The Murder of Kecia Hughes

Part 1 | Tuesday January 4, 2022

Part 2 | Tuesday January 18, 2022

Part 3 | Tuesday February 8, 2022

Part 4 | Tuesday February 22, 2022

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Show Transcripts

Part 1 of 4

David Lyons:

Well, Keisha that’s the tragic part about this was a beautiful young woman. She was 28 years old at the time of the murder. She had two sons, at the time they were five and nine people that knew her best said that one of her favorite things was spending time with her children.

Wendy Lyons:

Warning, the podcast you’re about to listen to may contain descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast, the murder of Keisha Hughes part one. Hey guys, before we dig into our next interesting podcast, I want to share with you a friend of our’s podcast that is recently just been started. It’s a very great friend of ours named Chuck Gunter and his podcast is called One Movie Guy’s Opinion. It’s a great podcast that discusses well, his opinions on movies. If you’re interested in hearing it, it’s listed on all platforms and you can also find Chuck on Facebook as well. Again, that’s One Movie Guy’s Opinion. Please give it a listen. Well, David you know there’s a couple of cases I’ve been on you to do with me and at least I’m getting one so I’m kind of proud of that. This one is the 1999 case of a young lady, age 28 at the time named Keisha Hughes. And you actually worked this case. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that?

David Lyons:

I was the lead on this one and we’ve talked about what the lead is, is that it’s more of a team effort, but this one was assigned to me and it was the first one in Lexington for the year of 1999, as we believe that she was murdered probably sometime shortly after midnight on New Year’s Eve in 1998. And we’ll get into more detail about that. This was one that I actually pulled lead on and it was a very interesting case. It spoke to me and it stuck with me all these years about Keisha was. And I really think it’s important to memorialize her as a victim, who she was. When we talk about how we do this out of victim advocacy, and part of it is that we don’t want people to be forgotten.

David Lyons:

And it’s kind of sad because if you do a Google search for Keisha Hughes in Lexington, Kentucky, about all you find is an appeal record for her murderer, which is sad. There’s really not a lot. I can’t even find the older news articles that were there. They may be buried deep into the internet, but this way, if we get this case out, people, they’ll learn more about who Keisha was and what she meant to her family and the community.

Wendy Lyons:

And also not to mention we’ve done cases before on domestic violence, our Amanda Ross case, who was brutally murdered by her fiance, Steve Nunn, and sadly, this is another one on Keisha. And I think it just goes to show you there’s so many that, like you said, there’s not a lot of information found on it and it just kind of gets swept under the rug and not a lot’s known. So I’m glad that we are bringing Keisha Hughes’ unfortunate murder to light and maybe shed some light on, like you said, who she was, a little bit about that case, and recognizing some domestic violence problems that may be in a relationship of yourself for your friend.

Wendy Lyons:

But I did want to ask, I guess before we begin we have our other detective friends on here that goes over cases with us, and I always ask them how they began in that unit. And today we’ve were sitting here together without a detective since you were a lead on this. And I guess I want to ask you and our listeners probably want to know as well. How did you get involved in that unit? And why don’t you tell us a little bit about what year you came on, how many years you spent with the Lexington police department, how many years you spent actually working in homicide before getting promoted on up the ladder like you did.

David Lyons:

Well for me, I think one of the things that draws me to this case again and you were right, is that it’s going to be about domestic violence. And along with Amanda Ross, we had Umi Southworth and Michael Turpin and those other cases, and people can go back and listen to those again. And when you do this for a living, unfortunately, that’s one of the tragic things that you deal with far too often is domestic violence and murders that may result from that. As far as me and my career, another thing that I think I feel a connection to Keisha from is that when I started with Lexington Police Department, it was in 1992, September of 1992. And I actually moved to Lexington from Louisville and Keisha’s from Louisville. And again, that’s a connection I had that I think spoke to me with her a little bit is that she had also come to Lexington, Kentucky to start a life and to move here.

David Lyons:

So in 1992, I packed up everything and headed down the road and started working here at Lexington. I was very fortunate to get a job with Lexington Police Department and did like everybody else did. You do your time on the road and patrol which is a requirement. But I do know that I was invited into the unit rather early, and we’ve had a couple people to have mentioned that too. And the way I got in is that Sergeant Dan Gibbons, who we’ve had on this show before, he did the Trent Gerald podcast, which I got to work on that case, and this will explain more about I was in my career at that time when I did do that. But Sergeant Dan Gibbons asked if I would come up on a temporary assignment basis, which is a pretty big deal. Now I’d been asked to come into another part of investigations several weeks before, and actually turned that down because I felt like I needed more time on the road.

David Lyons:

And plus I had a fantastic beat partner. Dwayne Homan, a lot of people will know who Dwayne is. He just retired as an assistant chief. We were really, really good beat partners. And in our work, when you get a good beat partner, that’s hard to leave because you probably aren’t going to get another magical experience like that, where you think the same and enjoy working with each other. However, I turned down that first one because I was enjoying my time on patrol. It was a little different when Sergeant Dan Gibbons called though, because one, Dan’s reputation for being a mentor and he was a mentor, was before him. It was an opportunity that I’d been an idiot not to go take and move up there for a little while and learn from him. It really didn’t have much to do with what kind of work we were doing so much is working for Dan. That’s how much I admired him and still do to this day.

David Lyons:

That said, I ended up going up there and it was a temporary assignment so what that means is that you’re going to go up there from anywhere from a few weeks to maybe a couple months or whatever it, but fortunately it turned into a very long term assignment. I was up there for several years. I remember getting there and working through some cases and career wise, I stayed there for several years and then I ended up leaving the unit and I left because I was raising my daughter, Brooke, and needed to be able to be available for her more. And we can talk more about how grueling that is in that unit as far as call outs and how long you’re away from home and stuff like that. As a matter of fact, I think I had the epiphany I was in Washington DC and we were shooting America’s Most Wanted on a case that I had, and it was on Halloween.

David Lyons:

And I was balancing the idea that my daughter was having her first Halloween and I was away. So it was like you’re having this really neat career experience, but you’re missing that home life thing. But that led me to my next assignment in my career and that was the intelligence unit. And that was interesting within about a year of me landing in there, we had the 9/11 attack and everything changed significantly. That was an amazing experience to be working with the anti-terrorism task force with the feds and things like that, that was nice. After that, I got that first promotion to Sergeant, ran our computer unit for a while. We were instrumental, me and that unit in putting computers in cars and going to electronic reporting, which was a pretty big watershed moment for the police department. After that, I moved up to the rank of lieutenant, got promoted to that and spent some time in different assignments there.

David Lyons:

I was anything from a patrol lieutenant where I started there, went back inside and worked as the administrative assistant to the assistant chief of patrol for a while. And then finally wound up in planning and analysis where you get a really big view of what the police department is in a place like that. After that, I was fortunate enough to, in my final rank, I was appointed, which is different than being promoted into a commander and had a few assignments before that, my last five years was at the rank of commander at the command staff level. And I had the opportunity, my first assignment there was to go back to general investigations, which felt like going home because that’s where robbery homicide and all investigative units were that people typically engage with.

David Lyons:

Came back out, worked into a patrol sector with some fantastic people in east sector that’ll always hold a special place in my heart for those people in east sector that I got to work with. And then my last assignment before I retired, I spent a couple years over special investigations, which is just what that sounds. I had things like narcotics. It had intelligence backgrounds, forensics, it had everything. It was all the neat nitty gritty stuff. So I had a really good career and then ultimately I just recently retired after 28 years of service.

Wendy Lyons:

Well going back to homicide, you clearly didn’t toot your horn enough in that, tell the listeners, how long were you in homicide? And if you had to guess roughly how many cases did you work?

David Lyons:

I’ll tell you what, it was a handful of years, five or six. I moved on pretty quickly. I wish I’d stayed longer. I know it was my favorite assignment. And I think I’ve said it on the show is that by the time I retired, I had a significant collection of badges. And my favorite badge in that shadow box is where they’re all at now, is the one that says detective because that time spent up there. To be honest with you, I’ve never thought about how many I had or how many I worked. I’d have to really go back and start pulling numbers to look at that. But I can say that we were always busy. You always had something on your plate and there was always new ones coming in. And just like you’ve heard the other detectives here and at other agencies talk is just because you have a full plate, it doesn’t mean you just get to eat alone as you’re also working with other people’s cases as well.

David Lyons:

It was a huge experience in that aspect. I think that was my favorite thing about it is that I’ve always said that in my career, it was my favorite assignment. Nothing ever came up next to it because of the people I got to work with. And that’s one of the reasons I enjoy doing a podcast is bringing these people in and letting them relive some of those experiences that they had. And especially if I got to have those with them it’s enjoyable, the team experience was amazing. Being in the unit itself, it was busy. It’s like raking leaves on a windy day.

David Lyons:

We talked a little bit on cold case investigation about what the real struggle is, is you’ll get assigned a case and within a few days, sometimes you’ll get the next one dropped and we’re only made of people in this business and working those. So you’re busy. It’s very time consuming around the clock. It’s not something you leave at work. If you do leave in the afternoon to go home, you not only have the risk of the fact there’s a high likelihood you’ll be called back out in a few hours or several hours to work through the night again. But you’re also, trust me, you’re always thinking about these cases. And I would say that myself and the people that I work with, and I’m sure they still do it to this day. A lot of the work that gets done in these cases is off the clock. It’s just because you’re working them in your brain the whole time that you’re doing them.

David Lyons:

It was humbling, I know you mentioned the word toot your horn, but one of the things about this kind of work is that it requires humility and it will deliver it. If people get a piece of humble pie, they’ll get a whole pie if they come to this unit because of the weight you carry in representing these crime victims and their families, when you do that kind of work. And it had its ups and downs. There’s still cases I look back at that I had that haven’t closed. I know the cold case unit just looked at a few of those and takes a peek at them every now and then that’s always frustrating when you can’t get back to those.

David Lyons:

And probably the biggest thing that people from the outside don’t understand too, is that it’s enjoyable work, but a little dark thing in law enforcement… And I’ll get at hallelujah from a lot of cops if they’re listening or former cops is that job really is dependent upon your leadership. So I’ll just say this. When your leadership in a certain environment is good, you’re gold and you’re having a good time. When the leadership’s not good, that’s a down. Leave that at that for now. Maybe we’ll do another show on that one time. It was an interesting work in the fact that you’re always learning. You’re baptized in a fire. I remember that I got my first lead case. I think I was up there for two or three days and we had a body found out Davidson Avenue and I got assigned that. And that was a real trust message from Sergeant Dan Gibbons, to be able to take and give you a case that early on.

David Lyons:

Which again, I that’s one of the reasons I respect him so much, but the experience was amazing. And I don’t think anything in my career could ever come close to that or the people that I got to work with. And again, finally, I’d moved on from it to go to the intel unit and moved away from there. There’s a part of me that wish I’d stayed. When we’re talking to Chris Schoonover and he made a career out of it, there was a part of me that wish I’d stayed with it to that point, but it wasn’t going to work well for the family part and that’s what comes first.

Wendy Lyons:

Well. So now that our listeners know some of your background, moving on to this case, why don’t you tell us a little bit about this case? What about it stuck out to you before we move into the nuts and bolts of it, if you will?

David Lyons:

Well, again this one’s always stuck with me. Unfortunately it was a domestic violence case. It also was one that as we dug deeper into it, that we had found prior acts of domestic violence and accusations, and then it had that same sad, tragic element to where according to witness statements, Keisha was about to leave her husband. And it seems that’s always the most dangerous time for people, I believe, that is when they go to terminate the relationship is when that happens. The case itself was also interesting in that we always talk about what we’re doing and what we’re doing when we get it. And in this case, it was one of those two where it’s not a who done it, it was a rapid fire, really close identification on who the suspect was, obviously, because the way it transpired that we’ll learn about which presented some challenges in itself.

David Lyons:

Because you’ll hear that when we… And for example, talked to a suspect after that, we don’t have a lot of information in the moment, but we have to do the interview then if that makes any sense. And you’re going to see how quickly this one landed in our laps up in the unit that day. The case also, I think what stuck with me quite a bit with it is that we’re going to learn that this was bizarre because the suspect actually had somehow construed an alibi, which likely could have been very successful had his timing been a little bit different and I’ll tell people about that. That’s always tripped me out about this case, is that somewhere along the line, he had really planned a decent alibi that would’ve made this a very difficult case to close in on him.

David Lyons:

However, his timing destroyed that probably. And then also we’ll talk a little bit about how we actually got information from people that were incarcerated with him in the past, which is tricky stuff to work with, but was interesting to build a background on who he was. So those are the things I think that stuck out with me about this case, that just, I find it interesting that it stuck with me over all these years.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, David, before we dig into this and I ask you what you were doing, which our listeners know, I love to know from the very, very beginning what our detectives were doing prior to the call going out. Why don’t we back up a little bit and you tell our listeners about Keisha Hughes.

David Lyons:

Well, Keisha, that’s the tragic part about this, was a beautiful young woman. She was 28 years old at the time of the murder. She had been married to her husband, Troy Hughes for about two years. She had two sons, at the time they were five and nine and they were not Troy’s children. They were from another relationship. People described her as being quiet, somewhat of an introvert. And she worked at a local hospital or clinic, an area in the medical field. The people that knew her best said that one of her favorite things was spending times with her children. She really enjoyed being with those. She had three siblings who were biological and three step siblings, pretty big size family, pretty big size family. And again, she was originally from Louisville and came to Lexington.

Wendy Lyons:

So she comes to Lexington. Do you know, had she met Troy prior to coming to Lexington? Did they meet in Louisville and move here or did she meet him here?

David Lyons:

I believe looking back that she met him in Louisville and then she convinced him to come to Lexington with her.

Wendy Lyons:

Okay. So this case, tell us about when the call went out, how it went out, obviously you weren’t in patrol at the time, so you probably wouldn’t have been first dispatched. So back up a little and tell us how it began.

David Lyons:

Well, this one was interesting and again, I was relatively new in the unit because it was the first of the year. On January 3rd, I was at the police department working. That’s what was interesting about these and the dynamic on this is incredibly important to understand. We had a scene going on in north Lexington, up in the Hamburg are on Bainbridge at some apartments. And what had happened is that a family had asked for the police department to do a welfare check on Keisha because they hadn’t heard from her for a few days. Now all of this is going on without the knowledge of the detective bureau yet, because as we know, there’s a point where patrol will involve us when it becomes necessary. So in the back of this early on January 3rd is that the police are attempting a welfare check on Keisha at her apartment.

David Lyons:

They’re not having a lot of luck. As a matter of fact, early that morning her husband, Troy Hughes meets them at the door, but won’t let them in. He keeps opening and closing it, opening and closing it. She’s tired, she doesn’t want to wake up. This is probably about 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning if I remember correctly. They make a decision to come back a little bit later, working with the assumption that, yeah, she’s probably in bed and doesn’t want to speak to anybody. They didn’t have anything at that time to rattle her cage and make it seem more suspicious than it was. So they come back. In the meantime, the family increasingly is getting more and more concerned because they hadn’t heard from her. And at one point her mother goes ahead and does a missing person’s report with a patrol officer.

David Lyons:

They end up going back to the apartment later in the afternoon and with the assistance of a manager as they enter the apartment and Troy’s not there. And when the officers go in the apartment, the first thing they noticed is a very foul odor. And they recognize that as probably somebody that’s been dead for a while, the decomposition. Because once you’ve smelled that, that’s something that’s very unique and you never forget it and they know what it is. So they smell that and they do a cursory search of the apartment. Then they locate who we later found out to be Keisha back in the bedroom, in the bed,, deceased and moving well through decomposition phases at that time, which would explain the odor.

Wendy Lyons:

Now were her children there as well?

David Lyons:

No the children were back in Louisville at the time, which was fantastic that they weren’t anywhere around any of this when it went on. So again, they start to deal with this and they put things together really rapidly. So they know they’ve got to try to locate the husband that was there earlier, that wouldn’t let him in. The way they described it was interesting how he kept closing. And if you can imagine like somebody just opening the door just a few inches and speaking through it and then closing it and coming back and saying, “No, she’s tired and she’s still asleep and I don’t want to wake her up.” But whatever the conversation was it was like that, that’s what they were dealing with. Once they found her body, of course, everything accelerates and goes in the high gear.

David Lyons:

At that point, they’re attempting to contact the coroner and they reach out to them to get them to respond. And that’s probably about the first time that up in the detective bureau, we get the first sign that something’s gone wrong when they find a deceased person in that apartment. Now, ironically enough, as they put out an attempt to locate, we call it an ATL on her car and on Troy is some patrol officers notice him in the area operating that car. They go to pull the car over. He jumps out of the car, bails in a foot pursuit ensues and they end up tackling him and get him on the ground.

David Lyons:

They take him in to custody at that moment. Now later we’ll get into the alibi because what was interesting is that around the same time that they’re actually taking him and getting physical control of him here, someone is checking out of a hotel room up near St. Louis, which is seven or eight hours away, plus snow and plus really bad weather conditions on the roads up there, but somebody’s checking out of a hotel room that had used his ID to check in, which we’ll cover that more in the alibi section about how that could have worked well for him had he not come back and driven in the area.

David Lyons:

So here taking it back into how we get involved, pretty much you’re in the office. You’re going through your routines. You’re handling your other cases. You’re doing paperwork and things like that. Patrol calls and says, “We’ve got this.” And that’s the way it comes to you. We’ve got a woman that was reported missing. We did a welfare check. They give you the real quick rundown on it. And by the way, we have this guy and we’re bringing him down headquarters to interview.

David Lyons:

Now that’s the interesting thing that I talked about before, is that in the good side of it, you probably have something that is now cleared as soon as you’ve recognized that it sounds like it’s going to be because of who they’ve brought in. But as an investigator, you have to imagine what it’s like that you’re going to get one attempt at interviewing this person and you’re going to have limited information about what you’re going to be able to talk about and you have to move pretty quickly. You can’t sit on this and for example, put them in a holding room for 12 hours while you look at the scene and talk to everybody that’s involved. So this is where the coordination between patrol and all the other units and investigations becomes really, really critical.

David Lyons:

They end up bringing Troy to police headquarters and that’s where I met him. He had been Mirandized out in the field. I think it was officer Ricky Lynn, fantastic friend of mine, was the person that actually Mirandized him out in the field. He didn’t make any statements at that time on the way down to headquarters. And by the way, the officers that responded to the scene also were officer Varney and officer Chenault, really good people to work with.

David Lyons:

So what happens is when you get somebody like that down there, then whole thrust of this is how much information can you put together before you go in the interview room. So by that time we’re talking to people that were out at the scene, what it was like, and according to them… And when I did a scene walk through later, I found this to be the case is that she was found in that back bedroom, there some body fluids present. It was hard to say then if it was because of an assault or decomposition, but the other thing too, is that they talked about how there were several air fresheners in the apartment scattered about those Glade things, the little popups and things like that.

Wendy Lyons:

The trees, the hanging trees.

David Lyons:

Yeah, anything like that. The whole place was full of those. So that led you to believe that it supports the idea that she’s been down for some time, which we knew because of the decomposition. But it also was important information because that came up in the interview later to help me get through that. So at the same time, you have people in our domestic violence section are running record checks on this person to see if they have any records on the husband, Troy Hughes, to see what his background was. Because it’s important again, to try to get as much of this together as you can, before you get in that interview room. They talked a little bit to the family and the gist they got from the family out on patrol was that the family had known of trouble in the relationship for some time. And they believed at this point that Keisha was really attempting to leave Troy, that she was done with the relationship. And again, that’s a very dangerous time and a domestic, the violent situation.

Wendy Lyons:

Well you’ve talked a little bit about Keisha and what kind of person she was, who she was. And we’ve talked about Troy, and obviously he… A little on the shady side with opening and closing the door and well, and the domestic violence, which resulted in killing her. Why don’t you shed a little light on just who he was?

David Lyons:

Yeah, that’d be good. Like I said, they were married at about two years. Troy at the time of the murder was a 33 year old and he was working as a restaurant cook here in Lexington. His full name was Troy Dwayne Hughes. We had gathered pretty quickly that he was not well liked by her family. According to them, he was always trying to drive wedges between Keisha and her family, which if you look at domestic abusers, that’s one of the things that we look at and identify as a red flag is that isolation and that control that they try to perform. And that was pretty clear in this too. The family described him as having an attitude that summed up to whatever a man says goes, and the woman has no say. And later we’ll talk more about how that’s what we gathered from some of the inmates in some of the corrections facilities where they had been housed with Troy in the past is that he really lived that, that was actually a part of who he was.

David Lyons:

Now what was interesting is when the domestic violence unit was doing the research, they found out that back in Louisville in Jefferson County, they found two prior domestic violence incidents. And this is really important to understand too, because of the patterns that exist in this kind of a thing. The first one is that on December 9th, 1996, a judge found him guilty of domestic violence after Keisha said he hit, choked, and threatened to kill her. He was ordered into anger counseling by the judge for 16 weeks, which he apparently completed.

David Lyons:

Now doing some of the research on this case outside of my case notes, I found some newspaper articles about that very thing and article I found, and we’ll post this on the website from the Herald Leader talked about how even back then it was questionable, whether anger management counseling was doing any good in these domestic violence cases. And the opinion back then, and I’d say it’s still a strong opinion of mine today is that it probably doesn’t do a whole lot for these. It’s just, they run people through these things and I guess they expect them to come out completely differently. But in this case, it obviously didn’t have an impact like they thought it would

Wendy Lyons:

Well. And I think also not only does it possibly not work, if you have a person, and this is strictly my opinion, if you have a person that is already of that mindset and that demeanor and treats other people like that, I’m sorry. I just don’t think you can stick them in a class once a week for 16 weeks and reform that person and make them into a whole new person who’s been aggressive their whole life and now they’ve had this epiphany, mere a couple of months later, and now they’re a turnaround person. I just don’t think that works. And clearly in this case, it proved that it did not work.

David Lyons:

Yeah. I’ve always looked at it, kind of like the analogy I use is the car auto body shop that I think people make a mistake with human beings about. If you get in a fender bender, you can take your car to an auto body shop, point out the fender that’s dented, leave it or for a week, maybe two weeks and come back and the car comes back and you can never tell it’s been in an accident and it runs fine for the rest of it’s workable life, I guess. People aren’t that way. And I think there’s a huge naive belief sometimes that you can change people. And I don’t think you can change people. People can change themselves if they’re motivated, but the idea that I’m going to put you through a process and get a result is pretty naive. And I think that we see that far too often.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, and I think also the courts who order this, I think it’s kind of putting a bandaid on it and covering their behind saying, “well, hey, I put him in classes for 16 weeks and he completed it. We did our part.” And I don’t know how much you can do about that legally aside of those classes. But I think for places like that, they just think they slap a bandaid on it, send you to a couple classes and you’re all brand new again. And I feel like if a person is a domestic abuser, why is not more done other than classes?

David Lyons:

Well, I think the first thing we fall back… I think what it falls back to is that we put a lot of weight on trying to gather enough information to convince a court to hand down emergency protective orders. And then hopefully have those turn into domestic violence orders with conditions is on somebody. That seems to be the best way that we have to deal with this. However, we’ve said before in some of the other cases that we’ve covered and people will see this as true, that still in itself has some limitations when it comes to whatever the drive is of the offender, on how bent they are on actually carrying out acts of violence. Unfortunately, those things don’t always work as well as we’d like. To give you an example on this case, hardly a year later after that December, 1996 judgment from the judge is that he was charged with stalking her on April 8th, 1997, along with assault and terroristic threatening and an emergency protective order was issued at that time.

David Lyons:

Now that EPO eventually was a domestic violence order, but it had expired by the time that the assault and murder occurred here in Lexington. I think right now would be a good time to offer some information for people listening before we go further on this, that if somebody feels like they’re in a domestic violence situation or a potential domestic violence situation, is to reach out as fast as possible for help. Obviously you can call 911, you can call your local police department. But the thing I want to get across is that there are people with experience that are experts that can help you plan. They can help you strategize in these situations to help you with a better outcome. For example, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is what we recommend on here. And that number is 1-800-799-SAFE. And that’s 7233. One more time, that’s the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE or 799-7233.

David Lyons:

Before we move forward one more time there are people that can really help with this that have much more experience than I do, or most of the people that I work with on the particulars about how to navigate through a horrible time in your life like this. And we strongly recommend calling people for that kind of help if you find yourself in that situation. So we look back at what we know about Troy and some of that we knew going in the interview room, we had a taste of, you’ve got to understand that when I went to interview him and sit in a room with him is we had some background information from the family.

David Lyons:

We had a very suspicious circumstance at the scene with him being at the apartment, not being at the apartment, getting into the apartment, of finding her in a fairly advanced state of decomposition, all the air fresheners, things like that, is that’s what we walked into the room with. And so when I sit down with him in the room, there was one more thing that officer Ricky Lynn found in Troy’s pocket when he took him into custody, that played a big role on where I went with that interview.

Wendy Lyons:

Hey, you know there’s more to this story. So go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.

David Lyons:

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded, and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at MurderPolicePodcast.com where you’ll find show notes, transcripts, information about the presenters, and much, much more. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, which is closed captions for those that are hearing impaired, just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us.

David Lyons:

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Part 2 of 4

David Lyons:

… angry at her in the moment. I didn’t catch anything remorseful about him in the room at all. And I’m not going to say that he was happy he did it, but he seemed resolved that he did it. And that he gave me the impression that you felt like this was 100% necessary because he had thought that she was seeing somebody else.

Wendy Lyons:

Warning. The podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast, the Murder of Kecia Hughes, part two.

Wendy Lyons:

Welcome back, listeners. David, when we left off last time, you were about to do the interview with the suspect. And you mentioned something that was in his pocket that Officer Lynn had found. What can you tell us was in his pocket?

David Lyons:

Well, I’ll get to that in a minute, but I thought about this before we sat down and record it. And I thought you know what I need to do, is probably talk about all the things going on while somebody’s in the interview room.

David Lyons:

Because remember I said this was a unique case in that they patrol just brings a suspect in? And there’s not out a whole lot we know, so there’s a lot of things going on. And I think that’s one thing I want people to understand is that again, we’ve said it time and time again, no one person investigates one of these cases. It’s a big team effort and there was a lot of team effort going on with that.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, and you know I’m certainly one for details. Why don’t you tell us what was going on?

David Lyons:

Well, for example, before I went in and I’m trying to gather what little information we had about this before I went in with the suspect, in the background what’s happening is that the forensics unit is arriving on the scene. And they’re starting to get an idea of what they’ve got to work with.

David Lyons:

But what’s important with that is that the forensics unit can’t go in and process this scene. We’ve all seen that on TV and I know the documentaries and everything, until a search warrant has been asked for and been signed off on and is ready to go. That’s a critical, critical thing. While I’m getting that, just the basic scant information I can get, forensics has arrived. And other detectives that I worked with are in preparing their search warrants for the apartment and the car that Troy was found in.

Wendy Lyons:

Why would one need search warrants? Because it’s obviously pretty clear that you have a deceased person that was found in the home. Why would you need a search warrant to go in there?

David Lyons:

That’s a good question. And that’s why I wanted to go into this a little bit, is that we use search warrants because it’s the United States. The difference is in us and a bunch of other countries is the law enforcement represents the government. And we all know a couple hundred years ago, we got tired of King George over in England and changed things. Because over there, the government needed nothing to walk into somebody’s home, which is one of the reasons people got fed up.

David Lyons:

Well, here is you get a search warrant. And it’s critical because to get into somebody’s home in the United States, you have to have probable because. The correct method of doing it is through a search warrant, which is where an officer prepares what’s called an affidavit, which has details on it and takes it to a judge and gets it sworn into and I’ll talk more about that in a minute.

David Lyons:

The big thing is, is that there’s some exceptions to the search warrant thing that can come up. And occasionally you’ll have murder cases that, on the face of it, may meet an exception or appear to in the beginning. For example, if you go into a scene and everything this scene speaks to you is that the decedent in there is the only person that lives in that house. The only person stays in that house. You could probably start to work around that a little bit because there’s nobody to give consent or anything, but to it’s really dangerous, dangerous water to go to.

David Lyons:

In the United States, under the fourth amendment to US constitution, a warrant is required based on probable cause. Now, there’s a few exceptions to that, but they’re very particular and they have to meet certain standards. For example, you can have a search and send it to a lawful arrest where a police enter a home to make an arrest. They have a warrant for the arrest or probable cause, and they can search the immediate area around the arrest, but they can’t go any further than that. And that’s based on looking for things like weapons or possibly any evidence that was discarded right there in that immediate area.

David Lyons:

Another way is based on plain sight. For example, if the police are already lawfully in a place, we’re going to consent them in it. If a homeowner or a person that has the expectation of privacy in a home invites the police in and you’re standing there and you see something in plain sight, you can seize that. And get probable cause and get a warrant to go further. So that’s there too.

David Lyons:

Another method to get inside of a home is through consent. And then, that’s basically what it sounds like. Is the police say, “May I come in?” And the homeowner or the person that has the expectation of privacy there says yes or no. There’s also things like there’s exceptions to automobiles. Automobiles take a little bit less if they’re actually out on a road because of the idea that people can move around and people who work with other people can move around like co-suspects. It’s more of a rush search in that. And if the car’s not towed, usually you can search it there too.

David Lyons:

Now, the last one is what a lot of people hear about is what we call exigent circumstances or high pursuit. And what that is if there’s something that the police can articulate accurately, that someone in that home is in danger or the police are following somebody while they’re pursuing him for committing a felony, you can enter that home.

David Lyons:

But even then, you’ve got to be really careful about how far you go with those things. And every one of these methods will be carefully scrutinized in court, usually by the defense. Back to my point is that we usually, well, not usually, but always, did what we called cut a paper. If somebody prepared a search warrant affidavit and did that.

Wendy Lyons:

How did you go about obtaining that warrant?

David Lyons:

Well, I didn’t do it because I was getting ready to go in the room with Troy. But one of the guys I worked with, Craig Sorell, a detective in the unit at that time, actually stepped up and did that. And what he does is he gets what’s called an affidavit and he puts the… Several things go on the search warrant affidavit.

David Lyons:

First of all, there has to be a very detailed description of what we want to search. And when I say detailed, it has to be detailed. For example, when we describe an apartment or a house, that description has to be good. So good that if you or anybody else took that and read that warrant and stood on a street, that you could go to that house, regardless if it had house numbers or not, and not mistake it. That’s mission critical on these things.

David Lyons:

Then it talks about what we’re going to ask permission to go in and look for and take. And that’s important too, that has to be commensurate with what you’re looking for. For example, if you were doing a property crime and you were looking for a 72 inch big screen TV, I’m not going to be able to go inside that apartment based on that information and look inside dresser drawers. It has to fit that.

David Lyons:

Craig put that together. And actually, for the listeners, if you go to our show notes at murderpolicepodcast.com for this episode, I went ahead and put copies up of the affidavit and the search warrant. And just be ready they’re redacted a little bit. Everything you get to open a records request is redacted. It’s pretty neat. And for example, on this one where Craig did the affidavit for the search warrant, he describes that and I’m going to have to take some things out, because they’re taking up.

David Lyons:

It gives the ad. It says here’s the address. And it says, “More particularly described as follows.” And it says that, for example, it has the house number, which we’re not going to read or the apartment number because that’s immaterial now. It talks about the color of the sign that the street numbers are on the sign where that’s located. It’s present on the outside of the building, located on the second floor of building four in the southeast corner of the building, the numbers appear and it’s got the numbers again. And are fixed to the center of the door.

David Lyons:

A plastic Christmas ornamentation of Santa Claus is fixed to the same door. See what I’m saying, is every detail you can provide is really mission critical, as the whole thing is we don’t want to hit the wrong door. Now, in this case, it’s not a big deal because remember, Kecia was found in the apartment. The officers were there, they had the scene secured. There’s not going to be a misidentification, but that’s what the judges are going to look for.

David Lyons:

And then it talks about Craig in there start to talk about the fact that yeah, the real brief thing that an under-identified female had been found deceased in the apartment. And then he goes on to describe the Pontiac car that he was in. And then, there’s some check boxes, there are some things that Craig listed on there. For example, what he’s asking for is on our affidavit it says for the following described personal property and their physical evidence to wit blood, hair fiber, semen, or other trace evidence, photographs, interior and exterior, weapons, guns, knives, clubs, or other instruments used as a weapon. Any ammunition showcasings or projectiles, any personal financial or other notes, writings, records, or documents that may assist in the investigation of this death.

David Lyons:

Those sound broad, but they’re really not. And keep in mind too, that when we found Kecia in this moment, we had really no idea how she died. And the big thing on an affidavit in Kentucky, there are some check boxes. And he had checked for property or things used in committing a crime, property or things in the possession of a person who has intention to use the same as committing a crime. And it goes on further and further with that.

David Lyons:

Once the officer goes ahead and then finally gives a synopsis, and if you go online, you can read the synopsis that Craig put. I’m not going to read that to everybody. But it’s pretty much the story we’ve told so far is what goes in there. Has to be accurate. It’s going to get scrutinized. After that, you take that in front of a judge. That can vary. It’s pretty interesting how that works. If it’s during a Monday, through Friday working days, you’ll go to the courthouse and ask for an available judge and they’ll work within a schedule to wiggle you in to get in front of a judge.

David Lyons:

If it’s after hours, where we are, is there’s a call out procedure and there’s a judge on standby somewhere. It’s somewhere in the town, that you’ll wake up at sometimes three or four in the morning to go to their home and actually spur to a warrant there. It’s pretty neat. Basically, you take it, the judge reviews it, they read it over. They may or may not ask questions about it.

David Lyons:

In some rare cases, they may send you back to get some things clarified, because they pay attention to these. They review it. They actually raise your right hand and they actually swear you to the facts on that warrant. That’s huge. Your reputation is at stake with this. If you ever bamboozle one of these or mess it up, that judge and some of the other judges probably won’t sign warrants for you anymore.

David Lyons:

After that, they sign it and that’s called a good warrant and you take that in a location. And that’s when the warrants are served or executed. It’s pretty simple after that. Once you’ve gone through, in this case, forensics goes through as they make a detailed list of everything that they took. And they leave a copy of that list back where the warrant is served. That’s warrants 101, probably. Search warrants, 101.

Wendy Lyons:

During the time that all this is going on and you’ve got the warrant being signed, what else is going on with this case while you’re in the interview room with Troy?

David Lyons:

So much stuff, because it just happened so quick. For example, the other investigators on the team, they’re out helping complete what’s called the neighborhood investigation. We’ve talked about those before. They’re speaking to the responding officers. Again, the responding officers always send in very detailed memos, but speaking to them is mission critical.

David Lyons:

And they start to track down family and friends for interviews. It’s a lot of moving parts because this is all about victimology and who last spoke to her? What was last said? Who last saw her? All of that stuff has to come into play and get documented.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, you said earlier that these interviews are fortunate to have because you have someone. But difficult because you’re going in kind of blind, I guess.

David Lyons:

Yeah. That’s what I said in the last episode and it’s true. They pull up, they basically say, “Here we come.” And they give you that scant facts. And when you’re going in, I think that’s what I’m trying to get across, is that you’re going to go in this room. You’ve got one opportunity. You cannot wait all afternoon. You have to exercise this pretty quickly.

David Lyons:

You’re going to say it down with this person that at this moment, you don’t even know if they’re going to talk to you, but that’s the challenge of it. The thing is before you get in, you’re like a sponge trying to get anything you can get up to that moment of walking into that room.

Wendy Lyons:

Okay. Back to what I originally asked you, when we picked back up on this second episode. What was found in Troy’s pocket?

David Lyons:

Yeah, that’s a good time to talk about that. Again, that was a big difference maker because when officer Ricky Lynn took him into custody, he found a note folded up in his pocket. And it was one of those things that was very fortunate to have going and interview him because it did so much. And if people go again to murderpolicepodcast.com and find the show notes for this episode, I have a scanned copy of a redacted version of that handwritten note that Troy had in his pocket. Let me read it real quick, the parts that aren’t redacted. It says, “Dear Mary Harris.”

Wendy Lyons:

No, wait who’s Mary?

David Lyons:

Mary is his mother. Good question. That’s Troy’s mother. It says, “Dear Mary Harris. I’m sorry for doing this, but I love her too much. Period. I can’t live without her. Tell everyone I love them. Troy Hughes.” And then there’s a second paragraph. It says, “Mom, Mary Harris,” and whatever was in there was redacted. It’s not important, but it’s taken out.

David Lyons:

And it says, “Everything that my wife and I have goes to the kids, except for the TV that goes to my mom.” And it says, “Troy,” and under it says, “Big screen TV in the front room.” Now, when you read that, what does that sound like to you when you read that? What are the things that stand out?

Wendy Lyons:

Well, to me it sounds like a either I’m getting ready to kill myself and here’s what I want happened, or I’m getting ready to go to jail and here’s what I want to happen.

David Lyons:

Exactly.

Wendy Lyons:

Either way, it’s something’s about to terminate.

David Lyons:

And again, when you read between the lines, when he says, “Everything that my wife and I have goes to the kids,” that, if you read between the lines on that, that’s an admission to some degree that my wife is no longer alive or he would be leaving it to her and the kids. Or say if he was mad at her for some reason, don’t give anything to Kecia, but it was interesting.

David Lyons:

That finding, that was a stroke of luck because circumstantially, they’d already put together the idea that this guy more than likely circumstantially is responsible for her death. But we’re still not positive. You know what? When you’re going in the interview room, you could get some information that changes that, but something like this slides it over the edge considerably. And gives you much more confidence in the idea that you’re talking to the person that’s responsible for this.

David Lyons:

It also gives the person to an interview, a place to go with that person’s mindset. And that can come in handy later. For example, if you need to do scratch to see if you could feel a conscious in this person, which is so rare in that room anyway, but is that you could pull that up. And I ended up talking about it briefly in the interview. But as an investigator coming in on something that fast, that was a huge help when Ricky found that in his pocket.

Wendy Lyons:

Now at this point in the interview, have you read that note or do you not know about that note?

David Lyons:

No. I knew about the note going in, which was, that’s why I’m saying it was helpful.

Wendy Lyons:

Does he know that you know about the note?

David Lyons:

No. No. Yeah. That’s the other thing too is then, you know we’ve talked before is that you really, you only provide information that you think is going to tickle responses that you want. And that’s important. It’s like a car card game, is that you’re going to hold the cards that you hold until you need to play them to get the effort out of it. No, he didn’t know about that, that I knew about that note at that time.

Wendy Lyons:

Now, did you know that you’re going to ask him about it soon? Or was that just off the table? You’re not even going to inquire about it.

David Lyons:

No, I knew that I could and that I probably would. But again, you put that in your hand, if it’s a poker hand, and you have that there. You have to be strategic about when and how you’ll you’ll use that. The big thing is, is that you feel going in that you’ve got something, you’ve got something to really work with. That if you get in a corner with this thing, if you’re not moving the interview through, that that’s something that would be pretty power.

David Lyons:

And again, circumstantially, it has so much information that lends them being responsible for Kecia’s death, that it’s extremely power, in and of itself. It has a lot of power like that.

Wendy Lyons:

Now back to this interview, I looked at the transcript, which you have put on the show notes. I could not find where you read Troy his Miranda Rights. Was that not required? Had you already done that? Where does Miranda come in here?

David Lyons:

Great question. That’s what I love about doing this show is that we can straighten up some things that are out there that people believe or may not be correct on. And you’re right. First of all, the redacted version of that interview is transcribed and it’s on the website. People can go kick around and look at how that flowed. Because obviously, we’re not going to read that to people on this show.

David Lyons:

For sure, what we’re looking at is with Miranda, it’s required when two things are present. And it’s no more than this, but there’s so much out there that gets told that’s not quite right. Is Miranda is required when a person is actually in the custody of the police and when they’re being interrogated. And if one of those two things isn’t there, then Miranda doesn’t apply.

David Lyons:

And a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that it’s just a carte blanche thing. That every time the police takes somebody into custody, that they have to read their Miranda Rights. And a lot of people, unfortunately, people who get arrested, that misunderstand that, will start hailing and screaming about that, that, “I’m going to sue,” or they’re going to drop the charge. And the thing is, is that there’s a lot of things you arrest people for that Miranda doesn’t come into play.

David Lyons:

You don’t have to ask them any questions. For example, if somebody was drunk in a public place or something like that. But in court, a good defense attorney will carefully analyze every bit of this to make sure that you met the requirements on that. Now, that said, here’s why I didn’t do it is because Officer Ricky Lynn had done it. Ricky did it when he took him into custody out in the field. And Ricky, being the fantastic patrol officer that he was, carefully documented how he did it, where he was, when he did it, what Troy’s responses were and the date and the time.

David Lyons:

He had all that together to where, when I heard that Troy was Mirandized, then I had a quick personal huddle with Ricky, because you really got to know this before you get all this. Again, this has to be accurate when you run with it. And Ricky confirmed everything to me about how he read his rights, how he responded and stuff like that.

David Lyons:

Now, Ricky, didn’t ask him any questions, which is fine too. But here’s the end thing. You’re only required to receive Miranda one time. And we’re very careful about that. We’ll find later in the following episodes that on appeal that was challenged a little bit. And we won that in the appeal court without any problem at all. But the reality of it is, is you get Miranda one time. It’s not every time you sit down with a cop. In this, it wasn’t read again.

Wendy Lyons:

Okay. You go into the room with him. I’m assuming he’s already there. Right?

David Lyons:

Correct.

Wendy Lyons:

Okay. Did Ricky put him there or did you?

David Lyons:

You know, I can’t recall. This had been several years ago. At the police department, we had holdover rooms which were secure rooms that are something like a jail cell, no bars or anything like that, but there little safe rooms where we can keep people from getting out or people getting in. That’s important too. You have to control. You have to have complete control over who’s around that.

David Lyons:

And in also those little rooms, those holdover cells as we called them, were very safe to where people really couldn’t hurt themselves with them. For example, you couldn’t take something and cut yourself. You couldn’t hang yourself. Ironically enough, I watched a guy attempt to do that with a boot lace on a whole nother case one time. But there’s no place in there to hang something to actually get traction and do that.

David Lyons:

Whatever happened is, he was in one of those for a few minutes and somebody walked him down to interview him. And boy it’s been so long ago, I can’t remember. I just, I barely remember going in there, but I’ve got all these great notes, I think is what takes care of it.

Wendy Lyons:

You go in there and what’s he doing?

David Lyons:

He’s just sitting there and looking at the floor, looking at me. There’s nothing really earth shattering about this. I don’t think I’ve ever had a response from somebody in a room that was like, “Oh wow.” A couple weird things every now and then as the interviews progressed, but they’re basically just waiting. And keep in mind, they know why they’re there, even though if you haven’t directly told them why they’re there. Sometimes they know why they’re there. They’re just contemplating.

Wendy Lyons:

You introduce yourself.

David Lyons:

Yeah. And the thing is, is that when you come in, is it’s real important. It’s not like on TV. I had somebody ask one time, if when you did this, it was like on TV. Do you yell and scream and throw things and turn chairs over? And you could if you were an idiot. But that’s not how you get people to work with you.

David Lyons:

The whole thing is that you’ve got to build a rapport with people. I always would go in and use my first name. I’d introduce myself. I’d tell them who I was and what I did. That’s fair and being up straight with that. And the whole thing is actually, when you go in, your demeanor needs to be something more of a kind and relaxing, demeanor. Non-threatening and actually friendly.

David Lyons:

For example, do you need anything to drink? Do you need anything to eat you? Are you cold? Are you hot? Or are you uncomfortable, or anything like that? That’s setting the ground to start building the basics of a quick rapport, which is mission critical in this. If you look at the interview, you’ll see it starts out pretty simple.

David Lyons:

But there’s a reason for virtually everything. It’s, you’re running a baseline with this person to get the communication going. And it starts with things as simple as what is your name? What is actually your date of birth? Identification’s going to come up and be very important. And if you look at the transcript on this one, is there’s a little discussion in the beginning too about what you’ll see what I’m ticking away is, do you have any emotional or mental health issue that are underlying and everything?

David Lyons:

And that’s important because it’s not likely that I would ever stop an interview on that, but I want a record of that for a lot of reasons. I want a record of it to show that I asked that so we all know when we get in court that that’s on the table. And that could impact the approach that I take on this. I’m going to be more careful about certain things if somebody identifies that.

David Lyons:

I also talk a little bit at what his sobriety level might be. I want a record of that. And again, if somebody has some intoxication level, I’m not going to stop the interview. But I want a record that I asked and I want a good, legitimate identification of that issue. And again, any one of us could route our interview in a different way based on that. But when I get in court, I want everybody to know that we’ve addressed that. And if they were intoxicated or believed they were intoxicated, I want a record of it.

David Lyons:

For example, I had a case where somebody in a suppression hearing, the defense was leaning on an intoxication defense on that the statement may not be reliable. And the person was saying they were intoxicated. But with the video that we had, what was great, because at one point in the interview, as he stood up like something off Karate Kid, on one leg and did a thing with his arms, perfectly balanced and everything. And that all is about making a record who they are. You go into things like, are you right-handed or left-handed? Now, why do you think I might want to ask that in an interview?

Wendy Lyons:

Well, I think you might want too to establish if there are wounds that you can tell were made with the right or a left hand.

David Lyons:

Exactly.

Wendy Lyons:

That will lead more credence.

David Lyons:

Exactly. Because again, we don’t have anything out of this scene yet. We don’t have an autopsy. We have no real genuine cause of death yet down this. Is that again, when you’re sitting down with this guy, you have to keep an open mind of the idea that maybe this isn’t a murder, but this is the importance of doing a structured interview with him.

David Lyons:

But yeah, you ask those basic things, not to see what hand they write with, but what if the scene, for example, has some cast-off or the medical examiner sees some patterns of injury that might support that, or walk away from that. And then there’s, we talk about employment. And where have you worked? And everything again. That’s building rapport, getting a feel for who this person is based on what they do or what they have done.

David Lyons:

And also in the background too at some point, is we’ll learn do you do record checks on our employment? That could be alibis or not alibis. You want all that down. And then you work toward the family. Are you married? Are you single? Who are you married to? How long you been married to? Do you have kids? Do you have step kids? That’s all in the interview. That’s to get rapport. And actually, that’s probably the first tick you make at getting in toward what happened to Kecia.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, I was going to ask you, has her name even been mentioned at this point?

David Lyons:

No. At this point, simply that, “Were you married? And who were you married to?” You remember detective Rob Wilson? I’m pretty sure he’s the one that said, he called it a dance. And that’s kind of what happens at this point is that you get that baseline and you get that rapport started, because that’s so critical. And the dance starts.

David Lyons:

And that’s where, when you move from that basic stuff, once you break the ice over the family and hear her name said, it’s hard to describe this, but the next thing you want to work into is can you get a timeline down for them, whoever’s in that room? Well, what have you done? What’s the last 24, 48, 72 hours look like? And for this, 72 hours and plus a little bit was pretty important.

David Lyons:

And while you’re getting that, because it’s important to get a statement on what they say they were doing, where they were at and who they were with and things like that, is the art I think in part of the dance is start to include interactions with Kecia. Instead of just blurting out, “When’s the last time you saw Kecia? And what’s the last time you said to Kecia?”

David Lyons:

You want to go with this pretty easy and take it through and make it about them for a little bit and then weave Kecia into the conversation. And the whole time you’re doing this dance as Rob calls it, is when you’re delivering information. Because you’re really good about asking about, “Well, did you ask this? Did you ask that?”

David Lyons:

And what it comes down to is that you offer things and watch for a minute and see how they respond. And then you may change your tactic or you know, “Okay, this is a hot button issue. I need to dress this up a little bit differently.” You’re poking in and poking out and watching for reactions to direct questions because that’s going to tell you when you’re onto something and when you’re not. Does that make sense?

Wendy Lyons:

It does. How was he responding when you were doing your poking or you’re asking questions that were related to Kecia?

David Lyons:

He was pretty laid back. I’m not going to say laid back, but he wasn’t aggravated, angry. He wasn’t asking any questions about, “Is there any word on my wife?” That’s another thing that you’ll see in the transcript. There’s nothing that, “Well, how is she? Is she okay?” And stuff like that. Because you remember when she was at the apartment telling the officers is that she’s asleep. Anybody else would be like, “Oh my God. I was pulling up. I went down, went to the Rite Aid,” or whatever he would’ve said, but none of that’s in this thing.

Wendy Lyons:

He doesn’t know technically, why he’s even there. No one has said, “You’re here because Kecia’s dead.”

David Lyons:

No, in the beginning, I told him it was a death investigation.

Wendy Lyons:

But did he ask you of whom?

David Lyons:

No. See, there you go. Those are the things that you’re paying attention to. Is that there’s no direct response, which could be they don’t care or there’s an avoidance of that whole topic. That’s what interviewing somebody is all about is how fast can you get a rapport and work it out? And again, that whole thing of when you’re tossing things at them, you’re really watching for physical reactions, eye reactions, body changes, body shifts, body posture, all of that.

David Lyons:

I’ll tell you, I’ve got a neat side story. I had a guy one time that I was interviewing over some robberies or something. And, and it was funny because once I got everything I needed, I noticed that every time I would hit him with direct questions about the material I would watch and he would get little cotton mouths on the edge of his mouth, little builds up of white stuff.

David Lyons:

When I was done, I just had to see if this was it, but I would hit him with a pertinent question and that would come. And then I’d walk him into something like, “Well, how are your kids again?” and everything and it would go away. And then what I did is three or four times is I would him back to a central question and that cotton mouth would come up.

David Lyons:

You’re looking for a lot of things. There’s their breathing change. Do you see the arteries in their necks start to pound? Do they start to furl their brow? That’s the kind of stuff you’re looking for. And again, I think it’s why Rob calls this a dance. Is that you’re playing the music and you’re seeing how they dance back to it.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, and I think also with most of us, if you’re innocent, you’re going to instantly start asking questions. Why am I here? You’re talking about a death investigation. What are you even investigating that involves me? Why am I here with you? And I think the telltale sign would be, if those questions aren’t asked, that’s a red flag.

David Lyons:

Oh, yeah, it’s a red flag.

Wendy Lyons:

That he’s not even concerned.

David Lyons:

It’s confirming for us. But then again, look at all the cases that you’ve seen interviews on, where they go to the part he can pretend all that stuff. There’s no absolutes in that room. And everybody that we’ve ever had the show will say over and over again, that’s why you have to keep an open mind. This is a blank slate. You have ideas, but you can’t lean in too hard with that. It’s all about that.

David Lyons:

And again, at this time we have a deceased woman. We don’t even have a manner or a method of death or anything at this point. It’s you got to be very cautious on how you approach all these things. Your biggest thing you got to watch for is overleading people. And we’ve seen what that looks like in cases that didn’t work out so well. Is you’ve got to be careful because again, everybody’s going to be scrutinizing this interview if we get somebody in and headed to trial.

Wendy Lyons:

You’re casually asking him questions of various sorts. Kecia has not been mentioned at this point. Right?

David Lyons:

Right.

Wendy Lyons:

What do you all continue to talk about? And at what point are you going to pull the rug out from under him and mention Kecia?

David Lyons:

Well, it’s not pull the rug out. Don’t think I’ve ever seen that work. But as we continued to talk and as I kept laying things in to see how he’d respond, I started moving Kecia into the conversation. And finding Kecia and finding her deceased. And then it gets a little more central into when were you with her?

David Lyons:

And then, if you read the transcript is he starts out just firmly, “I’ve got nothing to do with it,” and deny and everything. As you move, it’s like you tighten that language a little bit at a time into moving from, “I need to know what happened,” to becoming more and more toward being accusatory. And again, I like to walk in that end carefully because I didn’t want to mess up opportunities.

David Lyons:

And when you read the transcript that you get, because what happens is that as we move through this interview is he comes from denying it to moments when he is putting himself there in the room. And as far as an investigator, it’s kind of like, you’re on the edge of the cliff. You’re like, “We’re almost there. We’re almost there.”

David Lyons:

I think at one point I even told him, I said, “You’re only a few words from really straightening this out, that you’re so close.” And again, you got to be careful. I don’t want to be accused later of taking somebody and walking them through and over-feeding them because there is such thing as false confessions too.

Wendy Lyons:

I’m guessing, for our listeners who maybe haven’t read the notes, you’re talking about casual things, but you’re starting to work that in. And that’s, I guess he’s knowing that you’re indicating this death investigation is Kecia.

David Lyons:

Oh, yeah.

Wendy Lyons:

He’s kind of putting himself there, kind of not. He’s not outwardly admitted to killing her or to saying, “Is my wife dead?”

David Lyons:

No, that didn’t come until later in the interview. And I finally got him to a point where he finally made the admission that probably fortified everything that our theories were based on that point, that he had been arguing with her. She had been talking about leaving. He talked about how that angered him. Where the more we learned about him, it was no surprise on that for who he was. And how that angered him.

David Lyons:

And finally, at some point, because I was asking. I was telling him, she’s deceased, but what happened? And again, being careful not to lead. And more importantly, we didn’t know, “Did you hit her? Did you strike her? Did you use a weapon on her? Did you use something other than your hand?” And you’re going through all those. You’re laying all that out there to see if they pick any and whatever. But again, you want the truth or the closest thing to it. And he finally talked about that he struck her one time. And then he finally talked about how he actually strangled her.

Wendy Lyons:

He comes clean with you and tell you tells you that he’s done this. I guess, are you shocked at this point or did you know that he’s getting ready to tell?

David Lyons:

Sometimes you can tell when they’re moving to a point where they’re likely to talk about this. It’s never a guarantee. That’s where you have to be the most careful because you don’t want to back them away from it. And one more time, this is about looking for the truth, not necessarily looking for a confession.

David Lyons:

But when they do finally come across that, it’s not over. Is you talk about it more because then you got to move into getting details or as detailed as you can. Because even though they’ve just told you this, it still has to be corroborated by the scene and the evidence and eventually, by an autopsy. And you see where I’m going with that?

Wendy Lyons:

Yeah. Yeah, I do. Now let me ask, was he seeming remorseful or angry when he was talking about striking her and subsequently strangling her?

David Lyons:

Angry at her in the moment. I didn’t catch anything remorseful about him in the room at all. And I’m not going to say that he was happy he did it, but he seemed resolved that he did it. And that he gave me the impression that he felt like this was 100% necessary because he had thought that she was seeing somebody else.

David Lyons:

We’ll learn later about more who his persona was, which is classic domestic violence, abuser persona. I do, I know at one point in the conversation with him when we were talking about it and I think I asked something about, “Did you try to get help or anything like that? Or did you stop?” You ask things like, “Did she say anything?” At one point, he had stopped and she evidently begged for her life to some degree or something like that in the interview.

David Lyons:

And he went back at it. And at one point he said something to the effect of how he heard himself say, “Troy, you got to finish what you started.” After he had said, “I wanted to hug her. I wanted to make love with her and everything.” And then he said that something told him, “Troy, you have to finish what you have started.” And I said, “And how’d you do that?” And he goes, “I choked her.” And then that was that.

David Lyons:

At one point in the interview, about three quarters through, I got the impression he was trying to feign a mental health condition, which is you have to be aware of too. Is that he looked at the doorway and was speaking to somebody while it was just me and him in the room. And I’m like, “Who are you talking to?” And he goes, “Oh, oh, I thought that was my stepson.” And I was like, “Okay.”

David Lyons:

And I let that go. You don’t contradict that. But it’s like, I think part of him thought that, “I’m already in for a penny for a pound. I might as well go ahead and start looking at maybe a mental health issue on this,” which is not uncommon either. Your goal though as a detective is to document all of that, have that on tape. And that’s what we did with that.

Wendy Lyons:

So now, does he tell you that he left immediately after strangling her?

David Lyons:

Yeah. He left the scene. And we’ll get into that later about what his actions were, which were pretty interesting too. And when he talked about strangling, you know what was unique about that, is that again, not having anything going in, is that what that meant later was amazing, especially with regard to the autopsy findings.

Wendy Lyons:

Yeah. What about that autopsy? What did that show her cause of death was? Hey, you know there’s more to the story, so go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.

David Lyons:

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons. And was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, which is our website and has show notes for imagery and audio and video files related to the cases you’re going to hear.

David Lyons:

We are also on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube, which has closed captioned available for those that are hearing impaired. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us a five star review on Apple Podcast or wherever you download your podcast from. Subscribe to the Murder Police Podcast and set your player to automatically download new episodes, so you get the new ones as soon as they drop. And please tell your friends. Lock it down, Judy.

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Part 3 of 4

David Lyons:

And this was interesting sitting in a room with this guy. At some point he said, “If push came to shove, I could strangle her.” And he said, he always talked about beating her, and the inmate told me that when he would talk about strangling her, the inmate actually demonstrated this. He would put his hands out and his arms out and wrench them like you had somebody’s neck and his face would get angry. So he was visually showing the inmate that I could strangle her. And he said he would really get intense when he did that.

Wendy:

Warning, the podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.

Wendy Lyons:

Welcome to the murder police podcast. The murder of Keisha Hughes, part three. Welcome back to the murder police podcast. I am Wendy.

David Lyons:

And I’m David.

Wendy Lyons:

The last time we left off, our listeners may recall, Troy had confessed to killing Keisha by means of strangulation. He confessed this in an interview with you, I believe David, right?

David Lyons:

Correct.

Wendy Lyons:

Now what did the autopsy reveal that was so important?

David Lyons:

Yeah, we’ll get to that because the autopsy happened a few days later and it might be a better way to put up what it didn’t reveal. And I’ll talk about that in just a second. Because after he does that and we’re through, he’s officially charged with murder, you fill out a citation and you write the word murder on it and he’s taken over to the corrections facility, which is our Fayette County Community Corrections here in Lexington. And he’s housed there. The thing is that, the minute that he’s arrested is, you have probable calls.

David Lyons:

Then arguably probable calls was coming together real well at the scene, is why he was detained and taken into custody on the circumstantial evidence with that alone, his confession and his admission to the elements of it really added that quite a bit. But the reality of it is in a case, specifically one of these where the suspect is dropped in your lap and we talked about how difficult it is to go into an interview, rather code on that, is tons of work goes on after the arrest. The other detectives we’ve interviewed have talked about that same thing. And we’ve got some cases where the post-investigation was just mind boggling.

David Lyons:

I remember the murder of Umi Southworth, if people want to hear something that talked about some incredible information that was discovered in the wake of that arrest before it ever went to trial, that’s a good one and it’ll point to that same fact and this one’s no different. So what ends up happening is, other detectives on the whole team, continue discussions with family and friends and co-workers to continue to establish some kind of a victimology. What do we know about Keisha and her life to help guide this and look for motivators and influencers in the case. And also we tend to identify some more indications of prior violent acts by him, which starts to show a pattern.

David Lyons:

For example, many of the people that were friends and family, knew that there were real dangers in the relationships based on what she would tell people, especially when she’s talking about leaving him, is they knew there was a real pass. And also neighbors that lived real close in the apartment, would report hearing arguments in the past. None of them saw anything, but they could hear the two arguing. So in the wake of that same afternoon, the crime scene is being processed by the Forensic Services Unit, by the evidence technicians and detectives that do that. And Keisha’s vehicle where Troy was located in, has been towed to our facility. And based on search warrants, it’s being processed as well. Further investigation by our Domestic Violence Unit, who revealed a significant history of domestic violence charges and protective orders in Louisville, Kentucky dating back to 1996, and those were pretty important too.

David Lyons:

Again, they yield a lot of information about the history between Keisha and Troy and his propensity of violence. We also do a little bit of work on the suspect obviously on… Just like we do victimology on a victim, we want to know more about the suspect, including where they’re employed or have been employed. And in this case, it paid off a lot, because when we started following up his last employment, we found that on January 2nd, 1999, he failed to show up at work at 10:00 PM, like he was scheduled to do so. This is really important to find out and then get good verifiable records on this because, you’re trying to set people into confirmed timelines of where we can prove they were and they weren’t. And in this case, had Troy thought about it, and offered that in an interview as part of an alibi, that would’ve been really good to strike that, and it could come up later. Yeah, who knows what he’s going to testify to later? So we had that.

David Lyons:

The interesting thing is when the detectives went and talked to the people at his place of employment, a supervisor actually heard him say, “If I have to spend New Year’s Eve with Keisha, I’ll probably end up killing her.” And that was on New Year’s Eve. That’s a powerful statement, powerful talks about who he is again. Myself, and I remember a few days later on January 3rd, actually the next day, is I did a crime scene walkthrough. I didn’t do it the same day that we had the case go out.

Wendy Lyons:

So you did this walkthrough, some one or two days later after she had passed, correct?

David Lyons:

Yeah, absolutely.

Wendy Lyons:

So why did you wait one or two days? Why didn’t go that day?

David Lyons:

We usually didn’t go right into those scenes. The scene integrity, and these investigations is mission critical. The whole goal of the people that are working these scenes, is to reduce the foot traffic of anybody coming and going from those scenes. And even if we were lead, our primary on one of these investigations, most of the time we never entered into the scene. It would have to be an exceptional case to go see something but we never went into the scene until the County coroner and the Forensics Unit gave us an indication that they processed the scene to the best of their ability and recovered everything and documented everything, to the best of their ability. And then what we do, it’s called a walkthrough. And a walkthrough, we would wait into a walkthrough to aid in a decision as to when that opened that scene back up. For example, this would have to be cleaned and things like that.

David Lyons:

But it was very important to stay out of that scene because we didn’t want to be a contamination element or take anything off the scene or leave it. So we always waited. And I remember some of the things that struck me is going back to the bedroom and seeing where she had been found. And again, she was moving quickly into some advanced states of decomposition. But what was bizarre too was, throughout the apartment were several air fresheners like Airwicks the kind you pull up. And I mean, many, many, many, I can’t imagine how many there were, but there’re more than we would want in our house or anybody else’s was going to need.

Wendy Lyons:

Yeah. I was going to say, what is the significance of that? Because we also have those plugged into our walls and setting about as you know.

David Lyons:

Yeah, but not this many. It was crazy. What it expresses is that, like I said, when somebody’s body is moving through decomposition, the smell is really, really rough. A lot of people tell you, once you smell it specifically, you’ll never forget it. What it leans into though, is that Troy was there. That he wasn’t gone and that comes up in a few minutes. It’s very important in that aspect, but that means he’s there, and he’s hanging out with her body in there and to fight that odor, he’s going and getting these air fresheners and putting them up, which is ghoulish. If you think about it, that I’m going to stay here, and then when we talk about the alibi a little bit, that even strengthens part of what that was.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, let me ask you, and I know this may be moving forward a little bit, I’m sure I’m wondering other people maybe as well. Did he have an idea of ultimately, what he was going to do with her body because the air fresheners are only going to work so long? Did he have an end game of where he was going to take her?

David Lyons:

Hard to say. And I’m glad you asked that because actually at the scene, the way the bedding was pulled and moved, and I’d forgotten about this until you said something. The way that bedding was arranged and pulled and off the side a little bit, there’s a part of me that believed, and we never affirmed this up with him. I believe he tried to move her. And because of the way things were shuffled off to the side, she was a little bit in a bloated condition. This was going to be much more difficult, and there is such thing as dead weight. And Troy is not a very stout guy. So I’m glad you asked that, I think that. However, when we get to what I think is one of the most articulate alibi attempts I’ve seeing, we’ll see why that might not have been the case, but I think he was going to move her. I think that was his first move is maybe, “Can I get her outside of the car?”

Wendy Lyons:

But still then, it leads to ultimately, where are you going to take her?

David Lyons:

That’s it. And all of that requires a follow up. I think this was at least a second story apartment. And I think he tried to pull it. It just really looked like that bedding was being slid off of that bed and onto the floor. Funny, I’m glad you asked that I come. That’s a memory, I’d forgotten about until I remembered walking in that scene.

Wendy Lyons:

So we know that an autopsy was performed on January 4th, by Dr. Greg Davis, and our listeners let me just interject here. We have actually done an interview with Greg on pathology. And if you’ve not listened to that, please go back and listen, because Greg is so knowledgeable in his field and he’s really just… Well, I thought he gave a great interview for us and he’s just a really good guy. However, side note. So the autopsy was performed on January 4th, by Dr. Greg Davis. What results did that show?

David Lyons:

I think what was interesting is again, is that he conducted that. That’s where I got to know him. And again, if you listen to the podcast, he’s a teacher and he was a teacher at the autopsy table as well. Here’s what’s significant. And this starts to really paint a different picture of things. Based on his autopsy examination, he found no anatomical calls of death. Now that’s bizarre. I’ve got a guy that’s admitted to strangling his wife and in actuality, this isn’t that rare. But absent that confession, this could get very difficult.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, sure, especially since there’s no evidence of any damage to the soft tissue. So had Troy not made a confession, he may have walked on this.

David Lyons:

Yeah, that could interject into it. And even with a confession, there’s always some argument to be made because you’re right. In some strangulations, you might have damage to things like the neck and the esophagus and the lungs and tracheal and cervical spine and laryngeal, and the facial nerves, you can have petechiae, you can have all kinds of indicators and things like that. And then none of those were there.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, and not to mention, bruising on her throat.

David Lyons:

Exactly. All those visual things. And now I’m sure one thing that might have played a role in this too, is the fact that she was moving through decomposition that always can mask a few things, but even inside those tissues, inside the neck, they weren’t damaged and you hit the nail on the head that has no physical evidence of the strangulation claim. So you have an acknowledgement and admission, but I’m telling you really want more than that because if for some reason we lost that confession, if in a suppression hearing, if there was a problem with that, then you’re left without. So that’s a weird thing. And also on the alibi I’ll talk out about in a minute, this is one thing that I don’t even think Troy knew obviously, but it would’ve fortified his alibi attempt if my theory was correct on that. The big thing is that, what they did is they went ahead and furthered this on and asked for some more examination by a well known forensic anthropologist, Dr. Emily Craig.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, let me ask. Why did they forward this onto her? Was it because Dr. Davis couldn’t find any evidence?

David Lyons:

Right. Is that she’s more gifted in it. And that’s what forensic anthropology is. Is that she’s more gifted in looking at the bone structures and things like that. Now, Dr. Craig, a lot of times came into cases and where you found remains. She was very gifted in that.

Wendy Lyons:

And if I recall correctly, was she not the forensic anthropologist who did the autopsy of Haley McHone?

David Lyons:

Exactly.

Wendy Lyons:

Which is another one of our cases.

David Lyons:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Wendy Lyons:

Listeners haven’t heard one of my personal favorites.

David Lyons:

Yeah. Yeah there was Emily. I remember sitting on Haley’s case, going up there and spending an entire day with Dr. Craig and we he had Haley’s body bag out and going through that with a magnifying glass literally, tweezers and small tins looking for a hair or fiber or anything we could find in that bag. She’s another person that was very educational to work with. Well, between her examination and some more investigation working with our partners in Louisville, Kentucky on those prior assaults. They had found that Keisha’s hyoid, which is a little U-shaped bone in the neck, was actually fractured, but it didn’t happen in this assault. It was fractured earlier from one of Troy’s assaults on Keisha in Louisville and healed over. That’s what you’re looking for in strangulation and tissue damage and cartilage damage, which we talked about. However, what we found was an older one which was just sad that, it again paints that picture of that violence that she was suffering through.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, right. And it leads credence to, it’s not the first time he had put his hands on her throat, let alone on her person.

David Lyons:

Absolutely, absolutely. So those are some twist and turns in there. And again, all of this is happening after arrest, it’s all starting to come together, it’s information you don’t have any interview, but you start to piece this together. Good and bad of it and everything and they fall into this alibi. The alibi on this one is amazing and I wish I’d had some of this information in the interview and could have worked through it but again, we didn’t. During the search of Keisha’s car, that Troy was driving when they took him into custody, detective Bill Ramsey, with the Evidence Collection Unit at the time, found a hotel receipt and an envelope, in the front passenger floorboard from a Fairfield in Collinsville, Illinois, which just to let people know, is well over 300 miles away from Lexington and well over a seven hour drive by car in the best of weather on good without traffic and road conditions.

Wendy Lyons:

Now this was Keisha’s car or Troy’s car?

David Lyons:

It was Keisha’s. But it wasn’t a trip with Keisha that we could tell. And here’s what was interesting is you take that receipt of folio as we would call it, and I contacted the hotel staff in Collinsville, Illinois. And here’s the interesting thing I found, and this is why… Again, this alibi attempt was actually pretty incredible. But according to this staff, and they were able to verify from their audit records, unequivocally that this happened, is that a Troy Hughes, checked into the hotel on Saturday, January 2nd, 1999 at 4:18PM Central Standard Time, which would’ve been 5:18 Eastern Standard Time here in Lexington, and actually provided a driver’s license for Troy Hughes with his picture on it. Now think about when this is it, I mean, this is like, “Did he drive up there after the murder?” that’s possibly.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, and let’s not forget, he did not show it his job that same day in turned that evening.

David Lyons:

Yeah. But here’s the twist, this is the part. So okay, makes sense. Is it in theory, you’ve got somebody that has moved and take taken off like you would think people do after they kill. And at the same time, now you start looking back and you’re like, “But there are all those air fresheners in the house.” And there was a significant amount of time spent in that house, but here he is somewhere else and here’s the kicker. According to hotel records, “A Troy Hughes checked out on Sunday, January 3rd, the next day at 11:58 PM Central Standard Time.” So now we’re talking roughly 1:00 here in Lexington, and the hotel advised that back then too, that a lot of the roads in interstates were shut down during that time price and snow. That’s important because now that travel time of sevens seven and a half hours has increased dramatically if you could travel at all, here’s the thing.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, now let me pause you. You keep referring to him as a Troy Hughes. So that’s either leading me to believe that two people have these same names with the same driver’s license that lives in Lexington, or is there something else about quote a Troy Hughes?

David Lyons:

Here it is. If people were paying attention, when we started the case is at right around the same time that Troy is spotted in the area of the apartment, has a small vehicle pursuit and runs on foot and they take him into custody. That Troy Hughes, which actually been to detained at 2:00 PM, 1:00 PM back in Central Standard Time on January 3rd, the same timeframe he checked out up a hotel over seven hours away in good driving conditions. So what that looks like is that somebody at least checked out of that hotel identifying themselves is Troy and likely checked into that hotel with a driver’s license that had Troy on it. Because the timing doesn’t work out real good even for leaving and going into weather bad to get to the hotel, but either way, for sure, whoever left that hotel could not have been our Troy Hughes. And they knew somebody checked out personally at the desk when he did that.

Wendy Lyons:

Okay. So did you question him with this during the interview, or did you not know this during the interview?

David Lyons:

Didn’t know it. So again, there’s the challenge, right? Is this would’ve been fantastic to really try to take and get out of him during the interview or at least try to bring up, because I would’ve liked to have known who that person was. I would’ve liked it if he had maybe tried to lay that alibi out for us, because remember we’ve told you and we’ve told the audience before that, “If you’re not going to tell us the truth, we like really good lies.” And this would’ve been a really good lie because we had all this information that would’ve countered all of that.

David Lyons:

But of course the biggest one being that he’s personally at the scene during this time is gigantic. So it becomes a lost topic and people might ask, “Well, did you find out who that person was?” And unfortunately we didn’t, because of the way their suspect rights are. Once they get into the hearing or arraignment and whatnot, we don’t have the access to them like we did before so it becomes a lost topic. And in actuality, as much as curiosity would want me to find out who that person was, it probably isn’t a priority at this point in the investigation. As odd as that say, it becomes more of a curiosity.

Wendy Lyons:

Did you ever ask him about this or did you never have the opportunity?

David Lyons:

Do never had the opportunity? You just can’t. The protections and them speaking to us become very innate past the preliminary hearing. I mean, they’re invoked on their behalf. And the only time you’d get that is with the presence of, and permission of their attorney, which isn’t likely in a case like this anyway. So this is what it looks like, and why he messed this up and he was going to benefit from something he didn’t even know happened. You strangle your wife, you maybe attempt to remove her body, maybe not, but plan B or a good plan and this might be something that got planned for some time is that, what if you simply drive home on a third or the fourth, you come through all that weather, you go to your door and your story to the police is, “I didn’t get an answer at the door. I opened the key, came back and much to my shock, I found my wife deceased back in the back bedroom, where she was found.”

David Lyons:

And all of a sudden, you’ve got a record of you being in this other city, you’ve got a record of you checking in. I mean, I had his fax sent to me with a photo call copy of his license. And then you’ve got a record that you’re checking out and then you drive back, and where he would’ve got bonus points that he didn’t even know about. Is the fact that her anatomical cause of death wasn’t readily available and at autopsy. So what it would’ve been, it’s kind of scary. It’s prior pending investigation. Is that without a real cause of death, without with him having what would’ve looked like a good alibi, this would’ve been really kind of scary. This might have just stayed pending for a while and unresolved. Where he messed up, is he got seen there at the apartment that morning and he got seen in the area. Had he waited till later in the evening or the next morning to roll in and open a door and find her, this could have turned out altogether differently.

Wendy Lyons:

Oh, certainly. Did you ever get video a footage of who the person was in Illinois?

David Lyons:

No. They had nothing like that. And keep in mind in timeframe, we’re, we’re talking back in 1999. If video was around, then it’s nothing like the quality way of now. A big thing that we couldn’t stand back then those days was even with bank robberies is, video was really horrible. Anything on video was bad. They would replay over tapes, nothing like that existed for this. And again, at some point you have to look at it in balancing the workload you already have. Is that, am I satisfying the curiosity or is it really integrity the case? And we didn’t have anything in the case that said, whoever this suspect was, or this person was that did this had any other involvement other than that. Could have been, but we didn’t have anything that said that.

Wendy Lyons:

So he is in jail, and then on January 14th of 99′, his case gets wad to the grand jury, correct?

David Lyons:

Yeah. On the 14th, we had what’s called a felony preliminary hearing. And in Kentucky, and this could be different in different places is that, when you’re taken to custody and from the date you’re arraigned in Kentucky there, the court system has 10 days to get you in front of what’s called a preliminary hearing. What happens at a preliminary hearing is that the defendant’s attorneys, can actually question the probable calls on taking somebody into custody. This is where going to start to work the first holes in the case if they can. What they’re looking for is they’re not trying the case yet, there’s not a whole lot, it’s not really complicated. Sometimes they’ll ask a detective or an officer, a lot of questions. What happens is you’ll come in, you’ll swear in, the judge will ask to tell you about your case, you’ll go through a summary of the case.

David Lyons:

What you’re delivering is the probable cause of why they’re in custody. You are not convicting them at this moment, but you’re talking about that. The defense sometimes will ask questions to try to hammer away at that, to see if there’s leaks in that. But sometimes they also do what they did here today and they wave it. And wave it means is they’re not going to question the officer, they’re simply going to accept the fact that probable likely existed at that moment. And they wave it to the next step, which is called the grand jury. And that’s scheduled within about 60 days out.

Wendy Lyons:

So we know also that the following week a search warrant was granted for biosamples from him. So he was taken to one of our local hospitals, which then was called Good Samaritan Hospital. What biosamples was retrieved from him?

David Lyons:

Yeah, this time just blood. Back in 1999 is we just took him and what you do is, you do an affidavit for start search warrant or a court order, you take that to a judge, you give them the probable cause why you want to take this body fluid from somebody which is a little more invasive than searching their house or their car, right? There’s going to be a needle involved.

Wendy Lyons:

Yeah, because some of people like me, would not go down without screaming over the blood removal.

David Lyons:

Yeah. They’d have to sit on your shoulders probably. But you go and you grab some other police and you just simply pick these people up, sign them out of the jail, take them to the facility, show them the warrant, and you go ahead. And they I’ve never had anybody really fight this. They go ahead and let the staff go ahead and take any samples we’ve asked for in a warrant.

Wendy Lyons:

Now, did you take him for that?

David Lyons:

I did. Yeah.

Wendy Lyons:

Did he say anything to you during that transportation from the two?

David Lyons:

No, he didn’t. The only thing he asked is what it was for which that’s reasonable. And I told him, “Well for DNA.” And of course we’re looking for trace evidence that might make a connection back then and everything. So a lot of times they don’t, but I’ve had some of them talk your ear off, which I don’t think I’ve had anybody talk my ear off and really move the case forward or backward or anything. But I mean, sometimes they just like chatty Cathy’s.

Wendy Lyons:

So he was not a chatty Cathy?

David Lyons:

No, not at all. He was pretty quiet, but I’ve had some though that it was like you and me go on a lunch, like we’re catching up. I mean, it’s crazy, but just depends upon who they are. But I don’t think of any had any one of them really incriminate themselves on those conversations. And we were pretty careful about that to be honest with you, that if they just said something in the car, you could probably use that but at the same time, you got to be careful about never looking like you’re trying to pry for that. Because again, there’s some invocations of some rights that come into place because they’ve been arraigned. You’ve got to revert. That’s a very, very icy slope to go on to, if you play with that too much.

Wendy Lyons:

Now we know moving forward from this some 10 months later, you get letters from some inmates housed at Federal Correction Center in Manchester, Kentucky. Tell us about that.

David Lyons:

Yeah. This is pretty interesting as I got a letter from an inmate and I’m not going to name these people, they seem like pretty good people and I think their intentions were well. But I get a letter, very polite handwritten letter from an inmate and he’s at FCI Manchester, which is a couple hours from here in Lexington. And he basically is offering information that while he was in custody at one point with Troy, that Troy made some statements that we might be interested in. Now, this is what we would typically just call a lot of people here call them jailhouse informants.

Wendy Lyons:

Jail house informants. Tell our listeners what that is.

David Lyons:

Well, what it is, it’s just like it sounds you’ve got somebody that’s in custody or been in custody and they claim that they were in custody and had contact for example, cellmates or in a break room with one of the people in your target and your investigation, then they want to offer information. They’re tricky. It’s very risky. And you have to be very careful cautious. You have to be very cautious. When you enter down this road to work with these people. For example, you would never base your case fundamentally on a jailhouse informant statement. It’s just because the reason they’re doing this is pretty selfish, but just like every other information source we get, we try to evaluate what the motivator is on that. In this case, most of the time, now you can have some people that honestly will just do this, because it’s right.

David Lyons:

But in this case, and it worked out this way, they were willing to help, but they were politely asking for maybe some assistance or recommendation and more and having a sentence reduced or for example, in the federal system, what they might ask for is, “If I cooperate, if it’s valid, I’m interested in maybe being moved to a facility closer to my family.” Because in the federal system, you can be shipped way far or away from your family. So as long as you understand those motivators, and you’re willing to testify to those motivators because in court you’ll get asked, “Well, why did they do this?” Well, they wanted to take a shot at having a 30 year trafficking sentence reduced or be eligible for parole earlier.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, and then you also have to wonder the validity of it. Are they telling the truth or are they just trying to make it sound and pretty plausible, but they’re wanting that leniency or that move on their sentence.

David Lyons:

That some will lie. You’re right, they’ll put it together. So what you end up doing is you want to gauge the motivation, you understand going in whatever they tell you’re probably have to corroborate another way. The other thing you have to do is, and this sounds stupid to some people, but you have to verify, “Were they in jail on these dates? And was your target in jail, on these dates?” And then you need to find records in the facility, to show there was an opportunity for them to actually have contact. So we’ve seen that before, where you’ll go looking and you’re like, “You two were never in jail at the same time. This couldn’t have happened.” So you dismiss that. When he goes in the file he’s liar, pretty much but in this case, everything validated, they were together. And actually circumstantially, these did get used in the case because we’d never based the case on them, but they really talked about who Troy was. And I said in the beginning that we were going to talk more about how we figured out what kind of person he was.

Wendy Lyons:

So we know that one jailhouse informant had offered some information from the year prior with Troy, what information did he share with you?

David Lyons:

Yeah, this was interesting as you’re right, that he had claimed he was incarcerated with Troy, in 1998. And before Troy was released, they had met and had conversations. This was interesting, he said that Troy always talked to problems that he had with his wife, and would always fall back saying that it was because she just didn’t respect him. And Troy evidently really demanded and wanted respect from Keisha. He made constant references, the fact that he should kill her and that he also stated that if they were in a foreign country where it was legal, he’d be allowed to kill her for some of the things that she’s done to him.

Wendy Lyons:

So he’s wanting respect, but he’s willing to kill which in my opinion’s a little worse, then the respect he’s demanding, which would make me wonder, “What are we dealing with here? You’re you’re going to kill someone because they’re not respecting you.” I don’t know. Maybe that’s just my opinion.

David Lyons:

No. Yeah, it’s a part of that pole pattern of who he is. As an abuser and his mindset is that it’s so much bigger than chauvinism or misogyny at this point. He actually saying that if you lived in a foreign country, for example, in some countries that where this is legal on honor killing and things like that, then he’d be allowed to kill her for some of the things that she did to him. And those are usually based on just lacks of respect or his perception that she was having an affair.

David Lyons:

The guy told me too, that he got interested in the Muslim faith in prison, but he said that what became very apparent after a while is, he really thinks the only reason he got drawn to that is because his perception on Muslim faith regarding women is he really believes there’s that he would for example, say that they were to stay covered and to walk three steps behind men. And those were his perceptions of why he was drawn to the Muslim faith. And when he joined this inmate told me that they asked him not to be around him anymore. Because they said, that’s all he would talk about. And it got real clear that he wasn’t entering into that faith to express the faith like any other person would do, but because of his perceptions of what it meant on how he could quote and quote, maybe control Keisha.

Wendy Lyons:

Now we know also you said prior, that he was more or less a hindrance to people, because he always wanted to talk about his wife. And since it’s not like with you, how you just dote on me, right? Oh, my God.

David Lyons:

Yeah, right. Yeah, 180°C different.

Wendy Lyons:

Yeah, I thought so.

David Lyons:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Is that I’m not stupid. You’ve seen all episodes of forensic files and probably all four of them, because that’s all they ever made. And I’m pretty sure they-

Wendy Lyons:

They do have forensic files too. There are two right now.

David Lyons:

Yeah. That wood chipper you bought for me last year, I’m not stupid, we’ve never used it. But other than that, I think that’s what this guy got across, is that he was a pain in a butt, because that’s all he talked about and his anger that he carried and that’s all they heard about. It was like a broken record. And what was when I interviewed this one, he told me about two other people that might have information. So we went back out on another day. I couldn’t contact all of them before. Met with another one, and this one had been incarcerated with Troy before in 1997, like October through December. And he said the same thing.

David Lyons:

Let me tell you something real quick though, he did not say this same thing. When you’re listening to statements from people, if they match to much almost word for word and everything’s in step, then you get a little suspicious because that begins to sound like something repeated or rehearsed. But this guy seemed very sincere. He said that when they were together, he always talked about the marital problems with Keisha and that she had missed a couple visits to him in the institution and how that really made him mad. And that several times that he made indications that if she ever tried to leave him, he would hurt her. There’s your domestic violence pathology right there.

David Lyons:

And he said that she was just using him, was not treating him respectfully. So there’s that same, that same tone. And this was interesting sitting in a room with this guy, is he said, at some point he said, “If push came to shove, I could strangle her.” And he said, he always talked about beating her. And the inmate told me that when he would talk about strangling her, the inmate actually demonstrated this. He would put his hands out and his arms out and retch him like you had somebody’s neck and his face would get angry. So he was visually showing the inmate that I could strangle her. And he said he would really get intense when he did that.

Wendy Lyons:

Well then we know from the autopsy with Dr. Craig, he had done that at one point without killing her.

David Lyons:

Amen.

Wendy Lyons:

So we know he is at least brought her to the brink of death would’ve not choked her. She probably thought she was dying, and how sad that ultimately, he ended up doing it again and taking her life.

David Lyons:

Oh, absolutely.

Wendy Lyons:

So let me backtrack a little. You had said previously that sometimes these informants are looking for some motivation or leniency on a sentence or to be moved closer to their families. Did any of these informants ever request of you, a favor if you will?

David Lyons:

Yap. The first one did and to get people to understand is you don’t go and vouch for them. That’s inappropriate. You don’t know who they are, but there was a particular federal hearing I went to in Louisville for the first one and basically the federal judges is asking two things, did the inmate offer information and that’s a yes. And did the inmate’s information appear to be true, and did it help with the case you were investigating and that was a firm, yes. Now I can’t remember, I think they did skin a little time. He was in there for trafficking, he had a 30 year sentence, but I do believe they at least made him eligible for release a little bit earlier. At least that’s what I heard later.

David Lyons:

The second one, I don’t think we ever got asked. I don’t know if he worked that out through the prosecutor’s office, the Commonwealth attorney, and then there was a third one. But to be honest with you, when I went and saw the third one, I felt like I was in the scene from RAising Arizona, is he just stood there and smiled. And I really think that he just wanted a visitor. So we talked for a few minutes, then I left.

Wendy Lyons:

Better visitor than you?

David Lyons:

Exactly. Well, I’ll be candid. Most police don’t feel real comfortable walking into federal prisons. I’m just going to tell you, I don’t think I could work there and you’re not going to get a lot of Christmas cards and jam on the month clubs if you’re a cop in a federal prison.

Wendy Lyons:

Likely not.

David Lyons:

Yeah, so I didn’t feel comfortable with that. But those things in the back of a case that are going on, and I think that’s what I wanted to share, is that there’s so much detail that goes into it. In between the time that he’s arrested and we’re, we’re documenting these other things and putting these in the file and validating when people are in custody and validating when people are at work and validating when they’re doing hotel rooms. In the meantime, the whole thing is based on the fact that it’s moving through the system, we’ve been to the grand jury and he’s been indicted well before now. And it’s just simply waiting on trial dates, which are soon to come.

Wendy:

Hey, you know there’s more to this story. So go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.

David:

The murder police podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons, and was created to honor the lives of crime victims, so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The murder police podcast can be found on your favorite apple, our Android podcast platform, as well as @murderpolicepodcast.com, which is our website and has show notes for imagery and audio and video files related to the cases you’re going to hear. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube, which has closed caption available for those that are hearing impaired. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us a five star review on Apple podcast or wherever you download your podcast from. Subscribe to an in order to play podcast and set your plate on automatically download new episodes, so you get the new ones as soon as they drop. And please tell your friends.

David:

Lock it down, Judy.

---

Part 4 of 4

David Lyons:

He made an appeal based on the fact that evidence of the discovery of Keisha’s body should have been suppressed because it was discovered during the course of a warrantless search. Keep in mind, in United States of America, there’s just a few ways the police get in your house.

Speaker 2:

Warning: the podcast, you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.

Wendy Lyons:

Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast, the fourth and final episode of The Murder of Keisha Hughes. Welcome back to the Murder Police Podcast. I am Wendy.

David Lyons:

And I’m David.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, David, on our last episode of The Murder of Keisha Hughes, we left off discussing you interviewing Troy. Right?

David Lyons:

Right.

Wendy Lyons:

Okay. So, I’m guessing at this point he has been arrested for her murder.

David Lyons:

Correct.

Wendy Lyons:

So, now he’s in jail, Fayette County Detention Center, awaiting trial.

David Lyons:

Exactly. And of course, on the last episode we talked about all those unique things we found in the investigation after the arrest, which was kind of crazy, but that’s the way it usually works sometimes.

Speaker 2:

While he’s awaiting trial, at what point are they getting ready to wrap this up and try this case?

David Lyons:

Well, the way it works, and we’ve heard the other detectives talk about it, and I’m sure it’s this way across the world, is that when we’re waiting on the trial, the Commonwealth Attorney’s office is sending the investigators a honey-do list that changes quickly and often. As they go through the case, they find things that they want to reinforce. Or if they’ve got questions, and they’ll send messages over or meet with you and ask you to go knock out extra interviews or to double check on pieces of evidence, or maybe in some cases, ask for more things to be tested. And at the same time, they’re receiving all of your documentation for their file, which is an important part of this whole thing. And sometimes people can see, on some of these documentaries, where there’s problems with this.

David Lyons:

There’s a motion for discovery that’s made by the defendant’s attorneys. When that motion is made, the prosecution, with the assistance of, for example, the police department, the medical examiner’s office, the coroner, everybody that’s involved, copies of everything we have in that file have to go to the defense attorney in that motion of discovery. It’s really important to make sure no page gets left behind, if that makes any sense. It’s also important that everything that you have in your file that’s been documented goes. For example, you could never ethically and legally withhold something that would be exculpatory. And we’ve talked about “exculpatory” on the show before where, in the course of the investigation, if we dig up and find some information that could lean a person to believe the person might be innocent of the crime, you have to turn that over too, and what the results of your investigation was.

David Lyons:

Withholding exculpatory evidence is why some cases are overturned, some of them are sent back to retrial. It’ll damage the reputation of anybody involved, if they get involved with that. So, you have to imagine how important it’s to take that murder book and actually make sure every page is copied. And then every audio recording, every video recording is copied religiously and turned over for that. So, that’s going on. And again, the honey-do list, which the thing about the honey-do list is, for a lot of people, I think when they first see it, they think it’s busy work. But it’s the prosecution’s office, the Commonwealth attorney. Specifically, we’ve had Ray Larson on the show before. It’s everything they need to go to trial.

David Lyons:

Because there’s a big difference between having probable cause to make an arrest and get an indictment and then having something that actually may be successful in trial, that’s thorough, to bring facts to the jury. Now, in this case, all of that happened. But you asked about trial, and in Troy’s case, he actually ended up pleading guilty in the case and never went to trial.

Speaker 2:

Why would he have not gone to trial because he pleaded guilty?

David Lyons:

That’s a decision that’s pretty interesting. You see a lot of people in the public, they’ll kind of get impatient. For example, one of the things that’s ridiculous, I think, is when the news says that a person charged with murder was arraigned around Friday at 9:00 AM and entered a not-guilty plea. And people are like, “Well, they should have pled guilty,” where, in an arraignment, you’re going to plead not guilty. And if you try to plead guilty, usually the judge will enter in not-guilty plea for you, because it’s too early in the game to do that.

David Lyons:

Now, the thing about a guilty plea is, that’s based on a lot of discussion between the defendant and the representation in court, in the form of a defense attorney. And I’ve never, obviously, been in on those conversations. We’ve been on the periphery of those before, because a lot of times the attorneys will have a good relationship with the police department. And there’s a lot of discussion that happens before you can get in the courtroom.

David Lyons:

On this case, I would have to believe, just guessing, that it could have been one or maybe a combination of things. One may be that it’s possible that Troy actually personally took complete accountability for the murder of Keisha and really meant that. We’ve heard before, in the other episodes, about how he regarded her and women in general. And in his mind, he may have rationalized this death as being a fact of life for him and a necessity. I think the other thing we can look at too, is that we did have a confession that withstood suppression hearings and as far as it was allowed in the court. So, you had the direct admission of him. And then, you had all that circumstantial evidence.

David Lyons:

When the defense attorneys and the defendants are discussing this, I think sometimes they look at it as to: what are the odds of actually coming up with something different than a guilty? And then, maybe they do the math. That if they take a plea, and they say, for example, in this case 40 years, maybe to them, it wasn’t worth the risk of getting life or life without, or life after 25, whatever that might have been; a longer sentence. I think we talked before that the death penalty was not on the table with this case, because it didn’t have the aggravators that Kentucky required. So, he enters a guilty plea. But that is the basis of a lot of conversation between the defendant and the defense team.

Speaker 2:

He then enters his guilty plea. And I guess he is off to prison, right?

David Lyons:

He is. Yeah, he’s off to prison. He starts doing his time, as they say. Starting on that 40 years.

Speaker 2:

Where is he housed? Do you know this?

David Lyons:

Well, currently the last I saw, in looking up online, he’s at the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex here in Kentucky, a state prison. Now, while in custody though, he ends up, actually through his attorneys, filing an appeal on his guilty plea.

Speaker 2:

Wait, why would he appeal a guilty plea that he pled guilty to?

David Lyons:

That’s a common question because it you look at it that he’s taken accountability, and he’s admitting to at least enough of the crime to “do the time” as they’d say. And some people, again, in the community may think that, well, you shouldn’t be allowed to appeal if you plead guilty. Well, that’s not the way our justice system works. One of the things that makes it the best one in the world is that you still can appeal those things and bring those arguments in front of appellate courts.

David Lyons:

And some of the reasons are is that: what if your defense wasn’t as strong as it could have been? What if there was information that changed or was discovered after your guilty plea? What if there were other considerations that never made it into court, either because the court missed him or the defense attorney missed them. In those bad cases where I talked about exculpatory evidence, those are things too. Wow, we found out six pages that a file weren’t delivered, and those file was an interview that the information should have been entertained in court and examined by the defense attorneys. Any of those things can happen. But the big thing is, in this country, you have that ultimate right to appeal and question things.

David Lyons:

In this case, he actually appealed based on three things that are pretty interesting, and we’ll kind of go through those one at a time to talk about what they were and what the Supreme Court of Kentucky decided. The first one is that he made an appeal based on the fact that evidence of the discovery of Keisha’s body should have been suppressed because it was discovered during the course of a warrantless search. That’s pretty strong stuff. And in a lot of cases, that could be… We’ll talk in a minute why it didn’t work here. But keep in mind, in United States of America, there’s just a few ways the police get in your house. It’s either through a warrant or you consent to be in them or what we call an exigent circumstance or an emergency.

David Lyons:

And the preferred method is always through a warrant. And we’ll talk about that in a minute. The second thing is he said that the confession should have been suppressed because the person who advised him of his Miranda Rights, in this case, that was Officer Ricky Glen, when they took him into custody in the parking lot after that chase, was not the same person that conducted the interrogation. That’s kind of interesting. And we touched on that a little bit, but we’ll go deeper on that.

David Lyons:

And the third one was kind of a technical foul strike that they were looking at, with something to do with the violent offender statute in Kentucky. They were questioning the constitutionality of that law, period, because it provided for an earlier minimum parole eligibility date for a life sentence than for a term of 40 years. So, they were questioning that whole concept of what that law was mathematically what it means.

David Lyons:

Now, on the warrantless search claim, what’s interesting about that is they gave a lot of details about how the first responding officers arrived and knocked at the door. We talked about that. But they went into a lot of detail about the second officer that came later in the day, Darnell Dials. When he went to the apartment and then knocks on the door, he noticed a foul odor coming from the apartment. And originally, I think he actually indicated in his paperwork, he thought it might have been baby diapers. It’s hard to distinguish probably, with the breeze standing out there.

David Lyons:

But what they questioned was the idea that eventually, as we talked about before, Darnell was allowed in by the apartment manager. And when they opened that door, Darnell Dials had said that he encountered a rush of extremely hot air with the same foul odor he had smelled before. But by the time that he smelled it when the door was open, he started to really recognize that as decomposing human remains. And we’ve said before that that smell is very, very pungent. And once you smell that, there’s not a lot of smells that are like that at all.

David Lyons:

So, his argument was that he went in the apartment based on that thinking that somebody, particularly Keisha, could need help. That was the first thing the court looked at, and they ruled in favor of our work and ruled that there was no need for a search warrant based on what we call “exigency,” which means that the police can go in, if there’s a genuine emergency there, and especially when we think somebody might need to have aid rendered to them. Now, the court agreed with that.

David Lyons:

On a second thing though, is they also talked about something that came into the testimony, where one of her brothers had indicated that, if the police had not gone into the apartment, he would’ve gone into the apartment. Which of course, he’s a civilian. He doesn’t have to have a warrant. And this is a neat thing too, that comes up in these, is the court demonstrated, through research and case law, that on that part of it alone, they would’ve allowed it because of a thing called “inevitable discovery.” And what that is that, if there’s a good argument on totality of circumstances and facts, that for example, Keisha’s body was going to be found, then that enters into the idea that the warrantless search was also not an issue for the police, because it was just going to come up.

David Lyons:

You’ll find inevitable discovery, really, in a lot of cases with deaths because of, like we talked about, decomposition and odor, is that that’s just not going to sit unattended for any amount of time, in most cases. So, the court supported us on that one, and they denied any kind of appeal based on that.

David Lyons:

The second one was the confession. And you remember, I think we talked specifically about the idea that, when I went into that room with him, I did not read him his Miranda Rights again. Ricky Lynn had done that out on the road when he captured him and had given me the time and where he was when he said that. So, even though we had a suppression hearing, they argued that because of the fact that that wasn’t the same person that read the rights. And then, they argued that there was a time delay between the Miranda and between me actually sitting down to interview him, that they thought that that confession should be suppressed. And that would be a strong hit in this case. Fortunately for us, the court decided in our favor again, that the confession was admissible. Because again, based on case law throughout the years, it was pretty clear that it didn’t have to be the same person that reads the rights.

David Lyons:

I think I said in a previous episode that primarily you get read your rights one time and that there wasn’t a significant enough delay to arguing any kind of bright line rule with Miranda. So that statement got allowed in, which was a big deal. If we’d lost that, we’d have been trying this again, and I don’t know how successful we’d be. And then finally on that third one, kind of a smaller issue, is the violent offender statute. And that was overruled as well. They didn’t act on that.

David Lyons:

Again, sometimes the defense attorneys do a good job; will challenge as many parts of the record as they can, which is why your documentation has to be good. And protect the record. That’s a vigorous defense. And that’s another part of our system that we have, is that you’re represented by people who can vigorously defend you. So, you don’t look at an appeals issue and say, “Well, that’s just garbage; they shouldn’t be doing that.” That’s actually the sign of a really good attorney, that takes these things and appeals them. In this case, fortunately, for the Supreme Court of Kentucky, we were upheld on all three. And his conviction, based on his guilty plea of 40 years, stood.

Speaker 2:

So, he’s still serving his time right now.

David Lyons:

Yeah. Like I said, last time I checked, he was at the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex. They have some information available online. And I think I put this on the website. If not, I’ll try to remember to on the show notes. But his expected time to serve his January 24th, 2034. The minimum expiration of a sentence date, based on what they call a “good time release date,” provided that he doesn’t go into a facility and infract and cause problems there, that’s called “good time.” That date is actually still listed as January 24th of 2034.

David Lyons:

Now, he is eligible for parole. And that’s actually coming up pretty quick. His first parole eligibility date will be December 25th of 2023, so that’s just a couple years out.

Speaker 2:

One year?

David Lyons:

Exactly, exactly. So, that’s on the way. And we’ve talked about parole hearings before, I think, in Michael Turpins case, some in Trent DiGiuro’s case. And that’ll be up to the family, to anybody left in the family that has an interest in that; they may want to go testify at that parole hearing. But that’s usually based on how they feel about the situation and sometimes, unfortunately, if anybody’s still around. But she does still have family in Louisville [inaudible 00:17:01]

Speaker 2:

Well, basically what we have here is another horrible domestic violence case that ended in someone being murdered.

David Lyons:

Yes. And we’ve talked about those before, and we’ve covered those. It’s sad enough to think that how many murder cases in any community are based on domestic violence. It’s just such a curse and a problem. And the one thing I want to talk about, and we’ve said this before, is that we’re talking here again about a domestic violence situation where, at one point, there was a protective order and a domestic violence order in place; those were all in there. And in the end, Keisha died. And I want to bring this up because just because we’re talking about these exceptional cases where there’s a tragic result, they are still exceptional, and they’re still outliers. Because it’s important to remember that the domestic violence system, the support network, the court system, the processes in place usually work. In most of all cases, they work. They do provide protection for people. They do provide people to leave environments where they’re not healthy, or they’re not safe.

David Lyons:

And I just want the listeners to remember that just because you listen to a true crime show or see a documentary, does not represent all of the domestic violence cases that go on. Is that they are the outliers. So, we still have to have a lot of faith in the system. We have to have faith in the people that report it. We have to have faith in the people that address these: the victim advocates, the social workers, the people that can get involved, and the judges that take care of these. Because, in most cases, they work. And I just want to make that clear.

David Lyons:

Now, what we do want to do is make sure people understand there’s resources for people. You can start locally, whether you are in the United States or not. I’m sure in other foreign countries where we’re being listened to, and we are global as far as our audience, is that there’s local resources for sure that you can reach out to. To cover the basis for everybody though, in the United States, there is the National Domestic Violence Hotline. And this whole system is set up to give the caller some protections and some anonymity while they get a game plan in action. But I really want to encourage people to do this: that if you believe that you are in a situation that is not only unhealthy, but you are at risk or are currently being abused, is to reach out for help as fast as possible. To get in touch with someone, to get in touch with professionals that can help you answer questions and maybe give you strategies and plans that seem kind of impossible right now because of where you’re at.

David Lyons:

Now, the Domestic Violence Hotline, the national one, is available at 1-800-799-7233. One more time, that’s 1-800-799-7233. Don’t give up hope. There’s an entire safety net out there with professionals. Like I said, they can help you, even when you’re in a place when you don’t think help is available or will work.

Speaker 2:

Most certainly, reach out to that 1-800 number if you are a victim. If you’re a friend or a family member of a person that you suspect are being victimized, be a listening ear for that person. Try to reach out and get them help. They may be in a situation that they know is not great, but they don’t know how to get out of it. And unfortunately, in this incident with Keisha, this was not her first time being victimized. We know of this due to the autopsy that was done. And there’s likely countless times he put his hands on her that wasn’t even visible in that autopsy.

Speaker 2:

So, if her family is listening, we want her family to know our prayers go out to them. This has been some years, but still, they lost their loved one in a very horrific manner. She has children out there that had to grow up without a mother. So, our hearts do go out to her. And please, if you know someone who is a victim, or if you yourself are, please don’t stay in that situation. We don’t want else to have to pay this ultimate sacrifice like Keisha did.

David Lyons:

I agree. And our town lost a beautiful young woman that had a complete future in front of her. So, like you said, many prayers to the family, and we can all keep Keisha in our thoughts moving forward,

David Lyons:

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded, and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, which is our website and has show notes for imagery and audio and video files related to the cases you’re going to hear.

David Lyons:

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