It was just after 11 p.m. on May 2, 2017, when then-37-year-old Jason Crawford called 911 from right outside his home in Cullman, Alabama, about 50 miles north of Birmingham.
911 DISPATCHER: 911, where is your emergency?
JASON CRAWFORD: Uh, my wife is shot. I need someone out here, please
911 DISPATCHER: Sir, is she breathing?
JASON CRAWFORD: I don’t know … I’m trying to pick her— lift her up so I can see.
Jason remembers that night vividly.
Jason Crawford: It felt like it was taking longer and longer for anybody to get there … And eventually, I saw some headlights.
Body camera footage shows what Cullman County Sheriff’s deputies found when they first got to the scene.
DEPUTY: EMS is on their way, OK?
Jason’s wife, 32-year-old Tiffiney Crawford, was slumped over in the driver’s seat of her own van. There was a pink revolver in her left hand, which Jason says she kept in the driver’s side door of her vehicle for protection. When one of the sheriff’s deputies tried to check Tiffiney for a pulse, the gun fell out of her hand.
DEPUTY: What happened tonight?
JASON CRAWFORD: Uh, I—We were arguing. … I gave her—her stuff, so she can go. I didn’t let her in the house. … And the last thing I remember, she said she loved me, and I was going in the house, and I heard a shot, a scream and then another shot.
Tiffiney Crawford had two gunshot wounds to her head — one shot was to the left side of her jaw and the other was to her left temple. At least one sheriff’s deputy at the scene believed she had taken her own life. The paramedics tried to revive her, but it was too late. “And they came over and told me that she was dead,” her husband Jason Crawford told “48 Hours.” “It just made me feel sick in my stomach.”
Cullman County District Attorney’s Office
Tiffiney had been shot twice in the head. Paramedics tried to revive her —
Jason Crawford: And I was thinking that maybe there’s a chance she’s still alive.
—but it was too late.
Jason Crawford: And they come over and told me that she was dead … It just made me feel sick in my stomach.
To at least one of the deputies on the scene that night, it appeared pretty clear that this was a suicide.
DEPUTY: There’s nothing here so far that says anything to me other than a suicide.
And it wasn’t long before deputies realized who Jason Crawford was — the son of Ronda Crawford, who works as an office manager at the sheriff’s office.
DEPUTY: You know it’s Ronda’s daughter-in-law.
Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry soon got word.
Sheriff Matt Gentry: The chief deputy called me … and said, ‘Hey … it appears that … Ronda’s daughter-in-law … had shot herself.” … I said, “I’ll go out there and check on them.”
By the time the sheriff got there, Ronda Crawford was already on scene. It was Ronda – Jason’s mother – who called Tiffiney’s mom, Cheryl McGucken to tell her what happened.
Cheryl McGucken: I felt like I was kind of frozen in time in that moment. … And I said, “Is Jason there? Can I talk to him?” And he was already speaking with the police.
Cheryl McGucken: And so, um, I got off the phone and … I tried to figure out what my next step was (cries).
Cheryl’s thoughts soon turned to Tiffiney and Jason’s children. They shared a 5-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter. Tiffiney was also stepmom to Jason’s then-14-year-old son, Logan. All the kids were inside the house that night; the two youngest were asleep. For Cheryl, life really hasn’t been the same since then.
David Begnaud | “48 Hours” contributor: What are the things that you miss about her?
Cheryl McGucken: You know, the things I miss about her is her spontaneity. … Tiffiney was an individual that had a huge heart, and she just wanted to engulf everyone around her and help them find joy.
That is why Cheryl says Tiffiney devoted much of her spare time to a support group that she had started on Facebook called “Mothers Helping Mothers.”
TIFFINEY CRAWFORD VIDEO: We’re there to laugh with each other, to love each other, and to just build you up in everyday motherhood.
“She saw a vision that there were … other mothers … that needed somebody to talk to,” Cheryl McGucken said of the “Mothers Helping Mothers” Facebook group. “And that group took off like a wildfire and spread all over the country.” At the time of Tiffiney’s death, the group had about 9,000 members.
Tiffiney Crawford/Facebook
Cheryl McGucken: She saw a vision that there were … other mothers … that needed somebody to talk to … And that group took off like a wildfire and spread all over the country.
Tiffiney and Jason had been married a little more than six years when she died.
David Begnaud: What did you think of Tiffiney when you first met her?
Jason Crawford: I thought she was striking and beautiful. She was outgoing. A lot of things I wasn’t, you know? So, it was more of, like, I guess opposites attract kind of thing.
When they started dating, Jason had been divorced for several years. His first wife, he says, had cheated on him. Tiffiney was in a relationship at the time — married, in fact. It wasn’t exactly a fairytale beginning from the outside looking in, but Jason says, for the two of them, it was.
Jason Crawford: It was like fireworks from — in the beginning.
Tiffiney eventually got divorced, and that is when she and Jason married and started their family. Just what led up to her death on that night in May 2017 would be up to the investigators to find out. Sheriff Gentry remembers a conversation he had on the scene with the coroner.
Sheriff Matt Gentry: He says, it appears to be a suicide. He said the only weird thing is there’s two shots.
David Begnaud: What do you recall about what you thought in that moment?
Sheriff Matt Gentry: Well, that’s weird. It’s strange. … Now, has that happened before? Yes. But it’s not normal.
One of the shots was to her left jaw area, the other was to her left temple.
Sheriff Matt Gentry: I said because of his mother’s connection to our office, for transparency, there has to be an autopsy done.
Sheriff Gentry says his investigators went on to process the scene that night.
Sheriff Matt Gentry: We investigate every suicide like a homicide … So, the van was searched. Evidence that was needed to be was seized.
But the next morning, Sheriff Gentry decided to turn the case over to the Alabama State Bureau of Investigation.
Sheriff Matt Gentry: I could have told our guys to work it. … But because of the potential for conflict … I want full transparency.
Joe Parrish is the state agent who got the case.
David Begnaud: What’s the first thing you do?
Joe Parrish: I went to the District Attorney’s Office … And asked him about the van.
Parrish wanted to get his hands on that van in which Tiffiney was shot so he got a search warrant for it, but there was just one problem: the van had been released to the Crawford family, and by the time Parrish got to it — less than 24 hours after Tiffiney died — it had already been cleaned by Jason’s family members. The sheriff’s office had given them the go ahead.
The first thing SBI investigator Joe Parrish did was obtain a search warrant for Tiffiney’s van. But there was a problem: the sheriff’s office released the van to the Crawford family the night before. By the time Parrish got to it — less than 24 hours after Tiffiney died – it had already been cleaned by Jason’s family members. They had received permission from the sheriff’s office.
Cullman County Court Clerk
Jason Crawford: I didn’t want the kids to see anything. I was worried about them when they woke up in the morning.
David Begnaud: What did you make of that, that the van had been cleaned?
Joe Parrish: It was odd that they would clean it up that quick after something like that.
But Sheriff Gentry defends his decision to release the van.
Sheriff Matt Gentry: There was nothing of evidentiary value to the van. … They processed it, took, uh, pictures. They did everything they normally would do on a crime scene, uh, that night.
David Begnaud: Right. But if you’re treating it like a homicide, I’m not turning the van over to the family.
Sheriff Matt Gentry: Sure. So — so and I — I mean, I completely understand. So, it was treated — we worked it like a homicide, but it was treated like a suicide. … Every bit of evidence that was needed was taken.
But as it turns out, that van would be significant. And so would what Jason and Tiffiney were arguing about right before she died.
THE AFFAIR
Jason Crawford says that in the months leading up to his wife Tiffiney’s death, he noticed a change in her.
Jason Crawford: Yeah— I could tell something was going on because she was getting more distant…
Jason Crawford: She had been drinking a lot … too … two or three bottles a week sometimes.
David Begnaud: So, you had a feeling something was up?
Jason Crawford: Yes.
Tiffiney Crawford had been shot once to the left side of her chin and a second time to her left temple. The gun was found in her left hand, but Tiffiney was right-handed. Two shots to the head are rare in suicide attempts says Joe Parrish, but two shots using a nondominant hand to pull the trigger seemed nearly impossible to the longtime investigator.
Tiffiney Crawford/Facebook
And he says his suspicions were confirmed the night Tiffiney died. Just hours before she got home, Jason found messages on their computer suggesting that she was having an affair.
Jason Crawford: I started calling her, you know, just trying to see if she would tell me anything. And… She’s like … I don’t know what you’re talking about, denying it. And I was like, “OK, well, I think you need to get home.”
Tiffiney’s mom, Cheryl, says she knew about the affair.
Cheryl McGucken: She called to let me know she was on her way home. And that, um, Jason and her were going to have to have a discussion about their problems …
David Begnaud: Did she sound worried?
Cheryl McGucken: She did not sound worried. She sounded kind of hyper and, you know, anxious. … I just said, “Well, I love you. Be careful.”
Tiffiney’s friend, Lyndsy Luke, says she also knew about the affair. Lyndsy says Tiffiney told her she was making plans to leave Jason, and that she got a job at a local grocery store to save up money for a new life on her own.
Lyndsy Luke: She knew what she needed to leave him and how she was so close.
David Begnaud: Was Tiffiney afraid that Jason was going to find out about the affair?
Lyndsy Luke: Yes. And she didn’t want him to because she didn’t want to hurt him.
But that night, when he did find out, Jason says he was hurt and angry. This was the second time a wife had cheated on him. When Tiffiney got home, he says that’s when he confronted her, and refused to let her go inside.
Jason Crawford: I kept telling her she’s not staying the night. … She asked me, “why can’t I stay?” I was like … “you’ve destroyed the sanctity of our marriage.”
David Begnaud: You were really angry.
Jason Crawford: Uh, yeah, I was angry, but I was controlled anger.
Jason claims they argued for more than an hour, and when he remained insistent that Tiffiney was not going inside, he says she asked him to go and get her work clothes.
Jason Crawford: I went in and grabbed some clothes and threw them to her. And then … I told her I’m done talking. Um, so, I went in the house. And as soon as I went in the house … I heard a shot, her scream, and then another shot.
David Begnaud: And then you did what?
Jason Crawford: Went right back outside.
David Begnaud: And what position was the door in — the car door?
Jason Crawford: The car door. It was pulled to or closed.
Jason says that’s when he called 911. But in that call and the police body camera footage from that night, Jason never mentioned an affair.
JASON CRAWFORD (dash cam video): Last thing I remember, she said she loved me …
Lead investigator Joe Parrish says authorities didn’t learn about the affair until the next day. Also, when Parrish listened back to that 911 call, there was more that caught his ear.
Joe Parrish: It was very cold … It didn’t sound like somebody that was worried about his wife.
911 DISPATCHER: I’m gonna need some more information from you …
And there was one question that the 911 dispatcher kept asking Jason that he wouldn’t answer.
911 DISPATCHER: Who shot her in the head?
Joe Parrish: Who shot your wife? … He was avoiding the question.
David Begnaud: I would like to play the 911 call for you.
Jason Crawford: OK.
911 DISPATCHER: 911, EMS and Fire, where is your emergency?
JASON CRAWFORD: Uh, my wife is shot.
David Begnaud: You seem cool as a cucumber.
Jason Crawford: Well, maybe that’s just the way my tone of voice is.
911 DISPATCHER: She’s been shot? Who’s she been shot by?
JASON CRAWFORD: Please send an ambulance now, please.
“Did you kill your wife?” “48 Hours” contributor David Begnaud asked Jason Crawford in his only interview on the case. “No,” Crawford replied.
CBS News
David Begnaud: She asked you who’s she been shot by. And you didn’t respond. Why not?
Jason Crawford: Yeah. I just felt like if I said it into existence, it’d be true.
JASON CRAWFORD: She’s been shot in the head.
911 DISPATCHER: Did she shoot herself in the head?
David Begnaud: This lady gave you an opportunity to say yes.
Jason Crawford: Yeah.
David Begnaud: And you didn’t respond?
Jason Crawford: Well, I don’t know how many more times I can tell you. … I just froze in thought.
David Begnaud: Do you understand how somebody listens to that and says, yeah, ’cause he did it?
Jason Crawford: Yeah. I can understand that.
And that’s exactly what Joe Parrish thought. A week after Tiffiney died, and with her autopsy results still pending, Parrish decided to bring Jason in for questioning.
During that interview, Jason spoke in detail about discovering the affair and the argument that he had with Tiffiney:
JASON CRAWFORD: I said, “You’ve ruined our home.” I was like, “You’re no longer a part of this …”
A week after Tiffiney died, and with her autopsy still pending, Joe Parrish brought Jason Crawford in for questioning. For the first time, Crawford spoke in detail about a discovery he made the night his wife died. He told Parrish that Tiffiney had been having an affair, and that’s what they were arguing about.
Robert Tuten’s Office
And he also answered a question that Parrish believed was key:
AGENT JOE PARRISH: Was she left or right-handed?
JASON CRAWFORD: She’s right-handed.
AGENT JOE PARRISH: Right-handed.
JASON CRAWFORD: Yeah.
Tiffiney was right-handed, but the gun had been found in her left hand.
David Begnaud: How often, in your experience, do suicides happen where the individual uses their non-dominant hand?
Joe Parrish: I’ve never seen it personally.
Jason Crawford: It’s not like I know she’s like so predominantly right-handed that she couldn’t use her left hand.
But why would Tiffiney, a woman who devoted so much time to helping others, suddenly kill herself?
Lyndsy Luke: There was nothing suicidal about her.
Even Jason finds it hard to explain.
David Begnaud: Had she ever spoke about wanting to kill herself?
Jason Crawford: Not that I know. Not to me.
After Parrish interviewed Jason, he was free to go. But about a week later, he was brought back in for questioning —- this time by Parrish’s colleague. Jason agreed to take a polygraph, and investigators told him he failed.
POLYGRAPH EXAMINER: Your reactions were off the chain. OK? … You’re saying that there’s no way that you shot your wife?
JASON CRAWFORD: Correct.
It wasn’t long before things turned contentious.
INVESTIGATOR: I don’t want to hear that — that, “I didn’t shoot my wife …” … Because I know that’s a f****** lie.
JASON CRAWFORD: I can get up and leave because I’m not under arrest, right?
INVESTIGATOR: Huh! You listen to me, huh! … (Jason walks out the door) Walk out that f****** door.
That interview also ended with no arrest. Because of a backlog, it would take nearly a year to get the missing piece of the puzzle: those autopsy results. You see, the manner of death was ruled a homicide, and that is when the decision was made to present the case to a grand jury. Jeff Roberts was the Cullman County Assistant District Attorney at the time.
Jeff Roberts: I have no doubt in my mind he’s guilty at all. … I think the forensics tipped the case.
But would a grand jury indict Jason? Even Tiffiney’s mother had her doubts.
Cheryl McGucken: Even though I didn’t want to believe it was a suicide, naturally, I wouldn’t want to believe my son-in-law killed her either.
TIFFINEY’S DEATH RULED A HOMICIDE
Cheryl McGucken: It’s a sad situation, whether on one side you believe somebody committed suicide or somebody committed murder. … Neither one of those scenarios work in my mind.
When Cheryl McGucken learned about her daughter’s death, she said, “I felt like I was kind of frozen in time.” She said of her daughter, “Tiffiney was an individual that had a huge heart, and she just wanted to engulf everyone around her and help them find joy.”
Cheryl McGucken
In the year following her daughter Tiffiney’s death, Cheryl McGucken says she had a hard time believing that her daughter could have killed herself — but she also couldn’t imagine that her son-in-law, Jason, would’ve pulled the trigger.
David Begnaud: Did you ever call the investigators and say, I want to know every bit of details you have? I want to know all the details.
Cheryl McGucken: No.
David Begnaud: Why not?
Cheryl McGucken: I suppose I didn’t want to, um, let that cloud, my time with my grandkids and my relationship with Jason and his family —
Jason Crawford: My family and friends … they never questioned that I wouldn’t kill my wife.
Jason did have a lot of support, but not from the investigators or then-Cullman County Assistant District Attorney Jeff Roberts and his legal assistant Debra Ball.
Debra Ball: She was too out there to help other people. … She’s not gonna kill herself.
Jeff Roberts: There’s no way that that’s what happened.
Once Roberts had received word that the medical examiner had ruled Tiffiney’s death a homicide, he decided, along with lead investigator Joe Parrish, to seek an indictment against Jason.
Jeff Roberts: I couldn’t figure out who else did it. He’s the only one who had a motive to do it, for one thing.
Agent Joe Parrish: The grand jury came back with an indictment for murder for Jason Crawford.
Cheryl McGucken: Jason called me and told me. … It was very shocking. And very confusing.
On May 21, 2018, just over a year after Tiffiney’s death, Jason Crawford surrendered at the Cullman County Sheriff’s Office. He was only in custody for 30 minutes before he was released on bond.
Cullman County Sheriff’s Office
On May 21, 2018, just over a year after Tiffiney died, Jason surrendered.
Joe Parrish: Walked in, I told him he was under arrest. He didn’t seem to be worried.
David Begnaud: He didn’t seem to be worried?
Joe Parrish: No.
Jason wasn’t in custody for very long. In fact, he was released on bond and Robert Tuten and Nickolas Heatherly became his defense attorneys.
Robert Tuten: We don’t believe Jason is guilty of this at all. … There’s no evidence … They did not see blood or anything on him. They found nothing that would indicate he had, had fired a, a firearm recently.
But the night of the shooting Jason was never tested for gunshot residue, and his house was never searched for bloody clothing. Still, Tuten and Heatherly say they believe Jason, who says he was inside the house when the gunshots rang out.
Robert Tuten: His oldest son … heard his father come back in the house right before the first gunshot.
And about that polygraph test that Jason was said to have failed?
Robert Tuten: Police investigators use those as an investigative tool. If they think somebody is guilty, they tell them that they have failed the polygraph and insist they tell / what really happened.
David Begnaud: They gave you a lie detector test and you failed it.
Jason Crawford: Hmm, yeah. … They can make those read how they want to.
Jason’s defense team also downplayed that 911 call — the one in which Investigator Parrish noticed Jason sounded calm, even evasive.
Robert Tuten: If someone’s never been in a high-pressure situation like that where they’ve just been shocked by what they’re seeing, they probably would not understand how that affects somebody.
Jason Crawford: It just felt like I was outside my body not knowing what was going on.
But the prosecution was confident that Jason was guilty. Dr. Valerie Green was confident, too. She is the medical examiner who conducted Tiffiney’s autopsy.
David Begnaud: Do you remember saying … to yourself … “I got a feeling there’s more to this story”?
Dr. Valerie Green: Oh, yes, definitely. … I think the thing that made me think that there could be something else going on with this case is … that gunshot wound on the left side of Ms. Crawford’s head.
Dr. Green says that based on the absence of gunpowder particles and abrasion around the wound to Tiffiney’s left temple, she concluded that the shot had to have been fired from at least 10 inches away.
Dr. Valerie Green: That’s indicating that, you know, she’s holding her arm outward beyond 10 inches and trying to shoot herself. … not saying … that it’s impossible. But it’s not likely.
It is especially unlikely, says Dr. Green, because Jason reported that he found Tiffiney in thedriver’s seat of her own van with the gun in her left hand and the car door closed.
DEPUTY: Where’s the gun, sir?
JASON CRAWFORD: It’s right here in her hand.
Dr. Valerie Green: That was concerning to me because I mean … For you to be able to hold up a gun and shoot yourself in the head … it would be difficult to do, and that’s such a small space.
That’s not all, says Dr Green. Neither of Tiffiney’s injuries were contact wounds.
David Begnaud: She didn’t have a contact wound here and she didn’t have a contact wound here.
Jason Crawford: Correct.
David Begnaud: Most suicides involve the barrel, or the tip of the gun being placed on the skin.
Jason Crawford: Yeah. And you said most, not all.
But there was something else Dr. Green noticed, specifically about that van.
“I remember looking at pictures of the driver’s side door,” Dr. Green told “48 Hours. “And I didn’t see any blood on that door. I didn’t see any blood on the glass.” This led Dr. Green to believe that the door was not closed when Tiffiney was shot. “And I think that that door is open because he was standing there,” Green said.
Cullman County Court Clerk
Dr. Valerie Green: I remember looking at pictures of the driver’s side door … And I didn’t see any blood on that door. I didn’t see any blood on the glass or the window. I didn’t see anything even low on the door. … That makes me think that the door was not closed. … And I think that that door is open because he was standing there.
Despite the autopsy report, and the fact that a grand jury had indicted Jason, Tiffiney’s mom continued to support him.
Cheryl McGucken: I never changed how I felt towards Jason. I mean, what purpose would that serve? You know, he’s also somebody’s child. And he’s the remaining parent to my grandchildren.
More than four years would pass before the case ever went to trial. During that time, the defense would retain their own medical examiner—the former chief medical examiner for the state of Alabama — and he had a drastically different opinion than Dr. Green.
Dr. James Lauridson: I believe it’s a suicide.
THE TRIAL OF JASON CRAWFORD
In November 2022, more than five years after Tiffiney Crawford died, her husband, Jason Crawford, went on trial for her murder. Prosecutor Jeff Roberts was confident in his case, but he knew there would be challenges.
Jeff Roberts: The fact that … it was considered by the officers on the scene apparently consistent with suicide, I thought this is going to be really tough to overcome.
Jason’s defense attorneys Robert Tuten and Nickolas Heatherly also felt that they had their work cut out for them.
Robert Tuten: Simply because there’s no way to really find a definitive answer for exactly what happened.
“48 Hours” was only allowed to film the trial from outside the courtroom, through a windowed door. Tiffiney’s mother, Cheryl, who said she didn’t want to hear the details surrounding her daughter’s death, chose not to attend the trial.
Cheryl McGucken: I knew that there would be things said on both sides that I … didn’t want to have in my head.
But she did go on day one—solely to testify. She was the prosecutor’s first witness.
Cheryl McGucken: He assumed that I was on their side
Instead, Cheryl says she told the jury how she really felt about Jason.
CHERYL MCGUCKEN: I’ve never had any issues with Jason.
Megan Brock was a juror on the case.
Megan Brock: She was telling everybody, me and Jason have a great relationship. … I was, like, “really?”
David Begnaud: You thought it was weird that his mother-in-law—might still be supporting him—as he’s on trial for murder?
Megan Brock: Mm-hmm. Yup.
Before her death, Tiffiney and Jason had been married for more than six years. But when they first started dating, it wasn’t exactly a fairy-tale beginning. Jason had already been divorced for several years after he says his first wife cheated on him. Tiffiney was married at the time.
Amber N. West
Undeterred, the prosecution moved on with what they felt was evidence of Jason’s alleged motive: anger over his wife’s affair. A friend of Tiffiney’s testified that Jason called her after learning that Tiffiney had been cheating on him, and that he said, “He couldn’t go through this again,” referencing the fact that his first wife had also had an affair. Jason claims he didn’t say that.
David Begnaud: His first wife cheated on him. Tiffiney cheated on him. Isn’t it plausible for somebody on the jury to think, hey, look, the guy snapped … so he killed her.
Robert Tuten: I don’t think that happened at all. He didn’t snap over his first wife. … They remained friends even to this day.
Jason’s 911 call was also played for the jury, and they saw some of that police body camera footage, too.
The prosecution also called DNA analyst Angela Fletcher, who examined swabs taken from Tiffiney’s gun. She testified she couldn’t say for sure whether there was any female DNA on the gun because there was only a trace amount of DNA detected. But she was certain that both the grip and the trigger contained male DNA.
David Begnaud: Is it Jason Crawford?
Angela Fletcher: No. The profile was so limited that I was unable to do any type of comparisons.
Jason Crawford: There are other people that have touched that gun that were males. My dad gave her the gun, so his DNA may be on it. … Her brother also shot it.
With so little DNA detected, the prosecution argued that Jason must have wiped the gun and then planted it in Tiffiney’s hand.
Robert Tuten: There’s no proof. There’s no evidence of it at all, no.
Jeff Roberts: Her DNA would have had to be on that gun if she did it herself.
But perhaps the most damaging testimony against Jason came from Medical Examiner Dr. Valerie Green. She told the jury how she believes the gunshot wound to Tiffiney’s temple was fired from more than 10 inches away.
Dr. Green explained that based on the absence of gunpowder particles and abrasions around the left temple wound, she concluded that the shot was fired from at least 10 inches away. “That’s indicating that … she’s holding her arm outward beyond 10 inches and trying to shoot herself,” Dr. Green said. And she believed that to be unlikely, especially because Jason Crawford reported that he found Tiffiney in the driver’s seat of her own van with the gun in her left hand and the car door closed.
Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences
Jeff Roberts: Which is way more consistent with him standing outside the car, shooting her than … her trying to hold a gun, you know, over 10 inches away.
But the defense showed the jury a pre-recorded deposition with their own medical examiner, Dr. James Lauridson.
DR. JAMES LAURIDSON: I believe that — that Mrs. Crawford shot herself first in the left side of the face and then shot herself in the left side of the head.
The defense showed the jury a pre-recorded deposition with the former chief medical examiner of Alabama, Dr. James Lauridson. “I believe that … Mrs. Crawford shot herself first in the left side of the face and then shot herself in the left side of the head,” Dr. Lauridson said. He also testified that there was no way to tell how far away the gun was when the shot to Tiffiney’s temple was fired because her hair was in the way.
Robert Tuten’s Office
Dr. Lauridson also testified there is no way to tell how far away the gun was when that shot to Tiffiney’s temple was fired — because her hair was in the way.
Dr. Valerie Green: I do realize that scalp hair can filter out gunpowder particles … but that was taken into consideration. … I would expect more abrasions to have been able to filter though her hair.
The defense also argued that Tiffiney had been struggling emotionally. She had started seeing a counselor just one day before she died. And friends of Tiffiney testified that she had been drinking excessively, and that she was upset because the man with whom she was having an affair had recently broken up with her.
Robert Tuten: He told her he didn’t want to have anything else to do with her.
Robert Tuten: Basically, her whole life is falling apart, and I think she just gave up.
Tiffiney’s journal was also entered into evidence and portions of it were read out loud to the jury. In an entry dated on May 2, 2017 – the day she died – she wrote, “I’m struggling with figuring out what to do with myself.”
Cullman County Court Clerk
Tiffiney’s journal was also entered into evidence. And in an entry dated the day she died, she wrote that she was “…struggling with figuring out what to do with herself” and that she was “… trying to avoid breaking down.”
David Begnaud: Isn’t it possible that she was having thoughts of suicide?
Jeff Roberts: I would say no. … She had started seeing a counselor. That’s somebody who was looking forward in life.
Jason’s son, Logan, also took the stand for the defense. He testified that he heard his father inside the house when the gunshots went off that night. But the prosecution questions his memory.
Jeff Roberts: When he keeps hearing the same story, his stories will start matching up somewhat like all 14-year-olds would.
Nickolas Heatherly: His story never changed. He was interviewed by law enforcement, and it stayed consistent.
On the last day of the trial, Jason Crawford took the stand. He told the jury that he loved Tiffiney and denied killing her.
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As the trial was drawing to a close, the defense made a bold decision. They called Jason to the stand. He testified that he loved Tiffiney and denied killing her, but both the prosecution and the defense acknowledge there was a point where he lost his cool.
Robert Tuten: He argued a little bit with the prosecutor.
Jeff Roberts: The person on the stand was the person that you could easily see doing this.
Jason also testified that he called Tiffiney a degrading name that night she died.
David Begnaud: You said to the jury, I was trying as best I could to make her hurt inside as much as I was hurting.
Jason Crawford: Mm-hmm. Yeah. … I was just basically talking down to her … like she was not human. … I feel sorry … because I feel like maybe that contributed to what pushed her to — over the edge to do that.
Even though Jason’s testimony likely did him no favors, there was still no direct physical evidence pointing towards his guilt.
Robert Tuten: There’s no evidence that Jason fired the gun.
And after four days of testimony, the case went to the jury.
Megan Brock: I said, “Oh, God, here we go. … I don’t know if this man did it or not.”
HOW THE JURY REACHED A VERDICT
It was Nov. 18, 2022, and Jason Crawford’s fate was now in the hands of a jury. Behind closed doors, Megan Brock says she and several fellow jurors were on the fence about his guilt.
Megan Brock: And I was, like, “So, we’re gonna sit here for the next, however long it takes?”
Cheryl McGucken: My stomach was in knots.
Cheryl McGucken admits she was nervous for Jason and his family.
Cheryl McGucken: You know, this is my son-in-law.
After several hours deliberating, the jury requested access to that body camera footage. Then they asked for the 911 recording.
JASON CRAWFORD (to 911): …My wife is shot. I need someone out here, please.
About 30 minutes later, they announced they had reached a decision. Cheryl was in the courtroom, only for the second time.
David Begnaud: And who were you with for the verdict?
Cheryl McGucken: I was sitting with my husband right behind Jason’s parents and the rest of his family.
As for the verdict, this is how Megan says the jury came to their decision.
Megan Brock: When we listened to that 911 call again, that was it.
David Begnaud: So, the 911 call sealed the deal?
Megan Brock: That was it.
David Begnaud: Really.
Megan Brock: The … operator, she keeps asking him, you know, “who shot her?” Finally, she was, like, OK, well, where is the gun at? And he said, laying beside her. … And we were like, like, wait what?
911 DISPATCHER: Where is the gun at?
JASON CRAWFORD: It’s laying beside her.
Megan Brock: He clearly said “the gun is laying beside her” … When in fact, the body cam footages showed her holding the gun, barely, but holding the gun.
David Begnaud: The gun wasn’t laying beside her.
Jason Crawford: It was beside her because it’s on her side, in her hand.
David Begnaud: They found the gun in her hand?
Jason Crawford: Yes.
David Begnaud: You understand the difference between in her hand and laying beside her?
Jason Crawford: To some people, yes. Like, beside her, it’s beside. Like laying on her — it’s beside her. … I just chose the wrong words to say.
But the jury did not see it that way.
Megan Brock: I said, “Oh f***. He’s guilty.” Everybody said the same thing. They were like, “he’s guilty.”
Thirty minutes after the jury listened to Jason Crawford’s 911 call, they went back into the courtroom and delivered a guilty verdict.
CBS News
David Begnaud: The verdict was guilty.
Jason Crawford: Yes. … It just felt like it shouldn’t be happening … it was unbelievable. So, I was just stunned.
Cheryl McGucken: You know, I had a friend that said … “hallelujah.” And that really bothered me. Because that wasn’t anything to cheer about. … There’s no justice here. Everybody loses.
David Begnaud: You are a grandmother.
Cheryl McGucken: Mm-Hmm.
David Begnaud: And there are two kids left behind who had nothing to do with this.
Cheryl McGucken: Right. Exactly.
David Begnaud: But at the end of the day, this man was put on trial.
Cheryl McGucken: Mm-hmm.
David Begnaud: The evidence was heard.
Cheryl McGucken: Mm-hmm.
David Begnaud: He was convicted.
Cheryl McGucken: Mm-hmm.
David Begnaud: So, he is a killer in the eyes of the law.
Cheryl McGucken: You know, they’re going to do an appeal. I don’t want to misspeak on this at all.
David Begnaud: But when you say they’re doing the appeal, what do you mean? Are you protecting him?
Cheryl McGucken: I — I don’t have any reason to protect him, um, but I’m going to let things play out as they will.
Following this interview, Begnaud asked Cheryl if she had any interest in seeing the evidence.
David Begnaud: You said you did. You asked if we could show it to you. We provided you with what was in the public record.
Cheryl McGucken: Yeah.
David Begnaud: What do you now believe?
Cheryl McGucken: Well, I now believe that he did kill her.
Cheryl McGucken: Reading the evidence, going through what was said during the trial. It — it — it made it painfully obvious.
On March 10, 2023, Cheryl McGucken took the stand again at Jason’s sentencing hearing. But this time, she spoke for her daughter.
CHERYL MCGUCKEN (reading): I couldn’t understand how my son-in-law, Jason, could look me in the eye for five-and-a-half years, if he had murdered my daughter.
“Jason, if not you, who?” Cheryl McGucken asked her son-in-law at his sentencing hearing.
CBS News
“48 Hours”‘ cameras were again outside the courtroom looking in, so Cheryl shared with us, what she said directly to Jason.
CHERYL MCGUCKEN (reading): Jason, if not you, who? You were there. You know the truth. … I pray you will someday find wisdom and strength to speak the truth.
She said that in front of her grandchildren, too — they were sitting in the very front row. Cheryl didn’t know that Jason’s parents were going to bring them.
As the judge prepared to sentence Jason Crawford, his lawyers were still pleading his innocence, just as Jason did when Begnaud first spoke with him.
David Begnaud: If I could interview Tiffiney today, what do you think she’d tell me?
Jason Crawford: Probably that she’s sorry. She’s — didn’t realize that it would affect so many people like — like it did.
David Begnaud: She wouldn’t tell me that you’re a liar and a killer?
Jason Crawford: No. I don’t think so.
Jason was sentenced to 99 years in prison. But under Alabama law, he will be eligible for parole in 15 years.
David Begnaud: What do you think Tiffiney would say now, having seen you on the stand?
Cheryl McGucken: I can hear her saying, “I’m proud of you, Mama.”
“She was my first born. My only daughter,” Cheryl McGucken said. “She was very involved with her children. … She used to dance and sing with them all the time.”
Now, Cheryl just wants to make sure that her grandchildren are proud of their mother, and never forget who Tiffiney was and what she stood for.
Cheryl McGucken: She was just an angel that came down from heaven for a short time to teach all of us … how to love and be kind and be giving.
Tiffiney’s children currently live with Jason’s parents.
Produced by Stephanie Slifer and Judy Rybak. Gabriella Demirdjian is the field producer. Ryan Smith is the development producer. Liz Caholo is the associate producer. Jud Johnston, Wini Dini and George Baluzyare the editors. Peter Schweitzer is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
A Colorado dentist who is accused of poisoning his wife’s drinks has been charged with murder. James Craig is accused of killing his wife, Angela, by lacing her protein shakes with arsenic and potassium cyanide.
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An appeals court ruled that the parents of a shooter who killed four students at a Michigan school can face trial themselves for purchasing the gun used in the killings.
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A young mother found dead in her car. Could she have shot herself twice? “48 Hours” contributor David Begnaud reports Saturday, March 25 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
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The Savannah-based Liberty Auction house was hired to clean out the home and sell all its contents, according to owner Lori Mattingly. Cleaning out the Moselle estate was “just like any other job,” she said to CNN over the phone on Tuesday.
“Their things are not any better or nicer than any other things that we pick up from other people’s homes,” Mattingly added. “We go into a lot of very nice expensive homes … And we’ve had much nicer things than theirs, but their things are nice.”
Among the items being auctioned are beds, chests, tables, chairs and picture frames that once hung on the walls of the Moselle estate. The Murdaugh items will be sold among items from other estates, and each item will be identified by a lot number, according to Mattingly. The auction house did not have an exact number of items being auctioned from the Murdaugh estate.
Photos of some of the items up for sale have been posted online and there are plans to post more photos in the coming days, Mattingly told CNN.
The auction will take place on Thursday at 4 p.m. in Pembroke, Georgia, a small town just outside of Savannah. Bids will only be accepted in-person.
“It’s unbelievable how many phone calls I have had, and I have only been able to answer so many,” said Mattingly. She told CNN the auctions usually draw a few hundred people, but they expect many more than normal for this sale.
Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, were found fatally shot on the property on June 7, 2021. He has maintained that he did not kill them. Prosecutors argued that Murdaugh committed the murders to distract and delay from investigations into his long string of alleged financial crimes and lies.
Murdaugh was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for the murders. He is appealing the conviction. The former attorney is also facing additional charges for other alleged financial crimes for which he has yet to face trial.
Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced former South Carolina attorney, was sentenced to life in prison earlier this month after he was found guilty of murdering his wife and son – the most serious and grisliest of the allegations faced by the scion of what was once one of the state’s most influential dynasties.
The murder convictions, which Murdaugh has appealed, came almost two years after he called police to report he had found his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and his grown son, Paul Murdaugh, shot dead at their rural estate. Murdaugh said he found the bodies after returning from a visit to his mother.
But the deaths weren’t the only ones to which the Murdaugh family name was tied. And as yearslong mysteries surrounding the family are garnering fresh attention, so are several other deaths.
Alex Murdaugh called 911 on June 7, 2021, to report he found his wife Margaret, 52, and son Paul, 22, shot dead outside their Islandton home about an hour from Hilton Head Island, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, said.
Murdaugh denied involvement in their killings, even as he was buried under an avalanche of charges related to alleged financial crimes. But he was eventually indicted in July 2022 with two counts of murder and two weapons charges – to which he pleaded not guilty.
The defense team, in the meantime, argued Murdaugh was a loving father and husband and painted a picture of a sloppy investigation.
In the end, it did not convince the jury, which was shown a video in which Murdaugh’s voice could be heard at the scene of the killings minutes before they happened – an indication, the state said, that he had lied about his whereabouts when they were shot.
Weeks after Murdaugh’s conviction, the family of Stephen Smith – whose body was found in the middle of a Hampton County road on July 8, 2015 – announced it would petition a court to have his body exhumed for a private autopsy as part of an effort to reexamine his death.
“We think that he did not die on that road that fateful night,” Eric Bland, an attorney for Smith’s family, told reporters in a news conference. “We think that there was other reasons and other causes that caused his death.”
“Our job is not to find out who did it,” he added. “That’s not what we do, we’re not law enforcement, we’re not doing a criminal case. … What we’re really trying to do is give a mother answers.”
Authorities have not detailed any connection between Smith’s death and the Murdaugh family.
On June 22, 2021, SLED announced it was reopening an investigation into the 19-year-old’s death based on information gathered while investigating the double homicide of Margaret and Paul Murdaugh.
SLED has not specified what that information was but confirmed in a statement to CNN it had “made progress” in the investigation into Smith’s death. The inquiry remained “active and ongoing,” the agency said.
According to an incident report from the South Carolina Highway Patrol’s Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team, or MAIT, Smith’s body was found in the road with blunt force trauma to the head.
While a pathologist cited in a SLED report states that Smith appeared to have been hit by a vehicle, the responding officer referenced in MAIT’s report cited “no vehicle debris, skid marks, or injuries consistent with someone being struck by a vehicle.”
Smith’s shoes were also both on and loosely tied, the report added, and investigators saw no evidence suggesting he was struck by a vehicle.
Notes from investigators in the case file say that “according to family, Stephen would never have been walking in the middle of the roadway” and that he was “very skittish.”
According to notes taken by a SLED investigator at the scene, Smith had injuries to his left arm, hand and head.
His vehicle was found about three miles away, that report said, and added the gas tank door was open and the gas cap was hanging out on the side of the car. The vehicle’s battery was functional but the car wouldn’t start, it added.
Smith’s death remains unsolved, but his family hopes a private autopsy will provide them a “new, unbiased look at his body and an accurate determination of his cause of death based on facts,” according to a GoFundMe page that raised more than $60,000.
Mallory Beach was a 19-year-old woman killed in a February 24, 2019, boat crash.
Beach was ejected from the boat – along with a male – when the boat struck a bridge, according to an affidavit from an officer who was supervising the scene.
According to a report from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, a doctor who treated Paul Murdaugh after the boat crash reported that Murdaugh was “clearly intoxicated” and slurring his speech.
Beach’s body was found about a week after the crash by volunteer searchers, according to a Department of Natural Resources accident report.
Three people who were on the boat told investigators that Paul Murdaugh was driving, but another passenger named a different person who was also aboard that night as the driver, according to the affidavit.
At the time of his death, Paul Murdaugh was facing charges including boating under the influence, causing great bodily harm, and causing death in connection to the boat crash.
SLED has also announced it was opening a criminal investigation into the February 26, 2018, death of the Murdaughs’ longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, 57, and the handling of her estate.
Satterfield was the Murdaugh family housekeeper for more than two decades before dying after what was described as a “trip and fall accident” at the Murdaugh home, according to Bland, the attorney, who is also representing her estate.
SLED opened its investigation based on a request from the Hampton County coroner that highlighted inconsistencies in the ruling of Satterfield’s manner of death, the agency said in September 2021, as well as information gathered during SLED’s other ongoing investigations involving Alex Murdaugh.
Satterfield’s death was “not reported to the coroner at the time, nor was an autopsy performed,” the coroner’s request to SLED said. Additionally, her manner of death was ruled “natural,” which was “inconsistent with injuries sustained in a trip and fall accident,” the coroner said.
SLED announced in December 2022 it would seek to exhume Satterfield’s remains, saying it had sought and received the permission of the housekeeper’s family.
In December 2021, Murdaugh agreed to a $4.3 million settlement with Satterfield’s family, stemming from the alleged misappropriation of funds they should have received after, according to affidavits released by SLED, Murdaugh coordinated with the family to sue himself and seek an insurance settlement.
In the aftermath of Satterfield’s death, a $500,000 wrongful death claim was filed against Alex Murdaugh on behalf of her estate, Bland said. But the estate did not receive any of the $500,000 owed as the result of a wrongful death settlement in 2018, Bland added.
Bland has told CNN he does not believe Satterfield was murdered, but he does not want to rule anything out.
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Miami Beach officials imposed a curfew beginning Sunday night during spring break after two fatal shootings and rowdy, chaotic crowds that police have had difficulty controlling.
The city said in a news release the curfew would be from 11:59 p.m. Sunday until 6 a.m. Monday, with an additional curfew likely to be put in place Thursday through next Monday, March 27. The curfew mainly affects South Beach, the most popular party location for spring breakers.
The release said the two separate shootings Friday night and early Sunday that left two people dead and “excessively large and unruly crowds” led to the decision. The city commission plans a meeting Monday to discuss potential further restrictions next week.
Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said in a video message posted Sunday that the crowds and presence of numerous firearms has “created a peril that cannot go unchecked” despite massive police presence and many city-sponsored activities meant to keep people busy.
“We don’t ask for spring break in our city. We don’t want spring break in our city. It’s too rowdy, it’s too much disorder, and it’s too difficult to police,” Gelber said.
The latest shooting happened about 3:30 a.m. Sunday on Ocean Drive in South Beach, according to Miami Beach police. A male was shot and died later at a hospital, and officers chased down a suspect on foot, police said on Twitter. Their identities were not released, nor were any possible charges.
In the Friday night shooting, one male victim was killed and another seriously injured, sending crowds scrambling in fear from restaurants and clubs into the streets as gunshots rang out. Police detained one person at the scene and found four firearms, but no other details have been made available.
Under the curfew, people must leave businesses before midnight, although hotels can operate later only in service to their guests. The city release said restaurants can stay open only for delivery and the curfew won’t apply to residents, people going to and from work, emergency services and hotel guests. Some roads will be closed off and arriving hotel guests may have to show proof of their reservations.
Last year, the city imposed a midnight curfew following two shootings, also on Ocean Drive. The year before that, there were about 1,000 arrests and dozens of guns confiscated during a rowdy spring break that led Miami Beach officials to take steps aimed at calming the situation.
Chilling details of the chaotic and bloody aftermath of the Uvalde school massacre show how emergency medics desperately treated multiple victims wherever they could and with whatever equipment they had, according to never-before-heard interviews.
Some came from off-duty or far away to back up their colleagues sent to Robb Elementary School, where classrooms had become kill zones but there were still lives to be saved.
There was the state trooper with emergency medical certification who always carried five chest seals with him, never imagining he would ever need them all at once; the local EMT who crouched behind a wall as gunshots rang out and was soon treating three children at the same time; and her off-duty colleague who found herself caring for her son’s classmates, not knowing if her own boy was alive.
Amanda Shoemake was on the first Uvalde EMS ambulance to arrive at the school last May 24, she told an investigator from the Texas Department of Public Safety. But with law enforcement officers waiting for 77 minutes to challenge the shooter, she spent time trying to direct traffic to maintain a lane for ambulances to get through once victims started coming out, she said, according to investigation records obtained by CNN.
“We were just waiting for what felt like a while. And then somebody … came and they were like, ‘OK, we need EMS now,’” she said in the interview, part of the DPS investigation into the failed response to the school shooting, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed. At least one teacher and two children were alive when officers finally stormed the classrooms, but they died later.
As Shoemake and colleagues reached the school building, they were told the shooter had not yet been found and could be in the ceiling, she recounted, saying how they sheltered behind a brick wall as the shooter was confronted.
“We just squatted down there and waited there until the shooting stopped,” she said. “And then after some time they brought out the first kid that was an obvious DOA.”
DPS trooper Zach Springer was one of the hundreds of law enforcement officers from across southwest Texas who responded to Robb when alerts went out for reinforcements. He had become certified as an EMT a few months earlier, he told the Texas Ranger who interviewed him.
“I made a conscious decision not to bring my rifle,” he said he thought as he drove up. “I knew there were so many people up there, they’re not going to need rifles, they’re going to need med gear.”
Springer entered the school and started getting a triage area ready at the end of the hallway where armed officers from the school force, local police department, sheriff’s office, state police and federal agencies were lined up. While commanders like then school police chief Pete Arredondo, then acting city police chief Mariano Pargas and Sheriff Ruben Nolasco have given various statements about whether they knew children were hurt and needed rescue, medics from many agencies prepared for victims.
“I set up as best I could,” he said. “I put tourniquets, gauze, Israeli bandages, compression bandages, hemostatic gauze. I was like, ‘I got everything, I think.’ … I had five chest seals, which is ridiculous in my opinion, like I’ve made fun of myself – when am I ever going to need five chest seals?”
He heard the breach and then started seeing children brought out amid the smoke from the brief but intense firefight, he said.
He went to help a Border Patrol medic treating a girl shot through the chest. He said he started checking her legs for injuries when he heard colleagues ask for a chest seal. In the chaos of the response, all had been taken.
Springer said they covered the girl’s wounds with gauze, got her onto a backboard and he repeatedly told the others to secure her head as they moved her, though he later believed the young victim was too small for the carrier.
“I don’t think that they secured her head because she wasn’t tall enough for her head to be secured,” he said. And while the girl was thought to be alive when they pulled her from the classroom, she did not survive, he said.
When he ran back in, the hallway lined with posters celebrating the end of the school year had been transformed. “You could smell the iron – there was so much blood,” he said.
Back outside, Uvalde EMS Shoemake had put the first victim in her ambulance to hide him from the crowds of anxious parents frantic for information, when another child was brought out. She saw an unattended ambulance from a private company with its door open and no stretcher, she said.
“I had them put her on the floor of that ambulance and I started treating her there. Then while I was treating her, there was two more 10-year-old boys brought to me and so I put one on the bench and one in the captain’s seat.”
Shoemake’s colleagues including Kathlene Torres came to help and got the little girl onto a stretcher and into another ambulance, working to save her life as they first thought a helicopter would take her and then getting her to the hospital themselves, they said.
Torres told a DPS officer the girl was critically injured but still managed to share her name and date of birth. She was Mayah Zamora, who would spend 66 days in hospital before she could go back to her family. “I can still hear her voice,” Torres said.
At least two of the EMTs had been at Robb earlier in the day to see awards presented to their children. One of them, Virginia Vela, had watched her 4th-grader son at a 10 a.m. ceremony and then two hours later was corralled in the funeral home parking lot across the street from the school with her husband and other parents who were being held back by officers.
She told the DPS investigator that she was recognized as a local EMT and allowed into the funeral home to treat some children who had been hurt climbing through windows to get away from the school.
Photos show chaotic scene as Uvalde students escape
When she went closer to the school to help the other EMTs, she saw the first victim brought out, a boy who was dead, she said.
“I thought it was my son,” she said. “Once I saw his clothes, I knew it wasn’t my son, but the fear … ran through my body.”
More children came for emergency medical treatment.
“One of the kids that I had in the unit, he was shot in the shoulder. The student that I was helping up from the side of the unit, he had bullet fragments on his thigh,” she said. “And then we had another student with blown off fingers. And she was just in and out. We were trying to get her oxygen and trying to keep her alive. And I realized those were my son’s classmates and my son was not coming out.”
Vela opened the ambulance to see if more children were being brought to them. And finally, she saw her boy running from the school.
“I didn’t even run to him. I didn’t go get him. What I was thinking was ‘run buddy … get the hell away from that school, just run to the bus,’” she said. “I grabbed my phone, and I called my husband and my husband’s like, ‘I see him, I see him, he’s getting onto the bus, he’s OK.’ And I said, ‘OK, but I’ve got to stay here with these students.’ And I hung up and I continued to do my job.”
Vela told DPS she remembered a little more of the day after she knew her son was safe, but it was still a blur as she worked with Shoemake and the others, writing a child’s vitals on their arms and getting them on their way – load and go, load and go.
And once the emergency work was done, she had an important question.
“I asked my partner, ‘Did I freeze? Did I even help you?’ She goes, ‘Yes, girl. You were like jumping from unit to unit, helping everybody that was coming out,’” Vela said. “And I was like, I need to know this. I need to know that I continued doing my job.”
Three of the 10 people facing murder charges in the death last week of a 28-year-old Black man at a Virginia mental health facility were security guards at the hospital who watched and then participated in the fatal smothering, the prosecutor told CNN Friday.
The victim’s family wants answers as to how a promising musician having what they called a mental health crisis ended with him dying – and why no one stood up for him and kept him from being killed.
The county prosecutor said seven law enforcement deputies, joined by the hospital workers, “smothered him to death” while restraining him.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill said, referring to unreleased video that shows the man’s death.
Baskervill said the hospital security guards passively watched the alleged smothering but eventually joined in and piled on top of the victim along with the deputies.
The local law enforcement officers’ union says they “stand behind” the deputies while an attorney for one of the deputies charged said he looked forward to the full truth being shared in court.
Here’s what we know about the deadly incident.
Irvo (pronounced EYE-voh) Otieno was 28. He had a passion for music, family attorney Mark Krudys said Thursday, and was working to become a hip-hop artist. Originally from Kenya, he came to the United States when he was 4.
His mother, Caroline Ouko, said he had “found his thing” with music and could write a song in less than five minutes. “He put his energy in that and he was happy with it,” she said at a news conference Thursday.
Irvo had a big heart, she said, and was the one his classmates came to when they had problems. He was a leader who brought his own perspective to the table, she added.
“If there was discussion, he was not afraid to go the other way when everybody else was following,” she said.
Her son had a mental illness that necessitated medicine, Ouko said. He had long stretches where “(you) wouldn’t even know something was wrong” and then there were times when “he would go into some kind of distress and then you know he needs to see a doctor,” she said.
On March 3, Otieno was arrested by Henrico County police who were responding to a report of a possible burglary, according to a police news release. The officers, accompanied by members of the county’s crisis intervention team, placed him under an emergency custody order.
The officers transported him to a hospital where authorities say he assaulted three officers. Police took him to county jail and he was booked.
On March 6, Otieno was taken to a state mental health facility in Dinwiddie County and died during the intake process, according toBaskervill.
“They smothered him to death,” the prosecutor said.
A preliminary report from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond identified asphyxiation as a cause of death, the commonwealth attorney’s office said in a statement.
Otieno was held on the ground in handcuffs and leg irons for 12 minutes by seven deputies, Baskervill said.
Baskervill said Friday that video of the apparent smothering shows there were hands over Otieno’s mouth, hands on his head and hands holding his braids back.
At the Henrico County jail, just before Otieno’s transfer to Central State Hospital on March 6, he was naked in his cell, with feces all over, according to Baskervill.
She told CNN the video from his cell, which she viewed, shows Otieno was clearly agitated and in distress. CNN has not seen the video.
Otieno was pepper sprayed before five or six Henrico jail deputies entered the cell and tackled him, Baskervill said.
“He’s on the ground underneath them for several minutes there,” she said. “And blows are sustained at the Henrico county jail.”
Asked if Otieno appeared combative, Baskervill said, “I would really characterize his behavior as being distressed, rather than assaultive, combative.”
Later, at Central State Hospital, Otieno was on the ground at one point with at least 10 people on top of him, Baskervill said.
“They’re putting their back into it, leaning down. And this is from head to toe, from his braids at the top of his head, unfortunately, to his toes,” she said.
Baskervill said Otieno was eventually put on his stomach, with the pressure on him continuing, and he died in that position.
Baskervill believes Otieno was dead before a 911 call was even made. Paramedics left and State Police were not called until 7:28 pm, according to Baskervill.
“The delay in contacting proper authorities is inexplicable. Truly inexplicable,” she said.
The seven sheriff’s deputies and three hospital workers have been charged with second-degree murder.
The seven deputies who were charged were identified in Baskervill’s release Tuesday as Randy Joseph Boyer, 57, of Henrico; Dwayne Alan Bramble, 37, of Sandston; Jermaine Lavar Branch, 45, of Henrico; Bradley Thomas Disse, 43, of Henrico; Tabitha Renee Levere, 50, of Henrico; Brandon Edwards Rodgers, 48, of Henrico; and Kaiyell Dajour Sanders, 30, of North Chesterfield.
The Henrico Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 4, the local law enforcement officers’ union, issued a statement Tuesday saying they “stand behind” the deputies.
“Policing in America today is difficult, made even more so by the possibility of being criminally charged while performing their duty,” the group said. “The death of Mr. Otieno was tragic, and we express our condolences to his family. We also stand behind the seven accused deputies now charged with murder by the Dinwiddie County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Baskervill.”
The hospital workers arrested Thursday were identified as Darian M. Blackwell, 23, of Petersburg; Wavie L. Jones, 34, of Chesterfield; and Sadarius D. Williams, 27, of North Dinwiddie.
There is video footage but it will not be released to the public. CNN requested the footage but was told the material is not subject to mandatory disclosure because the investigation is ongoing.
“To maintain the integrity of the criminal justice process at this point, I am not able to publicly release the video,” said Baskervill, noting surveillance video from the mental health facility recorded the intake process.
Otieno’s family has viewed the video provided by prosecutors Thursday and his mother says Otieno was tortured.
“My son was treated like a dog, worse than a dog,” she screamed, angry that no one stopped what led to her son’s death. “We have to do better.”
His older brother, Leon Ochieng, said people should be confident in calling for help when their loved ones are in crisis. He did not believe the people he saw on the video cared about preserving a life.
“What I saw was a lifeless human being without any representation,” Ochieng said, adding that his family is now broken and is calling for more awareness on how to treat those with mental illnesses.
“Can someone explain to me why my brother is not here, right now?” Ochieng said.
CNN has sought comment from the deputies and received word from attorneys of three of the individuals charged.
Caleb Kershner, the attorney for Boyer, told CNN he has yet to see the video but said “nothing was outside the ordinary” in the process of transferring Otieno from jail to the mental health facility.
Kershner told CNN that Otieno refused to get out of the vehicle when arriving at the hospital and deputies had to use force to get him out.
Kershner also said hospital staff administered a sedative to Otieno when he was still alive and resisting. However, Baskervill on Wednesday said the shot was given after Otieno was already dead. CNN has reached out to the hospital for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
“My client was simply holding his leg throughout any ordeal in order to ensure that what we estimate to be a 350-pound man, who was having a severe mental health episode, as not let loose in a medical facility where he could severely injure other people,” Kershner said. “From my review of the case, nothing was outside the ordinary or outside the scope of their training for what they did.”
Peter B. Baruch, an attorney for Disse, issued a statement defending his client.
“Deputy Disse has had a 20-year career with the Sheriffs department, and has served honorably. He is looking forward to his opportunity to try this case and for the full truth to be shared in court and being vindicated,” he said.
Bramble’s attorney, Steven Hanna, said he was still gathering information and declined to comment further.
CNN has not heard from the other attorneys it has identified as representing the other defendants.
An attorney representing one of the deputies told CNN he and other defense attorneys have not yet been able to review the video of Otieno’s death.
The lawyer said he is “shocked” the video has not been released and believes “they are overcharging” the deputies in this case.
Family attorneys say Otieno posed no threat to the deputies.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is working on behalf of the family, said Otieno was not violent or aggressive with the deputies.
“You see in the video he is restrained with handcuffs, he has leg irons on, and you see in the majority of the video that he seems to be in between lifelessness and unconsciousness, but yet you see him being restrained so brutally with a knee on his neck,” Crump said Thursday.
Crump said the video is a “commentary on how inhumane law enforcement officials treat people who are having a mental health crisis as criminals rather than treating them as people who are in need of help.”
Much like the arrest and death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Otieno was face down and restrained, Crump said.
“Why would anybody not have enough common sense to say we’ve seen this movie before?” he said.
Family attorney Mark Krudys said the deputies had engaged in excessive force.
“His mother was basically crying out for help for her son in a mental health situation. Instead, he was thrust into the criminal justice system, and aggressively treated and treated poorly at the jail,” he said.
The video from the mental health facility shows the charges are appropriate, Krudys said.
“When you see that video … you’re just going to ask yourself, ‘Why?’” he said.
The 10 defendants will appear in court Tuesday before a grand jury, according to online court records. If the case goes to trial and any of them are convicted, the prison sentence for second-degree murder in Virginia is a minimum of five years with a maximum of 40 years.
Crump has called for the US Department of Justice to take part in the investigation.
Mexico City — Mexican authorities have arrested a 14-year-old boy nicknamed “El Chapito” for the drug-related killing of eight people near Mexico City, the federal Public Safety Department said Thursday. The boy allegedly rode up on a motorcycle and opened fire on a family in the low-income Mexico City suburb of Chimalhuacan.
Another man was also arrested in the Jan. 22 killings, and seven other members of the gang were arrested on drug charges.
An aerial view of the municipal garbage dump (bottom) and the Escalerillas neighborhood in Chimalhuacan, a low-income suburb of Mexico City, Mexico, February 24, 2021.
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty
The victims were holding a party at their house at the time of the attack, which also left five adults and two children wounded. It was reportedly a birthday party.
The boy’s name was not released, but his nickname — “Little Chapo” — is an apparent reference to imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. El Chapo has been serving a life sentence in a “supermax” maximum security prison in Colorado since his 2019 conviction on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
The motive in the killings has not been made public, but drug gangs in Mexico frequently dabble in kidnapping and contract killing. They also kill rivals selling drugs on their territory, or people who owe them money.
Mexico is no stranger to child killers.
In 2010, soldiers detained a 14-year-old boy nicknamed “El Ponchis” who claimed he was kidnapped at age 11 and forced to work for the Cartel of the South Pacific, a branch of the splintered Beltran Leyva gang. He said he had participated in at least four decapitations.
After his arrest, the boy, who authorities identified only by his first name, Edgar, told reporters that he was drugged and threatened into committing the crimes.
Also Thursday, prosecutors in the northern border state of Sonora said they had arrested a woman linked to as many as nine murders in the border city of Mexicali.
The state prosecutors’ office said that the woman had outstanding warrants for two killings, but that she had been named in seven other homicide investigations. The office did not say what the possible motives might be in those killings.
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Three Virginia hospital workers are facing second-degree attempted murder charges in connection with the in-custody death of Irvo Otieno last week. This comes after seven Henrico County Sheriff’s deputies were also charged with second-degree attempted murder in the case on Tuesday. Jeff Pegues reports.
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The mother and grandfather of a newborn found dead in a ditch in Iowa have been charged with first-degree murder, and court documents say they told investigators the baby was still alive when they put him in a trash bag and abandoned him.
Megan K. Staude, 25, told police the child was born at home on Feb. 24, according to a police affidavit. She told authorities that she put him in a box and didn’t provide any care for two days before she and her father Rodney A. Staude, 64, put him in the bag.
This mugshot provided by Warren County Jail on Wednesday, March 15, 2023, in Indianola, Iowa, shows Megan Staude.
/ AP
Rodney Staude also confessed and said he helped his daughter dispose of the bag in a ditch near Norwalk, according to the documents.
Both the Staudes initially told police the baby died on the way to the hospital after it was born, authorities said. Megan Staude said she buried him in a cemetery in Cumming, Iowa, but authorities found no evidence of a fresh grave at the cemetery.
Law enforcement officers received a tip from Megan Staude’s co-workers on March 8, leading to the discovery of the body. On March 13, a witness showed authorities a text conversation with Megan Staude, in which the witness asked her, “Was the baby alive when you left him?” and she replied, “A little,” the complaint says.
“It’s just a tragic set of circumstances on a number of levels,” Norwalk Police Chief Greg Staples told The Des Moines Register. “That baby didn’t have the choice to decide his own fate and now there’s people in jail because of it.”
The results of an autopsy are pending and the investigation is ongoing.
Rodney and Megan Staude are each being held in the Warren County jail on $1 million bond.
Authorities told the Register they don’t know who the child’s father is.
CBS affiliate KCCI-TV reports that the city of Norwalk says the house where the baby was born has been a public nuisance for months. The city claims the home is deteriorating and not safe to occupy, the station reported.
Norwalk police: Mother left baby to die, disposed of body with cooperation from her father https://t.co/6SJgAu5eEJ
Neighbors told KCCI that the house has been in bad shape for a long time.
“Run down, kind of just in disrepair,” Dayce Gute said.
Iowa has a “Safe Haven” law that allows someone to leave an infant up to 3 months old at a hospital or health care facility without facing legal action.
Safe Haven babies are then placed with foster or adoptive families.
According to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, “A parent may also contact 911 and relinquish physical custody of an infant up to 90 days old to a first responder of the 911 call.”
In their federal trial that followed, all three were found guilty of interference of rights, a federal hate crime, and attempted kidnapping, while the McMichaels were also each convicted on a weapons charge. The father and son were sentenced to life in prison and Bryan was sentenced to 35 years, to be served at the same time as his state sentence.
In their appeals, the elder McMichael and Bryan both challenge whether prosecutors proved the men acted the way they did “because of” Arbery’s race and color. Travis McMichael’s appeal instead focused on more technical matters to do his convictions of attempted kidnapping and weapons use charges.
“The evidence against Bryan did not present a man who saw the world through a prism of racism. He was not obsessed with African Americans such as his codefendant Travis McMichael,” Defense attorney J. Pete Theodocion, who filed an appeal on behalf of Bryan, wrote in the filing.
“There is simply not sufficient evidence in the record to suggest Bryan would have acted any differently on the day in question had Arbery been white, Hispanic, Asian or other,” the attorney wrote. “Every crime committed against an African American is not a hate crime. Every crime committed against an African American by a man who has used racist language in the past is not a hate crime.”
See the moment judge holds moment of silence for Ahmaud Arbury
Arbery was shot dead on February 23, 2020, while he was out on a jog – something he was known to do, according to his loved ones – in the Satilla Shores neighborhood, outside the city of Brunswick in south Georgia.
The federal trial of the three men featured testimony from witnesses who spoke about racist messages the men used.
The remarks witnesses shared in court, which had been made privately and publicly, revealed the men talked about Black people in derogatory terms and used racial slurs in conversations with others – key evidence prosecutors used to prove they acted out of racial animus.
Defense attorneys during the trial acknowledged their clients used racist language but denied that’s what motivated their actions.
Paul Flores was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison in the murder of Kristin Smart, a California college student who went missing in 1996. Her remains have never been found.
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Officials in Memphis are expected Wednesday to release about 20 more hours of video relating to January’s deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols – as well as some records of the city’s now-finished internal probe into 13 police officers and four fire department personnel, a Memphis official said.
The anticipated release comes a day after the official revealed that a seventh police officer has been fired and others were suspended or left the force after the brutal encounter in the western Tennessee city. Previously, authorities said six officers were fired, five of whom have been criminally charged.
The city’s internal investigations into the beatings have finished, so the city intends to release the additional video footage Wednesday afternoon, Memphis Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Sink told a city council committee Tuesday morning.
The unreleased footage most notably will include audio of what was said after the beating and after an ambulance took Nichols to a hospital, and it could play an investigative role as his office contemplates additional charges,the county prosecutor previously told CNN.
Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was repeatedly punched and kicked by Memphis police officers following a traffic stop and brief pursuit on foot on January 7. Nichols was hospitalized after the beating and died three days later.
Five police officers, who are also Black, were fired following an internal investigation and were indicted on criminal charges January 26.
Body camera videos and surveillance footage from the arrest were released on January 27, showing the severity of the beating to the public and drawing widespread condemnation from residents and police officials alike. The video shook a nation long accustomed to videos of police brutality – especially against people of color – and spurred protests and vigils in Memphis and other major US cities.
The video released in January contradicted what officers said happened in the initial police report filed after Nichols’ beating, the county prosecutor said, and spurred renewed national debate on justice in policing and reform.
In early February Shelby County prosecutor Steven Mulroy told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer the video released in January are “the relevant parts” of the initial stop and the beating after the foot chase, but the yet-to-be-released footage could play a role in investigations.
Potential charges of “false reporting” related to the initial police report were being investigated, Erica Williams, a spokesperson for Mulroy’s office, told CNN around the same time.
When asked whether anyone new will face criminal charges now that the city’s investigation is finished, Williams told CNN on Tuesday: “Not at this time.” Mulroy’s office previously told CNN it would wait for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to conclude an investigation before deciding on more charges.
The city will also release Wednesday some records related to the internal probes of the 13 police officers and four fire department personnel, including documents indicating what they were being investigated for, Sink said.
Other investigative files have information that needs to be redacted, and will be posted online when that is completed, she added without giving a timeline.
But Sink already announced the bottom line on Tuesday: Seven police officers were fired, three were suspended, one retired and two had their investigations dropped as result of the probes, she said.
That was the first time the city announced a seventh officer was fired. That person’s name, and details about what the officer is accused of doing, weren’t immediately released.
Also, the officer who retired likely would have been terminated, Sink said without elaborating about what that officer was accused of doing.
The city has previously said that three Memphis fire department personnel who responded to the scene – two emergency medical technicians and a fire lieutenant – were fired, though none was criminally charged. On Tuesday, Sink said a fourth fire department worker was suspended. Sink did not elaborate.
The two fired EMTs did not conduct a primary examination of Nichols for the first 19 minutes they were on scene, and the lieutenant stayed in a fire truck, according to a state emergency medical services board.
A council member asked Sink whether anyone who struck Nichols was still part of either the police department or fire department.
“No. All of those officers… have been charged criminally,” Sink said.
Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr. each face charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. Second-degree murder in Tennessee is considered a Class A felony punishable by 15 to 60 years in prison.
Their attorneys entered not guilty pleas on their behalf.They are due back in court on May 1.
The five charged officers were part of the department’s SCORPION unit, which was launched in 2021 to take on a rise in violent crime in Memphis. Shortly after video of Nichols’ arrest was released in January, Memphis police announced the unit would be permanently deactivated as a sign the department was taking “proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted.”
In addition, two Shelby County Sheriff’s Office deputies who were at the scene were suspended for five days each without pay for their parts in the case, according to a sheriff’s office news release obtained by CNN affiliate WHBQ.
The US State Department on Monday imposed a visa sanction on a Syrian military official whom it says killed at least 41 unarmed civilians in a neighborhood of Damascus in April 2013.
Amjad Yousef, a military intelligence officer for the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and his immediate family will be blocked from entering the United States, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Video evidence of the massacre in Tadamon, which Blinken described as being “carried out coldly and methodically,” publicly emerged in 2022 “after a long and comprehensive investigation by independent researchers.”
“Today, we are taking action to promote accountability for this atrocity,” the top US diplomat said.
The announcement of the visa restriction comes as a growing number of countries have renewed at least some level of contact directly with the Assad regime, particularly in the wake of last month’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
“The footage of this massacre, coupled with the ongoing killing and abuse of countless Syrians, serves as a sobering reminder for why countries should not normalize relations with the Assad regime absent enduring progress towards a political resolution,” Blinken said.
“The United States calls on the Assad regime to cease all violations and abuses of human rights, including but not limited to extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture,” he said.
Blinken noted that March “marks the twelfth year of conflict in Syria during which the Assad regime has committed innumerable atrocities, some of which rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
In an April 2022 article published in “New Lines Magazine,” the two researchers who helped expose the massacre said that the videos, which were “already shocking for their atrociousness, stand out in their brevity and callousness among the thousands of hours of footage that we have examined throughout our respective careers as researchers of mass violence and genocide in Syria and elsewhere.”
“Particularly shocking about the Tadamon videos is the fact that the intelligence officers who committed the massacre were on duty and in uniform; they report to President Bashar al-Assad himself, and yet they chose to show their faces in the incriminating footage. At several points during the video, they looked straight into the camera seemingly relaxed and smiling. In documenting their own actions, they used HD video quality,” Annsar Shahhoud and Uğur Ümit Üngör wrote.
Yousef, the official who was sanctioned by the State Department Tuesday, “is focused, stoic and precise, and he works efficiently toward completing the task within a matter of 25 minutes,” the researchers wrote.
“After a few months, we confronted him with the massacre and let him know that we had seen the footage,” the researchers described.
“First, he denied it was him in the video. Then, he said he was just arresting someone,” they wrote. “Finally, he settled on the justification that it was his job and expressed his content: ‘I am proud of my deeds.’”
Wayne Couzens, the former London police officer who abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard in 2021, has been sentenced to 19 further months in prison for indecent exposure incidents that took place while he was serving in the force.
Couzens, 50, was already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the killing of 33-year-old Everard, which sparked outrage towards the Metropolitan Police and began a national debate about violence against women.
He was additionally sentenced on Monday for exposing himself to women on three occasions in the months prior to the murder. Two occurred at a fast-food restaurant – the latter of which was just days before he murdered Everard – and another took place while Couzens was on shift with the police.
Couzens appeared via video link from prison during Monday’s hearing. The court heard that he stepped into the path of a female cyclist while naked and masturbating, in a woodland area of Kent in November 2020, while he was supposed to be working from home.
Then, on two dates in February 2021, Couzens displayed his erect penis to staffers at a fast food drive-through, while picking up food in his car.
The second incident took place on February 27; days later, on March 3, Couzens kidnapped Everard in south London.
On Monday, Couzens also pleaded not guilty to a fourth indecent exposure charge from an alleged incident in June 2015. The UK news agency PA Media reported that he will not face trial over that charge as it was left on file.
Confidence in the Met police force has plummeted following a series of scandals, including cases of violence against women and allegations of a misogynistic and protective culture among officers.
The crisis began after Couzens’ murder of Everard, which stunned Britain and drew sharp scrutiny towards Scotland Yard. The 33-year-old was walking to her London home on March 3 when Couzens used his police identification and handcuffs to deceive her into getting in his car under the pretense that she had violated Covid-19 pandemic rules. He raped her and strangled her with his police belt later that evening.
Police were subsequently criticized for their heavy-handed tactics at a vigil for Everard in Clapham, south London, near where she went missing, and for not acting upon red flags in his behavior sooner.
Two police officers are currently facing misconduct hearings over their handling of two separate indecent exposure reports related to Couzens, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) confirmed last month.
In January, former Met senior officer David Carrick admitted 49 offenses, including 24 counts of rape, over an 18-year period, sparking another round of anger. Critics have called for a root-and-branch inquiry into its the Met’s operations and its process in dealing with complaints.
Met Commissioner Mark Rowley apologized for the failings that led to Carrick not being caught earlier, in an interview distributed to UK broadcasters in January.
Announcing a review of all those employees facing red flags, he said: “I’m sorry and I know we’ve let women down. I think we failed over two decades to be as ruthless as we ought to be in guarding our own integrity.”
A report last fall found that when a family member or a fellow officer filed a complaint, it took on average 400 days – more than an entire year – for an allegation of misconduct to be resolved.
As he embarks on another campaign for the presidency, Trump delivered another CPAC doozy Saturday night.
Trump’s lengthy address to the right-wing gathering in Maryland was filled with wildly inaccurate claims about his own presidency, Joe Biden’s presidency, foreign affairs, crime, elections and other subjects.
Here is a fact check of 23 of the false claims Trump made. (And that’s far from the total.)
Crime in Manhattan
While Trump criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has been investigating Trump’s company, he claimed that “killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan.”
Facts First: It isn’t even close to true that Manhattan is experiencing a number of killings that nobody has ever seen. The region classified by the New York Police Department as Manhattan North had 43 reported murders in 2022; that region had 379 reported murders in 1990 and 306 murders in 1993. The Manhattan South region had 35 reported murders in 2022 versus 124 reported murders in 1990 and 86 murders in 1993. New York City as a whole is also nowhere near record homicide levels; the city had 438 reported murders in 2022 versus 2,262 in 1990 and 1,927 in 1993.
Manhattan North had just eight reported murders this year through February 19, while Manhattan South had one. The city as a whole had 49 reported murders.
The National Guard and Minnesota
Talking about rioting amid racial justice protests after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Trump claimed he had been ready to send in the National Guard in Seattle, then added, “We saved Minneapolis. The thing is, we’re not supposed to do that. Because it’s up to the governor, the Democrat governor. They never want any help. They don’t mind – it’s almost like they don’t mind to have their cities and states destroyed. There’s something wrong with these people.”
Facts First: This is a reversal of reality. Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, not Trump, was the one who deployed the Minnesota National Guard during the 2020 unrest; Walz first activated the Guard more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself. Walz’s office told CNN in 2020 that the governor activated the Guard in response to requests from officials in Minneapolis and St. Paul – cities also run by Democrats.
Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that he was the one who sent the Guard to Minneapolis. You can read a longer fact check, from 2020, here.
Trump’s executive order on monuments
Trump boasted that he had taken effective action as president to stop the destruction of statues and memorials. He claimed: “I passed and signed an executive order. Anybody that does that gets 10 years in jail, with no negotiation – it’s not ’10’ but it turns into three months.” He added: “But we passed it. It was a very old law, and we found it – one of my very good legal people along with [adviser] Stephen Miller, they found it. They said, ‘Sir, I don’t know if you want to try and bring this back.’ I said. ‘I do.’”
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. He did not create a mandatory 10-year sentence for people who damage monuments. In fact, his 2020 executive order did not mandate any increase in sentences.
Rather, the executive order simply directed the attorney general to “prioritize” investigations and prosecutions of monument-destruction cases and declared that it is federal policy to prosecute such cases to the fullest extent permitted under existing law, including an existing law that allowed a sentence of up to 10 years in prison for willfully damaging federal property. The executive order did nothing to force judges to impose a 10-year sentence.
Vandalism in Portland
Trump claimed, “How’s Portland doing? They don’t even have storefronts anymore. Everything’s two-by-four’s because they get burned down every week.”
Facts First: This is a major exaggeration. Portland obviously still has hundreds of active storefronts, though it has struggled with downtown commercial vacancies for various reasons, and some businesses are sometimes vandalized by protesters. Trump has for years exaggerated the extent of property damage from protest vandalism in Portland.
Russian expansionism
Boasting of his foreign policy record, Trump claimed, “I was also the only president where Russia didn’t take over a country during my term.”
Facts First: While it’s true that Russia didn’t take over a country during Trump’s term, it’s not true that he was the only US president under whom Russia didn’t take over a country. “Totally false,” Michael Khodarkovsky, a Loyola University Chicago history professor who is an expert on Russian imperialism, said in an email. “If by Russia he means the current Russian Federation that existed since 1991, then the best example is Clinton, 1992-98. During this time Russia fought a war in Chechnya, but Chechnya was not a country but one of Russia’s regions.”
Khodarkovsky added, “If by Russia he means the USSR, as people often do, then from 1945, when the USSR occupied much of Eastern Europe until 1979, when USSR invaded Afghanistan, Moscow did not take over any new country. It only sent forces into countries it had taken over in 1945 (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968).”
NATO funding
Trump said while talking about NATO funding: “And I told delinquent foreign nations – they were delinquent, they weren’t paying their bills – that if they wanted our protection, they had to pay up, and they had to pay up now.”
Facts First: It’s not true that NATO countries weren’t paying “bills” until Trump came along or that they were “delinquent” in the sense of failing to pay bills – as numerousfact-checkerspointed out when Trump repeatedly used such language during his presidency. NATO members haven’t been failing to pay their share of the organization’s common budget to run the organization. And while it’s true that most NATO countries were not (and still are not) meeting NATO’s target of each country spending a minimum of 2% of gross domestic product on defense, that 2% figure is what NATO calls a “guideline”; it is not some sort of binding contract, and it does not create liabilities. An official NATO recommitment to the 2% guideline in 2014 merely said that members not currently at that level would “aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg did credit Trump for securing increases in European NATO members’ defense spending, but it’s worth noting that those countries’ spending had also increased in the last two years of the Obama administration following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the recommitment that year to the 2% guideline. NATO notes on its website that 2022 was “the eighth consecutive year of rising defence spending across European Allies and Canada.”
NATO’s existence
Boasting of how he had secured additional funding for NATO from countries, Trump claimed, “Actually, NATO wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t get them to pay up.”
Facts First: This is nonsense.
There was never any indication that NATO, created in 1949, would have ceased to exist in the early 2020s without additional funding from some members. The alliance was stable even with many members not meeting the alliance’s guideline of having members spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.
We don’t often fact-check claims about what might have happened in an alternative scenario, but this Trump claim has no basis in reality. “The quote doesn’t make sense, obviously,” said Erwan Lagadec, research professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and an expert on NATO.
Lagadec noted that NATO has had no trouble getting allies to cover the roughly $3 billion in annual “direct” funding for the organization, which is “peanuts” to this group of countries. And he said that the only NATO member that had given “any sign” in recent years that it was thinking about leaving the alliance “was … the US, under Trump.” Lagadec added that the US leaving the alliance is one scenario that could realistically kill it, but that clearly wasn’t what Trump was talking about in his remarks on spending levels.
James Goldgeier, an American University professor of international relations and Brookings Institution visiting fellow, said in an email: “NATO was founded in 1949, so it seems very clear that Donald Trump had nothing to do with its existence. In fact, the worry was that he would pull the US out of NATO, as his national security adviser warned he would do if he had been reelected.”
The cost of NATO’s headquarters
Trump mocked NATO’s headquarters, saying, “They spent – an office building that cost $3 billion. It’s like a skyscraper in Manhattan laid on its side. It’s one of the longest buildings I’ve ever seen. And I said, ‘You should have – instead of spending $3 billion, you should have spent $500 million building the greatest bunker you’ve ever seen. Because Russia didn’t – wouldn’t even need an airplane attack. One tank one shot through that beautiful glass building and it’s gone.’”
Facts First: NATO did spend a lot of money on its headquarters in Belgium, but Trump’s “$3 billion” figure is a major exaggeration. When Trump used the same inaccurate figure in early 2020, NATO told CNN that the headquarters was actually constructed for a sum under the approved budget of about $1.18 billion euro, which is about $1.3 billion at exchange rates as of Sunday morning.
The Pulitzer Prize
Trump made his usual argument that The Washington Post and The New York Times should not have won a prestigious journalism award, a 2018 Pulitzer Prize, for their reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election and its connections to Trump’s team. He then said, “And they were exactly wrong. And now they’ve even admitted that it was a hoax. It was a total hoax, and they got the prize.”
Facts First: The Times and Post have not made any sort of “hoax” admission. “The claim is completely false,” Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said in an email on Sunday.
Stadtlander continued: “When our Pulitzer Prize shared with The Washington Post was challenged by the former President, the award was upheld by the Pulitzer Prize Board after an independent review. The board stated that ‘no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.’ The Times’s reporting was also substantiated by the Mueller investigation and Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the matter.”
The Post referred CNN to that same July statement from the Pulitzer Prize Board.
Awareness of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline
Trump claimed of his opposition to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany: “Nord Stream 2 – Nobody ever heard of it … right? Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along. I started talking about Nord Stream 2. I had to go call it ‘the pipeline’ because nobody knew what I was talking about.”
Facts First: This is standard Trump hyperbole; it’s just not true that “nobody” had heard of Nord Stream 2 before he began discussing it. Nord Stream 2 was a regular subject of media, government and diplomatic discussion before Trump took office. In fact, Biden publicly criticized it as vice president in 2016. Trump may well have generated increased US awareness to the controversial project, but “nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along” isn’t true.
Trump and Nord Stream 2
Trump claimed, “I got along very well with Putin even though I’m the one that ended his pipeline. Remember they said, ‘Trump is giving a lot to Russia.’ Really? Putin actually said to me, ‘If you’re my friend, I’d hate like hell to see you as my enemy.’ Because I ended the pipeline, right? Do you remember? Nord Stream 2.” He continued, “I ended it. It was dead.”
Facts First: Trump did not kill Nord Stream 2. While he did approve sanctions on companies working on the project, that move came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already around an estimated 90% complete – and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said shortly after the sanctions that it would complete the pipeline itself. The company announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced that it had renewed permission for construction in its waters.
The pipeline never began operations; Germany ended up halting the project as Russia was about to invade Ukraine early last year. The pipeline was damaged later in the year in what has been described as an act of sabotage.
The Obama administration and Ukraine
Trump claimed that while he provided lethal assistance to Ukraine, the Obama administration “didn’t want to get involved” and merely “supplied the bedsheets.” He said, “Do you remember? They supplied the bedsheets. And maybe even some pillows from [pillow businessman] Mike [Lindell], who’s sitting right over here. … But they supplied the bedsheets.”
Facts First: This is inaccurate. While it’s true that the Obama administration declined to provide weapons to Ukraine, it provided more than $600 million in security assistance to Ukraine between 2014 and 2016 that involved far more than bedsheets. The aid included counter-artillery and counter-mortar radars, armored Humvees, tactical drones, night vision devices and medical supplies.
Biden and a Ukrainian prosecutor
Trump claimed that Biden, as vice president, held back a billion dollars from Ukraine until the country fired a prosecutor who was “after Hunter” and a company that was paying him. Trump was referring to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, who sat on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
Facts First: This is baseless. There has never been any evidence that Hunter Biden was under investigation by the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who had been widely faulted by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and European countries for failing to investigate corruption. A former Ukrainian deputy prosecutor and a top anti-corruption activist have both said the Burisma-related investigation was dormant at the time Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin.
Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, told The Washington Post in 2019: “Shokin was not investigating. He didn’t want to investigate Burisma. And Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation.” In addition, Shokin’s successor as prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, told Bloomberg in 2019: “Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws – at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing.”
Biden, as vice president, was carrying out the policy of the US and its allies, not pursuing his own agenda, in threatening to withhold a billion-dollar US loan guarantee if the Ukrainian government did not sack Shokin. CNN fact-checked Trump’s claims on this subject at length in 2019.
Trump and job creation
Promising to save Americans’ jobs if he is elected again, Trump claimed, “We had the greatest job history of any president ever.”
Facts First: This is false. The US lost about 2.7 million jobs during Trump’s presidency, the worst overall jobs record for any president. The net loss was largely because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but even Trump’s pre-pandemic jobs record – about 6.7 million jobs added – was far from the greatest of any president ever. The economy added more than 11.5 million jobs in the first term of Democratic President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
Tariffs on China
Trump repeated a trade claim he made frequently during his presidency. Speaking of China, he said he “charged them” with tariffs that had the effect of “bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our Treasury from China. Thank you very much, China.” He claimed that he did this even though “no other president had gotten even 10 cents – not one president got anything from them.”
Facts First: As we have written repeatedly, it’s not true that no president before Trump had generated any revenue through tariffs on goods from China. In reality, the US has had tariffs on China for more than two centuries, and FactCheck.org reported in 2019 that the US generated an “average of $12.3 billion in custom duties a year from 2007 to 2016, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb.” Also, American importers, not Chinese exporters, make the actual tariff payments – and study after study during Trump’s presidency found that Americans were bearing most of the cost of the tariffs.
The trade deficit with China
Trump went on to repeat a false claim he made more than 100 times as president – that the US used to have a trade deficit with China of more than $500 billion. He claimed it was “five-, six-, seven-hundred billion dollars a year.”
Facts First: The US has never had a $500 billion, $600 billion or $700 billion trade deficit with China even if you only count trade in goods and ignore the services trade in which the US runs a surplus with China. The pre-Trump record for a goods deficit with China was about $367 billion in 2015. The goods deficit hit a new record of about $418 billion under Trump in 2018 before falling back under $400 billion in subsequent years.
Trump and the 2020 election
Trump said people claim they want to run against him even though, he claimed, he won the 2020 election. He said, “I won the second election, OK, won it by a lot. You know, when they say, when they say Biden won, the smart people know that didn’t [happen].”
Facts First: This is Trump’s regular lie. He lost the 2020 election to Biden fair and square, 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. Biden earned more than 7 million more votes than Trump did.
Democrats and elections
Trump said Democrats are only good at “disinformation” and “cheating on elections.”
Facts First: This is nonsense. There is just no basis for a broad claim that Democrats are election cheaters. Election fraud and voter fraud are exceedingly rare in US elections, though such crimes are occasionally committed by officials and supporters of both parties. (We’ll ignore Trump’s subjective claim about “disinformation.”)
The liberation of the ISIS caliphate
Trump repeated his familiar story about how he had supposedly liberated the “caliphate” of terror group ISIS in “three weeks.” This time, he said, “In fact, with the ISIS caliphate, a certain general said it could only be done in three years, ‘and probably it can’t be done at all, sir.’ And I did it in three weeks. I went over to Iraq, met a great general. ‘Sir, I can do it in three weeks.’ You’ve heard that story. ‘I can do it in three weeks, sir.’ ‘How are you going to do that?’ They explained it. I did it in three weeks. I was told it couldn’t be done at all, that it would take at least three years. Did it in three weeks. Knocked out 100% of the ISIS caliphate.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim of eliminating the ISIS caliphate in “three weeks” isn’t true; the ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency, in 2019. Even if Trump was starting the clock at the time of his visit to Iraq, in late December 2018, the liberation was proclaimed more than two and a half months later. In addition, Trump gave himself far too much credit for the defeat of the caliphate, as he has in the past, when he said “I did it”: Kurdish forces did much of the ground fighting, and there was major progress against the caliphate under President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016.
IHS Markit, an information company that studied the changing size of the caliphate, reported two days before Trump’s 2017 inauguration that the caliphate shrunk by 23% in 2016 after shrinking by 14% in 2015. “The Islamic State suffered unprecedented territorial losses in 2016, including key areas vital for the group’s governance project,” an analyst there said in a statement at the time.
Military equipment left in Afghanistan
Trump claimed, as he has before, that the US left behind $85 billion worth of military equipment when it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. He said of the leader of the Taliban: “Now he’s got $85 billion worth of our equipment that I bought – $85 billion.” He added later: “The thing that nobody ever talks about, we lost 13 [soldiers], we lost $85 billion worth of the greatest military equipment in the world.”
Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan government forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of about $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.
As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress has appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A minority of this funding was for equipment.
The Afghanistan withdrawal and the F-16
Trump claimed that the Taliban acquired F-16 fighter planes because of the US withdrawal, saying: “They feared the F-16s. And now they own them. Think of it.”
Facts First: This is false. F-16s were not among the equipment abandoned upon the US withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan armed forces, since the Afghan armed forces did not fly F-16s.
The border wall
Trump claimed that he had kept his promise to complete a wall on the border with Mexico: “As you know, I built hundreds of miles of wall and completed that task as promised. And then I began to add even more in areas that seemed to be allowing a lot of people to come in.”
Facts First: It’s not true that Trump “completed” the border wall. According to an official “Border Wall Status” report written by US Customs and Border Protection two days after Trump left office, about 458 miles of wall had been completed under Trump – but about 280 more miles that had been identified for wall construction had not been completed.
The report, provided to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, said that, of those 280 miles left to go, about 74 miles were “in the pre-construction phase and have not yet been awarded, in locations where no barriers currently exist,” and that 206 miles were “currently under contract, in place of dilapidated and outdated designs and in locations where no barriers previously existed.”
Latin America and deportations
Trump told his familiar story about how, until he was president, the US was unable to deport MS-13 gang members to other countries, “especially” Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras because those countries “didn’t want them.”
Facts First: It’s not true that, as a rule, Guatemala and Honduras wouldn’t take back migrants being deported from the US during Obama’s administration, though there were some individual exceptions.
In 2016, just prior to Trump’s presidency, neither Guatemala nor Honduras was on the list of countries that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considered “recalcitrant,” or uncooperative, in accepting the return of their nationals.
For the 2016 fiscal year, Obama’s last full fiscal year in office, ICE reported that Guatemala and Honduras ranked second and third, behind only Mexico, in terms of the country of citizenship of people being removed from the US. You can read a longer fact check, from 2019, here.
