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Truth & Justice with Bob Ruff

S6 Ep20: Jim Fitzgerald

Truth & Justice with Bob Ruff

Bob Ruff

Documentary, Society & Culture, True Crime

4.57.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2018

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After reviewing Sandy's police interrogation videos multiple times, Bob decides to bring in an expert. Jim Fitzgerald is a retired FBI profiler specializing in language. Fitz gained notoriety when his skills in forensic linguistics helped to find and capture the UNABOMer.

In this episode Fitz gives his expert analysis of Sandy's police interrogations.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Do not do not fear, I want to give you the body, but I do not fear, do not fear.

0:29.6

December 23, 2012. It was six years ago today that Jim Melgar lost his life. He lived his life

0:56.6

selflessly, always giving, never asking for anything in return. Jim was a father who loved his daughter

1:04.3

unconditionally in the type of husband that most women dream of. He was known to be kind, loving,

1:11.0

impatient, always leading with his heart. Jim was just weeks away from retirement when he was

1:17.8

tragically taken from this world. So before we begin today's episode, I'm like for us all to take a

1:23.9

brief moment of silence to remember the man that we've been and will continue to fight for. Jim Melgar.

1:53.9

Now it's time to get back to work. The path to uncovering the truth in any wrongful conviction case

2:17.1

is to focus on the details. Look for the things that the original investigators missed,

2:23.8

investigate the assumptions, and separate reality from fiction. We put every detail the state's case

2:30.3

under a microscope and see if it can hold up to the scrutiny. In order to find the truth from

2:38.2

time to time we have to bring in experts, people with the training, knowledge, and experience necessary

2:43.9

to take us beyond this speculation. When I bring in an expert to help us with our investigations,

2:49.4

I have two basic criteria. I only want to hear from experts with no preconceived thoughts on the case

2:55.8

and no motivation to bend towards one side or the other, and I always seek out the best of the best.

3:02.0

Jim Clemente is known to be one of the most talented criminal behavior analysts in the world,

3:15.3

and that's why I asked him to profile Jim Melgar's murder. Clemente's assessment of the crime scene

3:20.6

was that Jim was likely killed by someone whose motivation was not murder. It was likely a case of

3:26.6

a home invasion gone terribly wrong. Once we had an expert profile completed, I decided our next

3:40.0

step would be to put the microscope on Sandy. One of the major elements of the state's case,

3:45.8

as explained by prosecutor Colleen Barnett, and subsequently the form of the jury who convicted

3:50.7

Sandy, is that Sandy changed her story multiple times during her interrogation.

...

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