The Locked Door: Fire, Blood, and a Small-Town Secret | Signal 51 Chronicles – Case 3 Pt 1

This is the Signal 51 Chronicles, the fire next door.
Welcome to the Signal 51 Chronicles.
This is episode seven of the reboot, Ashley's over there accounting, it is seven.
You are right.
I'm John Henry, this is Jake White, my compadre, he's a retired fourth, he's a retired sergeant,
the fourth police department.
Welcome back Jake.
I'm here.
I'm excited.
I've been digging into this one for you have been you have devoted your entire being to
this case.
I don't know that, but a lot of effort.
We come to you from an undisclosed location in Fort Worth, Texas.
And we are a proud member of the Sunset Lounge DFW platform, I get that right.
You did.
I'm proud.
I'm so proud of you.
And they offer viewers and listeners an array of shows on featuring all sorts of top
good content.
It's a good way to spend your off time.
Yeah, if you like listening and watching podcasts, it's a good way to go.
There's a lot to tune into.
There is.
There is.
Indeed.
So that voice you hear on the other side is, other side of the table here is Ashley.
Hi friends.
She's our producer, extraordinaire, Jake, where would we be without Ashley?
Answers nowhere.
We would not be right here.
Can you imagine?
They can't see the setup behind the cameras.
Yeah.
Can you imagine the boondoggle that would be if we tried this?
No way.
You like zero chance that's happening.
I'd be like asking us to take on a home project or something, home improvement, not going
to happen either.
In fact, it would call her too for that one, because she could do that or for that.
She got that down there.
I just took out the last wall in the house.
The last wall?
How'd you say?
Yeah, the last wall I had to take down had four, had to knock out.
Slide chamber.
Kind of.
Do you hear what we're talking about there?
Let's go to the police plotter, would you say?
Let's do this.
Dateline is grapevine Texas.
You familiar grapevine Texas?
Yeah, I'm familiar.
They make wine there, apparently.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it was so funny.
Apparently?
I mean, it's good.
The wine there's good.
Mustang grapes.
We learned that a long time ago.
But this particular, that's how they make their wine, actually.
This particular case incident was several, several years ago.
Okay.
But it's none the last one that is worthy of looking back on.
So police arrested a 22-year-old man after a motorist reported being followed by a pickup
truck equipped with red and blue emergency lights.
The driver called 911 and remained on the line while continuing to drive, leading officers
to intercept the vehicle along Texas 360.
Police said the truck had a realistic police style lighting system installed, but no
official markings.
There's found a fake police identification card inside the truck that appeared to be
cruelly made.
The suspect admitted installing the lights, but declined to explain his intent.
The man was arrested on suspicion of impersonating a public official and was booked into jail.
An immigration hold was also-
Oh god, here we go.
It's also placed.
Here we go.
Police credited the motorist for not stopping and for staying in contact with dispatch until
officers arrived.
Now I believe that, and in fact, I'm looking at a story here, that the police identification
looked at this guy, and ties closely to something near and dear to your heart, I know,
because I've been there with you.
That the police identification card was not nearly as realistic as the lights of the
truck.
Okay?
It was made with a gift card from Chipotle, yes.
The restaurant chain's logo was still visible on top of the card with the word, quote unquote,
police written under it.
Now that is- that's going cheap on your-
Yeah, that's going pretty cheap, I'll give you that.
I never encountered the imposter, I always thought it would be kind of neat.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Never had the opportunity though.
I've seen plenty of videos online where they'll co-incidentally pull up behind the imposter
who has a car pulled over.
It's just like the ones I've seen, it's usually like some nerdy, like 24-year-old kid,
Hodgepodge a gear, and looks anything but official, so I've never had any personal experience
with that.
We have a story we're not going to relay it ever on a police officer who once pulled
over a little legitimate law enforcement officer, pulled over somebody, and there was a barter
at the window.
Yeah, let's not go there.
It's a funny one.
It is a funny one.
In fact, the old guy, the guy we're talking about once upon a time, he'd have been happy
to come on here and tell us about that, I don't know, I'm going to hear him, yeah?
Probably not going to go down that rabbit hole though.
No.
So, ladies and gentlemen, parents advise your children never to impersonate a police
officer.
It's against law.
Yeah, it's a good advice.
All right, so let's go to the meat and potatoes of Episode 7 of the Signal 51 Chronicles.
And Episode 1 will be, is the locked door.
And before we begin, I guess we need to, I don't know, we really need to do this.
Maybe you're listening to a true crime podcast, right?
You're prepared.
You should be prepared for the worst, but listener discretion is advised.
This episode contains descriptions of violence and homicide.
So, we're going to Lake Bridgeport in Wise County, Texas, population of 100,000, I'm
sure.
That's just over 300 people.
300 people.
Mm-hmm.
You ever been up there before?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Selling houses up there?
Uh, yeah.
Yeah, in fact.
And then the lake up there, I mean, I eat like-
You have?
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Water skin?
No.
Good God, no.
Tubing.
Mm-hmm.
None of the above, I've just been like to the lake.
I've never participated in any water sport activity of sorts.
Yeah.
Not really my thing.
You know, I think, I think it's Bridgeport, I think that the impetus for digging that
was by T.C.
Alama.
Can you remember his name?
Anyway, I'll think-
There is a story behind that.
Uh, I don't- yeah, there is a story behind that.
I don't remember the details of it, yes, you know, I think you're all-
Yeah.
Anyway, it'll come to me in a second.
Anyway, there's no local police department there, nope.
So that means they're under the jurisdiction of the Wise County Police Department.
Sheriff's Department.
Excuse me.
Sheriff's Department.
Yes.
I meant that.
Um, and I think we find that, uh, we get a school discusses later, but I think we find
that that's- that fact comes into play here, that there is no local jurisdiction.
Um, anyway, we'll get to that.
Anyway, on the morning of July 5th, 2019, something happened near Lake Bridgeport, in Lake
Bridgeport.
So, fracture this community and it remains unsolved, so let's set name up.
Remains unsolved.
Correct.
There's going to be some twists and turns towards the end, I think.
But setting it up, I think we need to first explain how we came across this.
Yeah, let's do that.
So-
How did we come across this?
My buddy Drew.
Drew.
I know Drew.
You know Drew.
A Wise County kid.
Oh, boy.
He's very much a Wise County kid, if you will.
Wise Ass County kid.
I will fit to the, uh, um, to the extreme.
To the extreme.
He's telling me he said, hey, you need to look into this log.
There's a guy named- he's a defense attorney.
His name's Barry Green.
I've heard of Barry Green.
Yeah.
He had a swim through here at the DA's office.
Very lively fellow, at least.
And I say that because on his blog, Liberly Lean, he's got some funny content on there.
It's got a, I don't know that it has a, I mean, it's titled Liberly Lean.
I don't know.
I mean, political spin, some of it, but it's really just pure entertainment.
Yeah.
Some of it makes me laugh.
Yeah, sure.
And so-
So we're here on this earth.
That's why we're here.
And so this case, he was involved in and it was one, even now, I'm almost left with
more questions than answers, because I don't understand how we got to the point that
we're going to tell everybody about.
And a lot of the content were things that he provided to, to the masses, if you will,
through his blog, through his blog, through his, some of his social media accounts.
This guy is screaming from the mountaintops.
And that, not the mountaintops quite literally, but you'll see what he saw as a second plays
on.
To get this set up, so we're talking July 5th, 2019, early morning hours.
So the morning after 4th of July festivities, we are talking about a lake community.
The parties were definitely kind of the center of town, if you will, definitely the center
of this story, it's got a little part to do with that.
But at 420 in the morning, Wise County Dispatch gets a 911 call.
A neighbor reports smelling smoke coming from a duplex at 620 North Main Street.
He says the woman who lives there, Laura Whitener, is not answering her phone.
The windows are hot to the touch, the curtains are drawn, there's no visible flames.
The front door is dead bolted, so when they get there, they have to 4th century.
Now to set it up just a little bit, we're talking about a row of 6 duplex buildings.
This 911 collar was calling from 640 North Main.
So the adjoining duplex to where Lauren Whitener lived.
Go inside that living room, a couch is on fire.
In the bedroom, they find Lauren Whitener lying on a burn mattress.
She's nude except for a white shirt pushed up over her chest.
And when investigators turn her body over, they realize immediately that the fire had
nothing to do with her death.
Well, we'll get into that.
So who was Lauren?
So Lauren was a 32-year-old Army veteran.
She served overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq.
She was also a surgical nurse at the Wise Health System Hospital.
She was a single mother with an eight-year-old son.
By all accounts, she was close with her neighbors along North Main Street, along North Main Street.
Especially the couple living two doors down at 660 North Main Street.
Rodney Eric Maxwell, he goes by Eric and his common law wife are what's described as his common law wife, Ashley Hill.
What is a common law relationship?
You live with somebody for common law marriage that is, you live with somebody for how long?
I don't know.
I've heard somebody conflicting things on this.
If you received mail there, I've heard that before.
If you received mail there for, I don't know, how much time?
That's Milton Daniel, by the way, I was thinking about Lake Bridgeport.
Milton Daniel, yeah.
Obviously, they go in, they find the orange body on the charred mattress.
They see that the love seed in the living room is also a smoldering charred.
They see the stab wounds to her body.
They run up, they shed 18.
Is that what it was? 18 stab wounds?
Literally, they saw eight stab wounds, sliced wounds, observed eight stab wounds.
What they did was the investigators fairly quickly secured a search warrant or her duplex.
I'm going to read a long list of edits.
All of this is going to become relevant, but it is a long list, so it's important to pay attention what's on this list.
We got time.
In and around her duplex, investigators recover or find.
There's going to be some discrepancies on what they recover, slash sees, versus what they actually see.
But in her duplex, they find a blue lighter on the front porch.
Blue lighter.
A full beer can under the couch.
A kitchen knife with an eight inch blade in the sink.
A kitchen knife with almost a five inch blade in the sink.
Three knives and one pair of scissors from a kitchen drawer.
Sleep-aid cough medication on the nightstand in the bedroom.
A purple lighter on the right nightstand in the primary bedroom.
An empty water bottle on the left nightstand in the bedroom.
An empty bottle on or near the right nightstand in the primary bedroom.
There's some cigarettes in or on the left nightstand in the primary bedroom.
A blue lady shirt on the bed in the primary bedroom.
A pair of men's boxers.
A cell phone located in the kitchen.
A knife on the front porch.
A knife on the grill in the backyard.
Multiple cigarette butts in an asterisk on the front porch.
Multiple cigarette butts on the ground near the porch area.
Lighter fluid from the backyard of 640 North Main Street.
So that's where the 911 collars were calling from.
Again, the adjoining duplex.
They had their own separate fenced backyards.
A green lighter from the backyard fence line near 660 North Main Street.
So the next duplex building over.
Three cigarette butts on the kitchen counter.
A router.
These are interesting.
Three smoke detectors that had been removed from the ceiling.
And three batteries in the trash can from said smoke detectors.
Not all though. There's more.
It was also reported that investigators confiscated the following.
Near or also at 620 North Main Street.
A bloody blue cell phone case.
The medical examiner during the autopsy collected nail clippings.
The victims clothing.
They also did a sexual activity kid to see if there were some kind of sexual assault involved.
And then finally.
Hair from an outside trash can.
Possibly like a bathroom trash can something like that.
So again, that list of evidence becomes important.
Kind of recap.
And obviously they get the 911 call.
They respond the front doors lock.
They go in.
Lauren's body is deceased on her bedroom on her bed in her bedroom.
Mattress is charred, smoldering burned.
Whatever you want to call it.
A love seat in the living room front living room.
Same thing.
Same thing.
House did not become engulfed in flames or anything of the sort.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now that autopsy, I'm guessing it was probably performed here.
I bet, I bet Wise County doesn't have a corner either.
Nope.
They went to Dallas County.
Dallas County.
Okay.
County Medical Examiner.
All right.
And we want to discuss what they, what the autop...
Yeah.
So the, so the Dallas County Medical Examiner.
As you just mentioned, conducts this autopsy.
And Lauren had 18 stab wounds.
16 of those were on her back.
Others were to her neck and jaw.
And the Medical Examiner and Dallas rules this death by sharp force injuries to the neck and trunk.
The smoke inhalation, that was not, was not a contributing factor.
Which, which means that the fire was set after she was already dead.
And some early questions that come to mind when we think about this are why dead bolt the door.
Why set the couch on fire, but not the bed?
I mean, the bed was.
The bed was on fire.
Well, but we don't know if that was from her burning.
Well, yeah, we'll get to that.
I think I have some ideas on that.
And why if this was sexual assault does nothing at the scene immediately explain it?
So you want to start with the neighbors now?
So like any investigation, the investigators are going to interview as many witnesses as they possibly can.
In this case, we know that there are six duplex buildings on the same street, all next door to each other.
So there's also, let me put it here right quick.
The Wise County Sheriff's Office, who's conducting this investigation, correct?
There is no quote-unquote homicide detective or detectives in the Wise County Office, right?
We're just talking about sheriff's deputies out there using whatever.
Well, I mean, I think they have their own detectives, but they're kind of a catch all, if you will.
Yeah, they're doing anything from robbery to somebody impersonating a sheriff's deputy to this.
All right, go on. They call in some help.
Obviously, the Texas Rangers.
Yeah, they came in and that's going to be a topic that we're going to discuss.
But like I said, they're going to interview as many witnesses as possible, right?
To learn probably more about Lauren, to learn about like, hey, how did this happen? Did anyone see anything?
Did anyone hear anything? The list goes on.
So, like I mentioned earlier, they collected a mountain of evidence at the crime scene or reported a mountain of evidence at the crime scene.
The items, some of the items that collected, we learned that the three smoke detectors were removed from the ceilings and the batteries were removed from the smoke detectors.
They swab those for DNA.
These were not the only items though that were swabbed for biological evidence.
Again, something that as this plays out. So also this investigation.
And talking to the neighbors, they specifically interviewed Eric Maxwell and his wife Ashley in the morning hours of July 5th.
They're doing this now to kind of set the scene. These are interviews, you know, in the front seat of a detective's car. These may be in a front yard.
You know, it's 2019 or they may be using their phone to record it. They may be using the old school recorders.
I'm sure that you're familiar with just collecting as much information that they can.
So in these initial interviews, they ask Eric Maxwell, his wife Ashley Hill, to go to the Sheriff's office later that day to get a more detailed description.
Maxwell and Hill agreed. So that later on in the day, they go to the Sheriff's office.
They provided more detailed statement. Eric Maxwell voluntarily provides his fingerprints and a DNA sample.
He wasn't the only one though. There were other neighbors who were asked and did the same thing.
So we're going to go kind of in a chronological step here.
So we know, again, just kind of recapping. This crime happens on the fifth. Investigators collect evidence. They interview neighbors.
They're still actively working this. They clearly have not developed any kind of theory on what happened, who's involved.
What was the root cause of this crime? What was the motive of this crime? So July 8th, investigators go back out to the crime scene.
They locate a pair of black latex gloves, approximately 200, 250 yards away from Lauren's duplex.
I don't know exactly where. That's one of the things that we ran into a lot in reading about this case.
We know that on July 9th.
It's 250 yards.
But still, you know, how many pairs of black latex gloves do you find laying on any neighborhood street?
Now, there could be easy explanations, right? It could have been the first responders who were there.
I mean, who knows where those black latex gloves came from? Could have been the suspects though.
I wonder if the sheriff's deputies had had they combed that area before and not seen them.
Or was this a new territory that they just said, hey, let's go check this out. We don't know.
Well, we don't know for sure. It's possible that they did. But again, one of the other things we have to remember is, it's Wise County, Texas.
Right. I mean, it is stool still rule by nature.
Yeah. I mean, it's not a huge thriving area.
Rule rule is a hard word to say to you. Rule. Yeah, he nailed it.
But you made me self conscious that I messed it up.
So, you know, I think that is rule.
Their resources are going to be limited, right?
They don't have the luxuries of the big city where you're calling people in.
Yeah. You know, you've got multitasking at its finest going on at this point.
I wonder how big that sheriff's office is. I have no, I mean, I would think.
I don't know, maybe 100 deputies or so give or take somewhere in that ballpark.
Is that big? Maybe.
All right. Maybe I'm way off. But you've got all these guys, all these investigators multitasking, right?
You've got some that are focused on the crime scene.
I like literally quite literally inside her apartment, perhaps even just her building.
You've got others that are interviewing all these witnesses, neighbors, etc.
You may have some people kind of come in the area.
But again, how many and how detailed can they possibly be? That's hard to say.
So, one of the other things, part of the documents that we examined that we looked at.
So, on July 9th, investigators conduct a consent to search at an apartment belonging to a person that we know as Salim S.
I have no clue who Salim S is. I have no clue where his apartment is.
I just know that it was around the same time as this investigation is going on.
So, is Salim S a suspect related to this? Who knows?
So, July 10th, this is where more of the story starts to come out a little bit.
So, they again interview, again named Billy Ray Thompson and a lady named Vicki Bondavi.
So, Billy and Vicki lived in the duplexes to the north of Maxwell and Hill.
So, probably 680 North Main Street, maybe even the building won up from that, right?
So, Billy, going back to the July 4th night, Billy had called Maxwell over to his duplex because he observed that Maxwell and his wife Hill, actually Hill, were in some kind of argument.
Again, it's 4th of July night. Probably like a block party style environment, right?
Everywhere outside, I guarantee in Wise County they're setting off fireworks, all the stuff that you would do, things that we can't necessarily do here inside the loop, but it's rule.
Yeah, exactly, that's redundancy. Yes. So, Billy calls Maxwell over, sees this argument, and he asks what's going on.
Maxwell tells...
Lots of alcohol involved too, I'm sure.
I mean, it is the 4th of July. And it's in Wise County.
There is some mention of alcohol, we're going to get to that.
Maxwell tells Billy that he and Hill had gotten into a fight inside the residence.
Maxwell grabbed Hill by the jaw and Lauren Whitener was also there. She jumps in between, separates.
Again, their neighbors, they're clearly friends, okay? Yeah.
But Maxwell tells Billy that he, Hill, and Whitener were involved in some kind of threesome.
Uh-oh. I hear this new term, I think it was called a thrupple. Is that correct? Thrupple.
Yes, it's a thrupple. I've heard this too.
I have never heard of this term up until talking about this story.
Yeah. I've always heard it more associated with like gay couples.
Uh, I feel like it's becoming more of like a thing for like bisexual men and women type stuff.
So, okay. So, thrupple. Yeah, thrupple.
Wait off the rails here.
None of them are actually like, I mean, I guess the one couple, the Hill, the Hill, Maxwell couple are common law.
So that makes them legally together at some point, but there's no actually no marriage between any of them, right?
I mean, so it's just...
I'm listening to this story as it happens, but I can tell you on the thrupple side,
it's three people who are all in a monogamous relationship together.
Yeah. Okay, there we go.
I don't know, I just heard the term.
I just thought it was a new way of describing a thruesome. I don't know.
You're really, you're, you know, bright before our eyes, ladies and gentlemen, you're seeing a man evolve.
Evolve.
Indeed.
Indeed.
Into modern society.
Well, we're all very proud of you, you know, but I'd heard of it, but I'm not, I'm certainly good luck with that.
So, imagine the, do you imagine how, what a, how complicated that relationship would be between, you know, a thrupple.
Thrupple.
Thrupple. I get that right.
Thrupple.
Thrupple.
Thrupple.
Thrupple.
With a TH.
Oh, thrupple.
You imagine how complicated that would be.
Could you imagine being in a thrupple?
Me?
That's good.
God, look at me.
No.
I mean, it's hard enough handling one wife, right?
Or, or, let's show of anistic.
It's hard enough handling one spouse.
Did you imagine having to handle two zero chance?
I mean, just think about how difficult, it's difficult enough trying to figure out where we're going to go eat with one spouse.
Yes.
Just nothing gets done ever.
Nothing gets done ever.
Nothing gets done ever.
Nothing gets accomplished.
All right.
We got to get back on topic.
Did we?
Okay.
This is hilarious.
Okay.
Get back on topic with this.
We're talking about a murdered here.
All right.
And possibly involving a thrupple.
A thrupple.
So, during this conversation with Maxwell and the neighbor.
Maxwell conveys that he believed that his wife wanted to be with Lauren instead of him.
See, here we go.
So now it's, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, you know what?
It is.
Wait, so they were in a thrupple with another man.
Yes.
But also this chick.
No, there's just.
No, there's supposedly a relationship with them.
One thrupple involving Maxwell, Hill, his common law wife and their neighbor.
Lauren, our victim.
Okay.
Lauren Widener.
Yeah.
So it's going in.
There's another man involved.
Yeah.
I mean, to this, this took kind of an interesting turn.
Now, they also though got some more context on this friendship.
Even the day before on July 3rd.
Well, when you say, you know, if I'm the law enforcement officer and we got like some sort of thrupple.
Yeah.
My, my, my, my ears perk up.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I would think so.
Yeah.
But again, we're going.
Okay.
So we go back to their interviewing all of the witnesses, right?
So what they learn.
You know, you've got to get the facts prior to this crime prior to the officers responding.
So on July 3rd, they learn that that Lauren spent time with Maxwell and Hill.
They were, they were close.
They were friends, right?
I mean, they had barbecues together.
Their kids played on a trampoline together.
Yeah.
Lauren's got an eight-year-old.
And these two got a kid.
They got a kid.
I can't remember.
Yeah.
And on July 3rd, that day before, even though Lauren only lived a mere 50 feet or so away,
she and a male friend stay at Maxwell and Hill's home overnight.
Good Lord.
What do we call this, Ashley?
I don't know.
Yeah, this is, yeah, who knows what this is called.
So July 3rd, Whiteners at their house.
July 4th, Whiteners spends the day with Maxwell and Hill.
Her friend, her male friend, he's reported to have left at around noon.
So, again, 4th of July, partying the group ate Chinese food, drinking beers.
Right?
So, it's a 4th of July, get together.
Right?
Nothing says a 4th of July like Chinese food and wise county and fireworks.
Yeah.
That is 4th of July at its finest, okay?
So, they're starting to get some of the stories, understanding some of the relationship,
okay?
They know that Lauren was reportedly very friendly with the neighbors to the horse down.
So, we talked about the July 8th, the black latex gloves mean July 9th,
the consent to search at Salimus' apartment.
July 10th is when they interview Billy and learn about a lot of this threesome stuff, if you will.
So, we're going to go to July 11th.
Investigators ask Eric Maxwell to return to the sheriff's office for another interview.
This time, Maxwell was met by wise county sheriff's office investigators and A. Texas Ranger.
The interview took on a different tone.
All right?
This is not, tell us about this.
You know, such a friendly, hey buddy, let's just get the facts here.
This turns into an interrogation.
Yeah.
And those are always rough.
And this turns into, we talked about the polygraphs earlier.
Investigators tell Maxwell that they had brought in a polygrapher from the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Department of Justice.
The U.S. Department of Justice flew down to Wise County for a polygraph.
How common would that be?
I don't think it would be common at all.
Yeah.
Right?
Because typically in your own lot, like in the foot, let's say for the Dallas police partners, they have their own.
You have your own, but then going back to Rick Holden, you have him drive out that, Rick Holden is the, in Dallas, what worked is the premier best of the best.
So they might contract with a guy like, they contract with Rick Holden, come out and do this type.
The legit investigators know he is the best one.
So they're not going to call in and then know.
Now, again, it is Wise County.
Does their budget allow for this?
I don't know.
So, well, I mean, they're not to pay the U.S. Department of Justice something I presume or no.
Not necessarily.
All right.
They call them out.
Yeah.
So they tell, they tell Maxwell, hey, we've got this polygrapher here.
They're interrogating them.
Take a polygraph.
And he says, okay, I'll do that.
And he takes a polygraph.
Yeah.
So this is a nine and a half hour interrogation.
Polygraph.
I did a half hour exam.
Throughout that entire time,
Maxwell is continuing his claims of innocence.
I didn't do anything.
I didn't do anything.
The investigators tell Maxwell that he fails his polygraph.
I don't know if that's true or not.
Very well could be.
This would go too far off down rabbit holes.
You're allowed to do that.
You can just say.
Yeah.
You can just lie about.
Yeah.
You can lie.
I mean, that's somebody.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can definitely do that.
Good Lord.
Yeah.
There is an investigative.
Athlete Bailey was right.
All right.
Yeah.
There's an investigative need for it in some cases, right?
Again, going off into this whole polygraph thing, you know, obviously,
we have people that would have a better opinion of it or have much more knowledge of it
than what I have or when any of us would have.
When they tell him he's failed this thing.
He fails the polygraph.
He keeps saying.
It may or may not be true.
But anyway.
I did not kill my neighbor.
I didn't kill Lauren.
I mean, he is screaming it.
They let him leave.
Right.
He doesn't confess to it.
Whether he failed the polygraph didn't fail the polygraph.
Who knows.
They let him leave.
Same day.
The investigators also interview a female witness.
They interview Maxwell's father.
And a person that we only knew as that I only know of as Ace.
I don't know if that's his real name, nickname.
I have no idea.
That is my whole name, Ace.
Now, this polygraph, I mean, this, well, this interrogation polygraph on July 11th is not all that they were doing though.
Simultaneously, investigators had obtained a search warrant for Maxwell's house.
Okay.
Well, they are there interviewing him.
You have other investigators that are executing a search warrant at his, at his home at 660 North Main Street.
So during the search, investigators utilized, um, blue star.
It's a.
Yeah.
Put a name for bloom and all.
What is liminal?
We'll get it.
We'll go.
In short, it makes blood glow.
Right.
I don't want to get too far off into the sign.
Because I'm not, frankly, that versed in it, but it makes blood glow.
Rather, it's visible to the naked eye or not.
Okay.
So they, they use the blue star to illuminate items that appear to have blood on them.
And this is in Maxwell's house, Maxwell and their apartment.
And we'll, we'll put a link just so the listeners can know what it is.
Um, so once they do that, um,
once they, they, they use the liminal, they're also going to use what we're going to call a hema stick.
And that's what that is.
It's a, it's like a presumptive positive test, right?
This is not in a lab environment.
This is at the crime scene.
Yeah.
Um, this is where the presumptive test is what I would call rather rudimentary.
It gives the investigators an idea.
Now what I, what I can speak to would be more in the drug world.
We had these little, the technology has changed, but we had these little things.
We'll call them narco pouches.
So if you come up to a white powdery substance that you think is cocaine,
you put a very small sample in there.
It had three ampules.
You break these three ampules, shake it up, and it would turn blue.
If it was, if it was, yeah.
And you would note, this is presumptive positive.
This, I'm not a chemist.
I'm not a scientist.
This is not in a lab environment.
It's just reacting with these reagents to say that it's presumptive.
So this hemistic is the same thing they, they say.
It's a similar.
Yeah, they, they take what they think might be blood particles.
And they put it in this thing on the scene.
Yeah.
Whatever the chemical reactions are, whatever else.
Yep.
It shows up.
Yes or no?
So the presumptive blood test showed positive results for the presence of human blood
on the items that were collected.
We'll talk about that.
Now also on the front porch of Maxwell's residence, they noticed a red pan of gasoline.
Your rather standard gas can, right?
Yeah, right.
In the pantry, investigators located a bottle of lighter fluid,
in which they said a presumptive test for human blood showed a positive result.
In total, during this search warrant, investigators submitted five items to the crime lab.
Okay.
So three, three of them were swabs collected to the positive reaction that he mystic.
One piece of fabric from a love seat.
Uh-oh.
Okay.
And one half towel from a trash bag on Maxwell's front porch.
So Maxwell is at the sheriff's office, getting interrogated, taking a polygraph.
Other detectives are at his house.
And they ultimately walk out with what we know, five things.
The three samples, the love seat fabric, and the half towel.
Yeah.
That's it.
Okay.
Which, which, you know, you know, if there's blood or whatever, people, other people live there,
be their blood, could be whatever.
So it seems like they're hot on the trail, right?
Maybe.
I mean, they've, they've already done the consent to search.
Consent to search is when somebody allows you to search their house car person.
Right.
Out of without a warrant, out of warrant.
They do that on July 9th with this guy, Salimess.
It seemingly doesn't result in anything more.
July 11th, they're there at Maxwell's, interviewing, searching.
July 12th comes around.
Yeah.
Okay.
So Maxwell leaves on July 11th, free to go.
No charges, no nothing.
So July 12th, we're talking one week after the crime, exactly seven days.
A restoration crew cleans out the crime scene.
We'll put a link to that video.
So they're at Lauren's duplex pulling out those big heavy trash bags, the contractor bags,
just loading up a trailer.
On the video, you're going to see the char on the wall from the smoke.
It's got a couple cross outlines.
Perhaps she had some crosses hanging on the wall.
What she did.
This crew cleans out the crime scene.
Now, who says to do that?
Yeah, that's what I want to know.
I don't know, right?
But this seems like, I mean, I don't know how this, I do not know how exactly how this case ends.
I have an idea.
I wouldn't have thought anything was out of the ordinary.
I think a week in theory would be enough time.
Did you have, obviously, the property owner wants, you know, to get this.
Yeah, that's them.
I mean, this guy, the guy that owns this apartment, I mean, this duplex owns all six of them.
Yeah, right.
It is a investment slash business.
Yeah, sure, of course.
Tragic, absolutely.
Life goes on.
But life goes on, yeah.
Okay.
He needs to get the thing completely cleaned.
So I think what we're going to end this one.
Yeah.
For today, for this episode, in addition to the crime scene being cleaned out, on or about the same day,
it could have been the 13th, July 11th, 12th, 13th.
We know that investigators applied to the court to install a tracker on an unknown vehicle.
Okay.
Okay.
So now this could be somebody that they've already identified or somebody they want to know more about.
Could be Slee Mass, who knows?
Yeah.
Who knows?
Yeah, exactly.
And where it leads me to believe probably not though, on the same day, they also searched Eric Maxwell's Acura.
So what I think probably happened was they either had a search warrant for that Acura.
And maybe it was a consent to search.
I don't know which.
But during the course of that search is when they installed the tracker on his vehicle.
And that's just a theory that I have.
But I think there would be, there would be a lot of coincidence to stand, stands the reason.
So now they want to know where else is Maxwell going?
Yeah.
Right?
The first data, it's only giving you present data.
So where is this guy going?
Yeah.
Okay.
So we're going to leave it at that for now.
So again, I think the recap, we had the murder, the fire, the murder, the mountain of evidence that was recovered.
We have a couple seemingly suspects identified.
We know that Maxwell, part of the, my new term that I've learned, the thrupple, thrupple.
Thrupple.
Thrupple.
Seems to be a suspect.
Yeah.
You know, they brought him in.
They've given him a polygraph.
They've quote interrogated him.
Yeah.
So he seems to be a suspect.
They release the crime scene.
It's cleaned out.
The crime scene's cleaned out by a civilian restoration crew.
A crew that has nothing to do with the investigation.
Yeah.
So with that, we're going to leave it there.
And when we get to episode eight, next week, we're going to go down the other roads or avenues that this case goes.
Yeah.
Because I mean, there's certainly maybe what is key is stuff they don't collect possibly.
I don't know.
Huh.
There's a reason we're talking about this one.
It goes down so many different trails that I would have never imagined in the year 2019.
So yeah, they're going to have to tune in and check this out.
Yeah.
Please do tune in.
And we'll be back on episode eight next week.
Where do we need to tell people exactly where else they can find us?
Actually, can you help with that?
Yeah.
So they can find us on the Sunset Launch DFW on Patreon and or YouTube.
Y'all also collaborate on this with the Sunset Launch on Y'alls.
Y'alls YouTube page, which is under Signal 51 Chronicles Podcast.
You can also find this on Apple Spotify.
Anywhere that you get your podcast on the Sunset Launch DFW and or Signal 51 Chronicles.
All right.
Yes.
Check those out and make sure you share them so that the rest of the world can know what you know.
And we will see you next week.
That's good stuff, Jake.
Good stuff, man.
All right.
All right.
See y'all.
This is a stolen water media production.