The Taxi Driver

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where 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. Warning.

0:51 Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Jennings. What is going on? We're back for another episode of Unspeakable? Speaking of Unspeakable, do you know that I completely and totally overdosed on smoke brisket yesterday And I'm not proud of myself and there was a scene to be seen, but it was so good. It was so good, So shout out to my husband for that. So if you haven't had any smoke brisket, go get you some. It's it's time that you eat some of it was so good. But recovered now, I'm feeling better, my stomach's back in order, and I'm ready to give you a good show before I do it though, Let's do some shout outs. And I got a bunch of people here, and look low, ki, I can I could screw up a two car funeral, and I'm aware of that. And I got off task on my on my shout outs, but I think I got them straight.

1:44 So if I if I took a minute to give you a shout out, it's okay. I'm about to give it to you. If I don't say your name today, that's all right. I'm gonna be i'm'a keep podcasting and i'ma keep calling out the names. And then if I say your name twice, well you're just a lucky duckling, okay, because I'm not sure if I'm gonna double say some names, but you're just twice as special, I guess if I say it twice, all right. But I'm gonna start in techar Kenna, Texas, and this is gonna be miss Kim kirstein Hi Kim, all the way out in Texas. Thank you so incredibly much for joining. I've got another one, and this name you're gonna have to say it with me everyone. Her name is Joline, Joline, Joline Jolene. I can't sing, but I'm shouting out hey to Joline, Oh, sir in Buffalo, Minnesota. What is going on? Joline? Please don't take my man, but do please listening, keep listening to my podcast. That would be that would be legit all right. And then I've got Delissa, and I believe it's Brito. Delissa Brito from Middleburg, Florida. I love my Florida people. What's going on, girl? I've been talking to you, I think on Patreon a little bit too, huh, so wanted to give you a shout out as well as Miss Susan Edwards right here in my backyard in Denham Springs, Louisiana. Hi, Miss Susan, thank you so very very much. And then back out in Texas, Cyprus, Texas, to be exact, I've got Lisa Williamson. Hey, Miss Lisa, how is it going. I hear that y'all had some bad weather here yesterday from the

3:16 day that I'm recording this, so I hope that you're doing well. And then these people I don't have locations for, so I if I need to send out help to find you, I will let me know. But there was no location. But I've got mister Garrett Sutherland, Hi Garrett, and Miss Shana Bradley. Hi Shana. I'm so incredibly thankful for all of the people that continue to support the show. You absolutely make the difference. And so if I didn't call you out yet, it doesn't mean you're not special. I just didn't get to you yet. But I'm getting there. There's a lot of people I have to say hello to. I also want to remind you that you need to go ahead and put your address on your Patreon so that I can send you your quarterly gifts. As well as the fact that I now have my Glitter t shirts, my Glitter Unspeakable shirts, I'm extra. I like to sparkle everywhere I go. The ladies have spoken and they're out there. So you can look at my Facebook. I put a link there, or you can go to Unspeakable to the podcast dot com and you can buy your shirts there as well. Anything and everything that you do is a great support to me. And if you can't get you a shirt, that's fine too. Thank you so much, but I am gonna do this case. It was actually specially requested by miss Tony McClung. And you know when people do special requests. I always take them into consideration. I have a notebook and I write down anytime you message me. When I say okay, I'm gonn look into that, I'm gonna write that down. I ain't lying to you. Look, here's the notebook, right yeah, right, cheer if you're watching me podcast, and I write them all down and I look into them. It's just one one lady in limited time, and I'm trying to get to every suggestion that you send my way. But this one really was important to me when I looked at this. It does involve

4:47 a young kid, and so I wanted to tell this story and maybe it could be a lesson to some younger listeners out there that might be listening to this. But do you remember being twelve years old? If you were listening right now, do you remember being twelve? I don't remember everything about being twelve, but I do remember how new I was to the hormonal changes that were going on. The interest of ooh, what is a boyfriend like? You know, what is a girlfriend like, the possibility of a new relationship and that someone might actually be interested right in me? And that's exactly what twelve year old justin Bloxham was going through in March of twenty ten. So Justin, let's talk about him. He was born on May twenty ninth, nineteen ninety seven, in Shreveport, Louisiana. And for some reason, there's a lot of cases out of Shreveport. If you really start looking into that, My buddy, you know Jim My producer, Jim and Woody Overton on real lifeful crime. They they covered this case. Woody covered this a big case out of Shreveport. And I don't know why, but you know, young people, man, y'all got to keep y'all's head on the swivel.

5:55 But mom her name was Amy, and dad's name was Kevin, and y'all, they were so proud of their boy. They loved their Justine and he was the second of four sons that were born to them. Now his mother's own words, Amy said, and this is a direct quote, we fought hard for him because they had multiple miscarriages before they were actually able to conceive Carrie and give birth to their little Justin. And he grew up a happy kid. This is not some tragedy of a bad childhood. This kid grew up happy. He was loved, and he was involved in everything if it involved moving and having fun. He was a seventh grader at North DeSoto Middle School. He enjoyed to skateboard. He loved skateboarding, being outdoors, mud riding, and if he wasn't jumping on his trampoline, he was throwing kicks and strikes whenever he was on the mat at karate all right, this was a rough and tumble boy, exactly what you expect when you think of a young a young guy coming into his own. He was also a musician.

6:57 He liked to play the drums, which is my personal favorite. Whenever I go to a concert, I like lots of different types of music. But I recently went to a Shineedown concert. If you like that, if you're my age, if you like them, And the frigate drummer man had dreads down to the back of his legs, and he had like beads in his hair, and when he would start wailing on those drums, and that hair would start flying and the fire would be all right, they had the pyrotechnics. It was so sick and justin I'll put a video of that. Let me make a note re QUI. I'm gonna put a video from that concert, so you can see exactly what I'm talking about. But you know, Justin was a musician. He loved playing the drums. But not only was he active, he was a smart kid. He made the grades necessary to be on the honor roll and was a good student. He was so good that he was even on the superintendent's list at North Dasota Middle School. He was on the superintendent's list. His science teachers were so proud of him, and I'm sure that they, you know, were grinning and hugging him because he was a natural at science. He won first place in his science fair, and he was part of his school's four age club. He played on the Griffins football team, and when he wasn't competing in sports, he was still applying himself. He would like to sit down, he liked to sketch.

8:15 And then something that was super wholesome about him that I really liked was that he would go out and he loved to help his papa with their cows, and he would go out and help, you know, take care of them or give them their inoculations or whatever it is that they were doing. So you know, of everything that I've mentioned so far about this kid, his parents were most proud of the fact that Justin was a kind and caring soul, and I think that says so much. Right, He's got all these accomplishments and he's so talented, but he was kind and he was a good kid. Now his parents were no longer a couple, so his mom, Amy was in a new relationship at the time. She was engaged to be married to a man named Craig Fletcher, and Justin's dad, whose name was Kevin, was also remarried and he had a wife named Christine. So Justin never lacked for family, and he certainly never lacked for someone to hang out with because there were a total of four brothers who loved him. Okay between his hers and ours, so a houseful of boys, to say the least. His brothers, Travis, Tyler, Colin Dalton, and Justin.

9:18 I think those are just the perfect set of names for the pictures when we know what I'm gonna put pictures up and share these people, it's just perfect. They are what you hope to see in photos, you know, at the beach where everybody's and they don't have this photo, but if you know, you imagine the mom with her husband and then all of her boys and they're wearing you know, white shirts and khakis on the beach, like that's the kind of people these people are. So twelve year old Justin had plans on the evening of March twenty ninth, twenty ten, because it was spring break, and that's whenever the kids are at that point of the school year where they're over it. So are the teachers, like Loki, I'm out there, you know, jugga margaritas. But we're on spring break. We're wanting to let loose. You have a whole to just chill out, be with your friends, do what you want to do, relax before finals come up. And so he was going to spend the night with his friend named Dustin Rose Grant and Dustin lived in Stonewall, Louisiana. So Stonewall is located in De Soto Parish and it's about six miles south of Shreveport if you're looking at it on a map. So a pretty cool fact too. By the way, the highway that runs through there was built partially by convict labor.

10:26 So they were making them people work. Nothing worse than these these people convicted of crimes just sitting on their ass doing nothing. You know what I mean, Like to me, you took away from society and you should pay it back. Go build a highway, Go pick up some trash, fold some clothes, help us out, right. But he was going over to his buddy Dustin's house, and he had packed his bags and inside his bag he had put his blue jean shorts, a T shirt, his underwear, a belt. And then, most proud as a mother, most proud of this kid is that he even remembered to pack his own toothbrush. Way to go. Justin big moves right for a twelve year old boy. And he headed out for a night of fun with his friends. So while he was hanging out with his buddies at justin at the house, Justin was on his phone and he was texting with a girl that he had met on social media.

11:16 And that's going to be the first red flag of this story. Social media. Oh my god, if we are not active in our kids' lives and looking and seeing what they're doing on social media. But he was texting this girl that he had just met on social media, and look, he was interested. Okay, he's young. It was fun. I remember the first time I was on the Internet, and that's when we had dial up, which makes me feel old, right, And we would go into the chat rooms and you'd have to say if you were you know, white female, how tall you were, whatever? Okay, Well, now we have social media with pictures and way more. You could FaceTime if you wanted to a complete stranger. Well, he was interested in this girl and she was fourteen years old, so she was two years older than him, but she was certainly showing interest in twelve year old Justin. So Amanda was liking this boy, right, score. He was super excited about that. And Justin was a cute young fella. He had light, auburn brown hair. It was cut into an average boy's, you know cut. He had his bangs just a little bit longer. Something that kind of stuck out to me is And if you don't listen to country music, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. But y'all remember back in the Gap, there was a young boy.

12:28 His name was Billy Gilman, and he kind of got big. He sang a few songs that went big, and he was a little country singer like in the nineties. For some reason, Justin looks like Billy Gilman to me and everything down to the little braces on his teeth. Okay, he had a thin frame, he still had braces on his teeth. He was at that awkward age with girls. But hey, you know, they seem to like him, and he was going to shoot his shot, right, He's going to talk to this girl. So Justin and Amanda texted for a while, and the text star to turn a little more devious. Okay. When I say devious, I don't mean criminal. Okay, I just mean young teen tween whatever. Uh. And they're kind of saying things that they probably wouldn't say in front of their parents. They would be embarrassed if other people knew. But they, you know, were talking a little sexy talk.

13:22 So she started saying, look, you should sneak out of the house and we should meet up. And this wasn't just to say hello, all right. She was a frisky little thing. This Amanda was frisky, and she seemed to be hinting that if he did sneak out that there would be something sexual happening between the two of them. Now, this is where podcasting for me personally is hard, because I want to tell the truth and I want to tell the story and how how it came to be. What's difficult is that you never want to embarrass a young person on a podcast. So I want to be very clear on that that I'm not sharing this information to shame, and i am not sharing this information to embarrass. I'm sharing it because I want you to understand the full gamut of the story and how it laid out. Okay, so getting from point A to point B became an issue in their conversation because you know, they were considering it, but neither one of them were old enough to drive. They couldn't get anywhere, and he knew that this probably was just talk, you know, but hey, he was old enough to play along, so what could go wrong. Let's just have the chat, Let's just keep talking, and you know, see what happens. I mean, she was fourteen, what is she going to do? Well, Hey, shout out to all the twelve year old boys out there, because fourteen year old girls can beat you up. Okay, y'all haven't yet caught up. So what's she gonna do? Right? But I mean, she was so sweet and she seemed different from the other girls who didn't really show him much attention Like this, and it was too far

14:52 for either of them to walk to really make this happen, but they were going to keep having the conversation. But eventually, though, Amanda realized that they could make it to see each other. They would just have to be creative, and so she's like, look, Justin, if you give me your address of where you are, I've got some money, so I will pay for a taxi to come get you. We could actually make this happen. It would be fun. So realizing this was actually happening, Justin got some butterflies in his stomach and he was really nervous, but he was ready to man up and he was going to go see her for real, but not really okay. He was really hesitant about it. Like one part of him is saying, you know, hell yeah, but his brain is telling him, I don't know if this is a good idea, right, but it's kind of interesting, it's really fun. So he was super hesitant, super hesitant in these messages back and forth, but then he was resistant almost but then eventually he caved. And during that period before he came, she exchanged over two dozen photos with him, and that's when he was like, Okay, I'll meet with you. But there were stipulations. Okay, he said, I can only be gone for like thirty minutes and then I have to be back. And you know, that spoke to me because it shows the innocence almost of this boy, because maybe you can't get anywhere, do

16:25 anything and get back in thirty minutes, you know what I mean, like that, that's not gonna happen. But it just shows kind of the innocence of the concept or the idea that he could maybe could do this. So about that time that they're having this conversation, his friend Dustin, got really tired and he handed him the remote to the TV. They were sitting there watching TV while he was texting, Dustin hands Justin the remote and says, hey, I'm going to bed, rolls over goes to sleep. So it was just after three o'clock in the morning on March the thirtieth, when, just as she said, a taxi pulled up in front of the friend's house. And so Justin's like, whoa, this chick really has some game. You know, she must really be into me. And this was edgy for Justin. Amanda had sent, like I said, over a dozen photos to him, and while I'm sure his hormones at that age were raging it.

17:15 It was basically fighting his common sense. And I think we all understand this as adults, you know, common sense goes out the window when those hormones start raging. And twelve is a confusing age for a boy, right They've started to look and act like an adult, but they don't have the same life experience and decision making skills that an adult would. So interesting to me is that sometimes you have to give kids this age a little bit of a reminder that there's still a twelve year old kid, you know. And that's why the text between Justin and Amanda are so telling, because she tells him at one point the taxi driver went to the end of the street to go get you. I'm sitting here watching porn. And his response to all of this, and this is an actual quote from the text exchanges his actual response to her saying I'm watching porn tells me everything that I needed to know about Justin. When he said, and this is a direct quote, you gotta remember, I'm only twelve. It's almost like he was young but smart enough to know that this is kind of out of my scope of knowledge. I mean, I don't. I'm only twelve, you know, I don't know what that means or what he knows what porn is, obviously, but you know, I don't know what that's supposed to mean for me. He's probably getting a little scared, honestly, what, oh my god, what does she expect me to do? But when he saw the car pull up, just like she said, he quietly exited his buddies home and he walked to the vehicle cautiously. I'm sure he checked to make sure it was a real

18:48 taxi and it was, y'all. It was a Green Action Taxi cab I d M twenty eight. There were four doors and markings in yellow all around the vehicle. This was this was a cab. So Justin got inside the cab and headed toward her home so Bloxham. Justin Bloxham replies to her, but are you sure you can get me back in thirty minutes? The taxi drives off. About thirteen minutes into that drive, the cab slowed and stopped because it had died on the side of the road. Great, So Justin texted Amanda at three thirteen am, saying the cab died hours go by.

19:37 Later that morning, Justin's friend awoke and realized that Justin wasn't there. So when he had handed Justin the remote, he was on the bottom bunk of the bed, but he wasn't there anymore. So Dustin got up looking for Justin and he says, Okay, is not here. Maybe his mom just came and got him and he forgot his bag. His bag is here, so his mom must have picked him up. So they give her a call and said, hey, Justin left his bag here, and she said, wait a minute, I never came and got Justin. That's when things kind of took a turn. So his buddy becomes beyond worried. After they searched for him, and they realize, oh my god, Justin seriously is not here anywhere in this house. He wasn't answering his phone, and so that worry turned into immense stress, and so they immediately called the police. So Justin was reported as missing and the sheriff's deputies arrived very shortly thereafter. So, after questioning turned up nothing much, the police expanded their questioning and they started talking to the neighbors on the street. Now, remember Justin left at three am. You know, it's very quiet at three am in this area, but luck would have it that the neighbors. One of the neighbors was awake when this happened. When Justin walked out and he saw him go to that Action Taxi cab. He saw it creeping through the neighborhood early that morning, and so the police went and checked with the Action Taxi company and they found that no taxi had been dispatched to that area that morning. Hmm.

21:06 That's curious based on what we know so far. So police began manning their mounting, their action plan and spreading the word for all the officers, Hey, be on the lookout for this green Action Taxi cab. There should be a or maybe I don't know if he's still there, but there should be a young teen occupant, male white inside. But it turned out that a deputy's name is Deputy Arbuckle. He was on shift early early that morning and he saw that exact taxi or what looked like that exact taxi on the side of the road around six thirty am. Not only had he seen that green Taxi cab, but he had stopped and he asked that taxi, hey, do you need help? Because it was parked on the side of the road on US Highway one P seventy one, and the vehicle turned out not to be parked there, but it had actually broken down because it ran out of gas. So the driver of the taxi was fine, was by himself, and you know, our buckle at the time, it was six thirty in the morning, our buckle didn't have anything, you know, negative to think about that. He said, okay, well, you know what's going on.

22:15 You know, while are you out of gas? Where are you going? And he says, look, I'm just waiting for someone from the taxi company to come. After I ran out of gas, I got out of the car. I was walking around trying to figure out what was the issue, and that's when I dropped the key. So now I can't find the freaking key. So the company's coming to bring me a spare key and to bring me some gas, so you know, you don't have to worry. And nothing seemed that worrisome. And this was found to be true, and in fact, other passers by also confirmed that they had seen the taxi on the side of the road that morning as well, so when they stopped to offer help to him, because a couple of people did very friendly right. The driver told him all the same thing. I'm out of gas, I lost my keys. It wasn't like the story was inconsistent or anything. So one motorist though, came forward and said, yeah, I saw a guy walking from the woods to the cab. And so it's kind of like, what are the chances of all of these occurrences being related in some way?

23:15 Well, not to be crass or anything, but men p and so it's not so crazy to think he would walk from the woods, maybe I'd use the restroom while he was waiting. He walked in the woods speed and walked back. I mean, that wasn't necessarily the most alarming thing that had ever happened, but to police it kind of seemed probable. I mean, I don't believe in coincidences, not now. I always believe that there's a link between things, and I don't believe in coincidences. But I mean, a green vehicle with yellow riding is pretty specific thing to see at three am and six am in the Samish area, and to think that Justin may have possibly gotten into this cab. So investigators also agree that it was just super suspicious and on a gut feeling, just on a gut feeling. And I want to take a second to explain a gut feeling. You know, in law enforcement, gut feelings aren't enough. And it's it's kind of sad because once you've done law enforcement long enough, plenty of older officers will tell you the gut feelings are a very powerful tool for a law enforcement officer of experience.

24:30 And so the gut feeling is all that they went on when police said, you know what, let's go out and search the woods. They had no reason to go out and search the woods. There was just a car parked on the side of the road that had broken down. But the police are like, nope, I don't believe in coincidences. Let's go search the woods. Let's just see if there's anything out there that might lead us to justin. And so police descended upon Highway one seventy one in the area of where the taxi had been stopped. Now, in a court of law, a gu gut feeling is not enough to establish any type of probable cause or anything like that. You can't just go, you know, running up in someone's house and say, well, my gut told me they're bad people. It doesn't work like that. But in an investigation, gut instinct or guttural feelings, they're good. You should always follow your gut. And I'm not just talking about investigators and talking about people in general. What do they always say when something bad happens or they find out that someone's a total creep? They go, you know, looking back on it, I almost felt that way, but I blocked it out. I didn't. I didn't want that to be true, and so I kind of went against my gut instinct. Always follow your gut, always right. So the police went out and they went and they searched that area and they scanned to say, okay, is there anything that's out of place? And nothing notable was seen from the road.

25:45 I mean, there was nothing there. But they went back in the woods and there was nothing in the woods. That was until an officer found a muddy footprint set and following those muddy footprints, it led off the road and through a fence. Now this is off of a highway. This isn't like someone's cattle property or something like that. So they followed in the direction of the footprints, and that's when they came upon a shallow pool of water just about forty yards back from the highway into the woods, and unbelievably, based just on a gut instinct, they came upon the lifeless body of twelve year old Justin Bloxam. It was very obvious to Justin had been in a struggle for his life, but he had clearly lost the battle. At first though just at first glance, looking at him, police believed that he had been strangled. Now, what had happened between Justin heading to meet fourteen year old Amanda and where that taxi had broken down? Something serious happened. What was it? How could this young team, this lovable and good boy, have ended up strangled in the woods and why? What could possibly have caused this?

27:08 Well, the autopsy of his body would tell a story of his final moments that really nobody was prepared for. The coroner his name was doctor James Traylor. He found that Justin had been smothered to death, but not from above, not with like a pillow or something like that. No, this was not even what you would, I hate to say, traditionally think of when someone is asphyxiated. But this was a little bit more scary, I guess than that Justin was smothered while on his stomach and the perpetrator was on his back. And so you imagine this twelve year old boy in the woods fighting for his life with a perpetrator on his back, crushing him and suffocating the life out of him. There were several areas of PATIKII, which is basically ruptured blood vessels right in the eyes, on his face. They could see it on his forehead and for this to happen, pressure would have had to have been applied to the point. This pressure had to have been applied so strongly that Justin's blood was literally unable to drain to his heart. I'm talking about massive amounts of pressure on this kid. Doctor Trailer also found what's called an abraided contusion on the inside of Justin's mouth. An a braided contusion is basically like a bruise with a cut inside of the bruise, and this

28:44 looked like it was caused by a ton of pressure also against Justin's mouth, which caused him to compress his lips very hard against his braces. So if you flip your upper lip up where your braces would be hitting and your bottom lip where your braces would be hitting. That's exactactly where this contusion was that was mashed inside of his mouth. And according to doctor Trailer, whoever did this had to obstruct Justin's mouth and apply pressure over a minute and a half to kill him. Think about the pressure a minute and a half of someone just crushing you and mashing your mouth so hard. And there's no way that this was an accident, No way. There were numerous abrasions on Justin's body which were anti mortem wounds, which means it happened before he died. This was pain and suffering as this all evidence of him fighting for his young life.

29:41 There were injuries to his neck, his face, his hands, his back, his shoulders, and his torso and you can almost with me telling you this, you can almost envision him doing everything he could to get this attacker off of him or away from him, but it was to no avail. He was isn't big enough to fight back. He was just a kid. He was no match for whoever did this. So as words spread about what happened to Justin, it became painfully clear how loved this kid was, you know what, damn it, Even if he wasn't loved, even if this was a shit kid who never did anything right. He's still a kid, but Justin was a good kid and he did the right things. The principle of his school, his name was Keith Simmons. Keith Simmons even spoke out and said he was the kind of student that you wish you had a school full of. You wish you had a student body full of Justin Bloxham's.

30:37 He was very positive, he was happy, go lucky. He was smiling every day. And I'm telling you for a principal to notice this, that this means everything in a school setting, because oftentimes the bad kids get all the attention. Unfortunately, Justin was such a light and a joy. His own principle spoke up and said, oh my god, what a loss. Homeroom teacher, her name was Sherry Trogel, said he was a very precious child, sweet kind and funny, he was smart, and he was never a problem. And just coming from a teacher's heart right here, I'm telling you that's not just said. That comes with intention that they did not want to lose this child. So investigators immediately they wanted to know who was the taxi driver that was in that green cab. And they were able to identify him as thirty four year old Brian Douglas Horn. How are they able to quickly identify him, y'all all because Deputy Arbuckle that had checked on him on the side of the road that morning had routinely radioed in his license info for a basic warrant check. So whenever we get license and registration, it's not because you're always in trouble, Okay, Sometimes we just need to identify who you are. Believe it or not. Crime can often be pieced together when we check on people, there's warrants. I can't tell you you know how many times, just in this short period that I was working the streets

32:08 at night, you pull somebody over for a traffic violation and they got warrants out the ying yang. You know, I remember this one guy. Sorry I'm getting off topic. We just want to tell you this real quick. We pulled up this one guy for uh, I think he was just driving erradically or something like that. And he gets out and it was kind of funny. He had a neck brace on. He had a long ponytail, skinny little thing look like a stick bug with a neck breath and uh, we pull him over and he comes hobbling back and he's like, oh, you know, I'm sorry, blah blahlah blah. And so we're like, you know, license and registration, why you do my license? We're just you know, just checking everything, and we run it and the dude we had to arrest him because he was wanted for failure to pay child support.

32:49 And I look at him, going, whoday, hell is reproducing? What is stick bug? You know he got a broke net. Then you do that having all these kids because he had like twelve kids. Holy crap, Batman. Okay, but my point is that sometimes just checking people's licenses results and putting people behind bars. Well, while trying to, you know, just check on this guy that happened to put a stamp, a time stamp on not only the fact that he was on the side of the road with a taxi, but his name. So that just routine thing right there that seemed like a nothing circumstance turned out to be very important. So while trying to locate Brian to have a word with him, investigators ran a criminal history check, which would reveal some you know, some more in depth history on him. So to give you a picture of him. Brian was five foot eight all right, a rather unassuming guy physically. He was married to a woman named Amanda. Hmm, coincidence. I don't believe in coincidences, but that was the name of his wife. And he had an average build, more on the slim side. He had long hair past his shoulders. He kind of kept it in a ponytail. Both his ears were pierced, and when I'm looking at him, he kind of almost looks like that expected nineties grunge rocker dude, you know, if you're trying to get a mental picture here. And so cool in fact that he rocked a heart shaped tattoo on his right leg with the name Anne in it, you know. But other than that, he didn't come across as a thug or anything like that.

34:19 But his background was a bit sketchy because he was seen as a loner and a misfit by a lot of people that knew him, and he had reportedly himself been a victim in a sexual assault case when he was twelve years old, the same age as Justin. He was also turned over by the state, or turned over to the state by his parents when he was a child, and eventually just emancipated from their care. He had spent some time in juvenile detention because he had gotten in trouble. Nothing though, that seemed crazy for the age of the kid. Now, I mean, it wouldn't have been acceptable in my household. But you know, he made some bad choices, numerous curfew violate sneaking out all the time, he went joy riding in his mom's car one time. So he did have reports from his juvenile days, but nothing that would alert them to being, you know, a killer.

35:13 None of it was in any major consequence in this case, of course. But you may be interested in something that investigators found in his adult record. And in that adult record they found he was a multiple, multiple time convicted sex offender. But Justin had not been raped. So kind of give you a little bit about that. You know, it did bring to light though, that this may have been a sexually motivated crime. So what exactly were those previous convictions? I looked them up because I wanted you to know.

35:54 He had at least fourteen prior arrests on his record. All right, so this isn't He's not, you know, Church on Sunday type of guy. He spent three years in prison after pleading no contest to contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile in nineteen ninety five. Now, states differ in their laws. In the understanding of the laws, you know, they ebb and flow, and they fluctuate throughout time. But contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile doesn't just mean buying them underage. You know, alcohol, all right? He was a registered sex offender in two states. He was a sex offender in Missouri as well as a sex offender in Louisiana, and there were two sex related offenses. A charge of indecent behavior Okay, that stemmed from a Shreveport arrest when he was nineteen years old nineteen and was messing around in a vehicle with a thirteen year old girl. I don't want to just gloss over that either, real quick. Nineteen and thirteen where I come from, that's an ass whooping from a daddy, okay. Nineteen and thirty thirteen, completely unacceptable. Reports say that Horn was accused of taking at least two young girls in separate incidences in his car, where he allegedly fondled them and raped

37:27 one of them. Okay, So this isn't just circumstances that looked batteries in the back seat, making out with a thirteen year old. No, no, this is absolutely intentional sexual problems with young children. Children. Another charge of his indecent behavior was in nineteen ninety seven for the sexual assault of a fourteen year old girl, where he served a year and five months for this. He was also labeled as what's called an Article five seventy five fugitive from Green County, Missouri. Now I don't know why, but I feel like, because I don't know all the Missouri's laws obviously, but I felt like this was kind of a failure to register situation where sex offenders have to go in and check in, have their photo taken, you know, verify that they're living where they' supposed to be living and that there's no children in the house or something like that. So I looked it up, and this is called violating a condition of lifetime supervision. It was a five seventy five point two oh six point one to be specific, and it talks about a person who commits the crime of violating a supervision, you know, condition that has been imposed by court order. Basically, so there was some type of supervision on him that he had not followed through with Regardless of whatever it is, this was a bad dude, and it was specifically a bad dude to have alone in a cab with a child. The fact that he was even walking freely amongst us is the frustration that I really can't shake, Like, really,

39:00 really, how many chances do you get to offend young children before we the people go, We're not doing this, Padna, We're not doing this. I mean, are we really? Are we really gonna continue to plea down everything just for a conviction rate. And I want people who don't understand this to hear me on this. Okay, Prosecutors are presumptively elected based on the fact that they have a high conviction rate, right. We want effective prosecutors, people who are gonna put the bad guys behind jail. That's why we elect these people. But I'm kind of here standing on this hill by myself where I'm like, how about we put these people away for the max penalty? How about we do a lot of that. How about we stop having these useless convictions when they result in minimum penalties. If we're gonna plea everything down to quit fucking charging them, which is not what we need.

40:00 No, that's not what we need. We need high conviction rates because you need to be really good at your job. And I'm really glad that a plea deal works out for you. But to put it in context, teachers, okay, we're judged on how many students graduate and how many pass our class. Well, what if instead of me just teaching them? What if instead of me just teaching them, I went to them and I said, look, we know you're not really gonna do the work. We know that you're gonna get caught for this. You know it, I know it, everybody knows that. What if we just make an agreement, I'll give you the D and you don't even bother coming to class, and then I'll get the points for you passing. Yay, successful teacher. That would be ridiculous.

40:46 No one would ever buy that. Okay, And I'm not dogging on prosecutors. Understand I'm a total total fan of prosecutors. But what I'm saying is we the people who make the decisions, are supposed to make the decison. Let's not just look at conviction rates. Let's look at penalties. What are they impressing upon these people Because there's no reason that this guy should have been walking the streets after having offended multiple children and a convicted sex offender. No way, not on my watch. His own brother, his name's Kevin Horn, got wind of the fact that his brother was a person of interest in Justin's murder. His own brother found out and was like, hmm, maybe I need to help out here. Police had begun a three pair search for Brian, and Brian had been busy cleaning out the taxi before he was set to return it because he leased it. But realizing the seriousness of the situation and likely I don't know this for a fact, but likely knowing what his brother was capable of to this point, Kevin went with his brother to Action Taxi to turn it back into the company. And then, like I said, Brian had only leased it from the company, he didn't own it, so I mean he had to turn it back in. But then Kevin drove Brian to the police station for him to speak with police. This this brother, Kevin seems like a solid guy, you know that realizes good bad are indifferent. We need to go talk to the police. So after he

42:22 drove him there, you're gonna see in the reports if you go and do any research on your own. Reportedly he turned himself in, but don't get it twisted. Brian wasn't quickly helpful to the police, nor was he cooperative with the police when he got there. That's just some pretty writing putting some flowers on. He turned himself in. No, his brother got him up there, and he wasn't cooperative and he wasn't helpful. So back at the crime scene, with the help of a metal detector, the keys to the taxi were found in the area near the struggle of Justin's body, so it looks like they weren't lost. It looks like they may have been dropped during the fight of Justin's life. They were in a grassy area the highway and Brian Horn's cell phone charger was also found there. Now, there were also boot impressions in the mud, like I told you, at the scene of where the body was. So Brian's brother wanted the truth, and that's pretty obvious. He drove his brother up there. He wanted the truth. He gave the police. His brother, Kevin, gave the police a full consent to search his vehicle, which ended up being perfect because Brian's things were still in his brother's car because he had just rode with him from dropping off the taxi, and police were able to seize his cell phone, which included an AT and T SIM card. Now, Justin's phone records showed that he had been communicating with that young girl consistently all night up until he stopped responding.

43:55 I don't know exactly how often the to the girl and Justin had communicated, Honestly, I'm not certain about that. I don't want to give you false information. I'm not sure how long they had known each other and spoken. But what I do know is the very last text message ever sent by Justin was that text message on March thirtieth at three thirteen am that said, quote unquote, cab died After that, no more communication with Justin. What was shocking to investigators was that Brian Horn's cell phone contained that message. So what was going on here? How did the taxi driver have the message from the boy that was going to meet the girl? Well, when they pulled phone records, they were shocked to see that he had all of the messages between Justin and that young girl, Amanda. Why would this be? Why would he have all of the mess and that's when the light bulb went off.

44:59 It's because Brian Horn was the young girl. There was no Amanda. There was Brian Horn, a grown ass man pretending to be a fourteen year old girl the whole time. It turns out that Brian Horn had been posing as this young girl. The way he did it was that at some point Brian had taken an eleven year old girl's cell phone. I believe it was a neighbor of his, under the premise that he was going to put ring tones on her phone for her, and in essence gained access to everything in the phone. Brian had used the phone to dupe and then ultimately trick Justin into getting in the cab with a thirty five year old grown man. It's sick, think about it. He knows how young boys think. Hell, he was one himself. Brian Horn was twelve once. He had previously stolen the phone from a real child, from a girl, a neighbor's daughter, to use it. And there's no doubt in my mind to use it to his advantage. That the deviance and the forethought to do this is astounding. And please, please, when you're listening to this, don't let it get lost

46:31 in the commonness you know of this level of wrong. Just because it seems to happen more and more and more does not mean it needs to become normal that people do. Adults dupe children, No freaking way, what is in your mind? You're a grown man duping a young boy. No wonder the taxi cab had never been dispatched out to that neighborhood. It didn't have to be. The predator was the girl. She never existed. Now, Dustin's sexual deviance history was with young females. But don't make let you think that, oh, well, boys are off the table. Don't ever think that there's only one choice out there for someone who's a sexual deviant. Some scary info for you and your teens if they happen to be listening to this episode.

47:23 You know these people will go to lengths to get you. I promise you. And it's what you don't know that will get you when you're young, it's what you don't know that will get you. And if we keep sex an abuse a taboo topic in our society, these things are going to continue to happen. So, in my opinion, let's open the lines of communication. If you aren't comfortable saying it. Record this info and let me tell it to your kids. Let them listen to me, because this is important information. Children between the ages of twelve and fifteen are especially susceptible to be groomed or manipulated by adults that they meet online. Justin fell right into that twelve to fifteen and according to the FBI, fifty percent of the victims half of the victims of online sexual exploitation are between the ages of twelve and fifteen. We have got to talk to twelve to fifteen year olds. Justin wasn't a bad kid. He was the epitome of a good kid. What the issue is is that he was limited in life experience and maturity. But what he did was certainly age appropriate for his actions to make a bad decision to go meet up with a girl. Obviously we wish that hadn't happened, but it was age appropriate in maturity level that he would make that decision.

48:49 And estimated eighty nine percent of sexual advances directed at children occur in internet chat rooms or through instant messaging. That is the way that they will get you. They are doing it through social media. Now, these were MySpace days, Okay, back then, that's before Facebook if you're young, but my Space days for justin think about what we have now with all of these apps and features that we can keep You know that parents are trying to keep up with. This is the most important stat that I want you to hear. Hear me out, y'all. While using social media, forty percent of children remove privacy settings in order to attract more followers. Kids are not looking for safety, y'all. They're looking for approval in numbers, those likes, those shares. Kids don't think like adults, and they don't have the experience that we do to understand our viewpoint. That's why they can't see it our way.

49:52 That's why they argue with us. We know that, I mean, their language is dumb as shit. If you need proof, how many of y'all have googled skibbity ohio is in the last month Tuesday Tuesday Special Team, Special Player, like all that dumb shit. It's dumb. If you haven't looked it up, it's because it's so dumb you don't care, you know what I mean. Both, it's like proof that we're separate in our thinking. Brian really gave no explanation as to how Justin ended up dead next to where his cab had died, other than his claim of just saying I didn't do it on purpose. Well, we all want answers, don't we. I mean a shoulder shrug and an I don't know isn't good enough. But that's pretty much all the police were getting from Brian. Police would then ask questions of his wife about him. They wanted to know about their life together, which would elicit some information that was pretty eye opening. She explained that they were swingers and that they love to have sex with other couples, but adult adults of course, right Amanda, his wife was like, we swing with adults. She also added that he liked to choke during sex. That was one of his things that got him all erotic, was choking. But another adult female came forward, and this would be really important. She came forward and said, look, I have been sexually active with Amanda and Brian, and she added something that happened recently. She said that Brian said he

51:28 really wanted to get a younger male to join them in their sexual activities because he was gonna get off by seeing a virginal boy a virgin boy have sex with his wife while he watched. And then it all comes together and makes sense, doesn't it. Just now, it was that statement that made this all just fall into place. Lure a young boy him up, bring him home, have him join them for sex. You know, it was that basic in Brian's mind, I guess. But what I'm thinking is either Brian made advancements towards Justin that were rebuffed, or he told him the real plane at some point, but Justin balked either way and was like, I didn't sign up for this, what's going on here? And he either went running or started fighting back. Brian grabbed him from behind, put his hand over his mouth to shut him up, and that's what caused that bruising and the lacerations in his inner mouth from the pressure on his braces, just gripping him, telling him to shut up, be quiet, And as they struggled, Brian pulled him back into the woods, completely overpowering him, then slamming him face down in the dirt as he's struggling for his life, and then he slowly choked the life out of him while sitting on his back and his chest.

52:55 So there was no evidence like I said of rape or sexual assault. This is in terms of seeing semen or a sexual assault kit showing anything. That doesn't mean that there wasn't eroticism in this. I'm telling you, I just I'm not. You know, we don't know what's going through a freak's mind like that. Police also pulled fingerprints from the cab that proved Justin had been in that cab, and then they searched all of that simcard and found tons of explicit messages that had been sent to Justin's phone from Brian Horn. The muddy boots. There was muddy boots that were inside of the brother's vehicle whenever he let police search it. The muddy boots that they found in the truck turned out to be a match with the boot prints that led straight to where Justin's body was. And so it just meant the one thing, and that's that they had the right person in custody and the killer had been found.

53:57 Brian Horn was indicted by a grand jury into Sodo Parish. Now, I want to tell you something. Defense attorneys obviously have an uphill battle most of the time, and I'm not dogging on a defense attorney, but something that this one said, rubbed me all kinds of the wrong way. His name was Antonio Florence. Okay. He represented Brian Hornincourt, and I want you to hear what he said. These are direct quotes upled. He said, yes, Horn is a sex offender, but he doesn't rate boys. He said that he was a sex offender only in relation to females and said, look, he's a swinger and he liked to watch his wife and his girlfriend on the side have sex with other men. And those text messages were designed for that, to watch this virgin have sex with this woman as if as if that's normal. That's not normal. But that's not the thing that got me the most angry. It's the next sentence he said. And this was said in open court to a jury. Teenagers want to have sex with adults. Twelve year old boys don't want to have sex with adults. This twelve year old boy was going to meet a fourteen year old girl that he thought was on the same level in playing field as him. He probably thought he was gonna get a little smooch in and a little touching. This is

55:28 not with that child set out for. He said that justin was thinking he's gonna go have some fun. What is wrong with you that we're not putting blame on a child here. This is a child who got into a cab who he thought he was going to meet a fourteen year old girl that was a grown ass man the whole time riding this He said that that horn never intended to kill him. Okay, then what was the goal. If the goal wasn't to kill him, then then this is the only other thing I can come up with. They wanted to play with him and then send him back home, So, oh, don't get mad at him. He just wanted to basically have an orgy with a child. Is that what the defense attorney was really trying to say to these people? Disgusting? It's not cool, and I don't appreciate. If I was Justin's mother, I would have come over over the bench at that man. The restraint these victims have is unbelievable. God blessed Justin's mother, who, by the way, I did reach out to and didn't get back cheating it back with me at the time I was gonna record this. Brian also tried to make the argument that the abrasions on Justin's body were caused after his death, because he was dragging him from the road and then over a barboar fence where his body was found.

56:37 I guess he's trying to say, oh, he didn't suffer that much. This was all after he was already dead, but that was found to be not true according to the doctor who confirmed that the wounds were not even consistent with barbed wire nor dragging after death. Everything that happened to this child happened while he fought as best he could to get free. He was dragged like a lamb to slaughter alive into the woods, either to be raped or killed or both. But either way, there is no justifiable reason for what happened to twelve year old Justin. I think that once Justin was made aware of what was going on, that's when he started fighting back. And that's whenever Horn decided he had to get rid of him. He had already kidnapped him by coaxing him under these false pretenses. And now, Brian, I'm sure, looking out for oneself as he always did, feared that the kid was going to go tell, which he couldn't have because he was already on parole which he'd absconded from, which I told you earlier from the previous sex offenses, and his whole argument became that basically he put his hand over Justin's mouth and was just telling him be patient, I will take you to the girl.

57:40 Okay, why would you even say that? Because the girl's not real. You're nothing but a liar. No one should believe anything that comes out of this man's mouth, you know, unbelievable, rattled and unwilling to let him go. When it went south, Brian Horn killed him. The courts would also agree in some fashion with what my idea is here, because the trial resulted in a unanimous finding of guilty of first degree murder with the sentencing punishment of death. Good. So this case begs the question real quick, how does a convicted sex offender, twice convicted sex offender get to be a taxi driver. Well, when this case began, Brian Horn's boss his name was David McFarlane, the owner of Action Taxi. He approved the permit on March nineteenth. Justin was murdered on March twenty ninth. So McFarlane himself said that he didn't like the fact that Brian Horn was a registered sex offender, but that he couldn't discriminate and that his hands were tied. Remember this is at the time he hired him. So thanks to Justin's mom, thanks to a strong woman who is gonna take no shit. She decided, you know what, if my baby is gone, I'm gonna make it worth something.

59:00 And she said, this has got to change. So she pushed for and was successful in the passing of Justin's Law, which, for example, in Texas, increases the severity of punishment for repeat sex offenders under this two strike rule. Now, if they have two strikes against them, they possibly face life sentences on these sex offenders without parole, which is we should never even let them have a second chance, you know what I mean. Justin's Law also places employment restrictions on certain violent sex offenders that should have been in place already. It's common sense. When Justin died, I want to be very clear that he is the ultimate victim in this case, but there is a ripple effect of victimhood, like rocks, like skipping them across a pond.

59:44 This case caused a massive ripple. Justin's family has suffered greatly. One of his own brothers, Dalton, he grew up to become a marine and proudly serve the United States Marine Corps sim Per five Dalton, but he would honorably be discharged about five years later. But Dalton even said in an article that I read that inner rage and PTSD affected his advancement, and he told another news outlet that I read that he has a hardness in his heart after his brother died, and he even has a desire to die. This affected his brother tremendously. The friend that Justin spent the night with said that the trauma from that is something he still deals with almost every day when he wakes up in the morning. Y'all. He's an adult now. When he wakes up in the morning, he still goes and checks that everyone who is suppos's in the home, who are supposed to be in the home is still there when they wake up. You think this doesn't have long term effects on everybody involved, Even the killer's own brother it suffered from this. He didn't do anything, He's the brother. But he was getting messages on Facebook, people calling and disguising their voices and hanging up in his face. They were getting death threats about this. A feel for him, y'all. He didn't do anything all he did was share the same parents. This was something the killer brother said, I love my brother and I hate it that he is where he is, but when you make choices, you have to face them. And his brother meant y'all, because he testified for both the prosecution and the defense, and so one outlet our read said, well, you know, how

1:01:15 do you feel about your testimony helping to convict your brother, and the brother looked up at Kevin said, the evidence is what convicted my brother, not me. There's no winners in this case, but I can say this. It's just another example of why we need harsher penalties, especially for sex offenders, no second and third chances. I'm not willing to risk those I love on the hopes that someone won't reoffend. Are you? We the people better get a grip on these offenders and spread the word that hug a thug programs don't work. You won't therapyse the predator out of a sex offender. All we are allowing is the opportunity for more people to get hurt, and then when children are the target. I'm not having it, and you shouldn't neither.

1:02:07 I never thought i'd say this, but the death penalty and deodorant seemed to have a lot in common this summer. The ones who needed applied the most never seemed to get it.