EP. 63 PETITO CASE

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Welcome to Is this Legal here are your hosts attorneys Colin McCallin and Russell Hebets.

Welcome everyone. To another episode of Is This Legal? My name is Russell Hebets and I'm here with my partner, Colin McCallin. Yes you are. Hello everybody today, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna be talking about a case that has been all over news. This is one where actually I had seen a ton of headlines, Colin, but I hadn't really been following it. And my wife actually brought this case up and just started quizzing me and asking me questions about it and I didn't have answers. So I went out there and I found answers. I can't, I wait to hear what case you're talking about. Russ. We are talking about the Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie case. Oh yeah. I think everybody's talking about that case. I'm pretty sure everyone and their mother, even people who live under rocks, I believe are talking about this case, cuz it has gotten everywhere.

It's somewhat timely. I mean a couple podcasts ago, we did the case on Barry Morphew, which is murder without a body, uh, and is kind of a missing person's you know, it it's it's along those lines. Um, and actually we have a body in this case we do have about didn't have a body the whole time, but we do have a body now and we are going to specifically kind of focus our podcast on the criminal liability or potential criminal liability. Brian Laundrie's parents, Christopher and Roberta. Right, right. That's where a lot, you know, a lot of focus obviously has been on what happened between Gabby and Brian, but we thought we would take a good look. A good hard look at, um, the culpability, if there is any, uh, on behalf of these parents, uh, whether, you know, we're gonna talk about different things that they may have done could have done that we think could possibly be criminal or not criminal, depending on kind of what they did this.

Hopefully make sense later. Yeah. It it'll all come together, everyone. So let let's start with anyone who maybe has been seen all those headlines, but really he hasn't dove into the case. Let's let's give just a quick primer of what happened this summer. Yeah. So we have a timeline here and uh, we're gonna walk through it. Yeah. So it, it began this summer Gabby Petito and her fiance, Brian Laundrie, decided to embark on a cross country's printer, van trip, visiting multiple national parks and camping and yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun actually. Yeah. So they were, they were actually like Gabby Petito was a, um, uh, big on social media. She had a bunch of follower followers. She was posting as they went and eventually at some point on this trip, her posts stopped that's right. Yeah. They, you know, it it's just the tool of them.

They're in a white van road tripping. And uh, as you mentioned, Russ, this girl is pretty prominent on a social social media and she was kind of, uh, blogging her trip or vlogging her trip. Um, and all of a sudden in, in, in, in terms of the timeline, um, all of her posts and communications stopped near the end of August. Now let's back up because do, during the trip on August 12th, uh, 2021, the Moab, Utah police actually had a domestic violence encounter with this couple. Um, they, they were seen by a bystander and engaged in an argument and the police actually came out there's body cam footage of these interactions. Uh, and you know, basically it looks like the summary of those body cam video show that they both talked about the fact that there was an altercation between them, but they both love each other.

And the police decided not to take any action. Yeah. And, and said, okay, well we're we're outta here. But there, there was allegations that he was that Brian Laundrie was at least slapping Gabby Petito. Yeah. And there's a lot of circumstantial evidence around this. Like there was a witness who said he saw, who turns out to be Brian laundry, slapping her. That was not conveyed to the Moab police when they were making the contact. So there's, there's a bunch of ancillary information out here and there's a whole lot of circum, substantial evidence that points to Brian, but let's so let's get back to, to Brian. Yeah. Okay. Because sometime late August communication from her stopped, he then shows up back at his parents' home in Florida, in Florida, Christopher and Roberta without Gabby, but Gabby's white sprinter van. Right. And um, I think they get back.

He gets back from this trip right at the beginning of September. And this is before this case blew up in the media. Um, you know, it now again, she had stopped communicating with everybody right at the end of August 30th, her last text, um, to her family, which they actually don't believe she drafted, indicated no service in Yosemite. The reason that they, uh, they doubt that was, uh, from her is because her body was later found in Wyoming. I don't think they made it to Yosemite. And so, you know, there's SU there's suspicion around that text. So it's possible she could have completely opt social media earlier than August 30th. The point is Brian Laundrie never reports Gabby Petito missing. And he shows back up, drives all the way across the country, uh, in her van to his parents' home. And Russ, why don't you take it from there?

Well, he hangs out in his parents' home for, um, roughly 10 days. I mean he, he and his parents go on a camping trip after a week or so together. Um, according to dog, the bounty hunter has gotten who who's, whose information is unimpeachable, by the way, you guys were just waiting for the dog dog, the bounty hunter reference. Yeah. He's involved in this. He's involved in the search somehow, but, uh, yes, they're he, Brian lottery stays with his parents roughly from like September 1st to about September 5th, they all take a road trip, Russ to, uh, a campground about 75 miles away from their home. They stay there for three days and they apparently leave together. Um, we don't know what they did there. We don't know what's going on with this trip, but it's around that time that suspicion is swirling. People are starting to wonder what's going on is grabbing a hole of this case.Yeah. A few days later, September 11th is when Gabby's family reports her missing. They hadn't had communication with her for, um, at least 11 days, assuming that text was accurate, couple more days, if it wasn't from her and they reported her missing. So the police east, they reach out to the laundry family and they wanna ask about Gabby. What's the response? Uh, well the response is, we're not saying anything. You talk to our attorney, uh, the fam the laundry family, uh, have been making all of their communications, the through an attorney. They haven't said one peep about this. Um, but what we do know again is that during this interval of time, um, they didn't contact, uh, Gabby pet Tito's family. They offered no information. Brian has offered no information as to what happened to her, where, why he came home alone. Um, it it's terrible for, you know, Gabby's family is sitting here.

They know people have information about this, and they reached out directly to the laundry family. And no one is talking, I mean, the laundry, family's not talking to anyone. They're not talking to Gabby's parents, Gabby's family, the police, no one, they have just buttoned everything up. Right. And you know, the potato family has reached out to the public. They've reached out directly to the laundry family, basically saying, look, if you have any sort of decency or humanity left in you, please let us know. We can't eat. We can't sleep. This is killing us. Um, and, uh, anyway, unfortunately we have an UN unhappy ending in this case because, uh, on September 19th, um, human remains were discovered in Teton county, Wyoming, uh, which were consistent with, uh, Gabby Petito. And in fact, two days later on the 21st, the FBI, the cor the Teton county coroner was able to confirm that they are the human remains of Gabby Petito.

So she, we know that she died, um, and that her, her death is being considered a homicide, right. It was of note, it's not a suicide or accidental death. Exactly. And so let's back up a few days before that identification, before the body was even found Brian laundry disappeared, right. He left the laundry home and, uh, purportedly out to go hiking in a nature, preserve in Florida. Um, notably he didn't bring his cell phone. He didn't bring his wallet. He left those at home and he left. He left with a backpack. I believe, according to his parents, he left with a backpack and parents say he went to this 80 square mile. Some, some mass nature preserve in Florida, right? Exactly. With like 80 miles of trails, um, swamp land, very tough to search. Um, the parents that they went and found his car there and left a note on it because they were worried about him hurting himself, and then eventually came back and got the car because they didn't think he was gonna come back and, and collect it.

But to date, Brian is still Mia. Yeah. We don't know if he's alive. We don't know if he's dead. Uh, we don't know if he's hiding. Right. Um, all of this of course is there's a lot of speculation in the media here, but at the moment he has yet to be located, he he's, there is a warrant for his arrest. Yeah. That's what I was just gonna say, go ahead. He's he's clearly a person of interest in the homicide. Yeah. But the warrant, yeah. The warrant doesn't go to the homicide. He's actually not to the homicide, the warrant for unauthorized use of a financial transaction device, because he apparently used Gabby's debit card on the trip, back from out west to the tune of about a thousand dollars. Right. Exactly. So that is what the warrants for, but what the warrant does is what, what does it do for law enforcement costs?

Well, it allows to contact him and arrest him and look for him. And, uh, it also allows, it allows for them to do other things such as execute search warrants. Um, you know, during the, any criminal investigation, really, uh, the police are allowed to, um, use the search warrant tool in, in, in further investigation of a crime. The they're investigating in this particular case. Obviously we, I mean, it's the, the big story is, did this guy kill Gabby, right? Um, but they are able to use the information that they have in order to search the laundry family home, which the FBI has done. Why FBI, by the way, uh, well, this, this crime occurred in a park. Um, and so NA because it's a national park, that means federal law enforcement is, is involved here. And honestly, it makes sense in a case like this, because we're essentially talking about a homicide investigation that is interstate that is taking place yeah.

In several states across the country. So in a way, it, it just makes sense. But that's where, that's why local police are not involved with this. The FBI is concerned with this, right. FBI has jurisdiction because it was national forest. And FBI also has jurisdiction because those debit cards were made in multiple states, these driving across the country. Exactly. And so here's like strategically, here's why they would issue the warrant for the financial, for the debit card rather than for murder is because it is much, much easier to get a warrant for a crime that they can show was committed. Like right now they're still collecting evidence about the murder. They don't have, have to convince a judge to sign off on a murder warrant when they're still investigating it. They can just sign off on this other warrant and use those tools that Colin just talked about to essentially investigate the murder.

They're looking for this guy. They don't wanna spook him and say, Hey, we've got a warrant for you, Brian laundry for first degree, murder of Gabby Petito know, I mean, if he is on the run, how likely is it that a person is going to, you know, come back once they find out that there's a arrest warrant for murder. Now he's probably smart enough to know that he's, uh, I'd say there's a sought after person, but I, I can also see the FBI saying, listen, we just want talk to you about this homicide right now. We're only talking about, you know, fairly small minor charges, come in and talk to us. We'll see what's going on here. Right. And, and you know, that that could work. That could work. So what we wanna do is dive into the parents, Christopher and Roberta, because we know that they had individual contact with him, exclusive contact with him for like two weeks after the death of Gabby, that is completely unexplained. And we wanna know, and we wanna answer the question for everyone out there. Do Christopher and Roberta laundry have any criminal exposure. And if so, what exactly. And we are going to get to the answers to those questions right after we take a break to play, is this legal with today's podcast guest? We will be back.

It is my honor to introduce our next guest. He is a Jack of all trades, but don't call him Jack. He's the paralegal, a writer, a sound engineer, a podcast producer, a ring tone creator. And he absolutely shreds on guitar. You don't believe me. He's is responsible for the, is this legal theme song. You listen to every single time you listen to this podcast, please welcome to the pod. Jason totes. Wow. Woohoo. Thanks so much guys. Our own Jason totes long time listener.

First time participant I'm excited.Uh, Jason has listened to every single episode of our, uh, podcast because he has helped us, uh, make him sound better. And he gets, 'em all cleaned up and pretty and shiny for the Show.

I Do. Jason. It's pleasure to have you here. My question is, do you have your thinking cap on because it is time to play. Is this legal?

I was up all night studying. I'm ready to go fire away.

All right, here we go. Jason, this hypothetical involves our good friends, Cornelius and Jada officer Cornel thinks his old nemesis and town near do well. JBA is growing and distributing marijuana illegally from his home. The problem is that JBA is a wily rascal. He knows officer Cornelius really wants to nail him. So he keeps a, his windows and blinds closed and he wrecks a privacy fence around his yard. Officer Cornelius, however will not be denied. He's pretty clever too. He sees a telephone pole across the street. He decides to climb the pole and install a camera that can see de into Judi's backyard over the privacy fence. Now because it's a public place where the poll is, he doesn't get a warrant. It's great. The camera can zoom in and out and has a great view of the yard. The camera records 24 7. Finally it catches JDI in his own backyard, harvesting weed and packaging it for distribution. JDI is arrested based on the camera's evidence. Is this legal?

Whoa, Interesting. Huh? Why don't you, uh, yeah. Why don't you take us through, uh, as the wheels are turning here, what's going through Your mind?

Well, okay. First of all, I'm thinking if I get this wrong, I'm definitely gonna wait till you guys leave and then rerecord some smart stuff. Splice that in Man. Um, I guess we shouldn't have given him the keys to the podcast, got time to change some passwords.

Um, I guess my first thought is that it depends on what the initial, his initial basis of suspicion was. Like, I, I missed the part at the beginning. What did you say? He, why did he suspect he just suspects it just a hunch.

Yeah.

Okay. I don't know. I have no idea, but I'm gonna just go with my gut and say no way, not legal.

Uh, why, what, what, why is that Your answer?

Because I don't think you can. I don't think you can just spy on someone off a hunch.

Well, um, I would say that the Supreme court of Colorado agrees with you. We got a winner. Oh my gosh. Uh, that is correct. Uh, this actually just came up, uh, made a little bit of a splash in the local media. Uh, but the Colorado Supreme court took this issue up and said that no, 24 hour surveillance without a search warrant goes way, way too far. Uh, they had an issue with the fact that basically you can set up a camera SP directly in someone's yard and record everything with no with no bookend period, no beginning date, no end date. They just basically start recording. And it's also relevant. And as you said, that it's a, it's a private backyard. You know, this is, this is not recording a public street. This is report recording over a privacy fence. No, no, no, no way. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, Russ. What about the fact that the camera is in a public place? I mean, I distinctly heard in your hypothetical that, uh, you know, it's not like he planted the camera on his property. He planted that on a public place in a telephone pool. I mean, that gets him like halfway there. So, I mean, it's, it's good that the camera's in a public place, but you can't be looking into someone's private property. And as Colin said, you can't be doing it 24 7. So for those reasons, Jason, you are correct. Oh, Man's right.

Yeah. Good work. Um, and, uh, this is kind of a special episode for Jason here because unfortunately Jason is gonna be moving on from us. Not only has he been our sound engineer for our podcast, but he's working, uh, as a paralegal for our law firm for a long time. Um, and he is moving on to greener pastors and better opportunities. Uh, we wish Jason the best, but the good news is he's still gonna be working on our podcast. So, um, I guess this isn't really a goodbye.

This is more of a Overwatch, Right? Uh, yeah. But yeah, I, I will be back and, uh, thanks for everything guys. And,And you've got the microphone here. This is your moment. Anything else you wanna say? Anything you wanna pitch shout out? Yeah.

No, not really. And I don't have anything to plug or anything, but

Wow, boring.

I'm sorry. Uh, but I will say just, uh, these guys are great and uh, if you're in legal trouble, give 'em a call.Awesome. Wow. Thanks, Jason. We didn't even pay for that. He plugged us awesome.

Straight from the heart. All Right. We're gonna head back to the episode now. Welcome back, everyone. All right. So we left off with do Christopher and Roberta laundry have any criminal liability and if so, what is their criminal liability? So for purposes of this segment, everyone out there, we are going to assume for our hypotheticals and for this hypothetical discussion, we're going to assume that Brian laundry, in fact did murder Gabby. Petito okay. Where we're gonna, we're gonna assume that he actually actively murdered her. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a suicide that this was a murder and he is the one responsible. Okay. Whether that turns out to be true or not, we'll wait and see. Right. But I mean, there's a lot of evidence right now that points to it. Yeah. But Hey, innocent to proven guilty exactly. Right. Your defense attorneys after all. Yeah, exactly. But for this hypothetical, we're gonna assume that that is the case.

He did murder her. So like some, some things that come to mind immediately, for me, Colin, knowing that the parents had exclusive contact with him for 14 days where she is unexplained missing, um, like conspiracy complicity, harboring a fugitive. Those are just some things that come to mind. Like, did they help to us cist in this hypothetical murder, real murder, but hypothetical Ryan did it. Right. So let's talk about some of those terms. I mean, let, let, let's kind of start with, let let's look at their potential criminal liability from the most serious crimes kind of on down. Okay. Let's start with the homicide of Gabby Petito. I mean, is there any way that they can be criminally criminally responsible for that murder via things like conspiracy or complicity, which were, were they, were, were they an accomplice to this? Um, here, here are, those terms explained a little bit.

Um, conspiracy is where there is an agreement between two or more individuals to commit a crime or to aid in the commission of the crime. Yes. Complicity is where there is active aiding and abetting. Exactly. They're very similar, right? They are similar. Um, now in this particular case, um, you know, there, there may have been some sort of cover up. I mean, again, assuming that, uh, that, that Brian actually killed Gabby and came home and informed his parents of this effect, you know, we're, we're gonna kind of look at that and say, okay, what are they allowed to do? What aren't allowed to do if they, um, did anything affirmatively to cover up this murder? For example, let's just say he brought home the murder weapon with him. Right. And the family took that and they disposed of it somewhere through it in the river, right.

Is what they did. Right. Um, um, that, I mean, that would be pretty egregious, but I don't know if that necessarily there, there, there may be an argument that they conspired to help them cover up this murder is that aiding and abetting her death so many days after the fact, not probably not right. Not, not for the murder and you know, Colin and I were taught about this a little bit earlier, and it is tough to come up with a scenario where the parents could be held responsible through any kind of legal mechanism for the actual murder, given that they were what, 1500 miles away. Right. And not active in it. Like here's here's. And if she's murdered in Wyoming and he returns days later to Florida, there's a nexus there that I, I, I don't think I, I don't, I don't know how you argue that, that anything they did would've prevented the murder.

He would've caused the murder. Pardon me? Right. What a cause murder here. Here's the scenario. Brian's on the phone with his parents. He's saying, oh, Gabby and I we've been fighting like cats and dogs. I am sick of her. I don't want to get married to her. Um, she needs to end and the parents on the other line say, oh, well, Brian, you should go kill her. Yeah. Okay. There you go. Then you had it like that's, it would have to be something that blatant to get. Yeah. I I'll be honest with you. I mean, that's close as we're gonna get, I don't even know if that does it. I mean, what if it's like, okay, here's how you do it. Sure. And here's how to disposal shirt. Here's how you, right. But you, that's a, probably a pretty unlikely scenario that probably didn't happen pretty far fast.

So, so we don't think that the laundry parents can be criminally responsible for Gabby's death, but that's not the end of the story Russ. Right. Well, what about Colin harboring a fugitive cuz they had 14 days where after he killed her, where they're sitting there not turning him in, just hanging out with him, to going on a nice camping trip, go visit the lake, you know, get away for a while. Right. So I mean, all of that is incredibly weird. All of that is incredibly suspicious. It's bizarre in this type of a case, uh, I don't think that's criminal and here's why it's because during that period of time, the FBI admitted, he's not a suspect in this homicide. He's not a, he's not a fugitive. He's not on the, I mean at the, they didn't, they didn't issue the warrant for him until I believe after he went missing.

That's right. So, you know, the whole time that they're spending with their son, he's not a suspect. He hadn't been convicted of anything. He's not a fugitive, so they're not harboring a fugitive. He's allowed to live there. So, so far, I mean we've exonerated Christopher and Roberta. I mean no, no nexus to murder, not harboring a fugitive. Are these parents getting off SCO free? I, um, I mean possibly, but let's talk about evidence tampering, Russ. Okay. Um, so, um, this, this is something that he could have exposure for. Again, this is all speculation on our part, but making certain assumptions, making assumption that he killed, that Brian killed her, that he came home and somehow informed his parents about what was going on. Um, did they do anything, um, that that could be considered evidence champering again? And if the scenario was like, maybe he brought home the murder weapon, if they disposed of that, clearly that's evidence tampering.

If, if they altered or tried to do anything with the electronic communications that had previously gone out or, or if, or if he killed her in the van and they helped him clean it. Right. That would, that would be tampering with evidence. Boom. And, and, and that's very, very serious. And that's very, yeah, that is very and thats a F very serious or, you know, since it's a federal crime, it's definitely punishable by, by prison. Yes. Um, so evidence tampering is something that could be out there now. Russ, what about this though? This is what I think a lot of our listeners are wondering about. Okay. I mentioned a, a few minutes ago and I still stand by this, that the behavior of Brian laundry and his parents since this event happened, I is, is at best suspicious, right? At best, at worse, it honestly makes it look like there, there is a cover up of some kind that, that they were informed about what's going on and that maybe they even took steps to help.

Uh, Brian vanish, um, these FBI agents, they come to the laundry family and they say, listen, you guys are witnesses. You, we don't believe you killed Brian. You need to tell us what you know and where, where she is, where he is, because we believe, you know, these things let's assume in this example, Russ, let's assume that they know answers to all of those questions. If you're a witness and you have information concerning a murder concerning a missing girl, considering the suspect's location, aren't you obligated Russ to bring that information to the police? I mean, it sure sounds to me like if you don't, it's obstructing a criminal investigation, you never have the requirement to talk to the police. Yep. You are never required to make a statement to the police. You have an absolute right to, to just shut up. It doesn't matter if you, if you are a witness, if you are the actual suspect, it, if you are the victim, uh, there is no obligation for you to speak to law enforcement, our, our, uh, longtime listen's to know this from our, uh, episodes we've done on interacting with the police, but it is perfectly within the laundry family's rights to say, we have nothing to say.

You can speak to our lawyer. Um, even if they know something about this, there is no affirmative obligation. They have to bring that forward. Now obviously the, or maybe is a moral obligation. Yeah. There, there maybe is a societal obligation, but as far as a legal obligation, no. Well, and I'll tell you, let's talk about that for a second because I I'm sure the laundry family is probably going through their own version of hell right now. I mean, I, I, I, I don't know what this family's like. Um, you know, but say they're nice. Yeah, exactly. You know, and, and, and there, and, and there, there are currently cameras parked in front of this family's home. They, they can't go anywhere without the FBI following them. Uh, and I'm, I'm saying for good reason, that's probably smart in a case like this, but I mean, um, this is a family that's probably under immense pressure right now.

I mean, Colin, is it legal for the FBI to follow them around everywhere like this? Yes, it is great. I see what you did there. Yes. Nicely done Russ. It's always, we have, whenever we have a teaching opportunity, we take advantage, but yeah, the, the police can follow you anywhere. Right. If you're on a public street, right. Uh, they don't need probable cause to just kind of tell you and see where you're going. They, they can probably even put a tracker on, uh, I, I don't know if they did that in this car, in this case, they probably need probable cause for that. They, they do. There's, there's actually recent case on that. But I mean, you know, frankly, the media is doing their job for them, him, because this family can't go anywhere right now. I mean, they, they can't leave their front driveway.And it's smart if Brian laundry is in fact alive still, then you know, the good place to start is him contacting his parents. That's who he went back to right after, you know, this, this death of Gabby. So you should surveilling them honestly. Well, especially based on what they've done so far. I mean, again, while their behavior, I'm not saying their, their, their behavior may not be criminal, but it's certainly weird and bizarre. And law enforcement might find following their movements fruitful. Right. And so here's, here's another avenue where they possibly have exposure because the, the car that was found, Brian laundry's car was found at this nature preserve that we mentioned before. There are, you know, there's a bunch of internet sleuths out there who are just putting forward their own. I mean, dog, the bounty hunter. I mean, it doesn't get any more cream of the crop than that.

Doesn't get any more Lu than dog. I mean, he's the Louies, but so a lot of people think that they, the parents, um, Christopher and Roberta intentionally left the car there and told the police that that's where he was as a red herring. Right. As the, basically let's divert all this manpower to this impossible search through swamp land. And meanwhile, that gave Brian time to just get the F outta Dodge in a totally different direction. Right. Um, if, if they did that, is that legal? Is that legal? Um, so the answer is no, no, that's not legal because then, then what you're doing, I mean, that, that, that, that could fall under a couple of different crimes, either false reporting to authorities, right. Uh, or, you know, in Colorado, we would call that attempt to influence a public servant. I don't know what the FBI calls of justice, but there, there are criminal charges for that.

I mean, if there, if they are affirmatively lying or misrepresenting facts to the police that caused the police to spend their manpower and resources chasing down that lead, yes, they are criminally responsible for that. Any, any line to police, you know, we said a minute ago, you have an absolute right to not talk to the police. That's as far as it goes, exactly. You don't have an absolute right to lie to the police. Now the police can lie to you of course. Right. But you don't have a right to lie to the police. And you know, now what about though this notion, if they, you know, again, if he, if the walls are kind of closing in, if they're seeing the riding on the wall and they just think it's imminent, that their son is getting, getting arrested now, is it legal for them to maybe make arrangements with him to go to a nature, preserve and disappear for a few days?

I actually think that probably is okay. Assuming the, uh, Brian, wasn't a suspect and wasn't wanted on a warrant before they made those arrangements. I think that's okay. Now they can't lie about it. They can't misrepresent. Right. But I mean, if, if, if he's like, look, I'm, I'm outta here, this the heat's too much, whether he's guilty or not, uh, I wanna get away and they help him get away. I think under circumstances because he wasn't wanted, that's probably all right. I agree with that. Yeah. I think it changes if he was cuz then you get to aiding and AB betting a criminal and I'm sure you could find, um, statutes to fit that into now. Russ, let's just have a, kind of a more loose conversation about this to wrap this up. You know, I've been thinking about this, let map it up tightly.

All right. Uh, I've got my bow right here. Uh, you know, we're talking about parents whose son is coming to them at the darkest moment of his life, possibly potentially disclosing that he had done this terrible thing. You know, I have spent some time kind of wondering, okay, if my, if my child, if I'm, if I'm in their position, how would I handle this situation? This impossible situation where the, the, the media, I mean, the, the, the dissension of the media upon this story is it's the biggest case in the country right now. I mean, know, everybody's talking about this case. What do you do? What, what, you know, how do you advise your son? I mean, obviously it depends, of course, on what information they were provided, what they knew, what they didn't know, but I'm trying to look at this case, oddly from the, from the lens of, of compassionate parents who want nothing but the best for child, no matter what horrible act their child committed.

So, I mean, you know, we're both parents, right? We both have children. And so you can, you can put yourself into those shoes as a parent. And if you do that, you know, that, that would explain why they might have left the car or why they might have, you know, just clamed up. But it doesn't in my mind, excuse it. And when you're talking about a crime like murder there, you know, nothing is more serious than that. You're talking about the, the worst transgression societally that you can, you can make. And in that scenario, you know, I just feel like that has to Trump, you know, protecting your little boy, you know, you, you, you, I mean, there certainly there's advice. You can give your child don't say anything, right? Uh, let's get you an attorney, which, which they obviously did. They have a family attorney.

Um, but ultimately it probably ends there. You're like, you, you might have to turn yourself in, right. You, you might have to at least make yourself available to what the authorities, you don't have to, you don't have to answer their questions, but, you know, yeah. I mean, I think sitting here, I think you and I are probably in agreement. You, you, you, you, you make it as, as easier as possible for your child. I mean, I, I'm sitting here wondering, is it possible that they were lied to by Brian laundry? Is it possible like that Brian comes home with this ridiculous story about something that happened that didn't really happen and maybe, you know, maybe they didn't know who to believe or what to believe. I still end up in the same place though. Okay. You get a lawyer, you, you, you know, we, we have to deal with this.

Isn't going anywhere. Cause honestly, no matter what Brian is in better shape, if he turns himself in, right. No matter what, right. Right now he is. I mean, he looks guilty as hell. Yeah. Right? None of, none of what he's doing is helping him. Right. It, yeah. There's, there's nothing good about what he's doing. Um, as a parent, I, I would be worried about him harming himself. Yeah. Um, you know, so there's, there's nothing good coming out of this. It's a super sad case. It's tragic. Um, but it's interesting. And it's, you know, it's got the attention of just about everybody and it does have a lot of, uh, legal issues, as you can see that kind of come along with it. So, uh, we will we'll update, uh, everybody's information comes in, although something tells me, none of you are gonna need updating the, the way this case has been covered. If you get your news here, uh, and here alone, I guess number one, I'd say to you, kudos to you. Number two, I'd say really? And number three, I'd say, well, we'll, we'll break the news whenever we can. Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll keep you informed on anything that you need to be informed of. So shut off all other news outlets now. All right.

But now it is time for De to the C to the OT w baby dumb criminal of the week. Yes. It's the segment everyone's been asking for? Oh man. I, I been, I'd be getting asked all the time, just walking down the street. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've been approached about D C O T w. But so it's gonna Colin. I wanna tell you right now, it's gonna seem like we're piling on, but I swear this is, this is just where the story came from Florida. Yes. Now I don't know what made me guess that it was completely like, I'm not just searching dumb Florida criminals. I'm actually just, but if you were to do that, you would find plenty of info. That's let's be honest. 90% of them. Yeah. Yeah. All right. What's going on in Florida this time? So here it is from citrus county, Florida, a man named Mac Yearwood.

He was wanted in connection with an assault, the citrus county Sheriff's office put out, they have a, instead of dumb criminal of the week, they have a wanted of the week. Okay. So they have a poster with Mac’s mugshot. What he's wanted for, which is by the way, violation of probation in reference to two counts of battery. Okay. His age, his weight, his height, and his name. So after putting out this poster, they're flipping through Facebook and they happen to find that wanted poster as the profile picture of Mac Yearwood. So, so he found the wanted poster and put it as his own Facebook photo, this profile picture. So, I mean, it, it, I, I just love, they put a clip of some of the comments. Willie Simmons writes, nice mugshot, man. Mac year would responds. Thanks, buddy. Then, I mean, my, my favorite is summer Nicole, this isn't real.

Is it uncle Mac? Did he, did he respond? He responded. Yeah. Unfortunately it is. Wow. And that's the same response that I'm sure he was internalizing when the cops used his Facebook to track him down and arrest him. Wow. The Stewart police department wrote on Facebook. Facebook's a great way to communicate and connect with old friends and family. If you wanted by the police. It's probably not a good idea to use the wanted of the week poster of yourself as your pro file picture. I, I agree with that. I, I have to say Stewart police department, that is good advice and good police work. That's really, really nice and good police work. So Mac, it didn't work out for you. Yeah. Probably should not have done that. I mean, not only is this a Florida case, but how many of, I don't know how many D CTWS we've done now, but I would imagine virtually half of 'em had something to do with social media.

I mean, it is amazing how social media can get people in trouble and, you know, Russ and I got a few stories of that on our own that we probably can't tell you, but, uh, yeah. People don't really pay attention to what they're posting on the internet and, uh, all the time. Yeah. It happens all the time. Yeah. And police and police are using it. Well, that's great though. I mean, that's, that's pretty, that's pretty, um, ballsy to just post that as your Facebook post, it is ballsy as your profile. That's great. And I'm, I'm going to simply, because it was just so aggressive and, and I mean, it really, it seems like he wanted to get caught, so I'm gonna give him a four. Okay. On five knucklehead, four to five knucklehead. Yeah. And I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he knew that this was, this was just an easy way to end it.

Yeah. Um, of course you guys listening at home, can't see this, but I will say this guy's really photogenic. I mean, it's a great shot. It is a great shot. Like, I mean, if, if someone took a, a photo of me like this, I I'd be pretty flattered. I'd be like, man, I I'd like people to see this. They got my good side. Maybe I should use this as my Facebook post. So say think it had nothing to do with the wanted poster. It was just a good picture. I, whoever is snapping the photos, uh, down in that Florida police department, they must be a professional professional photographer cuz this guy is gonna get like acting gigs with this thing. Um, yeah. Four sounds right. Um, I, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm actually, uh, I'm, I'm giving him credit for using at least a flattering picture cuz now that's a, not just on Facebook, it's all over the dumb criminal, uh, websites.

Right. Uh, for anybody to find. So at least a lot of P he thought about the fact that a lot of people are gonna see this photo. Um, but yeah, it's all pretty much stupid from there on out, man, if you're wanted, uh, and have a mugshot you might want not a, you, you might want to not make that your profile picture. Everyone. Thank you for joining us again. We have a lot of fun with it. Hopefully you had fun listening as always. You can find us on Twitter Hebets McCallin, or @IsThisLegalPod you can find us on, uh, Facebook Hebets McCallin or our website hebetsmccallin.com. Do you guys think that, uh, the Laundrie family is guilty of anything? Let us know, let us know your opinion. Yeah. Shoot us a tweet. All right. We'll see you guys. Next time.

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