The Dark Side of the Pacific Northwest: Cold Cases and Modern Violence

Cold cases and modern crimes merge as we explore the unfinished search for Teekah Lewis, a toddler who vanished from a Tacoma bowling alley in 1999, and the evolution of criminal activity throughout the Pacific Northwest.

• Teekah Lewis investigation sees new activity with a three-day excavation at a Tacoma property based on a "multi-pronged tip"
• Authorities confirmed they did not find Teekah's remains but suggest the investigation continues with potential other locations
• Gary Ridgway (Green River Killer) recently led authorities on a search for additional victims' remains that yielded no new discoveries
• Modified handguns with "Glock switches" transforming urban violence by turning semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic
• Recent mass shooting in Pioneer Square resulted in over 100 rounds fired in under a minute with multiple victims
• United States is both the leading producer and consumer of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) globally
• Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces working to address evolving technology challenges including AI face-swapping apps
• Experts advise parents to create open communication with children about online safety without fear of punishment

If you have a suggestion for a show, please send me an email at mario@onairmario.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Introduction
• 7:45 Recent Crime Headlines and Conspiracies
• 16:30 The Teekah Lewis Cold Case Investigation
• 32:10 Search for Evidence and Police Response
• 45:18 The Green River Killer Legacy
• 54:33 Urban Gun Violence and Glock Switches
• 1:05:30 Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC)
• 1:16:14 Protecting Children in the Digital Age

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to US Phenomenon, where possibilities are endless. Put down those same old headlines. It's time to expand your mind and question what if? From paranormal activity to UFOs, bigfoot sightings and unsolved mysteries, this is US Phenomenon?

Speaker 2: 0:21

From the Pacific Northwest in the shadow of the 1962 World's Fair, the Space Needle. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon. Wherever you are on God's green earth, if you believe in such thing, good evening. I'm your host, mario Magana. This is US Phenomenon, where sometimes we go where no other people like to go. And tonight, the good, the bad, the ugly I don't know if we want to call the show crime doesn't pay, but I think it's time to focus on some of the most influential. I don't know if I want to call them influential, but if I don't want to say if it bleeds, it leads. But tonight we are going to go wall to wall coverage on some of the most notorious. We're going to cover some stuff around the pacific northwest and maybe beyond too, and I'm going to bring our guest in, who is no stranger to uh this show, but is no stranger in regards to uh, having been a social media sensation. I'd like to welcome back to this show Steve Hickey, which you can find at Photog, steve 81 on all your social platforms. Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:41

You know it has been a little bit, and let me tell you what man. Things are going crazy. One people think that the world's coming to an end. Let me just let's let's just talk about this. Recently, the mount saint helens eruption uh, anniversary goes by. You have a, a pontiff that passes away like the day after easter. Um, so new pope from the United States, from the Americas, and then the social media sensations of all these different like conspiracies, like this underwater volcano that is 500 miles off the coast of Oregon is going to have a thousand eruptions. Well, come on, okay. So if that's true, I mean, I love a good conspiracy, but someone is really trying to hit, like trying to get the doomsday button, like, yeah, we, I got it, I got it. You know, ladies and gentlemen, if you're concerned about this underwater volcano, it's going to be nothing like Mount St Helens and it's supposed to. According to USGS, it's supposed to be kind of like just it's going to erupt but it's just going to be very slow and just magma is going to come out. It's not really, it's not going to. They're not anticipating a huge, major thing. Hey, if it happens, you know we're all dead anyhow, so it's not going to matter. And then, you know, the pontiff passes away.

Speaker 2: 3:18

Everyone's talking about this. Administration is the anti-crime. I mean, just some of these different conspiracies have just been wild and recent and recent headlines where you know if it, you know, most people have been talking about something that we'll be talking about tonight and I want to cover a couple things and maybe you might be able to give us some more information. But it seems to be that there are more shootings recently and maybe, for those who are not as hip, but we'll kind of cover some of these plus maybe some, uh, internet crimes against, you know, children, internet, you know that, that whole scene as well.

Speaker 2: 4:05

Why do I always get the acronym wrong? I always get the acronym wrong, especially when we're doing the show um, and then in recent headlines we'll talk about, um, the, the tika lewis case and which had been brought to the forefront over the week, um, and had brought some, some buzz, um, I guess let's just start off there. For those who may or may not be familiar, this case goes back to 1999 where this young little toddler went missing from a bowling alley. Um, she yet has to be found. Um, she's still missing. Uh, we've talked about this multiple times on this radio show, uh, and I know that back in my younger radio days, uh, we would go to this bowling alley and it's just a very tragic story, steve and I I'll let you pick up on what has transpired, why everyone was kind of like could this be? What was you know? Which is still a cold case, right, oh?

Speaker 3: 5:16

yeah, yeah. So you know, going back to 1999 when she disappeared, there was a bowling alley down there called Frontier Lane. A lot of people had been familiar with that spot and had been there over the years and she's there with family Tika is two-year-old Tika at the time Her mom's there and other family members, and there's a lot going on. The way that it apparently transpires is they believe that Tika is in an arcade with other people from the group, but really, really, they've lost sight of her and they don't realize that quite yet. They come to realize she's missing and panic sets in really pretty quickly, even with all these people. Within minutes they realize that there's a problem and law enforcement's contacted, people start descending on there and she basically vanished and there were a few theories over time. There has been this person that they always call the person with the pockmarked face, somebody who just really had a lot of pockmarks all over them. Then there's apparently been a person of interest who has since passed away. These things just kind of keep evolving. I can tell you in talking to Tika's mother, the theory that she's really clung to is that she was abducted because somebody wanted a child of that age and that looked like that and took her to raise them and she believes that Tika is out there somewhere alive and just doesn't remember, probably, what happened back then. And so every so often and it's interesting too, I'll talk a little bit about it as we go on is kind of what has kept that case in the public space compared to others. You know she's really good about making sure that this doesn't disappear. Every so often they do anniversaries about it and it hits the news. I just recently did. They have this cold case series that they do a really great job on and they did a really good deep dive with her and when this case popped up there was question because there was not a lot of confirmation from law enforcement at all. Is it really her and why are we all thinking of her and not a couple of others? And I really think it's a testament to her mom making sure that this case stays relevant.

Speaker 3: 7:25

So as time goes on, there have been new artist renditions A couple times. I talked to her maybe a year and a half ago. There was a new police chief for Tacoma and they had gotten a new rendition and she explained something to me. I read up on this later and I guess it really is quite a challenge, and that is for usually black people. When they disappear, these renditions don't really take into account what their hairstyle would most likely be, and these renditions don't come out very accurate. And so she had another artist rendition done about a year and a half or so ago which was much different than the others, and it got back in the news because this new chief had come out and basically had said hey, I don't know that this was handled to the level that it could have been and we're going to re-get into this. And so they got a big 53-foot trailer with the new rendition of her on there, and since then that chief has now exited the organization. It was kind of a contentious exit too. And then in talking to Tika's mom Teresa, she apparently was not happy with, ultimately, how that continued on, and so she felt kind of out there in the cold.

Speaker 3: 8:31

And so over this last weekend I get a tip from somebody who says that there will be a dig at the property that we go to here in a second in Tacoma, and this property is an old home, it's changed hands multiple times and I knew at that point that it was going to be a cold case, supposedly from the nineties, and so I decided to go out there Monday morning. I was told at the time they were going to get started around nine o'clock. As I'm getting down there, they apparently have already started and they used a city excavator to dig the hole. And why that mattered is as I'm driving there I see the excavator going the other way. It was because it needed to be on other jobs that day, so it dug the hole very quickly, got out.

Speaker 3: 9:13

I show up and I don't get out of the car yet. I just kind of pull up. This is my first time in this neighborhood. It's over in a neighborhood kind of east out there, only about a mile away from the bowling alley. As I pull up, it's pretty low key. There's one marked vehicle, it's a pickup that says Tacoma Police but also Search and Rescue and the rest all appear to be undercover and a number of forensic fans. Nobody else is out there. There's no other news source, there's no crowd. None of that stuff is there.

Speaker 3: 9:42

And so I call a colleague of mine who has done a lot in the past with other cases like this where there's forensic stuff or there's probably outside agencies, fbi and such that, hey, I'm on a dig out here that looks like it's legit, can you maybe try and lean on some places, see if you can figure out who it may be? And the next thing that that person does is calls Tacoma Police Department to ask for a quick statement. And I get a call back and he goes hey, I just called TPD. They say that they're not out there and they don't know what you're talking about. I said, well, it's not really up for debate. I'm looking at it. Let me go up and I'll ask somebody for a card. I'll call you back.

Speaker 3: 10:19

So I walk on up and, as I do, everybody kind of like turns away and looks the other way, which is, you know, I'm used to usually when I go to scenes, pretty, you know, warm interactions and and sometimes some some sort of request which I'll get into in a minute, but usually it's pretty, pretty easy on. So I awkwardly say is anybody have a business card? I could have. I know you can't make any statements, but I just like to have a card. And they all kind of look at each other. You know's like somebody want to give this guy a card and kind of smirk, almost kind of like you know, get a load of this guy.

Speaker 3: 10:49

So I'm feeling very awkward and one who turns out to be the lead investigator goes out to her car. She comes back, gives me a card and I look on there and realize that it's Julie Dyer and in my head I'm like I know who this is and I know one of her biggest case. I know a number of her cases, but I know one of her biggest. So I go back to the car, I send a picture, they another call goes into TPD and they said they seem kind of more confused this time. The first time they just discounted it. The second time they seem confused, like we don't know, but we're definitely not going to have a statement. Don't call us, we'll call you and I get the word back and right around that time a couple of marked units pull on into the block sure around my vehicle, not like boxing me in, but around my vehicle and get out. Let me know that. Hey, uh, we were just brought out here to close the block and move you out of here.

Speaker 2: 11:37

You need to move down to the next block why do you think they were doing such a thing like that steve to like? Do you think that in in this situation, they didn't want someone like yourself as a reporter to tip others off? Were they? Are they concerned, like? What was your thoughts on that piece?

Speaker 3: 11:56

yeah, so I thought about that and I, and so I, when the cop came up, the the uniformed officer was great, but I said, hey, if you know, if they need something such as keep quiet for a day or just say it, you got to use your words, yeah, and she kind of goes back over, them, comes back over, she goes, yeah, they, they don't have any words for you. And I kind of smiled. I was like, all right, at least we're clear where we stand here, you know, and I moved on over, and then I called um. A couple other people law enforcement said hey, if this was happening and you were on that, why would you respond that way? And both of them said it's definitely got a big case everybody knows about and they don't really know what to do, and generally, when it's a big case, leadership wants to handle all communications so that they can get their name on it. It may not be as much as they don't want to talk to you that they can't talk to you.

Speaker 3: 12:43

Okay, fine, I start looking up, though, and start trying to figure out well, who could this be? And, as I said, I'd heard it was somebody from the 90s and that was about it. So I look up Julie Dyer's biggest cases that she's working and Tika Lewis pops up. I start going into the background of the home and it's changed hands a handful of times. It looks like the records for that area out there. You know, I don't know how far they go back, but the oldest record I can find is 2004. And at that time there was an owner of the house with the last name Lewis. Now that ultimately, I think Internet sleuths started taking that and saying it's someone in the family, right, I think it's a coincidence, but there is a connection potentially between that owner and somebody else who's been named a person of interest in the case and that's kind of where I think that's going.

Speaker 3: 13:36

I haven't gone out and confirmed what I believe that is or what I'm hearing. It is because, with the way they're being so closed up on evidence, I don't know if there's a reason they don't want that out, because now they have at least confirmed what they were doing there but still will confirm that part. So then I start making some other calls to other people just in law enforcement, saying, hey, I think this is what it is. Do you think that there's a reason that they don't want this out. I've given them a chance to not. They don't have to tell me a reason, just tell me a reason, just tell me. Hey, we need time. And they haven't taken me up on it. So not that we know of it's an old enough case. There's definitely haven't been any arrests, anything like that.

Speaker 3: 14:15

So at that point, you know, I'm kind of annoyed. You know my ego's been a little bit ahead of like why I'm getting kind of pushed out and treated the way I was. So I thought, well, this thing's going to become bigger. There's no way it's going to stay a scene that only I'm at. I'll start making some phone calls. So I start leaning on other people in the industry written media as well as television news and we start getting everybody on out there and by about noon, one o'clock, it's pretty much circus. At this point Everybody's there.

Speaker 3: 14:41

Now community members are coming and gathering outside, and at one point I'm not going to say who it was, though I don't stand by what they did. But first we're all up there, kind of everybody. You know, we're all chatting amongst each other. How did we get to here, what do we got? And all of a sudden the PIO shows up and we're like, oh, we might actually get a statement.

Speaker 3: 14:59

So she comes on out and it's Officer Boyd, she. She comes on out and it's Officer Boyd. She's great, pretty, you know, no-nonsense, very serious individual but really easy to work with. But she walks on up and I kind of sarcastically say, hey, should we just start hitting you with questions or do you got a statement you want to give? And she's like I am not here to give any statements. The only reason I'm here is to find out which one of you put a camera over top the fence. Oh, and I'm like what? It definitely wasn't me.

Speaker 3: 15:30

And one of the camera guys from the tv news, uh behind said I did it, I knew I shouldn't. I told my boss we're not allowed to do that, we shouldn't do. And he said I had to do it anyways. And so like, there you go. And so she chastises him a bit and tells him you know his legal cons, because the fence wasn't even close to far from the hole. You had to go on a neighbor's property to then look over the fence.

Speaker 3: 15:48

And so then at that point we said, hey, can we get anything out of you? And she's like I don't have anything to tell you. I said can you give us a 10 seconds saying, hey, obviously there's something happening here and we're not ready to give out any information? She said I will give you that, but you can't be hitting me with a bunch of questions. Okay, fine, we turn on cameras and one of the other we'll call them TV news reporters who had heard that negotiation and that expectation.

Speaker 3: 16:12

Wait until she finishes about a 10 second, 15 second thing, and then goes well, we're hearing it probably involves Tika Lewis, and what do you have to say about that? She just kind of looks and just goes silent like yeah, that's there. And then she uh says, you know, I don't have anything I can say. She's like so you're telling me, tacoma police department doesn't even know what's happening out here and this, and finally it just ends like she walks away.

Speaker 3: 16:33

And so this point now we have, you know, really unfortunately, established a pretty adversarial relationship. I feel like right, and then the uh mobile precinct shows up, which is that big RV vehicle and those usually show up and it's going to be a multi-day or pretty extended scene. And once we saw that, we're like, well, this went from a hey, we're just kind of looking around to we're going to be here for a bit Right Over the next couple of days. We also, by the way, at that point did talk to Tika's mom and she said I didn't know this was happening. I have made some phone calls into the department and what they're saying is that they can't say it involves TICA, but they can't deny it involves TICA either.

Speaker 2: 17:11

I wonder why they I guess I don't know why wouldn't they, like, give her you know, say, hey, we're doing you know, is it? They don't want to get her hopes up. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 17:29

Like, do they? I don't know what the protocol in that situation is. I, you know, I've wondered about that and I and I kind of wonder if it has to do with their concern that she also might talk and so they don't even want to put something on her that then she could even say um, she, you know she has been very verbal about this case over the years.

Speaker 3: 17:41

I don't mean that in any sort of negative light whatsoever, but I don't know if there was any concern that somehow she would then tell us or what. And in the end I don't know why they were so concerned about us knowing that it's that case anyways. That in itself is interesting. It's not like we're going to see what all's going on in there, but nonetheless, that was all she had, and so we've been talking to her over the couple of days and so as we start putting stuff out there into the world, saying hey, there's speculation that it has to do with this case, and I'm feeling at that point about 90 plus percent, that's what it is. I had a few other people send me little bits of information about stuff in the past. I was like I'm feeling confident, but I don't go off something because I feel confident. I go off something when I have it. So I said, hey, there's this going on, there's this speculation, and that case has a lot of people stuck with it. For those who live here. Pretty much everybody remembers that happening, remembers when it happened and remembers the saga of it and I didn't realize there were such strong Facebook groups that are just dedicated to that, and so my story went in there. And then it became this battle of the private sleuths or saying that, oh, this isn't true. And apparently David Rose had gone and weighed in and said that it has nothing to do with them and he doesn't know what he's talking about, which I thought was really quite odd.

Speaker 3: 18:56

And then this morning we do get word that it absolutely was a tip to deal with Tika Lewis's case. They won't't say exactly what the tip was, but they did go there in the hopes of possibly being able to find remains. They have said that they did not find her body and I want to make that very clear. That's they said specifically, we did not find the I believe, the remains of tika. With the amount of processing they did, there's still maybe a chance they found something of interest that is still being processed. I mean, a lot of times they times they'll just kind of dig. They're done this. I mean they went through three days of sifting every little bit of granular anything, wow. They have said that this tip involves multiple prongs and what that tells me is, I believe, that they have a person of interest that is involved in that property at some point in time, somehow, some way, and then on top of that, is probably involved in other locations, and so this was one of those locations that they're checking, but they're not done.

Speaker 2: 19:53

And I know this isn't really talked about very much anymore, but I mean, think about, for those who have lived here for such a long time, this case being very much. You know you got to leave it to Tika's mom for continuing to, you know pound the drum and you know to be the voice for Tika to get some type of resolution. If it's a reunite, you know to reunite with Tika if it's to find closure. It's interesting to me are we looking at a situation because I know that a lot of people talk about the little boy who was also weeks prior to this case or you know, tika going missing, but there was a young boy who was, you know, alleged had. You know they believe that there may have been a tie with the guy or the person in of interest who had may have done something to the little boy in the bathroom who had been hanging out near the bowling alley the time of her miss. You know her disappearance. And what's interesting to me is when you think about the 1999s, that time period there wasn't a lot of it, there wasn't a lot of video going on, there wasn't a lot of surveillance going on on a lot of these properties that you typically see to this day, um, the fact that it you know how this case really plays out and you know it is like a parent's worst nightmare to get that gut feeling for that half a second when your child is like you can't find your child.

Speaker 2: 21:32

Everyone's had that feeling. You know where you're, like oh my gosh. Now think of tika's mom, who's had this same feeling for this long, this long that she's been dealing with this gut-wrenching stomach, empty feeling, like oh my gosh I mean, being a parent of a 17, soon to be 17 year old, I mean I, you know we're out and I'm like you know, I had that like where'd you go? I lost you for a second and it just you freak out, you know, and it's like the worst, it's any parent's worst nightmare. You freak out, you know, and it's like the worst, it's any parent's worst nightmare.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Steve, I wonder if they don't find any evidence in regards to any evidence remains, whatever the case may be, are we looking at possibly another victim? Could this be tied to Green River Gary? Could this be tied to Green River Gary? Could this be cases to him as well? I mean, I know that they say that that is the big piece that the tip was for Tika, but are we maybe looking for maybe some leftover stuff from maybe a potential serial killer as well?

Speaker 3: 22:45

So it does seem to be that this was for Tika. I don't see them making a definitive statement like that if that wasn't accurate, and there has been descriptions of a couple of people that were very specific, that did not seem to be a Ridgeway type One of them, as I said, is deceased. Now there's another person that I believe they do have history with, that there was even some past restraining orders with in the past. That also is deceased. I mean, this is now 26 years later, 25, 26, depending on what time of the year it fell and a lot of times we see the age range of people committing these types of acts is already going to be closer to the 30s, middle age, so on. So with that in mind you know it's a long time it's not inconceivable that whoever was involved may be deceased.

Speaker 2: 23:39

It is strange, because I think what they're going to start to do is I think what you were saying, too steve, was that they are, uh, looking at the records of who was who owned the house, who owned the property at that point in time, and these tips, this case is very, still much, very much fluid, cold case still. Would we still call it a cold case, or do you think that this may be lighting the fire and the adding some fuel to the case?

Speaker 3: 24:07

Yeah, so we see this a lot in cases like this where there is something that ends up being ultimately a dead end and would otherwise remain a dead end. But then it gets other people thinking about the case again, thinking about stuff that may have clicked to them later or they've heard something over the years, and they get that motivation to speak up. Send in another tip. Uh it, I see there probably being an influx of tips going into investigators right now. Whether or not they're credible, I don't know. Yeah, but you generally do see an uptick, after an event like this, of information coming uh talking with uh photoc steve 81.

Speaker 2: 24:40

You can find him on all his socials youtubes, the internets, the tiktokies, the um, the tiktokies, uh, no, we're not talking about talkies, the uh chips or whatever, but um, on all the social platform. Here's an interesting question. I, since the last time you and I spoke they had that big. I don't want to even call it like driving down memory lane for Gary. You know I shouldn't say our good friend Gary Ridgway, because we don't know him by any means. Did anything else come of that? Have we heard anything?

Speaker 3: 25:17

There was a release that they at least as far as what they're willing to disclose it turned up nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. And they don't ever put a lot of detail in that. I don't want to give Gary any bit of credit, sure, but I don't know. Was it he intended to give them nothing, or is it one of these that they've had in the past, like, hey, let's drive out there and take a look? That man's been incarcerated a long time. The world looks much different now, and a lot of where he was placing these bodies isn't going to be in green areas. That changed over the years. So I don't know. I don't know if what they're really trying to tell us is he outright duped them or misled them, or it just did not produce the results that they were hoping for, but nonetheless it did not produce any of the results that they put all that effort in for.

Speaker 2: 26:08

And to me it's like almost, is King County looking for closure? For obviously, a lot of these victims that are still, you know, haven't been identified or they're missing victims that still are out, possibly still out there. And what is very strange is you're right, I mean, when we're talking about 80s, I mean we're talking about about 40 something years of, uh, of change. You know, the evolution of that whole area has completely changed. Someone who lived in the area, someone coming from a mexican restaurant near riverbend, going across the green river bridge, saw them taking out the first body.

Speaker 2: 26:51

Yeah, I was so little but my dad was like these, you know, my dad was like, oh, they're pulling out a body, and that was, you know, that was the beginning of the boogeyman you know. For for us young kids, you're like, oh, this is crazy to think about what gary did in those the 80s, 90s and 2000s. Um, it's just, it is mind-blowing. I, just to this day, obviously he, you know he will spend the rest of his life incarcerated. But I don't know how much they're going to get out of Gary anymore On these field trips, if we're going to see any results and say, hey, look, I don't think that Gary can probably remember. I mean, I couldn't tell you.

Speaker 3: 27:42

He wasn't a young guy. When he got caught he wasn't old. But he wasn't a young guy when he got caught. Right, he wasn't old, but he wasn't young. And now we've added decades on. I don't believe he's hit his 80s yet, but he I think he's in his 70s, 70s, but he looks every bit of 70 something years old. He has aged a ton, and so you you also have that too. Is his capacity still there?

Speaker 3: 28:02

I think it's been generally accepted and he has alluded to that there were more that he just couldn't even remember and investigators have said there definitely are more. So I think there's hope, because you know the, the what, who he was going after were people who generally weren't looked, looked after. These are generally women working the streets and runaways not tied to their family, and boys. They're not tied to their family anymore. They're not checking in. It could have taken years and then it's just they just kind of disappear. Was there even a missing person report put in in the first place? We don't know. So when you have that, you could just have somebody just kind of vanish and never be looked at again, and so there's, there's all you got people who never did find a loved one and wonder if it was because of him, or somebody just evaporates off this earth. It's harder to do that now than it used to be, but it's certainly. It was certainly possible back then.

Speaker 2: 28:53

And I know that we've talked about this multiple times too, about the. You know the, the uptick of. Oh my gosh, we have a serial killer running around and I still, to this day, I don't even know if they found anybody for that 16 year old girl that they found on 509. I haven't, you know, I haven't. I mean especially Gary. You look at, you know Ted Bundy, you know Wesley Allen Dodd the list is very long for this area, but the Green River Killer being so prolific in that time period and then actually catching him with you know clearly the DNA of, you know the paint and whatnot, to be able to figure out what the profile, very, very interesting to me. What's your thoughts right now? If you were just to say do we think that this is going to, that tika's case is going to go back in a spot where they're going to continue to have very little to work with, I think, or do you think that they're?

Speaker 3: 30:00

I don't, so I don't know what. When they say multi-pronged tip, right, and I you know some of the stuff I put out I was a bit critical of how I kind of thought they handled the scene. I'm not critical of the investigation or any of that, and that level of detail is not at all needed in in in the public. They have every right to keep things close, and so I don't know the quality of the tip that they have or what the other parts of that are or what else they're working with. I really don't know. I can tell you this. So they are having a lot of success right now in cold cases, more than we've ever had before, and some of that comes from the ability, if there's already evidence locked away, to be able to go back and retest evidence that was not thought to be viable in the past. Just in the last couple of years there have been massive increases in what is a viable sample to test from Sure. So you know we're going back to 99. I don't know what their evidence locker looks like. I have to imagine that they did collect things back then and there may be other people along the way that they had points of interest in that if they were able to eventually find her, that then they can go back and test to maybe get something. It depends obviously, if she did lose her life back then, what that end-of-life process looked like as far as what type of samples would be available and or viable.

Speaker 3: 31:20

But I feel more optimistic about cold cases now than I really ever have, and it's really because of the advances just in DNA testing. We may have even talked about it last time, you know the testing facilities that orchestrate those types of lab settings are saying we are really within a couple of years from I don't think it will be cost effective, but to a point where officers in the field could test a steering wheel for whoever's touched that steering wheel on DNA and get a result in the field. Wow, now I don't see within more years. It's going to be many more years, I think, before they get to a cost-effective way. And there is still something to be said, unless there's advances in this where they can have less controlled environments, but those are generally done in very controlled environments.

Speaker 3: 32:10

But in theory that's what they're getting to is in the past you needed liquid or moisture, right? So fingerprints leave oils, things like that that you need to be able to get, or you need a skin flake, something that can go into a beaker. You can see it, even if it takes a microscope and work with that. They're saying now that it may not even be that deep anymore with how quickly they're going from. In the past they needed you know, think of OJ right Like they needed a fair amount of fluid to be able to test the. Any of that they don't need hardly anything.

Speaker 2: 32:45

That case itself is quite an interesting case on its own, but so recently there's been a lot of shootings, a lot of shootings. Man, it's wild right now. Why is the Glock, the Glock switch, becoming such the gun du jour?

Speaker 3: 33:01

yeah, so there's a couple things going on, and I know that it's been talked about a lot. Homicides, in Seattle specifically, are down this year. Now we're getting into summertime. I don't think you ever want to look at a statistic within you know three to four months of time, but the numbers are down. That is indisputable. The numbers are down significantly.

Speaker 3: 33:21

But what we have seen going on for some time, and we're seeing it now, is the glock switch. Is is basically a part that you add on to a glock firearm. A glock firearm there's a semi-automatic handgun right, but the hammer is not. You know a lot of. Even when you slide a rail, what you're really doing is pulling a hammer back. It's just a smoother way than taking your thumb and doing it. Well, in a Glock, that's all internal and that action the way that works. You can add on a part generally known as a switch or a Glock switch. That then makes it perform as a fully automatic weapon.

Speaker 3: 33:57

Now, there's some downsides to that too, not only at the amount of fire rate. That is not good for the public, but let's talk a little bit more about this. So if you look at an AR-15, whether that's single shot or you have one that's actually automatic. You have. You know you're up against a shoulder, you have a hand on a trigger and you have a hand forward. You have three points of contact across that firearm to hold it steady. Those also shoot very smoothly. But even on top of that shotgun any of that you have three points of contact. Generally you could be down to your side maybe. You have two points of contact. You're always going to have at least two, if not three, in a handgun. You now are one hand on there. You may have one hand right here. You really have one point of contact to hold that weapon and every time you fire it goes bam right. And so hopefully, as you get better at shooting, if you're practicing, you're getting better at handling that recoil. But every time you get to recenter and pull, when you use a Glock switch and you are on just this point, it basically goes right. You just kind of keep dealing with recoil.

Speaker 3: 34:58

So that's where now, when we have shootings like what just happened in Pioneer Square, everything is getting hit. We're even finding now the shooters themselves have tried to deal with this by starting down low. They don't aim at the bottom Normally. For those of you who don't know, I really like firearms. I'm a big fan of firearms. That's why I'm kind of getting this much into it. But you know, a lot of times when you aim you go for the box. So you're going to aim straight. You want to go for what's the easiest part. There's a lot of vital if you're, if you're in self-defense or or if or if you're a killer, you're going to be in the box because that's where all the big stuff is and you got the best chance of hitting. They're now starting to aim now at the feet, knowing it's going to kick back. So what we're finding is victims with more leg wounds because those first shots hit. But the problem is then, as it comes up, it just starts going everywhere spraying yeah it is believed right now, the three victims.

Speaker 3: 35:46

There was a mass shooting in seattle just this last weekend. Uh, of the three victims, only two may have been the intended target. The female was not the target and there were shell cases, shells in or bullets in walls and windows all over the place. And what happens is you go generally from, say, a nine somewhere around their clip. They're now using 20 and 30 round clips. So you have a glock now that would otherwise fit in your hand and there's a, you know, a clip all the way down here to the bottom. It's longer this way now than it is that way, right, and they're emptying the entire clip in seconds. Then they drop, put another one in again, and it just keeps. And so now you're dropping 20, 30 rounds time and time again, and if you have multiple people which this one does appear to be gang related you now have upwards of four, five people all pumping 20, 30 rounds at a time, and so in a matter of under 60 seconds generally under 30 seconds you may have well over a hundred rounds fired, and so there's been a big uptick in that.

Speaker 3: 36:48

We get a lot of shots fired, calls They'll go out there. There's no victim. They may be, not. We're even aiming at somebody. We're wanting to send a message to somebody's house or whatever, and they show up, they go. We don't seem to have a victim. Nobody's called in yet, there's nobody here. But we have like 40 shell casings on the ground and you know, generally it's going to be a 9mm or something. A Glock 9mm is a very popular handgun and so that's where the uptick has happened.

Speaker 3: 37:14

Now that is still indicative of a lot of pent-up available violence. Thankfully, it is not turning out the amount of cold bodies in the street, because I think a lot of these shootings are much more about messaging or people just showing off. They're driving around and it's just put out the window and just keep on going, but the amount of rounds being fired is really remarkable. These switches do make it. Now it is a federal offense If you keep on going, um, but the amount of rounds being fired is is really remarkable. These switches do make it. Now it is a federal offense.

Speaker 3: 37:40

If you put that on there now you got to get caught, obviously. But if you get caught with that it, it changes everything. Just having that alone if you get stopped by the police, you are now looking at a federal offense. Yeah, so what that does basically is it keeps the keeps that from fully going back and so it just kind of keeps bouncing. That's a very rough explanation for it, but that piece where you see that bar going through there that would normally go completely forward and it's keeping that from happening.

Speaker 2: 38:06

So if you're not watching the show, you can go to my website on airmariocom and you can go back and watch the video as well.

Speaker 3: 38:15

Think of it similar to like a bump stock on an AR-15. Similar concept Now the weapons themselves and that was found in the AR-15s with bump stocks. When you have a semi-automatic AR-15, everything about it is not really engineered to do machine gun fire. Machine gun fire is a lot of heat happening very fast. You get the barrel can turn red hot very quickly. You need a firearm that's engineered for that, these Glocks, because they're using generally 30 round clips and they're not sitting there just going where an AR-15, they may want to throw a drum in there. You're talking 50 to a hundred rounds. Now you could actually look at the weapon failing or becoming next to impossible to be able to aim or operate the Glocks.

Speaker 2: 38:51

I have not heard of that happening very often because it's just a different type of shooter who's going out with that and not as many rounds you know when, when people are out here in the, in the, in the night club industry, you know going out to, you know, obviously a much younger crowd is going to these nightclubs, um, and you know, being someone who has been at a couple shootings, three to be, uh, you know to, to look back, it's terrifying. One in a nightclub, uh, and I was, you know, in the dj booth for a broadcast and I was like it is just, it is something if you've never been a part of it. It just it is not fun, and especially in those types of environments. And what's what's really, what is really terrifying. What is going on right now, because of the amount of rounds that are being dispersed, is someone may catch a stray bullet, and that seems to be the case with the Federal Way incident as well. You know the young kid who may have caught in a stray bullet.

Speaker 2: 40:04

I would recommend and I know that our listeners are not spending a lot of time in these types of environments. But you know, again, it's happening right now and it seems to be I don't want to say it the new norm. This is the new norm. This is how people are getting things done. But what's interesting to me, someone who kind of knows that area very well. There is now another new nightclub in Pioneer Square. Is now another new nightclub in pioneer square? Uh, so are there, you know you now, you, you have two nightclubs within a half a block of each other. Where the shooting was. The shooting was on second avenue, roughly right as that were a lot of um, yeah, between next stadium and that, yeah yeah, and I know a lot of people are like listening, like, oh, this is not bigfoot, there's not ufo.

Speaker 2: 41:03

I mean, it's still something that there's a loss of life and and what we want to do is educate people. You know, educate your. Maybe it's your grandchildren that are still going out to these nightclubs, you know you, maybe you know somebody in their 20s, you know, let them know, say, hey, these are things that you need to be looking for. Uh, looking for and look, that area, relatively, is still being reactivated and I know they're trying to bring up that area um, generally safe. But again, when you get into those late hours, you know we're talking the 1 am hours.

Speaker 3: 41:40

That's when the riffraff starts to show up and I, yeah, they tried to roll out some new rules now, just in this last week. I I'm not totally up to speed on all, but I believe it and it involves the nightclubs now have to provide a certain amount of security. They also have to provide a certain amount of video surveillance. I don't know. What I haven't really seen is where these shootings are happening really inside the club. They're generally outside. Is providing security to the interior going to make a difference? I don't know. Is better surveillance maybe going to help in prosecution? Sure, maybe catching suspects? Sure, it's not on the front end going to stop any of this?

Speaker 3: 42:21

I think what you've got a better chance is as you keep arresting, and a lot of times too. I don't want to give up too much on one that just came in. There was an arrest here recently on one. These shooters are not just having one time, they're doing this multiple times. So if you do get one off the street and actually in custody, the numbers do start to drop. I can tell you with a high level of certainty that does have to do with the drop in homicides.

Speaker 3: 42:45

In seattle they pulled some people off who were involved in much more than what they got arrested for. Interesting. When you see that type of drop. It's indicative of that. I've seen the people that they've arrested and seen who they've been affiliated with. It makes sense that the numbers were going to drop. Some of the other things too, and there were a couple of massive fentanyl busts that HSI got involved with. That netted some serious numbers and their amount of firearms that they were distributing out here. Once that drops, it makes a difference. You also see an immediate uptick and overdose and violence as people now don't have their money source and they can't pay very serious people the money they owe, right, so they have to make up that and then you start to see that decline and I do believe that is part of it.

Speaker 2: 43:27

I think there is a positive thing there that you're seeing, but there are new up-and-comers so, as we continue to talk with Foxtalk Steve 81, his handle, steve Hickey it's time to talk about probably one of the most not fun topics, and I bring this up because I think that it is a passion of yours. I think that anyone who is a family, who has kids, I don't think it's talked about enough. I know that there have been things that have been put in place, steve. I know that when we talk about the war on drugs, I mean we know that there is buckets of cash that goes to that. But let's talk about what is probably one of the most ugliest cases and we're not talking about Diddy, because we won't go there but Internet Crimes Against Children. I know this has been a passion of yours. Where did it kind of start?

Speaker 3: 44:34

for those who may be listening for the first time, yeah, so I started out really focusing on just kind of crime stuff. I love this place, I love living here. I choose to live here. It's not a terrible place. My mind kind of works well for that. It's very linear type factual reporting so it works well in the crime space. And as I started going through it I started running across what are called ICAC cases. So ICAC is a task force, internet Crimes Against Children task force. What ICAC really is you generally have a lead agency In this area it is Seattle Police but then multiple other agencies around have a detective or two detectives who are then assigned to help in that and it's a group of individuals who are specially trained.

Speaker 3: 45:19

They also do other things. Kind of think of it like a SWAT cop. That cop's usually out doing cop stuff, whatever their day-to-day is answering calls. They also get a special page when there is a SWAT call and ICAC's kind of that. They are detectives who also specialize in the thing and so where a lot of their work comes from is tips and they'll get tips from platforms saying hey, we think that there's been CSAM, which is sexually abuse, sexually child sex abuse material is CSAM that we have seen being transferred. Here's the IP addresses and the users involved and they follow on those. They also get a lot of tips too when you have stuff happening in town and a detective hears about something and goes, hey, this is probably more of an ICAC case. They're generally not handling the familial relationships If you have a father doing something like that, unless he's distributing content from those actions. That's not what they're touching. So they go and handle all of this stuff.

Speaker 3: 46:24

And as I started getting into it more, I think there were a couple things that and I realized kind of how naive I was. I think in my mind you think that's so much. We realize that there's people here doing things, but you think that the majority of that type of activity where you have in these rings of people participating this must be happening in other parts of the world and that it's just a financial motivation for them. And what I found is, as I've worked this more, the number one producer of c-sam is the united states of america. The number one consumer of c-sam is the united states of america and there's a few reasons why that probably is Number one. We have a lot of, you know. We are a wealthy nation. We have a lot of children with easy access to electronic devices, and that means then access and those people then have access to them if they're taking advantage of that situation.

Speaker 3: 47:14

There has also been some studies recently and I'm not, you know, these are not fringe studies, these are looked at through ICAC and there's also other groups I don't want to say ICAC's the only one, but they're usually who you're going to deal with at a local level that have shown that hormones in the food in the United States and I'm not this is not a pro-hormone, anti, this isn't meant to be a health conversation but just simply hormones and the food have children developing differently in this area, but that has led other parts of the world to want c sam produced in the us as well because of the way that these children are developing. And they started finding this as they would have international cases that would come in and our detectives are struggling to get the ages correct on those victims, because when they, when they get somebody's cache of of content, sure they have to review all of this stuff and they have to decide what the age of the victim is and so on, and then, as they would have other countries do the same thing with us, everybody was getting the ages wrong, and that's when they started realizing they're developing much differently. But all that being said, um, you know, I found just finding out right there that we are the number one producer and consumer. I'm thinking I'm a father. How did I not know this? Was I just discounting it, wanting to think it doesn't happen? Sure, as I started looking into these cases more, I think you know we're kids of the 80s.

Speaker 3: 48:29

Usually, in the past, you always thought it was the creepy guy in the van. Yeah, it's not. These are your neighbor, your child's teacher, your coworker. They're leading otherwise seemingly productive, functional lives, and they have this component of that life that you know, and there has been debate as to when or where this starts. What's motivating this? Because the numbers seem to be up. I think the general consensus is that we're not creating more people who want to participate in this. What we have created, though, is opportunity, and so more are willing to go into this world, and then they're able to communicate with each other. Think of prison. When you send people to prison, they talk with other people who have been convicted of the crime, and they usually come out a little bit savvier. How to not get caught.

Speaker 3: 49:19

The difference here is go back to the creepy uncle of the creepy guy in the van analogy from the 80s. He probably didn't have anybody else he was talking to. He had maybe one person he found with a common interest. Now they are able to get together in chat rooms and talk. It's gotten so bad. Now we are seeing in King County in-person viewing parties. Somebody gets in King County in-person viewing parties. Somebody gets new content. They meet physically in the same place to then watch it together.

Speaker 3: 49:43

Now, outside of absolutely discussing that sound, why that matters most is that is a massive escalation in a comfort zone for them. In the past they would never want to be in any such thing and have others know who they are, let alone a group of people know who they are. And so when I started seeing that, I was like I really want to start focusing more on this. So what I have discovered now in doing these cases and they're pretty harsh for those of you who may not have heard my stuff, I do. I tell these stories bluntly, but I'm not interested in desensitizing the public, uh, re-victimizing victims or doing it just for shock value. It is it, it is thought through, but it is not meant to be an easy, easy lesson, but we do try and soften it a bit. But we are seeing now, laws have not caught up to this. This is kind of where the passion of the work is going and why I put so much effort into this. I want to put purpose to this work. If all we do is just maybe inform people or get people worked up over something, but we don't change anything, then what's the point and what I am finding now? I'll give you two separate examples Again, without getting too deep into it.

Speaker 3: 50:53

I had a case recently where a man had been arrested, and I had a case recently where a man had been arrested and what put him over the top is he was watching live streams of children being really brutally victimized. But it wasn't happening in the room he's in. It's happening somewhere in the USA. It could even be theoretically in the same state. It's not some international thing, but somewhere in the USA could even be theoretically in the same state. It's not some international thing, but somewhere USA. And this falls into this weird category and we've seen cases in the past where a woman is being an adult woman is being harmed and nobody steps in. But you really have the one suspect who has harmed her or raped her. The others didn't participate, they just turned a blind eye and so so generally, the others aren't charged. Sure, there is not a law right now that that is meant for live streaming services for the people who view, and these people may even participate in making requests of what they want to see happen in real time but the law isn't caught up. These laws were designed before that technology was there.

Speaker 3: 52:00

The only reason that this man got caught and what he ultimately got charged for was, as I'm sitting here at a desk looking at a laptop. He's basically here, he is watching, he is pleasuring himself and he decides, as he's been doing this, he wants to create new content of him consuming the content. So he has a camera over here off to the side, kind of silhouette of him in the screen. Well, not only is he despicable, he's also really stupid, and on his desk is his W-2. He's a Boeing employee and his W-2 is on his desk. It has his name, his address, his employer and his social security number. At some point he moves, it zeroes in on that. It's now caught. He doesn't realize that and he distributes that.

Speaker 3: 52:44

He got charged with distribution he got charged with. I believe he had possession of some other stuff, but really what he got was a manufacturing and distribution charge. In my eyes, he participated in the rape of a child. What he got charged with was manufacturing and distribution, and this is a simple thing that could be solved, but we haven't had to solve it before. So there's that one there.

Speaker 3: 53:09

Another one what I'm about to do here very shortly involves a man who did have CSAM materials considerable amount of c-sam material and he's using an app that is available to everybody, that you can take your face and put it on somebody else's body and we've seen this type of stuff when you're making memes and things like that. He is taking pictures of people in his real life, taking their face and putting it on the body of the children. So what he really got charged with was he had possession of material that he was then altering. Not the altering is the crime, but putting that on there. So my first thought is wait a minute. I've been doing this enough. I know a couple of things.

Speaker 3: 53:52

Number one one of the biggest sources of tips to ICAC are the social media platforms. They can catch that stuff in DMS very, very easily through automated systems. They're not having to have somebody sit there and watch it. All it triggers they validate tip goes in Right. These apps as I started looking into this particular app company and I'm still trying to get a statement out of them actually advertise within sites such as pornornhub, saying you can put your face on these people and what they do is they download the app for free and then they buy coins. There's actually a financial transaction for them to have enough coins to continue to create this stuff and my frustration, right there, is okay, let's, for just a half a second, give them the passive. Okay. This is an for just a half a second, give them the passive, okay. This is an unintended consequence. Let's get this caught up.

Speaker 3: 54:42

This has already been proven to be an issue and you should have known. It's step one. All of the other platforms have made that this made sure that this was not possible, and you are. You are not only letting this happen, but you are advertising in a place, giving people that thought process. You didn't put in your ad that you can use this this exact way, but you pretty well walked them to it, and so that again shows okay, we need to have a new law. I think we need to start. When you have organizations Also with AI I want to throw this in there too. Ai platforms, where you can now create other types of images, those platforms already have safeguards in place to make sure that this can't happen. Other types of images those platforms already have safeguards in place to make sure that this can't happen. This particular organization, which really is AI, doesn't. They don't seem to care. They've been called out before and they're still doing it. And for a direct financial profit, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 55:31

Our guest, steve Hickey. Photog. Steve81, you know, for those who are listening, are probably freaking out. They're like, oh, oh, my god, my kid has an iPad. My kid has this and, you're right, our kids do. They're connected. The great thing is that there are apps within these different platforms that you're able to monitor. You can you can have full parental control of your child's iPad, iphone, whatever the device may be. It doesn't have to be an Apple device, it can be any device and you can have full control. If you're questioning this, send us a text at 775-990-5151. We'd be happy to help you out, or I'm happy to help you out and put you in the right direction to make sure that you're able to safeguard your children's phones. If that's something that you need, send us a text. We're happy to help you. We'll touch base with you. It's interesting, steve.

Speaker 2: 56:34

When we talk about these things, it's not fun. I mean, this is the ugly stuff that really makes my skin crawl and that the laws haven't, you know, continued to evolve because it's ever-changing so fast. It's very fluid and the laws haven't caught back up to where we are at in the consumption of how people are consuming things and if that's the case, where you know if what they are doing is criminal intent. Then we got to. You know, we got to stay on top of making and making sure that one, our kids, understand what they're, what they're doing on the internet, how to stay away from people who you know may be trolling and things like that on these social media platforms and making you feel good and, you know, giving you likes and clicks for you know the the dumbest things. Um, you know it's a generation of you know what hip move I, as I sit here and almost throw my back out on what you know tiktok move, that we, you know, dance we're doing. But to keep our kids off of some of these social media platforms as long as humanly possible.

Speaker 2: 57:52

It is so challenging for today's youth. They think they need it and it's it's, it's available to them. You know they want to. Everyone wants to be a YouTube sensation. They want to be a TikTok sensation. They want to make that. You know that viral dollar. You know to make that. You know that viral dollar, you know. And you know maybe your kid does have a niche, a niche and they're able to. You know, maybe they're able to take evidence and find sasquatch hair in the wilderness or you know they. They have this thing where they're able to make connections with u. You know aliens, or whatever the case may be, whatever their content may be, it is so difficult, once you get past that threshold, to allow them to have access. It is a whole other world out there.

Speaker 3: 58:44

I would add too you know I had one just recently that I did. A Kitsap County medical examiner death investigator with that organization has been charged with molesting a 13-year-old girl, which is terrible. He also basically admitted that he did it to investigators and to the family. Wow, the reason I pointed out is what really stuck out to me in that one was what he had done to the girl. It was clear she knew she could go to her family and say this just happened to me and that they would come around her and protect her. And I don't know them, I haven't talked, but I didn't get the sense.

Speaker 3: 59:27

Sometimes I think all parents don't want that to happen. Sometimes, when your kids come and tell you something, that they get involved with that immediate reaction to get angry, even though you're working towards, okay, we're here together, but it's like, well, how did this? How could you stop? If your child is scared to come and tell you this, even if they know eventually you'll come back to the, you know, as you go through the cycle of this and come back and they were you need to stop and realize that. They need to know that you're going to extrapolate that well then, you shouldn't have been there you should have whatever. And it's not intentional I don't believe parents are intentionally but you are making sure your child is probably not going to come to you. They're going to want to hide it.

Speaker 2: 1:00:20

Sure, and I think we live in a day and age where ruling by an iron fist I'm not, you know, I'm not telling you how to raise your kids, but having the open dialogue with your children. In regards to, you know the day-to-day activities, but let alone social media, if you're allowing your children to have these platforms, you know how do you police it, how do you guide them, because there is so much content available and you go down the wrong path and next thing, you know, you have a whole other plate and a whole other circumstances.

Speaker 3: 1:00:58

It's also difficult when you have teenagers. We all can remember when we were teenagers and we thought we were just adults without driver's licenses, we thought we could handle it all. And it isn't until you get older and you see people who are the, who are the same age, that you can think of that happening going. That's a child. Yeah, I couldn't make those decisions back. I thought I could, I very confidently thought I could, and there's not a chance. And so, remembering that and and you know, I think it's so easy to try and say, well, you shouldn't have been doing this or you shouldn't have been there. Why weren't you home, have been there, why weren't you home? That's another thing. I think.

Speaker 3: 1:01:29

If you have a child, you know, I have read these where the child broke curfew and then got into a situation and didn't want to go to their parents because they were worried about the consequence of what got them in that place. I'm not saying you've got to give your kids a pass, and I can't speak to every scenario, sure, but as a parent, you have to at least say hey, yeah, there are consequences when you break the rules. By the way, if something, to a certain level happens to you, that all goes aside. Yeah, we're going to get through that right and maybe sometime down the road, yeah, we're going to talk about that thing, but I am the place you can go when this happens without any fear.

Speaker 2: 1:02:09

If someone has a tip or they know something, they really should go to the website of ICAC and make an anonymous.

Speaker 3: 1:02:21

Yeah, there's a couple ways you can do it. So number one if you think you have a child who has been a victim or if you think you are a victim, the easiest way is still go through local law enforcement. It would be a 911 call. They will then make the referral and it can happen very quickly. That case of the medical examiner it was a dispatch 911 call and within an hour they also realized that this death investigator worked with that local agency. They not only got it to a higher level, they got it to an outside agency and had a detective over there within like 45, 60 minutes. They move very quickly on this.

Speaker 3: 1:02:54

Um, if you think that, uh, you know, you just have a tip, you have somebody you were concerned about, yeah, go, you can look at the ICAC page, you'll get it. But really, icac operates because of the local agencies that they're attached to Sure. So you're still probably going to go through that intake of 9-1-1, something like that, unless you, you know you really have. Oh, I think something happened some time ago or I heard somebody got arrested recently that I think I've had. I've had that a lot um, where I do a story on somebody and then potential victims from their past come up and say that person was my teacher, my whatever, and there were things happening back then.

Speaker 2: 1:03:30

And then I usually say yeah, you should really probably contact investigators at that point a couple cases that you worked on that have been probably, I would say, trending stories that um have been posted on on on your social platforms. Uh, one would be the, as we talk about the icac um, was there any more information other than the guy that went to the um? The taquilla case, where the guy went down to the um, to the hotel, to to meet the mom and all that was there.

Speaker 2: 1:04:02

Anything else that came out of that other than you know not much you know I have been still trying to work on more on that.

Speaker 3: 1:04:08

We're going to start doing some records requests just to see what we can put together. What unfortunately happens and I've talked to people close to that case when the suspect is dead, the resources dry up really pretty quickly. There's no risk of more victims and even for the past victims there's really not much else that they can do. The person's no longer here and so the justice system doesn't really have a mechanism for that and all of these agencies have more caseload than they know what to do with. So there were a lot of things that he was believed to be involved with but they were not able to continue to pursue. But I plan on going back through. I want to learn more what was in his vehicle when they got a hold of it, learn more of his blood alcohol level. I want to get reports on that. That thing had an end. It had a closure, but there was a lot of potential what that man was there to do.

Speaker 2: 1:05:05

And he was the one that lived in Port Orchard. Is that right?

Speaker 3: 1:05:08

That's right he lived in Port Orchard. And he was the one that lived in Port Orchard. Is that right? That's right. He lived in Port Orchard. He was the medical director for Guantanamo Bay under Bush and Obama. Okay, high-functioning individual yeah, had crushed it in his professional life, but appeared to have this part of him that he had been placating, he'd been satisfying for years, and they believe that it wasn't just when he lived here. This was all over, you know, he'd been all over the world uh.

Speaker 2: 1:05:37

The other case uh was uh, the gentleman who may have had a, an arrangement with a young woman that was uh. Then uh found dead. Uh, she, I, I believe that she was. I wasn't sure if she was a, if she worked at the nightclub as a dancer. Has anything come from that one?

Speaker 3: 1:05:59

Yeah, that was the ex-Bothel City Council member. So you know, these things have a lot. They get really intense and we all jump on it. We start telling the story and then it just nosedives because it goes in the legal system and that's not a bad thing. These cases take a lot of time. Um, different actions. Good example here difference between that and an ICAC case. So I can, I can tell you this If ICAC comes and knocks on your door, uh, and they start asking you questions, they know the answer to every single one.

Speaker 3: 1:06:25

They've been looking at you for some time. It's kind of like any federal case when the feds come after you. They've been looking at you for six months or a year. They know things about you you forgot. When you get into a situation where that man has killed that young lady, they didn't know anything about this until the day there's a body and so there's all that catch-up time. So then to even get it ready for court can take months, and that's really where that one is. It's got a long time left before it's going to actually start going through the court process, um, where usually you know, like I said, when you get charged by the feds, you're probably in front of a judge. You're probably in trial within the next 60 days. They're ready to go. Yeah, your, your defense attorney's the one going. Hey, let me catch up. But they're at 99 conviction rate.

Speaker 2: 1:07:06

It's just a very different process, sure um, I'm trying to think of any other cases that we you know that were huge at that point in time. It's unfortunate that there are some cases. Are you going to be doing more cold cases?

Speaker 3: 1:07:20

um, yeah, I I might. So I personally I would love to. I think that they're very difficult to produce. There's tons of information to go through, years of it. The production side is very different. I think it will be long format. I would love to dive into it. It's finding resources. It is really hard to monetize these types of operations like I have. There's a reason. It's really just me. It's hard to scale up and it's hard to scale up. So eventually, yes, I would love to. I don't know when that will happen.

Speaker 3: 1:07:51

I think what I could continue to do is insert myself into cases like this where there is some big thing that happens, get a lot more people paying attention to it and then hopefully pass the baton on to the other true crime type of people. King 5, not that I ever want to be pat, you know, telling people to watch competition, but king fives actually does a really great cold case series. It's well produced, um, it's well put together. They've also most of those cases that they're working or cases they've covered in the past. So they've already got a war chest of footage and they're really good at working through that stuff. So, um, you know I'm kind of being sarcastic, but I want to they're. They're a great organization for that type of thing yeah, check it out.

Speaker 2: 1:08:33

Yeah, their local unsolved mystery show that they uh, yeah, I thought for a moment that that show had gone away but it is still running, so good for them. I. I think it's good that people get a you know, kind of a re-enlightenment or refresh of what stories may have been going on in the Pacific Northwest at that point in time and then, to, you know, bring back some of these cases that maybe people forgot of Again, like one, for example, is the DB Cooper case, another one from the Pacific Northwest, and obviously that you know, to this day alleged. You know stories have gone through that it could be this person, it could be that person and you know, I I think right now everyone is pointing back to Richard McCoy who passed away, his wife finally passed away, and now his kids are saying, oh, we have, you know, evidence of the parachute. So all these different stories and that one being huge back in the day, yeah, I've seen some of the stuff that King 5 has done on that local Unsolved Mysteries show. Very, very well put together they do.

Speaker 3: 1:09:39

I like too. When you go back and you watch some of that, all of us like to think it was so picturesque back in the day and these things didn't happen. The numbers don't support that. There was a lot going on. There always has been, and I think it's good sometimes to go back and go oh, that's right, there was those things going on. We did have serial killers, we did have.

Speaker 3: 1:09:58

You know, I don't think we're calling gun violence, I think it was just called gang violence back in the day. The verbiage has changed. But uh, to say that somehow this place is just in this absolute state of unrest and it's just this shithole is just not factual and the numbers don't support it. It evolves. As a population we've evolved. As citizens we've evolved, and as a culture we've evolved and we have more people living here than we ever have before. I think crime rate matters. I don't have the statistics sitting here at my fingertips, but our crime rate is actually really pretty, especially compared to all the other areas in the country. We have one of the best crime rates there is.

Speaker 2: 1:10:36

Yet somehow we get thought of as this lawless area, and I think people really should make a distinction between major crimes and petty crime, and I think our lower level crime is absolutely up, but the stuff that really affects our day today, our safety, is going to be more in the major crime category and I feel like I'm starting to see this in the, in the in the city, is you're starting to see a lot of movement in regards to and this is always an ugly topic of of of homeless people being moved around and kind of cleaned up, and I'm not saying that, you know, to sweep away the homeless from an area West Seattle, you know, fremont neighborhoods. These areas aren't sustained, they're not great places for them to be held up. You know, I know that there was an encampment off of 15th. As you're going to the Ballard Bridge, that is gone, going to the West Seattle Golf Course, there was an encampment there that is gone now.

Speaker 2: 1:11:39

So they're pushing but they're also making limits to where people can hang out. They cannot be in the proper junction. It was told to me that they can't be up there hanging out, um, at certain times of the night and during the day, um, so the evolution of them continuing to be to move, I don't want to say you know it's like shuffling the cards and like just keep moving and keep moving. Uh, you know, even when you talk about soto and and that area being kind of continuing to be worked and cleaned up, and you know you're not seeing the you know the white house anymore.

Speaker 3: 1:12:17

That was the encampment there and and I joked because that was something that you saw on on a social media platform like ish seattle looks like ish or whatever had been posting and doing drive-bys by you know this, this makeshift white house, and I was like damn that's I think there's still also and you've seen it now, especially with the political climate and so on we have local you know, online media influencers I guess we'll call them who really are just into a couple topics and they are really trying to get the attention of people on a national level. They're not really even speaking to people locally as much as they are speaking out and what they're trying to show is all this place is the worst it's ever been, and for those of us who live there realize, no, that's not the case, I think. I think we're starting to work more towards a manhattan model. Manhattan in new york has similar homeless numbers than we do. They manage it very differently and they have a lot more resources, and that is that is capitalism in a way that most of this country really can't understand. So the amount of available revenue is a whole nother world, but they do not let that go out into certain areas. They will have a ton of resources of shelter.

Speaker 3: 1:13:28

I don't know that anybody ever then exit that shelter to get back into society, but they will not be out on the street and I feel like we're kind of going that direction where we're not really going to solve anything, but we will make a different perception to those who are out there and I think that in itself would probably be a successful move from, say, the mayor if they can get to that.

Speaker 3: 1:13:50

And I think that in itself would probably be a successful move from, say the mayor if they can get to that, because I think people are much more willing to pay when they see a result. But right now it really is a shift and the sweeps themselves though they, I think they can be very problematic for those who are in them. The amount of stuff that gets cleared out from the jungle and other areas like that it I struggle to really get people to truly understand how much stuff that is out there. And if you want to consider yourself to be an environmentalist or concerned about people, you can be concerned about somebody out there on the street. You can also be concerned when they're living in that, or we're just letting that stuff pile up six feet high out there, and I'm not saying that to be demonstrative, that's just what it is.

Speaker 2: 1:14:32

It very much is.

Speaker 2: 1:14:34

Yeah, very much. And the other place too, las Vegas. You don't see a lot of the homeless population on the Strip Like in years past. You would go to the Strip and you would see someone on a sky bridge, and they really don't let that happen anymore. You would go to this trip and you would see someone on a sky bridge and that they really don't let that happen anymore. It is really much just a clean touristy trap. Now you're not. I promise you. You go to Vegas. It is night and day difference. You're not like every time I go there for a conference, I'm not seeing. You're not. I'm. I'm not running into homeless people hanging out and if they are on these sky bridges, police are moving them. They're getting moved.

Speaker 3: 1:15:11

And I think you get more support from the people who are paying the tax. I think in recent years the frustration has been you keep saying you want more money, you've got more money than you've ever spent on this and it seems to be the worst it's ever been. So I think it could also go in waves. I think if you can get the general public to see some sort of movement, then you can go and say, okay, we've done that, now we need to get to step two. If you want to go from we have the biggest problem we ever have to, here's the ultimate solution. You're not going to get there. It's got to start with okay, you, you, you, not. You voted for me. I came in. Now you can go in parts of town. Maybe you weren't able to, but we didn't fix the problem. We just fixed your traffic problem. Here's what we can do next. But I've shown you I can do step one. Here's what two is, here's what three is, and you keep kind of inching that along with results, and visual results matter.

Speaker 3: 1:16:00

I think that can almost be the unfortunate part. You could maybe, behind the scenes, be doing great work. If people can't see it or feel it, it really won't matter. It won't sustainably matter. You will lose your funding very quickly and you will lose the will of the people. You have to give the visual, tactile change and then you can start asking more. And I think that's kind of where more Manhattan has gone. When I've gone out there and seen these spots, the amount of resources for people. They're not forcing people not to be homeless, they are giving them daily pairs of clean clothes, much cleaner shelter space, much better ecosystem. I don't think they're getting them out of there, but for myself, I think, saying well, we want to make it a protected space for you to live on the sidewalk. All you've done is let that person live in bondage. That is not compassion.

Speaker 2: 1:16:46

Yeah, our guests this evening. Uh, photog steve 81. Uh, steve hickey, it's always a pleasure as we wrap things up from the pacific northwest. Um, anything you're working on that you want to kind of share before we uh head out?

Speaker 3: 1:17:02

the big one's going to be that one on the face, swapping out that one's going to be an icac one. I've got a number of of arrests I'm going to go through. We got one that nobody else really got out. In Gig Harbor there was a double homicide that there was just an arrest on here this week. A young man is suspected of torching his dad and brother's home, killing them both, and it originally just came in as a house fire. But we got somebody out there, noticed the ATF and more were out there and thought this might be something. And sure enough, here it is. So we'll get on that. I would suspect there'll probably be in the next week some other revelation in the Tika Lewis case and then otherwise back to the normal business as usual and hopefully we will get to an arrest in that Pioneer Square shooting.

Speaker 2: 1:17:46

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, if anything breaks on the tika lewis, keep me, keep us posted. We I'm sure. Um, it'd be very unfortunate if. If you're, if you're hitting this up, then it's. It could be a conclusion, but I hope. I hope that she's out there somewhere alive and you know someone to this day. Hopefully she's. You know, it's just, you just. You know it's very bleak and I always want to keep hope for that. In regards to her returning to her mom safely, but in most reality that's not always the case. So, fingers crossed on that. As we wrap things up. From the Pacific Northwest, I'd like to thank our guest Photog Steve for hanging out with us this evening. If you have a suggestion for a show, please send me an email at mario at onairmariocom as we wrap things up. From the Pacific Northwest, I'd like to thank our guest Steve. I'd like to thank Mark Christopher, sofia Magana and myself. Mario Magana, be sure to look up at the sky, because you never know what you.