Matt Murphy

I really wasn't hopeful that that would be anything to do with what we were dealing with.

But then when the second body came up, so you've got a female –

that doesn't have all the limbs attached and everything that shows it's been in saltwater for three to six months.

And then you have a almost full term baby that doesn't have the same marine activity on it and looks, you know, essentially normal.

You know, that kind of tells you a story of what you got there, especially when they're found so close in proximity to each other and to where Scott was fishing.

So when you have that, that pretty much, oh, okay, well, we can figure this one out.

And we put together an arrest warrant for Scott based on that information and other information that we had gathered to that point.

And it was almost interesting the way this case went for that four-month period.

Because it seemed like anytime we ran out of something or we're getting close to finishing up all the different things we were doing besides Scott, then all of a sudden something would pop up and it would like fill the tank with gas and we'd have more to go on.

And so this was a point before those bodies showed up.

We were just about ready to charge him.

But unfortunately, the D.A.

in Stanislaus County.

He said, hey, if you don't have a body, I'm not going to give you a filing.

Now, we've been working this case as a no body homicide from the start.

And we were using a protocol that was developed by a prosecutor from Merced County, south of Stanislaus County, where we lived.

And.

This case fit everything on all the things that he had on the protocol with you have a victim that doesn't have any prior history of leaving.

They've got ties to the community.

They don't have any family problems.