Part 2 | Bullet in the Brain: The Shocking Ryan Waller Case

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast. Or I tell stories of real crimes with real victims whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable.

0:50 Warning. Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all, kJ You're back with part two of the Ryan Waller episode that I started last week. So if you are just now joining in for the first time, don't start here. You're gonna be confused. Jump back, listen to episode one, and then you can jump into episode two. And I gotta tell y'all, I haven't even finished telling the story, and I've already started getting the hater ade. So I filled up my cup. I took me a few gulps, and I know that some people didn't like what I had to say in the first episode. So is America. And I'm gonna roll on and tell you even more in part two. But first I want to give y'all some shout outs, and I'm gonna start in Frankston, Texas, where I have mister j R.

1:36 Hayley. I have never heard of Frankston, Texas. Maybe I'm just ignorant there, but I'm just waving to you right now on the camera. I'm so happy to have you here, and I'm gonna look you up on the map because i want to know exactly where you are. Jr. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for believing in me and for joining. I really appreciate it. It means everything. And then this was someone who I think was a listener and may have rejoined from Longview. I believe this is Oh yeah. Washington, Kelly Lee, Miss Kelly Kelly, Kelly Kelly, what is going on? Love your name. I think it's great. I hope you're doing well over in your neck of the woods. And then San Pablo, California, Wow, all the way over there away from me. I do plan to go to California. I've never been, but I do want to go. But I might have to say hello to Christy Fernandez.

2:25 What is going on? Christy? If you see me that way, maybe this summer you better say hey to me and then last, but certainly not least someone that I know personally. I think the world of is a precious soul. I taught her and her sister. But Ashlin Buller all the way from right here in Denham Springs, Louisiana, Ashland, what is going on? I hope that you are doing well. I hope that your family is doing wonderful. I think about you and your precious grandpa. I know that he was. He just meant so much to you, and so I'm just I'm blowing kisses and I'm saying hello, and it is so good to have you join my crime family and I.

3:07 Just adore you. All right, But I will have more shout outs in next episodes. If you haven't gotten yours, hang tight. But I want to jump right in to part two of this Ryan Waller series that I'm going to be doing. So how about this. I know it's been a week. It has been a whole week since you heard the last episode, So I'm gonna give you a quick recap so we can be up to date on where we were. So there's a lot going on. Ryan Waller and his girlfriend Heather did not show up for Christmas. And so his mom got very upset. She called nine to one one and requested that a welfare check be done on her son. When police eventually made entry into the house, they did find that Heather was deceased on the couch from a gunshot wound to the head. And then the initial responding officers in the reports that they wrote, at first they thought they had possibly come upon a potential suicide when they first saw Heather dead on the couch.

4:01 I don't think I maybe mentioned that in episode one, but I did read that in their reporting that when they were peering through the blinds, they thought, uh, oh, you know, we're already here on a welfare check. This might be a suicide. So while they were clearing the house, Ryan ended up going out of the back door. They detained him, and they placed him in a police car until the homicide detective arrived and was able to take over. Remember, Ryan had this massive black eye. He also had a wound on his nose, but he continued to say that he didn't know what was going on. And then when they pulled out his roommate, Alicia, she also said she had no idea what was going on. So due to this confusing confusing nature of the situation, that there were no clearcut answers in this exact moment, and someone's dead in the house. They were taken down to the police station for questioning. Ryan continued to maintain that he did not know what was going on, and the interview at the police station just made no sense whatsoever. Said Heather hit him and cause the black eye. Then he said his roommate may have done it, and just everything was a big mumble, jumbled mess. About twenty five minutes into the interview, the detective did look more closely at his injuries after he started to now say that he had been shot in the face. That was really quite unbelievable, considering he was walking and talking and all of that until it wasn't. And that's whenever the detective said, holy shit, I think he really might be shot in the face.

5:28 Ryan was sent to the hospital, where doctors would confirm Ryan was telling the truth. He had been shot in the face, but he was alive. He was walking and talking, although not making sense. Obviously, he had been shot in the face, so police were left dumbfounded that not only was he alive, but he was speaking and this was against all odds, against all odds, would this actually be the probability of. What was happening here? But it was real. And to put this into more perspective, when Ryan was what I mean is like, how amazing this is that he is alive right now? It's a miracle.

6:09 When Ryan was initially arrested at the house, he gave very direct answers to the questions when he was being put in cuffs, do you have any weapons on you? No? Is there anyone else in the house, Yes, my roommates. You know, when they said come out of the house, you know, get on the ground whatever, he did walk out and I didn't get on the ground like he was commanded. But you know, he was doing what he was told for the most part, and he was answering questions. That is incredible. Think about that, a bullet to the face and your brain is still trying to function at its best capacity. Now. Ryan did not. Mention anytime on the scene that he had been shot. It was actually in the interrogation room when he seemed to kind of make it make sense in his brain and he was able to say, I was shot in the face, and that was what had resulted in this traumatic brain injury.

6:58 So all of that said, police. Now had to make sense of what information Ryan had given them, because some was accurate, but some was very clearly not accurate. Deciphering all of this would be impossible without the help of additional interviews from more people. So what was eventually or initially coming across as being evasive was now obviously a horrendous symptom of his grave injury. Ryan was a victim in all of this, but just simply able to unable to vocalize it. I can't imagine the struggle that must have felt like, because you know, he's obviously suffering and he thinks he's saying something and he's trying to give the information. He just can't make it make sense. But knowing what we know now, it's just heartbreaking to think that he was trying his best, but he's just too injured in the moment to be able to do it. And that's why that frustration was coming out and why it was like, I don't know, man, I don't know. It's because he genuinely could not vocalize it.

8:06 So with that information in mind, police were looking at everything that he had said and they wanted to find out if Richie and his father, who Ryan had eventually claimed, or his attackers once he was in the interrogation room were Number one, were they real people? And number two, if so, did they actually fit in the story factually right now or was Ryan putting them in here because of the brain injury and it was not actually part of what had just happened. Again, Ryan had stated multiple things that weren't correct because of his injury, So figuring out what was real and what wasn't is part of the process here.

8:46 For example, he said he was born in Michigan. He wasn't. He said Heather wasn't his girlfriend at first, then he said that she was. He said Heather hit him and caused the black eye, which she hadn't. And the reason I'm pointing this out is because Ryan was hurt. He was trying to give good information. But police, you know, they don't know anything and what is factual and what isn't for certain, so they're having to look and pick and decide, Okay, how do we put this all together? And what was Ryan actually trying to convey to us? So police felt like this was more like a puzzle with pieces everywhere, and the information had to be sorted then organized in order to try to put together a sequence of events. So Detective Dalton, after he sent Ryan off to the hospital, he followed the ambulance to Saint Joseph's Hospital and he stayed there until he was briefed by doctors that Ryan had in fact been shot in the face and this was a clear injury to his brain.

9:38 The doctors would have to work valiantly to save Ryan's life. The bullet had traveled through the left side of Ryan's face through the nose area, and a fragment of the bullet had broken off. Now, that fragment had lodged in his left temporal lobe behind his left eye, hence the massive black but it came to rest in front of his left ear, so it was still in there now. The left temporal lobe, if you just are curious, is the dominant hemisphere of your brain used for things like language, verbal verbalization of your memory, and processing complex sounds. So basically, the main portion of Ryan's brain that was damaged was the part that he needed to understand and then respond to people and to things that were happening around him.

10:32 Stimulus in his environment. The path of the damage that was done by the bullet had greatly hindered his ability to access his memories, and it also was hindering his language and the ability to express things accurately. It also explained why his emotions seemed off in the situation, or his lack of emotion whenever you know, Heather was dead on the couch and he seemed to just like not really think much of it. Well, that wasn't what was happening. The damaged portion of his brain housed the software that would have regulated his emotional response in all of that. Obviously, with all of that damage to his body, it wanted to quickly repair itself, and we all know what happens when you first get injured. Swelling. His brain was swelling as a result of the initial damage from the bullet, and that swelling is what would necessitate surgery amongst other repairs if Ryan were even to have a chance at survival.

11:34 So he was sent in for surgery and afterwards he was placed in recovery. It's incredible that he survived the surgery, in my opinion. But now everyone would just have to wait it out. They would have to just sit and it'd be a waiting game. Of would he live or would he die? And nobody knew that answer. So learning this, Detective Dalton left the hospital and he returned back to the crime scene where he and other investigators immediately wanted to canvass the area for any possible witnesses that may have information on what could have occurred. So they spoke to the next door neighbors. Their names were Robert and Elizabeth, and Robert and Elizabeth said that the previous night was quiet. They had never heard anything like nothing, And what they did confirm for the police was that the lights at Ryan's house had been off for three days. Now, you're wondering to yourself, why would you notice that? Why would you know if someone's house lights were off for three days? Why would that even catch your attention? Well, there was a reason, and that's because this was a change of pace compared to what they were used to with Ryan's house. Because, if being honest, these neighbors had been very frustrated with Ryan's house due to the constant activity at the house that.

12:54 Was going on. They said it was so much that they had even called the police prior because they felt like drugs were being sold out of that home. But the last three days nothing. It was strangely quiet compared to normal. Okay, So they took that into account, and then the police moved on to other neighbors to see, okay, did they know anything. But four additional neighbors around the house echoed the exact same sentiment. They said, it's usually extremely busy over there, cars in and out constantly, but the last three days it was radio silent. It caught their attention, and this included one neighbor who spent a lot of time in his garage smoking. He didn't smoke in his house, And they said, okay, well have you heard anything? Did you hear gunshots? Did anything ever happen, screaming anything? And he said nothing. He said, I never heard a gunshot, I never heard anything. And he confirmed that was over the last three days quiet. So this lack of activity at the home also was supporting roommate Alicia's account of things and that she said she hadn't been home over the last days because she had stayed at her mother's house.

14:09 So they're putting all of this together and going hmm, because if all of this took place on Christmas Day, that would mean everybody's wrong. How could they have not seen anything, heard anything, if everybody was there, but they're all saying they heard nothing. It's kind of interesting. But one thing was for certain, and that's that Heather was dead. We cannot forget about Heather and all of this. Her life was over and detectives knew exactly what had happened to her. She was brutally murdered, but they were going to have to find out more about what happened. So a few days after the incident, this would have been on January second, Detective Dalton attended Heather's autopsy. He took notes and he watched as her clothing was assessed and doc amended, as well as.

15:01 All of her wounds. And you read this report and it's like you can just visualize this poor girl, you know, laying on the couch. She had been snuggled up in a black hoodie. She was still wearing her jeans when she was executed, just laying on her side on the couch, bothering no one. So the medical examiner would conclude that she did in fact die of a gunshot wound to the head, and the caliber of that weapon was believed to be a twenty two. Now if you don't aren't familiar with with with bullets, Okay, this is going to be a very small, yet effective bullet. Okay. So there would be additional findings though that would be very important to this case in the long run.

15:48 Based on the. Further exploration of Heather's body during the autopsy, the medical examiner would say that this murder or death did not seem fresh. It was not brand new, as was thought at the scene. Initially, the firefighters had even said, she's been dead, she's cold, this is not like she just was shot. But the coroner confirmed this. Okay. Decomposition begins as soon as the body dies, as soon as you take your last breath, decomp starts, and that process may not be readily visible to the naked eye, okay, when you're looking at somebody, but the autopsy can provide that evidence. Most people, whenever they think about someone being dead for a couple of days, okay, puture faction is the phase that comes to mind. Most people think about someone being dead and they're gross and they're you know, turning green, and there's bugs and all that kind of shit.

16:47 But that kind of stuff doesn't usually happen until almost day four. Again, whether in temperature respective, everything's relative in relation to a body's dcomp Okay, but you don't become putrid immediately. It takes time. If Heather was indoors and in an air conditioned room like she was, then her exterior would have looked rather normal for the first few days to just the average joe looking at her. But internally, the bacteria that was feeding on the contents of her intestines before she died, that would bacteria would have begun to digest the intestines themselves after death, okay, and this is immediately. That activity then would break outside of her intestines and it would start digesting all of the surrounding organs, which is the eventual process when you get you know, complete decomposition. So when the doctors opened her up, the coroner could tell that she had been dead for a few days, not one day. A few days because the process that I just mentioned had already taken place. The decomp was more advanced than just one day. So that meant that although the couple had missed Christmas with their family and they were found late that night, you know, into the early morning hours of the twenty sixth, they had actually been injured and dead for more like three days. And all of this is based on Heather's level of decomposition, combined

18:18 with it aligning with the information from the neighbors that there had been no activity at that house, no lights, no movement for around three days. It was just making sense. So Ryan had apparently been alive but gravely injured, unaware of how bad it was, yet continuously moving about the home during this time. No wonder, he wasn't answering the phone when his mom or his dad or anybody was calling him. No wonder, he didn't answer the door when Pete family came knocking and was trying to get him to come to the door. His brain had been swelling for what was now believed to have been two to three days. Ryan had woken up on the floor. He never saw Heather get shot. This had to be true because, based on the evidence initially observed at the scene, he would have been shot and fell unconscious to the ground right there by those sliding glass doors. And I tell you this because officers had documented that they saw a pool of blood inside the sliding glass doors, and Heather's body, after everything had been processed, never seemed to have moved off of the couch at any point that said. That's why they think now the pool of blood must have been Ryan's initial location of where he had been shot inside the house. When he awoke whatever time later, he was functioning, but it was just on like a superficial type of level. And if you've been a listener for

19:49 a long time, you may remember my episode on the Piglia Family. This was the same case there. If not, you can go back and you can listen to that one. But the dad was chopped up with an axe and his face. He had suffered severe brain damage, and although he was mortally wounded, when he gained consciousness again, he got up, He walked around the house, bleeding everywhere. He even went outside and got his newspaper. He got locked out of his house, He even got his spare key unlocked the door, walked back inside before eventually collapsing and dying on the floor. So it's not unheard of. And it seemed now that Ryan woke up. But when he got up he saw the blood on the floor, he subconsciously realized.

20:32 That this was a mess. That you're not supposed to have a mess on the floor. But he's not putting two and two together because he's so traumatically injured and so seeing the mess, he went and got a mop and he started mopping up the blood. Now it wasn't a great job, but he had started trying to mop up the blood. Hence why in the evidence report there was a massive luminol reaction for an attempted cleanup at the scene. So this hadn't been a crime seen cover up attempt at like it first looked. This was Ryan's brain trying to work on autopilot with faulty equipment. It's just flat out pitiful if you're really listening to what this poor guy was going through.

21:14 For three days, two to three days, he. Went in the living room where Heather was laying dead, but he interpreted that as she was sleeping. There was blood smeared on the couch, there was blood all over the pillows, there was blood on the floor, there was blood on her head in her face. But Ryan didn't pick up on all of that because of the injury. And strangely enough, when looking at the reports, there was a glock a pistol. There was a glock stuck in the couch in between the cushions, right with Heather's body, but only the grip was visible when Heather's body was recovered from the couch. That was odd that grip of that gun was also covered in blood. Well, obviously Heather didn't do it.

22:08 She was dead. So had Ryan gotten that gun and maybe brought it back in there and placed it with her after the attack, so maybe in his mind she would have protection. It's possible anything at at this juncture was possible because the whole thing was odd, But poor Ryan didn't know what he was doing. So the belief here also was that Ryan must have covered Heather up. It made sense as to why Heather had a red blanket pulled all the way up to her neck, and this was after she had been shot because of the way the blood spatter was, so Ryan must have covered her up, not processing that she was even.

22:51 Dead, so she wouldn't be cold while she slept. That subconscious caring was in there, pitiful. And then he must have gone back to his room because the initial police report said that there was blood on his bedroom floor. There was blood all over his bed, his pillows, and also his bathroom, so there was evidence that he had spent time in all of those rooms, even going into the restroom the entire time, slowly dying with his brain swelling before he eventually went and laid down. In the bed. The pooled blood that was in the house, it was dry in a lot of places too.

23:32 Think about that pooled blood was dry. This was just additional evidence that time had passed since they had been attacked. It was all lining up. The couple was fine when roommate Alicia left for her mother's house for a few days. She even said that in her interview, but Ryan already had the black eye when she returned on Christmas night between nine thirty and ten Peace. So this meant that the couple had to have been shot somewhere more around December the twenty third, based on Heather's level of decomp and the fact that Ryan was already shot with advanced dark black and blue bruising on his face when he was found on the twenty fifth early mornings of the twenty sixth, So this was now the timeline that police were working with. But what the hell had happened? Well, Detective Dalton would be very interested in a former roommate named Eric, and this guy's name was brought up multiple times between Ryan and the current roommate Alicia. During their initial questioning this name, Eric kept swirling around. Ryan initially said that Eric was dating Heather, but y'all, we know that's not true because Ryan was dating Heather. In Alicia's initial interview, she said she used to date roommate Eric, so obviously this needed some c clarification in the fact that the guy used to live there seems pretty important. So Detective Dalton called this Eric

25:06 Fella to get his explanation of the friendships or the relationships between everyone. But from the very start, Eric said, I never dated Alisha. Why would Alisha lie about that? Why would you say you dated somebody if you didn't. Well, here's the kicker. Alicia wasn't lying, but neither was Eric. In a twist of events, it was realized there had actually been two Erics that lived in that house prior to this incident. Eric number one, the guy that Detective Dalton was speaking to. He had the nickname Southside and he used to be Ryan's roommate before they had a falling out and Eric left the house. That's when Alisha moved in as well as Eric number two. Eric number two had hell tattooed on his arm. So I'm going to refer to Eric number one as Southside and Eric number two that dated Alicia as hell Raiser, so we can keep it clear.

26:09 Alicia never dated Southside. Alicia dated hell Raiser. So that's why there seemed to be people not telling the truth, but they were. It just had to be clarified, all right, gotcha. So when asked why and when Southside Eric had left the house and gone to the left the Phoenix area, it turned out that he said it had been just about two weeks prior to the shooting. That's pretty convenient that you say you left right before a shooting occurred. So do tell give. Us more information, Eric, because the timeline seems kind of, you know. A red flag. So south Side Eric explained, Look, I left town on December the twelfth because Ryan and I got in an argument.

26:55 Ryan was wanting to throw a party, and south Side Eric didn't want to because he said it's going to piss off the landlord. But I got to tell you something real quick. It's not quite as kosher as oh, let's have a party. No, I don't want to have a party our landlord. To get mad. Okay, it's not quite that that uppity, Okay. The situation, when it was further pressed, was explained. Southside Eric said, look, I'll be up front. We were selling drugs out of the house, all right. Well, guess what that seems to align with all of what the neighbors thought was going on too. And he says, we were selling drugs and we were selling it, you know, out of the house. He said, we were selling weed, shrooms, x k oxy, cotton, vicodin, you name it.

27:40 We were slanging dope out of the house. But Southside Eric wouldn't give up any names or connections or anything that could be additional potential leads because we all know, you know, drug sales has an inherit of you know, level of danger with it. But he wasn't going to give up any names. The only thing that he did say was, look, our supply or has Phoenix police connections. He said that allegedly, and I'm going to say allegedly here, that there were some officers in the department that were assisting the dealers to. Get out of jail. And he also claimed, look, I saw this firsthand because Ryan had previously been arrested and he was helped out by the cops.

28:21 But again he gave up no names. He gave up nothing that this could even be vetted or confirmed either way. Southside Eric said, I moved out of the house when Ryan didn't want to stop selling dope and throwing these parties. Southside was wanting to remain more low key and not have all the attention drawn to the house, as well as the fact he was aggravated because every time they would throw a frickin' party, shit would come up missing, and he was tired of the stuff getting taken, and that was why he moved out, and he just gave the whole house to Ryan on December the twelfth because he didn't want to be a part of that anymore. But before that falling out, there had been another roommate that lived with them named Richie.

29:04 That's the same name that Ryan mentioned as saying was the person that shot him in his interview. So although the information is coming out slowly, it's kind of starting to fall into place. So Richie had lived in this house before Ryan even moved in. Southside and Richie lived together, but Richie started using more and more dope and he started tweaking out real bad on drugs, and so he stopped being able to pay full rent. That's why Ryan moved in with Southside and Richie because he was going to help to pay the bills. Since Richie couldn't cover all of his portion of the rent because of his dope habit. Ryan moved in. He took the bigger bedroom which used to be Richie's, and he said, if I get the big bedroom, I'll pay more. Richie said okay, and Richie moved into a smaller bedroom for less money. Well, when that happened, I guess you could say three's a crowd, but Southside, Eric and Ryan got really really tight and they started hustling and doing drug sales together. Shortly thereafter, Southside told Richie, you gotta fucking kick bricks. Bro, you're not paying your rent and you're all jacked up on drugs, and like, this ain't cool anymore because Richie had escalated to starting to use meth and other what they considered like harder drugs than weed and pills and all of that, and so Southside didn't want to mess with him anymore because of his erratic behavior and the fact he wasn't paying.

30:34 Ryan didn't even like Richie to be upfront, so it was a good change all around, it seemed for everybody. So Richie gets kicked out and he did leave. But Southside said that after Richie got kicked out, he had caught him creeping around the house late at night, and he said in one time, in one instance, he had heard something and he said, I even pulled a shotgun on rich because I thought he was a burglar. He almost shot his ass. He didn't, but he almost did. So the detective was like, okay, wait a minute, you thought he was a burglar and you pulled a shotgun. But if he wasn't there to burglarize the place, why was he there. And he said, well, he didn't burglarize us, but I feel like he was there because he wanted to come rob me and Ryan because he knew that we had a lot of stuff in the house. Well, what was meant by a lot of stuff was drugs and guns. So I was looking through an evidence file.

31:29 In that evidence file, he listed that this is what should have been in the house, a glock forty five. He said, there was two Mosburg shotguns, one with a pistol grip and ar fifteen an SKS with a black folding stock. A Compact nine block and a twenty five caliber pistol with a pink pearl grip on it. He said, there was usually weed in the house there, you know, pills, whatever, and he said Richie would have known that because we had even sold dope to Richie and Dad in the past. So that's why I think he was there to come, you know, steal all our stuff or try to well. Even though Southside had now moved out of the house, since all of that, he was still friends with Ryan.

32:14 They still talked. He just didn't want to live with him anymore. And he said, matter of fact, the very next day after I moved out, after Southside moved out, he said, Ryan and I spoke on the phone and Ryan. Said, Bro, after you left, I had another run in with Richie. I mean it was right after you left, and it was wild too. See Ryan caught Richie trying to break into the house again, but this time Richie was trying to break directly into Ryan's bedroom, because there was a door right there that went to Ryan's bedroom and I think, if I'm remembering the map correctly of the home or the schematics, that's the same door Ryan went out on the back patio when he was arrested. When Ryan caught him trying to break in, Ryan had a pistol on him, and so he jumped on Richie and he pistol whipped the shit out of Richie. That's what Ryan had told Southside. But what was even wilder about that was he pistol whipped Richie and then he didn't realize that the way Richie had gotten into the house was in a car believed to be driven by two Hell's Angels. You don't have to know much to know you don't fuck with the Hell's Angels, Okay, right?

33:28 Wrong or indifferent? That ain't people that you want to pick a fight with or mess with. That ain't cool. So this is a lot of information, right, detectives writing all this down, and the south Side continued to talk. He then gave another bit of information that was literally like somewhat shocking. All right, Heather's boyfriend before Ryan, he had been recently murdered. Her boyfriend was murdered before she then started dating Ryan. Wait what like wait, what there's another murder like tied up in this And yeah, that was true. His name was Roman and Roman was actually very good friends with Ryan. So that, as you can imagine right now, opened up a whole new world of possibilities in this case, how many people do you know that have had two boyfriends shot and or murdered and then they themselves were.

34:25 Murdered after that? Like, wow, to put all of this into perspective, there's a lot of violence and pistol whippings and drugs and murders going on. I mean, this is just wild, okay. But eventually it would also be clarified that that party remembered there was a fight. That's why Southside Eric moved out, was because he and Ryan were fighting over a party. Well, that party that was being thrown was actually a party being thrown in memory of Heather's murdered ex boyfriend Roman. That's why they were having this big party. So when this big party is being thrown, Richie, the former roommate, shows up with his little brother and another guy that nobody knew his real name, but he went by the name Phoenix. Well, they showed up to the party even after Richie had been kicked out of this house on not so good terms. So after all of this was said and done, and he gave as much information as he could Southside Eric got down to the nutcut and said, look, Richie is the one that I think might be involved in these shootings U and I do know where he is right now, like as far as where he lives, if you want me to give that information, which of.

35:32 Course he did. So I know that was a lot of information, but I hope you can kind of get the picture here that there was a lot of a lot of stuff going on. So it turned out that when the initial shooting or the crime scene was being taped off in all of that, the landlord of the home had shown up and another cop that was on scene at that time during those initial hours of the investigation, had questioned her and had said, look, if you're the landlord, you know, are there any known issues at this house? Are there anything that anything that you've been dealing with or anything you might could give us to let us, you know, kind of understand what might be going on here. And she said, look, this is all I know. I have a rental agreement with Ryan Ritchie and Southside Eric. She never mentioned that she had a rental agreement with Alicia, but y'all, it makes sense right because it was a brand new transition Alicia had just moved in just a few days, like two weeks prior to this shooting. Landlord also confirmed that she had spoken to Ryan days before about the rent being late, and he promised that he would put the rent money in a cigarette box on the barbecue grill. She went and picked it up on December the nineteenth. When she was there, she tried to do an inspection, but she found that the locks had been changed, and so that was against policy. So she called Ryan and she said, look, bro, first of all, only half the rent is in this cigarette box, and you can't change the law on this house. That's against policy.

37:02 And Eric said, I know, I know, I'm sorry. He explained the situation about you know, squirrely roommates and people being kicked out, and then he also said that he was mad at Southside Eric for skipping out on the rent and moving out and running off with the money. But you know, he would come up with the money as soon as he could so in a trust but verify situation. The police asked her, okay, well, have there been any parties that have been an issue at this house, because remember that's what Eric said their blow up was about. And she said yes, parties had been an issue, she said. Matter of fact, police had been called to the house towards the end of October because there was a party there where some people had shown up uninvited, and when they were kicked out of that party, shots were allegedly fired.

37:53 In the air. Okay, well, now it's looking a lot like that mentioned part that the landlord is talking about was probably the same one that Richie and his friends had shown up to uninvited. If shots were actually fired at that party, someone's pulling the trigger at the party? Was that possibly a precursor to this? Now, murder and attempted murder, guns, drugs, and violent wildness seemed to be a constant theme at this house lately, so detectives continued to work these leads to follow up on any information, interviewing more people. In those days that passed, and incredibly, y'all, Ryan not only would survive his surgery, but he would start recovering. He would start making progress, and police would continue to monitor this progress and hopes that he might be able to talk to them more clearly as he healed, and amazingly, behind the feats of all things you would expect. On January thirty. First, Ryan Waller was able to speak to police and give more insight on this situation. It's just unbelievable.

39:08 So a detective shows up and he goes and he interviews Ryan. Ryan was there. His dad's name was Donald. Donald was there as well, and so during this interview, he showed Ryan a total of twenty seven pictures and he asked him did he know any of the people in the pictures, and Ryan said, look, before you even looked at the picture, he said, look, I already know it's Richie. Richie is who shot me. I know it for sure. Okay, great, but remember police still have to solidify the case and they have to do everything required step by step, and they have to make sure they're building a solid case and do everything. In detail. So Ryan looks at the.

39:50 Pictures and he identified Southside Eric first in the photos and he said, look, this is Eric. He's going to know everything about Richie. They had once been really really tough. Richie then also picked out a photo Uh or excuse me. Ryan then also picked out a photo of Richie and explained that's him. I had kicked him out because he couldn't afford the rent. And then he added a detail that police didn't know. And what's really cool here is that although Ryan has this brain injury, everything he's saying now is making total sense. It's aligning with what everyone else has said. He told the officers. Yeah, I kicked him out, he said, but Richie would always come in through the sliding glass doors on the back even if it was locked. He said, Richie would kind of pick it up and push it off of the track and he was able to open it.

40:40 Well, that was big. This was huge because this would explain why the glass on the back door wasn't shattered, as if someone was breaking in, you could sneak in just by lifting the door off the track, and you could try to break in quietly. But the effect on Ryan's brain injury was still a parent and I want to be very clear on that. Okay, obviously he's made huge strides here. But when he was talking, he still said that he only had one roommate, which was true because Alisha was there, but hell Raiser Eric in her broke up right around that timeframe, and so hell Raiser had moved out. But he couldn't name Alisha his roommate. He couldn't give her name so the detective brought it up and was like something something Alicia, and Ryan said, ooh, that sounds familiar, so it was familiar to him. He couldn't remember seeing Alicia the day of the incident, but he did remember seeing her at some point afterwards and her asking if he was in pain, and that aligned with what Alicia had said about her getting home and giving him some advil.

41:49 He said that he had changed the locks two weeks before the incident. That aligned with what the landlord had said. And he thought that Richie was the one that shot or he knew Richie was the one that shot him, but he thought it was because Richie was coming in to burglarise or steal from him. He became very frustrated though in that interview because he's like, I can't remember Christmas. He's like, it's so weird. I don't know why I can't remember Christmas. And that's when his dad piped up and said, well, I tried to call Ryan on the twenty third, but I never was able to reach him again. This is aligning with the shooting having occurred late on the twenty second, early into the twenty third of December, not the twenty fifth, And this matters because the timeline matters when you're doing the investigation. So Ryan was asked what all should have been in the house whenever this incident took place, what might be missing? We'd like to know what we're looking for. He says, I had two shotguns and I had a rifle with a folding stock, and he said those were actually Romans, Heather's murdered ex boyfriend.

42:56 Those were his guns. He said. There was a Compact nine, which was Heather's. He said I had a small laptop, and he said if I had any money, it would have been in a safe in my closet. I probably wouldn't have had more than five hundred dollars. Maybe some weed, maybe some pills whatever. Well, none of these things he listed were found in the home, minus Heathers nine millimeter, which was stuffed in those couch cushions. You remember that part. So this means potential burglary claims were looking to be the most promising motive here for what had gone down. So police would let Ryan rest and then they would go back and they would interview him again on February the second, and this time they did a photo lineup and so they brought him six individuals in a photo lineup, and Ryan said the one that looked most familiar to him as the person that he said was with Richie, because he said there were two, was person number six. Well, I can tell you, because I've looked at the file, that person number six was in fact Larry, Richie's dad. He added, though that he didn't know exactly what all Larry had done, because he said, I passed out right after Richie shot me in the face with a revolver, he said, but I can tell you that Larry was wearing a leather biker jacket when he was there. Now, his memory was foggy, but he said, I remember I was on the couch with Heather. I heard a noise. I got up, and I found that

44:29 Richie was coming through the glass sliding doors. But the next thing he remembered was laying on the living room floor, waking up and seeing a pool of blood by the glass sliding doors. And then he said it was like flashes of bloody handprints on the walls, maybe his own. And he eventually said, I was able to get up in the living room. I went over and I tried to wake up Heather. But I couldn't get her to wake up. I went in the bathroom. He said. That's when I was totally shocked. I looked in the mirror and I was covered in blood. This is horrifying to me. He doesn't know what's going on, and he's seeing himself just covered in blood. And then he remembered laying down in his bed. But the next thing he remembered was seeing lights in the windows, and he said, I tried to leave out of the back door, but then I got arrested. Well, that's really aligning with the investigation incredibly, it's making sense. But then he said he remembered something else. He said, but wait, I remember Larry pointing a gun at me while Richie was going down the hall. But he's like recalling this while he's talking.

45:37 He's like, but it doesn't it can't be the same incident. It had to be a different incident. But as he's trying to remember, he can't decipher it. His memory was so affected by his brain injury. But he said, I know the dad pointed a gun at me. I know he did, but it doesn't fit in this story, all right, So that was noted. And while all of this was great evidence. To have Ryan direct naming his attackers was perfect. They needed that, but they would have to have more to be able to arrest and convict these guys. Any criminal defense attorney worth their salt would start with the fact, Oh no, Ryan's memory is unreliable, he's got a brain injury. Everything you have is circumstantial. Hopefully you can see that. So this case had to be built much stronger. Even though this was perfect evidence saying that's who shot me, great, we needed that. Now there was another interview that police conducted, and this was what the guy named Robert, and this would now become very handy since Ryan was able to give them this further information. Robert was in this friend group with Ryan, okay, and he knew a lot about Richie, even down to the fact that Robert Southside and Richie had met initially through this music party group known as SFL.

46:52 And by the way, would you like to know what SFL stands for? Because I have the answer. They were in a music group SFL, which stood for Stoner's for Life. Richie was so involved he even had a tattooed on his back SFL. That's kind of lame, I'm sorry. You get sfl tattooed on your back, all right, But anyway, when asked why anyone if he in his opinion, in this guy Robert's opinion, do you have any reason to know why anyone would want to kill Heather? He was said yeah, he had no clue. He said, that's mind blowing. I can't even come up with the reason as to why anyone would want to kill Heather. So then the detective asked him, do you know who might want to kill Ryan? And his immediate answer, direct quote, was who wouldn't?

47:39 WHOA what do you mean who wouldn't? He said, you know, Ryan had a lot of stuff going on there, but he said Richie was the guy that he believed would have done it. And he even brought up another incident that had happened just a few days before the shooting that Ryan had mentioned to him. Ryan told Robert that he was asleep in his bed and he woke up to a guy that he called Phoenix sitting on the sofa right by his bed staring at him. That's like creep factor one thousand, A wake up with a stranger in your room staring at you. Well, when Ryan saw him, he immediately reached over and grabbed his gun, and he drew down on the guy and pointed the gun at Phoenix. As he did that, he heard a voice. He allowed, watch out, he's got a gun, and he recognized that was Richie's voice.

48:32 Richie was in the house too. But what this was all about, he wasn't exactly clear. He just knew that Ryan told him the story of pulling the gun on this guy Phoenix and Richie being there. But remember, Phoenix was the name that everyone had mentioned as an uninvited party guest alongside Richie just days prior to the shooting two. Robert also added the information that Phoenix was a friend of Richie's because he had met him and while they were doing time in prison together. Yes, if that tells you the caliber of these two guys, Richie and Phoenix, these two cats made friends in prison.

49:12 Ryan also had told Robert that he had pistol whipped Richie when Richie tried to break in another time. So that's not two people that have said that pistol whipping incident. Well on December twenty second, so we're still building the timeline here, Robert said, for sure, he spoke to Heather and Ryan on December twenty second. They were fine, but he hadn't spoken to them again until he had the news broken to him about the shooting on December the twenty sixth. Again, Timeline is making sense. This had to have happened on the twenty third, and then on the twenty sixth is whenever he found out everything that had happened. All right, Well, what did you do when you found out? And Robert says, well, that's when I called my padna Chunk, Yes, Chunk like on the Goonies, you know, all right, Chunks.

50:00 His real name was Brandon by the way, Okay, he said. I called Chunk and I said, oh my god, you know, did you hear what happened? Ryan was shot? Heather's dead? And Chunk said, yeah, I heard about it. He said. I called Richie's mom to see where Richie was and she said that he had run off to Fountain Hills, which was another area. Well, Robert told the cop, I just thought that was really odd that all of this went down, and then Richie happens to disappear and run off right after these shootings happened. And that's when Robert made up his mind. I think Richie is the one who did this. I think Richie murdered her, and I think Richie shot Ryan. So following that lead, police wanted to talk to Chunk. So they go through their basic introductions and then police just flat out cut to the Chase, which, by the way, is kind of funny because Chunk's last name is Chase.

50:52 But anyway, I. Digress, So, like, all right, look, Chunk, we got word that Richie might be involved in a murder and he might be in the Fountain Hills area. And Chunk corrects. Them and he says, no, I don't think he's in Fountain Hills. I think he's in Paradise Valley. But he went to Paradise Valley, you know, before Christmas, not on Christmas Day whenever Ryan and all them were found. But guess what, that makes sense because if the shootings were to have occurred just a few days before Christmas, well, then of course that would have been when Richie would have run off before Christmas. Chunk also said he knew Phoenix.

51:34 Phoenix was a real person. He said, I don't know his real name, but Phoenix had offered to pay Chunk for a ride out of town about the same time that Richie left out. Butt Chunk said, no, I didn't give him a ride, you know, I just didn't take him up on it. And Chunks said, look, I heard that Richie might be the guy that did this, but I don't think that he's capable of it. Well, with all of that information, police now felt like they had enough information to obtain an arrest warrant for Richie Lee Carver in the murder of Heather Kwan and the attempted murder of Ryan Waller. But Richie wasn't someone that police were willing to play games with, and he was not new to the criminal life. He had a history of drugs, crime, violence, prison time. Okay, so this was not someone to play around with. So what they decided to do was to deploy their Rapid Deployment unit to go take down Richie Carver.

52:30 And this was a very tense operation and they knew that he had likely already killed somebody tried to kill someone else, and so he would most likely be ready to fight. In result of that knowledge, they got all dressed, they got in their tactical gear, ballistic helmets, vests. The team was briefed on everything, saying, we need to take this guy into custody, and then we want to affect a search warrant on his home to try to get any evidence collection that we can. So they make their plan and around seven pm they surround the house and an officer starts banging on the door Sheriff's office or police department search warrant, but nobody came to the door.

53:13 Again. He banged on the door, please, police department come to the door, search warrant, but it remained silent. Nobody made a sound. So police were not playing games. They weren't gonna wait to be ambush or anything like that. So they went ahead and they kicked that damn door down. The team went in, they spread out, and they started clearing the home room by room, but very quickly. When they first came through that door, they found that another entry door was barricaded, and so they had to switch their plans reaching through another doorway to make jury. And you got to think about this. You don't know what's on the other side of that door. You don't know if someone's laying down with a shotgun or an ar or anything like that, ready to mow down every officer here.

53:56 So they have to do this quickly. And swiftly in these doors. Being barren is very dangerous. So once they made it through that doorway they breached. They didn't see anybody. They cleared the rooms, but they came to one door of a bedroom that was locked. Again, not knowing what was behind it, they didn't know if he was armed and lying in wait. Officers deployed to what are called avon round's boom boom into the doorknob, which blew the door open. They rushed in, but again they found no one. The house was empty. Thank god, nothing terrible took place inside that home. The house was secured and it was immediately turned over to detectives to search for evidence. But police were very soon after able to track down Richie's physical location and they were able to take him into custody without incident, because if he had planned to fight, after he looked around and he saw all the officers there ready to handle the situation likely changed his mind.

55:02 All he said after he looked around and saw the officers was I want an attorney, And just like that, getting any possible answers from him was no longer an option. Police would have to build their case without so much as a word from their main suspect, so police shifted gears. They wanted now to locate and have a word with Richie's dad, Larry. They were curious. They wanted to see what exactly might he have to say about his name being brought up in a murder and attempted murder investigation. Having Richie behind bars that was a huge step in the case. But this was far from over and certainly nowhere near a slam dunk. But just when detectives thought that this nightmare of a case couldn't get more frustrating, it would take a final turn that nobody saw coming.

55:55 Because while investigators were busy tracking down Larry, police headquarters got a phone call, not from a witness, not from an informant, and definitely not from someone anyone expected to voluntarily speak up. The person on the other end of the line didn't ask for a lawyer and didn't ask any questions. Instead, they started with a single but direct statement, it wasn't Richie. Following those three words, over the next few minutes, alibis would collapse and expected loyalties would be shattered because the most dangerous person in the room isn't always the one threatening the loudest and holding the gun.

56:40 Sometimes it's the silent one sitting in the corner who's simply holding the truth. Stay tuned for Part three.