Anatomy of Murder

A murder case has many layers: the victim, the crime, and the investigation. To truly understand it, you need to dissect each piece of a tragic puzzle. Join Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi and Scott Weinberger every Wednesday for an insider’s perspective, as they reveal to you the Anatomy of Murder.

"I Definitely Did It" - Part 1 (Vilet Torrez)

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 08:00

A failing marriage leads to obsession, but did it also lead to murder? Four little words in a peculiar 911 call immediately launches the hunt for this missing mother.

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If you're looking for a new show unlike anything you've ever heard before, check out audio Chuck's latest series killed. Each episode of killed covers a story that you may have never read because it was killed before it got published. I'm Justine Harman, who some of you may know from my show OC swingers, and I'm here to bring these dead stories back to life binge killed right now to get the full story. Hi everyone, Ashley Flowers here and I have exciting news to share. My debut novel, all good people here is officially out now. Our fans are blowing up our social talking about it. You do not want to be left out and the worst thing that could happen is for someone else to spoil it for you because there are some wild twists in this book. If you love true crime content, mysteries, and a grown up Nancy Drew style detective work then I have a good feeling you won't be able to put this book down. So what are you waiting for? Grab your copy of all good people here now, wherever books are sold. Right now we're working a missing person, a mother of three. There's a neighbor of mine that was reported missing by her husband today. If you don't think that the husband is somebody that we have to iron out, it took for him two days to report her missing. Let's face it, she could be dead somewhere. They found the garbage bag and it just stunk so bad. We have a job to do. I don't know what to do. I'm. I'm nervous that maybe something's happened to her. You first. We have a goal, and our goal is to find your mom, OK? I'm Scott Weinberger's, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. Belasi former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's true conviction, and this is anatomy of murder. In today's story, while the subject matter may be similar to other things we've talked about before, you're really going to see and feel how an investigation works from the inside. Looking out here on a OEM, we always try to do as many things as we can to give listeners a complete 360 degree view of a case, including whenever possible, getting the actual audio used in the investigation. We're talking about 911 calls, interviews with the witnesses, interviews with suspects, confessions. And the one unique thing about today's case, there is a ton of it. And it will take you, the listener, back in time to when this crime occurred and you'll witness this investigation in real time, just as it was for the detectives. We're heading to Miramar, which is a city in Florida West of Fort Lauderdale. The day is Monday, April 2nd, 2012, and on that day, 911 dispatchers received this call. Yeah, just a second. Can you hear me? I just got the phone. Alright, hold on. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Alright, listen up. My wife been messy Saturday. She was in here suddenly. I definitely did it. I mean, it was 1:00 o'clock if you show up here. The caller is 38 year old Sid Torres. The woman he's reporting missing is Villette Torres, who's his estranged wife. They've been married for 13 years and they had three children, ages 5/8 and 13. OK, so she's been missing since Friday, I guess. I guess you all live together. Yeah, I know. I mean, do you live there with her or no? We're separated, OK? And now the call comes in on a Monday. But Volette, according to Sid, has been actually missing since Friday. So two whole days have passed without him reporting her missing. And also it sounds like he's in his car driving, and I found that a very odd place to be filing a missing person's 911 call. How about you? I don't want to read too much into the call, but in most cases, people, as you said, would not call from their car. They would call from their home, but in this case on their way to work. And also one other thing, not to expect that law enforcement would respond right away. That is a bit odd. All right, we'll get someone over there. Now over a week to work, but then I'm gonna go back, OK? So because I'm not in the house right now, OK? How long does it take you to get back over there? We're taking about 20 minutes, 30 minutes because I already put the call in, so I'm gonna be he definitely sounds and almost says that he's reluctant to go back when the dispatcher says that the police are going to go there, so he should meet them. I'm going back. I'm going back. Alright, alright, we got, we're on the way to. Alright. Bye. Bye. Dispatch sent police to the home to meet with said. But the odd thing was, is that Sid wasn't home like he had said. And in those situations, the dispatcher is going to dial back the caller to be like, hey, what's going on? Hi, this is Amir. Amir Police Department. You called for your wife? Are you at the house now? Because the officer is knocking and no one's answering. No, no, no, no one's there. I'm on my way over here, scale. So you guys went out on my way to work with them. How long until you get there the officer is waiting? 202030 minutes so 20 or 30. I will tell you how long will take me. OK? Alright Sir, he's waiting. I'll let him know. Thank you. Bye. You know, Scott, the fact that Sid wasn't at home and that he couldn't even nail down when he would get back there, what did that say to you? Well, I mean how serious was he about making this report? It is a bit of odd behavior, but like the 911 call, people handle stressful situations differently, so this could be the norm for him. Now Sid is a manager at a dry ice company and one question I would want to ask him is could your work schedule be so busy that you would not have time to talk about your missing wife and also the mother of your three children? But you know, if you know that you have to call 911, which is an emergency line. Yet he doesn't even sound like there's any sense of urgency in his voice and being reluctant to go back. It almost strikes me that it wasn't a priority other than the obligatory having to make the call. There is a protocol at almost every police agency here in the US about how to handle a missing persons report. It normally begins by somebody reaching out to a police or Sheriff's Department that prompts a response by uniformed officers or deputies to determine at that moment how urgent of a situation it could be. Like if it's a child or if it's someone who's elderly, those would set up different protocols than someone who was an adult who is suspected of being missing. That's when the determination is made to upgrade the investigation to a supervisor who would likely reach out to the Detective Bureau. Now, I'm not talking necessarily homicide, but probably missing persons at first. But in this case, the one we're talking about today, we've already said there were a couple of unusual things going on that led the initial officers. And missing person detectives to reach out to Detective Jonathan Zeller. It sounded weird, the case there were flags that were up, sounded like a little bit of foul play was involved and we got involved. Now, one thing you are going to all see right away is that Jonathan is a really smart investigator. You're going to hear it and what he did and even when you hear the way he spoke to the various people involved, well, back in 2018, others agreed and he was named Miramar's Officer of the Year. You know what? It's a real life puzzle that I enjoy trying to solve, you know, these mysteries I like to watching Columbo and those types of cop shows. And if you don't know who Colombo is, I'm going to suggest that you look him up because I actually think it'll help you as you're listening to some of this podcast, to understand who it is that Scott spoke to. Because Colombo is the guy known for his beige overcoat. He was clearly a relentless, excellent investigator and he was all about the detective work. And that's exactly how Jonathan Zeller strikes me as I listen to him on this case. Very quickly, detectives began to establish an important fact. From day one in the investigation, Villette didn't seem like the person to just walk away. And most likely something bad had happened to her. Everybody else described, you know, ballet tours, as far as being a great mom, you know, church going, you know, to work, she also didn't make it to work that day either. OK? And that was also not like her at all. So these are all the flags that go up why we get involved, you know, at our level. Now, almost right away, investigators did notice something unusual when they listened to that 911 call played back when Sid was giving a quick rundown of the events from Friday to Monday. My wife went missing Saturday. She was in here suddenly. I definitely did it, so she didn't work. Turn the device. The dispatcher, or the 911 call taker, you know, catches on real quick and says you did what? So you did what? I mean, and his response? Ohh, you know, she didn't come home yet. I mean, it was one o'clock she didn't show up yet. Proverbial Freudian slip is going to cause that no one's saying anything to him. He is reporting his wife missing in the middle of a timeline, he says. I definitely did it. Talk about this element before and it's often referred to as guilty knowledge. And for prosecutors, we're always going to call it what we're going to call it in court, and that's consciousness of guilt. So while we don't know what that did, it is because we don't even know where bullet is. It just makes you think that none of this is going to turn out well, at least not from the left. So we know this and you probably know this, but obviously detectives want to talk to Sid and get his take. And there is a lot to unpack about Sid and also volette. But before we do, it's important to get an understanding of the home, the neighborhood and the timeline of events. They always say the first 48 hours of every missing person case is the most crucial. So let us dig into the first 48 hours. Let's start with Friday. Police could prove that she was alive on Friday because her car was spotted. We had the tag for her car. We ran it through the Sunpass system, which is the toll system here in Florida. So meanwhile, Sid took the kids out and he clearly told that to investigators up front. So he goes to pick up the kids. He's late and picking up the kids and use the excuse that he got tied up with work. Since original plans were to take the kids to Disneyland, but he changed his mind. What he decides to do is take the kids on a train ride starting from Miami all the way to Fort Lauderdale. Going to see a movie with the kids while they were out. The daughter calls Valette and Valette is out having dinner with a coworker. Come to find out. What the daughter had told us was that while she's on the phone with her mother, Sid asks his daughter to ask her mother where are you at. The response that Phillip gave to her daughter was I'm having dinner with a friend. From there they go to IHOP to have a late dinner, and then they go back to the let's house. Sit had actually moved out September of the previous year. That was six months before that. This couple had now been separated. According to the daughter, they didn't want to stay at their grandparents home, so Sid took the kids back home and they all went to bed in the master bedroom, all four of them, the three kids and said. As Friday turns to Saturday, her car is spotted again. She was making her way to her home. She parked in guest parking and enters the gate on foot. We also have surveillance footage from the gated community that she lives in, showing her entering the community. And then we have another surveillance system from another House showing the car passing and parking the car in front of where she live. This was at 5:17 AM and from that point forward, Vallette was never seen again on video. When she arrived home, that van, her minivan, OK, where she parked, that's exactly where it stayed the whole time. There was never any evidence of her leaving the community, leaving her in her car and coming back. There's nothing like that at all. So at the moment, investigators have every reason to wanna talk to Sid further more than just someone who is a husband, more like someone who may be a person of interest. Hey, yes. Hey, how you doing? Detective toilet the memory Police Department, detective Zeller. We thought, you know, we often talk about the mindset investigators have walking into an interview room when speaking with someone who may be suspected of a crime, perhaps is even as serious as homicide. It's all about setting up a type of rapport, a level of trust, not revealing that you as the investigator already have serious suspicions and the reason it's unlikely the person will be giving up anything unless they're ready to confess, which we all know doesn't happen very often, so you don't want them to know that you're suspicious of them. Because they'll just lawyer up, clam up all these different things, and you won't be successful in getting any information. One of the moments that you'll hear a portion of is Detective Zeller's interview with Sid, and the audio may not be great, but it is very real. Again, just because so we didn't lose anything in translation with uniformed officer. And what's also very real that you hear is where it took place because it was in the home that said once shared with Villette and it really, you can hear how very conversational and relaxed, at least to a degree. This initial conversation was what's the status of your relationship. She has a boyfriend and we couldn't agree with that. Oaks gonna move out and eventually hopefully you work out. The relationship between Sid and Violet is complicated, to say the least, but it's also long. The couple met in high school. They quickly fell in love, and then they got married. Now their paths took them on different ways, although the couple remained together. She finished her education at the University of Miami. Sid took some classes, but then he joined the Armed Services and entered the Marines. And how long you been together? 20 years. 20 years? But it was his work, how much he worked, that really seems to be the thing that started to fray this marriage. Not separated because of of, you know, differences. Just be separated because of the money. OK, so there wasn't anything marital that we were separated. So did they draw divorce papers? They turned, they got the attorney. Thank you, honour like you contract. Who is the attorney? Nice name. Here is another one of those very unusual moments that was borne out of this interview. Sit told investigators that he hired an attorney and filed for divorce, but he did not know the attorney's name. I find that a bit odd. Metaphor on the pool. If you want to put the water, you have to come to see that this is just another you think anything as bad as happened to her. Not diesel matter, me not. Country super. Really probably having the time of our life. But if you could. But then all of a sudden he is emotional to the point that he is crying when he talks about his love for this woman and the fact that they're marriage is falling apart. It doesn't. That's what worries me. That's all. You know what to stay up late. So late. I really could sense that inner turmoil that he was experiencing. Obviously my little one. Certified Mommy today detectives are going to speak to everyone that they can find that is closest to Violet, and in this case that's including her 13 year old daughter. And that formal interview is where this case takes its first big turn. When we interviewed her, you know, she told us that that particular night she had woken up hearing these what she described as howling noises. She also said that she heard her mother crying too. She also then heard, you know, her father saying no, you wake up, no, you wake up several times, not to her, but this is what she's hearing. She never went downstairs to see what was going on or anything like that. She just went back to sleep. And the reason that it's telling is because when she describes it, like these howling noises or what? But think about this. If someone's being choked, you know they're making that noise of of being choked. Maybe that could be the the the sound that she's describing or this howling noises she's describing. I don't know. So right there, without even getting the rest of it, you just know that something happened inside that house, and we probably know who it is that caused it. Everything seems to be pointing at Sid, but there's a piece of information that investigators learned that changes this entire investigation around, and it doesn't have to do with Sid. This is a call police get from one of villette's neighbors. There's a neighbor of mine that was reported missing by her husband today, but I think I have some information about this lady. Early on in this investigation, Detective Zeller learned much more about Violette, including that she had been seeing somebody else. He learned this from friends, and also from Sid himself. I'm going with this guy for a year now. Did you know that guys, they work together? The man in her life explained by Sid was Zoe, a coworker of Violettes. Now we have somebody brand new on the investigative radar. So I would want to talk to Zoe and ask him questions not only about where was he or what involvement he may have in the disappearance, and that would give me some indications of where this investigation may lead. He did tell us, our coworker that she was seeing at the time. And trying to somehow maybe implicate him in her disappearance. And the question was, was Zoe the person she was with the night before she was reported missing? So to find out, Detective Zeller did a sit down with Zoe, who was able to provide some valuable information about that day that Vallette went missing. Zoe said they had ice cream. Later they had dinner. And at the end of the evening, he said they all went to his house down in Miami-Dade County, which is about 2025 miles South of Miramar. We did interview him and he was super cooperative. He hid nothing. He told us what we asked and he told us more as well. He also gave us access to his cell phone. He gave us access to his bank accounts. He gave us everything that you know and more. He then said he wasn't sure what the actual time that Villette left, but he does remember an incident that occurred before leaving his home. She just came out with it and said, I have to go, I got to go, I have to go. And he found that concerning. But you know, when you think about Zoe, there's this is that he may well have been the last person to have seen her before she entered into that gated community. When you're talking to a potential witness, if they're an open faced sandwich, I think that's a term for someone who's just willing. To tell you everything. Willing to provide everything, all the information that they have about what they know about potential disappearances or anything else relevant to a case. For all intents or purposes, Zoe was just an open faced sandwich. He was willing to provide them cell phone records, any kind of video evidence that they may have, putting him in a place where he can say this is when she left and this is where I was for the rest of the night. So they quickly ruled Zoe out as a potential suspect in her disappearance. And so once police rule out, Zoe. Then they have to look at who else could be responsible for Roulette's disappearance. When we start off an investigation, we start off in the middle and we kind of spiral our way out, eliminating suspects from within and going now outside of it. But once again, during that spiraling, I could never leave or eliminate Sid as either a suspect or somebody that had something to do with her disappearance. And if it is said, then they're going to need to get the evidence to prove it, but before they're able to start looking and speaking to witnesses, witnesses start to come to them. A911 dispatcher received a call from one of the let's neighbors. There's a neighbor of mine that was reported missing by her husband and her name is Celeste Torres and I spoke to her last on Thursday. The concerned neighbor called because she believed she had relevant information about Volette's disappearance, and she and her husband have been having problems. And it just. I just, I don't know. I don't want to say. I just, it's things I know. It didn't seem like there's anything all that unusual or out of the ordinary to hear that they're having problems. You know, this is a couple who things are so bad that they're actually getting a divorce. So it almost seems, well, of course they were having problems, but then police get another call. Hey, my neighbor came over here about an hour ago. He told me his wife who is soon to be his ex-wife is missing. He says he hasn't seen her since Friday. Although my boyfriend said that he saw her on Saturday morning but her husband, her ex-husband, told me he last saw her on Friday. Another important advantage of having these statements is verifying statements that Sid may have made to police, which could conflict his timeline of events. But it is what the caller told the 911 operator during that call that revealed a possible motive within that conversation. Just a few weeks ago, she told me that she had tried to kill her, and she told me that she told her the kids were going to be be orphaned. You had officers that responded their spoke to neighbors and where they were getting a different picture of what life or whatever was going on in that household was not a pretty picture. So I don't know what to do. I'm I'm nervous that maybe something happened to her and they have three small kids and he said he I asked him where the kids were and he said he was going to pick them up and he hasn't been around for like a month. And my boyfriend and I don't know what to do, but I don't know if I want the cost to be over here because we don't trust him. He's still increased and. Years. And, you know, hearing the call from me while we already had it, from the daughter, hearing this, it is just like everything is just the tables have turned and there's no way of coming back. And it's just this is bad, this is bad, this is bad. And just the weeks before the friend being told by Violette that Sid had said the children were going to become orphans, it's almost like you were hearing this self fulfilling prophecy come to life. Now the question must be raised if in fact these threats were real and if City is responsible for the disappearance of his estranged wife. What about the safety of the children now? So they have said he's agreed to be interviewed. He is cooperative to really every request they make, so they try to up it one more notch. Right now we're working in missing person, a mother of three. If you don't think that the husband is somebody that we have to iron out and say this is where it was, this is what happened, we we have to verify all that. Let's face it, right now, you probably have hopes that she's fine. There's an opposite side to that. That she's not fine. She could be dead somewhere. All right, if that's the case, we have a job to do. And the 1st place. Be perfectly honest with you. I don't know you from Adam. I'm not saying you did anything to her. We have to look at you. First reason being is because when we move on to the next guy or the other guy or a girl, whoever it may be, we don't have some defense attorney later saying. But wait a minute, what about the husband? Look, we checked him out from top to bottom. Not a pop right now. I can tell you right now, you're cooperative is good. It's good. I mean, you're not telling me that. Hey, wait a minute. I don't want to talk to you. That would be like, wait a minute. Why doesn't he want to talk to me? His wife is missing. All right, but we're not playing games. But no doubt, you're the prime suspect. We have to be able to eliminate you. We have to get past you first. Get past you first. Now that is a very interesting statement to use within an investigation, but a great technique. And here's why you're showing a person that there is a path to eliminate them. If they just cooperate on this next step, then you'll move on to potential reasons why she's missing or who may be involved in her disappearance, including perhaps the person that Sid felt was responsible, which was her new boyfriend. Has she ever laid a hand on you or your vice versa? Yes, yeah, there's been a few times here. What was the extent of the violence? Slapping, punching, not punching, but yes, you know, driving her and driven by the short. So what are you doing? What you doing? Police had a strategy to really figure out exactly how truthful Sid was going to be. Now it is something that all of you have heard before. It's just one of the subject of of eliminating you. Do you want to take a polygraph test? And investigators aren't just thinking about what will happen during the actual polygraph. They're even thinking before what's going to happen when they acid to take. One reason that I asked if you wanted to take a polygraph for a computer voice stress analyzer was to determine whether a did he really want to do it and try to help out. If he has nothing to hide or was going to say no, I'm not doing it. If we could set it up like, you know, now it's going to be our office, none of the main Police Department. You think about let's assume for a minute that he's done something. So how is he going to react at just being asked to take the test? While he doesn't have to take the test, there's no obligation. Remember, he is playing the cooperative card. He is talking to the police whenever they want, wherever they want, saying yes to whatever request they make. And so if he says no, why? So you'd almost think that he feels maybe boxed in, that he must say yes. Sid goes in that very same day to take the polygraph test. But here's the thing. He doesn't pass the test. But he doesn't fail either. You do know why you're here. I'm not investigating this. What I'm doing is I'm going to conduct the computer voice stress analyzer. The test that Sid would agree to take wasn't a traditional polygraph examination. At the time, the Miramar Police Department were utilizing something called CV SA, which is short for computer voice stress analyzer. The subject is not actually hooked up to the machine, but answers the questions into a microphone. The computer then registers micro. Tremors, which are tiny frequency modulations in the human voice and when the test subject is lying, the automatic or involuntary nervous system causes an inaudible increase in the micro tremors frequency. The CSA detects, measures and displays those changes. There's a couple of questions that the detectives want me to ask you very direct, but these are the questions that will be asked. While he's trying to set up the machine, he noticed, you know, that Sid was writing some things down and this investigator asked him, you know, what are you doing? You're taking Nelson? No, no. You know, she pays the bills and stuff. I'm just looking to see what bills I need to pay. I found that odd for multiple reasons. I mean, one, if I'm going to a police precinct to talk about my missing loved one, I'm probably not even thinking of my bills, and I'm certainly not taking them with me. I thought that was weird, too. So did the investigator. Hold on, you're here to take a polygraph or a CSA, and you're worried about your bills. Another flag. My take is it's a way of him displaying some human behavior. He was not nervous, right? He was like paying his bills, which is just as routine as answering you, the detectives questions that he is cool as a cucumber. But Scott, if you're called into a precinct, like if I'm calling the precinct today about anything that I definitely didn't do, like, I can't imagine that I'm bringing my checkbook and writing out checks for, you know, my gas or heat at the time. I think this is his way of dealing with things. And you know what? To be fair, that could be completely his personality. I agree with you, Scott, because as you were talking, I was starting to think just that. You know, it's also a great example of why, as an investigators and prosecutors, we can never get tunnel vision. Like you said, maybe it's just him and we're all reading much too into it. So I guess we're going to find out. Is your name Sid? Yes. Do you suspect someone of killing voluntourism? No. Pretty orange shoes. Do you know who killed Follett's horse? No. Are you sitting down? Did you kill for the Taurus? When investigators get the results of the CSA, it wasn't what they expected. It turned out there was an issue with the machine. You can't do anything with it now. It doesn't tell you anything one way or another, and I would really be hard pressed to think that he's going to allow them to try it again no matter what he's done or hasn't done. So it was kind of like one shot and done and the machine totally messed them up. Well, I wasn't happy about it, but listen, things fail. I get that it happens. Not everything is perfect. Do I wish that we could do it again? Yes. The time it will come now. So with the lack of any information from the CSA, they choose to interview him again. We know she came back to the neighborhood, but then on top of that, when we have your daughter saying she woke up in the middle of the night and she heard what she heard, all right? I mean, it starts to add up, wouldn't you agree? If she hear something, I wouldn't know whether she hear all right. And here is where you start to see the inner workings of Sid starting to come into play full force because there is this push and pull which is going on during that interview. She heard her mom crying. I don't know whether I mean, she heard her mom crying was like the air because I was laying in the bed. She heard you crying too, all right? And you weren't in bed. I was in bed. Just won't flinch, but he also won't give an inch and he is really, while not outwardly combative, he is tug of warring with them every step of the way, which is really starting to show to me that his mind is starting to try to figure out how to deal with this and still come across as the cooperative innocent husband. I could not in good faith disregard anything that Sid told us or did would not rule him out whatsoever. But who was responsible for bullets? Disappearance is just a part of the mystery. The question really remains where is she? Think about where Villette was last seen. She is seen going into the gated community and remember, oh, neighbor says, that he actually saw her going into the house. So those two areas, both the car, her car and the house, could prove vital and certainly give vital information and clues to investigators. So they want to get into both and they'd get the car. Remember, Sid let them tow it away and they search it. But when they do. They got nothing. The next step for crime scene investigators was to do a similar search of the Torres home. The goal there is to find any evidence or any indication of, you know, that a crime was committed. Would they be able to locate any signs of a struggle? How about damage? Evidence of a fight? Maybe he stabbed her. Maybe he shot her. What about blood? Research it. We process it. We, you know, photograph it. All that to help us look for evidence. What they did notice was very commonplace, but also telling is that all her everyday items were there. Whether it's her toothbrush, whether it's her clothing, whether it's whatever, all those things were still there in place. Nothing was taken of hers. Did it look like a normal household? Yeah, it looked normal to me. Was there any indication of anything that was broken or anything like that? No, there was not. While overall it looked like a normal house, they did find one more thing. Blood. In a missing persons investigation, where it's under suspicious circumstances, finding blood in the victim's home is a pretty big BRF, or big red flag. But before you go there, whose blood is it? Could it be the type of blood or a very small amount of blood just left on a wall or a floor from a small cut and that was just transferred to the surface of the house? Could it really just be that? Keep one thing in mind too is that even though there was blood in the house, we could never tell if that was from this incident. Another incident? Was it an accident from one of the children? That's one of the scenarios that actually was true is that there was some blood there and it belonged to one of the kids that had an accident. Just another bit of hopeful information which turned out not to be useful. So right now the big question is, is Sid responsible for Follett's disappearance? And it doesn't look from the outside like he's trying to hide anything? I mean, he'd agreed to this stress analyzer test, and on its face at least, that doesn't seem like the actions of a killer. Detectives did find out that Sid was hiding something. This is an interview between detectives and one of Sid and Velez's friends. One morning I heard he was buying cameras and things and I tried to call her anything that she talked or emails or anything she said he will see about his computer with at work. We had a coworker of said tell us that Sid would brag about it and he would actually show him on the computer. Hey, listen, this is the software that I used to, you know, see who she's texting or who's she's calling and so on and so forth. Girls, that led you to believe that that he was he was spying on her. As Jonathan is now interviewing the Friends of Sid and Villette, he and other investigators find out that Sid was in fact obsessed with Violet. In fact, he was paranoid, so bothered by seeing her with her coworkers that even though they are separated that he actually starts spying on her. I think we just. This is another interview between detectives and one of Sid and Billetts friends. He was able to read the text messages that he was sending and to hear their conversations. He told you this? Yes. He he said that he knew everything, that she was talking with the other person that he was going out with. And you know that he was so upset because he kept the listening to to this conversation and reading this text messages of everything, all the interchange between, you know, billet and her friend. You already do a side step into deeper, darker waters. Narcissistic, obsessive behavior, and it may even fall into coercive control in a sense of just knowing and controlling information about them, who they're with, what they're saying, where they're going. You know, it's not voyeuristic for just wanting to watch someone. There is a control aspect to it that had been going on for so long that is just disturbing now in a whole different way, even beyond fillette being missing. It may be weird for you, it may be weird for me, but for him? For a jealous person who everything that's going on with his wife, not that weird at all. He wanted to keep tabs on her no matter what time of day it was. He just wanted to know everything that she was doing. Based on the information detectives dollar was getting from witnesses, he could tell that Sid was using some type of spyware on Violette's phone. This coworker is the one that calls about it now. He didn't have a name of the software. I requested his credit card usage and from there I saw there that he had payments to a company for the spy software. When investigators Zeller starts to dig deeper. He finds out that Sid has been actually tracking the lead. He has installed spyware on her work computer. You could actually see text messages, emails, all her contacts, all the phone calls, picture, videos. And one of the the premier features of this software also was that you could actually activate the microphone and listen live. You have to remember, this is 10 years ago. I mean, technology wasn't where it is today. It must have been really difficult to implement this program, not only in her phone, but her computer, the levels of what he went to, to really be tracking her in every single way. That is most disturbing to me. It's incredible and it's frightening. Going back to a 2014 NPR investigation, they found that 75%. I mean, just think about that 75% of domestic violence shelters that were surveyed across the United States had encountered victims whose abusers had either used eavesdropping apps, and that 85% had actually encountered victims whose abusers tracked them using GPS software. Prior to installing the spy software, it was actually tracking her for well over a year. This has been going on for over a year. Hold on a second, if you have software that can track her, why didn't you ever tell us about it? We can also track her. You have to raise the question once you know that. So why not early on in the investigation when detectives or even officers first came to his home and said, hey, you know, you're reporting your wife missing. Why wasn't he helpful by saying, hey, wait a second, I've got this app on my phone or my computer that actually tracks her. Let me see if I can help out. Let me take this information and see if we can pinpoint her location. Nothing, bird chirps. He could track his wife anytime he wanted to and he failed to disclose that to us. You think if he was really concerned about the mother of his three children, and is she in trouble? Is she being held against her will somewhere? He had provided this information, but never once did he admit that. While we all seem pretty clear that we think we know who is responsible, we still need to 1st show that a crime happened at all, which is why investigators really need to find valet. In the first few hours they're using a lot of manpower to search, you know, a lot of territory around their house in Miramar, we did multiple searches, the whole entire community. But Miramar PD's efforts are about to pay off. In one of those searches, they find a bag. There was one particular search where they found like a garbage bag and it just stunk so bad. They opened it. And there's bones. But we'll let you know. Right now, those remains are not Villette Torres, who that turns out to be, and much, much more about Sid to be revealed next week in part two of our story. Anatomy of Murder is an audio Chuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Forseti Media. Ashley Flowers and submit David are executive producers. So what do you think, Chuck, do you approve?