The Scream Murder, Episode 2: Caught in a Lie

Hi, this is Connor McCarthy. Today we're back with another episode of The Scream Murder, a true teen horror story. Remember, if you can't wait for more, you can listen ahead to the entire series right now, add free when you subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus. Just click the link in the description to sign up, terms apply. Now here's the next episode. On October 19th, 2025, the Louvre became the backdrop of something straight out of a heist movie. In this series, I'll take you inside the events of that day through the eyes of the people who lived them. Then I'll join the International Hunt for the Louvre Jules. Heist at the Louvre, a new series from ABC Audio. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app, or subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts to listen, add free. It's September 2006 in Pochatello, Idaho. The murder of 16-year-old Cassie Joe Stodder terrifies and enrages this small town. The investigation quickly leads to two unusual suspects, high school classmates of Cassies. One of those classmates was just caught lying to detectives. I'm Pat Rogers here with Connor McCarthy, and this is episode two of the Screen Murder Trutheen Horror Story Podcasts. So when we left the last episode, Brian Draper, had admitted that he had been lying about what he and Tori Adam check had done once they left the house where Cassie was murdered. He had said that he and Tori went to a movie, but now he says that's not true and he has a new story about what happened that night. And I'm here to tell you, you didn't go to the movie. You were not at that movie here. We didn't go to the movie. Okay, can't take it. I don't think you're the type of person that could kill somebody cold blood. Can you expect my clothes fit? Especially your clothes, of course. Okay. He came clean. All right, you got me. We didn't go to the movies. We were doing something else. What I'm about to play is the police interview with Brian Draper and his second story. He's going to tell them. I can tell you what we're doing. I was trying to hide this, but I guess I'll tell you. You're going to have to manage the only way out. We went through cars and it's going to slow it. So I'm going to take that. He went through cars. What does that mean? We checked for the cars that they're locked. Locked. We're happy. Where was that? Connor, you could tell there was a bit of a rugpole for detectives here. His new story is I was going through cars, which is plausible because this is something that some teenagers do. They go around, grab a handle, the door unlocked. What am I going to find inside? Some change. Maybe a dollar, two, pack of cigarettes, CDs at that time. But you want to know why he lied in the first place. Yeah, yeah. It's a murder investigation. There's something interesting said because I know it's against the law. Now, Pat, this is a 16-year-old kid. Is he more concerned with what his parents are going to find out versus what the homicide detectives are going to find out? Who is the one that he fears most because you're a kid? Am I going to get grounded because now I'm going to have to fess up that I was breaking into cars while my friend was murdered? The point is, this is the second story that Brian has told. And here's Detective John Gansky. I think with the juvenile, sometimes they're reluctant to tell us things that might get them in trouble and maybe seems trivial to us. But it's a big thing, you know, to them and because of the stage they're out in their life. And the reason why they lied about going to the movie is because they were doing something, something else. And that's something else that they were doing is that they were burglarizing or going through cars in the neighborhood of whispering cliffs near where Cassie was house sitting. He is an unreliable narrator at this point because he is already capable of one lie and police need to once again dig into the cell by. So just like the movie, can you tell us any details about the movie? Who was in it? What was it about? Couldn't tell them. So they start down the same path. Which cars? What color were they? What streets were they on? What did you get? What was the Macon model? Don't know, don't know, don't know, don't know. He had no information about the cars he allegedly was breaking into. And again, this is about the same time that police believe Cassie was murdered. So once his second story kind of falls apart, can't name any of the cars, no details. Again, police really start to close in. And Detective Andy Thomas sort of grabs onto this thread now. The car break-in thread. The car burglary thing is not happening. Okay? That's what happened. These are the types of situations that you don't lie in. Everything else in this world is game. And I'm a firm believer in that. I don't give a s**t. If you lie in anything else to a cop, whatever, when it comes to a murder of a beloved friend, you do not lie. Okay? The second part of that is I want you to take a deep breath. And I want you to think about what part of this that you that you're involved in. Okay, how much of this are you involved in? And if you are, that's fine. We can deal with that fine. We can deal with that. Well, you guys are ridiculous. We're not going to kill a friend. Why am I like, you're Cassie? Do anybody know who did it? No, I don't know, killed Cassie. In the video, you can see Detective Thomas is right in front of him, staring right into his eyes, but Brian doesn't break eye contact. Yeah. But now he's been caught into two lies. And detectives don't like when you lie to them. And they offer Brian what they offered Matt. Hey, come in, take a polygraph. Maybe we can get you out of it. Let's clear this up. Let's clear this up. Brian immediately and enthusiastically says, yes, I will come in and I will take a polygraph. The confidence just hits a 10. Yeah, right from Solan. I didn't kill my friend to absolutely, I will take this polygraph test. Let's do it. He's ready to clear his name. Everybody knows that polygraph tests results are inadmissible. But detectives love it. They love them. It's like you said, it's a tool that they can use. There's a psychology that they use. And they can argue it either way. You don't want to take a polygraph. If somebody doesn't want to take it, why don't you want to take it? That's odd to me. It says the detective. Or if you take it and fail it, why'd you fail it? What are you lying about? Here's what John Gansky said. Polygraph tests are controversial at best. I think sometimes they can be useful, not the actual polygraph itself, but the interview process that comes with the polygraph. And the possibility of your body indicating that you're lying, a lot of the times we get the truth, not from the machine, but from the interview process. Our next step with Brian was that he'd given us a story and he agrees to a polygraph examination for the next day. And that was pretty much the end of the interview and his mom, Pam, drove him home. This is what she had to say about that whole situation. Well, the whole thing worried me. I mean, I was worried for my family. I was worried for my parents who were elderly. I was worried for my daughter. I was worried about everything at that point. And I was extremely worried for Brian because he was so quiet and withdrawn. Something was definitely telling me that he knew more than he was saying. He kept telling me, he can't believe she's gone. He just kept saying, I can't believe she's gone, mom. So the Brian that she sent into the room was different than the Brian who came out of that room. All right, so maybe this is a good time to back up and talk a little bit about Brian draper's family situation, his background, and their whole situation. Connor, you met with his parents. I met both Pam and Brian's dad, Carrie, when I was in Idaho. And they are hardworking, small town residents trying to raise their kids. Brian was actually adopted. They had a difficult time getting pregnant. So how they saw it, he was a blessing because they weren't sure if they were going to be able to have children. And then they were able to adopt him. His biological mother was quite young. So they adopted him as a baby and raised him. as their son. Here's his dad, Carrie. Bryan is very talented. In many ways, he flew through his education as an A-student without trying. He was a musician for Hurleyon, playing the piano. To find his room, where he had a drum set. Yeah, he was down in that room, pounding on the drums, playing, and we loved it. In my mind, Bryan was the perfect son. So when this came up, they were just blindsided by their son who seemingly perfect. All the way up to age 16 is now being questioned by police. Like, none of this tracks. This doesn't make sense. So Bryan leaves, agrees to come back and take a polygraph. But meanwhile, police are still investigating. They're not just waiting for Bryan to take his polygraph. And that investigation rightly centered on Pocatello High School, because you got Tori Adam Check, Bryan Draper, Cassie, and Matt. All of them are students. Where would you go to find out more information about students than the high school? So the students told us there were police in the hallways, police in the vice principal's office. Imagine how disruptive this is in a high school. And despite the fact that Matt had passed his polygraph by now, there were rumors. This is Danny Dixon, a former Pocatello High School student. Yeah, I remember initially how crazy it was. I remember everyone crying. There was counselors swarming the hallways. Just, yeah, everyone holding on. It felt like to each other a little tighter. And so everyone was like, oh, Cassie's boyfriend. He was there, and he was her boyfriend. And so you've seen a lot of crime movies. I think people just thought, oh yeah, he probably did that. And this is frustrating for investigators, because nobody knows that they had already talked to Matt, and they had cleared him of any connection to the homicide. Yet they go into the hallways of Pocatello and everyone points the finger. It's the boyfriend. With no other basis. Other than, while I've seen a lot of movies, and you know how things unfold in crime documentaries, it's always going to be the boyfriend in the end. So it's a frustrating setback. They're not progressing very much in the investigation at school. All they have right now is Brian Draper. We need to follow up with his story and see what happens with his polygraph test. The following day, he comes back to the police station. But this time, he's not alone. He doesn't have a lawyer, but he does have his mom and his dad. Pam and Carrie are there by his side. He sets up to take a polygraph. He's ready. Clear his name, like he said, but that is not what happened. Going on his way, how are you doing? Brian. Brian was in the interrogation room nervous, scared, and he wanted to talk to police. Just help him away. Hey, man. Just help him. In the police interview, you can see Brian in the center of frame, Carrie, just to his right, and Pam, with Detective Gansky and Thomas. Everyone is looking at Brian. What is he about to say? He's highly emotional. It's about to explode out of him. Sure, you're right, sir. We didn't-- we-- we real side, and we part and side-state. So Brian tells police that they left the house at 9.30. But what he says next is both shocking and case-altering forever. It is another major turning point here. He says that they doubled back and came back inside the house. They had no plans of actually leaving. They just wanted to convince Cassie and Matt that they were going to see a movie that was never the plan. They come in, did the basement, where they had been earlier that night, and they had unlocked the door. You remember, they were down the basement playing with the weight machine. When they did that, they took that opportunity to unlock the basement door, knowing that they were going to come back later. And that's part of the explanation of why the lights were going out. Brian explains that. Can you tell us what we're going to do about this? That's what the lights are. We have a power box. Yes, sir. We went there. We went-- Matt, we're still here. And we went-- we turned over. I thought this was scary. OK. So was your intent to do those lights just to get them to come down there? Yes. OK, so you thought it was going to jump out? Yes, you could move it. Part of this confession, the sobbing, the stuttering, the stammering, it's hard to get what he's saying piecing together. He can barely get it out, get the words out. But he just said, we were just trying to scare them. So what he's suggesting is a plan. He also goes on to tell police that to lure them down into the basement, they had smashed an ash tray. And if you remember, from episode 1, there was this glass that was at the bottom of the staircase. They couldn't really figure out why it was there. There was no windows broken. And there were no windows anywhere near this part of the basement. But they'd turn the lights off often on. They'd smash the glass in attempt to scare them. As we talked in episode 1, when Matt was describing this, Cassie, Matt, and the dog are at the top of the stairs. They're looking down into a pitch black basement. Now we know it was Brian and Tori. And keep in mind, Brian's parents are sitting right next to him. This is all brand new to them. This is brand new to everybody in that room. Remember, they thought, oh, we're coming in for a polygraph. He's going to-- he's maybe hiding something, but we'll be gone in a couple hours. They're sitting here in real time listening to this plot unfold. And the two are wearing a mask that we had. Cassie, what kind of mask? Halloween? Yeah, Halloween masks. He just says they put on Halloween masks. I mean, is it from the show Halloween? No, it's not. No, they're white, and then we paid. I had-- mine was all black and stuff because of red, all over me. You can see Pam in the video, heightened up. That should recoil. She puts her hand up to her face, almost hiding, shocked. Again, where is this going? This is not a story he told me when I was at home with him all weekend, or after the first police interview. You have to keep asking, maybe guys, of course. Let's take a step back. And remember Brian's first interview early on. They're just getting to know each other. What do you like? Movies. What kind of movies? Horror movies. What kind of horror movies? Slasher movies. Cut to him in the confession saying, we don't masks. We carried knives. We went up to scare her. He then explains that he and Tory waited in the basement until they heard Matt's mom come and pick Matt up and leave. So now they know that Cassie is alone in the house. And this is when they make their move. Brian and Tory walk up the stairs, knives in hand, masks on face, reach the top of the stairs. Cassie is in the living room, 20 feet away. She turns. She sees the two of them. What Brian is saying was that that's where it was going to end. Tory stepping on me. And he walked over here and then Cassie was saying, who's there? And that was not to say you know, hey, and then she screams that I was so close to him. He was really scouting. And then I was like, what's going on with him? He was saying, what's going on with him? What are you talking about? OK. So you guys, you turn when he's stabbing her, where are you going? I'm back at him, I'm buying the door. And he said that if I told him, he would kill me. What he's suggesting is, Brian thought, we're just going to do this to scare her. Tory had a different plan. So since you're saying that Tory stabs her, all of a sudden, I was totally good at it. Yes. Brian puts everything on Tory. Tory attacked, stabbed Cassie to death. The big question is, hey, because we help Cassie's body. And we're going to go find the knife. And we're going to compare the knives to the wounds. OK. At any time, he's very likely to be shown under the knife. Hey, let's Cassie. When watching the police interview, Brian's dad, Carrie, is in the corner of the room. He's trapped. He cannot move. And you see him gripping his son shoulder, you see him tightening himself up. He is stuck in the worst possible place he could imagine. I think at that point in time, to a certain extent, I had checked out. I really say that because I don't-- I think I was just going through the motions. I think I stopped thinking. I feel like I was watching a movie. - Somebody else's life. I knew he was toast. I knew I asked my son. I knew it. - The cameras are still rolling even though the confession is over. And the camera's capture a very personal moment with this family in this time of extreme stress. Pam, Carrie, and Brian sort of lock together and embrace, and Pam says something to Brian. - You are an incredible boy, an incredible boy. I talked to her about that moment in particular. And she said, even after hearing that he had been a part of this crime, he's still my boy. You know, you never stop being a parent. - Then when we went back in the room and like, so the first question he asked is, can I go back to school? And then before when they were leaving, I believe is when I hugged him and told him that he was an amazing boy. And I was, it sounds weird, but that's the son I raised. The one who even though he was naive about the finality and what was gonna happen, he still went in and told the truth. And he's still my son. And that was, that never changes. He will always be my son. - This may be controversial. And there are a lot of people out there that certainly do not want to hear mother calling Brian Draper incredible minutes after he confessed to participating in Cassie's death. But she felt in that moment, she needed to do something because of what he had just done. And he, as Carrie said, had no idea of what was coming for him. And they felt like they just needed to take a break and just be parents for their only son. Regardless of what just happened. - Sure, that's her take. Incredibles not the word I would use. - I wouldn't use that word, but they're in a highly unique situation and they're making this up as they go. No one's prepared for this. - I think what you said is on the money and it's understandable that she would do this. But I think people watching and Cassie's family might not think that Brian Draper is an incredible boy. - There's one other very strange moment captured by the cameras that was outside of the interrogation. So Pam and Carrie were not in the room. The detectives were not in the room. Brian's alone, the cameras are rolling and he starts talking to himself. But he's also talking to Cassie. He addresses Cassie as if she's still alive. - Okay. She was very confused. - I didn't know. - What is the tragedy then? - One bad woman. Cassie was here. But I was talking to Cassie. I wish I wouldn't stop. I will protect you Cassie. I would have stopped him. I wanted to be your boyfriend. He's talking as if she's still alive. - He's center frame. The cameras on him. Do you think he's aware that the camera is rolling? - Well, that's the $64,000 question. Either he's had some sort of weird psychotic break where he's talking to her as if she's alive. I would stop him, I want to be your boyfriend. Either that's the case or he knows those cameras are still on and is sort of constructing a I would have stopped him. You know, again, Tori did it. Did this kid in the moment come up with this like scheme to sort of look, look, I'm apologizing to her. I wanted to be your boyfriend or is he really just broken brain syndrome? That's the part that works against his story. I want to be your boyfriend. This is a different context. He clearly had a liking. He had a crush on, I would say from what he just said. I had a crush on you, Cassie. If you have a crush on a girl, do you put on a mask and wheel of knife and go upstairs and terrorize her? No, that doesn't track with someone who has a teenage crush on a girl. So for Brian, he confesses they have a version of events that closely coincide with the crime scene of how she died. But there are so many details between that. We had Brian's word. A person who's been caught lying not once, twice, unreliable narrator. He's closer to the truth. Is it, okay, Brian, we had your confession. You're putting it all on Tori. Now we need the evidence that matches your story, the knives, the mask, where is it? 'Cause remember, nothing was found at the crime scene. And then Brian agrees, okay, I'll take you to Black Rock Canyon where everything is. Now, Black Rock Canyon, when we were making the documentary, "Scream Murder," a true teen horror story, we went out there with Detective Ganski and saw this area, you know we were talking before about how Polka Tell was kind of isolated. This is a good example of it. It's only 10, 15 minutes, maybe outside of town, but you think you could be on the moon. It's pitch black at night. No one's gonna be out there, but you can still hear the traffic from a distance. You're not that far away. So you can go out there in 10 minutes, do what you wanna do and be back in town and no one would notice. So what Brian said about Black Rock was that after they had killed Cassie, they drove out there and buried this evidence out there. So this is where Brian, after his confession, leads police out there and he locates, even in the dark, the area where they had buried everything and they start pulling out exactly what Brian said they would find there. The black clothes, the masks that they wore. These masks were clearly homemade, paper mache and then they designed them themselves. They sprinkled paint down, bloody smears that were coming down from maximum effort to terrify Cassie seemingly seconds before she was murdered. And then they pulled an eye outside of the hole and these, what we've been told from the autopsy report was one of them was a serrated knife. That doesn't do it justice. These were 10 to 12 inch long daggers, hunting knives almost. If you recall, the Rambo knife is sort of a moniker for this. So clearly this horror movie theme is something that's on their minds and we'll see in later episodes that it comes really to the forefront in a way that nobody could have predicted when this all started. The other thing they found in this whole of evidence was something that Brian had never mentioned and it wasn't a murder weapon and it wasn't something they wore there. It was a tape, a videotape. - A tape? - Yeah, what's that doing there? - I mean, what is that doing there? And it looked like someone had tried to damage it, set it on fire. Maybe that's why Brian never mentioned it. But he knew that it was in that cash with everything else. - So you think he didn't mention it because he thought, oh, it's so badly damaged, he'll never get anything off of it? - Destroyed. Everybody at the police station, all investigators involved were quickly notified. Guys, there's a tape and our technicians been able to recover the footage that's on that tape. Everyone is brought into a single room. Everyone's gonna watch it at the same time. No one knows what they're about to watch and they're about to watch something that they are going to regret. When I sat down with John Kanske and we got to the moment of the tape discovery, I could see him reliving this 20 years ago that this was a going to be a defining moment for him. - So we get a call that we got the videotape. They fixed it, looks like they'll be able to play it. They're in the conference room. Andy and I arrived about the same time. We walk in and you can hear a pin drop in the room 'cause nobody in the room knows what we're about to see. And are you prepared to see what you're gonna see? - There was so much tension as they're waiting for the technician to hit play. (gun firing) Opening shot is the camera in the hallways of Pocotella High School. Kids are moving around. going to lockers, they're getting stuff. It appears that Brian is doing most of the camera work. Now what's strange about this tape is that it jumps around because it's out of order, it's happening on multiple days. We're in March of 2006 and then we jump to September 21st, the day before Cassie is killed. But early on, something happens that catches everyone's breath in that police room when they're watching it. It's a shot of the camera, POV, Brian holding it, walking down the hallway, which is almost empty. You see a student off in the distance and row of lockers. As you're closer, you realize it's Cassie. Brian spins around, puts the camera on her, says, "Hello, Cassie. What's up? I'm getting you on tape, okay? Say hi, please. Hi. Okay, see ya. Wait, have you seen Tori? He's supposed to be here at 730 and it's 819. He's an hour late. He didn't even care to eat. See ya. When you look at the timestamp, it's September 22nd. This is the day that they killed her. He approaches her on tape in the hallways of Pocatella High School. Certainly a huge shock for anybody that's watching this. She's in the clothes that she's killed. Yeah. It's hard to watch. Yeah. It's clearly Brian taunting her. See taunting her with a plan to kill her as he taunting her with the plan to only scare her and is that going to be a part of this tape? What else is on this tape? Okay, so seeing Cassie at her locker alive, the morning of September 22nd, knowing that that night she would be murdered, is certainly heartbreaking and shocking and diabolical kind of at the same time. This tape is 35 minutes long. Seeing Cassie at the locker is one of the earlier scenes if you want to call it that. And what police are going to see is that Brian and Tori captured the rest of their day and into the night. What is on this tape? That Brian and Tori did not want anyone to see. The most shocking parts are still yet to come and we're going to explore that on the next episode. When we check out the whole house, we know there's lots of doors. There's lots of places to hide. And then in the video you see them, they're driving there to commit this crime. There should be no odd against killing people. Just kill Cassie. We just looked her house. If I had some f*** up, we got to get our act straight. (dramatic music) - Last October's brazen daytime heist at the Louvre was shocking. Now, nearly a year out, there are still critical questions to be answered. - Where did they go? - And second, where did they come from? - In this series, I'll take you inside the events of that day like you've never heard them before through the eyes of the people who lived them. - On the pavements, I saw something shiny. - You did see the crown. - Yes, exactly. - Heist at the Louvre, a new series from ABC Audio, available now, add free on Amazon Music.