A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)
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Who is the victim in this case?
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murph.
If you're a longtime listener of this show or just a true crime fan in general, you probably can't count the number of times you've heard how DNA or modern forensics have helped solve a crime or catch a killer. So it's sometimes hard to believe just how new most of this science really is.
And you may be asking, what did investigators do before these techniques became so commonplace? I mean, fingerprinting has been around for most of the 20th century. But even when I started my law enforcement career in the 1980s, things like DNA profiling, GPS tracking, even doorbell cameras, they all sounded like stuff of science fiction.
And the answer? What we often describe as old school detective work. Gathering facts, building a timeline, and speaking with people. Witnesses, sometimes over and over, until the potential lies are exposed and the truth shakes out.
Because while the hard proof can often be revealed in a piece of science, at the heart of every crime is a story, an intricate web of human desires, fears, and frailties. And with just the right combination of patience, logic and gut instinct, a good investigator can unravel that web and reconstruct a story that may have begun with a single dark thought, but ended in murder.
This was truly detective work to me. This is what an investigation should have been. You know, it wasn't send some DNA swabs off. send some foot impressions off. It was myself and my partners working together and just keeping at it like every single day until we solved it.
Retired detective Michelle Amacone worked in law enforcement for 29 years, 20 of which were spent as a homicide detective in Southern California. And it is no exaggeration to say that she was a trailblazer.
When I went to homicide in 1994, I was the only female homicide detective in the whole county.
In 1998, Michelle was a detective with a sheriff's office in Riverside County, an area that spans from greater Los Angeles to the Arizona border. And she was first on the call sheet on January 12th when a frantic 911 call came in just past 11 p.m. from a home in the Moreno Valley.
Somebody broke into our house and we heard gunshots. When did they break into your house? Just now.
The caller was a 12-year-old child. He and his mother were asleep in his bedroom when they were awakened by the sound of multiple gunshots from inside the house.
Who's crying? My mother. Who broke into your house? Here. Hello? Who broke into the house?
I don't know who broke into the house. All I know is I think my husband was shot and I did not want to go look.
The boy's mother, Lisa James, believed the gunshots came from the bedroom where her husband had been sleeping. And as you can imagine, she feared the absolute worst.
Okay, ma'am, we have several people on the way, okay? Okay, do not hang up the phone.
Sheriff's deputies were the first to arrive. When they entered the primary bedroom, they were met with a horrific scene. Lisa's husband and the 12-year-old's father, Kevin James, was lying lifeless under blankets stained with a massive amount of blood.
It was a call out. I was sleeping. It was like, I don't know, two in the morning or something. The first responding deputies were already there. And the information that I had was that there was a lone male who had been shot three times in the head while he was sleeping. He was still in his bed.
And while every detective is trained to keep an open mind, you can't help but start thinking about the most likely scenarios.
What were the circumstances of the home invasion?
The first things that ran through my mind were, you know, home invasion, the wife. And now those were really my two main thoughts, I think, when I was heading to the scene was, okay, home invasion or, you know, the wife. The wife's the only one in the house.
The James home was located in a middle-class neighborhood, not an area with a particularly high crime rate. So with the arrival of police on the quiet suburban street, neighbors were understandably alarmed.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is the victim in this case?
0:20–4:46
2
What were the circumstances of the home invasion?
4:46–9:44
3
How did the investigation begin?
9:44–14:55
4
What evidence was found at the crime scene?
14:55–20:19
5
Who were the key witnesses in the case?
20:19–24:09
6
What role did the 12-year-old son play in the investigation?
24:09–28:34
7
Who is George Taylor and what is his connection to the crime?
28:34–32:59
8
What were the detectives' suspicions about Lisa James?
32:59–41:07