305. Caught by the Algorithm: How Geo-Fencing Solved a Murder

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Like, people could be watching this on Netflix. Happy Monday. Thank you for being here. Tuning in on Netflix. It's a little different, but we're going to try not to think about it. It's just a regular episode, a regular week, a regular day. Okay, wait. Chill. Okay. If you're listening and you have no idea what we're talking about, or you're watching and you're like, huh? Garrett and I's podcast is now available on Netflix, so there might be new people listening or there might be some OG listeners who have also transferred over. Now, if you are new, I'm just going to give a quick rundown of what this is. If you randomly clicked on it and they're like, what the. What's happening? What is going on? I'm Garrett. And I'm Peyton. And. We're married. Yes. We are husband and wife. And six years ago, out of the blue. We started a podcast. I love true crime. And I have always, quote unquote, hated it. Hated it. As in, I'm not interested in it. I don't watch true crime documentaries. I don't watch or listen to anything true crime. Yeah. So I was wanting to do something in true crime. And I was telling Garrett, I was like, oh my gosh, I want to start a podcast. I just don't know who to have as a co-host because I don't want to do it alone. And he was like, well, I'll be your co-host. And I was like, Garrett, you hate true crime. How would that work? And he was like, well, maybe that can be the thing. You love it. And I hate it. And so. Six years later, here we are on Netflix. We're still here. We're still making episodes. And we're so glad that you guys love it. Quick. So Peyton tells me a new case each week. I never know what case Peyton is telling me. I don't. I usually don't know anything about the cases unless it's a high profile case. And I've come across it on the news or on social media. But even my social media, TikTok, Instagram has nothing to do with true crime. So again, I don't know anything. I don't know anything about the cases. I am non-scripted. I don't have any scripts, any parts at all. Yeah. And I just do the research. I basically create a research paper and then give a summary overview of a different case each week to Garrett. And you get his perspective from someone who absolutely hates true crime and mine as someone who has loved true crime since I can remember. And yeah, that's basically it. We could ramble forever, but we won't. If you heard a bark, that is our dog, Daisy, who is a part of the show, who's currently barking at us. She's the official mascot. But essentially, the meat of the podcast is you are just getting nitty gritty details about true crime cases from someone who loves it and someone who hates it. Now, before we jump into every single episode, we do something called Garrett's 10 seconds, which is basically Garrett's time in the podcast to number one, start us off on a lighter foot before we get into murder. And number two, just. Just venture into his world for a second because most of the script is my take on true crime. So yeah, this is his time to shine. I'll make this pretty quick because you'll kind of get used to my 10 seconds and see a lot more of it if you keep listening. And we've already been rambling for a little bit at the beginning of the podcast. So my 10 seconds this week is for those who have been listening and know about the podcast is I have been working on opening up my podcast. And I'm opening a bagel shop. If you don't like bagels, it's not for you. And I'm sorry. But if you do like bagels, I'm opening a bagel shop. It's happening. Permit has been acquired. It is in my hands. I started construction. We should be done in about eight to 10 weeks. And then we'll be opening. It's crazy. I'll keep everyone updated. I know everyone's always like a bagel shop. It's going to be amazing. I'm excited. On that note, let's hop into today's case. Our sources for this episode are. It's something a lot of us don't even really think about anymore, especially when it comes to what we are sharing through our phones. We offer up our location to friends and family to keep each other safe. We literally post what we're doing in our day-to-day lives for complete strangers to see. And sometimes we don't even know what terms we're agreeing to, like sharing our cookies and search history with private companies, all by checking one little box on a web page. Now, with technology, we've obviously surrendered a lot of our privacy. Sometimes unknowingly. Sometimes we don't even really care. But usually, we don't think about the consequences it might have later on. And that's the thing about cell phones and web pages and social media platforms. They are designed to keep that fine print hidden, to make you feel like your privacy is locked away in that little screen. The truth is, when we agree to a lot of these terms and conditions, privacy is honestly no longer a right. It becomes a privilege. When you disrupt the social order, when you break the rules society has put into place, those secrets that you thought were contained in your cell phone can be used against you and in ways you didn't even know were possible. So today, I am taking you to Atlanta, Georgia, as we dial back the clock to 2018. Now, over the years, Atlanta has become a pretty major hotspot for the entertainment industry. Thanks to tax breaks and other incentives, the city has become kind of the Bollywood of the South. Production for a lot of movies and TV shows have migrated to this state, which means a lot of people pursuing their dreams in the entertainment career have as well. And that's including 31-year-old Mitchell Jones Jr. Mitchell was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, on August 7, 1987. After graduating high school in 2006, he went on to study the arts at Gannon University. This was a private Catholic college in his hometown. While there, Mitchell worked at the local Christian center and had a few different sales jobs. But after graduating, there was one dream he knew he needed to pursue, acting. Mitchell decided to follow those dreams by heading south to Atlanta. He found a place just outside. In Marietta, Georgia. And there, it seemed like Mitchell really blossomed. He kind of came out of his shell. He told friends he never really felt safe in Erie, but in Atlanta, he could be himself. He didn't have to hide, which was an important shift for Mitchell, who was also gay. Have you seen those videos recently of all the actors having to act in anything that's like action or sci-fi? Like they're just acting in front of nothing? You know what I'm talking about? Like on the screens? Yes, like on green screens and stuff? I could never be an actor. There's no way. It does go to show you how talented they really are. Not that it's cringy, but kind of. Oh, yeah. Like just playing pretend? I mean, good for them, because I could not do that. But you know what I'm talking about? Have you seen those? Yeah, like in. Like Stranger Things. No. They just posted one, and they were. It's just. Like in Eclipse, when she's petting a guy in a green suit? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And pretending it's Jacob? Ew! I know. Ew. I couldn't do it. Okay, so like I said, Mitchell, he worked in a Christian center back home, but he is gay, and he's now moved to Atlanta, and he's like, oh my gosh, I feel a lot more comfortable here. And as Mitchell established a life and started building his career in Georgia, he gained a huge circle of friends. And they all said Mitchell had an incredible energy. He was a blast to be around. He was funny and lighthearted. He also dated a lot of people. He also dated around, but kept things mostly casual as he was focusing on acting. And everyone who knew him at this time didn't mince words when they said he was actually extremely talented. Now, unfortunately, not many people would get to see Mitchell's talents on the big screen because his life was cut short that November 2018. Now, it's the day after Thanksgiving. So Black Friday, November 23rd, 2018. and that night a woman named Lynette Hurt hears a commotion in the apartment next to hers so this apartment obviously shares a wall with Mitchell Jones Jr.'s apartment and while he sometimes plays his music a little louder than she would prefer she actually really likes Mitchell they're good neighbors she's older than him but she would cook for him she kind of became a shoulder for him to cry on she was sort of like an aunt to him at this point and she's used to him having friends over and things getting a little rowdy but for some reason this Black Friday feels a little different it sounds like Mitchell is actually fighting with someone in his apartment there's yelling and banging but Lynette doesn't want to be the nosy neighbor by knocking on Mitchell's door it's after 9 p.m. she figures okay whatever is going on it's Mitchell's business so she just goes upstairs and heads to bed now about a half hour later the local 911 operator receives a phone call it's around 9 30 p.m. when a man calls and says he's hurt and he needs them to send help okay tell me exactly what happened sir tell me the address he doesn't offer his name he can't even muster the strength to give them his address all he can say is he needs the police because he's dying now luckily 911 traces the call to an address 3400 laurie joe dry now around 10 p.m. police and first responders enter the place easily the front door is unlocked and they hear someone upstairs calling from the bedroom saying help me when they get up there they find a black male lying on his bedroom floor up against a wall covered in blood and he keeps saying he was shot even though his wounds to responders appear to be more like stab wounds okay now this victim is in and out of consciousness so when they ask who did this to him he says he can't tell them his name but the police are wondering if he can't or if he won't so without even getting the victim's name they rush him on off to the hospital and then they find his wallet and id this is 31 year old mitchell jones jr but who did this to him and why well that question becomes even more pressing as the night goes on because mitchell doesn't survive the ride to the hospital gosh he is pronounced dead before they even get there which is so devastating to me in cases like this when a victim themselves is aware enough to try and call police and get help and police do respond but they end up not surviving anyways like i just can't i don't like thinking about those last moments so the police now have a homicide investigation on their hands and the silver lining is they have a good amount of blood evidence at this crime scene that might actually help them identify mitchell's attacker see mitchell had been stabbed in the face oh my gosh in his head and his torso which meant it was unlikely he ever even made it out of the bedroom with those injuries that night so when they find that there's blood on the wall outside of the bedroom leading down the staircase and then those drops of blood cheese are on the door frame headed outside they're pretty confident that this blood belongs to a different person because mitchell most likely never even left his room and bled in the apartment we've talked about this before on the podcast usually when someone is stabbed many times um it's usually a case of some sort of rage or passion or something so we'll see especially because mitchell's bedroom showed signs of an intense struggle there's broken items and things turned over in the room and mitchell's bedroom showed signs of an intense struggle whatever happened here went down with a fight it was very unlikely that the attacker left without injuries of their own which could also help them potentially identify a suspect later on if they find them soon enough but there's something else any seasoned police officer will tell you or garrett this was a crime of passion whenever you have a stabbing like this it's intimate it's close and it's personal i've done too many of these cases by now it's just it's getting out of hand i think i'm gonna have to quit that theory was reinforced by a few other clues around the place like all of these lit candles which made it seem like mitchell was maybe expecting a romantic encounter that night that maybe potentially went wrong plus mitchell was in his underwear when he was found there's no murder weapon in the house that they can find and police are very careful about collecting any blood evidence they can at the scene they also realize when they go to look for mitchell's phone they can't find it at least not the one he typically used mitchell did have a backup phone which he used to dial 911 but they discover early on that this isn't his primary device and when they couldn't find his usual phone they believe there was only one possibility and it was that mitchell's attacker whoever did this took the phone with him jeez and by the following day the investigation was really starting to heat up police began canvassing the neighborhood to see if there were any other witnesses to the crime now of course they spoke with the neighbor lynette who heard parts of the altercation though unfortunately nothing she said was very useful for the investigation and can you imagine she wakes up the next morning and police are knocking on her door like hey your neighbor was murdered last night and she's like oh my gosh i genuinely heard this fighting and was like i don't want to be a nosy yeah but like how are you supposed to know right you don't but just imagine that reality the next morning and how awful that would be yeah i mean a lot of people would put blame on themselves but hopefully not no there's nothing it's not their fault they didn't do anything yeah so there is another neighbor though who did give police a good clue their property directly faced mitchell's home and the night before they caught something on their outdoor camera it showed a car pulling into the driveway at 909 p.m and then the same car pulled out and sped off about 20 minutes after that this was right around the time that mitchell placed the 911 call police are obviously like okay you literally got our killer on doorbell footage which is pretty usual nowadays police couldn't get a license plate off the grainy footage they couldn't even really tell the make and model of the car but they were able to zoom in on the brake lights which helped them narrow it down and eventually they decided they were looking for a dark colored buick lucerne which actually that's a pretty good clue because it's not that's not a car that everyone's driving it's not like it's a honda accord or a honda civic right so that really does narrow things down quite a bit if you're like me you hit a point in your life where you're like i've got to start taking my health seriously and then you got into supplements and next thing you know you have a cupboard full of stuff that you're not even sure works you 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One purchased, one donated, over 200 million donations and counting. Head over to bombas.com slash audio and use audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash audio. Code audio at checkout. And when police looked back at the footage from days and weeks before Mitchell's death, they saw that same car pull into his driveway on a few earlier occasions. I don't even know what that car looks like. This is someone who had been there quite a bit, which proved to the police Mitchell had known this person after all. Now at this point, the police were trying to follow every lead they could. They had subpoenaed Mitchell's phone records and were waiting on them to come back. And meanwhile, they were looking into everyone Mitchell was close to just trying to figure out his life. They knew he had a big social life and that he had dated a lot, which only made their pool of potential suspects larger. But when they speak to Mitchell's mother, she says there's one close friend Mitchell had in Atlanta that was like a sister to him, that if anyone knew the details of Mitchell's personal life, it was probably her. Her name was Jasmine. And when police speak with Jasmine, she says there was this one guy Mitchell was dating before he died that was giving off a lot of red flags, that there had been some physical altercations between the two. Two of them already, which actually fit something Mitchell's neighbor Lynette had told police, too, that there was a night prior to the murder when she also heard Mitchell fighting with another man. But the following day, she saw them outside together laughing. So she was like, OK, maybe it was just a little fight. Still, police are like this lead is worth pursuing. So they have Jasmine tell them more. She says Mitchell and this guy had broken up a few weeks before he died. Apparently, things reached a breaking point. When Mitchell kicked him out of his place one night. Problem is, Mitchell had never told Jasmine this guy's name. Apparently, they weren't all that serious because Mitchell only ever referred to him to Jasmine as that boy. Interesting. I wonder if they met on like a dating website like Tinder or something. We'll get there, though. He had shown her a few photos of this guy, the boy. And in one of those photos, Mitchell sent that boy. And he had his shirt off and he had a lot of tattoos, including one on his arm that read rest in peace, Brandon, with the date of a death. So police see this photo and they see an opportunity here. They go online and they start looking for a Brandon that passed away on that specific date. And they find someone who they think could be the Brandon referred to in this mysterious tattoo. And when they look at Brandon's social media, they find that he's a man. And they find that he's friends with a guy that looks exactly like that boy in the photo that Mitchell had been seeing. Police discover his name is Eric Hopkins. This being a pretty good lead, they immediately start looking into Eric's background and they find he actually has a criminal history. He had stabbed one of his previous lovers before. It was during a domestic dispute, though. I'm pretty sure it was a domestic dispute. So they find that he's a man. And they his partner survived. The coincidence was too much to ignore, though. So the next. I just hate DV cases are so hard because there's almost always past convictions or a history of history of abuse. And then it sucks because they abuse, abuse, abuse, abuse, abuse. And then a lot of times they kill someone. And it's just like, what are you supposed to do about that? Frustrating. It's definitely frustrating. You want to be like, what? How was this allowed? Yeah. Obviously, the next step was to get this Eric guy down to the station. So investigators try the nice way. They call him and ask, hey. Oh, good luck. Do you know a man named Mitchell Jones, Jr.? He says yes. And when they tell him, OK, well, he was killed a week ago. Eric responds by saying, are you serious? Now, to police, he does sound genuinely shocked in those audio recordings, but he must know. This doesn't look very good for him because at this point, he refuses to speak with the police and says they're going to have to contact his attorney. He wants nothing to do with the investigation, which honestly, I mean, good answer, honestly, not that dumb of him to be like one of my past boyfriend's lovers was killed and now you're calling me to ask about it. Yeah. So this is when police realize they're going to have to get him down to the station a different way if they actually want to talk to him. But luckily for them, Eric has. violated his parole for that stabbing charge. So 10 days after the murder, they move in and force Eric down to the station for an interview. Now, Eric openly admits he wasn't really in a relationship with Mitchell. They had just kind of fooled around occasionally, more of like a situationship. But the last time they spoke was a few days before the murder. So right before Thanksgiving, he denies having been to Mitchell's house that night or having anything to do with it. He says he was at a movie that night. And while the person he went with seemingly vouches for him, there's no other evidence that he was there. So police decide to take a sample of his DNA because they want to compare it to the blood found in Mitchell's home. But until they get those results back, they decide to keep pursuing Eric. Because right now, he's kind of the best lead they've got, which is why they get a search warrant for his phone to see what he's been up to. When they get a search warrant, I feel like I've asked this before, and they're searching his phone. I assume they don't actually. Do they actually like grab his phone or do they like grab it and make a copy of it? Do you know? Usually they confiscate the phone. The actual phone. Okay. Yeah. And if they have. Okay. So like, say police were responding, to an overage person talking to an underage person and they show up and both those people are there or even just the overage person is there, they will take their phone like on scene. They will be like, this is, you know, a part of our investigation. Yeah. That makes sense. I think in this case, I don't know. They have the warrant and I'm assuming they probably confiscated his phone. Interesting. Now, not only do they find that Eric and Mitchell spoke many times in the two weeks before, but they also find that they confiscated his phone. Before his murder, he also called a second number a lot. So this other guy in Eric's phone was named DeAndre Fleming. Now, basically they want to rule out the possibility that Eric may have had someone else kill Mitchell for him. So police follow this trail, which leads them to DeAndre Fleming's parents' house where he's still living. And when they get there right off the bat, they notice something suspicious. Because what do you think is literally sitting in DeAndre's parents' driveway when police pull up? The Buick. The car. A dark colored Buick. I mean, game over at that point. Just like the one that was seen coming and going pretty often from Mitchell's house. So police feel like they're steps away from solving this case. They feel like they're on the right track. They knock on the Fleming's door and they speak with DeAndre, who is the father of DeAndre Fleming. And DeAndre Fleming is the father of DeAndre who is seemingly very cooperative. But when they ask, okay, do you know Eric Hopkins? He's like, hmm, no, the name doesn't ring a bell. Which is hilarious considering all the calls that just came. Yeah. He's like, okay, you're being a little sketchy since we obviously know that you called his phone a bunch. So they pull out a picture of Eric and they show him. They're like, this is Eric. Are you sure you don't know him? And right away, DeAndre, he's like, oh yeah, that guy, I play video games with him. He says they never met in person, but the Eric has used DeAndre's phone as a hotspot to play video games before. I'm a little confused because how is that not possible if they haven't played in person? Like for a hotspot, you have to be somewhat near that person to use it. Yes. Well, let me explain it to you. So that doesn't make sense. So the explanation, of why the phone calls are there, if he's only using it as a hotspot actually does make sense to police. Because when your phone links to someone's hotspot, it actually appears like a phone call on your records. That's kind of how it shows this activity. Now, again, like Garrett just said, I had the same exact question. What I personally found strange about this was how Eric linked to DeAndre's hotspot if they never met. Because as far as I'm aware, you need to be in close proximity to link to someone's hotspot. So maybe the two were neighbors but just didn't know each other well. Either way, his story did seem to check out to the police, especially because when they look at DeAndre's cell and type in Eric's number, no past correspondence on text or the phone log come up. It really is just the hotspot. I'm really confused about this hotspot thing, but I'm going to ignore it. - Well, it's annoying because none of the sources or even police explain why that doesn't make any sense at all they're like yep it was just him connecting to the hot spot but they've never met in person like there's not there's no explanation that's literally like impossible all we have is that police apparently went forward with this explanation okay either way i mean all i can do is just take what i'm learning from sources but either way they decide to take a look inside the buick they're like hey can we look inside the buick and this is when they realize there's no blood or dna evidence in the buick that they can see it seems like it's just a coincidence that this random guy was hooking up to this guy's hot spot and it's completely random that his parents drive a buick get out of here that's insane and police are like okay well i don't think we have any choice but to clear him you I'm like every all the evidence makes sense in his connection to deandre and so he's cleared because police get word that the blood found inside mitchell's home that night is actually not a match for eric hopkins so like okay we only got to deandre through eric and now we're learning that the blood that we believe is from the attacker is not even eric hopkins blood in fact when they run that dna profile from the crime scene through codis there's no match in there either meaning investigators are basically back at square one when it comes to evidence this was until they get the records back on mitchell's missing cell phone so they are getting his records through his like logs and cell phone activity and here's where technology falls short while your phone records show who you call and text with it obviously doesn't show who you've been messaging over social media apps you would only be able to find that through going through someone's phone correct and getting into their app so if you send someone a dm to come over to your house that's not going to come up through a subpoena to say verizon you'd have to subpoena the social media platforms themselves to give you access to that specific user's data actually physically have the person's phone which i just don't think happens very often well i mean the phone's missing they literally until they find the attacker okay okay and then even then you got to know passwords or you still have to get a subpoena yeah i'm done i wasn't thinking about that so it's obviously a tedious process now the police were hoping mitchell would have texted or called the person who he invited over that night but they don't find any evidence of that on his logs the last person he spoke to was his neighbor so they believe that this conversation probably happened through a social media platform which they don't have access to at this time however they do notice something else interesting when they get his records back remember mitchell's phone number that he sent to mitchell's phone wasn't at the crime scene when police got there he had used a backup cell phone to call 9-1-1 his primary cell phone actually moved to the area of downtown atlanta after his murder so police are like well let's just go to his cell phone's last known location because we believe the attacker had it and it is an empty lot in downtown they're like maybe the suspect just ditched it there but they have no luck finding the attacker's phone number so they're the cell phone in this empty lot so this case hits another roadblock that was until march of 2019 one of the detectives on the case had just come back from an fbi training seminar where he learned about a new technique they were teaching known as geofencing i think we've talked about geofencing before on the egypt covington case but in case you missed it here is how it works google has this technology called geofencing and it's called geofencing and it's called geofencing sensor vault so whether you like it or not if you have a device that is using google it is tracking the device's location at all times whether you have your location history or permissions on or not so google has the ability to track you whether you're like yes or no google then stores all of this information in their sensor vault database and ever since 2016 law enforcement has been hitting up google to get this information when they think it might solve a crime there's even new special warrants for this kind of thing called geofencing warrants so what's kind of cool about this geofencing thing is that when a police department goes to google with a geofencing warrant they are basically saying hey we need a list of all the cell phones that were in this specific chosen area which is really cool because if you have like a crime scene in a specific area of town you can be like hey we're going to we need to know every single cell phone that was in this area from this time to this time and get a warrant for it so google basically hands over a map of a chosen area and that map shows what cell phones were inside a perimeter at a certain time so in mitchell's case that map would be the area around his apartment during the date and time of his murder all right guys we are jumping into an ad and it is wayfair now there was a time where i looked around my home and just thought i could elevate this like i don't want to be a victim of a crime but i don't want to be a victim of a crime i don't want to drop a ton of money on expensive furniture i'm wanting that expensive luxury look but at an affordable price and then enter wayfair i got couches from wayfair i got rugs from wayfair i got dressers from wayfair and most recently i just ordered a baby bassinet wayfair helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products great value and trusted reviews shop thousands of products across every style and budget and again guys anytime i'm looking for something specific i immediately check wayfair first i have been 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talking about sometimes it feels like you need to have everything figured out you don't go talk to someone go see what's going on visit better help.com husband to explore your payment options that's better help.com it's better help help.com husband now this technique is becoming more and more common in solving cases which is why you're hearing more and more often that murderers are leaving their phones at home like serial killers or turning their phones off because they don't want their phone with them even if their location services are turned off there's one stat i actually found from 2019 where google said they received about 180 requests for geofencing data a week now i imagine it's grown exponentially since 2019 crap that's a ton and by the way it's not just google if you have your location settings on any service provider can say where your cell phone was at at any given date and time i'm down that doesn't bother me police don't have to rely solely on pings from cell phone towers now which have already been messy when it comes to true crime and it's it's like paying said it's so complicated to deal with pings it's so complicated they can really narrow it down to a small radius to see exactly where your cell phone was and if you're carrying it where you were and when you were there now in terms of this investigation police paired that geofence down to the 500 feet surrounding mitchell's home in a 45 minute window around the time of his 911 call and they rule it down to four devices based on who came and went during that time because if someone's like sitting in their house their phone's going to be there the whole time versus coming murdering someone and leaving now two of those devices actually belonged to an elderly couple that lived down the road so they kind of crossed them out one was someone who was visiting a friend on the block so they crossed them out and then there was one that really stood out to investigators someone who left the geofence moments before mitchell placed his 911 call someone who hadn't even been on the police's radar before oh man a 22 year old old man named dante holmes dante had a history of aggravated assault and theft but he wasn't in the codis database which explained why police might not have gotten a hit on him through his dna so they get a subpoena for dante's phone because they're like hey this was in our it covered our warrant so now we can get a subpoena for his phone and they find an image he had uploaded to icloud right after the time of the murder it's a picture of a bloody wound on his leg but that's not all they find out that dante's mother had a brand new buick the time of mitchell's death and then sold it quickly after the incident that's insane that's insane also pretty damning remember how mitchell's phone traveled to the dante's house downtown atlanta area right after his death we'll guess whose phone was right there traveling alongside mitchell's phone at the same time dante's so this is more than enough to get an arrest warrant for dante holmes and on april 12 2019 almost six months after mitchell's death dante is taken into custody and one of the first things they do is take some of dante's dna to run it against the blood sample they have and then they start interrogating him which he does agree to without an attorney present now at first dante profusely denies having anything to do with mitchell's murder in fact he denies knowing mitchell at all and then little by little throughout the interrogation he begins to change his story he says okay yeah i do know mitchell but we just hooked up once or twice i didn't even actually know his name and the last time he saw him was actually back in september two months before the murder obviously police know this isn't true the buick was spotted on mitchell's neighbor's security camera several times in the weeks leading up to the murder so even if it was like september and then he just came back to the murder that's still a lie i think it's so funny because the geofencing also has him literally in the area so it's just like come on man give it up this is why it's like police don't know what's going on with him because he's been there for a long time and he's been there for a long time and he's been there for a long time and don't release all their cards or all their evidence even to the media 100 because you can catch people in lies like this and once you catch them in a lie then they have to backtrack and they lie again like it's just over at that right but even though he's caught in these lies he's not really budging so the interrogators change their tactic they start playing the how's your family gonna feel about all of this card and the listen you will feel better if you'll just confess because we have all this evidence we know you're lying and then dante finds out that mitchell's murder is finally gives in he says okay he went over there that night because he was going to call it quits with mitchell he claims mitchell called him over to talk about things invited him up to his room and he claims it was actually mitchell who started this dante says i turned around for a second when i was in his bedroom and then when i turned back around mitchell was standing there with a knife in his hand what a loser because no one can like there's no witnesses to be like oh he's lying so it's just like come on man so dante claimed that's when mitchell tried to stab him and dante then acted out of self-defense they get into an intense struggle fighting over the knife and dante said that was when mitchell cut his leg eventually he got the knife out of mitchell's hands and stabbed him in the back and then just kept going all in an effort to protect himself he then took the knife and mitchell's phone with him in a panic and fled the scene before getting rid of both items later on instead of calling 9-1-1 and saying oh my gosh this guy just tried to stab me and i stabbed him back in self-defense like please can you come here dante said it was never his intention when he arrived at mitchell's home that night for things to go down the way they did but police aren't really buying it they think if dante really did show remorse for what he did he wouldn't have stolen the victim's cell phone making it harder for him to call for help which is most likely to happen if he didn't get the knife out of mitchell's likely why he even took the phone he likely would have called 9-1-1 on his own to say what had happened yeah at least now they have a confession though whether he's saying it was self-defense or not and soon they do get confirmation that his blood also matches the blood on the door frame found at mitchell's house which is more than enough to get him indicted on charges of malice murder this is a criminal offense in georgia when a murder is committed with express or implied malice they also get him on aggravated assault and aggravated battery as well as two counts of felony murder it's safe to say the prosecution feels pretty confident about their case against dante however they aren't sure how this geofencing technology is going to translate to a jury are they going to understand it are they going to trust it and will they think it's also a violation of personal privacy luckily that's not the only evidence they're working with they do have dante's confession and his dna at the crime scene so they decide to pursue the death penalty and that's when dante's attorneys think okay maybe we should start talking about a plea deal three weeks before dante's trial is set to begin in january of 2020 his lawyers say he's changing his plea to guilty to avoid the death penalty which at that point you're just admitting everything right right he is sentenced to life in prison with that the state of georgia saw one of if not its first case ever using geofencing technology and mitchell jones gets the justice he deserves why like why like why sorry yeah like why what was the reason why was even the motive he never actually gives anything he says he does the typical i'm pleading guilty because i don't want the death penalty not because i actually did this like did they get in a fight like what was and the prosecution theory was just that like a lover's quarrel maybe didn't want to be broken up with whatever it had happened but i mean the truth is we'll never know but i do think it's important to know as far as true crime goes geofencing has actually sparked a lot of controversy in the years since mitchell's case i get it while law enforcement sees it as an incredibly useful tool others are afraid it's a slippery slope when it comes to an invasion of privacy especially because like any crime solving method it is not completely fail safe yeah take the case of george melina in phoenix arizona for example back in 2018 23 year old george a warehouse worker was arrested after a geofence placed him at the scene of a murder he spent the next week in jail arguing for his innocence before he was released it was then determined that george's stepfather was to blame for the murder he had george's phone in his car while it was happening i mean yeah who's to say who's carrying whose phone it's just a phone not necessarily i guess this stuff there now we learn from like did you actually have your phone can we prove that person actually had that so it's not as like concrete as maybe people once believed and even though george was released from prison after a week the mistake was never fully corrected the arrest has stayed on his record an arrest for murder mind you which will make it very difficult to find work and support that's in the future because you have an arrest for potential first degree murder on your record all because his cell phone was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person in his father's car which is like completely normal and then there's obviously the argument of privacy should it be a right or a privilege of course there's the idea of i have nothing to hide i'll show you the contents of my phone but some people see this as a complete invasion of their personal space regardless that even if they have nothing to hide the government and law enforcement agencies should not have complete access to their lives and know where they are at 24 7 because as we know from doing this show and even in george's case sometimes even those with nothing to hide are blamed for things they didn't do at least in mitchell's case geofencing did lead to a success story mitchell's father even praised it when he spoke to the press and if it weren't for those new tools dante holmes might be out there walking free today because they never would have linked him to mitchell and that is the murder of mitchell jones jr horrible i just did i mean i guess we'll never know the actual motive but i we do so many cases and we've done so many cases and to kill someone we'll never know the actual motive but we do so many cases and we've done so many cases and we've done so many cases and we've done so many cases and we've done so many cases and we'll never stop blowing my mind i'll never be able to understand it because it's not okay we don't kill people we just yeah we don't do it we got to control our emotions there's so many other ways to handle things and it's crazy to me that people just kill people honestly i've been down the like police body cam footage rabbit hole lately you know just out of i i don't know just when i'm have free time and um i've been watching police responding to murders and having their body cam on. and it's just like lovers fighting murders I honestly had to turn it off any type of dv is just because it just feels like what hello like control your emotions but all right you guys that was our episode today and we will see you next time with another one I love it and I hate it goodbye the mighty dollar once upon a time it had a whole menu named after it now no more but one dollar a day lets 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