Mikita Brottman

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Episode 163: Three 911 Calls (final episode).

Saturday, July 10, 2021

FINAL EPISODE. This will be the last episode of Forensic Transmissions. Enjoy the back catalog and check out the great trial archive at Court TV.

(1) In November, 2009, Jiverly Wong, 41, walked into the American Civic Association, where he had recently taken an English class with other immigrants, and shot 13 former classmates and association employees and wounded four others, firing 98 shots from two handguns in about a minute, before taking his own life. Wong was apparently angry after being laid off from his job at a vacuum cleaner plant, and his broken English made it difficult for him to apply for unemployment benefits. This 911 call reveals the confusion at the scene.

(2) In February 2009, Susana De Jesus and Karen Jackson left work in Pearland, Texas and Susana was forced into a car at gunpoint and driven away. Karen was too frightened to call the police. Two hours later, she called her brother in Canada, who called 911 to report what his sister had seen. Susana’s car was found within hours but her body was not found for a month, when it was discovered in an abandoned trailer at an office park. Nicholas-Michael Edward Jean confessed to killing Susana for her 2008 Cadillac.

(3) Ryan Emmons, 31, of Montcalm County, called 911 just after 2 a.m. on April 17 2009 to say that his wife was giving birth in the family bathtub.  Apparently, neither Ryan nor his wife Carri, 27, had any idea that Carri was pregnant, even though they’d had three previous children. Ryan thought his wife had just put on a little extra weight after she quit smoking. Dispatch operator Angie Adams did a great job helping Ryan with the delivery, even though she was only three days out of training.

Listen to the episode here.

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Episode 162: Neil Entwistle Trial Testimony

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

On 22 January 2006, the bodies of 27-year-old Rachel and 9-month-old Lillian Entwistle were found shot to death in the master bedroom of their family home in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. The immediate suspect was Rachel’s husband Neil, 28, a British citizen, who bought a one-way ticket to London and left the country hours after the murders. Back home, Neil met up with some of his old college friends, Ben Prior and Dashiel Munding, and told them he’d come home to find his wife and daughter dead. The friends went drinking, went to see a movie, and talked about helping Neil to find a place to live. Entwhistle later told police he had fled to England to be with his family because he was so distraught over the death of his wife and daughter. Police suspected a failed murder-suicide pact.

Neil had told Rachel that he had an income of $10,000 a month from an “offshore account” and ran his own consulting business. In fact, he was broke and had been unemployed for 6 months. He had over $30,000 in credit card debt, had been spending money on escort services, and was under investigation for fraudulent eBay transactions. He was extradited from the U.K. and tried for double murder in June 2008. Found guilty, he was sentenced to life without parole, and is currently in a medium-security prison in Bridgewater, Mass. His parents continue to insist that their son is innocent of the murders, that Rachel was the true killer and that he will eventually be cleared and released from prison.

This episode contains the testimony of Ben Prior and Dashiel Munding about their time with Neil in London after the murders.

Listen to the episode here.

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Episode 161: Death of Ted Binion

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Ted Binion was a wealthy American gambling executive and one of the sons of Vegas casino magnate Benny Binion, owner of the Horseshoe Casino. Ted, a multi-millionaire, loved the high life and ran the Horseshoe for a while, hosting the casino’s poker tournaments. But in 1998, Ted, 55, was having problems. Due to his heroin addiction and associations with known criminals, he’d recently lost his gaming license and his ties to the casino.  His wife Doris had moved out, taking the couple’s daughter, Bonnie, after learning of Ted’s affair with a topless dancer named Sandra Murphy. Just before his death, he discovered that Sandra was cheating on him with a man named Rick Tabish.

On September 17, 1998, Ted was found dead from a combination of Xanax, heroin, and Valium. He’d recently bought 12 pieces of tar heroin from a street drug dealer, and had a Xanax prescription from his next-door neighbor, a doctor. Police believed the scene was staged by Sandra Murphy and Rick Tabish, who wanted Ted’s money (after losing his gaming license, Ted had taken all his gold out of the Horseshoe safe and buried it in a 12 foot deep underground vault in Pahrump, Nevada). In 1999, Sandra and Rick were found guilty of murder, but the verdict was overturned, and after a second trial, they were acquitted.

This episode contains testimony from the second trial, in May 2005, featuring a line-up of memorable Las Vegas characters. On the stand in this segment are Jan Jones, Ted’s friend and mayor of Las Vegas, followed by Laura Brown, longtime friend and the wife of Ted’s attorney.

Listen to the episode here.

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Episode 160: Interview with a Vampire

Monday, June 7, 2021

Roderick Ferrell and Heather Wendorf were best friends at school in Eustis, Florida before Rod moved with his mother to Murray, Kentucky. In Kentucky, he began dressing in black and talking about vampires. When he visited his friends in Eustis over Thanksgiving of 1996, he said he’d formed a vampire cult and got four of them to leave home and join him: Heather Wendorf, Scott Anderson, Charity Keese, and Dana Cooper, all teenagers. But Rod’s car was too cramped to fit all five, and they needed money, so before they left, on November 25, 1996, Rod and Scott broke into Heather’s parents’ house, intending to steal their 1993 Ford Explorer and some cash. Richard Wendorf, 49, was lying on the couch watching television. Rod tells the detective how he attacked Mr. Wendorf with a crowbar and “smacked the fuck out of him until he finally quit breathing so yes, I’m admitting to murder…. it took him about twenty fucking minutes to stop breathing, I swear, I thought he was immortal or something.” When Ruth Wendorf, 54, emerged from the shower, Rod says he was going to let her live, but “she clawed me, clawed me, spilled fucking scolding hot coffee on me, pissed me off” so he killed her, too. “I just took the bottom of the crowbar, and kept stabbing it through her skull and whenever she fell down I just continually beat her until I saw her brains falling on the floor.”
After four days of driving through four states, the teenage vampires ran out of cash, so Charity Keese called her grandmother and asked her to wire money. Her grandmother called the cops, who tracked down the teenagers and arrested them in the parking lot of a Howard Johnson’s in Baton Rouge. Ferrell, 17, pleaded guilty and was, for a while, the youngest person in the United States on Death Row. His penalty was later reduced to life without parole.

Listen to the episode here.

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Episode 159: Betty Broderick Trial

Sunday, May 30, 2021

During her 17-year marriage, Betty Broderick worked and raised four children while her husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, went through medical school and law school. When Dan finally qualified, he was in high demand as an attorney in medical malpractice cases. The family moved to a lavish house in San Diego, and Betty no longer needed to work. Not long after the move, however, Dan, unhappy that Betty had aged and put on weight, began an affair with his 28-year-old secretary, Linda, who many said looked like a younger version of Betty. Eventually, he divorced Betty and married Linda. Betty, 41, angry at being cast aside, became obsessed with Dan and Linda. Finally, on November 5, 1989, she broke into their home and shot them both to death. She said she had been driven over the edge by years of physical and psychological abuse. Her first trial, in 1990, ended in a hung jury. At her second trial on December 11, 1991, she was convicted of two counts of second degree murder and later sentenced to 32-years-to-life in prison. The case received extensive media attention. Middle-aged women in particular sympathized with Betty’s ordeal. She is now 73 years old, and incarcerated at the California Institute for Women in Corona.

This episode contains the testimony of Betty’s boyfriend after her divorce, businessman Bradley T. Wright, who describes how he found the bodies and called 911; L.A.Times reporter Amy Wallace, and Betty’s friend Helen Pickard.

Listen to the episode here.

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Episode 158: Testimony of Vanessa Bulls

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

On April 7, 2006, Kari Baker, an elementary school teacher, was found dead in the family home near Waco, Texas. Her husband Matt, a Baptist minister, said that Kari had been depressed and suicidal since the death of the couple’s young daughter Cassidy some years earlier. However, Kari’s family and friends did not believe she was suicidal, and suspected Matt was responsible for her death.
In January 2010, Matt Baker was tried for the murder of his wife. Critical testimony came from Vanessa Bulls, 27, his former mistress, who told the jury that Matt had drugged his wife, handcuffed her to the bed under the guise of spicing up their marriage, then smothered her with a pillow until she died. Vanessa said Matt had talked about killing his wife and making it look like a suicide. She said she didn’t help Matt plan the murder or participate in it, but she never reported it to authorities because she was afraid of exposing the affair that she said began about two months before Kari’s death. Vanessa also said she was afraid of being arrested for knowing about Baker’s plans but not stopping him.

Listen to the episode here.

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Episode 157: Phil Spector Trial

Friday, May 7, 2021

Melissa Pileggi Grosvenor said she met Phil Spector in New York in 1991 when she was a waitress, found him “very charming, quick-witted,” and was in a platonic relationship with him for a year and a half. She testified that after a dinner in Beverly Hills she went back to his house, but when she told Spector around 2 a.m. that she was tired and wanted to go, he left the room and returned with a gun, which he holstered and “started walking back and forth, cursing and talking crazy.” She said after she returned to New York he started asking her out. She said when she declined he left such messages as, “I’ve got machine guns and I know where you live.”

May 10, 2007, Melissa Grosvenor testified at the trial of Phil Spector in Los Angeles. Later in the trial, Melissa’s estranged sister’s Angela Pileggi-Silverstein takes to stand to describe how her sister once stole a plaque in Georgia and boasted about being in Court TV. However, this did nothing to refute Melissa’s testimony. Many other women testified that Spector also pulled a gun and threatened them when drunk.

Two years after testifying in the Spector trial, Angela Pileggi died from a drug overdose on a Caribbean cruise in December 2009, aged 45. On April 13 of that year, the jury found Phil Spector guilty of murdering actress Lana Clarkson. On May 29, 2009, he was sentenced to nineteen years to life in state prison. He died in prison in 2021.

Listen to the episode here.

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Episode 156: The Ice Cream Vigilante

Thursday, April 22, 2021

In this episode, Norma Jean Towers, of South Tampa, Florida, tells the jury that she was a regular at a met karaoke bar, where, in 2009, she met Michael Keetley, 49, a quiet, charming ice cream man. In 2010, she learned that Keetley had been shot four times and his ice cream truck robbed. He was left permanently disabled, and his injuries required surgery and therapy. He was forced to move back in with his parents and slept in a hospital bed in the dining room. He told a detective that “he wished every day that the people who did this would be brought to justice.”
When he was well enough to leave the house, he and Norma Jean began dating, but according to Norma Jean, when the case languished and nobody was arrested, Keetley became intent on vigilante justice. She describes how Keetley once took her near the scene where he was shot and asked her to write down vehicle license plate numbers and descriptions. She was afraid, she said, she asked him not to do that again. She said they watched a television marathon of old movies by Charles Bronson on vigilante justice, like Death Wish. One day that fall, they went to a gun show, and he purchased a .45-caliber handgun.
Finally, on Thanksgiving Day 2010, Keetley was out for revenge. He fired at a group of men sitting on a stoop, killing brothers Juan and Sergio Guitron and injuring four others. But they were the wrong men. Keetley, 49, was tried on two counts of first-degree murder and four counts of attempted murder. The case ended in a mistrial. A retrial is set for July 2021.

Listen to the episode here.

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Episode 155: Michael Colucci Trial

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Michael and Sara Lynn Colucci had been through some ups and downs in their marriage. Sara, apparently had never fully recovered from the suicide of her first husband. She was smart, quick-witted, and impulsive, but also prone to depression. At first, she seemed to have been happy in her marriage to South Carolina jeweler Michael Colucci, but due to some bad business decisions, money had become tight and the couple were facing significant financial losses.

On the way back from a difficult discussion money issues with their attorney on May 20, 2015, Sara apparently asked Michael to pull up outside a warehouse they owned so she could slip through the fence and use the bathroom, as she had done many times before. When she didn’t return, Michael went to investigate, and found that Sara had hung herself with a garden hose. However, evidence collected at the scene did not support Michael Colucci’s version of what happened, and indicated there was a fight or struggle.

In April 2017, while Michael Colucci was awaiting trial, his father Ivo Colucci, owner of Colucci’s Jeweler’s in Summerville, S.C., shot and killed his wife Doris in the family jewelry store. He was determined unfit to stand trial because he suffered from dementia; he was prone to violent outbursts. Ivo Colucci died in 2018, aged 84. In December 2018, a mistrial was declared in the Michael Colucci case, and he remains in prison, awaiting retrial.

This episode contains the testimony of the Coluccis’ neighbor of seven years, Dorothy Montijo.

Listen to the episode here.

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Episode 154: Testimony of Myron Levin

Thursday, April 1, 2021
In this episode, Myron “Pepi” Levin takes the witness stand in the murder trials of Cherry Hill Rabbi Fred J. Neulander. The rabbi’s wife, Carol Neulander, was murdered in the family home in 1994. The two men responsible for the murder, Len Janoff and Paul Daniels, said they were paid by Fred Neulander, who was in love with a wealthy widow. Mr. Levin, who went to prison during the 1980s after being convicted in a food-stamp-theft scam, was Neulander’s racquetball partner and also testified in the rabbi’s second trial when the first was declared a mistrial. Levin said that Neulander asked him for help in finding a hit man months before Carol Neulander’s murder, but didn’t disclose the information to investigators until 1997 after he learned Neulander had cheated him in the purchase of a Torah. Fred Neulander received a life sentence for his wife’s murder, while Len Jenoff and Paul Daniels, who admitted beating Mrs. Neulander to death, were both given 23-year prison terms. Pepi Levin died in January 2007, at the age of 84.

Listen to the episode here.

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    • About me
    • About This Podcast
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  • “When we want to read of the deeds that are done for love, whither do we turn? To the murder column.”

    George Bernard Shaw.

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  • RSS Recent Episodes

    • Episode 163: Three 911 Calls (final episode).
    • Episode 162: Neil Entwistle Trial Testimony
    • Episode 161: Death of Ted Binion
    • Episode 160: Interview with a Vampire
    • Episode 159: Betty Broderick Trial
    • Episode 158: Testimony of Vanessa Bulls
    • Episode 157: Phil Spector Trial
    • Episode 156: The Ice Cream Vigilante
    • Episode 155: Michael Colucci Trial
    • Episode 154: Testimony of Myron Levin
    • Episode 153: Sanel Saint-Simon
    • Episode 152: Four 911 Calls
    • Episode 151: Pastor Lewis Clemons Deposition
    • Episode 150: Len Kachinsky Stalking Trial Part 2
    • Episode 149: Sean Foley Case
    • Episode 148: Bob Ward Trial Testimony
    • Episode 147: My Lai Massacre Testimony
    • Episode 146: Pamela Smart Trial Testimony
    • Episode 145: Luis Toledo Family Murder Trial
    • Episode 144: Jessica Chambers Case
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