Teen Runs Out of Gas and Never Makes it Home | Casey Crowder

I'm sure that most of you can relate to this. The gas light comes on in your car, and you do the math in your head, and you know how many miles you have left, how far it is to the next gas station, whether you can make it, or whether you're about to be that person standing on the shoulder trying to flag down help. And usually, you make it. Most times, the math works out. But on a Sunday morning in August of 2006, a 17-year-old girl standing on a two-lane highway in southeast Arkansas, 40 miles from home, did the same math and came up short. So she does everything you would do. She pulls over, she puts on her hazard lights, and she calls her mom. She's got money in her pocket, and she's got a phone that works, and there's a gas station just up ahead, close enough that walking to it isn't even a decision, it's just the obvious thing to do. It's the thing that any of us would. Half a mile, eight minutes, maybe ten at the most. She tells her mother she can handle it. And her mom hangs up and starts her day, because there was nothing out of the ordinary about this. It didn't sound like an emergency. It sounded like an ordinary Sunday with a little problem in the middle of it, like a story her daughter would tell later, rolling her eyes about her walk. But she never comes home. Somewhere on that stretch of road, in broad daylight, on a highway that people drive every day, Casey Crowder stops being a girl who ran out of gas. And this moment becomes every parent's worst nightmare. Deadly deep dives. Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. And if you have never been here before, I am Kimberlea. It's nice to finally meet you. Now, before we get into the video, I just want to take a moment to talk about what I'm doing. Today, because this video is sponsored by Fabletics, and I've genuinely been wearing their items for years now, and I honestly think they just keep getting better and better. 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Either they have active wear, everyday clothing, jackets, lounge pieces, men's clothes, and even scrubs. So there is a lot on their website. So try Fabletics by using my link below and sign up as a VIP to get 70 to 80% off your very first order. And I just want to thank Fabletics so much for making today's video possible. Now you are watching this the day before my IVF retrieval surgery. That's going to happen tomorrow morning at eight o'clock. And if some of you are following along on Instagram or my community channel, I'm going to put a link in the description down below and I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments. And I'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have. none of her personal belongings and she's nowhere to be found. Where was Casey Bess Crowder? And before we talk about what happened on that road, I want to talk about who she was. Casey was born on February 24th of 1989 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas to Marty and Melinda Crowder. And for about two years, she had them entirely to herself. Then Nicholas arrived in the spring of 1991. And then 17 months after that, in August of 1992, the twins came along, Joseph and Wesley. So by the time Casey was three and a half years old, her mother had a preschooler, a toddler, and two newborns. And the Crowder household became the kind of house you could probably hear all the way from where you're sitting right now. The four kids under four, Casey out in front of all of them, stepping into the role as a big sister. Anyone who has grown up as the oldest or has an older sibling knows exactly what it was like for Casey. And so Casey was born on February 24th of 1992. And she was born on February 24th of 1992. And so Casey was born on February 24th of 2002. And so Casey was born on February 23rd of 2002. And so Casey was born on February 24th of 02. And so Casey was born on February to get there and if you have a vehicle and you're comfortable behind the wheel you make the drive and sonic if you have a sonic where you live i had one growing up in jacksonville but if you have a sonic that is where they went to get something to eat so 40 miles down 65 to see a boy that you are in love with in high school wasn't a big deal it wasn't an expedition but it was a detour and a secret that casey had been keeping from her mother casey had told her mom like i told you that she was going to a friend's house but she didn't but i also want to be very specific about this technology this is of course a little bit of an older case and it matters because of the way that you look at everything it's easy to forget what teens were like back then and what they had casey did have a cell phone but this wasn't a smartphone there was no iphone i think that came at least one year later but here she was with the phone that could make phone calls and maybe the occasional and very short text messages because it was probably one of those ones where you had to use the numbers to spell things out through pressing them a number of times there was no find my there was no location sharing there was no app you could get on to track her location no dash cams in every car no ring cameras on doorsteps no everybody filming everything if you wanted to know where someone was in august of 2006 well they'd have to call you for you to be able to find out or you would have to call your phone you would have to call them and they would actually have to answer that's the entire safety net that you would have a phone call and when a call goes to voicemail kind of like it does today and you don't have a location and you don't get a last read receipt or anything like that you pretty much have nothing but silence and whatever story you tell yourself in that silence but don't get me wrong there were cameras they existed and they're going to become important in this case cctv footage but in 2006 surveillance is not what it's like now in 2026 we're talking low resolution often black and white and these cameras were usually aimed at the cash register or maybe the front door because that's what these businesses cared about and these kind of cameras would even record over themselves on a loop and they do not have traffic cameras like they do today so here you have a young girl on a road all alone a car pulled over that ran out of gas with almost no witnesses in a county where you can drive 10 minutes without passing a house in a year where we did not have tracking devices on our phones and all the cameras were pointed at something else other than possibly where they are now outside of buildings if you've ever been 17 in love with someone that lives a county over let's say you know exactly how quickly that stops feeling like a lot of distance you don't care how far you have to go you just do it and of course melinda noticed it was an ordinary part of raising a teenager you're watching her become an adult and get further and further out of your orbit lying to her mom is not a red flag i'm sure all of us have said we're going to be somewhere and we go somewhere else and i say that partially because of what melinda's reaction tells you she found out 5 30 in the morning with her daughter on the side of the road on a highway and she wasn't feeling scared she was a little bit disappointed but that's it and there would be time later to reprimand her if she needed to and i do know that a lot of time had gone by remember i told you like it was midnight her husband came home and you're probably thinking why did she wait so long but she had three other kids at home but once her husband was there they left to find their daughter so when i left off they had gotten to that durango so let's talk about that a little bit more about that recap it was pulled over on the shoulder of highway 65 near the hospital exactly where casey had said it would be it was locked and it had run out of gas casey was not in it so marty called 911 officers were there within minutes they took statements from marty and melinda on the side of the road and then they looked at the whole vehicle inside through the windows and they noticed casey's purse was not in there and neither was her phone whatever she had done she had done it deliberately enough to take her things with her lock the doors behind her and go they did however still see her softball bat and her glove still in the back there was an exxon station about half a mile up the road so this is where her parents and the officers thought she would be or where she was headed so they went there together in the middle of the night they showed a picture of her to the guy that was working the overnight shift and he said he did not recognize her and he had not seen her later david chastain from the arkansas state police took the lead on this investigation and he went back there to talk to other employees and that is when they pulled the store's security footage and they went through it casey had never been there she was not on that footage and that was their first clue kind of because it wasn't much but the durango and the exxon were half a mile apart maybe 10 minutes of walking and she never arrived which left investigators with a very small number of possibilities and no way to choose between them did casey start walking and maybe go in a different direction than she told her mom did she begin to go towards exxon and something happened to her before she got there or had she never started walking at all because somebody stopped on that shoulder before she could if anything it left her parents with even more fear you expect that maybe you're overthinking things you expect that maybe there's going to be a reasonable explanation like i don't know she got there she didn't have enough money for gas and she decided to call a friend but you don't expect her to never show up and not know where she went investigators started calling hospitals around the region and detention facilities as well they were checking whether anyone that was admitted matched her description but it came back with nothing the other thing they did was retrace her evening which meant they started to call the last person who she said she was with adam he told them casey had come down on saturday night and they went to a party they went back to his house and she stayed over and then she got up and she left somewhere between 5 and 5 30 on sunday morning because originally he said she wanted to try to make it back to church before her mom left so she could go with her and her brothers before she pulled out though she actually asked him for some gas money and he gave it to her because he knew she had run low on gas he also told them that one of his co-workers jimmy had come over while casey was getting ready to go early but jimmy was there to see if adam was interested in going fishing that morning and if so they were going to prepare their gear jimmy leaves at some point goes to get one of their other co-workers named jay who also wants to come fishing and around 7 a.m jimmy and jay in jimmy's truck are driving up highway 65 and they pass the duringo on the shoulder of that road but they do not stop when they finally get back to adam's they mention it which at that point jimmy and jay leave drive back up to the gas station to check for casey while adam stays home he does not have a cell phone so he's at his house and he's waiting in case she got a ride back or she calls but when he tries to call her it goes straight to voicemail and she never shows back up jimmy and jay don't find her at the gas station so they drive back to adam's and they all go fishing what do you think of that whole story well detectives want to know more so they went and they found jimmy and jay and they confirmed what adam had told them they said they didn't know where casey was but it did seem odd that all three of these young men knew on that sunday morning that adam's girlfriend's vehicle was sitting empty on the side of a highway and she was not answering her phone but adam does nothing he doesn't call her mom he doesn't call the police he goes fishing he doesn't seem like he really cared that much or is he just a young man who doesn't know where casey is or is he just a young man with other things on his mind thinking like everyone else did that casey could handle it herself there was also a problem with what adam had told them the first time they spoke to him because they went back to speak to him a second time and he did acknowledge that he might have left a few things out he and casey had smoked marijuana the night before and they had slept alone together so they weren't exactly sleeping if you know what i mean i think you know and i don't have to spell it out for you anyway neither of those things connects him to what happened on that highway but a person who leaves things out in their first version of the timeline gets looked at a little harder and adam did get looked into they weren't going to rule anyone out because they didn't know what happened to her officers then go to nearby businesses and they located in mcdonald's that was in walking distance now this was past the exxon but they thought okay maybe another theory is that she went to go get something to eat first and then she might have decided to go somewhere else or got a ride so they look through the cctv footage they look on video from about 5 30 that morning for a couple hours and they scrub through it they do spot a young woman coming in around 6 30 that morning but she did not match casey's description and they looked through every single person that came in there and they didn't see her they did the same thing with hospital footage they started at 5 20 that sunday morning now this was very close to where her car was left there was one camera on that building that pointed towards the sidewalk in between where the car was was and where the gas station was. And they were hoping that they were going to see her walking, but it was so dark. I mean, you can make out maybe some headlights from cars that are passing by, but no people until maybe 6:40 when the sun actually comes up. Then things were a lot more clear, but that's over an hour later from when she called her mom. Now the hospital was only about a thousand feet from where she was on her way to the Exxon station. So maybe she would have passed it. But like I said, probably too dark to even see her. This is what it looks like in 2008, according to Google maps. So there were businesses nearby, but they weren't open at that time of day. So nobody would have seen her walking. And there was just fields as far as you can see. But this was a busy highway, lots of vehicles passing by. So now investigators are thinking there is a possibility that she got inside somebody's car. But that meant she was taken somewhere other than that gas station to go get gas and go back to the Durango. So that was a terrifying thought. Her family and her friends, they drove to Dumas with stacks and stacks of photographs and missing persons posters. And they started going door to door. They were asking businesses and anyone that was on that road for help. They stapled and taped her face to every surface in that town that could hold a flyer. The description that went out on those flyers was 17 year old girl, about five foot one and 105 pounds, blonde hair, green eyes and a pierced belly button. They were hoping that someone would recognize her. And dozens of officers and volunteers had joined in. They were working this rural highway between Dumas and Pickens, the stretch she would have driven that morning on the ground and by air. And more and more agencies arrived. And officials actually set up a temporary command center to organize the search teams. They kept track of tips that were coming in. And they were trying to coordinate even more search teams. And in those first few days, nobody could even say what they were looking for. There was no evidence near her car that Casey had been hurt. There was no evidence of anything, which meant every possibility stayed on the table, including the ones that people did not want to think about. And including the ones that they were thinking about. Some were thinking that maybe she got struck by another vehicle out in the dark. And they searched. They searched for a hurt or injured girl along that roadway. Her parents didn't believe she would ever get in a car with a stranger because she was careful. And by Thursday, August 31st, the FBI had joined the Dumas Police Department and the Arkansas State Police. Five days in and there was still nothing. No confirmed sightings of Casey. No witnesses who saw her walking. No witness who saw her stop. And no witness who saw her get into another vehicle. The ground search between Dumas and Pickens produced nothing. The flyers had produced nothing. And all the people closest to her, especially the ones that had seen her that morning, had all been interviewed. And I'm just going to tell you this. They had been strange. But it led nowhere. And that will make sense, I promise. But it was just sitting with me this entire time. And it bothered me like I'm sure it's going to bother you. Never mind. I'm not going to make you wait. I'm just going to tell you now. Remember Jimmy, the co-worker and friend of Casey's boyfriend, Adam, that came to the house while Casey was getting ready to leave? Well, this is going to come out way later because obviously phone records took some time to get. They have to subpoena those records. They have to be sent back to the investigators. But when they pulled the call logs, it showed that Casey had actually started calling Jimmy at 5:53 a.m. Not Adam, Jimmy. Actually, she called him until 6:39, four times in 46 minutes as she sat at the location where her car was found. Shortly before that first call, she had just watched him walk into Adam's house. So she knew, of course, that Jimmy was there, awake, nearby, had a truck. So I thought maybe she was calling him because it was the fastest way, she could get a can of gas or get a ride. But according to those records, Jimmy never picked up the phone. Why was she calling Jimmy and not her boyfriend, Adam? Now, I know Adam didn't have a cell phone, but he was just at the house, right? I even thought, okay, maybe Adam was asleep or, you know, kind of half awake when she was asking him for some gas money before she left. And because Jimmy was right there and she passed him as she was leaving, maybe that's why she called him. But I just kept thinking, why not call Adam? It just bothered me. I found no clue from anything I read, and perhaps there was a reason, and I just never got it because it wasn't documented. But the investigators said that Jimmy and Jay were both potential suspects when this investigation began, because everyone was a potential suspect. But especially because Jimmy had been the last person to see Casey when she was leaving Adam's, and Jimmy and Jay had drove past the Durango. They had seen it. They didn't stop, and they didn't take it upon themselves to go looking for Casey. They went fishing without alerting anyone. It just seems kind of odd to me. But at this point in the case, they don't have those phone records. So special agent Boyd Brashears and other FBI agents went after the only thing they did have: CCTV. This time they went to the Sonic. Adam had told them that he and Casey stopped at Sonic the night before. But they didn't know what they were doing. They didn't know what they were doing. They didn't know where they were going. And that Sonic turned out to be roughly 400 yards from where the Durango was found. The camera that was set up was to watch the outdoor dining area, the parking spots and the benches in the parking lot. But when the investigators looked at the footage, they found that at the very top of the frame, past the parking lot, there was a thin strip that you could see of Highway 65. Almost all of that recording is empty parking spaces and wooden benches, and nothing was happening there. But there was just that top edge where you could see the road. And on that road, you can see vehicles passing by. Vehicles that had to have passed by the Durango just before they made their way past Sonic. So agents started cataloging every single vehicle that crossed the frame of that video. They wrote down the time, the color, and the direction of travel. And if they could make it out, the approximate make-out and model. Every single one. Hour after hour. Building a list of everything that moved on that highway that morning. Because somewhere in that list might be the vehicle connected to Casey. Or to somebody already mentioned in this case. There was no green Chevrolet truck, which was the vehicle that Adam drove. So they crossed that off their list. However, at approximately 7:04 AM, a gray pickup truck traveled north away from where the Durango sat. In color and style, it resembled the truck that Jimmy drove. But nothing put Adam, Jimmy, or Jay near Casey's vehicle when she would have been stranded out there that Sunday morning. So no amount of strange behavior or unexplained things could really change anything. However, there were investigators that did admit, in records that I found, that they believed there could be an attraction between some of Adam's friends and Casey. They were quoted talking about how they could imagine one of them finding her attractive. And maybe her being around when they came to visit Adam from time to time. So it was concerning that they felt like these guys didn't do more. But there was no proof that they did anything to her. So that list of vehicles just kept growing. And then after six days, something they found changed everything. Six days after Casey called her mom from the side of that highway, a member of the National Guard that was working a search team east of Dumas was walking through farming country, through fields and the tree lines and drainage canals that cut straight through them, and several miles from the highway in a wooded area near one of those canals off a stretch known as Canal 43, the searchers saw something that stuck out between the logs and the trees on the ground. It was a badly decomposed body of a young woman. Almost a week had gone by. In the hot summer it was exposed to the elements which meant it was in very bad condition. It was not easy to identify her by just looking at her. She was fully clothed but what stood out was what was around her neck. One single black zip tie tied tightly and cinched in position, locked there. It was clear that this was a homicide. And right away they noticed the belly button piercing. Now that was the first indication that this was the body of Casey Crouch. That finding was called in to investigators and they came out there including Sgt. Todd Daley from the Arkansas State Police and he said he had never in his entire career ever seen a plastic zip tie used as a murder weapon. It was brutal. Jim Snyder from the Dumas Sheriff's Office talked to the media and he confirmed what they had found. Can you tell me what has happened? Yes, this afternoon we have located a body. The remains were carefully transported to the medical examiner's office where Dr. Charles Cocan, who is the son of Casey Crouch, conducted a full autopsy and confirmed that this was indeed the body of 17-year-old Casey "Bess" Crowder. He did this with the help of dental records. It was determined she had died from asphyxiation. This is not getting enough oxygen, which I'm sure you know, and the form of strangulation was by ligature and that ligature was a zip tie. It was so tight around her neck that it formed a circle of only three inches across. Three inches. That is not a restraint that slipped. That is one that has been pulled down as far as it could go on purpose. In the doctor's estimation, it would have cut off blood flow from the brain and caused unconsciousness within 10 to 20 seconds. There were no defensive wounds that could be identified. No gripping marks, no bruising anywhere. Not because they weren't there. It was because the days had gone by and decomposition erased the surface of the body where that evidence would have lived. The doctor could not determine if she fought back or whether she was hit with anything, but it was sad that they did find scratch marks. On her neck. Where she had actually dug her own nails into her skin trying to get her fingers underneath that zip tie to breathe. Sheriff Snyder described what she went through as pure hell and now her parents had to be confronted with the truth and I'm sure you can imagine it tore them apart. Melinda didn't even accept it. She told investigators they had it all wrong, that they had made a big mistake. That was not her daughter. In her mind, Casey was somewhere out there and she was going to be found. And the thing these people were telling her simply did not make sense to her. It could not be true, so she wouldn't agree to it. Her husband couldn't even speak. He was hysterical. They both were. Melinda has talked about that moment since and what she remembers is walking out of that room away from her own husband, not because she didn't want to help him, but because she could not figure out how to comfort him while she was trying to still make sense of the words that she just heard. That was September 2nd. Casey had been supposed to start her senior year that same week. And now word was getting around to her friends that they would see an empty seat in class where she would have been. And they couldn't believe it. None of them could. None of them could be prepared for something like this. I think just knowing that I'll never see her again. That I'll never be able to talk to her again. You know? And young people don't imagine a friend being murdered or even dying in high school. It was a lot for them to take in. For six days, everyone had been working that half a mile off highway in the town of Dumas. The body ended up six miles away, off the road, in the woods, past fields, near a canal that a person would have had to known about to find. Nobody would just walk there in accident. She did not end up there on foot, which meant that at some point on the morning of August 27th, on the shoulder of that highway, Casey did get taken away in a vehicle. But did she get in willingly? Or was she forced? Which one? So back to the scene and some additional details. Her shoes were not too far from where her body was found. And they looked like they were kicked off of her feet. They were the kind that kind of slide on like slippers, almost like an Uggslipper. And then there were her shorts. Well, they were men's boxers. She was wearing them as a pair of shorts, which was actually not that unusual. It was sort of the style in the 2000s. And underneath was a pair of regular women's underwear. Well, there was a rip right in the crotch of the outer pair, so of the boxers, but not on her underwear. But because this article of her clothing was disturbed, that was enough to go with this sexual assault theory as a motive. And there was nothing else. Her purse wasn't there. Neither was her phone. There were no tire impressions, no footprints, no drag marts, or anything else at that scene that they could document as evidence, which must have been very frustrating. So investigators went back to what they had CCTV footage on that highway of those cars passing by from Sonic. Now this was not much, but they watched and watched that narrow strip of highway at the top of that frame. And then they went down that same list they had of every car and truck, and they started to cross them off. But now that list meant something different because Highway 65 was a road connecting the place Casey disappeared with the place where she was found. At first they were just looking for witnesses. Now they're looking for someone who may have taken her. Any vehicle traveling between those two points that morning would be very significant. And guess what? At approximately 6:42 a.m., a white pickup truck with dark markings along its side passed the camera traveling south towards the Durango. But then, just minutes later, at approximately 6:45, what appeared to be the exact same truck passed by again. And now they're heading north in the opposite direction, in the direction of where Casey's body would eventually be found. What also stood out was that it was moving faster on the way back, as if they were in much more of a hurry to get away than they were when they would have been coming up to where Casey would have been standing, which seemed pretty important. And why this is all significant, it was the only vehicle that did this. Investigators could not read the license plate. The image was obviously too poor to see who was inside the vehicle. But what they had was a white truck with these dark markings down the side. And they took a screenshot of this footage to local vehicle dealers, and they asked what kind of car it could be. And the answer came back as an early 2000s Chevrolet Silverado, which is one of the most important trucks in America, and especially in 2006 in Arkansas. You would see, I don't know, a dozen of them any given afternoon. But what was on the car? That marking. It really narrowed it down. Not every Silverado had those. So they started looking for more cameras on that route, heading north, out of Dumas, trying to follow that truck past the point where the Sonic had lost it. And they found a Dollar General up the road. Now, they did not have exterior surveillance. But what they did have was one camera, inside that store that was facing the entrance. And through the glass, you could see a small piece of that same highway. At approximately 6:46 AM, a white pickup truck with very similar markings passed through. And that truck reached the intersection where 65 and 165 meet. And it turned east on 165, which is the road out towards the farmland where Casey's body was found. Now, the second sighting did two things. It confirmed the truck had kept going rather than turning off somewhere in town. And it put the vehicle on the route connecting Casey's abandoned Durango with the area where she was found. This is the point where the phone records came in. Now, I already let you in on the calls to Jimmy that went unanswered between 5:53 and 6:39 that morning. But at 7:04, four numbers were entered on Casey's phone keypad before the call button was pressed. Four digits. 1550. It's not a phone number. It's not enough to connect to anything or anyone. And they didn't know whether it was the start of something longer, like a number that never got finished, or if it was a number pressed by accident or something else. No one has ever been able to say what was being dialed. It could have very well been her struggling with someone that was trying to take away her phone as she tried to call for help. Maybe she was even trying to call 9-1-1, and that that got pressed before something stopped her. But it was eerie thinking about that possibly being her last call. But when you line that attempted call, or whatever you want to call it, activity on her phone with her last unanswered call to Jimmy, which was at 6:39, well, that's a very small window. You have 6:39 to 7:04. Now take that, and line it up with the white truck. It's going south past the Sonic at 6:42, then comes back north at 6:45, and passes a Dollar General at 6:46. The final entry on her phone is 7:04. That's 25 minutes. And this is the only connection they have at this point. They have the description of this truck, a direction of travel, no license plate, no name, and no way to find it. So they decide to make the truck come to them, which is very smart. It was exactly one week after Casey had disappeared. On Sunday, September 3rd, the FBI set up a checkpoint on Highway 65 near where the Durango had been abandoned. And the logic was simple. People are creatures of habit, particularly on a Sunday morning in this area. Whoever was on that road at 6:42 a week ago might be on it at 6:42 this morning, a week later. Maybe they're going to the same place for the same reason. And a regular driver in this area might remember seeing a girl standing beside her SUV. They might remember another vehicle slowing down near her SUV. They might remember a white truck with a stripe on its side. So starting a little after 6:00, agents began stopping cars and asking drivers and their passengers where they had been the Sunday before. And a white pickup truck with a dark stripe came up that road right towards them. And I would say that these agents were not very surprised because this is exactly what they expected to happen at this traffic stop. But imagine seeing this truck and wondering who was going to be inside. there going to be clues? Was there going to be something of Casey's or evidence of her going missing in that truck? Well, soon they would know everything they could gather from questioning the driver. Upon being stopped, there was a man who identified himself as 46-year-old Kenneth Ray Osborne. He provided his identification and they confirmed his name and date of birth as December 7th of 1959. He lived at a place called Wolf Project. It was about 20 minutes down Highway 65 from Dumas and he wasn't in that truck alone. Next to him in the passenger seat was a young woman that could have come off as very suspicious, but she immediately identified herself as Holly Osborne. She was 20 years old and the daughter of the driver. The agents asked where the two of them were headed that morning and Holly explained her father was taking her. To her morning shift at a nursing home in Dumas. But now the question was, where had you been the previous Sunday? Kenneth told them that he had driven that same stretch of road most Sundays and he had indeed drove that road at the same time one week ago. And we know that's the morning Casey was taken. He didn't dodge the question at all. He put himself on that highway at that hour. So agents took down his contact information. They wrote, down his license plate, the vehicle identification number on his truck. And they also asked him if anyone else had been riding with him the Sunday before. They asked him for two reasons. One was to see if it's possible that he was going to admit that he had picked up Casey and maybe brought her somewhere. And also to see if his daughter could be a witness. And it was true. Holly admitted she had work the Sunday before. And that same day that Casey had been driving, he had been driving the same day that Casey was missing. They drove together down that road on their way there. So at this point, they told Kenneth they wanted him to come by the police department. They just wanted to go through his movements a little more carefully in case he had witnessed anything that day in relation to the missing young woman. And that was the whole point. It was for drivers to be able to recall whether they saw a girl with a disabled vehicle on that road last Sunday. Most of the people in this area had already heard of Casey's case. I mean, the flyers were, everywhere. This was a small town. She had been missing for eight days. Her body had been found the day before. FBI was in town. The National Guard had been out searching. There was a command center there. And here was a man who lived 20 minutes away and drove this highway constantly. He would have known exactly why he had been stopped. But at this point, the procedure was to let him drive away and see if he would appear later willingly at the police station. He was there. He was there. There was no one person of interest. And he doesn't come back in. Not that day. But the following day on September 4th, Kenneth had heard from his own friends that investigators wanted to talk to him and wanted to take a look at his truck. And he did show up at the Southeast Arkansas Law Enforcement Center on his own. The thing was that people from this area who saw his truck on the news knew it belonged to him. We're talking about a very distinctive vehicle. So of course they were telling him. They were like, listen, you know what? They're looking for someone with your exact same truck. And you're the only one in this area with a truck like that. You better go talk to police. So at 2.55 p.m., Arkansas State Police Special Agent Rick Newton and Special Agent David Chastain sat down with him. That interview was not recorded. There was no audio. There was no video. Only thing that existed was Agent Chastain's handwritten notes. And what those notes entail is that Kenneth explained, He drove a truck for a living. He was a long-haul trucker. And he worked for a company called USA Truck. What that meant was that most of the week he wasn't even home. He only came back in town on the weekends. He talked about how he had two children, Holly and a younger son, Kenny Jr. Kenneth was also fairly recently widowed. His wife Rhonda had passed away 18 months earlier and had been very, very hard on their family. Holly had been closer to her mother than she was to her father. And when her mother died and her father had to work, he was very, very hard on their family. So she was left to take care of her younger brother all week long. After that background information about his current lifestyle was put into the record, Kenneth gave his account of August 27th. He said he had driven Holly into Dumas, leaving their home in Tiller around 540 a.m. They got into town around six and they stopped at a local diner called Matthews. That's where they ate breakfast together. And this was actually a very popular, I'm just going to call it like rest stop for big truck drivers like Kenneth. It's a place where you could stop, you could refuel, you could get some food and some coffee. After they ate, Kenneth said he dropped Holly off at the nursing home and then he drove home. Well, the timeline alone wasn't enough for detectives and they asked him for permission to search his residence and his truck and he consented. And somewhere in that conversation, the agents noticed that he had scratches on his arms. So naturally, they asked about them. And Kenneth explained he had a small dog at home, a very energetic dog that bit him and scratched him all the time. And he liked to play rough. Then he agreed to let them photograph not just his arms, but his entire body. And that's when they noticed faint abrasions all over his chest, on his elbows and on his knees. So now it's not just his arms, it's other parts of his body. And so they took a picture of him and they took a picture of him and they took a picture of his body. And not only could that line up with maybe being in a struggle, but kneeling down, possibly in a wooded area as it was happening. But he was very cooperative. If that wasn't apparent from everything I told you thus far, he said that the cuts on his chest and his other areas, that was a skin condition. But now there are two different explanations. But investigators had to do their due diligence. So they asked him point blank if those scratches could have come from a girl. Kenneth kind of posed a question back to them. He said, "Well, wouldn't you know? Because if she scratched me and these scratches were caused by her fingers, wouldn't my skin be underneath her nails?" Now, they can't just go back and confirm that. 2006, we're talking crime labs that had turnarounds for DNA testing that could be not only weeks, but months, maybe even a year. Sure, the Arkansas State Crime Lab was handling the entire state. Even a priority homicide would not come back that fast. So no, they wouldn't have known. But here's where one of the problems lie in this case. Heat and water, because they degrade DNA. And decomposition of that severity made recovering usable samples very unlikely. Six days outdoors, late in August, fingernail scrapings are surface evidence. And the surface is the first thing to go. And rain, humidity, insects, animal activity. There's nothing left to scrape. So their chances of usable DNA was very slim. But here's the thing. Nothing there doesn't mean he's innocent. A negative result from a degraded sample isn't evidence of absence. It's evidence that the sample was not viable. And his account had a problem. And the problem was really the sonic footage. Kenneth said he dropped Holly off around 6 20 a.m and he drove home but that wasn't adding up because he was still in the area to get caught on cctv footage at sonic about 20 minutes later so they confronted him with that fact kind of seems like a lie at this point but he remembered he actually went back to Matthew's diner and had another cup of coffee okay and I guess that's plausible I sometimes have two cups a day but here's what's even more unsettling his house was south and at first he is heading south on the sonic footage at 6 42 a.m however he's caught literally coming back north back in the direction that he came just three minutes later at 6 45 and he's not seen going back south towards his house at all I'm a very visual person I think you know that if you've been here before and if you are not watching then you might want to for this because I couldn't for the life of me understand how all this works and that's very important for this case in particular so instead of you trying to figure it out in your head I'm going to show you on a map exactly where these locations are and it's going to start making a lot more sense to you why they had Kenneth in the police station everything we're talking about is right now on highway 65 from the top of this graphic that I just made you there's a yellow rectangle well that's Matthew's diner it's on the corner of highway 65 and highway 165 now you see that red arrow it's pointing from Holly's work at the nursing home and it's a very short drive we're talking one minute from her work to Matthew's diner the Exxon gas station is right before you get to sonic that I've made a red rectangle around they're close to one another across the street from each other and that is where Casey was trying to get that morning now here's an expanded view I'm circling the nursing home with a yellow circle at the far top and then there's the dollar general that's where one of the cameras was and then the Exxon which I didn't circle but here's the sonic with the red rectangle the red circle further down to the south is delta memorial hospital which was right near where casey's broke down vehicle was sitting on the side of the road and i indicated that location with a star so now i feel like you have your bearings straight and i'm going to explain to you the direction that kenneth and holly would have been traveling that morning they came from their house to the south in tiller so they would have come up north on highway 65 and first they would have passed casey's broken down vehicle on the side of the road right before you get to delta memorial hospital then they would have kept going all the way to intersection highway 65 and 165 for breakfast at matthew's diner and since holly made it to work that day and we know she did they would have driven one minute to drop her off so to make it back home kenneth would have logically had to go back south from where he came back down 65 passing the dollar general passing the drive-through passing the hospital and then passing casey's car on his way out of town back home but that's not what happened not only did he turn around and start to head back where he came down 65 he turned and went east on 165 that's exactly how you would get to canal number 43 where her body was found i hope this is all making sense remember what the point of this video is is that you can't see cars so you can just disregard any footage of kenneth's truck taking holly to work you wouldn't have been able to tell you would have only seen headlights like this but the next time they see his truck which was during daylight it was captured going south at 642 which would have been after that supposed second cup of coffee after dropping holly off and that would have lined up with him just going home except for the fact he's caught on the highway and then 30 minutes later going back towards sonic back in the direction of matthew's diner and the nursing home again but why that was the question and here's what else the investigators know casey was found in the area that's called canal number 43 which is a very isolated area however you would take highway 165 do you see what i'm getting at highway 65 and highway 165 is where they caught kenneth's truck it's truck he's last seen driving going right off of the 65 into the intersection of the 165 right where matthew's diner was and in the direction of the highway that you would need to take to go right out to where casey was found explain it that's what they wanted him to do and that's when his story changed and that's never a good sign he said that when he left matthew's diner after dropping off his daughter and having that cup of coffee he started drinking coffee and he started drinking coffee and he started drinking coffee and he started going home but then he realized he was down to his very last cigarette again plausible so he said he quickly turned around made that u-turn drove back to matthew's to buy more and then he went home but that explanation created a bigger problem than the one he was trying to solve if kenneth turned around drove back to matthew's that would account for him the second time on camera but then if he drove home what would he do he would go back to matthew's and he would drive back to matthew's and he would drive back to matthew's and he would drive back to matthew's and he would see his truck cross a third time on sonic footage heading back south again agents went back they went through repeatedly through that cctv footage and never a third time did his truck pass so either he took a really long detour a long route and the total obstruction just to come back home which would also potentially pass where her body was later found or he's lying about what really happened i'm sure you're thinking what these detectives were he was driving holly to work and he saw casey on the side of the road and it piqued his interest and when he was heading back and caught on camera at 6 42 he saw her still on the side of that road and we know she was still there because at 6 39 just a few minutes before this she made a call on her phone that pinged in that location so within just three minutes of him being in her vicinity she was there in the middle of the night she was still there and she was still there and she was there and she was still there and she was still there and she was still there and she was still there those three minutes between the time they see him again on that sonic footage going the other way he totally could have grabbed her put her in his truck and drove away that's the theory they're working with because there was no explanation that made sense for him not to go home in the direction he would have been coming from it was very suspicious and i think rightfully so if you had merely gone to get cigarettes at matthews why not turn around and drive back the way you came they had been interviewing him for hours they had been interviewing him for hours and they had been interviewing him for hours and they but it wasn't being recorded so now they knew they had to keep him there and start to ask these questions all over again from the beginning so they could get it recorded and at 11 15 p.m they're still rolling audio they ask him again about the scratches on his arms and this is something that i personally noticed that wasn't referenced anywhere but these scratches were scabbed over they were not fresh and bleeding but here's my point it has been over a week so i'm not going to lie to you i'm not going to lie to you i'm not going to lie to you you would expect that these scratches would be healed if they were defensive wounds from casey into someone's arms and that's exactly what they look like to these detectives plus think about this way i have a dog i'm sure many of you have dogs if you do have a rowdy hyper little dog that jumps on you all the time wouldn't you also have fresh scratches along with the healed ones because your dog lives with you i'm assuming that right and i'm assuming that dog gets on you all the time and i'm assuming that dog gets on you all the time and i'm assuming that dog gets on you all the time so why hasn't that dog scratched you like that in a week to form new scratches along with the healed ones does seem kind of suspicious doesn't it your dog didn't learn to stop jumping on you in a week and to these detectives they did not look like scratches from dog claws they look like the ones you get from fingernails look at them for yourself i feel like i'm going back to the arguments in the karen reed trial if you know you know and apparently they had interviewed people from matthew's diner who would have known exactly who kenneth was and they had no transactions for a pack of cigarettes so did he bum some off someone it didn't make any sense and then they go over how kenneth had told them well i'm going to be cleared because you're not going to find my dna under casey's nails and they argued that he watched way too many crime shows because not all crimes are solved with dna but something else happened in this interview that some people might find to be controversial these investigators probably at their wits end right they're wanting to get a confession because they think that kenneth did it so they lied to him they were bluffing but they told him they had phone data that put him both right next to where her car had been abandoned at approximately seven o'clock that morning and then shortly afterward they had more phone data from afterward around the 7 13 at another tower that had his phone pinging near the route towards canal number 43 where her body was found they told him there was no connection to a tower near his house during that window of time and the truth was they were still waiting on cell phone data and whether people like it or not they are allowed to lie they're allowed to fabricate evidence that does not exist to get a confession and kenneth had no answer but that didn't make the detective stop they just pushed harder they give him a theory of what they thought happened here was this attractive young girl on the side of the road all alone wearing you know shorts and the way they put it was i feel like degrading but i think you get my picture and it caught his attention and he's lonely because his wife passed away about a year ago and he's going through a lot of problems and that's the point when kenneth just cuts off the investigators he's like i did not kill her i have nothing to do with her murder but that wasn't the answer the detective newton was looking for he wanted that confession no matter what and i can't get into the minds of either of these detectives but i truly believe that they thought he was guilty they already had proof he was in the vicinity of both locations and they're not going to let him go so newton started to graphically explain what was going to happen to kenneth meaning that they were going to seek the death penalty it was almost like they were threatening to kill him you're looking at going before 12 people in a box in arkansas city and going to trial for capital murder and be sentenced to death they're going to cook your ass do you understand where i'm coming from they ain't going to burn yet they're going to pump the needle in your arm kenny the prosecutor will go for your jugular vein some may say that this is doing something pretty unethical which is pretty much bringing up things like you're going to get burned by the jury they're going to put a needle in your arm i mean they were also playing good cop and bad cop there was brochures he was the good cop and he was calmly telling him just work with us just work with us now so that we can make it possible that you're not put to death just tell us what happened and that is when kenneth asked for a lawyer but was he given one No, they kept going. The questioning continued, and it continued for a very long time, and when Newton finally got up and he left the room, he said to him, the next time I see you, I'm going to get nasty with you, but the truth was, Kenneth was entitled to representation before speaking to these detectives, and none of what they had was proof. It was speculation, and it was evidence that he could be involved. We're talking about a truck that resembled his truck, on a recording too poor to read a license plate, and video that doesn't even capture who's driving, never shows a passenger in his car either, because you just can't tell. Then the scratches, he had explanations for, but inconsistent statements about cigarettes and why he turned around that morning, which is something that anyone could possibly get wrong. But then there was, of course, also the fake phone data. Yeah. That didn't exist at the time. So they really didn't have much to hold him on, so they had to let him go home. And three weeks went by before it seemed like authorities were doing anything in Casey's case, but behind the scenes, they had a big tip come in. Casey's body had been found three days earlier, and everyone in that town knew it, and Kenneth Osborne's name had started moving around a lot. And on September 5th, the day after they let him go home, a woman came forward. Her name. It's Nancy Dunn. She knew Kenneth's family really well. She drove into Dumas every Sunday morning, the same as Kenneth, and their vehicles would pass on that highway regularly enough that they would wave at each other as a little ritual, and every single time, he waved back. But on the morning of August 27th, she waved, and Kenneth did not wave back, and that stood out to her. And I think many of us, including myself. have internal dialogue, like, did I do something to him? Is he mad at me? Did he not see me? But it stuck with her. And as people started talking, she started thinking about it more and more. And she remembered clearly, clearly remembered that when she passed Kenneth, he wasn't alone in that truck. She saw someone in that passenger seat. And at the time, she assumed it was his daughter, Holly. The problem was, Holly was already at work. She was already clocked in. And what's weirder is that this person looks slumped over, like leaning, like they were asleep or something like that. And the reason she assumed it was Holly is because she always saw Holly, and they worked together at the nursing home. So when Nancy gets to work, she realizes Holly's already there. It just kind of made her think, like, what did I just see? So when she comes forward to police, she didn't say, "I saw Casey." She said, "I saw a person." "I saw a person that cannot be accounted for in a truck belonging to a man whose name is now in every conversation in town about this murder." But now investigators had a witness who put a body in that cab with Kenneth, something that the cameras could not do and could not see. They had an eyewitness that was brave enough to say something, but nothing happened for three weeks. Kenneth went back to work. Like I said, he was a long-haul driver. So that meant he was not alone. He would leave the state, and these investigators let him. Nobody stopped him. Nobody charged him. He had willingly given his DNA, and he let them go through his house and his truck. He had let them photograph his whole body. And during that time, this poor family that just lost their daughter had to bury her. The service was held at First Christian Church. This was the congregation that Casey and her family had belonged to her entire life. The one where she had gone through Christian Youth Fellowship, the same church her mother had been driving her brothers to on the morning she called and said she was on the side of the highway. They buried her at Fitzhugh Cemetery, Section 4, in the same ground as her father's parents, Luther and Louise. And at the same time, back at Kenneth's house, his children were going through their routine in a household that also knew what loss was like. Holly was 19 when her mother died. She was 20 now. And her father was gone most of the time, which meant that that 19-year-old had taken on almost all of the household needs, especially when it came to her younger brother, Kenny Jr. And for herself, in the middle of grieving her mother, she was working hard. She was working at a nursing home. Kenneth's mother, Ruth, was nearby and his sister, Lisa. And between them, they had kept things as normal as possible for this family for the last year and a half. And they had no reason to believe. The Kenneths would do anything to hurt a young lady, or anyone for that matter. And they had no idea what was coming. But the investigators were building their case. Whatever swabs that could be taken from Casey and her clothing and the scrapings beneath her fingernails, they were being tested. Because that was the whole question. Whether she had gotten a piece of whoever had done this to her. And about a week after she was found, that's when Kenneth's truck was impounded. They went through the interior. They collected anything they could. And of course, they had his DNA to test everything against. And there was one more thing. The crime lab actually found animal hair on Casey's clothing. Not human. Something that looked like it could come from a dog or cat. And we know that Kenneth owned actually several dogs. If hair off a 17-year-old girl's body could be matched to animals living in a specific house, then that's a physical link between them. The problem at that time? Was that the state lab in Arkansas did not do mitochondrial testing on animal hair. So an investigator had to actually fly samples from Ken's pets out to a lab in California and they waited. So all of this was pending. The swabs. The fingernail clippings. The zip ties. The DNA on the truck. The hair. Everything. Nobody had an answer yet. What they had was just samples in a queue. So by the last week of September, investigators had gone as far as that evidence was going to take them for now. But they felt like they had the right man. And they truly believed that the DNA would be a match. No doubt about it. And by Thursday, September 28th, they had enough to arrest Kenneth Osborne. It was easy to find him because the company he worked for knew exactly where he would be stopping along his route. And when he was heading back towards town, they were able to pick him up at a truck stop. He did not resist arrest. He did not say anything. He didn't give them any problems. He did not resist arrest at all. They let him call his daughter, who was already on the way to come pick him up. But Kenneth told her to stop wherever she was because he was under arrest. Holly rushed to her grandma's house, Kenneth's mom, and they raced over to the police department. By this time, Kenneth had been awake somewhere around 36 hours. He had not slept and he would not sleep that night either. He was going straight in for an interview with the same two men that had sat down with him before. The first was FBI agent Boyd Brashears and Detective Rick Newton. And remember his promise. He said the next time, I'm going to get nasty. That's what waited for him. But what was interesting is they did not take him to the Southeast Arkansas Law Enforcement Center. Instead, they drove him out to a metal outbuilding behind a house. And it wasn't just anyone's house. It belonged to Jim Snyder. That month in September of 2006, Snyder was a deputy for the Sheriff's Office. He was also a deputy for the FBI. and inside that shed Kenneth was told what was going to happen to Holly that she was going to be put in jail and he was told that what he could do to stop all of this was just tell them why and what he did to Casey if he confessed they would let her go they told him they would even bring her up there if he wanted to talk to her they would bring anyone up there anyone he wanted except maybe his lawyer because he did ask for a lawyer so here's what they talked to Kenneth about his late wife Rhonda and they said you know we know that Holly and Kenny Jr. they're your life aren't they they were appealing to his emotions and in the same breath Newton told him he was going to drag his daughter through the mud they told him that once he walked out that door they wouldn't be able to help him anymore they couldn't help Holly they couldn't help Kenny Jr. there was no tomorrow for them they said and Kenneth was terrified the fact that they brought him to this isolated area where no one else was around he didn't know what they were going to do to him he knew that they had the power and he believed they were going to do something to his children lock them up at the very least but he repeated that he did not kill Casey then they tell him about the evidence they tell him they have a witness that saw somebody in his truck that morning which is true but they added that Holly had been able to confirm it to that witness which is not in any version of what Nancy had told them what actually happened was that when they asked Holly about it she said that her dad went straight home after dropping her off and then they told her that the witness had saw Kenneth's truck heading towards the river Holly told them that could not be true and that's why they thought that maybe she was covering for him because in all honesty there's no way she could have known what happened after she got out of that truck that morning and went to work but she insisted her father would never hurt anyone and she was standing by him his family was standing by his side but about an hour into the interview there was a bombshell this is what they hoped would finally break Kenneth not only did they tell him that they found Casey's DNA inside his truck which was a lie they explained a new piece of evidence that was 100 percent putting Kenneth where Casey's body had been found Newton told Kenneth the United States Air Force had satellites all over and they were recording 24 hours a day and they could zoom in anywhere and they looked at the location where Casey's body was and lo and behold there was Kenneth's truck and they took a screenshot of that video that satellite footage and they sent it to detectives and there were the detectives opening up this envelope and showing it to Kenneth there it was a satellite photo of his truck right there right next to canal 43 dated September 27th of 2006. I mean I'm showing you the picture right now on the screen it's his truck it seems pretty concrete unless someone had the exact same truck that exact same hour the exact same day and they happened to go down those roads that Kenneth was on pick up Casey and kill her right wrong yeah because that picture is fake yes it's 100 percent fake fabricated produced doctored these agents had actually gotten a similar truck they drove it out there they took a photo can you imagine being presented with that I mean I guess if you're guilty you're like well shoot they got me most of us no the underlying reality here it's 2006 there was no system passively recording continuous overhead video of anywhere I mean especially rural Arkansas not that anyone could just pull a truck off later imaging satellites pass over specific points they're on scheduled orbits they capture stills when they're asked to and the odds of one of them being over a farm on that road at 650 on a Sunday are pretty much non-existent even setting aside that the air force does not just hand over surveillance imagery to state police even ones investigating a homicide but like a local homicide it's not going to happen but Kenneth believed it this was also a man who had been awake for 36 hours whose daughter was in custody in another building who he couldn't talk to who had been told his family's freedom depended on the next few minutes that's not the state of mind of someone who's going to be evaluating the plausibility of federal imaging capabilities and Kenneth even tells them I'm tired can I sleep can we talk about this tomorrow they asked him if maybe he was protecting someone else maybe he knows someone else that was driving his truck a lot of times detectives are trying to give you an out he asked for a lawyer but again they kept going and the interview ends without a confession after all that he did not admit to anything and then Newton walks out of that building and Brashear's playing the good cop role he stays behind five minutes maybe 10 minutes just the two of them and the video camera's off what we know about those minutes is from what Brashear said happened that Kenneth asked if he could see his family he says I'm a mess and then he asked to pray and Brashear's asked him whether he wanted to keep talking after that and apparently Kenneth said yes because at 7 25 that evening the camera goes back on and Newton and Brashear's introduced themselves and then Kenneth introduced himself and Newton said to the camera that Kenneth was ready to talk to them about something and asked Kenneth if he was correct and he said yes Newton tells him to begin when her vehicle was broken down and he picked Casey up how did it happen he was like I just picked her up and Newton asked him was she in her vehicle was she on the outside of it and he was like she was on the outside there was a lot of talking going on from Newton using what is usually referred to in court as leading questions he would ask him like okay what made you do a u-turn okay so you came back around then you saw her standing out there then you drove your car up to her so he's basically telling the story for Kenneth and all Kenneth would do is either say yes or nod his head it was not like Kenneth was telling the story in his own words he was essentially just agreeing to what Newton was saying Newton goes on and asked him if he told Casey he was going to help her and get her some gas and he said yes and he asked was she calm or was she nervous and Kenneth responded that she was calm she was very calm and then Newton says he wants to know when the zip tie was applied there's a bit of back and forth here it almost seems like Kenneth is thinking about the question or maybe not wanting to answer the question and even Brashears was like well you don't have to give us specifics and Newton's like yeah just just tell us the time and tell us where it happened Kenneth says just out yonder and Newton fills in the gap with where her body was found and Kenneth just nods I'm showing some of this to you so you kind of get the picture of how this interview was going on the back and forth Kenneth begins to say it was like a different person and Newton was like was it like the devil was in you and Kenneth said I don't know it just wasn't me he said he didn't mean for it to happen and this is where the detective seemed to kind of give him an out a little bit Newton was like yeah it just got out of hand right that's what happened it just it went too far you never meant to do this just got out of hand that's sort of the direction that Kenneth begins to go in with the whole thing and maybe that's a more comfortable way to describe it and he even added that in his mind he doesn't really know what happened you can look at this in different ways you could see this as somebody that is completely guilty who's withdrawn who doesn't really want to confess but feels like it's their best option so they're doing the least or you can see it as someone who's innocent and wants his daughter released and knows what's hanging over his head and he's just kind of going through the motions but not saying too much because he knows he didn't do it and he has no words to tell them what happened because he's not the killer but at the end of that video Newton looks at Kenneth and says I want whoever is watching this video whether that's the prosecutor or other investigators I want them to know the reason why you're saying all this is because you want to get it off your shoulders and Kenneth said yes so I don't know if you're zeroing in on anything here or if it's becoming more apparent or not this is not usually how most confessions go typically when a killer is at the point where they're ready to confess they're the one providing a minute by minute account of what they did all the details where it happened why what the motive was but this was more coerced I think that's a good word to use and you'll know why later but here's the thing and I think this is the part that people usually get wrong about interrogations and once you understand the rules What happened in that shed makes a lot more sense and this usually surprises a lot of people Police are allowed to lie to you. I kind of already said this and most of you know from watching true crime regularly Not just a little lie. They can tell you a big lie. They can lie a lot in Arkansas in nearly every state in the country an Officer can sit right across from you and tell you something like I have your fingerprints and they have nothing They can tell you a witness picked you out of a lineup that never even happened They can tell you your DNA came back from the lab and they haven't even put your DNA in they can tell you that your buddies in the next room already confessing that they know you did it and That didn't even happen and that's all legal and the Supreme Court said so in 1969 it's in a case called Frazier against Cup. It has been the law ever since courts have Upheld convictions where officers invented physical evidence out of thin air so saying they have a satellite photo of his truck at Canal 43 when there's no satellite photos that itself is not a violation of anything Same with telling him a witness saw someone in his truck Same with telling him his daughter had confirmed it. It's legal But here's where the line actually is. There are two things police cannot do and both of them showed up in this case The first is a rule from a case called Edwards versus Arizona and It is about a clean rule as we have if you're in custody and you asked for a lawyer the questioning stops Right, then it doesn't start again unless you personally started again not because an officer says did you change your mind? You want to keep on talking? Kenneth asked for a lawyer during his first interview and the second but they kept going he asked twice in that shed and they kept on going and they never ended it and Then that agent stayed behind with him prayed with him and then asked do you want to keep talking? That's a violation Not the lying you have the right to an attorney. Even if you can't afford one one will be provided to you But I also use the word coercion on purpose Because this is where it gets more interesting The test is not whether police were mean and they think Threatened you but here's the second thing they did wrong Promising a benefit you have no power to deliver in exchange for talking that's different Especially when the benefits not even about him. It's about his children Because think about what that actually does to someone if I lied you and I say I have your fingerprints You can still say no, I didn't do this and you can take your chances But if I tell you that the moment you talk I will let your daughter go and if you don't talk, I can't help her anymore and she's going to jail I have given you a price and they dangled it in front of him time and time again I'm gonna tell you my thoughts at the end and I hope you share yours in the comments below as well And my members know we just finished a two-part series plus a live stream all about something similar, but also different technically Kenneth had confessed twice He'd already gone over all of this with detectives and then they recorded it as Newton was Kind of having him reiterate by asking him the questions and letting him say yes or no But it was still his choice. He could have just kept insisting. It wasn't him if he was innocent But then again was he just telling them what they wanted to hear so that his daughter could go free Afterward Kenneth was moved to the Southeast Arkansas Law Enforcement Center And they did let him see his family for about 15 minutes his mom his sister his daughter and his son Well in that building though, he saw someone else He saw his buddy his former boss Jim Snyder the guy who owned the shed that he was just in Well, he walked up to him and you know what Kenneth said? He said it wasn't me. I was outside of my body watching myself do it It's kind of like what he said to detectives back at the shed But it's almost like he's giving a little more details on his own and Snyder said in his entire career He had never heard anyone say it like that So he went and got the agents and he said hey Maybe we can get a little more out of him because he feels comfortable talking to me at 8:55 They start recording him again. And now with Snyder leading he has a different rapport with him and it makes sense If you feel more comfortable, you might end up giving over more information specific information and this time he did He explained that he pulled over and he asked Casey what her problem was and she told him that her truck had been down and she ran out of gas and Asked whether he had a jug for gas and he said no, but he could get one He said that he had never seen her before that morning that she got in his truck cooperatively and that she wasn't even scared But what I thought was odd and maybe this was to account for her being slumped over I don't know but he said she wasn't really that coherent That maybe she said something to him here and there but she was kind of like leaning against the door and that she seemed in And out like she had been drugged And they know that she smoked marijuana the night before but she had spoken to her mom that morning and she was completely fine What they really thought happened was that once she was inside that vehicle He hit her or did something to her to render her unable to escape And apparently the detectives at the arise that at some point she came to near where canal 43 was located And that's when the fight began and that's when they think he grabbed the first thing he saw which happened to be a zip tie in his truck and he placed it around her neck from the back to control her and He clasped it Snyder asked him was she awake when the tie went around her neck Kenneth said he couldn't remember But there were scratch marks So we know she had to have been He said that he pretty much blacked out Snyder wanted to know if she fought him and Kenneth shook his head and said not really But not really doesn't mean no does it he insists? Did he didn't mean to tie it so tightly, but he had no way To remove it and that's scary because if you've ever used a zip tie, you know exactly what that's like Once it clicks into place, it doesn't get looser. It only gets tighter, especially if someone is fighting and moving That's when he said she was making her way into the woods trying to get it loose And he didn't even follow her He said at one point he thought he might have a pocket Knife with him, but he didn't he saw her fall down Then he got in his truck and he drove off. He said she was just staggering the last time he saw her but some of that Really doesn't add up like the rip in her boxers Snyder asked whether losing his wife could have had anything to do with what he did and Kenneth said he didn't think so He said it would take him a really long time to understand Why he had done it But he was saying he did Snyder still wanted to know why he said I don't know and if I really knew that then it probably wouldn't have happened He said that afterward he went home. He finished mowing his lawn and then he washed and folded the clothes he had been wearing He was charged with capital murder and kidnapping and held at the Dumas County Jail without bond His family was shocked But aren't most families shocked. This is not unusual You see her loved ones in a positive light, you know them and it didn't add up to his family. They knew Kenneth He told the judge he didn't even need a public defender because at his first appearance in front of circuit court judge Sam Pope Kenneth said his mother had been in touch with attorney in Fayetteville named Erwin Davis and he was gonna represent him Kenneth also asked if he He could be out on bond. He told the judge if you let me out I could work I don't even have to go back to the same company I could look around and maybe work on a farm or something, but the judge was like no you're not getting bonded out Thomas Dean was the prosecuting attorney and he let Everyone in this community to know they would be seeking the death penalty By the 10th of October. No lawyer had been hired by Kenneth or his family so the judge appointed Bing Colvin a public defender and Kenneth pleaded not guilty, but Colvin he didn't last within weeks He was asking to be relieved of his duties as Kenneth's attorney And his reason was that he had become a witness in this case And that his office was already also dealing with like four other death penalty cases at the same time But what it means when a lawyer also says they're a witness in the case It means they have personal knowledge of a fact in that case That will be put to the jury and that would disqualify him because he cannot both argue the case and also testify in it And in Kenneth's case it seems to have something to do with being contacted when Kenneth began Asking for an attorney and that part of the case is going to be challenged a lot And we're gonna get there because I want your opinion on this Kenneth Osborne's defense Eventually went to three attorneys. It was a team Jim Wyatt Patrick Benka in Catherine Street And the public was already talking because of what law enforcement had told them Jim Snyder actually went on TV and said that DNA evidence and interviews is what led to Kenneth's arrest. The Associated Press reported that Kenneth had been linked to Casey's death through a DNA sample and other evidence. And at the arraignment, the prosecutor himself told reporters that surveillance tapes and DNA evidence linked Kenneth to the killing. The authorities were confident they had the right guy and Casey's family believed they had the right person as well. And hold on to that because I'm going to come back to it. Meanwhile, Kenneth's mother, Ruth, she had been going on camera even before her son had ever been charged, saying she knew he was innocent and that she hoped the real killer would be found because she knew he wasn't guilty. The trial was eventually moved out of that county because he would have not been able to get a fair jury there. They had already made up their mind and there were a number of people who were not. They wanted him dead. Finally, in January of 2008, 16 months after Casey died, the trial began in Ashley County. The charges were capital murder and kidnapping and the kidnapping charge specified a purpose that he had taken her to inflict physical injury on her, to terrorize her, or to force her into an act against her will. The prosecutor's theory was straightforward. A girl was stranded on the side of a highway. A man came along and presented her with a gun. The prosecutor's theory was simple. A man came along and presented herself as helpful. She got in because she trusted him. He drove for six miles out to a canal road, tried to have his way with her. She put up a fight. He grabbed a zip tie, ran behind her, put it over her neck, clasped it tight to control her and realized he could not get it off. So he left her there helplessly to die. It's brutal. But the defense told the jury that what happened to Casey was horrifying, that she did not deserve any of this. A second of it. But that Kenneth didn't do it. That someone else must have driven by and maybe their car was hidden. And I thought this was interesting because it was a fairly good argument. What they said is maybe when this other person's car, the real killer's vehicle, had passed by sonic footage, maybe it was hidden by a semi-truck. Because let's say the truck and this other vehicle were going at the same speed, maybe you wouldn't see it. Because the semi-truck would be the only thing on sonic cameras. Or maybe they just took a different route. And the defense said they were going to present witnesses who saw things that contradicted the state. Plus the state only had two things, the confession and the CCTV. And remember I told you I was going to circle back to the DNA? Well, it's going to be quite a big reveal. Because the truth was, Kenneth's DNA was not on anything. Not on the zip tie. Not on her body. And her DNA was never found in his car either. That was all lies. That was all a lie the detectives told him to get that confession. So the confession was really all they had besides his truck on camera. And the jury heard everything that you have. They saw their surveillance of the truck. Southbound at sonic at 642. Northbound at 645. Moving faster. And then east. On the dollar general footage. On the 165 highway. Headed out of town. They heard from Casey's mom. The medical examiner. That Casey had died of strangulation. And the doctor described the zip tie. How it had been pulled down so tight around her neck that it formed a circle about three inches across. That was it. That it had not slipped into place. That someone had deliberately clasped it down. That the ligature would have cut off the blood flow to her brain. And that she would have been unconscious within seconds. 20 at the most. And then the jury heard something else. The thing that was hanging over this entire case. That Casey had been outside for six days in Arkansas. And that decomposition was severe enough that they could not determine if there were any injuries on her body. No defensive wounds. Nothing. Not because they were never there. But because they could no longer have been proven because they didn't have the evidence. That was the biggest issue. That if there was evidence there, it was already gone. The Crowder family sat through most of this. But when the autopsy photographs went up in that courtroom, they left. Even the state's own DNA examiner from the state crime lab testified that she could not link Kenneth. To Casey. And she explained everything. How water and heat degrades DNA. That recovering anything usable was unlikely. But it did seem negligent that 16 months earlier, Snyder, the sheriff-elect at the time, had told the public that DNA led them to Kenneth. Even this same prosecutor had said that DNA linked him to the killing. But that's not true. But then the state pointed out the rip in the boxers that she was wearing. The state's position was that Kenneth intended to force himself on her. And that tear was the physical evidence for it. But the defense countered that. Saying, well, couldn't it have been from normal wear? And I get that. Like, maybe at another point, it ripped somehow. And she never changed them. Or maybe they came from her boyfriend's house. Girls were wearing boxers as regular shorts in 2006. The defense also said it could have been from animal activity in that area. But why not on her underwear underneath then? Didn't really make that much sense. And there was evidence to support the state's theory in the form of a witness named Connie Sparks. She was there to tell the jury about something that happened back in 1981. So 27 years before this trial. She had known Kenneth since they were children. And at that time, he was actually engaged to her sister. Connie was about 18 years old. Married. And her husband drove a truck and he was gone a lot. And she said Kenneth just showed up at her house and said that his car had broken down and asked Connie if she would drive him out to his car. And she did. And Connie said when they got to an isolated spot near the Arkansas River, he grabbed her by the throat, tore at her clothing, and put his hands on her and tried to get down her pants. She said she kicked him and she finally got away. It sounds very similar to what could have happened to Casey. The defense had fought so hard to keep that information out of that courtroom because it was 27 years ago and it never produced a conviction. But the judge let it in. And then the defense did something that I still cannot explain. They decide not to cross-examine Connie at all. And then, of course, the state had an eyewitness. Remember her, Nancy Dunn? The person who worked with Holly? She told them all about seeing Kenneth every Sunday. She told the jury that he didn't wave that day and that she saw a person slumped over in the passenger seat. But on cross-examination, the defense attorney went right at her memory and they got the thing that they wanted most. Nancy had described the passenger having dark hair. She actually said it looked black. Casey had blonde hair. And Kenneth's family had an explanation for maybe why Nancy thought she saw a passenger but actually saw something else. A seat organizer. I'm going to show one on the screen. Most of us have seen these before. Most of us have used one of these before. Kenneth supposedly had one on the back of the passenger seat and maybe was in some kind of position where it appeared to lean towards him. And if someone was driving past like Nancy was, when there wasn't that much daylight out, she could have thought it looked like a person. When it was the defense's turn, they worked on dismantling the timeline. I'm just going to tell you before you even hear any of this, to me, it didn't really matter. It was immaterial. What the defense was trying to argue was that Casey's vehicle had broken down in the middle of the night way before 5 a.m. But what's the difference? Her cell phone data put her there on that road at 530, calling her mom and telling her mom in her own voice where she was. And I'm telling you this because the defense was going to almost attack some of Casey's character, saying, you know, she was partying the night before, sleeping at her boyfriend's house, lying to her mom, that there was a house party right behind Exxon, supposedly, and that that car broke down at 1 a.m. And they were about to put people on the stand that were going to tell this court and this jury. because they wanted to boost her credibility. She was working at two o'clock in the morning when she saw a vehicle less than a quarter mile down the road out the window with its flashers going. And she knew the exact time because she said a call came into the hospital that night asking about a patient she was taking care of. And she walked out right to that window. She was walking by and she saw that vehicle out there with its flashers. Three more witnesses said they saw a similar vehicle on that same spot between three and a quarter to five in the morning. And when Annette got off work that morning, she got a better look when it wasn't dark and it appeared to be Casey's SUV. So five different people said that they saw the Durango there before 5 a.m. But again, who cares? Well, the defense did because they were posing it like this. The state story is that she left. Adams between five and five thirty ran out of gas and got picked up shortly after seven. But if that SUV was sitting there at two in the morning, then either it was a different vehicle or Casey was on the side of that highway for five hours before she called anyone. And I was like, no, because even if they ran out of gas, let's say on their way to the party and they were like, you know what? Let's forget about it. Let's get the car later. We'll just leave it here and we'll get a ride. It doesn't change. The. The fact that Casey was at that car at five thirty on the phone with her mom. But they were going with the alternative suspect theory. So they were kind of posing it like, could it have been Adam, her boyfriend, who, by the way, they had completely ruled out by now? Or could it be Jimmy or Jay? The two guys that saw her vehicle didn't do anything and then told Adam about it later when they got back to the house and then went fishing. Remember, she did make. Several calls to Jimmy that morning. So could that be reasonable doubt? Because what those witnesses could not establish is that Casey was ever out there before five thirty a.m. They just saw a vehicle, not a girl. The second direction the defense was going in was a barbecue. Which I think kind of backfired as well. There was a cookout down by the river that same morning that Casey was killed and a woman named Sharon Williams testified that Kenneth showed up at ten o'clock in the morning. That he called her at nine thirty to ask whether he needed to bring anything along. She said that he seemed completely normal. He walked in. He was wearing a white V-neck shirt, cut off shorts, didn't have any blood on them or anything. But I'm like, why would they when she was strangled? However, on cross-examination, the prosecution was able to get her to admit that she noticed the scratches on Kenneth's arms. She said she assumed that it came from his pets. But that was important. Because she noticed them and then she had to explain why they would be on his arms. This was before anyone was accusing Kenneth of anything. And I thought, huh, it stood out enough to her that she had to come up with her own explanation as to why they would be on his body. And on cross-examination, the prosecution was able to get everyone at that barbecue to admit that they had no idea where he was before he got there at ten o'clock. That would have been plenty of time. To do what was done to Casey and go home. And shower. And wash and fold his clothes like he admitted he did. And all he had to do to get home was to drive that same road that ran right in front of Canal 43. And he wouldn't have been caught on any of those cameras. Because he would have been taken the long way back. There was also his logbook. So Kenneth drove for USA Truck Company. And drivers keep their own logs. They write down when they fuel up. And what route they're taking. And his own logbook put him in Louisiana the day before on the 26th. And he logged that he was still in Louisiana the next day. But he was off duty. And just in the city on his free time. When Casey disappeared. Not true at all. Since his own witnesses and his daughter put him at the nursing home on that road. And also at a barbecue in town. So even by his own self-recorded paperwork. He contradicted where he had been. That was not a good look. So the defense had to go with the one thing they could possibly attack. And that was the tactics the detectives used. By lying to Kenneth to get those confessions. I told you they're allowed to lie. But remember that things got a little unethical. Because they kept mentioning his children. They were essentially threatening him to tell the truth. Or else they would put his own daughter in jail. And Kenneth said it himself. Those children were his world. When his wife died. All he cared about was that his children would grow up and they would be safe. And at that point in his life. He said that when he was being interviewed. He didn't care if he lived or died. He didn't care about dying. He would rather be with his wife. So essentially give him the death penalty if you don't believe him. He'd be back with the woman that he loved. So he went along with it. And he made a false confession. Well to bolster this. The defense called a man named Richard Leo. He was a sociologist out of San Francisco. Who studied interrogations. And Leo reviewed the audio and the video from that shed. And they asked him to rate the techniques on a scale from 1 to 10. With 10 being the worst. And he put it at a 9. That's pretty bad. And I'm going to admit to you. When I watched it. I did cringe at many moments. I don't necessarily agree. With how they conducted this interview. But he did confess. And why would he confess to something he didn't do? Well. Because. People do this. It's documented. It's not as rare as you might think. Of all the people exonerated by DNA in this country. Roughly a quarter of them had made false confessions. People sat in rooms. And described crimes that they had nothing to do with. In detail. And then later. Their DNA proved they had nothing to do with it. And when researchers looked at how it even happens. They find some of the same conditions that show up here. Long interrogations. Sleep deprivation. Being told the evidence is overwhelming when it's not. And a suspect becomes convinced that there's no version. Of their story that's going to be believed. And they're not walking out. So the only question that's left to them becomes. What's the best outcome? And at some point for these people. Confessing feels like. A way out. A transaction. It's going to make it all stop. Kenneth had been awake by his account. For something like 36 hours. His daughter was in a building somewhere. And she was going to get charged in his mind. He had been told there was so much evidence. It was overwhelming. And some of what he told was not true. He had asked for a lawyer three separate times. Across two nights and never got one. And then he confessed twice. So here's my thought, which I told you I was going to give you. And you can tell me yours. I hold all of this at once. He confessed. But he's also a man that if he didn't do it, he had every reason to say that loudly. But he didn't. He was even in the presence of his former boss. And instead of doing something like. Begging him, like, hey, you know me, you know, I didn't do this. Please believe me. He didn't. He did the opposite. He became more relaxed and more detailed about the event. However, the way they went about getting these confessions was not clean cut. Taking him out to a shed. Giving him satellite photos that didn't even exist. Telling him his DNA broke the whole case. Well, actually, it broke him down. And that's what makes this case what it is. Confusing. Which also. Could be reasonable doubt. Pretty much what the state had was circumstantial evidence, which is still evidence and can still convict someone, which is the prosecutor's point. In closing, the prosecutor wanted the jury to remember something. Circumstantial cases work by accumulation. He said any skilled lawyer can take the facts, separate them all out and attack them one at a time. He called it one of the oldest tricks in the book. And I trust you see through it. What he was trying to tell the jury was that no single piece proves anything. But the combination becomes harder to explain innocently. And he has a point. A truck resembling Kenneth's. Going the wrong direction. Turning around. Three minutes apart. Driven right in location where this young woman was standing. The marks on his body. Any one of those things could have an innocent explanation on their own. But all together, in the same 25 minutes, is a different story. The prosecutor was telling the jury not to let the defense dismantle the picture into pieces small enough to just kind of shrug at. In Arkansas, juries are actually instructed on this. Circumstantial evidence can support a conviction and they're told to consider the evidence as a whole. To put it together. But there is another way to look at it. A jury reaches reasonable doubt. By testing the evidence. And testing does mean taking it apart. And in a case where maybe there's 10 weak things that are stacked up. into one big thing, taking it apart is exactly the thing that should happen before adding them all together and getting a verdict. So if you were on this jury, what would you conclude? I think I pretty much know what most of your answers would be. Here's a reminder of what they had. A truck on three different cameras, a man whose story about that morning changed, marks on his body with two different explanations, a woman who saw something in the passenger seat, but it was the wrong color hair, a tear in a pair of shorts with three possible causes, an accusation from back in 1981, no DNA, and two recorded statements in which Kenneth said he did it and explained how. Those tapes went to the jury. They watched them and they concluded that Kenneth was guilty. And they convicted him on January 18th of capital murder and kidnapping. And then they went back to decide whether he should die or he should live. And they couldn't agree. 11 of them wanted the death penalty, but one didn't. And because they were deadlocked, Arkansas law took it out of their hands and the judge imposed a sentence himself, life without parole for Casey's murder and a second life sentence for the kidnapping. Casey 's mother, Melinda, spoke and she said, you could have pushed her out of that truck. You could have done anything else, but instead you put a zip tie around her neck and watched her die. And she told him he killed a part of her as well. Now, I don't want to drag this out too long, but something else did happen. I think you should know about it. Kenneth appealed immediately and his lawyers went after the one thing that convicted him, the tapes. It took until June of 2009, but the Arkansas Supreme Court came back and it reversed both of the convictions. Yep. And it came down to two things. If you're in custody and you ask for a lawyer, the questioning is supposed to stop. And the second ground for reversal was coercion. And this is the part that I want to be more precise about. It was not the threats of the death penalty or the lies or anything like that. What the court could not get past was Holly. Deception is legal. Buying a confession with someone's daughter is not legal. It did not say he was innocent. It did not say the remaining evidence was too weak for a conviction, but it said that the jury should not have heard those tapes. And the state said they would do it all again, even without the tapes. They were that confident that Kenneth was the killer. He stayed in custody. And then the fight became about whether Arkansas could convict him a second time and that the death penalty could still be on the table. Because remember, the jurors never acquitted him of the death penalty. They just couldn't agree on it. So guess what? The state was going to seek it again. And on June 18th of 2014, about two months before that second trial was to start, Kenneth pleaded guilty. He got 30 years on second degree murder and 10 years for kidnapping. That was about a year and a half ago. And Kenneth pleaded guilty. But Kenneth wasn't okay with that. He tried to take back his plea deal almost immediately. Okay, Brian Koberger, but it was almost like the same argument. Blame it on counsel. Kenneth said he was led to believe that he was going to get out in just a few years. But the written agreement he signed said 40 years. And the plea hearing had him acknowledging 40 years. Outlasted. Outlasted. Outlasted. So it was denied. He was staying in prison. I have looked at this case from every angle that I know how to look at a case. And I have to tell you, honestly, I don't know the truth. But there's no explanation for why he turned that truck around. None that makes sense, at least. At least not to me. Or why he headed towards where her body was found instead of towards home on the same road. I do think, regardless of what perpetrators' own family members, think of them, they can and do have all kinds of thoughts and inclinations in their minds that we will know nothing about. And I think if he is guilty, like the jury believed he was, and like he confessed to and also pleaded guilty to, then I can get behind one thing, possibly, that he didn't know how tight the zip tie would get. But what I can say is, you know, putting it on someone's neck risks that they will die. So I think his intentions were to have his way with her, but it went wrong. And she fought him. And he chose to use an item that he himself said he could not take off. So he panicked and left. That's the only thing I could come up with. If he's not guilty, and this is a case of being in the wrong place at the very wrong time, and it's a very unfortunate situation where his, his truck that's very recognizable just happened to be on both roads related to this case and her murder, I hope that one day, maybe DNA testing can get to the point where he can be exonerated and they can prove his innocence. Kenneth Ray Osborne is still in prison. He became eligible for parole on February 5th of 2025. And it went before the board in August of 2024. And it was still out there as we speak. And one is from people who love Casey Crowder asking the state of Arkansas to never let him out. And the other petition is from his own daughter. Holly is still out there 20 years later, trying to bring her father home. And I have to say, I feel for both of these families. But for Casey's family, it has been an unimaginable tragedy. Melinda Crowder is still in prison. And I hope that one day, maybe DNA testing can get to the point where he can be exonerated. But for both of these families, it has been an unimaginable tragedy. I'm so sorry to her family and for what happened to Casey. And I'm so thankful for all of you being here for Casey's story. I will see you in my very next video. Bye.