
(22:12):
might sound odd, but it's not unusual, no, I mean,
it's like a cold case doesn't mean the case is closed.
It just means they sort of tabled it pending some
revelation they don't have. They probably don't have the staff
to continue to just doggedly investigate a case like that
when there's you know, is that about the size of it?
(22:35):
Kind of? I mean, there's no new leads, No, there's
no new action to be taken because there's nothing to
take action on. Right. That's that. But you know it
would take somebody like Daniels who made this kind of
a flagship issue. And I understand why. I mean, this
is a small town. People don't have closure. People feel like,
whoever this is that did this, if they've moved on
(22:57):
from believing that it was Nick mcguffin, is still out there.
And it's just like, you know, as a new sheriff
in town, I can understand why he would want to
like make that right and make people feel safe in
this small town. So I get it. But you're right
then about the tunnel vision. I mean, it's almost like
he was going to pin it on somebody no matter what.
And and you can tell he's he's got that energy
(23:19):
he brings in and has them like embedded with him.
He gives them full access to the point where it's
like a little weird in my opinion. It's like they're
so in the mix that they create this like sense
of you know, they're on the side of law enforcement
no matter who they're pursuing, and they don't seem to
(23:41):
be asking many uh hard questions of Daniels almost like
a quid pro quo of like, well, you gave us
all this access, so we're not going to give you
a hard time about these choices that you make. That's
just how I saw it. Well, in my eyes, it's
it's it's somebody who is aware of the pressure that
law enforcement and the media can exert on a potential suspect. Right. Um, So,
(24:05):
no matter who it is that as they reopen these
case files look at all the evidence. Again, no matter
who it is that they think is their prime suspect,
that person is going to have this pressure on them
as they then begin fully investigating. Again. I guess what
I'm just saying is like it almost felt like was
opportunistic and a little bit irresponsible with the level of
pressure they applied without seeing both sides. Yeah, this is
(24:30):
this is Yeah, this is exactly the point. So first there,
I think right about the pressure that media coverage can impart,
but we also need to consider the pressure that the
public can impart on law enforcement. Not getting this is um,
not getting this is tantamounts not doing your job right
(24:53):
in the public's mind, and the public of the town
is is divided on what the thing is going on.
And I do have some serious problems with the way
did this because they it's an active investigation, and so
from the law enforcement perspective, you could say this makes
sense because by giving full transparency, they're showing not only
(25:17):
the people of the town, but the people of the
country who are now an audience in this investigation, that
they are doing something right. So you can understand how
that's an advantage. But at the same time that brings
like if if the Internet was around and the format
is today during that investigation, can you imagine how inundated
(25:42):
social media would have been? Can you imagine? Yeah, on
every level, that's what they're what they're doing in this
twenty piece. The initial one is they're showing this investigation,
but they're also sort of feeding the flames of the
of the court of public opinion. And the court of
(26:04):
public opinion doesn't really obey loss. So so Daniels and
his team interview hundreds and hundreds of people, and they
claim and they noticed something odd. A lot of these witnesses,
or at least a significant number of witnesses that they interviewed,
(26:26):
were contradicting Nick mcguffin's story. And they would later say,
we have witnesses on record saying that they did see
Nick mcguffin and Leah Freeman together after nine pm after
she leaves Sherry's house. And that's where Kristen Steinhoff, when
(26:47):
we mentioned earlier, comes back into place. She seems too,
in particular, throws some monkey wrenches in. Uh. Well in
what this point is being considered an alibi. Yeah, the
story we knew up until this point, at least you know,
that had been told to authorities and from other witnesses,
was that she and Nick got in the car and
(27:11):
looked for Leah. Right. That that's at least my understanding
of the understanding of these witnesses up to this point. Um,
And that was it. That's all that happened. She was
just trying to help help Nick find Leah. And then
that story changes completely. Yeah, what when they were hanging
out at her house? She says they were in their bedroom,
(27:33):
she and Nick, and they were doing drugs specifically, and
you can see footage from some of these interviews specifically
that they were doing methamphetamine, uh, and that they began
kissing and things were escalating and she cut things off
because he was trying to escalate to sex, and so
(27:55):
she stopped there. And mcguffin maintains that yes, they kissed,
but they didn't like he didn't try to take it further,
and that they may have they may have smoked marijuana,
but that they were not smoking meth. And then there's
something transformative and not in the best way that happens.
(28:19):
Remember we said, unfortunately the body is so decomposed that
you cannot readily determine a cause of death. At least
that's what the law enforcement is saying here. But an
investigator is on television speaking to the public and just
speculates that Leah Freeman may have been pregnant at the
(28:41):
time of her death. There was no proof for this.
This was and to be fair, was phrased this speculation.
But when you hear something like that, you know it's
going to set a rumor mill ablaze and you can't
really retract it because people won't listen past that home.
It's an invest it's a detective that says that, like
(29:03):
speculating um and then you know that the sheriff does
I don't know, he's a little bit kind of finger
waggy about it. He's like well, that was just this
man's opinion, and they say that, um that that it
was never proven. He does say that, But you're right,
you can't put that badger back in the bag. Once
it said it gets people thinking, then immediately in your
(29:23):
mind you're crucifying. This guy is like a woman and
baby killer is like the worst. Well, you know, that
reminds me of guys that the recent Atlanta serial killer
rumors that were spreading around and that person expert that
brings necrophilia into the situation. Really, what now if that's
what we're dealing with, Okay, according to your opinion, Yeah,
(29:45):
and I you know you have to when you're conducting
an investigation, you do have to speculate because that will
lead you to the next part of your investigation. But
that speculation maybe belongs in the office TV right right,
not right before a commercial or something like that. And
(30:08):
that's and you're right, there's some finger wagging stuff there.
But but anyway, you can't as you can't rebag the badger,
you can't screw the lid back on Pandora's jars. Now
people are convinced that this is what happened, even though
this guy it was this guy's opinion. It is now
(30:28):
being treated by members of the public as evidence. At
this point, not only are these public these problematic public
statements going through, but Nick mcguffin still lives in town,
and law enforcement and the people at are on his
(30:49):
six all the time. There, you know, there following him
at home, they're following him at work. They're seeing whereas
car goes, are ringing him off the hook, trying to
get an interview with him, and he's when he doesn't
want to do an interview. Eventually, because this is the
(31:10):
kind of show this was, Eventually one of the reporters
just runs up to him when they see his car
idoling and starts, you know, firing off questions and this
guy and it's like, I'm Mike in the face moments
kind of you know what I mean, And and so
he he drives away, but this well, he what does
(31:32):
he say that that he does say one thing? They say,
like you said, I just want to know what it's like.
And then Nick says, what do you think it's like?
And how do you think I feel or something like that. Yeah, yeah,
And he obviously is responding from a like a very
emotionally upset place because he's been he's been surveiled so extensively.
(31:58):
Not only has he been surveiled, but he's being surveilled
in a very public manner. Everybody else in town is
aware of this, right it's getting reported in the news.
And then this thing is going to come out. So
August after this they have a highly publicized arrest. Is
(32:19):
still embedded. They have called in the cavalry. There are
different teams getting ready for the arrest. There's a helicopter
involved keeping track of him. Uh. The idea being that
he might try to make a run for it, so
they would need to be able to track him from
the air. Uh. He is arrested without incident. Really he's
(32:41):
not you know, he's not trying to resist arrest, he's
not fighting back, etcetera. Uh. And after this arrest he
goes to trial and legally this is where it gets
in a bizarre place. So he gets convicted, but he
doesn't get convicted of murder, which would have a life
sentence for him. He gets convicted of manslaughter in two
thousand leven and he gets a ten year sentence, and
(33:02):
not everybody on the jury is convinced. He is convicted
by what's known as a non unanimous jury ten people
guilty for manslaughter to vote innocent, and Ben you dug
up that this is a uniquely Oregonian thing, or maybe
there's a few other places, but it is definitely unusual
in the Yeah, in the United States, Oregon is the
(33:26):
only state that allows for non unanimous jury convictions for
pretty much every felony except for murder. So because two
people were against this on the jury, he gets acquitted
of the murder. That has to be a unanimous decision
of the jury, but the manslaughter charge does not. So
(33:48):
that's why it might sound really weird. Otherwise to hear
what on the face of it sounds like someone murdered
somebody and they got a ten year sentence. That's a
WTF moment. But but they have multiple charges knowing that
they might only get one, Like if it's one crime,
how come it's it's they're they're they're charging with with
(34:08):
murder and manslaughter. Well, he's eventually convicted of manslaughter. We
just know that he was acquitted of the murder charge.
And here's the thing, this is where the story actually starts, folks.
I hope you enjoyed the first forty minutes. Almost immediately,
it was clear that there were deep, profound problems with
(34:30):
this case. Here's where it gets crazy. Okay, I wrote
this kind of a messed up way. Nick mcguffin is
a freeman. Now Nick mcguffin's UH conviction was overturned. It
(34:50):
was overturned by the decision of a County Circuit judge
named Patricia Sullivan. In she says that this case, this
case won't fly. It's a violation of constitutional rights. It
turns out that Nick, who had been in prison for
nine years of his ten years sentence and maintaining his
(35:13):
innocence throughout the whole almost a decade, it turns out
that there was stuff law enforcement didn't want him, his lawyers,
or the public to know. I think that's fair to say.
I think they didn't want people to know. No, you're right.
After further examination, it was found that remember those two
shoes that were discovered Lea's shoes, UH, there was d
(35:37):
n A, not amazing samples of DNA, but d n
A that was from a male that was not Nick,
and that evidence was not presented at the trial, so
it was not known by the defense that there was
another possible suspects DNA president on major evidence in the case. Yeah,
(35:57):
I thought it was weird that we hadn't heard anything
about a bloody shoe, Like it just didn't come up right. Yeah,
the thing about the d n A in this case,
it's strange. Not all DNA samples are created equally. It's
funny because I was thinking of comparisons here, Like we
(36:18):
brought up an excellent point about resources and a lot
of a lot of these investigations are cash strapped. Like
I was speaking to someone in Louisiana recently who told
me that they were convinced they could solve some crimes
if they could just get like thirty dollars approved to
(36:39):
do some DNA tests, that they are waiting around for
like three or four separate cases, and that that seems strange.
But anyway, these these folks are struggling with what at
the time is a new technology that's not as advanced
as is now. So mcguffin gets an attorney, Janice Percale,
(37:00):
and she's working with something called the Forensic Justice Project.
They're based in Portland's their non profit entity that focuses
on either preventing wrongful convictions or correcting them, and she says,
there is no evidence against him being Nick mcguffin. He
just happened to be her boyfriend at the time. There
were no eye witnesses, there were no DNA connecting to
(37:23):
the crime, there was no other evidence that tied him
to anything that happened to her. Quick note, when she
says there's no eye witnesses, she means there's no eye
witness that like sees him engaging an act of violence
against Leah fan Freeman. And Puracal is the one who
figures out this DNA evidence. She only learns about it,
(37:46):
like again, almost a decade pass this original conviction, where
it's not brought up at all a trial. She only
learns about it because she's sorting through all the old
paperwork from that first trial. And if you read news
about this older news and like the news that comes
out when she makes this d N A request, which
(38:09):
I think is around, you'll see you'll see the same
line popping up in the news, which is something like
the DNA analysts at the time didn't disclose this information
due to an internal policy quote unquote internal policy. That's
the official reason. And this the decision that Judge Sullivan
(38:33):
makes is simply that whatever that internal policy at the
time was during the investigation, which we can talk a
little bit about, it was no longer the standard when
the case went to trial. So some policy they had
in two thousand one, two thousand two when they found
this DNA was no longer up to snuff when it
(38:53):
would have actually mattered in a court of law. That
makes sense, and you know, to be fair law enforcement.
The Department of Justice, they're still defending that decision not
to disclose that DNA. Yes, and a gentleman named Paul
yme Is with the Oregon d o J. He defended
(39:14):
that that policy, saying that the authorities were quote very
cautious back then because they didn't know about all the
DNA stuff that was out there, so they were cautious
and conservative in their report writing. Is he saying that
just DNA technology wasn't what it is today, Well, in
a way, it wasn't right and year two thousand to
an extent. But at the same time, if you've got
(39:36):
such a small sample, maybe that's a trace from a
family member. You know, she lived with people, another friend,
she goes to school. You know, she's doing volleyball and
other things. I'm I'm just imagining that if it's a trace,
like a small enough amount of DNA right that you
can't actually identify, maybe it's not worth even pursuing. We're
(40:00):
thinking about the blood though specifically there's traces of male
DNA found on both shoes, so so not necessarily the blood.
It was just, yeah, a blood stain would have one
would imagine enough, yeah, they would meet the threshold of DNA.
But this if we look at Crystal the statements of
(40:21):
Crystal Bell, who is the Forensic Service Division Director for
OSP the Oregon State Police, we'll see that Bell tends
to agree and says that the interpretation guidelines they had
didn't this is a quote from her, didn't necessarily distinguish
or discern really low levels of d n A. So
(40:44):
analysts at the time were they had personal discretion over
what they decided to report, but basically they needed to
be very very sure of what they were saying. So
Bell is stating that this analystsercent sure what they were
looking at, right, and that was how little they found.
(41:05):
But she also felled at has also claimed that, hey,
if someone had asked for this evidence to be re
examined the lab would have done. So there's a problem
with that though, because the people who would have been
the people asking would have to know that the DNA
sample existed, which they didn't until when Purakal found out
(41:27):
about it and made that request and so the judge.
So so their case to the judge was, Hey, if
the jury knew this, would it make a difference, And
the judge Sullivan eventually said yeah, I think it will,
so overturn the conviction. What does this mean for Nick mcguffin, Well,
it means that he still loses nine years of his life. Yeah,
(41:50):
he basically served his whole sentence. I mean, you know,
he obviously has ground stuff for um a lawsuit and
hopefully for some reparations, uh for that time, but you
can't get it back. Something that I feel it's been
weirdly absent from all of this reporting is we know,
because of the decomposition and the you know, um effects
(42:10):
of animals on the body, UM that that a true
cause of death was never able to be determined. But
I mean, there was nothing like strangulation, that there was
no signs of struggle, like you think that'd be the
kind of stuff that you tear reported on it was
it was her body was there for six weeks, so
(42:31):
it's more than a month. It's it's hard unless you
unless you've voluntarily looked at some of that stuff or
researched it, you don't understand the what a body looks
like after six weeks and the degree of decay. So
there's no retrial. Also, you should know, we should know.
(42:54):
Sullivan clearly explicitly in her ruling, says me, overturning this
conviction is not the same thing as me saying Nick
mcguffin is innocent. I'm saying yet his rights violated. But
there's not a retrial. The attorney at cous County, the
district Attorney, Paul Fraser, says he had several factors in
(43:18):
his decision. He said the lab report, the death of
key witnesses, and the original non unanimous jury decision all
played into his reasons for not having a retrial, and
on a personal note, he says also Leah Freeman's mother
didn't want to experience the profound strain of a second trial.
(43:40):
But that's not really the end of the story. This
leads us to two deeply disturbing questions and a lot
of us listening along at home can guess what they are. First,
who actually is responsible for the for the death of
Leah Freeman? Second? What other cases have exculpatory evidence like
(44:01):
DNA that would overturn a case? What kind of evidence
is there that, if it were revealed, could free innocent
people incarcerated today? That second question, it's tough to answer
for certain, but a case like this indicates that it
is possible that there are similar situations out there, not
just in Oregon, not just in the US, but across
(44:23):
the globe. That first question, though, is the point of
this episode. So we're gonna pause for word from our sponsor,
and then we'll ask who killed Leah Freeman. At first,
it might seem that having DNA means it's only a
(44:45):
matter of time before police do find another person, a
man somehow involved with the case. It's true, I mean
DNA has led to the reopening and even the resolution
of other unsolved murders other assaults, and will do the
same in the future. But like we said, not all
DNA is the same. This isn't enough to determine a
(45:06):
specific match. It's enough to when compared to mcguffin's DNA
determine it's not him. Whoever left this was not him.
But that's about it. Other than the fact that it's
a male, that's about it. Well, yeah, and we you know,
we we heard from a listener who's knows someone who's
(45:27):
connected to this case, and we're going to leave it
at that, but that they that there is potentially a
name associated with that sample. UM. Again, we cannot confirm this,
but that that is what we were told, and it
checks out that this person is in contact with someone
who has intimate knowledge of this case. UM. Why that
(45:50):
name was never released is very interesting. It likely has
to do with some of the thresholds that we're talking about,
or you know, the idea of um not wanting to
muddy the waters further. Maybe it's it's just it's very
odd that the name was never released all and and
yet they were willing to drag this guy Nick, you know,
(46:11):
through through the mud for for years and years and years, UM,
with all the surveillance and stuff. But this person who's
close to the case, UH made the comment that if
Nick wasn't the one who did it, that he likely
has knowledge of what actually happened. And because of the
way the investigation has gone and him being exonerated, that's
(46:34):
case closed essentially. I mean they would have to open
a new case, right or how how does that work
if someone is convicted and that's overturned. Does that mean
back to the drawing board for investigators now we're looking
for a new suspect. Or does it mean that maybe
he did do it, he served enough time that likely
all parties are satisfied. Like, I don't know, I'm just
(46:55):
wonder like, what's what's the next step. Well, the d
A seems to have it seems have indicated it was
their decision not to have a retrial, So that could
have been a possibility, um, And I think you put
that very well again to this listener. We appreciate you,
um profoundly for for reaching out with this, and we
(47:18):
do want to protect anonymity here. But there there's also
the possibility that someone associated may have died I believe,
may have passed away. Yeah, so there are other bits
of evidence as well. You will see descriptions of paint
chips found on Freeman shirt that don't match the paint
(47:40):
around mcguffin's car. But again, at this time, there is
not an easily determined cause of death been this least
of speculation. Uh, that's pretty prevalent twenty years on about
her demise. People will speculate, not prove, but speculate that
Freeman may have in struck by a car and that
(48:03):
whomever struck her with the car realized that they had
killed her and decided not to report the deaths. So
instead they took her body away to that rural area
and left it there. And if that is the case,
then they got away with it at least for now. Yeah.
(48:24):
That I that's mentioned in that and it's kind of
just thrown away, right, It's like there, you know, there
are a ton of theories. One of them said that happened,
but we decided that didn't happen. But but but but
why like again, but there's no if there's no defensive
wounds or there's no like something indicating that it was
I just never heard anybody say that it is where
the shoes were found, so far apart that does indicate
(48:46):
that maybe the body was moved or something like that.
Maybe what's the scenario where one shoe comes off in
one place and then as they're driving, another shoe comes
off ten miles away is it someone fighting and struggling
to escape a vehicle where the shoes once who comes
off as she's being put into a vehicle, and then
(49:07):
another comes off as she's being taken out of a vehicle.
I mean, I just yeah, I mean that that is
sort of the That is sort of the weird thing here,
like how why so far away? And the two shoes
and that is You're right, man, I don't understand that
scenario either, but I still think it's odd they just
discount the idea that she was hit by a car.
And not to joke, but it is, does seem like
(49:29):
this town as a history of picking up people's shoes, uh,
and you know, taking them home or maybe like taking
them elsewhere. I don't know. It's I don't know if
they have a history of that. Maybe a history, but
it's there's a history of one, a sample size of one. Um.
It's just an odd thing. It's an odd thing. Yeah,
it is, and it leads to questions that can be disturbing,
(49:52):
but they're necessary to ask. There are any number of
scenarios that could lead to is happening? Right? It could
even here's another thing that people don't point out. We
know the order in which the shoes and the body
were found, But we don't know the order in which
they ended up where they ended up, right, So I
(50:15):
think it's it's logical to assume that the first shoe
was maybe the first thing that got dropped at its location. Maybe,
but it's not for certain. We don't know the order
of operations. We don't know the timing here. And unless
you speak to the person who did this and they
admit to it, and they tell you, then it's highly
(50:39):
unlikely that people will ever know. Uh In, The rumors
will continue because regardless what you think about Oregon State Police,
regardless what you think about the innocence or the guilt
of Nick mcguffin, it is very clear that this ace
(51:00):
was botched, and it's very clear that public opinion played
an influential role in how the case proceeded. Right, And
this is not us commenting on mcguffin's innocence in any way.
This is just us saying here, you can tell where
(51:21):
things went off the rails and that DNA was important.
But for his attorneys, it goes far beyond that. The
mishandling the case, as they would phrase, it extends to
not just withholding evidence, but to accusations of officers fabricating
evidence or coercing witnesses or again, small town going around
(51:45):
and spreading rumors, you know what I mean. Like the
the implication is, this is not a specific thing, this
is just a hypothetical example. The implication is, let's say
you work on the force that's investigating this. You're hanging out,
you know, you're in a barbecue or something. It's like
one of your friends kid's birthdays. It could be something
(52:06):
that casual. And then you say, you know, I can't
say anything on the record, but I have you know,
blah blah blah stuff you could never get away with
saying in public or in court. It's very true. And
now guys, you know we have to do we have
to jump to again, but not the show or the
original show, the yes, yes last year, uh where everything
(52:33):
was clear in retrospect. Right today, Nick mcguffin is free.
He lives in the Portland area who works as a chef,
and he filed last year a federal civil rights lawsuit
against the local police, against Couse Bay, against the Oregon
State Police departments, and against the Sheriff's office, and both
(52:55):
he and his legal teams say, we consider this death
an open case, and we're also looking we're hoping for
answers to who killed Lee of Freeman, which is interesting
given from what we learned from people connected with this. Again,
like you said, Noel, one of whom stated, if it
(53:17):
wasn't mcguffin, then at least this person seems convinced that
he knows more than he's letting on. Right, was that
the sense of it? Yeah, it's it's it's an odd situation,
and it largely has to do with the It's it's
basically a technicality. You know, it does not remove him
from the list of possible people who could have committed
this crime, because his rights were certainly violated. Um. But
(53:42):
it's it's it's weird because it's it's it's like a
It leaves so many questions hanging, and it feels like
closure is never going to happen. I just have to
wonder how how this affects people who live in that town,
and how this affects the sheriff. He's obviously never gonna
claim that he did anything wrong. Um. He seemed very
right just in his actions. Um. But it's so up
(54:05):
in the air. Like, I can't imagine that anyone feels
particularly good about it, right, you know, I think it's
fair to say, I mean this. This means that it's
quite possible that law enforcement does have other suspects, but
they can't disclose their names, maybe due to a lack
of compelling evidence. And this is I know, like we're
(54:25):
talking about the dangers of speculation, but this is something
I was thinking of it. I have not been in
direct contact with law enforcement on this one. If they
were indeed incorrect their first step in solving this case,
or their first attempt to do so, can you imagine
how disastrous it would be to be wrong twice? That
(54:47):
is something I think they file under avoid at all costs.
Is it weird to think that they thought they were
right for nine straight years, or at least they convinced
themselves they were right for nine straight years, And maybe
they could just do that again, yeah, and get somebody
else innocent. Okay, sir, But this lawsuit, it does allege
(55:08):
some pretty damning stuff. The lawsuit that mcguffin is bringing
on the feral level says that they created an entire
false narrative based on quote junk science, including fabricated polygraph results,
other fabricated evidence. We already know that polygraphs are. I'll
(55:29):
say it. They're they're malarkey. Can we say malarkey? Who
has it has been saying malarkey? Joe Biden does he
own that one? Though? It is Yeah, someone took over
the word maverick to anyway. Uh but they anyway, it's
polygraphs are not solid proof of what they're often purported
(55:54):
to be proving. Right, And there's an excellent I believe
it's tech stuff is an excellent tech stuff episode about
the actual technology of polygraphs. Anyway, they also say that
police did something they're not supposed to do, which is
suppressed or tamper with, or even destroy evidence that undermine
(56:15):
the credibility of witnesses, including evidence of their own misconduct,
evidence of their violations of this guy's rights. And again
on their part, the investigators on the case maintain that
they followed procedure, you know, And they're saying, we're not
trying to cover up something. We just had this policy
(56:39):
about DNA at the time and it didn't fit our threshold.
That's that's what their perspective is, and that means the
rumors are going to continue twenty more than twenty years on.
Many people in the town of co Kill feel that
they're still gonna wait, Like you said, Matt, for closure
for justice. And rumors can be dangerous and unfounded. Speculation
(57:01):
can quickly erroneously turn into some sort of truth when
everybody just happens to agree. But at this point we
know that we know that the facts don't all seem
to add up. What do you guys think about this, Well,
it doesn't matter what I think. What matters is what
(57:22):
you think. Why don't you Why don't you write to us?
Find us on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, any of
the social media is. Let us know how you feel.
If you get any information, like the person who reached
out to us, maybe there's something we need to know.
Please find us. We are conspiracy stuff on YouTube, Twitter,
and Facebook, on Instagram or a conspiracy stuff show. If
(57:42):
you don't want to contact us that way, you can
use your telephone. That's right, you can call us are
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have three minutes to tell us your story, ask us
your question. It's all yours. Do whatever you wish with it. UM,
just please let us know if it's okay to use
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(58:04):
it on one of our weekly listener mail episodes. UM,
make sure to us know what to call you, happy
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(58:41):
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