Mini-series | 5 Episodes
Part 1 of 5 | Publish Date: January 12, 2021
Part 2 of 5 | Publish Date: January 19, 2021
Part 3 of 5 | Publish Date: January 26, 2021
Part 4 of 5 | Publish Date: February 2, 2021
Part 5 of 5 | Publish Date: February 9, 2021
The Murder of Umi Southworth is a 5-part mini-series detailing her 2010 murder in Lexington Kentucky. The detectives called this case “Fatal Control”. Listen and you will hear why.
Join homicide investigators Bill Brislin, Dave Richardson, and Chris “Schoon” Schoonover (The Murder of Haley McHone) as they round-table this case with you at the table.
This is your ticket to sit in the Homicide Detective bay, so do not skip this and miss out. Listen as they home in on a dark and very manipulative murderer and the frightening steps he took to avoid accountability. Episodes will release weekly for this mini-series to help everyone stay in the loop.
Show Transcripts
Copyright protected. Please cite source if used.
Part 1 of 5:
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.
Wendy Lyons:
Welcome to The Murder Police Podcast: The Murder of Umi Southworth, part one. Hi, Murder Police fans. This is Wendy. We have an amazing five-part mini-series for you. This case covers the 2010 murder of Umi Southworth in Lexington, Kentucky. David, you were so excited to record this case with the three detectives that worked it. Why don’t you tell the audience what it was that you enjoyed so much about it and what you think they will find interesting about it as well?
David Lyons:
Well, Wendy, I was excited because it was everything that this podcast is supposed to be. And I know our episodes always drive this home, but I really want the audience to hear from these detectives that actually do the work. And in some of the episodes, we’ve talked about what it would be like if you could sit in the homicide bay during a round table or a huddle and hear the talk, and we’re going to give that to the audience in these next five episodes, and they’re going to love it because you’re going to really hear these three guys not only think and reminisce and remember, and remind each other, you’re going to hear exactly why they did the things they did, the way they did them.
David Lyons:
The people we’re going to have are fantastic. It starts with Bill Brislin, who is the lead on this case. Bill hasn’t been on here before, and people are going to love how articulate he is, how detailed he is, and along with the other two, the sense of humor they share as a team. We also have Dave Richardson, who’s a lieutenant with the Lexington Police Department right now. And Dave is again, very well-spoken and he brings kind of the techno gadget guy thing to the investigation and most investigations. When he was in homicide, he was pretty much the cutting-edge on bringing newer technologies onboard into the unit and into court. And then finally, we have Chris Schoonover, as we’re all going to learn now, his official nickname is Schoon. And for our listeners who started with us in the beginning, he’s the one that brought us three episodes on the murder of Hailey McComb by serial killer, Tommy Lynn Sells, so you know who Chris is, you know how well he speaks, and he’s actually going to take the time to teach people what it’s like to do this.
David Lyons:
You mentioned before, it’s a five-part mini-series. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to deviate from our every other Tuesday schedule and we’re going to release these every Tuesday for five weeks so that they get closer together and people don’t have to keep up. And I’m going to tell you now that this thing is going to be so fast and furious and move, we’re not going to do introductions on the next four episodes. This is the last they’re going to hear from you and me. Just when that episode drops, put it in, turn it on and go and listen to it.
David Lyons:
The thing is about these three detectives is like I said, it’s going to be real detail with real teamwork and comradery among real friends. People are going to pick that up. And that’s the thing that TV and movies tries to pretend and emulate and show, but you’re going to feel it with these three when they start talking about this case over these next five episodes. The case itself, get into it, listen to it, and don’t miss an episode. It is going to get deeper and go into more strange places than anything that we’ve recorded before. And when I say strange, mind-blowing strange, so hang on tight. It’s really going to go there. The audience is in the right place at the right time with The Murder Police Podcast. And you’re going to be in the room with these people while they talk about this. So with that, without any further ado, we’re going to start the first of the five-part mini-series on the murder of Umi Southworth.
Wendy Lyons:
Well, gentlemen, thank you all for joining us today. Hello, Chris, how are you over there?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Thank you. I’m doing very well. Thank you for having us today.
Wendy Lyons:
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Sure. I started my career in the United States military with the US Army as a criminal investigative special agent. We investigated all kinds of felonies that were connected with the military and the US government. We also investigated things that had a nexus to the military base such as drugs and weapons and things like that. After that, I was hired with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, where I worked in special investigative section. We would investigate jailbreaks, any kind of scams that the inmates would have over the telephone. And then I was hired with the Lexington Police Department. Once I was hired with the Lexington Police Department, I did my usual stint as you know, your training and that, and then I was asked to go up a homicide unit, and I was in the homicide unit for 19 years and retired in 2017.
Wendy Lyons:
Nice.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Thanks.
Wendy Lyons:
A lot of experience there.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Thank you.
Wendy Lyons:
Thank you for joining us. Dave, how are you?
Detective David Richardson:
Good. Thanks for having us.
Wendy Lyons:
Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?
Detective David Richardson:
I came onto the police department in 2001. I started off working patrol like everyone. I was fortunate enough to go to robbery-homicide in about 2005. I spent seven years there and I’ve always said those were the best seven years of my life, just the most fun I’ve ever had, met some great people, worked some great cases with people. I got promoted to sergeant had to go back to the street, but was fortunate enough to come back and be the crime scene sergeant for four years. And that was definitely the second favorite job I ever had on the police department. Still got to work big cases, maybe not as much stress on the extended period like you’ll hear with this case, this drug on for quite a while. Then now I’m currently a lieutenant and spent some time in special victims during that time.
Wendy Lyons:
Nice. Well, thank you. And Bill, how are you today?
Detective Bill Brislin:
I’m great. How are you?
Wendy Lyons:
I am great. Thank you. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. Started the police department in 1998, graduated from the academy, did patrol for about a year. My goal in my career there at the police department was to be a detective. So I made it well known to my supervisors, but after about a year in patrol, I then was interviewed for a position with a Bureau of Investigations with Crimes Against Children. And that was around 2000. And I was accepted for that position and worked crimes against children and family abuse type cases from 2000-2002. And then once I had done a little stint with them, I had interest in homicide, and then was brought over to homicide in 2002 and worked homicide until 2018. That was the highlight of my career. As Dave said, it was his best years. It was definitely my best years, not only to work the cases but to develop a friendship and a family within the unit that we had at that time.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Following my time in homicide, I was then selected by the chief for a chief appointed position within the intelligence unit. In that unit, I oversee violent crime scenes with the NIBIN system, which is the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. It’s a system that basically compares shell casings to different scenes to see if the same firearm was used. This is a liaison position between the Lexington Police Department and the ATF. And I currently hold that position currently. And that’s about what I’ve done so far.
Wendy Lyons:
Well, I think between the three of you all and this one sitting here next to me, we’ve got a lot of intelligence and experience in this room, so I appreciate you all coming. So with that, why don’t you all kind of dig in a little and give me an overall description of what this case is, what it’s about, what stood out with the case that our audience might find some interest in.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
What stands out to me is this case is something that anybody lives in a cul de sac in a mainstream house, in a neighborhood where you think things are all normal in your neighborhood, and when people close their doors in the evenings, no one has a clue what goes on behind those doors, and that’s something that I would like people to know that be cautious, be aware. And maybe if you see you someone in need of help and they don’t dare ask, maybe you should strike up a conversation and ask them because this case, no one knew what this woman was going through.
Wendy Lyons:
Well with that said, you spoke about this woman and what she was going through. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about this victim, who she was, and what kind of risk factor stood out to make her obviously the topic of our conversation today?
Detective Bill Brislin:
I would just add that to piggyback what Chris said, no one really knows what goes on behind closed doors. And in this case, Chris and I, along with Dave have spoke on this case before and presented it and we actually called it Fatal Control, which is actually what we’re going to see as we talk more about this case. But this is definitely a case that we all felt throughout the whole time that we investigated it, it’s definitely a case that we wanted to solve and we wanted to see someone to be prosecuted for what he or she did. And you’ll see that at the end of this case. But to talk more about the victim, because you always talk more about the defendant, but in this case, the victim was Umi Southworth. At the time she was 44 years of age. She worked for the Fazoli’s here in Fayette County or in Lexington. She was a bookkeeper, an accountant there. She was currently married to the defendant, which is going to be Donald Southworth, who worked for UPS, and she had two children and they were married actually in the early ’90s.
Detective David Richardson:
I mean, I think she was a very soft-spoken person. Didn’t talk a lot at work about what she was involved with, just really went to work and did her job, so some of those people didn’t realize the pain and suffering she was going through in her life.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
You’ll hear throughout this presentation that there was a lot of questions asked about the defendant. There was a lot of questions, did we have the right person? There was a lot of questions, what could we have done to help Umi? She had great relationships with her colleagues at work. You’ll hear about them and how they assisted the police. Here’s the thing, and I think all detectives will say this later on, every case teaches you a lesson. And in this case, we learned several lessons. We’ve made several mistakes. We learned from those mistakes and things have changed. Policies were made in the Lexington Police Department because of this case.
David Lyons:
If I can jump in. So this is a domestic violence case, correct?
Detective David Richardson:
That’s correct.
David Lyons:
What’s different about working a domestic violence case? Can y’all give me an idea because I’m sure y’all handled several of these before?
Detective Bill Brislin:
I wouldn’t say that domestic violence cases you typically know the defendant in the case, but sometimes it’s harder to prove because of the relationship that was going on between the two that we’re unfamiliar with. So if you take out one of the individuals involved in the relationship, then you only can rely on the statements made by the other individual that’s still living.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
I’d like to add, the other hurdle that you have to get over as a domestic violence case is your witnesses. Who are your best witnesses and domestic violence? There are children. To get a child to testify against one or the other parent is very difficult. It’s a hurdle that’s almost impossible to do. So I think a domestic violence case sometimes is more difficult than a who-done-it homicide.
Detective Bill Brislin:
I would agree with Chris on that, especially in this case, because once she was deceased, we were having to rely a lot of information just coming from the defendant versus the children. And as Chris said, the children were very protective of their parents, whether one was being physically or mentally abused. So it was a very hard situation for them to be put in and a very hard situation for them to talk about.
Detective David Richardson:
Well, and of course, the child’s always in denial that it’s really going on because they don’t want to believe it either, everything that they’re witnessing.
Wendy Lyons:
Well, and I think also, I work with children, and I think one thing that I see in the younger children I work with, which is predominantly five years and under, even when they know that abuse is going on, even if it’s themselves, they protect that parent till the end. And there’s that sense of obligation to the parent even when they themselves are being abused that they don’t want to be anywhere else. They don’t want to be in foster homes. They want to be right there because they uphold that parent to the very end.
David Lyons:
Good stuff to know because a lot of people, I don’t think understand those intricacies. And Chris, you made a good point that it’s not a slam dunk. I mean, you can identify somebody early on, but the work is pretty difficult. We covered Amanda Ross with Todd Iddings and he talked about the same thing, that making the arrest wasn’t a big deal, it was everything after that. With that said, and now that we know a little bit about who she was, why don’t y’all just go ahead and start about how you were alerted to the case and just tell the story and let the audience hear how this went.
Detective David Richardson:
Well, I mean, we were actually all together the night that this happened. Like Bill said earlier, we were all kind of a family, so we were actually out for trivia night. We went on an on-call rotation, so we knew who next was up for a homicide. We got the call and a couple of us went in to start that, left our other partners there to do trivia because we really thought this might be kind of a two-hour case and we’d be back and hanging out with them in a few hours. And what we kind of learned was that’s not going to happen, and so started going through the process. I went to headquarters, started typing a search warrant just to get into the house and to search the property and everything. And Bill and Chris went and started interviewing people about what they knew and what was at the scene.
David Lyons:
How did you come to be aware that this happened? What’s that look like as far as being a detective? You were out just hanging out, how did you find out about it and what were the steps after that?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
We actually were all in the same car going to Mellow Mushroom for trivia night. And I remember Bill sitting next to me, he was on-call and actually the next one to what we call as catch a homicide. He was the next one up. So when he got the call, I could hear what he was saying in his voice, so I knew it was a call out. So we asked everybody else to get out, go in and save us a place to sit, order the two or three pitchers, probably two pitchers because we do like to control ourselves in public. And so after that, I told Bill, I’ll just ride with you, this isn’t going to be too long. I mean, this is open and shut. Well, come to find out on the way over, Bill receives another call and the information we receive is that Umi Southworth was reported missing earlier in the day, and there were several contacts with the patrol units, with the police department, and that they were searching the area behind the residence of Donald and Umi Southworth. That’s what we knew going over there.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
When we get over there we see several police vehicles with lights on, some off, and Bill then walks up to the sergeant on patrol and receives a briefing from that sergeant. Come to find out during that day, Mr. Southworth really didn’t want police and patrol cars at his house. So what we had done, what we always do, once we arrive at the scene, we get a briefing from the sergeant. There’s a lot of intricate things going on all at once, simultaneously. Bill is the primary on this case, so he’s directing people on what to do. Now, remember because later on you will be surprised that when we get called, the homicide unit, that means someone is dead, so we assume that we’re going, and the corner’s already there, we’re going to go and just go to the scene, we’re going to limit the people in that scene, and we’re going to evaluate the scene. We’re going to have forensic services unit, which is what Dave was talking about earlier. They’re going to process that scene while we’re interviewing witnesses.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
While that’s going on, at the same time, we understand that there’s children involved, so you have to use all your resources available to you at that time. So Bill had called in child services and the Crimes Against Children’s Unit to interview, or at least come down and interview the daughters of Donald Southworth and Umi Southworth. So we got them a ride to the headquarters, as well as Donald Southworth, and then we stayed. And what we usually do is we brief the Commonwealth attorney because the Commonwealth attorney likes to come to the scene early on to see what they had have because eventually, we want to at least be able to prosecute this case and prosecute it successfully. So they are with us at the beginning.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So Bill is actually briefing the Commonwealth attorney and other attorneys that are with the Commonwealth attorney. At the same time, I’m trying to direct individuals of where to tape off the scene, what to do with certain cars’ headlights because it’s becoming dark. And Dave, I’m contacting Dave describing the residence, which is a fourplex, brick. And this occurred, and like I said, it’s a regular neighborhood, this occurred in the Meadowthorpe area. So now you have neighbors coming out and you have to control them. So do you need more patrol, you have to evaluate all that. So that’s how we got involved with this case.
David Lyons:
More interviews to do too.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
More interviews.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So what I would say to that is to piggyback what Chris said was the crime scene, once we had arrived there at the scene, there was a lot of moving parts. And as Chris said, and I’m sure if anyone has listened to any of these podcasts before that they understand what happens at a crime scene as far as a homicide goes, but once we were on scene, I was having to talk to a lot of individuals, especially supervisors. I was getting different stories. Chris was also obtaining information for the search warrant to pass on to Dave, so we could have that done.
Detective Bill Brislin:
But what alerted the police to locating Umi, in this case, was the defendant, in this case, kept referring to I’ve searched the ditch line, I’ve searched the ditch line. She’s nowhere to be found around here. She’s probably left and went with a boyfriend of hers. Basically trying to have the police that are on scene probably leave and not search the area. And an officer actually located Umi in the ditch line. That’s when we were notified that they actually had a body on scene and it was believed that she was deceased.
David Lyons:
What did it look like as far as where she was found, the body and everything, what kind of environment what it was, and was she concealed at all?
Detective Bill Brislin:
So I’ll go into that, but I think another important part is once a lead detective and homicide detectives arrive on scene, you are overseeing, and Dave, you know this because you did this for years so I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, is that once you arrive on scene, you’re overseeing everything that goes. And this is your scene that you’re in charge. You’re in control. You are the responsible party. So in this scene, I observe what I believe, once we had located Umi in the ditch lawn behind the residence, I thought I had observed what looked like tire tracks bleeding through the backyard from the driveway area to the tree line. So I had everybody get off the grass before it got dark so we could photograph those tire tracks leading to the tree line because I felt that that could be important, matching up the tire treads to maybe a vehicle specifically, maybe the defendant’s vehicle.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So as it began to get dark, the photographs were taken. Chris was still trying to do what he needed to do. I was still trying to do what I needed to do. But once we knew that she was back there, we always tried to contain the scene. So the only person back there at that time was only the officer that had found her. And when he had found her, she had visible signs of mortality. Her head had some blunt force trauma. There was also some maggot activity, so he believed her to be deceased and didn’t check her vital signs. At that point, the coroner and our supervisor, Paul Williams had made his way back there. So we limit the amount of people in that area so we can control the scene for the forensics guys. It was at that point that they were relaying the information to us, and she was basically, to answer your question, located under what I would describe as a box spring mattress-type item, so basically the box spring, and she was completely nude. And I would also describe her having a belt around her neck.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right. You couldn’t see her. The box spring was laid flat onto the ground. Because later when we do conduct our interview with Donald Southworth, you have to understand what was seen back there for him to describe what he did.
Detective David Richardson:
It’s a wooded area with a lot of vegetation and everything.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right. The backyard is maybe three-quarters of an acre, grass. You have a carport with no doors on it to the right of the residence. Back behind that, it’s not well-trimmed, so there’s high shrubs going up the back wall of the carport. And then the wooded area, there’s one entrance maybe where a tree bent over, and then you go back probably 25 feet where it’s pretty dense, but there was a box spring there with a belt, not even the buckle portion, but where you loop the holes, under the mattress. It was sticking out. There was a log laying beside that and a bag of clothing. That was about it.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, I would describe the scene. It almost appeared, and this plays into the end as well, not to give away too much, but it appeared that it could be a homeless camp where she was actually located under the box spring. But once they lifted the box spring, they saw specific items. And I’ll let Dave talk about that on the forensic side. But she had this belt, basically, once we could actually observe her, loosely around her neck and she was completely nude. And like I described earlier, had obvious blunt force trauma to the head.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So after we were at the crime scene, we asked patrol to bring Donald Southworth to the police department. He doesn’t realize that we know where Umi Southworth is. We know where Umi is. And we asked him to bring his camera with him so we can have photos of Umi to help locate her and we can post those photos at different locations while we’re searching for her. We’d like him to come down and give us background on Umi, maybe what her habits were, what she does during the day, who she works with. That way we can get what we call a baseline, which the key to getting anybody who … Obviously in a domestic violence, when a wife goes missing, the number one suspect is the husband, so we’re going to at least eliminate him or we’re going to stay with him as a suspect. We’re going to get that out of the way right away. So we have him escorted to the police department with his camera.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And let me back up just a little bit because I think it’s important to know. How we even got there was where she worked at, the employees, her friends were worried about her and they had actually been to this location looking for her because she had not shown up for work. This was her last day of work, so they were concerned about her. They knew that there was some issues going on between her and Donald. Whether that was actually physical or mental or any type of domestic violence, but they knew that there was something going on between the two of them. So when she didn’t show up for work, the employees actually went to the residence looking for her early in the morning hours. Well, not early, but early afternoon around lunchtime. They made contact with the daughter of Umi. She believed that her mother had been at work. But the problem was her vehicle was in the carport or parked in the garage.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
It was parked on the side of the street, out front, along with their purse.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So, we call them the Fazoli ladies, you’ll find out more about that. They actually contact the police. They have some belief that maybe she’s missing. But at the same time, the defendant, in this case, Donald Southworth has also called the police saying that his wife is missing, but she probably ran off with her boyfriend. There’s no really concern. Can I file a missing person’s report? And you’ll hear more about that later on. So once that information comes in, there’s some conversation later in the day because the Fazoli ladies actually hear a recorded message on the work phone and it sounds like a struggle. They are concerned and it was on Umi’s phone, so they called the police again. They then contacted Donald Southworth and asked him to meet them at the residence. He was actually on his way back from Cincinnati. He said I’ll just meet you at another location. I don’t want you coming to my home because I have the kids with me. And the police went ahead and responded to the residence in Meadowthorpe.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And while they were on scene, prior to his arrival, he ends up showing up there, which was very concerning to them. And that’s where they made face-to-face call contact. He said, I’m just trying to report my wife missing. That’s when Chris and I got involved to have him escorted to the police department and we were treating it basically, at that point, just as a missing person. And as Chris said, we were wanting to get a baseline. He brought his camera so we could observe photographs of her. And we wanted to see the last time he had talked with her and the last time that she had been to work, and just some different things like that.
David Lyons:
You talked about patrol there so much earlier on. Did you all get any impression from patrol officers that they were coming to any opinions on this talking to him throughout this? Was there any information that they offered that they were suspicious or anything?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, that’s what I mentioned earlier, that ditch line. Don had kept mentioning, “I’ve searched around the house. I’ve searched the ditch line.” From my understanding when Chris and I spoke to the on-scene patrol officer that actually located her, it was more than just a number of times for him to create some concern for him to actually go search the ditch line. It was almost like he was trying to conceal the information, but actually, it was just blabbing, it really.
Wendy Lyons:
Well, that’s what I was going to ask. If he continues to mention the ditch line, did he not think that that’s going to strike up a red flag? You keep talking about the ditch line. “She’s not in the ditch line. She’s not in the ditch line.” I would think that would be my first thought, why does he keep talking about the ditch line?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
I think that’s a good place where … Bill, why don’t you talk about Donald Southworth and why he would think that the police would stay away from the ditch line?
Detective Bill Brislin:
I believe what Schoon’s talking about is that we really began to know and understand, well, we think we do, Donald Southworth based on the number of hours we’ve interviewed him. And we’ll go into that later as well. But this individual or this gentleman was a sociopath. He was-
Detective David Richardson:
He thought he was smarter than everybody else.
Detective Bill Brislin:
He thought he was smarter than the police. But that’s why he kept mentioning it. He was basically saying it, thinking we wouldn’t check it because he, like Dave said, that he was much smarter than we were and that whatever he did, he could probably get away with it.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes. His coworkers would say he was a great salesman. Everybody believed what he said. He spoke very convincingly. Even during his interview, he spoke very convincingly and he’d use things like he used Bill’s good looks in the interview. Compared to what his life was, his was a lot rougher because he was a little smaller person and a little uglier than Bill. That came up in the interview. So he felt that he could use people’s strengths against them and still be smarter than them to where they would, hey, I believe Donald Southworth. I mean, he’s given me compliments. He knows who I am. Not that Bill’s better looking than anybody. We all know that. But I mean, he was smart that way. He was a smart individual. He thought the big picture. Because some of the things that we found later on in the investigation probably no one has really ever thought about and he used those to his advantage.
David Lyons:
Let me ask you all this too while I’ve got you together. Just from experience, is that something you saw more than once with a suspect or a defendant? Because I know when I did this, you could smell that pretty quick and it actually, we don’t have to go into detail, but there was a different interview format I would use with those people. Is it something you saw more than once?
Detective Bill Brislin:
I would say yes. Chris?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes, oh yes. Your vocabulary would have to change that you used in your interview. Your approach has to be really soft. You have to play to their advantage
Detective David Richardson:
In those first 10 minutes of that interview, you’re kind of sizing up what type of interview this is going to be and then you start deploying the tactics that Chris talks about, about we need to get this person to talk. And so you’ve got to go to what makes them the most comfortable to kind of tell you the story.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And I’ll be honest, Chris and I went in pretty confident that we were going to get this gentleman to confess to what we knew pretty quickly because Chris and I have worked together for a long time and we do interviews very well. In fact, when I’m saying something, Chris is thinking what I’m probably going to say next and vice versa, so we work very well in the box. And that’s one of our favorite things to do in any homicide investigation is to just interview the suspect. So honestly, we walked in there thinking we’re going to get this finished probably in the next hour or two.
David Lyons:
Yeah, tell me real quick, what’s the box? Because I think I’ve used that before and didn’t explain it.
Detective Bill Brislin:
The interview room where we interviewed the suspect that we believe could be the homicide suspect.
David Lyons:
That’s just something I think the audience isn’t aware of, but I love getting these terms out that they’ve probably never heard of before.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
It’s a very small room. It’s soundproof. And there’s a table and two chairs or three chairs, however many are in there. There’s no windows. And you can get closer to the person you’re interviewing. You can back your chair out, but there’s nowhere for them to go. Even if you leave the door open, they still feel like, gosh, this is a small room. I’m sweating. So at that point, you know if it’s going to be a good interview or not.
Detective Bill Brislin:
A lot of the individuals, just to kind of give you some comparison, a lot of people that we talk to watch a lot of the First 48, so that’s probably a good thing to compare it to. What the box is, is what we’re talking about is what they see as the interview room on the First 48.
David Lyons:
Perfect.
Wendy Lyons:
So you’ve got this guy who’s thinking that he’s going to outwit you all and he’s a great manipulator. And he thinks he’s very convincing. So you change up your tactics to make him think he’s going to help you all figure out where his wife is, right?
Detective David Richardson:
That’s right. Because he doesn’t even know at this time that we know where she’s at.
Wendy Lyons:
So he’s thinking that he’s convinced you all she’s ran off with this boyfriend once again, it happens all the time. And you all know the truth, but you’re seeing what he knows. So when you get him in there, what happens?
Detective Bill Brislin:
I wish we could show the video because body language says a lot. And in this interview, he is instantly closed up. Once we enter the box with him, he’s got his legs crossed, he acts like he’s comfortable, he’s got his arms crossed. And just to kind of give you some visual of how the box works is the lead investigator typically takes the front chair at the table that divides, and it’s not between the two, so basically the suspect is sitting at an angle of you. The table’s just in the corner. And then the secondary typically takes the backseat of the box. And so he is closed up. He’s wishing to try to give us as much information that he can. Chris and I approach it with that your wife’s missing. We want to find her. He’s very open about how she wants to always be with her boyfriend. In fact, that evening she was on the phone with her boyfriend. The night before, I apologize. So that’s probably where she’s at, and we’re kind of maybe blowing this out of proportion.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And he even told us that he called the police. And when he does that, that’s good for us, right? Because we know later on we can get that recording. So he tells us he called the police and told them it was no big deal. She’s done this before. She’s left for eight hours at a time and went to a hotel with her boyfriend. He doesn’t mention his name immediately, but about a minute and 30 seconds, he throws her boyfriend’s name right out, just gives us a suspect. And that’s a red flag for detectives during the interview. If you’re in there for three minutes and in half of that three minutes, he’s giving you a name of who probably she’s with, or if something happened, it’s him, then you know, hey, we need to delve a little bit deeper into this guy because he’s deflecting everything we’re asking about him. But it also gives you a lead, so you know where to go from there.
Wendy Lyons:
So back at the fourplex, the scene is secured. You all have him down there, and then what transpires next? Do you all just talk to him and let him go with the pretenses of we’re going to keep looking for her, we’ll let you know when we find her, or what happens after that interview?
Detective David Richardson:
Yeah, it’s going to be because … So I was doing the search warrant. So now I’ve gone and met a judge at about seven o’clock at night, gotten this signed so we can search the house and the property. And they’re still talking, Chris and Bill are talking with Donald and the daughters and everything. And we’re starting the search warrant. Then I leave the scene because I’m in homicide at the time. I’m not in crime scene. So I go back and I’m kind of watching the interview and they are going at it and …
Detective Chris Schoonover:
He becomes very irritated with Bill because a good thing that Bill does is if you’re going to create a lie, you have to create that lie the same way every time and that’s very hard to do. I mean, if you’re a parent you know that’s what you use against your kids anyway, right? So you went out, huh? Where’d you go? That kind of thing. And when you know they went out drinking because you found a bottle in the back of the car, they can’t be exact. So Bill was very good on asking him, okay, tell me about your day today. And he would go through it, and later on, we could use, and we did use that against him. He said his daughter never left his side. Every time he went to look for Umi, she was with him. She was right attached to his hips, basically is what he said.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So in the meantime, while we have him there, again, the two daughters are being interviewed by Crimes Against Children detectives. The great thing about technology is we have our cell phones in the interview room so we’re getting texts from Dave. I’ve got the warrant signed, they’re processing the scene now. The Crimes Against Children detectives say these girls have a high IQ. Speaking with them is like speaking with a doctor. So they’re interviewing with the girls and we’re just trying to get Don to tell us if she’s missing where would she be? And he is going into his love life, would you say, Bill?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. So he starts talking about, he loves talking about himself, so he would start doing that. And when we started pressing him about the information about where he had been, he finally had explained to us that he worked for UPS, and in fact, he had been at work from 3:17 until 11:00 AM until he came home. And at that point, when he arrived home, her daughter had been at home when he arrived, and once he was home, he saw her car. He believed that she had been picked up and was probably out with another guy. As the interview continued, as Chris said, the interview became a little bit back and forth between the two of us. And like Chris said, he was trying to basically use everything I was saying against myself versus him actually giving us any information. After the interview had finished, it was probably an hour, hour and 15 minutes, but what had made it stop or why the interview stopped at that point was because I’d received a phone call and so I stepped out.
Detective David Richardson:
Yeah, that was a pretty big event in this case.
Wendy Lyons:
Tell us about the phone call.
Detective David Richardson:
It was a call you never want to get.
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, 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, Twitter, 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 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.
Part 2 of 5:
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.
Wendy Lyons:
Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast. The murder of Umi Southworth, Part Two.
Detective Bill Brislin:
After the interview had finished, it was probably an hour, hour and 15 minutes, but what had made it stop or why the interview stopped at that point was because I had received a phone call, and so I stepped out.
Detective David Richardson:
Yeah. I was going to say that was a pretty big event in this case.
Wendy Lyons:
Tell us about the phone call.
Detective David Richardson:
It was a call you never want to get, definitely. As we talked about, this case changed policy, the corner, this was about three hours after Umi had been located, and they went to start processing the area around the mattress and realized that, in fact, Umi was still alive.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, what had happened was the coroner had actually described that when they lifted the box spring to examine the scene further for forensics, that he actually had heard her take a gasp of air or breath, and at that point they checked her for a pulse and she had a very low pulse. So at that point, they called EC to come in. They removed her, and they transported to the hospital, and there she was placed on a ventilator. And we’ll talk more about that later, but she ends up passing away the following day.
Wendy Lyons:
So at this point, husband doesn’t know she’s been found still, even three hours later?
Detective Bill Brislin:
That’s correct.
Detective David Richardson:
And doesn’t know that she’s still alive.
Wendy Lyons:
So then do you all just send him on, or what do you all do from the interview forward?
Detective Bill Brislin:
So at that time I had stepped out. Chris was speaking with him, and once I… I think I pulled you out of the box, is that correct?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes. Yes.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And I explained to Chris what we had, which I was in complete shock that she was still alive.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So what we did was we came up with a plan. He’s not giving us anything. So maybe we, because he expressed his care and love for his daughters, maybe we bring his daughters up and let him spend some time with his daughters, observe what he’s doing with his daughters, and come up with a plan on how we’re going to approach the second half of this interview since she is alive, right? Because we can use that to our advantage, because why? If he is the actual suspect, he thinks she’s dead. So we’re going to use that to our advantage when we go back in there.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
But also, by law, we have to change our interview technique, which means he was driven down to the police department by the police. He’s in an interview room. He doesn’t have a vehicle to leave, and we have closed the door already. So with those parameters, we have to advise him of his Miranda rights. So we prepare for that type of interview when we go back in there. And so we let his daughters spend time with him, hoping that maybe they’ll talk about something and we can observe their behavior at that time.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. To add on what Chris said, so that was our decision was to take a break, let him visit with his daughters. Because of the situation we were going to monitor that communication. So we allowed him in the same room with his two daughters. One of his daughters who seemed to be closer to him than his other daughter, took a place near him.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
As we were observing the girls in the interview room, we discovered that maybe we need to think about how the family dynamics are and try to find out, well, maybe he has a history and was he married before? And was there ever any previous domestic violence reports made on Don? So we have, like I said, early on simultaneously things going on. Dave’s done with a search warrant, so of course we use Dave again to do other research for us.
Detective David Richardson:
So, but as I’m listening to his talking, because we know this case so well, like we haven’t even addressed that the two daughters weren’t from the same mother.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
With Don.
Detective David Richardson:
I mean, you’ve got to get into it.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Umi was a pretty solid, intelligent woman, and Don Southworth enjoyed her company, but after a certain period of time, Donald met somebody else and became interested in somebody else, and introduced that woman into their relationship eventually, and explained to Umi, “I’ve met this person, and this is what she is to me.” After some time, the other lady had the younger sibling. Gave birth to the younger sibling. In the meantime, they were married overseas, so he still called her, the second woman, called her his wife. And at that time they were separated. She had left Don, and that’s why he was picking up his daughters in Cincinnati at the time. Or, well, his one daughter in Cincinnati and bringing her back.
Detective David Richardson:
But at one time they all lived together.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Because he had visitation rights. Correct. Early on in this investigation, we discovered that they had all been living together, the two daughters, Umi, and this other woman. And they lived in the same apartment, shared certain rooms with each other, and Donald was the A-type personality, and this was the way he was going to control or run his family.
Detective David Richardson:
I think it should be noted that Umi and the other lady, I don’t think either one of them are agreeing to this either. It wasn’t like they thought this was good. It was just that’s the way Don wanted it and that’s the way it was.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. This was Donald’s doing. They just had to live with it. But that information wasn’t known to Chris and I in the interview until much later, so to go from that information, again, we didn’t know that, to seeing his relationship with his two daughters in the box, and then us pulling him out and placing him in another box to talk to him is where it starts to get a little weird, right? As far as his information.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So what happens is, we place him back in the box after we’ve seen this communication between him and the two daughters. We begin speaking to him again, and I tell him that we have located Umi.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Can I back up?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Why I brought up his Miranda rights is when we went back in there, Bill said, he was good about this. Bill said, “We’re going to have to ask you difficult questions. So to ask you these difficult questions, by law we have to advise you of your rights.” And Bill started. The second sentence that Bill read on the Miranda rights, he said, “But I didn’t k-.”
Recording:
[inaudible 00:07:25] Just some officers out there were saying, okay, they briefed me on a couple things. So I wanted to ask you a couple questions in reference to what they’ve been able to locate and find out there, as far as talking to neighbors and stuff like that, just basically to gain some more information to maybe help in this. So because I might have to ask you some hard questions probably from what we’ve talked to about the neighbors and talked to some surrounding people, it’s just like you saw… You said you watch Cops or your watch police shows?
Recording:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I’ve seen some. I don’t really watch them, but-
Recording:
Well, anytime we have somebody in prison and we’re going to start asking some hard questions, we usually just advise them of their rights. That way everyone’s covered, okay? So I’m going to just read this card to you, just to make sure you understand everything, just because we’re police officers and I warned you that anything you say will be used in a court of law against you. You have the absolute right to remain silent.
Recording:
I’m under arrest?
Recording:
No, no. I’m just advising you to make sure you’re aware of your rights, okay? Because your a good… Don-
Recording:
I didn’t k-
Recording:
What? You didn’t what?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
As he was reading, he stopped because Bill was very observant and heard that, and he said, “I don’t know..” and he just said, “I don’t know why you’re reading me… Am I in trouble? What’s going on?” So Bill picked up on it, and I thought for sure that we were going to be successful at that point, but unfortunately we were not.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. That went on for about a minute. I mean, it sounds like it went very quickly, but it… Like time had stopped. We were in the box. We were with this individual. I’m advising him of his rights, and as Chris said, as I’m going through it, he says, “I didn’t k-,” and obviously we both caught that. And so we pressed him about it. He obviously realized he almost screwed up, so we backed off of it after we obviously weren’t getting anywhere, because we still wanted him to talk to us, because at this point Miranda’s been advised. He knows his rights, so he could obviously say, “I invoke my right and I’m not going to speak to you,” right? So we didn’t want to lose that. So after advising him, it was probably within the first few minutes I said, “Well, while we’ve been on break and while you’ve been having time with your daughters, we have actually found Umi.” And his expression was kind of like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe you found her,” and then when I told him that she’s alive, he even took a second look at us like, “Well, she shouldn’t be,” right?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah, I mean, that’s the expression, but at the same time he’s saying, “Is she all right?”
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
“Is she okay? Is she all right?” So, he’s smart. He’s playing it well.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. So, as I’m telling him the information and Chris and I are talking to him, then he starts to continue with was she okay, where’s she at? So we explained to him that she had been transported to a medical facility here in Lexington, that she was being treated, and we were obviously going to go talk to her, and she was going to hopefully provide a statement to use eventually and tell us what had happened and we would be able to tell him the same. He seemed a little concerned about that. Is that when we started talking about DNA?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Well, at first we asked him, “Who do you think would want to harm Umi like this.”
Detective Bill Brislin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And this became important later on, because he said, and like I said earlier, at the scene we discovered… It’s a fourplex. If you’re facing their apartment, it’s a brick porch, and on the right side, downstairs, is where the Southworth’s lived, upstairs was another male individual, across the hall was an Asian couple, and then above that couple was a single woman that she lived there and was a librarian. I don’t know what her occupation was, but, of course, we interviewed her.
Detective Bill Brislin:
She worked for a bookstore.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
A bookstore. And at that point, when he said, “Well, across the hall, they were our friends. We talked to them every once in a while. We didn’t have any problems. The guy upstairs, he’s gay, so he wouldn’t harm her.” And I’m thinking, “Why do you say that?” But we’re going to come back to that, because later on it kind of is an issue that we bring up that you understand us detectives that, oh, okay, if you put the crime scene together and you put what he just said, he’s starting to help us out here, right?
Detective David Richardson:
So let me back… Just in case I missed it, too. When you said that she had been found, how much detail did you go into about the condition she was found in or anything? So all this is just contemporaneously flat out of his mouth, right?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Just that she’s alive and gone to the hospital and they located her.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah, he’s a talker, and that’s the kind of people you like, right? When you’re interviewing them, you like them to talk. So we just let him go with it.
Wendy Lyons:
So I imagine at this point, he is probably sick to his stomach thinking, since he doesn’t know her condition, she may tell the truth about what happened, and he’s probably trying to act like also he’s relieved, “So relieved that y’all found my life. I’m so relieved.” Is that about how it went down?
Detective Bill Brislin:
That is his reaction, but at the same time he’s trying to cover his tracks. Obviously, we believe that he’s the guy that we want for this, but he’s also making us really work hard to figure that out, and there’s a lot of things that happened throughout the investigation that he created these hurdles for us, and we had to get over them. And the audience will be shocked by some of the things that we still had to… the hurdles we had to get over.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So what I remember from that interview, too, is like Chris had mentioned… I apologize. I keep… I’m going to go ahead and say this. I call Chris Schoonover, Schoon, because that’s just what I do.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
It’s out of love.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. So I’m just going to stop trying to correct myself. It’s School, so.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And I accept it as his father.
Detective Bill Brislin:
There is quite an age difference. But what I would say is, though, and this is what goes on in the office, so just a sidebar, this is how we are. We work, a lot of people think how in the world do these guys solve homicides, but this is how it works, and Dave could even elaborate on that. I mean, you have to have that cutting up, the release, the great friendship to solve these cases, because of the things you’re seeing. Is that correct?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Oh, yeah. If you don’t act crazy, you’ll go crazy.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Detective Chris Schoonover:
That’s what I’ve always said. And maybe we’ll do it. I said before, we probably ought to come back and do a show and talk about that dark gallows humor that’s part of that and how that’s a resiliency tool. But that was the best part. I’m with Dave. It was the best part of my career, too.
Detective David Richardson:
Right.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, I think we could agree that homicide where it’s at. It’s the best position to have in the unit, or in the Department. If you’re able to work that position, then you’ve done a lot, and more than likely for the victims’ families, because that’s what we’re there for.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So back to the interview. So what I remember, too, is he had said those things, but really didn’t catch that, because he was such a talker. And so Chris picked up on a little bit, and as the lead, just to kind of set the stage, when you’re sitting there, I’m trying to hear what he’s saying, ask the question, but I’m also thinking about the second and third question I’m going to ask. But that’s why it’s important to have a very good second, because that individual, or that detective is listening to his response and also trying to think what I’m going to ask next. But he’s listening a little bit better. So Chris picked up on it, which was great, but we also found it more when we started looking at the statement that he had made.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right.
Detective Bill Brislin:
As we continued with the interview, we began pressing him a little bit more. We wanted to push him and see what his response would be. And I remember as we started to push him, if you would see the video from the interview, he really starts closing himself up. His legs are crossed. He crosses his arms. He’s becoming a little bit irate with us, because I keep pushing him a little bit about his responses about where he’s been, what he’s doing, and who he’s been with and what she’s doing.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah. This is the perfect time where we knew he was telling the truth one time in that entire interview, and this was the time where Bill was trying to describe the crime scene with the backyard with the tire tracks. Well, yeah, Dave, and they were doing, of course, the neighborhood, and we’ve talked about that on previous shows. Neighborhood canvas is very important to the detectives to get any information they can have. It’s fresh for the neighbors, they know what’s going on at the time, and they’ll more likely to talk when there’s no one nextdoor, in this case, and they’ll tell you the truth.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So those tire tracks, as he’s talking to Donald and kind of giving him the tough questions, I get a text from the Forensics Services Unit and from Dave saying, “Hey, our survey, they’re saying that there was a slip and slide out back and that’s where those tracks come from is from that plastic that they laid down and watered, and everybody in the neighborhood was using the slip and slide and sliding towards the back of the woods there.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So now I’ve got to go and explain to Bill that those aren’t tire tracks, when at this point in the interview Bill is confronting Donald about, “Did you drive Umi back there and then hide her body under those woods? Are you telling me…” You were on him pretty hard, and I’m going, “Let’s get past those tire tracks, Bill. Let’s just not talk about the tire tracks. I believe him.” And at that point, Donald got very irate and raised his voice and said, “I did not drive her back there. I don’t care what you say,” and it was probably the only time in that interview that we felt he was telling the truth, and I said, “Bill, I believe him.” He goes, “Okay. I’m past that. I believe you.” And we move on to the tougher questions.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. As a detective in the homicide unit, and we all have a lot of experience in that area, you can almost feel when someone’s telling you the truth based on their emotion, right? So that’s the first time we’d actually seen him get upset, so I felt he was telling me the truth, but I was like, maybe he’s trying to pull one over on me, but then when Schoon said, “Hey, you need to let this go,” Schoon and I have worked together so long I knew that something had happened, he found out something and I need to move past it. And so I picked up on it and said, “Look, I’m past it.” In fact, that’s what I said, “I’m past it and let’s move on.” But we had almost gotten tired of listening to him. It was like one lie after another, or we felt like. And he really didn’t show any compassion towards his wife.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Well, let’s talk about that. In the interview, and we noticed this coming out of there. We spoke about this after he had left the police department. How many times did he ask what happened to his wife? Now, we told him that we had found her, and he said, “I hope she’s okay. Is she okay?” And we just explained, “Well, she’s being attended to by the Emergency Room physicians,” and he never asked, did he? About, “Well, what’s her injuries? What happened to her?”
Detective Bill Brislin:
No, he never asked what had happened to her or the condition we found her in, nor did he ever ask to really go see her. In fact, and that’s one thing I was going to add to that, was before we ended the interview, because there was a time as a detective in homicide that you just know that you’re probably pushing it too much, and he’s not asked for an attorney yet, we still probably want to be able to talk to him at some point, so it’s a fine line. It’s like do I keep pushing or do I back off a little bit to give me that other opening at some point to talk to him when I have more information?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And the other thing we’re looking at as detectives, and we spoke about this previously, is we want a conviction. So what’s a defense attorney going to attack when this goes to trial? How long had he already been in the interview room?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Oh, several hours.
Detective David Richardson:
I was going to say, we’re kind of glossing over how long that was going on, but this was like… We’re in hour four of getting the call, and now we are just now starting to be like, all right, let’s take a break.
Detective Bill Brislin:
That’s correct. And that was one thing that was wearing on Schoon and I was like do we back out of this, because Schoon and I are confident in our interview skills, and so is Dave, and I know all three of us do a great job. And so it was just a decision made by us to back out. Let’s back out and let’s see what we got, because this is way more… There’s a lot more going on than we know, and we felt that. Prior to backing out, we asked him what he wanted to do. I’ll just leave it at that. And he basically said, “I want to go. I’m tired. I want to go sleep.” Well, where do you want to go? “I want to go to a hotel,” that’s close to his residence.” We can get you a ride there. “That would be great.” So that’s kind of where we left it was we’ll get you a ride to the hotel.
Detective David Richardson:
Because we weren’t going to let him have his van because we were going to keep that.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Correct.
Wendy Lyons:
Was staying at the house not a choice?
Detective Bill Brislin:
No, because we still had it being processed. So a lot of times what the listeners need to realize is sometimes when you’re processing a scene, that could take a number of hours, especially in a case like this.
Detective David Richardson:
Or days.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Or days, yeah. So that’s why he could not go back there. But, again, he never asked to really go see her. He was more concerned about being tired and wanting to go to a hotel.
Wendy Lyons:
As a detective, did that throw up red flags to you all that he didn’t say, “Take me to my wife. I want to see that she’s okay. I’m worried.”
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Well, that’s exactly what Bill and I talked about. Let’s get that on recording, right? So that’s why we asked him that in the interview room. It’s great evidence if it goes to trial. It’s wonderful, right? We can use it later. Because you always think they’re always… Everybody thinks, well, there’s evidence there, but there’s also things that you can use against them that are missing, such as the missing statement of, “I want to see my wife. Take me to my wife,” right?
Wendy Lyons:
Right.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
You have to depend on the Commonwealth attorney or whatever attorney we’re using to bring that out in a trial, and we assist them and it’s, it’s a long process. It’s a team effort. Like I said in previous podcast, it’s a team effort that one detective, one attorney, one forensic science person does not do it all. It’s a team effort to get a successful prosecution.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And what I’d like to add to that is because the day and age we’re in now, unfortunately, is just because I’m the police doesn’t mean I’m telling the truth. And so I usually have to show some type of evidence to say, “This is really what they said,” so like Schoon said, is we put them in the box whether they’re going to talk to us or not, just to get them on video or audio so then we know we can provide that to the jury, because, in fact, in one case that I had an individual didn’t ask for an attorney. He just said, “I don’t really want to talk about this.” He didn’t say anything else. So I said, “Well, I’m going to take you to the office and just explain to you what’s going on.” So I put him in the box, and he invoked his right, but what I had done is explain to him what had gone on and why he was under arrest and explained his charges, and of those charges was murder, rape, burglary, and tampering. And of those four, he said, “Well, how are you charging me with burglary?” Which is huge for a jury to see once I end up placing those charges and we go to trial, because he’s not concerned about the other charges. He was asking why about the burglary.
Detective David Richardson:
I was going to comment earlier, and I’m going to do it now. It was funny when you were talking about how he got so upset over the tire tracks and driving the truck. That small tiny thing and he goes off the hook, and then you’re talking about that guy. And that’s another thing I experienced over the years, the ridiculously minuscule things that they would lose their minds over compared to the fact that you’re talking to them about killing somebody. That’s just… I think the listeners need to learn, because people are always like, “What makes them tick,” and what it’s like to interview them. They get hung up on those stupid integrity issues over the dumbest things. That’s just a great point.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, he knew that wasn’t true. And they were pushing on that those are tire tracks, those are tire tracks, and he knows that’s not true.
Detective David Richardson:
Yeah. It’s a great indicator, like Chris was saying. Sometimes it’s what you’re not hearing that is more powerful.
Wendy Lyons:
So are you thinking at this point, if you let him go to that hotel is it going to be tough to get him back and get him talking again?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, no. He likes to talk.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah. So we give him, and let me back up. In the interview we gave him a DNA scenario, and at the time, when I was a little younger, DNA was the go-to, right? And it may still be, but computer and technology is the go-to, I believe, with the younger detectives.
Detective David Richardson:
Thank you.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah. Which is what Dave’s an expert at. But we were trying to explain DNA to him, and during that interview I said, “What’s going to happen if… You said you looked in the woods for her, along the wood line, and you didn’t find her. And now you say you didn’t find her, didn’t see her, and we test where she was found. Is there any item back there that’s going to have your DNA?” And he went into, “Well, when I was looking for her, I noticed a box spring, a mattress, that I sat down on.”
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, he actually says that later on in a phone interview, where he’s not in custody.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Oh, that’s right. That’s right.
Detective Bill Brislin:
But you’re correct on the DNA. You asked him about DNA, and he became very-
Detective David Richardson:
Well, he changed his demeanor because he was trying to think before he talked.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. Yeah, because he was like, “Well, shit.” I mean, so what happens if there is DNA there?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right.
Detective Bill Brislin:
But, yeah, you pressed him about the DNA, so finish that.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
I even had him explain what DNA was.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And he caught on quick and he could explain it. He was very articulate. So he said, “No, no. Shouldn’t.” I said, “Well, you need to think about it before you go. If there’s anything else you want to tell us, if you were back there into the wood line where she was found, anything.” He said, “No. Guys, I’m just tired. I can’t help you out any further.” Those were his exact words. “I can’t help you out. I’m tired.”
Detective Bill Brislin:
That’s correct. And the importance the listeners need to understand is the baseline is so important because what you get from them in the very beginning, you can always use against them later on. And that’s things that we end up reviewing, and Chris did a really good job in this case in reviewing documents or the actual transcriptions of the interviews, and he found all these discrepancies that we were able to press him on later on.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right. And what I remember from Dave, working with him and being his understudy, I guess you could say, is Dave would say, “You know, a good lie is better than nothing at all.” If they clam up on you, you have nothing, but a good lie is a great thing to have, because you can disprove that in a heartbeat.”
Detective Bill Brislin:
So I think at this point we probably could move from… So to answer your question, we ended up letting him go, and we ended up taking him to the hotel, which was just down from where he lived. But what our plan was at that point was we felt that maybe he may try to go somewhere.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Well, no, that was the-
Detective Bill Brislin:
Was that the same night?
Detective David Richardson:
That was the next night.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Next night? Okay.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
See, what the listeners need to realize, it’s not like on TV, and I’m looking at Dave smiling right now because we got called out at 7:00 p.m. on June 9, 2010. It is now 2:00 a.m. We are driving Donald Southworth to a hotel and the listeners are probably saying, “What about the two children? Where are they? What’s happened to them?”
Detective Bill Brislin:
We fed them.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
We fed them.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Bought them ice cream.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes. We agreed with family services to let them go to the other wife’s home, because we wanted to keep the sisters together, and the two sisters agreed to go. The older sister was not happy about it, but at least it was with somebody she knew.
Wendy Lyons:
So you mentioned earlier that the two daughters were there. I wanted to know what are they doing during this time that you’re interviewing Donald, and also I wanted to ask what are the ages of these girls?
Detective Bill Brislin:
So the ages of the two girls were 12 and 9. So as we were talking about earlier, after we allowed him to spend time with them and we moved him into another room to do the second part of the interview, they just remained in the other room until we contacted the other parent to come and pick them up. But they’d also been fed, received ice cream. They knew their mother was missing. Don had explained that to them in the room. There was some concern about where she may be, but, again, it was mostly a silent room just as they were sitting there and they were consoling each other.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah. The younger child asked, “What happened? What’s going on,” and the other, the oldest daughter said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Do I have that right? One of them said, “I don’t want to talk about it,” but the other one started talking about it.
Detective Bill Brislin:
No, that’s correct. So if you can imagine or envision the room that they’re sitting in, which is another interview room next to ours, they’re basically… I’ll set the stages. You have Donald sitting on the floor. You have one of the daughter’s sitting in the chair closest to him, and then you have the youngest daughter sitting the furthest away from the two of them in the corner. And that’s when the oldest daughter says, “I don’t want to talk about it.” If I can recall correctly, this is when Donald said, “I understand. We’re not talking about it.” And there’s some consoling going on at that point.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And at that point is when we decide there’s nothing else to gain from this. Let’s pull him out. Let’s do the second interview, which is what we’ve already talked about, advising him of his rights, and at that point we had the other detectives that were working the crimes against children and victim, the family abuse section, contact the other parent to come and get them.
Wendy Lyons:
So you release everybody. The girls go with the other parent. Donald goes to his hotel. What do you all do for the remainder of the night, or do you call it a day and start again tomorrow?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, in homicide it’s hard to ever call it a day, because we typically work nonstop, and, again, I keep referring to the first 48, but a lot of people watch that show; in fact, even a lot of the suspect we interview in the box say, “Oh, this is just like the first 48. I’m sitting in the room that they are interviewed in.” So a lot of people compare the First 48 to what we’re doing, and honestly it’s probably the closest rendition of what we do other than if anyone has seen The Wire from HBO, it’s a great show that probably depicts what we actually do. They go home, or they go with the other parent. Donald goes to the hotel, and our day’s not done. There’s still processing the scene, and that’s when we decided to go to the scene. So as the lead and the secondary and any other detective that’s involved, you typically go there to see what forensics has discovered and also to do a walkthrough.
Detective David Richardson:
Because they’ve been interviewing for three, four hours, so now you can really see what the inside of the apartment looks like, because they haven’t seen that because we had to wait on the warrant. They’re more concerned on the interviews. So now we can all walk through that together, and we can talk about things that forensics has found, things that stand out or things that are just normal. So that’s the next step.
Wendy Lyons:
So do you go to the apartment that night?
Detective Bill Brislin:
So we all traveled to the apartment. I think Chris, Schoon, and I, traveled there. I think… Did you go with us, Dave?
Detective David Richardson:
Yeah.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. So we all go there. Dave’s in his flip-flops. So we go to the scene. It’s still being processed, so imagine so we have the crime scene vehicles, we have crime scene technicians, the forensics guys, there, and we’re processing the scene. So as it was set up earlier, it’s a fourplex basically. They live in the bottom right apartment. So when you first walk in the door there’s a common area. Then as you make your way through the apartment, if you turn right there’s a bedroom, two bedrooms. As you turn right there’s a bedroom to the left, a bedroom to the right. That front bedroom is going to be the parents’ bedroom. The back bedroom is the children’s bedroom. And then there’s some music equipment in the kitchen area and also in the front room. And then as you make your way through the apartment to the back of the apartment is the kitchen. Then there’s actually a door that allows you into a common area that gives you access to the basement. So what we were doing is we were searching the residence for any evidence to show that maybe the scene was inside and she was carried outside, but we were also processing any evidence that we thought could be involved in what we were observing outside where she was, specifically like the belt, her clothing, and things of that nature.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah, so the other thing we’re looking for… So when you go to trial a defense attorney will say, “You from day one honed in on my client. You didn’t look at anybody else, did you?” Then, of course, on the stand you want to show that you did a well-rounded investigation. So the first thing, and as your listeners you’re probably saying, “Hey, well, could you check the doors? Was there forced entry? Was there any kind of locks that were already locked? Or did somebody have a key and come in the backdoor?” Now, I want to remind you Donald gave us the boyfriend, right? So did Umi give her boyfriend a key for after Donald went to work at 3:17 a.m. in the morning so the boyfriend could come back? We have to think of those things.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So you want to look at door casings. You want to look at windows and make sure there were no windows broken. Or a positive thing is if you walked around all the windows and they’re all locked, that eliminates a lot of things. So we’re checking locks. We’re looking at door casings. We’re looking into trashcans. We’re looking into where are your coats? Do you leave your car keys somewhere? Right? Because we know her car was in the carport that morning.
Detective David Richardson:
I’d like to talk about the trashcan. I thought that was really interesting in the crime scene, because in the room there was some computer electronics and everything, and obviously we, after talking to Don, I was like, “We need to take all of these videos and computers. We need to look at all of that stuff.” But in the trashcan in that room there was only one piece of paper. That was it. No trash. No Kleenex, anything. And it was just a divorce decree. No creases in the paper. No wadded up. Just like printed out and stuck in the trash. And so forensics is taking pictures of this, and they’re shown to us, and you’re like why is that like front and center for you to see about this divorce decree?
Wendy Lyons:
Because somebody wanted you to see it.
Detective David Richardson:
Exactly.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right. So then as you work your way from the inside of the house, and during his interview he mentioned something a lot about a water hose. So let me cut to the chase on the water hose. He said, “I don’t know, but I moved the water hose back to the house.” Bill and I to this day don’t know really what the water hose was used for. There’s something that was important to him, but we have never figured it out. But he said it probably three to four times. Then we work our way back to the wooded area. So what we have at the wooded area is the mattress, the box spring, right? And now when we get there it’s in a different position, of course, because it’s been processed and people have moved things, and they attended to Umi. The box spring, the clothes are still out there, and what we find are on the other side of a chain-link fence-
Detective David Richardson:
I was going to say, talk more about the clothes.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah. On the other side of the chain-link fence we find a long sweater, like a housecoat, a nightgown, and they’re wadded and thrown up on the other side of the fence. So, hopefully, we’re thinking, okay, she was found nude, her clothes are wadded up and thrown over the fence. We still haven’t found her purse, which if you know any woman they’re not going anywhere without their purse, right? We still haven’t found that. But we’re concentrating on that. We’re looking into the kitchen. We’re trying to find everything, and the kitchen is important, right? Because we don’t know what happened with Umi. So they’re video-taping the kitchen. The paper towels, kettles, spatulas. Bill’s going through the drawers to look at the drawers.
Detective David Richardson:
Looking in the freezer, looking in the fridge.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes. We find nothing out of the ordinary. We see that she cooks, which supports that he said she fixed me lunch before I went to work. Do you recall seeing a cat there, Bill?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yes.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Okay. Because-
Detective David Richardson:
It was a big cat. And I don’t like cats. There was also a snake there, and I don’t like snakes.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes. We’ll get to the snake. The snake he used for the kids in the neighborhood. He liked to spend time with the kids and show them about the snake, and his daughters liked the snake, too. I’m afraid of snakes. But anyway, part of his story in his interview was that the cat ran out the backdoor maybe. And maybe she went out to find out what happened to the cat, and maybe somebody attacked her back there. So that was one theory he had. He also talked about all her texting, and “You need to find her phone, because she was texting all the time, all night long.” It even irritated her oldest daughter. Her oldest daughter would ask her, “Who are you texting all the time?” That was concerning to him. So we still didn’t have the cellphone. So we were missing some things. And at the scene the first, early on, that’s what we saw at the scene.
Detective David Richardson:
And the flip-flop.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). There’s a lot going on here, and that’s why we’re all kind of jumping in is because there are so many things going on at the same time. So what Dave was mentioning was a flip-flop and keys. Early on when I had mentioned the [Fizoli 00:37:16] girls, when they had arrived on scene prior to the police being called to the scene was when they had gotten there, they were wanting to talk to the one daughter and ask if she had seen her mother. She had stated no, she thought she was at work, but it was odd that her car was there. One of the Fizoli ladies made her way around the back of the house and discovered a flip-flop and a set of keys, both which belonged to Umi. So she obviously thought that was weird, but at the same time as the discovery took place, Donald was there and approached her in an almost threatening way. “You need to leave. This is not your problem.” So she left, and actually did a little surveillance on Donald, watching to see if he would leave after they left, and he did, and they followed him around the block, and that’s what created them to call the police. They thought he was obviously suspicious and thought that he had some involvement in her being missing.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So as we’re still processing the scene, so it’s dark, we’re still trying to process the scene with lighting, but we’re also inside the house, and as we make our way through the house, like Schoon had said, we’re photographing, videoing, and things of that nature, but the problem with you being on a scene is you don’t know what the scene looked like before, so is it a house that looked like this all the time, or is there something wrong? So you’re having to really look around and search and things of that nature.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So we finally make our way to the basement, which was the common area for all four of the apartments, and in the basement they had some storage areas, but also that was their area where they all had their own washing machine and dryer. So we were able to discover which one, or identify which washing machine and dryer belonged to the Southworths, and when we did, we came across, opening the washing machine, to find several items that we thought to be suspicious. And what I mean by that is these items specifically were found in their washing machine, which was a pair of leather New Balance shoes, a UPS hat, which I remind you Donald was working for UPS at the time, women’s underwear, a white sock, men’s underwear, a pillowcase, checkered shirt, white boxer shorts, blue pajama pants, a towel, and a pair of UPS pants.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So these apparently were items that we felt that could be involved in the homicide. So as we pulled those items, we documented those items and then we also swabbed the washing machine for any type of blood, and that came up negative. So typically people do not wash their shoes, right?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Unless you’re 12 years old and a boy, right?
Detective Bill Brislin:
And specifically don’t wash their hat. And anybody that wears a hat, you know you don’t wash your hat because of what it does to it. So we all felt that this was definitely an indication that we probably are looking at the right person, which is going to be Donald. But, again, knowing it and proving it is too different things. We all know that.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right. So after we did our walkthrough, we end up not going home. We go back to the police headquarters detectives, and Dave we did this with you a lot, so I pass it down to these other guys. We do a round-table. We do a think-tank. What did we miss? What’s next? If we think it might not be Donald, what have we got to look at? Who do we have to approach? If it is Donald, what else do we have to do? We still have her purse missing. We have her cellphone missing. We know where her car keys are, and we’re still missing a flip-flop.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Well, and all the credit goes to Dave Richardson, is he comes up with, well, we have canine as a resource. Why don’t we do an article search? That’s a great idea. So the next day when it begins to become light out.
Detective David Richardson:
We haven’t gone to bed.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
We have not. We decided that an article search would be great. So we arranged to have that done, and lo and behold, if you recall earlier I said there were high weeds almost up to the roof of that carport in the back, and so we let the canine go through there and we discovered… I’ll let you describe what was found, since it was your wonderful idea.
Detective David Richardson:
Well, thank you, Chris.
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, 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, Twitter, 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 Podcasts or wherever you download your podcast from. Subscribe to Murder Police Podcast and set your play 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.
Part 3 of 5:
Speaker 1:
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 Umi Southworth, part three.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So the next day, when it begins to become light out.
Detective David Richardson:
We haven’t gone to bed.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
We have not. We decide that an article search would be great, so we arranged to have that done. And lo and behold, if you recall earlier, I said there’s high weeds, almost up to the roof of that carport in the back. And so we let the canine go through there and we discovered, I’ll let you describe what was found, since it was your wonderful idea.
Detective David Richardson:
Well, thank you, Chris. So the first thing we find, or the dog actually finds, not us, it’s just the dog sniffs it out, credit to the dog for finding this. And he finds a trash bag kind of in the weeds behind the carport. And so the dog’s pawing at that, so obviously we don’t let the dog get in that. So we pull the dog off and we open up the trash bag and in that is a roll of paper towels, a washcloth, Solo cup, some paper towels and a purse.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
A washcloth, too. Don’t forget that.
Detective David Richardson:
And so we go through the purse and, of course, we find the cell phone and credit cards and cash. So what does that kind of tell you right there?
Wendy Lyons:
I bet it was Umi’s purse.
Detective David Richardson:
It was. And that as detectives we realized, this isn’t a robbery because you’re not going to take a purse and just throw it away right there, you’re going to take everything out of the purse. So, that kind of helps eliminate that whole aspect of this crime just by the dog helping to find that purse.
Wendy Lyons:
Well, and the fact that it was put in a bag, it wasn’t strewn about the yard. And as you said, the cards were still there and the cell phone.
Detective Bill Brislin:
I think what’s important too, is David described the purse, but also the way it was packaged when you opened the purse. And we all can still remember to this day when we opened it, was it was all just very organized. It hadn’t been gone through. Everything was in a place. The cell phone was on the very top when you opened it, so it was obvious that no one really went through it. They just were worried about getting rid of it.
Wendy Lyons:
It was placed there.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Exactly. And that you’ll find that. It’s very interesting that you said that, is that it was placed there, and later on, we’ll talk about staging and talk about being arranged. That comes into play here in this case as well.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So let me refresh. So now we have Donald as a suspect, and we have maybe an unknown suspect. We have a purse that really hasn’t been ransacked, so we can take a robbery out. So we still have an unknown. We still want to keep our minds open for an unknown suspect, but it’s becoming slimmer and slimmer that it’s a person that’s unknown. So at that point, Donald’s still staying at the hotel near his house. In that evening, Dave, since he’s had a rash of good ideas all of a sudden, and it’s day two, and we still haven’t been home, Dave, would you like to describe your idea? And this is perfect TV, no commercial break police work right here.
Detective David Richardson:
I guess it’s a technology question, that’s why you brought me in. So I decided that we should get a fake purse, similar to the one we found and put a GPS tracker in it. And so we thought Donald may go back to the scene and to see what we found, because he thinks he’s smarter than us. And so we know Don is staying right up the street. So we actually put a GPS tracker in a purse and we go back and we hide it back in the weeds there in hopes that he’s going to come. And we all, all three of us, and every other detective working, wanted to stay and sit in our car and wait until midnight. But you have to remember, we’ve been up like 35 hours at this point and our boss at the time, which I didn’t agree with it then, but of course I do now, he made the right decision. He’s like, you all have to go home and sleep tonight because you cannot keep functioning like this.
Detective David Richardson:
So he calls in another group of people who do surveillance and they do a different type of surveillance. So anyway, they get set up on this. And lo and behold, in the middle of the night, Don starts leaving his hotel at about two in the morning and heading back towards the house. And of course we’re all asleep now because it’s day two, we have been up 35 hours, and he ended up not going to the house. He got, we think in our minds, he discovered that he was being surveilled. And as detectives, we would’ve said we could have done it, but we had been up way too much. We couldn’t continue on. So we’re back in the office the next day. And we finally, we got our sleep, we got our six hours of sleep. We come in at eight in the morning, 10:00, the GPS goes off that it’s moving. And we’re like, oh, we got him. And-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
He’s staying pretty calm telling this story. The real thing was, we got him, it’s moving, it’s moving, let’s go! We grab our coats off the back of our chair, we’re racing to our car.
Detective David Richardson:
We drive out of there so fast and we go to where the purse is now. And we’re like, where’s Don, where’s he at? Where’s this purse? And we’re looking around and we can kind of, you can’t do exactly right where it’s at, you’re in the parking lot. And we see this truck and it’s these guys that are mowing and we’re like, so we go over and kind of look in their truck, because they’re off eating lunch. There’s the purse sitting in their truck. And the guys mowing had found this purse and just picked up and threw in their truck and then driven away. We didn’t catch anybody with my bright idea.
Wendy Lyons:
It was still a good one in your defense.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
He slept better the night before because he thought he had a great idea.
Wendy Lyons:
He was proud. So you find the purse in the truck. Dead end.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. So I’d like to go back too. So prior to that too, we have that round table and the next morning, she ends up passing and we ended up attending the autopsy.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right. Would you like to explain about the belt? I’m sure listeners are wondering, well what about the belt around her neck?
Detective Bill Brislin:
So the belt was removed once she went to the medical facility for treatment, but the belt was, we thought could be important because if it was Donald Southworth that committed this homicide, we would imagine the belt may have came from inside the residence. So after the discovery of the bag with the items inside, we ended up going back and asking, or requesting a second search warrant to enter the premises for items that may match up to the items found in the bag, which were the trash bag, the paper towel rolls, the blue Solo cup, the washcloth and things of that nature. Because as a detective, if you really truly believe this is the individual that committed the crime, there’s items inside the residence that probably would connect or would be one and the same of those items as well. Right?
Detective Bill Brislin:
So we had a second search warrant signed, we entered the premises again, lawfully, and once we were inside, we were able to find trash bags that match the trash bags, or the trash bag that was in the bushes. We ended up finding paper towels and most people may not know this, but paper towels actually have a number inside the cardboard roll. It’s a lot number and you can actually connect rolls of paper towels to the same lot number and the paper towels inside the residence actually matched the paper towels that we had in the bag. And then also in the residence was the blue Solo cup, which matched blue Solo cups we found in the residence, and the washcloth, why it was so important was we knew that Donald Southworth had stayed at the other hotel that he was staying at previously because he had mentioned saying, “I’ve stayed there before, just take me there.” Well, the washcloth was from the hotel he had been staying in and had resided in previously as well. So, that was all important.
Detective Bill Brislin:
But at the autopsy, so as we’re pulling all that evidence, found that Umi had two types of injuries. It looked like she had been struck twice in the head, once by what the M.E. had, the medical examiner had thought would be some type of small hammer type item, and the second item that was used was some type of log, which we actually found lying near her at the crime scene. And we were able to do some testing to show that that was the log that was used to cause the trauma to her head.
Detective Bill Brislin:
As far as the belt goes, when we were doing the search warrant, there was a room that the kids had occupied, and if I remember correctly, Chris, weren’t there belts hanging on the wall? And they all were very similar to the one that we had found. In fact, at some point in our investigation, we ended up measuring the waist size of the belt to see if it was close in proximity to the other belts. And I ended up, we ended up showing the belt to the daughters who said that it was very similar to a belt that they had in their house. So, we’re on the right track here. It’s just, we know it, but can we prove it? Right?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right. And the other thing we did, and as I mentioned, we want to make sure we cover all our bases. So, we did research and we researched a sex offenders website, and we collected all the names of sex offenders within a five mile radius. And so our goal was, if there’s any DNA, we need to go out there and swab them. So that’s what we ended up doing for several nights, homeless sex offenders. We swabbed everybody that was in that area and we tried to get it to as close a time as it was at the time we thought that the offense occurred.
Detective David Richardson:
You know, you’re talking about DNA. I remember Bill making that one of those phone calls to Don about DNA.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. So I’ll talk about that. But also I want the listeners to know that as all this is going on, we also are collecting the evidence from her, from Umi. And what we used was a Physical Evidence Recovery Kit, which is otherwise known maybe in layman’s terms as a rape kit, where we collect physical evidence from the body, as far as if the person had been sexually assaulted. Also, we collected her items or items that were found at the crime scene that we were able to connect to her, which what I mean by that is the night shirt that [Schoon 00:11:11] was describing earlier. The log, the belt, there was also the sweater that’s like a housecoat, I think you described it as Schoon, also these other items from the trash bag. So we collect these items and what we do at the Lexington Police Department is we actually utilize the Kentucky State Police Lab, and they actually forensically examine our items that we test or we ask to be tested.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So those items are being sent to the lab at the same time as we’re doing all this other stuff. So those items are sent to the lab, and then as Dave was saying, we end up moving to, as the investigation moves forward, Donald never really has any contact with any of us after she passes, and doesn’t really… We even attend the funeral. He is not concerned about what happened to her. In fact, the first time I even talked to him is 8 to 10 days after the homicide, and he calls me twice. And so during those calls, he is more requesting the property. He wants his van back. He wants to know when he can receive the property that we obtained from the house back, but never once asking if we knew or who had harmed his wife Umi.
Detective Bill Brislin:
During those conversations, as I’m talking to him on the phone, he’s not in custody, I’m not having to advise him of his rights. He basically is just talking, I’m just sitting there listening. And in one of those conversations that takes place, he starts telling me about how he had thought about searching the crime scene and actually found himself back in the ditch line and had located the box spring that we had found Umi under. And when I began asking about that, I asked him, “Well, what do you recall about that?” And I think one thing we may have skipped over at the beginning was the initial officer that had found Umi described the box spring on top of her, but also on top of the box spring was a rug that was completely laid out flat like it had been completely intentionally placed there by someone.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And so, as I’m talking to Don about this, he tells me that, “Okay, I think I actually went back there and saw the box spring. In fact, I’m here to tell you that I actually sat on the box spring.” And of course I’m sitting at my desk about ready to fall out of my chair because he’s admitting to me that he was actually in the crime scene. But you and I, and all of us know as detectives, he knows that there could be a chance we find this DNA that Schoon had mentioned originally in the interview. So now he’s having to cover his tracks, right? So in that interview, or in that conversation on the phone, he tells me he sits on the box spring. I asked him, “Did you feel like there was a lump underneath it or anything weird or odd about it?”
Detective Bill Brislin:
And he described, “No, in fact,” he said, “I touched the carpet or the rug that was on top of it. And in fact, if there was any blood out there, I’m colorblind, so I don’t see red. So there’s no way I would’ve seen that.” So I asked him, “Did you pick up the box spring?” He said, “I did. I picked up the box spring and I didn’t see anything underneath it.” So, as soon as I hung out the phone, I recorded that conversation. As a detective, typically we all have recorders at our desk, and I had recorded that conversation. I hung up the phone, told Schoon and Dave what we had, which was very important because basically he’s obviously trying to cover his tracks, thinking we may have actual DNA at the scene.
Wendy Lyons:
Did he say that it did or did not seem odd to him that a box spring with a rug over it would be on the property in which he lived?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, I’m glad you brought that up because his explanation of that was that he believed that there was some homeless people or a homeless person residing in the backyard area where that box spring was. In fact, there was some information that was provided to us that that box spring had been seen placed on the curb and actually carried back to the crime scene by Donald at some point.
Wendy Lyons:
Well, did he give an explanation why he would just go sit on it?
Detective David Richardson:
Well, he was adamant that that was a homeless area back there.
Wendy Lyons:
So again, why would he sit on it?
Detective Bill Brislin:
That was just his explanation.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right? And remember, you want him to keep calling you and talking to me. So, if you recall early in the investigation, he said, “My daughter was attached to my hip. Everywhere I went, she went.” So of course that’s great information for us when Bill tells us that he went back there. So what are we going to do? We’re going to go talk to his oldest daughter that was attached to his hip, said did you ever go into… No, she claimed they did not go into that wooded area at all. So again, it works to our advantage every time he starts talking to us.
Detective Bill Brislin:
But we all know when someone mentions I’m colorblind and I can’t see red for blood, that’s a pretty good indication that maybe he had something to do with this.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Well, and his occupation as a truck driver. Don’t you have to pass a color test to get your CDL license?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
One would think.
Detective Bill Brislin:
I think that takes us to a big part of this case.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Well, I think we should talk about how we collected the DNA, how many people we’re… Go ahead. Explain, Dave. It was-
Detective David Richardson:
Well, we talked about Don and he claimed that that was a homeless area. Now, Bill did an excellent job and we’ve been to several homeless camps throughout our career, unfortunately, crime happens there, and so they all have kind of a common theme. There’s cigarette butts, a lot of beer cans, a lot of alcohol bottles, maybe a fire pit. I mean, we’ve been to them where there’s tents up, cardboard, that’s how these people live, and so there was none of that at the scene. And Bill did such a good job on the stand describing what a homeless camp that we’ve been to, and there was none of that there.
Detective David Richardson:
But that didn’t mean that we could just negate the fact that Donald said that, we needed to work that. And so like Schoon said, started pulling the data, every sexual offender in a two, three mile radius of that, we went out and found them. The amazing thing was is every one of them we’d be like, “Hey, we need to take a swab to see if that’s your DNA.” Every one of them opened their mouth and was like, “I didn’t have anything to do with that. Go ahead.” They never refused that. And these are guys that have been convicted of sexual offenses in the past and they knew that they had nothing to do with that.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And one of us has to play. I’ll give you a DNA swab if you’ll play basketball or dunk it with me. So obviously who’s going to turn that down when you can get somebody’s DNA.
Detective David Richardson:
So Schoon showed us his basketball skills and ended up trying to dunk a basketball. We won’t say if he made it or not.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
I pulled something.
Detective David Richardson:
But, and then we just started also swabbing people that were in the area. And so if they appeared to be transient and walking by, we’d be like, “Hey, do you mind if we get a swab?” And I don’t know if anybody ever said, “No, you can’t swab me.” Like every person. And these are people that have had outings with the police before, they’ve been arrested for minor offenses, and we treat everybody with respect, we don’t care about your past, that’s one of the things that we’ve always done as homicide detectives. We don’t care if you’ve been arrested for alcohol 20 times, we’re going to treat you like a human being and we’ll talk to you like that. And they gave us a swab because they knew they weren’t involved in this case. And so we sent all those to the lab and it ended up being like 40 or 50 swabs of people we sent just to confirm that none of those people in the area were involved in this.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And that’s where the Commonwealth comes into play with this as well. This was a joint meeting where that was discussed and asked of us to do that and that’s why it’s such a big part of any homicide investigation when you include all the people that would be involved, which would be the detectives and the attorneys that are going to prosecute that case.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
In the meantime, we’re waiting for the results. Now, several people think it’s like on TV, where you get your DNA results back in a commercial breaker, let’s be even realistic, some people think you’ll have it back in a week. Well, that’s not the case at all. Sometimes it’s six to eight months before you ever get the results back. So that’s why we continue to investigate this case. And we got a surprise, a call from the Kentucky State Police Lab about, if you remember Bill talking about a PERK kit, the rape kit, I get emotional thinking about it, because it was a surprise for me. I’ll let Bill describe the results of the sexual assault kit.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So to go back to that day, because I can remember it very vividly is that we had asked for this evidence to be expedited. And that’s one good thing that we have with Lexington Police Department and the Kentucky State Police Lab is we have a very good working relationship. There’s a few lab members there that we work very well with, and we asked for this to be expedited because we knew that we needed to get this information as quickly as we could. So, the evidence that we were processing, like I explained earlier, which was the trash bags and things like that, people think it’s very easy to obtain DNA and fingerprints from things like that. It’s not. So, we had not located any DNA or fingerprints from any of the evidence we’d already provided from the items found in the bushes.
Detective David Richardson:
What about the blood on the log?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, other than that, I’m talking about like the items found, the trash bag, but yeah, there was blood on the log, so that stuff was still being processed. But I remember sitting at my desk and the lab calls me, they tell me, in fact it was one specific lab tech, I’m sure it was if I remember correctly. And she had told me that the PERK kit had, the rape kit, had revealed that there was DNA found in Umi’s vagina. But in comparison because we had swabbed Donald at the original interview, is that correct?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes. That night.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So he had provided us with that and they had compared the semen that was located in Umi to Donald and it was not a match. So what we had at this point was foreign DNA, foreign semen that did not match Donald Southworth in the victim’s vagina.
David Lyons:
Did y’all let a collective gasp when you heard that? That’s-
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, so where I’m going with that is I remember getting the information on the phone, being very surprised by that, because if the audience remembers she was located completely nude, it looked to be some type of sexual assault along with the homicide. So it threw me back. I remember hanging up the phone and for anyone who’s been in our office, it’s an open floor plan basically with a bunch of desks. And I remember calling Schoon and Dave, which Dave and I looked at each other across from the desk, that’s where we were set up, and asking them to come into our lieutenant’s office, which was at the time James Carlos.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And it was even hard for me to say it because I didn’t know where we were going to be able to go with this because we all know how hard it is to prove foreign DNA that doesn’t match our suspect, how this is going to work out. So I remember all of us going into James’ office and I just let it out. And we all, just as you said it, Dave just kind of gasped and we just didn’t know what to say.
David Lyons:
What a curve ball. Seriously [crosstalk 00:22:22].
Wendy Lyons:
But for a second, were you thinking maybe it was his boyfriend that he kept talking about?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, that’s the thing is, is it? Is it another man that had been seeing her and we’re not aware of it and Donald’s been trying to tell us the truth? These are all questions we have to ask ourselves. So we are thrown back by this. We decide to step back and we have another round table if I remember correctly in James’ office and anyone who works homicide, there’s a lot of talk or conversations that occur in different places. And ours was always in James’ office or in Schoon’s office, but never in the open because it’s between us. We don’t need to bring anyone else into it. Right? And Dave, you know that, I mean, that’s just the way homicide works. And so we just side step back and try to figure out what the best approach would be in this. And is this when we decided that we probably needed to try to include the FBI?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah. We were going to start from scratch. That meant her cell phone came in play because we’ve got to believe that now Donald’s telling us the truth. So we are starting from ground zero.
Detective David Richardson:
And we’ve reviewed those cell phone records and there was some, a lot of conversation. So then it started, these guys traveled to multiple states to everybody she was texting with and getting swabs from them and…
Detective Bill Brislin:
And talking about the cell phone records, Dave brings up a good point. We had went through that information and the individual that he had accused her having an affair with, we had actually talked to him on the phone at that point. We hadn’t done a face to face, right? Is that correct?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Over the phone only, cause he was traveling a lot.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, and he was like, I’m being completely open with you. I was just providing her some guidance, as far as-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Spiritual guidance.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Spiritual guidance, and maybe even some marital guidance. He was like, “Sure. I was talking to her. And in fact you can see this on her cell phone, we were texting back and forth. And, but it’s never gone beyond that.” Eventually we ended up, Schoon and I, do a face to face with him, but at this point we were actually preparing, so this happened in June, right, and we were actually preparing to go out west for a training. That’s the way I remember it, right?
Detective David Richardson:
Right.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So we had planned, the FBI had invited us to come out to a training in California for a homicide training, and Schoon and I were able to go to that. Well, they were also asking for any detectives attending the training to bring any open case, complex case, that they may have to present to their Behavioral Analysis Unit. And what I mean by Behavioral Analysis Unit is basically what you see on Criminal Minds. Just to give the audience some idea of who we’re talking about.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
They don’t get the black helicopter [crosstalk 00:25:07].
Detective Bill Brislin:
No. Or the fancy jet.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And they don’t interview people.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Correct. This BAU unit, which was the BAU-2 Unit. Is that correct? BAU-2. That was the ones that handled the adults, correct, sex crime homicides, had invited us out there, and so we are like, it’s the FBI, let’s see what we can do with this. So-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
We’ve seen them on TV.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. So we pack it up, Schoon, James, and I, and we go out west. And so I remember the day we presented the case because-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And I was very glad it was you, sir.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Let me tell you, these guys drilled me like I was-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Well, let me back up a little bit. It’s very unusual that there’s eight Behavioral Science Unit individuals in each group, and they’re very rarely together. They fly across the country and two of them will go to police departments and explain these difficult scenes and they’ll evaluate it, then they’ll do a write up for the police department and they’ll send it to the lead detective. Well, we thought this was a great opportunity. All eight of them were going to be together in one room. This is a difficult case for us. I remember walking into an amphitheater with several individuals in a U shape. And I was to take notes. We set that forward right from the beginning, and I think Bill had to testify in front of the Senate committee by the time we were done.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. I recall going into that room, not knowing any of these individuals, but feeling almost second class because they made me feel like I wasn’t even a detective that I knew anything I knew about police work. Right? And this is just also to give the audience some idea of the timeline, we’re now in August, this began in June, right? And also I want to remind the audience, this isn’t the only case we’re working. This is, you don’t just get assigned one case and get to hold onto it. We’re also still in the rotation. We’re also receiving other cases that the homicide unit reviews, which is serious crimes against persons to include serious assaults where people may be getting shot or stabbed or whatever, but also suspicious death investigations, suicide, so I don’t want the audience believe that, oh, well you’ve had three months to work just on this one case. That’s not how it works. And it’s always been like that, correct Dave?
Detective David Richardson:
Exactly.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So we ended up going to the training and presenting this case. And I remember going, after presenting it, walking back to the hotel and we were able to have some beverages and I remember the FBI coming to the… They were staying with us and providing some-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
They were consoling you.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Consoling me.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
He was, let’s just be [crosstalk 00:27:58]-
Detective Bill Brislin:
Because I was a little upset.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
You were suicidal. I had to sleep in your hotel room that night. I was on watch.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, because you have to understand. So it’s 2010, I’ve been in homicide for eight years. I feel like I’m not an expert, but I’m at least close to knowing what I’m doing, and they made me feel like I knew nothing, but it wasn’t anything to them. They were just asking pretty important questions that I felt I had the answers to, but they were also pushing me for more information that I didn’t have.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right. And the thing is what you have to do prior to going and having your case evaluated by the Behavioral Science Unit, you have to fill out a booklet called the ViCAP, which is a violent offenders, it’s a booklet that’s about 32 pages and it’s detailed.
Detective Bill Brislin:
A victimology…
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah. So, Bill did all of that, he knew his victim and we all agree. And the basics is what they gave us off hand, but they really gave us further information to look into. And we all agreed Umi was not a high risk victim at all, except for her marriage, her relationship with her husband. So they did add, gave us a laundry list of things to do. And if we needed a second meeting that we could do that after the first laundry list was completed. So I thought, well, we’re pretty good at our jobs. We’ll have probably an arrest before that second meeting is needed.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, and that comes in October. So I was trying to review some of the information that they were requesting, and like Schoon had mentioned, it’s a lot, but the most important thing that came out of that meeting, other than me crying, was the general assessment questionnaire.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes, the questionnaire was fabulous.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So what this is, is it is a questionnaire that the FBI uses and provided to witnesses and victims of crimes that are hard questions, some easy, some hard that, because everyone needs to realize it’s sometimes hard to verbalize to someone what had happened in their life versus writing it down. So it makes it a little bit easier for them. So they had provided us with these, what we call is the GAQ and this was taken back by Schoon and I to Kentucky, along with the long laundry list that they had asked for us to complete. But at the same time, we’re also staying in touch with them nonstop, so they are staying completely involved in the case as well as we are. So they’re up to speed on everything.
David Lyons:
Can jump in and add, because I’ve done those before, and I’ve been to Quantico for one of those meetings too on [Resendez 00:30:47]-Ramirez. There are people that are listening to you all today that I know for a fact have had family members go missing or that are struggling with unsolved cases. I know they are in our audience. And it emphasizes the importance of how you have to be brutally honest with the investigators about that family member, and you can’t hold a single thing back. And I know that’s difficult for people because sometimes they have a loved one that lives a high risk lifestyle, and they try to hide that, but I’ve always tried to tell them that if you try to hide that you’re going to slow the case down because none of this works without that kind of honesty. So this is a good time to point out to somebody if you’re struggling with that to make sure that you’re completely honest about everything about that person that you can figure out because it’s going to really helping in with that case probably.
Detective David Richardson:
And luckily Donald’s second wife was very honest.
Wendy Lyons:
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. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, 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 podcasts from. Subscribe to 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.
Part 4 of 5:
speaker 1:
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 Umi Southworth, part four.
David Lyons:
There are people that are listening to you all today that I know for a fact have had family members go missing, or that are struggling with unsolved cases, I know they’re in our audience, and it emphasizes the importance of how you have to be brutally honest with the investigators about that family member, and you can’t hold a single thing back. I know that’s difficult for people because sometimes they have a loved one that lives a high-risk lifestyle and they try to hide that, but I’ve always tried to tell them that if you try to hide that, you’re going to slow the case down, because none of this works without that kind of honesty. So this is a good time to point out to somebody, if you’re struggling with that, to make sure that you’re completely honest about everything about that person that you can figure out, because it’s going to really help in the end with that case probably.
Detective David Richardson:
And luckily Donald’s second wife was very honest.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, so just to provide some timeline on where we’re at so far in reviewing all the evidence, so the audience can keep up, is that in reviewing the cell phone, like Dave had mentioned, in reviewing other evidence, which would be talking to UPS, we were able to create some type of timeline to the night of the homicide. So just so the audience is aware where we’re at, is that Umi’s last text was it 1:42 AM.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Donald, and I’m going to let Schoon talk more about this, because this is very important, but Donald’s call, he ends up calling UPS at 3:18, or I’m sorry, UPS calls Donald at 3:18 AM, he was supposed to report to work at 3:15 AM that morning, at 3:19 AM Donald calls UPS, and then at 3:20 UPS returns Donald’s call because no one answered, and then at 3:30 AM Donald calls UPS back, actually speaks to an individual and says, “I have to come to work, do not fill my spot,” because Donald drove a truck, a delivery truck, and if he did not show up on time, they would fill his spot with another individual. And Donald clocks in at 3:36 when he was supposed to be at work at 3:15. Do you want to speak on that?
Wendy Lyons:
Did he give any justification as to why he was some 15 minutes late to work?
Detective Bill Brislin:
No, he just said, “I need to come to work.” In fact, the individual at UPS that we interviewed said, “This is the first time I’ve ever had an employee call me demanding to come to work.”
Detective David Richardson:
And so we actually pulled 30 days of records of him clocking in, and everything was within two minutes, because it’s so set. I mean, you show up at 2:58 to 3:02 and you get in your truck and you go, and every day right on time, except that one day at 15, 20 minutes late.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So I just wanted to make sure the audience was clear on our timeline, because I don’t think we ever went into that, as far as where we’re at with the victim and the last time she was seen alive, and when Donald had went to work.
Wendy Lyons:
Now did you all ask him during this interview why he was late to work, or did he not know that you knew?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
We did not know that he was late to work at the point of our interview, because it was that first night. We did ask about her cell phone and who she was texting. And so you have to remember, now we have to do a warrant for Umi Southworth’s cell phone, so that’s going to take some time because cell phone companies don’t say, “Okay, we’ll send it to you tomorrow.” That’s going to take another 30 days, so we have to wait for that telephone information.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Now another tool, a resource we have in our bag is the immediate phone, what’s called Cellebrite, and what that is, is the photographic image of what’s on that cell phone. We can get that information that night if we know her passcode and everything into the phone. But again, it was two days after that we found the purse, or a day after we found the purse, and then we have to write the search warrant. We do Cellebrite it, but we still need all the contents of the texts, the past texts, and who she’s contacted, and what time, which is very important because we had that timeline, like Bill said, we want to narrow it down to a short window and who could have encountered Umi outside at 1:42 PM, or after 1:42 PM. So that was our goal, is to minimize that timeline.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So to follow up with what Dave had said originally on the second wife was her honesty. As I mentioned talking about the GAQs, the general assessment questionnaire, I remember this day very vividly as well, is that-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
I do too, I think you laid your head on my shoulder and screamed.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. So the FBI had requested that we send these GAQs out to everyone that knew the family, anyone that had any connection to them, anyone that had any communication to them, to see if any information could be provided that we had not received. So I sent these GAQs out to a number of people, specifically to the other wife as well, and her GAQ came back, and you have to understand the amount of documents that we’re having to process here. I mean, it was really just the three of us that was reviewing all this evidence, plus working our other cases.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So we’re trying to go through it as quickly as we can, well I remember this day, and I’d even beat down by the FBI anyway, and I remember getting a phone call from the lead BAU agent asking me if I had read the response of the wife’s, the living wife’s GAQ, and I said, “I had not yet, what are you seeing?” And she said, “You haven’t read that yet?” And I said, “No.” And so again, I’m sitting here listening to her and she tells me, “Well, you need to read it.” So I pull it out, and the question on the GAQ, and again, like we spoke about earlier, there’s some pressing questions, but the question specifically, which was question 61, said, does he or she engage in risky sexual behavior? And the wife’s response was yes, the response was, “Protected sex and multiple partners, forced a stolen used condom with semen from someone else inside my vagina.” That was her answer to that question.
Detective Bill Brislin:
As we all know there’s foreign DNA in Umi’s vagina, now we have his living wife responding that he’s placed used condoms with foreign DNA in her vagina, obviously we still may have the right guy. So I remember being disappointed in myself as a detective because I hadn’t gotten to that information yet, and had again the FBI point it out to me. In fact, that’s brought up several times later on-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
In a joking fashion.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. And so I-
Wendy Lyons:
It’s only joking so that you don’t feel so bad about yourself.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah.
David Lyons:
Yeah, because if it keeps up I’m going to do a GoFundMe for a support service animal.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah.
David Lyons:
Or you can leave with one of our many miniature horses out in the back paddock, which is a legal ADA, horse.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So I remember hanging up the phone again, looking at Dave across from me and telling him and Schoon we need to go to James’s office, and I remember leaning against the wall, as I always do, looking at James, looking at Schoon, looking at Dave, and telling them what I just was basically told was located in this GAQ. And of course we all, again, gasped with surprise, we didn’t know what to say about this, but then it was like, okay, here we go, we’re back on track, this is circled around for us, here we go. But we also were like, well how are we going to prove this?
Wendy Lyons:
Well I do have to ask, did Donald know of the foreign semen that was in Umi’s vagina, or had you all not told him about that?
Detective Bill Brislin:
So we didn’t know it until this day, nor did he know that we had known this, and that’ll come in the end, we don’t need to go into that right now.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right, right. But of course we have a tech wizard in our little threesome that is handling this case, so we assigned Dave a great job, David, you like tell us what kind of job?
Detective David Richardson:
I’m a shy ashamed say the things I’ve sharped on the internet, but I was curious, how do you find this kind of stuff? And so unfortunately I Googled it, and you can A, order them online-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Order what?
Detective David Richardson:
Order a used condom online. The funny thing is I was at a fast food restaurant the next day, I saw one there. The thing about police work is if you’re looking for a stolen car and you’re looking for a Chevy Malibu, you will see 100 Chevy Malibu’s in that day. And so I never really looked for condoms on the ground, and then sure enough I see one in a parking lot, I go to a park, I find two or three in the park, and I’m like, well, apparently it’s not that hard to find a used condom. And so that added a whole nother angle to this, whose DNA is in that still?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And of course our sense of humor, when he comes back to the office and says, “I saw a used condom in the park, I’ve seen it in a parking lot,” we’re looking for evidence envelopes with tape on it. He never collected them. So is he really qualified to be in the unit? So that’s where we were asking ourselves at this point, hoping that he could help us solve this case.
Detective David Richardson:
Yeah, I’m done.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
I’ve got something for you.
Detective David Richardson:
No, I’m done.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Now it’s October 2010, and so sometime has passed, and what we have decided to do, at the request of the FBI, is they have actually asked us back to discuss the information we had obtained since the last time we met, which was in August, so two months have passed, specifically about the information that we were just speaking about with the GAQ with the living wife, with the information she had provided with the used condom being placed in her vagina by Donald. So Schoon and I and James traveled to Quantico, if I remember correctly, is that right?
Detective David Richardson:
Yes.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And to me, with the BAU unit again, to discuss where we were at with this case. So during that time we meet with them, I feel I’m a little bit more prepared this time, I’m not going to cry, and you’re not going to have to hold me.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
No, I had to rub your back for a little bit there.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So we travel there, and we ended up meeting with the BAU unit again, and what they have done at this time, since two months have passed, they have put together basically a packet of information describing what they think has happened.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Their evaluation.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Correct.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Their victimology, and the evaluation of the crime scene, and the type of suspect that would commit this crime.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Right, and they refer to those things, just as Schoon had said, as a victimology, a crime analysis, and then a final assessment. Again, I hate to refer to television, but just to give you some idea of how this is working, it’s just like you see on Criminal Minds where they all sit down and they talk about it, and who has done this, and who may be doing this.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So in the victimology they talk about Umi, how at risk she was, they ranked her as a low risk victim, her relationship with Donald, was she a targeted victim and not, it wasn’t a random act. They had talked to us about the motive, talked about how she was killed by blunt force trauma. Also talked about, we have her nude at the scene, it appears to be a sexual assault, it appears be a murder, but there was no trauma to the vaginal area. There was some semen located in her vagina. There was no ransacking of the residence, there was nothing stolen from her purse, there was nothing stolen from the residence. And then this is where it really gets to be important in the case, there was evidence of what we were calling staging.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right, which is, so in reality all the courtroom drama television shows that you see, that’s not really how it works. There’s several hearings throughout the process, from getting someone arrested by the grand jury, to the preliminary hearing, to the grand jury, to the trial, and what happens is they determine what can be said in a courtroom and what cannot be said in the courtroom when a jury is present. So they minimize, I shouldn’t say minimize, I stand in corrected, they determine what can be said, and they sterilize what the testimony should be from certain witnesses. And then what Bill said was staging, they made a motion that the term staging could not be used, and the Commonwealth agreed, okay, so we won’t use staging. So Bill, in his creative testimony, came up with enough other term, and we’ll explain that later.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So to follow up with that, in the analysis provided by the BAU unit, we talked more about the crime scene being staged, and when I say that, to explain further to the audiences, Schoon hit on it as well, is if this victim, Umi, was sexually assaulted, there would be more trauma to the vaginal area if she was sexually assaulted, the items, her clothing would not be just placed next to her, you would seem to think they would be torn where she’s resisting from being sexually assaulted. So these were all things that were being pointed out to us by the BAU unit.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And to describe what they said, it’s a great quote, I wish we could say we came up with this, but, “The person committing the crime only knows what a crime is based on what they see on TV, if they’re not a true criminal.” Right? So if a person is a serial rapist, who’s going to take the time to take off the clothes of their victim and then throw the them over the fence? Usually you’ll see the clothing ripped, or pulled halfway up and left on the victim. This is not the case, it was thrown over the fence and just laid there. So the limitations of the person committing that crime is based on what they think of rapists.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Basically the offender’s imagination.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And to go along with that is these are all things we had discussed, Dave, myself, James and Schoon, but of course the FBI was also just saying, this is what we’re seeing, and it went along with everything we were thinking, but it went a little further, because is what they do. So they were talking about the inconsistencies that they were seeing, the staging they were seeing was like, if this was a true assault, a true rape, a true murder, then why did they not go in and sexually assault or even murder the child that was inside the residence? Why were these items not taken? Why is the purse being stashed in the bushes? So these were all just things that were being brought to our attention which we had discussed, but then we also were talking about the staging as far as Donald’s presence there at the scene at the time of the homicide and how he’d stated he’d went the work, we knew that he had been late for work and how he demanded to go to work. So these were all things that came into play during our time with the FBI.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So to finish up our meeting with the FBI, they decided to tell us, “Look, you need to go back to Donald and try to interview him if you can, and if so, you need to have some type of strategy and work towards his ego, work towards empathizing with his feelings, and being very receptive with his relationship with his two wives.
Wendy Lyons:
So is that what you did?
Detective Bill Brislin:
So after we met with the FBI we had not done that yet, so what we decided to do was just review the facts and evaluate the scene. So when we went through that, we came up with a number of things such as why was the purse and the belonging still on scene? Why were the clothes not torn? Why was the plastic bag in the same location as the purse? Why was there no forced entry? Why was there no injuries? Why was the belt loosely placed around her neck? Why were the shoes in the yard? Why were the keys in the yard? Why was there-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
No forced entry.
Detective Bill Brislin:
No forced entry.
Detective David Richardson:
And they got into Donald’s background, and trying to go back and research even prior to this event everything that occurred, and I think we spent a lot of time trying to backtrack for the 10 years prior to that, and that led us on a whole nother avenue of more people to interview. And so it’s only October and we don’t ask for several more months, because we just keep digging into these things and there’s more and more people to interview.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, so to pick up what Dave is explaining, I think just to give you some timeline again, so that was October was our second meeting with the FBI, we don’t actually have enough to go to the grand jury to testify until June of next year. So in that time we’re working this case, but as Dave said, we’re now trying to link up with other witnesses and other people that were involved with Donald. And what would come to find out was he had several relationships with several different women who actually were in hiding because of their physical and mental relationship with Donald, so it was our job to try to locate these witnesses and try to interview them and find out the background of their relationship with Donald, and in doing so it was very difficult, because these women had been in the hiding since the time they were dating Donald.
Detective Bill Brislin:
No other times was he married, but he had dated and lived with these women. We were able to find out their name, some of them were under an alias, but we were able to use some of our capabilities as law enforcement to locate them. One specific, which is a young lady that he was with early on prior to these other two women, who had actually staged her own kidnapping to get away from Donald, because that’s how fearful she was that he was going to kill her. This young lady was in hiding, I was able to locate her family and was speaking to them by phone numerous times during the week, documenting every time that I spoke to them. They were also sharing with me that times that they spoke to her, and also telling me that she didn’t wish to be spoke to or even located. So in using that information, we were able to locate and identify her based on phone records of where she may be.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So when that was discovered, the Commonwealth, Schoon, and I, and Dave decided it was a very important time to go talk with her to see if we could get some background about their relationship and his mental and physical abuse, if that took place. So after we were able to obtain the information from the phone company, we actually established which state she was in, and myself and another Commonwealth attorney, assistant Commonwealth attorney traveled to this location and did surveillance, trying to locate her. And in doing so we were able to locate her and follow her to a residence, and this is a complete part of the story that’s almost unbelievable, to be honest with you.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And what I mean by that is once we discovered her and located her and surveilled her, we followed her to a residence, and once I made first contact with her and explained to her who I was, she dropped to her knees, began vomiting and telling me, or asking me, not to kill her. And when I asked her what she meant by that, she told me that she knew that Donald had sent me to her to kill her. And I said, “I’m the police, I’m not here to kill you, I’m here to talk to you,” and she said to me, as she’s looking up at me, wiping the vomit from her face and crying hysterically, that she said Donald had told her if she ever left and she was ever found, he would send the police to kill her.
Detective Bill Brislin:
It took some time for me and the assisted Commonwealth attorney to convince her that we were not out there to harm her, we were actually there just to help her and interview her. So after she stands up, she jumps in her car, locks the doors, and calls the police, and the police respond to the residence, and I have to identify myself with credentials and explain what the story is. And eventually she comes out of the car and we sit on her back patio and talk for hours on end about her relationship with Don Southworth.
Wendy Lyons:
What did you learn from that interview with her on that back porch?
Detective Bill Brislin:
So the interview between myself and the assistant Commonwealth attorney and her, we discovered that Donald was exactly who we thought he was, which was an individual that thought he was smarter than anyone else, would threaten everyone else, and come to find out that he basically made these women believe that if they had ever left him, he was going to have them killed, whether by him or by someone else, and even by the police.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So that interview went on for a while, and from information we were actually able to identify another young lady who had been in hiding that was his second relationship. And so what we took from that was we were going to go back to Lexington, we were going to have another meeting about this, and then we were going to try to locate this second lady that had been in a relationship with Donald, and she was also in hiding. And Schoon and I and Dave did a lot of research trying to locate her, and we eventually did. And so myself and that same assistant Commonwealth attorney traveled to that location in hiding, it was basically a farm out in nowhere of a state that was not close to here, and Schoon, I apologize.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
No, that’s all right.
Detective Bill Brislin:
That was with us. So we get to that location, and we interview her, and she thought we were there to kill her as well.
Wendy Lyons:
So he really had these women believing that if they ever broke from his clenches, he’d hit them if he found them again.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Oh yeah, yeah, they were scared, and they wouldn’t believe that we were the police, even after showing credentials.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right.
Wendy Lyons:
So how did you convince her, did you call other law enforcement from that local area as well, or did she just eventually believe you and talk, or would she just not talk?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Normally when we interview people as witnesses we don’t let anyone else sit in, because we wanted a peer interview. At that point we allowed family members to sit beside them, or at the same table with us, and allowed them to be comfortable with us. And we gave them our cards and let them call the police department and confirm who we were, and that way they would sit down and talk to us.
Wendy Lyons:
So the second person, she eventually did talk as well?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yes.
Detective Bill Brislin:
She did.
Wendy Lyons:
Did she reveal much of the same thing that the first lady did?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Exactly the same thing. Both, I want you to understand, we’re also in fear that once we left that we are going to reveal in discovery their locations, and so we actually had to go through hearings to where we were not providing their actual locations to Donald in discovery so then they were still safe, and have them present that information to the judge.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Once we learned all this information we then traveled back to the office, and as Dave mentioned earlier, we traveled all across the United States in this case, during this time we also interviewed the daughters again, we had the FBI interview the daughters as well, trying to obtain any information. We kept meeting with the Commonwealth attorney’s office in this case, which the lead Commonwealth attorney was Ray Larson at the time and the assistant was Lou Anna Red Corn, who’s now the Commonwealth attorney, and we kept having meetings and more meetings to get this case strong, because we all knew he was guilty of this, it was just we had to prove it. We still hadn’t figured out whose DNA it was.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right, the big hurdle that we could not get over before we went to the grand jury was the foreign DNA. How do you explain that in a trial in front of a jury?
David Lyons:
Yeah, because that sounds like that thing called reasonable doubt.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Exactly, exactly. And reasonable doubt is not absolute reasonable doubt, as everybody would think, in a trial it’s a reasonable doubt of the common person. So that was a huge hurdle that we had to get over, that and the fact, and during the trial, and we’ll get into that in a little bit, but during the trial we had to get over that the police let Umi lay out there, and how are we going to explain that to the jury and get them to see what the police see?
David Lyons:
Yeah, because I remember when that happened. And the thing is, is that all of us have been there, either because of a car wreck, or anything, and when you’ve been at this job at any time, you find people that are deceased or close to it, but when you have that much injury that’s an assumption we’d all make. And I remember too that that was a policy adjustment that you alluded to on the first episode, is that prior to that there wasn’t any real requirement for anybody to come, like the emergency care people, and put pads on them to look for a heart thing because I think for years we kept going by that thing that we can’t tamper with a scene.
David Lyons:
And I remember it was drilled into me in 1992 is those firemen are going to come and they’re going to leave galls and wrappers and they’re going to destroy your crime scene, and when I finally got a homicide I would say, I think I can explain on the stand that yes, he left those things because they were trying to save somebody’s life, that’s not the same thing as tampering. So I think when that came about is we had a good policy shift at that point to protect everybody.
Detective David Richardson:
But that’s what that officer was doing that lifted up that mattress, he had seen death as the things he had seen, and so yes, we did change a policy, but there was a logical explanation of why he just froze that scene, because just like you said, he didn’t want to disturb that scene anymore, because he wanted to catch the bad guy.
David Lyons:
Yeah, and she was injured that bad.
Detective David Richardson:
Oh yeah.
David Lyons:
And for people that fortunately don’t deal with this, we’ve all seen people’s bodies in incredibly bad shape, and that there’s a certain point where life just isn’t even a functional possibility. So yeah, that was an honest human thing right there to make that assumption, I’d have done it too.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And just so the audience knows, just so they can have some ease about this, is that the MA testifies to this at the end in the trial that she would not have survived that injury anyway. So if she had been transported the minute that she was found and found to be alive, she still would not have lived through that.
Wendy Lyons:
So you mentioned you found the two former relationship people with Donald. Did you ever find a third that you interviewed, or did you stop with the two?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Well, we actually went back and interviewed the second wife probably three more times after we discovered what she did with the questionnaire, and a lot more came forward about the pattern of behavior, which was similar with the other ones. So what they did ask us to do is to gather information for Donald Southworth’s trips overseas, maybe that would reveal some information that we could have as bringing wives back, or maybe getting married over there and bringing women back here, but we didn’t discover that, we did what they asked, what the behavior science unit asked, and there was no telltale sign of any other women other than what we discovered there.
Wendy Lyons:
Now the first two ladies that you all interviewed that were in hiding, did he bring them here, or were they met here? And you mentioned another country, where was this?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, so the first, or I’m sorry, the one wife that, or I’m sorry, Umi had been brought back from Indonesia, that’s where he had met her. But the other two, the first two that we had spoke to, the first one had some ties to Indonesia, but the second one did not. But they all seemed to have had the same background, individuals that may be believed to be here illegally, because as he would always threaten them with calling immigration. So he would try to control them by that as well, whether they thought they were legally here or not. So we realized that he was basically staying with the same set of women throughout his relationships with all these women, so when we interviewed the one wife that was still alive, numerous times, like Schoon said, we were obtaining more information. But I think also what I need to add to that was she was also providing information that led us to possibilities of why or where he may have collected or obtained this foreign DNA.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And what I mean by that is they were friends with certain individuals here in Lexington, and during that time it was explained to us that Donald was actually providing marital counseling to a couple, and so they were constantly traveling back and forth between houses here in Lexington, and it was our understanding from the one living wife that he had mentioned, during that time of sexual intercourse when he inserted the used condom into her vagina, that, “It’s okay, it’s clean, it’s from our friends that we know, and it’s safe.” So she believed, and told Schoon and I, that it may have came from this couple that he was counseling. Well, by the time we track them down, they were actually residing in Asia.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So I won’t forget that phone call, I actually was able to track him down and called him over the phone, this couple, and I called him at five in the morning, or whatever it was, and I remember making contact with him because the FBI had actually assisted me in tracking him down and getting the phone number, and I interviewed him over the phone. And during that interview, it opened up with I could hear some roosters crowing in the background, and Tim asking what this was about, and I explained to him that we were investigating Donald, and asked what his relationship was with him, and he had told me exactly what we knew which was he was counseling them for marital issues, him and his wife.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And I’d asked him if he was ever inside their residence, he said, “Yes, he would come to our residence to provide the counseling,” and I said, “Well, do you and your wife have sex? And if so, do you use protection?” And he said, “Actually at that time, during the time Donald was counseling us, we were using condoms because we didn’t want to have a child at that time.”And I asked how he disposed of those condoms, and he stated that he disposed of them in the garbage. So it almost went in sync with what the one wife was telling us that during the time that he inserted the used condom saying it was close friends of ours, it’s a clean condom with clean semen, that it may have came from this couple, and he had access to the used condom, which was in the trash. So we thought that could be a way of explaining why we’re seeing that.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So what I had asked is if the FBI can meet with him to swab him to compare his DNA to the DNA that was found in Umi’s vagina, and he agreed to that, but he also stated that it was very easy for people to hire people to kill people over there, especially witnesses. So after I hung up the phone with him, that was the last I ever heard from him. The FBI was never able to locate him to swab him for the DNA to be compared to this DNA that was located in Umi.
Wendy Lyons:
Well then it lends you to wonder if Donald didn’t have he and his wife convinced to be in fear of him like the ladies that were in hiding.
Detective Bill Brislin:
That’s correct.
Wendy Lyons:
Seems like everybody was afraid of Donald.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And you wouldn’t think that when you look at him, he’s 5’10”, thin, he’s not very threatening.
David Lyons:
But certainly psychologically you’ve developed a profile of a literal monster.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So at that point we think we have some explanation of maybe how this used condom, or the DNA-
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Foreign DNA.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Foreign DNA is inside of her. So we approach the Commonwealth, we’re now looking at June of 2011, we’re a year out from the original date of the homicide.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Almost exactly the day.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, yeah, and it’s decided that this is as good as it gets at this point, that’s where we’re at.
Detective David Richardson:
Let’s present it to the grand jury and lay out all these facts that we’ve just done in these last couple hours, and let them make a determination.
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, 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, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube, which has closed caption available for those that are here impaired.
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Part 5 of 5:
Speaker 1:
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 Umi Southworth, Part Five.
Detective Bill Brislin:
We’re now looking at June of 2011. We’re a year out from the original date of the homicide.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Almost exactly the day.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. And it’s decided that we’re going to go … This is about as good as it gets at this point, right?
Detective David Richardson:
Yeah.
Detective Bill Brislin:
That’s where we’re at.
Detective David Richardson:
It’s presented to the grand jury and lay out all these facts that we’ve just done in these last couple hours and let them make a determination.
David Lyons:
And what’s a grand jury do? Let’s educate the audience on that because that … What is a grand jury and what’s a row?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
A grand jury is just 12 citizens, 12 to 14 citizens that come into the court. They get sworn in and they hear several cases that the police present to them that is their probable cause to go forward in a felony hearing or felony trial to prosecute these individuals.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
They’re allowed to ask questions during the grand jury. Commonwealth will ask the detective who testifies in front of the grand jury. They’ll ask them questions and the detective will answer those questions. And if any of the grand jury members have questions, they’re allowed to ask.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
It is a private sealed testimony. And then the grand jury … The detective leaves, the grand jury votes without the detective in there on whether there is probable cause to move forward for the felony trial.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. And just like Schoon said, so we have grand jury almost to the date of the homicide which is June 1, 2011. And it’s a grand sealed indictment. So, what that means is we’re going to go into the grand jury. I’m going to testify as the lead. And the indictment is sealed meaning that if they decide to indict, then that is not information led out to the public.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Okay. So, it was the first time I’ve ever testified. I testified for eight hours in that hearing. We utilized the PowerPoint to provide all the information that we’ve went through, a lot more information that we probably haven’t even touched on. And after that testimony was within minutes that the grand jury came back with an indictment wanting to charge Donald Southworth with murder. And that’s what we were looking to charge him with.
David Lyons:
So, let’s give them a timeline of what we feel happened before we go in arrest, what you presented to the grand jury of the timeline, what we feel happened to Umi the night of her murder.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Okay. So, what we had put together is this, is we believe that we know that Umi was going to take her oldest daughter who was a very well-respected musician here in Lexington and in fact had signed some contracts with the record company out of Nashville.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Umi was leaving her job. The day she was killed was supposed to be the last day she was to work at Fazoli’s. And she was going to take her daughter. They already had an apartment set up in Nashville. They were going to move there. And basically, she was going to take the golden egg away from Donald which was his money.
Detective Bill Brislin:
He was always looked at as when she did perform here in Lexington or other locations, he was always setting up the equipment and trying to be her best friend but also telling her what to wear, she looks better in glasses versus no glasses. He was very controlling of her as well.
Detective Bill Brislin:
What we thought had happened was the night of the homicide, he was supposed to report to work at 3:15. We know she got off the phone around 1:15 or so with the individual that he had stated that she was cheating with. They were in the same bed along with the oldest daughter. We believe from putting all the information together that somehow she was led outside because it was our understanding that anytime she went outside, she always had that housecoat on and along with some shoes. She never stepped outside without the flip flops or the shoes.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Which is where the cat comes in because she loved her cat.
Detective Bill Brislin:
She loved the cat. The cat was basically their other child is what they refer to it as. It would always go in the van. It would always travel with them, whatever. So we believe that she was lured outside. And I say that based on not just us guessing but if you recall from the very first interview we had with Donald, he mentioned maybe she went out looking for the cat.
Detective Bill Brislin:
We believe that the door that he let the cat out, she went out to look for the cat. He went outside. He struck her with a small hammer causing her to go unconscious. He then dragged her back to the tree lawn. Once in the tree lawn, she was still unconscious, pulled her clothing from her. And then she regained consciousness and the only other item he had back there to assault her with was this log.
Detective Bill Brislin:
He then struck her several times creating the blunt force trauma to her head. And at that time, he who thought this is what a crime scene looks like took her clothing and staged it or what I referred to it in the trial as arranged it there at the scene. We believe maybe after that time had passed where he was running late for work. That’s why they started calling. He demands to go back to work.
Detective Bill Brislin:
The water hose may have come into play with him washing himself or washing off some type of item, if you recall the items in the trash bag. He’s now hurrying trying to place those items and discard them. He’s doing all this in a rush. It’s raining, pouring the rain, which affected some of our evidence collection.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And I think we believe, this is my testimony to the grand jury that after he took those items to make it look like it was a robbery and a sexual assault and a murder, placed those items in the bushes in hopes to return back from work to reclaim those items to discard of those items.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
But the Fazolian ladies.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, kind of threw that …
Detective Chris Schoonover:
He didn’t expect them to be at the house when he got home from work.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah.
Detective David Richardson:
Let me point something out, too. Everything that you just talked about in that theory was supported by fact. And there’s a big misconception right now especially in some documentaries on things like Netflix, they’re writing that theory can run on itself. We’re not allowed to do that. Prosecutors aren’t allowed to do that. We don’t get to develop theories out of thin air.
Detective David Richardson:
So, that’s the result of a lot of good work for over a year to be able to come and say that this is likely what happened, not just some shot in the dark. And I just want to point that out because right now, there’s a lot of things out there that people think of I’ve got a theory, I’ve got facts. And what’s the thing we always used to say, “Your facts have to fit your theories and your theories have to fit your facts.” And facts, that’s just the way that works.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So, once that information … Did I leave anything out? Schoon, do you think?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
No.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So, after that evidence was provided to the grand jury, that was our theory. And like Dave said, it was provided by facts. It was based on some statements made by Donald at the beginning of the interview. And I think this is a very important time and dimension that what Schoon picked up on which was huge was that when he had stated that, “Well, my other neighbor is gay, he wouldn’t have done this,” because it was portrayed to us to look like a sexual assault, no murder.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So, there’s an indication there that he knew that she was lying out there naked and appeared to be sexually assaulted and have foreign DNA inside of her. Once all that information was provided to the grand jury, and again I went through it in like five minutes but that was eight hours of testimony, they decided to indict Donald for murder.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So, that very day, we did not know this. So, once the indictment came over, we had researched where he was staying. Based on police reports, he had been pulled over for living in his car or his van at the time and certain things. So, we knew he was at a certain location. So, we got Dave and a few other detectives and we went over to arrest Donald. But lo and behold, the very next morning, we found out that Donald had filed a lawsuit against the police department in the City of Lexington over Umi Southworth still being alive.
Detective David Richardson:
And we didn’t know that when we went to go arrest him. It was news to us.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So, the timing could not have been worse.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah.
David Lyons:
Did he advise you of the lawsuit when you went to pick him up? Is that how you found out?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
No, we found out in the morning on the news.
Wendy Lyons:
What was his demeanor when you went to get him because he had had some dealings with you all the year prior in that interview room? So was it just kind of, “We’re back?”
Detective Chris Schoonover:
I don’t think he’s intimidated by any of us. He just said, “Okay.” We collected the things in his room where we located them and he went to the police department with us.
David Lyons:
So, you feel like you still had a rapport with him.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
No. I think after the telephone calls with Bill, he figured out that, okay, maybe they’re a little sharper than he estimated. And I think he knew it was coming, that’s my own opinion after seeing the expression on his face and how willing he was just to … Now, he wasn’t going to provide any information because he already found out that, “Well, maybe they’re a little smarter than I thought and I’m not going to deal with this.”
Detective Bill Brislin:
I think that was the first time I saw on his face that he almost felt a little defeated, because I think he thought it could happen but I think only until the day we knocked on that door, the hotel or the motel, I think it was finally he figured out that, “These guys know a little bit more than what I thought they would.”
Detective David Richardson:
And they didn’t give up. I mean …
David Lyons:
Yeah, because a narcissist always counts on that bubble not ever breaking. And usually, that’s why there’s to be a report because they’ll switch, the 180 goes off and now they’re mad because you’re on [inaudible 00:11:01].
Detective David Richardson:
And it had been a year and he doesn’t know everything that Bill and Schoon and all the traveling they’ve done and the thousands of interviews that we’ve compressed down to this three hours that they’ve done. And he just thinks we kind of forgot about it. And the reality is we never forget about it. I mean, we’re working those cases day in and day out every day.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, I think that’s a very good point that Dave brings up is families may think we forget about those victims but we don’t ever forget about those victims. We are always trying to work those cases as much as we can. And sometimes we just can’t go any further until some other lead comes in.
Detective Bill Brislin:
But in this case, Donald hadn’t contacted me any further beyond those earlier phone calls about where we were on the case. Like Dave said, he almost thought that maybe we had just forgotten about it and put it to the side but we kept working and working and working and finally got to this point.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Can I add to that? Any homicide detective that really is a homicide detective, I don’t want the listeners to think even though they don’t know we go home at night and not talk about their loved one or someone that they know has been murdered, we absolutely wake up in the morning when we’re getting ready for work, it bothers us. We know we got to get in there. We’re responsible.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And I don’t think the victim’s family realize that it’s not a pride game. It’s something that … And that’s why when we go to trial, we’re so nervous and we don’t want to blow this in front of the family because they’re depending on us. So, it does affect us every day.
David Lyons:
I’ll jump in and say that if we’re awake, we’re thinking about it.
Detective David Richardson:
I would say if you’re asleep, you’re thinking about it because you wake up and you think, “I got to do this, this and this in the morning.” And then you can’t even go back to sleep because you just start thinking about all that stuff.
David Lyons:
I can still remember cases that I never was technically on the clock and I had the murder book at home and I was making notes. And that’s the love of this. It’s a good point is that it just doesn’t stop. And that’s the dedication people have to this. So that’s good for the family members to know I think.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, I think I also want to add just at this table alone, just with the four of us, we’re old school homicide and that’s how we always will be. And I know that even though you’re retired, Dave, and we’re all looking at retirement, we all still think about those cases and what we may have been able to do differently to try to solve those cases. Because like Schoon and Dave and everyone agrees that the family depends on us and if we can do it, then it’s not going to go anywhere.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Very true. Very true.
Wendy Lyons:
So, what is his conviction end up being?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
We’re not done. We just made the arrest. And anybody that see … It’s a TV commercial, anybody that thinks that our job gets easier after you make the arrest has no knowledge of law enforcement. Let me tell you this. It’s where the real work begins because you’re meeting with the Commonwealth meeting after meeting after meeting because what we need for public cause is totally different, what they need for conviction.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So now, Bill, myself, Dave, half of the unit, we were out getting documents, telephone records, reviewing telephone records, calling experts about the telephone records. Also, the Behavioral Science Unit, we’re asking for reports for them because what better testimony to have than Behavioral Science Unit. And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t know this but it’s not an exact science.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And the Behavioral Science Unit has to meet the [inaudible 00:14:44] qualifications, which means they have to be able to say, “Scientifically, this is the way people behave,” and they can’t do that. So therefore, they can’t testify. So, that’s one hurdle we had.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
The other hurdle we had is to how to explain that Umi was still alive. After that, the other hurdle was why didn’t we find any DNA in the washer and dryer? Because a 12-year-old would have washed those clothes.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Or even the belt that was around her neck.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Or the belt.
Detective David Richardson:
Or the log that was in the rain.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
I know.
Detective David Richardson:
Just no good DNA.
David Lyons:
Let me go back to the belt at the autopsy. Was there any sign of any impressions or constriction or anything?
Detective Bill Brislin:
No. So, at the time, it would appear that that was used for some type of strangulation or some type of injury to the neck area. But come to find out as we kept investigating, we started to see that maybe this was all staged. Well, I testified that that belt was actually just placed around her neck for a prop but there was no injury.
Detective David Richardson:
There would have been some artifacts.
Detective Bill Brislin:
That’s correct. There was no injury to her neck to show that the belt was used for anything else other than just around her neck.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Which is another deflection, right?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Part of this, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Detective Chris Schoonover:
It’s perfect. It’s perfect. And then if a good prosecutor which they did would say, “Why would he say the guy upstairs is gay, he wouldn’t hurt her,” when you see a naked woman? And how would he know that the gay guy wouldn’t hurt her?
Detective Bill Brislin:
And to follow up with what Schoon was saying about the issues we’re going to probably have in trial, these are the things we’re trying to work towards to make sure we can have them have an answer for why was there no force, the sexual assault, how was the [inaudible 00:16:26]. These were questions that we knew we had to answer on in the trial and having a good answer so the jury would believe this.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Also, we need to know and be able to explain his relationships with these other women.
Detective David Richardson:
Yeah. And just to clarify, too, because some people might be thinking it. It’s important, too, on the sexual assault part about evidence of injury and force because what he’s alleging or trying to portray out there is kind of a stranger violent sexual assault.
Detective David Richardson:
We know that people in relationships even married people can still have … You can still rape somebody under a different context but it’s important to show that there wasn’t any force because he’s the one that actually created that possibility or that theory as he developed that, so just to point that out.
Detective David Richardson:
Yes, inside of a relationship, there are such things as sexual assaults and they may not produce that kind of an injury. But he’s the one that made this whole theory up there that this is a violent sexual assault.
Detective Bill Brislin:
In preparing for trial and they had asked for a speedy trial on this which would limit us to the amount of time we had to prepare for the trial. So, I believe we went to trial within six months. Is that what you recall, Schoon? It was pretty quick.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
It was quickly.
Detective David Richardson:
A lot quicker than normal.
David Lyons:
Yeah, that’s a land speed record.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. So, because of the request for the speedy trial, and just so the listeners know, typically a homicide case if it’s not requested for the speedy trial, then usually we don’t go to trial for a number of years at the least of two. This went to trial rather quickly which was a strategy by the defense I will say.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And it was a very good strategy to try to push us quickly to trial to not have as much information in hopes to prosecuting their client. So, in our review of what we had with the case, we had interviewed over 200 witnesses. We had 66 witnesses we subpoenaed to trial that actually testified. There was at least 63 pieces of evidence. And there was over 30 pieces of DNA evidence that we provided as well in this trial which is huge.
Detective Bill Brislin:
I mean, Dave, they’ve you’ve been …
Detective David Richardson:
That’s a gigantic witness. Now, I’ve seen a lot of people sit out in the hall for weeks and never get called but I’ve never seen him actually go up.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Other than this case, I only have one other complex case that I’ve worked. And in that case, we provide 50,000 pages of discovery. So, I mean, there’s a lot of complex cases out there but this is definitely one of the most complex cases I’ve worked.
David Lyons:
With the 50,000, they didn’t ask for the speedy trial?
Detective Bill Brislin:
No, they have not.
David Lyons:
No, that’s a slow-reader group.
Detective David Richardson:
And it’s a great thing to have actually. We’re going to slow you down. We’re going to give you banker boxes.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And actually, that would be a good case for you to hear eventually once it’s adjudicating.
David Lyons:
Yeah, we’ll wait on that one then.
Detective David Richardson:
Hey, Bill, since you’re talking about the trial, let’s talk about there was one point that we had to panic. We pushed the panic button like the BestBuy button there. So, talk about the defense calling their expert.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Well, that is a good point but let me back up and I recall that and I think you can explain it better. But also, let me explain to the audience that how the defense believed I was going to answer.
Detective David Richardson:
Oh, yeah, sure.
Detective Bill Brislin:
I think that’s important in this case. So, in this case, I was on the …
David Lyons:
Stand.
Detective Bill Brislin:
… stand. Thank you.
Detective David Richardson:
So, how old are you? It’s getting dark.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. It’s past my bedtime. There’s no doubt about that. So, I was on the stand. And I think I took the stand for three days on this case. But the defense expected a specific answer from me that I believe was going to help their client. And I obviously didn’t answer the way they thought I would.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So, what I mean by that is defense had asked me, “When you arrived to the scene and you were the lead, is that correct?” “Yes, I was.” “When you observe the scene where Umi was found, did it appear that it was a homeless camp?” Because I knew where they were going with that. They wanted me to talk about, yes, it was. They want to provide reasonable doubt to the jury that, obviously, if this is a homeless camp, there could have been a homeless individual that has done this.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So, I responded, “No.” And I think the defense was taken back by that and asked me to explain my answer to that. And I explained that as Dave had talked about early on when we were talking about this, there were things we’ve responded to scenes like that of a homeless camp. And it was not what I would have seen in a homeless camp. There was no numerous cigarette butts. There was no beer cans. There was no liquor bottles. There was no fire pit. There was nothing of that.
Detective David Richardson:
Places to hang your clothes. We discovered that’s a common denominator in a homeless camp. They at least have a line or a branch where everybody hangs their clothes to dry out. There was none of it.
David Lyons:
And usually a five-gallon pickle bucket full of poop.
Detective David Richardson:
Yeah. Thanks for adding that in there.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So, the defense I think was taken back by that. And I thrive on testifying. I love that. Other than interviewing suspects in the box, I thrive being on the stand. So, what we decided to do so as I answered that question, I then went into … We all as homicide detectives see when the door is open in explaining something on the stand.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And what I mean by that to the audience is if the defense asks something and allows me some time to come back with a better answer or some explanation, then I’m going to take that time and do it. So in this case, that’s exactly what I did. So when they were taken back by my answer of, “No, it didn’t look like a homeless camp, this is why,” there was some silence. And then I went right into, “This is what I believe to be an arranged scene.”
Detective Bill Brislin:
And because we already had some hearings before to where I wasn’t able to use the word staging so I used the word arranged. And by that, I got in that the scene appeared to be arranged. And what I meant by that was the items were thrown around like they were placed there versus just a homeless camp would look. The clothing wasn’t torn for the sexual assault. The trash bags that were out there with the clothing that was in it were actually similar to the trash bags that were inside his residence.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And that this was a scene that I believe Donald Southworth set up. And before defense knew I’d gotten all that in, the jury was looking at me like, “We believe this is what happened.”
David Lyons:
I was going to say when did they object? At some point, think probably, “That’s a runaway train.”
Detective Bill Brislin:
After that, I was instructed to only answer the questions that I’m asked.
David Lyons:
Good for you.
Detective Bill Brislin:
But we all know this at the table, that’s what you got to do to get that in.
David Lyons:
Right. If they open the door, they open the door.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. Follow up with, and we don’t have right here tonight, but an excellent job in closing. And he had me up there or had me there to … And they let him and Lou Anna laid out the trash bags. We were able to show that they were all similar. They fit on top of each other. They were the exact same size.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And so, they laid out all this physical evidence and they did an excellent job in closing. I’m sure the listeners are familiar with Ray Larson and Lou Anna. They were able to basically tell the story so the jury believed it. They then after hearing the story then decided to basically find him guilty.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
The jury went in and it was a very short time that they came back. Let’s go back to the defense expert.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, I’m sorry.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Don’t apologize. You’re sweet. So, there was a panic moment where the defense had hired an expert from out of state to come in and explain why the Lexington Police Department didn’t understand that this was a violent crime scene and what we missed and whatnot. So, Lou Anna was awesome and her spouse was awesome.
David Lyons:
And that’s Lou Anna Red Corn.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Red Corn, yes. They came out and said, “Real quick, before we get to recess, before we come back after lunch, we need to know everything we can about this expert.” Well come to find out, his history was not so great. So, after lunch, Lou Anna approached the bench and said, “If you’re calling him to the stand, we’re going to address these issues that he’s had in the past. Do you want to do that?”
Detective Chris Schoonover:
The defense decided not to use him as an expert witness and it was a successful win after that. I mean, my point is you’re working on this case up until the jury deliberates. It’s to that point where it gets harder as the trial goes on until the jury deliberates. It’s not done.
David Lyons:
That’s good research on the Commonwealth’s part two. You’re looking at that history of that person because we all know that some people can get qualified as an expert and there’s a process for that. But it doesn’t mean that they’ve always been looked at carefully and what if their track record isn’t that good. Because in the end, this is what they’ll get accused of anyways, “How much did they pay for you to come up here and say that?” So, that’s great research on the Commonwealth’s part.
David Lyons:
And let me add too that with Ray Larson, too, is that I don’t think anybody close as strong as Ray. I mean, it’s fire and brimstone. He’s a prosecutor’s prosecutor. I’ve seen that myself and it’s very powerful to watch.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yes, he is. So, to give the audience an idea, this was a trial that lasted 10 days. Closing arguments lasted four hours. And the jury deliberated for three-and-a-half hours. And then they came back with a guilty plea or a guilty for Donald Southworth for the murder of Umi Southworth.
David Lyons:
They do. And then they moved on to the sentencing phase I guess or?
Detective Bill Brislin:
They did.
David Lyons:
Yeah. What did they come up with on that?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
No, a life?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Oh, it was life, that’s correct. Yeah, life imprisonment.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
But there was an appeal.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah, there was an appeal. And in any murder trial, there’s always an appeal. And it was granted this time because of some issues we had of information that was provided in trial.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
The testimony of the second wife was prejudiced to the jury. So, they felt that they should retry the case.
David Lyons:
Yeah. And that’s one thing that listeners don’t understand. Sometimes when they see successful appeals, a lot of people I think look at it and say, “Well, they screwed that up.” And we know that this whole process is a minefield. You know when you’re testifying, it’s a minefield. You all have done burden arguments before probably where you can’t use the testimony of a codefendant.
David Lyons:
And that whole thing in Miranda where everything you say can and will be used against you, that’s a crock. That’s not true. Because if I get up and just slip up and say, “Well, how did you arrest Chris Schoonover?” “Well, he had a warrant for a misdemeanor theft,” boom. That the gavel goes down the whole thing, starts again.
David Lyons:
So, it’s important understand that that’s the protection that the system offers, but it always doesn’t mean that that’s been bad work or anything.
Detective David Richardson:
And even though that the second wife testified to what she had experienced, that was deemed to be not admissible. And for us, that was everything. That was a good part of the case and for them to rule against that …
David Lyons:
Yeah, it’s all timing. I mean, because there’s things that you can’t do during trial that you can bring up during sentencing. And it’s a minefield right there.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. Let me also add that the judge in this case, I won’t say who that was, but did an excellent job because she knew that this could happen. And she knew how much information was coming into this trial. And she was very cautious of what she was going to allow into the trial knowing that there was going to be an appeal and there could be a possibility of a reversal. So, we had a lot of hearings.
Detective David Richardson:
I’m going to add to that. Yes, first, we were frustrated saying, “Why is this happening? Why is she not allowing this in?” And after thinking about it and after all said and done, she was preparing that there would no appeals.
Detective David Richardson:
She was on the money. She was on her game. I totally understood. Bill told me. Everybody understood and she did great. But lo and behold, they found a loophole.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yeah. And Schoon and I and we all at this table consider her a friend. And there were some times on the stand where I was like, “We’re friends. Why are you treating me like this?” I would look at her and like, “Are you really treating me like this?” I was put on the hotspot for a few times.
David Lyons:
So, that’s a good judge, right?
Detective Bill Brislin:
Yes, it is.
Detective David Richardson:
Right.
David Lyons:
And if people want to have faith in the system then, yeah, sometimes it’s a little bit of a rougher ride than not, but she’s protecting a record.
Detective Bill Brislin:
That’s right.
David Lyons:
And in the end, that’s what we all want is to protect the record.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
The issue came up and it’s called the 404(b). And what the Commonwealth goes through the 404(b) is similar acts that which cause this action of murder. In this case, it was a murder or domestic violence which involved the second wife. The Supreme Court of Kentucky felt that the testimony by the second wife was prejudicial to the jury which ultimately convicted the defendant. So, they won that appeal.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So, in the meantime, that means that the Lexington Police Department, i.e. Bill, me, Dave, that means we get to investigate further. So, we pull the books back out. We get to investigate what the defense’s attack in the trial. So, that’s our advantage, as well as their advantage that they won the appeal. So, we get back to work on, “Okay, so if they felt that the second wife’s testimony prejudiced the jury, we can’t use her again.” So we have to use something else to convince the jury that he committed this.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Well, in the meantime, so we’re searching more individuals for DNA, taking swabs, surreptitiously going over to other witnesses’ houses and asking them, “Hey, can you provide this?” If they don’t then … I mean, this is just an example of how we would collect DNA. If we knew that their habit was to go to a Mexican restaurant and have a margarita, some of the detectives may sit at the bar, wait for them to finish so we can testify that we actually saw them drink out of this straw.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
We would wait for them to leave. We’d collect that straw. Seal it, send it to the lab and be able to follow the chain of custody. So, it would come back and confirm whether it was that DNA or not.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
While this was going on, there’s other thing, simultaneously again, I’m sorry to be redundant but simultaneously, the court, the legal system is running through hearings and objections of, “Okay, how are we going to approach this? What’s the best approach? We need to have meetings. We have a hearing on suppression of evidence.” And so, eventually, Donald Southworth takes an Alford plea.
David Lyons:
And what is that? Describe that for the audience.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
So, what happens is they agree that there is enough evidence to take it to trial, but they’re not going to admit to that evidence is enough to convict them. So, what happens is they take the Alford plea. The judge says, “Do you agree to this?” And they have a whole diverse plethora of information that the defendant has to agree to.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
They read that in the courtroom for the record. And he agrees to that. So, at the end of the appeal and at the end of the Alford plea, he agreed to 15 years which he is released from prison at 2024.
David Lyons:
That’s not very much time, is it?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
It’s better than … We have to consider the witnesses and their stability in their life and their mental stability. And I don’t know if I had to do it all over again, if I would ask that second wife to come and testify. She was so brave in doing it the first time. And to criticize what she testified to, to say that prejudice, I don’t know if I would do that again.
Detective David Richardson:
And all the other relationships, they didn’t testify because we’ve talked about him but they were so scared of Donald that they couldn’t even come to testify. And put them through that again, it’s too much for them.
Detective Bill Brislin:
And that’s another good thing to talk about the judge, too. She saw that there could be an issue with that testimony as well. So, she didn’t want the appeal to happen. So, she was almost being very cautious of their testimony to be provided in trial as well.
David Lyons:
Those are important things to note because a lot of people again on the outside don’t understand those decisions are made based on people’s lives and where they are. And we did the murder of Trent DiGiuro on this show. And that was a decision on that one when it got appealed is that Ray Larson, the Commonwealth attorney had promised the primary witness and that she would only have to testify one time. And she was the foundational witness for that case.
David Lyons:
And when it went on appeal is that he even agreed that he couldn’t ask her to do that again. So, those are the realities of what you’re working with in the system. They’re just there.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Right. And that’s a great point. So, you have to evaluate, “Is this going to change their life? Is it worth having these witnesses go through this emotional stress again?” And I think it’s a win-win situation. I think we did as best as we can with the obstacles that Don Southworth have placed in front of the detectives. I think it was an outstanding investigation. And I think the outcome is not what we’d like but it’s the best that we can do.
David Lyons:
Absolutely.
Detective Bill Brislin:
I like to say this as well as this is the individual we were dealing with is the first wife that with the kidnapping, their relationship began in 1983. Just to give you some idea of how long this was going on. The kidnapping was 1992. The physical and mental abuse was occurring that whole time. And then, he was not investigated until the time he killed Umi in 2010.
Detective Bill Brislin:
So, to give you some idea of how long he’d been, basically, victimizing these victims had been quite a while. So, just to give the audience some idea of how long he had been at this.
David Lyons:
Well, as we round this out then, let’s talk about domestic violence a little bit. And unfortunately, we’ve all worked cases that ended the wrong way for that. What were some of the things that this guy was doing that people could look for in behavior of other people? When we talk about the control factors, were there some individual little things he was doing along the way that you all found out in the investigation that if somebody else was in those shoes, they could watch for and say, “Hey, I may have a problem with this?”
Detective Bill Brislin:
I think just to start with the most recent would be the Fazoli ladies. They were seeing an employee and a friend of theirs that sat by them side by side every day having to report to an individual who was believed to be her husband and saying that she can’t go to lunch with them because he’s demanding she has to eat with him and him picking her up and not having phone access. And these are small things that they were saying that I think other individuals may be seeing currently with their friends or coworkers.
David Lyons:
What can people do in a situation like that, guys?
Detective Chris Schoonover:
In reality, in a perfect world I would say, there’s plenty of hotlines that people could call.
Detective David Richardson:
1-800-799 say for the domestic violence hotline. Just reach out to people. Reach out to your friends, family. Reach out to the hotline. And we want to help. The police want to help.
Wendy Lyons:
Well, and I think also, it just takes a lot of courage from that victim especially in the first couple that you mentioned that you all had to go search for. When someone is willing to just go hide and change their name and physically become sick when they think that their abuser has located them or sent someone to find them, that’s powerful.
Wendy Lyons:
And it takes a lot of courage to be able to stand up and tell your story when you’ve got that person at home maybe threatening you and you really don’t know what their capabilities are or to what lengths they’ll take to harm you if you do tell. So, I can’t imagine what shoes the victim must be in to think she has to stay or he has to stay or they will suffer the consequences of that.
Wendy Lyons:
So, I think definitely having the courage to get out and find a safe place whether it’s calling the number or confiding in a friend or going to a safe house. I know there’s often safe houses for domestic violence victims. But understand that you don’t have to take it. You don’t have to be a victim.
Detective David Richardson:
And domestic violence isn’t always physical abuse. It can be mental abuse, financial abuse, just controlling someone. And so, if you feel that those are going on in your life, reach out and talk to someone and let’s work through this and get you the help we can provide.
David Lyons:
Yeah. Have faith in the system. I said it during the Amanda Ross episode is that when we see those outliers, those extremes, when everything looks like it’s in place but we have a result is not to lose faith. And some people will say, “Well, restraining order is just a piece of paper.” And that’s true in some extent.
David Lyons:
But in most cases, it works and it works well. And people need to remember that and to move toward that instead of away from it. So, I’m with you, Dave, is that those resources are out there, you just kind of keep punching away. And if you’ve got a friend that’s going through this, you need to be extremely supportive with them. That’s what they need.
David Lyons:
Tell them what to do. Be someone to be there to hold their hand and encourage them and be there and offer those supports, especially if there’s economic downfalls that come with this like moving out or something, is that it takes people getting their arms around people to help them.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
And that’s what we discovered in this investigation was the individual that she was texting, she promised that person that she wouldn’t stay the whole night with Donald before she left for Nashville. And they made her promise. And he, to this day, feels so bad. And there’s no recovering from that.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
But as a friend to an individual that’s going through domestic violence, take the initiative. Just say, “Why don’t you just stay with us? Go ahead and say your goodbyes. I’ll come over and pick you up.” Support them in any way you can. You don’t have the answers, but let them know that you will be there no matter what time of night, in this situation, 1:00 that person would have been over there driving, pick them up, take them back to the house, say their goodbyes and move on with their life.
Wendy Lyons:
Well, gentlemen, thank you so much, Bill and Chris and Dave. You have done a fabulous job helping us to see what kind of victim Umi was and so horrible of her death. And my heart goes out to her family that she has her daughter. But thank you all so much. It sounds like you work tireless hours, put in so much effort for this. And we’re grateful that you came to share your story.
Detective David Richardson:
Thank you for having us.
Detective Chris Schoonover:
Yeah, thank you again.
Detective Bill Brislin:
Thank you so much.
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.
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 shownotes for imagery and audio and video files related to the cases you’re going to hear.
David Lyons:
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David Lyons:
And please tell your friends. Lock it down, Judy.
