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Hello and welcome to true crime daily the podcast covering high profile and under the radar cases from across the country every week.

I am your host Anna Garcia we're recording this on July 28th 2021 and our guest today is Gerald Griggs who's based in Atlanta Gerald is a civil rights attorney but also handles criminal laws well.

Gerald has been with us before but right now I know that you're working on a very high profile case you're representing some of the victims and families who are who were allegedly abused by singer art Kelly Gerald welcome back to the program. How are you?

I'm doing great and thank you for having me absolutely Gerald can you give us a quick headline on what's going on with the art Kelly case cases as you know he's facing multiple cases around the country and currently the case in New York is set to go to trial jury selection on August the 9th the judge did delay the actual start of the trial to later on in August but jury selection will start August the 9th so many of my clients and many of their family members are eagerly awaiting their day in court where they can

make their formal allegations in front of a jury and then Mr Kelly can defend himself and then we can get to the bottom of what actually happened and get justice in these cases so we're we're excited. It's been a long time coming to get to this point and we're hopeful of the case that will be presented against Mr Kelly all right thank you Gerald and of course we hope that you will continue to keep us updated here and you'll come back as the the trials continue because there are a lot of people interested in what's going on in this case.

I will all right so Gerald these are the cases that we're looking at this week and one of them is happening in your backyard so I'll be very curious is what you have to say about this so here the two cases an aspiring rapper has been charged with 15 criminal counts and connection to a triple murder at a Georgia golf course but first a Pennsylvania man has pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murdering a young Amish teenager.

On July 22nd 35 year old justo smoker pleaded guilty in court to third degree murder kidnapping abuse of a of a corpse two counts of tampering with evidence and possession of an instrument of crime in connection with the killing of an 18 year old Amish teenager her name is Linda Stoltz-Fouce this is a horrible horrible case and what came out of this Gerald is that

witnesses had told police because you know she had been missing for some time and they they actually had to negotiate authorities had to negotiate with this man to find out where her body was buried which is you know when we get into the details of it Gerald we've had some cases where some families have absolutely refused to negotiate with the killer or alleged killer.

Yes and it is a very disturbing case any time that you have to negotiate to get information about your loved one is very disturbing I'm happy that you know they've gotten some semblance of justice but nothing could bring back their loved one and so my heart goes out to them but the fact that they had to negotiate is just very very very troubling individual with that type of control that type of mental power over some of them.

But it should never happen in our criminal justice system but I am happy that they were able to get some symbols of justice.

Yeah it's interesting you know some families are willing to do it obviously with prosecutors and the judge always overseeing everything and coordinating everything but some families refuse their feeling is that you know what our loved one is gone and there's no way that we're going to accept a lesser charge for this killer.

It's very interesting that this family felt very very strongly that they needed to have their Linda back they needed to have a proper burial and therefore they agreed to the lesser charges and this pattern of negotiation that took place over some time.

So let's get into the details of the case here.

So Justo has just been sentenced to 35 years and a half to 71 years behind bars as part of this plea deal that he entered into with prosecutors in the Lancaster County DA's office.

According to WGAL justo said quote this is what he said in court.

I know Linda was a light because of me the world is dimmer all I can say is I'm sorry and her family chose not to be in court to listen to this and I can't blame them.

Yeah I mean that's understandable I mean the pain that you're going through we lose a loved one and then to lose them in such horrific fashion you can understand them not wanting to be there and then having to negotiate to get the essential facts or you can give a proper burial so that you can have some similar closure.

I think that they wanted to have their Linda back as they said and they didn't need to hear from the killer he's the killer now because he's admitted to it.

But it's just it's it's horrible to think that in order to get closure you had to trade with this individual and I do understand plea negotiation happens all the time.

But most of the time you don't have to trade to get information where a body is located.

But I guess you know it probably death was on the table or some serious sentence multiple life sentences were probably on the table so this is the best thing to do for the defendant.

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