Preview
DEE: Thanks for listening, everyone.
DEE: Don’t forget, rating us on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcast.
DEE: It means a lot to us, and it really helps to promote the podcast to people who might not have heard of us before.
JEFF: And if you already did rate us, or if you want to do more, tell your friends.
JEFF: All your friends, wherever you talk to your friends, all the friends all the time.
DEE: And your enemies.
JEFF: And your enemies, everyone.
JEFF: Please tell everyone.
DEE: Tell everyone.
DEE: Everyone, tell everyone everywhere.
JEFF: On June 9th, 2016, a three year old girl was found wandering alone barefoot in a parking lot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
DEE: Her mother, 40 year old Lyntell Washington, who was five months pregnant, was missing and her car was covered in blood.
JEFF: What happened to Lyntell and why?
DEE: It’s time to dig in to the true crime podcast, Black Girl Gone, on this episode of So Much Crime,
JEFF: So Little Time.
JEFF: I’m Jeff.
DEE: And I’m Dee.
JEFF: And this is a bit of a different episode for us.
JEFF: We’re going to preview the podcast called Black Girl Gone.
JEFF: This is a podcast hosted by a woman named Amara, and it focuses on the often-ignored cases of black women who go missing or fall victim to murder.
DEE: But Black Girl Gone isn’t just about one case.
DEE: It’s a new case every week or two.
DEE: So here we’re going to preview the show by focusing on just one episode.
DEE: The Murder of Lyntell Washington.
JEFF: So here we’re going to talk about the format of the show, the content of this one story, and if this true crime podcast as a whole is worth your valuable time.
DEE: Then next time in our full recap, we’re going to recap a batch of episodes.
JEFF: So the idea is that we’ll cover a selection of the different types of stories and episodes that you’ll find on Black Girl Gone.
JEFF: So if you like these, you’ll probably just be hooked on the show altogether.
DEE: And we’ll tell you which episodes we’ll recap at the end of this show and link them in our show notes.
JEFF: We’ll also tackle a true crime question of the week.
DEE: For now though, let’s get into the story of Lyntell Washington.
JEFF: All right, Dee, before we get to the story, let’s jump in the time machine and talk about the time period that we’re in for this show.
JEFF: So this is a pretty serious episode, but I’d like to bring a little bit of levity to it before we get to that.
JEFF: So this crime happened on June 9th of 2016.
JEFF: So let’s talk about some things from the summer of 2016.
JEFF: Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?
JEFF: You go first.
JEFF: All right, I have two things for you, one good and one bad.
JEFF: Well, it’s a matter of perspective.
JEFF: All right, so top movie.
JEFF: So the seven of the top 10 movies were all sequels.
JEFF: Oh.
JEFF: And I want to talk about one of them.
JEFF: I’m going to give you the tagline.
JEFF: So it’s a sequel.
JEFF: It’s a sequel.
JEFF: So there’s your first clue and it’s, well, all right.
JEFF: So the taglines are, have you seen her?
DEE: That’s the first one.
JEFF: Second one, an unforgettable journey she probably won’t remember.
JEFF: And the third one, she just kept swimming.
DEE: Okay, sorry, I was immediately thinking Gone Girl, but she didn’t swim in that episode.
JEFF: No, you’re at the total wrong end of the age spectrum.
DEE: For kids?
DEE: It’s not The Little Mermaid.
JEFF: No, but…
DEE: Close?
JEFF: No, I mean Disney, yeah, it’s a Disney, well, it’s a Pixar movie.
DEE: Who’s swimming?
JEFF: Who’s swimming?
DEE: Oh, Dory.
JEFF: Yeah, it’s Finding Dory.
DEE: Isn’t it really apt that I forgot?
JEFF: Yeah, that was great.
JEFF: Anyway, quickly, the other sequels that were big at that time were The Conjuring 2, which is pretty much the same thing as Finding Dory.
JEFF: I think those movies are interchangeable.
JEFF: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Out of the Shadows, X-Men Apocalypse.
DEE: Did you say The Conjuring was interchangeable with Dory?
JEFF: X-Men Apocalypse.
DEE: I was not concentrating, so I just agreed and let you away with that.
DEE: Sorry, go on.
JEFF: All right, Independence Day, Resurgence, Now You See Me Too, and Alice Through the Looking Glass.
JEFF: Dee, have you seen any of those movies?
DEE: Independence Day, Resurgence?
DEE: They made a sequel to Independence Day.
JEFF: Yeah, I don’t think anyone watched it.
DEE: I mean, why would you?
DEE: Independence Day 1 was so good.
DEE: Like, how would you need to watch?
JEFF: Wait, are you saying that sarcastically?
JEFF: Because that is a fantastic movie that I will not stand for anyone to…
DEE: No, no, no, I genuinely love that movie.
DEE: There’s so much of it that I’m obsessed with.
JEFF: Okay, great.
JEFF: All right.
JEFF: So anyway, so that’s movies.
JEFF: And then my second thing, I said I had one good, one bad.
JEFF: So in June of 2016, it’s the first time a team came back from being down 3-1 in the NBA finals.
JEFF: To win, that was the Cleveland Cavaliers.
DEE: Oh no, were they playing the Warriors?
JEFF: They were playing the Warriors.
JEFF: Yeah, this was the epic.
DEE: For any of you Irish folk out there that don’t know about basketball, that’s the Golden State Warriors who are from San Francisco.
DEE: Jeff’s crying here.
JEFF: Little bit.
DEE: As he speaks about.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: All right, that’s what I got.
JEFF: What do you have from the time machine?
DEE: Ireland got knocked out of the Euros in 2016.
JEFF: I don’t even know what the Euros are.
DEE: They played, really?
DEE: Do you know nothing about soccer?
JEFF: I know about the World Cup.
JEFF: The US wasn’t really good.
DEE: And that’s it.
JEFF: Pretty much.
JEFF: I know about the Premier League.
JEFF: That’s a thing.
DEE: The Premier League.
DEE: The Premier League.
JEFF: What did I say?
DEE: The Premier League.
JEFF: Are we ever going to have an episode where we don’t get into a pronunciation?
DEE: I was just going to say.
DEE: Literally, it’s always about pronunciation.
DEE: I’m that old biddy, even though I’m the young biddy between the Hubs tier, but I’m the old biddy who’s always correcting.
DEE: I don’t correct that grammar for you because I’m an English major, but I do correct the pronunciation because, yeah.
JEFF: So before we jump into our discussion, let’s just talk about what this podcast is.
JEFF: So this specific episode, The Murder of Lyntell Washington, came out on January 8th, 2024, and the host is Amara.
JEFF: And as we mentioned earlier, this is a single episode story.
JEFF: It’s about 30 minutes long, so it’s a pretty quick listen.
JEFF: So Dee, initial thoughts on this?
DEE: Initial thoughts, if I’m looking at the format, and the host is generally where we start.
DEE: I love this.
DEE: I love the format.
DEE: I feel like with a one-episode show, it’s quite important that it’s focused on the storytelling, not the drama or the fluff that comes with, like, a series-long podcast on one particular crime.
DEE: I feel like here there’s not much personality that the host gives, at least for this one, for this episode on Lyntell Washington.
DEE: But yeah, for a one-episode show, I think that’s really important to me.
DEE: Like, keeping the victim, Lyntell Washington, at the center of it all was clearly, like, the focus.
DEE: And I really like that.
DEE: What about you?
JEFF: Well, I liked it, too.
JEFF: I did not think you were going to be into the format of the show.
JEFF: Well, because it’s just so different from anything else we’ve listened to for a lot of reasons.
JEFF: But specifically, it’s just this one voice, right?
JEFF: Like, it’s one voice she’s reading, I think.
JEFF: I presume she’s reading.
JEFF: It’s which there’s lots of podcasts like this where someone has kind of researched a story.
JEFF: They’ve prepared a script and they’re reading it.
JEFF: And there’s no sound effects.
JEFF: There’s no real, there’s music like intro and outro music, but there’s no music during the story.
JEFF: There’s no interviews.
JEFF: There’s no interviews.
JEFF: It’s very straightforward storytelling.
JEFF: I found it compelling and sort of like, I think she has a great presentation.
JEFF: I think she has a great voice.
JEFF: I think she, like you said, I think she’s very balanced, very measured.
JEFF: She isn’t, yeah, she isn’t injecting her opinions.
JEFF: She seems very deliberate about what she’s doing.
JEFF: So yeah, I think she’s a fantastic host.
DEE: Yeah, I think, again, she packs a lot into the episode, a lot of facts, but it’s still easy to follow.
DEE: And that’s probably because of the one voice.
DEE: She tells it in a great way.
DEE: I do think she’s very deliberate about things.
DEE: There’s lots of use of, I don’t know if you noticed this, there’s lots of use of Lyntell’s name.
DEE: She uses her name quite a lot.
DEE: I’m sure that has to be deliberate.
DEE: Like, as we said previously, like white women get a lot of space in the true crime genre for podcasts, for documentaries, for everything, for media coverage.
DEE: And even in a lot of cases, as they noted here, just for police interest.
DEE: So I felt like it was very, it was very deliberate to say, I’m going to continue saying this victim’s name so that she is known and like really bringing her to the force.
DEE: So I thought that was really interesting.
DEE: The other thing now, please don’t message us in telling me that my calculations are incorrect.
DEE: They’re approximate, but there’s about 37 minutes of this episode, right?
DEE: Approximately five minutes of it is ads.
DEE: So that leaves us with 32 minutes.
DEE: The first five or six minutes of this episode is information on Lyntell, information about her as a person, not her as a victim, about her as a person, about her heart, about like her dreams, her aspirations, how her friends saw her.
DEE: And then it goes back to that for the last one to two minutes of the show.
DEE: That’s 20% of this story, this true crime story is on her.
DEE: And when you look at other podcasts we’ve covered, where it’s not the victim or the victim is mentioned, but really that victim is not kept front and center.
DEE: I think it’s a pretty amazing feat that Amara has managed to tell this story in 32 minutes while keeping 20% of the episode about Lyntell as a person, not a victim, not a corpse, not a dead body, as a person.
DEE: And I think, fair play to you.
DEE: Yeah, that’s pretty amazing.
JEFF: Yeah, I think that was really well said.
JEFF: I mean, I agree with everything you said.
JEFF: I actually have a quote from the host that she gave an interview with oxygen.com, and we can link to this in the show notes.
JEFF: But I wanted to read this because I think it supports what you just said.
JEFF: So this is, let me start.
JEFF: So the beginning of this is quoting Amara.
JEFF: She says, so this is basically why she did this series, this podcast.
JEFF: So that I was always a fan of True Crime, but I noticed there was a lack of diversity in not only the stories being told, but also among the people telling the stories.
JEFF: So then, so that’s the end of that quote.
JEFF: And then the article says, Cofer said she knew the importance of highlighting these women’s stories because she had seen True Crime TV shows and podcasts contributing to some cases being solved.
JEFF: She also recognized that stories of black women, particularly in mainstream media, were often ignored.
JEFF: And then there’s one more quote from her saying, I want to humanize these women.
JEFF: They were more than the tragedy that took their lives.
JEFF: And so I wanted people to be connected to the story, to the women, to their families.
JEFF: My hope is that the more I tell these stories, the more I can also change the narrative.
JEFF: Which, I mean, to your point, I think that’s exactly what she’s doing, right?
DEE: Yeah, absolutely.
JEFF: Very effectively.
DEE: So then when we look at it, we’ve got 32 minutes minus seven minutes.
DEE: We’ve got like 25-ish minutes to tell so much facts.
DEE: And I know we’re going to delve into that now, but I really just wanted to call out that straight away, even having that first five or six minutes speaking about Lyntell, that got me in.
DEE: And I know you said like, oh, like it’s only one voice.
DEE: Like, I didn’t think you’d be interested in it, but it’s kind of more, I think I’m interested in her ethics, her like, her focus in this, which isn’t being dramatic.
DEE: It’s not like, it’s really just bringing this crime to light.
JEFF: Well, and I want to speak to, so in addition to that, I think when I first listened to this episode, I listened to this episode a few times.
JEFF: And one quick side note, it’s so short, right?
JEFF: Like she, yes, she packs a lot in, but she packs a lot in in a very short window.
JEFF: Like we’ve listened to other shows where the average episode is 45 minutes, 60 minutes.
JEFF: There’s some other podcasts that are like, you know, well over an hour long.
JEFF: So I think that’s remarkable.
JEFF: But the other thing that I wanted to note was, and I think this is sort of subconscious, but like I listened to this show.
JEFF: There’s a lot of shows we talk about that I listened to that I ended up wanting to tell people about because it sort of sticks with me or there’s something I think really is interesting about it.
JEFF: But this one, like this haunted me.
JEFF: And some of that was the story, right?
JEFF: Like, and we’ll get into that in a second.
JEFF: But I think some of that was her presentation.
JEFF: I think some of that was the way she tells it.
JEFF: Well, to your point about starting with Lyntell, starting with her hopes and dreams, with her life story, really making that an important part of what we’re hearing.
JEFF: That just, it’s, yeah, this part is like they should all be like this, right?
JEFF: Like they should all, all these Drew Grime podcasts that we listen to, I wish there was more of this.
DEE: More, yeah.
JEFF: Like this is something we criticize, we’ve definitely criticized other podcasts for, right?
JEFF: Like we criticize Wes Cork for this.
DEE: The flow, well, we criticize Wes Cork for keeping Ian Bailey at the center and inflating his ego and not focusing in on the victim and never feeling like we really got to know the victim.
DEE: Yeah, and like in 35 minutes, that was 14 episodes.
DEE: I don’t want to count how many hours that was for us, but like a lot of hours and like, this is 35 minutes.
DEE: I feel like after listening to this episode, I felt like I knew Lyntell, like I felt like I know the type of person that she was and my heart broke for her, for her daughter.
DEE: And we’ll get into that now in the, in the facts.
DEE: And that’s the thing as well.
DEE: She gives us facts.
DEE: We do not get her opinion.
DEE: And I think given her aim with this podcast as a whole, that is really important.
JEFF: Cause that would be a very different podcast, right?
DEE: Yeah, she’s not, she’s not muddying the waters with saying like, I’m also going to give my opinion.
DEE: She’s saying the purpose is to get people to know about these women and know who these women were outside of this crime.
DEE: And she does that really well.
JEFF: Should we talk a little about the story?
DEE: Yeah, let’s go into the facts.
DEE: So do you want to start us off?
JEFF: Sure.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: There’s a lot to cover here and we should probably try to do this succinctly.
JEFF: So actually my first note is that both of her parents died in 2010.
DEE: Yeah.
DEE: It was her and her sister.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: And that she thought she was unable to ever have children herself.
DEE: Yeah.
DEE: She met Darren and they like fell in love and they kind of wanted a family, but she didn’t think she’d be able to.
DEE: And then they, she got pregnant and it was lovely and they were so happy.
DEE: Darren suffered from addiction issues and they ended up eventually separating.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: But she had the baby, her daughter.
JEFF: And so she was also, so Lyntell Washington was a teacher, apparently a really beloved teacher.
JEFF: She had been named, I think teacher of the year in her school.
JEFF: I don’t remember exactly what.
DEE: The school before she moved.
DEE: Yeah.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: But her, so she was a very successful teacher, but her love life was described as a disaster.
JEFF: And so she’s teaching at the school.
JEFF: She falls for the new assistant principal who, yeah.
DEE: Robbie.
DEE: How many cliches is he bringing to life?
JEFF: Do you want to name a couple of them?
DEE: He’s an ex-Marine who turns out to be aggressive and possessive and a liar.
DEE: I feel like I’ve, look, I don’t know any Marines personally, but I feel like I’ve seen this cliche play out in movies and TV shows.
DEE: It feels like a very, like, it just feels like such a cliche.
DEE: He’s got a work relationship with her.
DEE: He’s, he’s basically her boss, like again, paradigmatics.
DEE: He’s got a wife, but tells her they’re separated, but they’re living together.
JEFF: This is a specific fact that I wanted to call out because the specificity of the way this is presented, that he says that, yes, he separated from his wife, according to him, they’re sleeping on separate floors of their home.
DEE: I will pause to go to the more lighthearted side of my personality and be like, okay, so when they said sleeping on separate floors, I was like, but where, like, where are the floors?
DEE: Like, I felt like it was like, you know, the ground of, you know, one sleeping in the bed and one sleeping on the floor beside the bed.
DEE: Like, I was kind of confused and then like, they were talking about like, we’ll get to like one of the discoveries that Lyntell makes and I was like, oh, that’s what they meant.
JEFF: So, and I actually had a sex moment.
DEE: But that’s such a cliche to say like, oh, we’re separated.
DEE: Like we don’t have a sex life.
DEE: We’re not sleeping together.
DEE: We’re living on separate floors.
DEE: Like that is a cliche.
JEFF: But, and yeah, and to back up a second, something you said before, so he’s kind of like her boss.
JEFF: He’s the assistant principal of the school where she’s a teacher and they have to sort of keep the relationship secret because of that.
DEE: So it’s like he has this reason to keep this as sort of a quiet relationship, but actually he’s also like going over, like hanging out with her and her daughter, like if she rings, he answers.
DEE: Like there’s none of the red flags of like, oh, I’m busy, I’m this, I’m that, like that’s all fine.
JEFF: Yeah, it’s funny you say that because I have a section I know it’s called All the Red Flags with Robert.
JEFF: That’s just the heading.
DEE: I mean, there are so many red flags, but I do feel like, you know, that was noted, like that when she called, he’d answer and like he would come over and hang out with her daughter.
DEE: It wasn’t just like the two of them.
DEE: It wasn’t just a hook up situation.
JEFF: So, so just like to move on with the plot.
JEFF: So he, he goes on this family reunion trip to Panama City.
JEFF: And, but really he’s on a cruise with his wife, which Lyntell finds out about because he, there’s pictures on social media.
DEE: He puts it on his social media and a parent, like she didn’t see it.
DEE: Her friends saw it.
DEE: So either they’re not like friends on whatever social media it was, or it’s on maybe his wife’s.
DEE: I don’t know what they, they never like, she never elaborated on what was there, but like, what an idiot.
DEE: It’s like, have you heard Jeff of these, it’s mostly men, these men who are on like Tinder, et cetera, and their profile picture is like them on their wedding day.
DEE: Like, fucking idiot.
JEFF: So while they’re on this trip, while Robert and his wife are on this cruise, he stops responding to Lyntell’s phone calls, and that sort of leads to this friction in their relationship.
JEFF: She’s, I don’t think we’ve mentioned this yet, but she’s pregnant with his baby.
DEE: That’s a pretty critical piece of information.
DEE: She has said, like, he’s so supportive.
DEE: She’s, like, five months pregnant?
JEFF: Yeah, I think so.
DEE: Oh, he’s so supportive, and he’s so excited.
DEE: They’ve already picked a name together.
JEFF: So…
DEE: She’s angry, and she’s calling him.
DEE: He’s not answering.
DEE: She decides to drive to his home.
DEE: Reason unknown, because he’s obviously away, but when she gets there, she realizes that he lives in, like, a one-story mobile home.
DEE: She drives to his house, and then obviously when she sees his house, it’s like, oh, they don’t live on separate floors because they don’t sleep on separate floors because it’s a one-story.
DEE: And she’s obviously irate.
DEE: She’s done.
DEE: This is over.
DEE: So she messages him, basically saying, I’m going to tell your wife.
DEE: Sure.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: As one would.
JEFF: So, yeah, then we get to the crime.
JEFF: Is that right?
JEFF: That’s what I have in my notes.
DEE: Yeah.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: So we basically jump ahead to Lyntell’s three-year-old daughter being found barefoot in this parking lot with dried blood on her foot, carrying a pillow, saying she’d slept in a car.
JEFF: Someone like a, I forget who it was, like some type of…
DEE: Leslie, before 9 a.m.
DEE: on June 9th, 2016, comes upon this girl and is like, he’s like off to work and he’s like, what’s happening?
DEE: He did a really good job of trying to figure out, like trying to get any information from her.
DEE: He looked at the pillow and said like, did you sleep in a car?
DEE: And she said, yeah.
DEE: And he said, which car?
DEE: And she points to her mother’s car, Lyntell’s car.
DEE: He walks over to the car and nobody’s in there, but there’s blood there.
JEFF: And also her purse and keys are still there.
DEE: And he said, is your mommy hurt?
DEE: And she said, Mr.
DEE: Robbie did the blood.
DEE: So he rings emergency services and they got there.
DEE: And when they speak to Lyntell’s daughter, she again kind of confirms like mommy was going to sleep with Mr.
DEE: Robbie, Mr.
DEE: Robbie did the blood.
DEE: Like I heard a bang bang.
DEE: Yeah, the police ring the school, but she’s, I think they go into her apartment and then they end up bringing the school that she worked in.
DEE: And they speak to Jamaica, who’s the other assistant principal.
DEE: So kind of, it seems to be like the same role that Robbie is in.
DEE: So she comes and takes her daughter.
DEE: She also informs the police about Robbie and the fact that she was pregnant.
DEE: And so the police are obviously onto Robbie straight away.
DEE: It’s heartbreaking to hear the little phrases from her daughter.
DEE: Like, oh, my God, they broke my heart.
DEE: Mr.
DEE: Robbie did the blood.
DEE: Mommy was going to sleep with Mr.
DEE: Robbie.
DEE: Like, did Mr.
DEE: Robbie hurt Mommy?
DEE: Yes, ma’am.
DEE: Like all these little phrases that she was using.
DEE: Like, she’s so young.
DEE: She looked at that.
DEE: She watched that.
DEE: And she was just left.
JEFF: Yeah, he left her at the car.
DEE: I mean, I will say we have heard stories where a child has witnessed something and the murderer or the perpetrator has also hurt the child.
DEE: And it doesn’t seem in this case like he had physically hurt her.
DEE: And that is something that I was happy.
JEFF: You’re searching for something to be happy about.
DEE: I’m searching something.
DEE: Oh, my God.
DEE: Because mentally and emotionally, I don’t know.
DEE: Like, yeah, no, you’re right.
DEE: Of all the things my children have ever witnessed, I just I like it.
DEE: I can’t.
JEFF: Well, OK, so then we get so the police know.
DEE: Why did he have to do it when she was there?
DEE: Why did he have to do it when she was there?
DEE: That seems like, why did he have to do it at all?
DEE: I know, Jeff, but why did he have to do it when her daughter was there?
DEE: That that’s a different level.
DEE: It is a different level.
DEE: Well, OK, I agree.
JEFF: So no, that’s justifiable anger.
JEFF: So we get Robert’s alibi.
JEFF: He talks about he admits to going.
JEFF: Yeah, driving his motorcycles to the parking lot, this Wal-Mart to talk with Lyntell.
JEFF: And he has a story about going to a bar, having pizza, watching a basketball game.
JEFF: But the police look at his cell phone record as well.
DEE: Like, I went to this bar and ate my pizza.
DEE: And you’re like, you know that they’re going to check.
DEE: Like, this isn’t the 80s, dude.
DEE: Like, this is 2016.
DEE: Like, they’re going to check the CCTV footage.
DEE: Like, you’re not there.
JEFF: Yeah, his phone showed that he was never at that restaurant.
DEE: Very angry.
JEFF: His phone showed that his phone and her phone were together.
JEFF: Their phones traveled together for a while.
JEFF: And then her phone was turned off.
JEFF: He placed a call at 1135 that night from some intersection.
JEFF: But, like, basically his story doesn’t check out.
JEFF: He gets charged with, first of all, he gets charged with aggravated kidnapping of a child and child desertion because they hadn’t found the body.
DEE: I will say, yeah, yeah.
DEE: I will say, like, the police in this case, like, seem to be honest, which was great.
DEE: The way they even charged him originally with aggravated kidnapping of a child and child desertion just so they could hold him, because they were still searching for more evidence on the murder of Lyntell.
DEE: They were obviously fairly certain that he had done it.
DEE: But by doing that, even, he was suspended from work.
DEE: Like, he had all these repercussions.
DEE: So it was like, you know, to be fair, we give them a lot of shit, because in a lot of cases we cover, the police do feck all.
DEE: And this, like, they seem to be on it for this one.
JEFF: Well, with one exception, they did suspend the search after a few days where they couldn’t find her.
DEE: Correct.
JEFF: So that wasn’t great.
DEE: That wasn’t great.
DEE: Correct.
JEFF: But you’re right.
JEFF: No, they charged him initially.
JEFF: And then Lyntell’s body was found in a drainage ditch about a week later.
JEFF: It had been badly decomposed by then.
JEFF: They were able to match her to buy her sandal, which there was one on her still and one that was in the car.
JEFF: They did an autopsy and just decided, figured out that the baby could have actually survived, which meant that they charged him with not just first-degree murder of her, but first-degree beat-aside, I think it was called.
JEFF: And then we get a bit about the trial and kind of the ongoing investigation.
DEE: Before we get into the trial, the other thing, feckin eejit, the other thing, glad he was a feckin eejit so that they could add this to the trial, but like that I found interesting sounds too positive that was told in this podcast was about his Google searches over the previous weeks leading up to Lyntell’s murder.
DEE: Rifle was one of them.
DEE: Pregnant shot was another.
DEE: Injecting bleach was another.
DEE: Failure to appear for paternity search was another.
DEE: Large caliber handgun was another.
DEE: It was about fucking money.
DEE: Money.
DEE: Money.
DEE: Are you joking?
DEE: And like either money or him trying to keep this away from his wife.
DEE: Both things like are so arbitrary.
DEE: Like they’re so like like, OK, if we’re even if we’re just saying in a world where it’s totally fine to be an absolute arsehole and do everything he did before the shooting.
DEE: OK, if we’re if we’re getting away from the murder for a second, just being like, you’re an idiot.
DEE: Like you’re actually an idiot.
DEE: If you think it’s it’s better to shoot someone in front of her child and dump her body and you will never be caught.
DEE: This is what he’s thinking because he is delusional.
DEE: Then to tell your wife that you’ve been sleeping with someone and to have to pay her a little bit of money for the child that you have together.
DEE: That enraged me.
DEE: It was about child support.
DEE: That was the Google search that enraged me the most.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: Yeah, I also wrote all that down.
JEFF: I wrote down the dates, two of these.
JEFF: So this I think speaks to the premeditation of the crime.
JEFF: It was May 20th when he searched for a pregnant shot and searched for a rifle.
JEFF: It was May 28th when he searched for injection of bleach.
JEFF: Also, he searched for what would happen if you inject bleach into someone’s bloodstream.
JEFF: So he thought about different methods.
JEFF: Then the paternity ones were May 29th, May 24th was search for a large caliber handgun, May 28th was the, yeah, whether father has to pay child support if the name is not on the birth certificate.
JEFF: Then after he was arrested, after he was arrested, he asked his sister to erase his iPad, which it’s all there, man.
JEFF: Like it’s, you can’t delete that.
JEFF: Like those, they’re going to, they’re going to find those records.
DEE: But we also have to talk about basically his other girlfriend.
DEE: So his whole alibi was about basically he brought his motorcycle to one place, Lyntell and then brought his motorcycle home.
DEE: But it turns out he obviously traveled with Lyntell and then made a call from very close to where Lyntell was.
DEE: I think it was like the 11:35 PM call from some intersection.
DEE: It was to his other girlfriend.
DEE: So she came forward.
DEE: I don’t know, was it at the trial or was it when it just came out about him?
JEFF: Yeah, Tramica is his second girlfriend on the side.
DEE: She was like, well, well, I thought I was basically his only girlfriend.
JEFF: It’s a pattern.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah.
DEE: Okay.
JEFF: So we’re just going to wrap this up.
JEFF: There was a trial, took five years for the trial to happen.
DEE: He doesn’t testify.
JEFF: No, but his wife did file for divorce.
DEE: He doesn’t testify.
DEE: I’m going to re-say that.
JEFF: Why do you want to re-say that?
DEE: I feel like one potential thing that you could do in this case to slightly even, not redeem, because that is a really high bar for this guy.
DEE: He’s never redeeming himself.
DEE: One thing you could do to show that you have even a percentage, one percent of empathy towards her family and maybe her daughter, and her, and Lyntell, and her unborn child, is to testify and just say, yeah, that’s what I did and I’m so sorry.
JEFF: To both own up to it and to apologize.
DEE: Just own up to it.
DEE: Just tell it.
DEE: Don’t sit there like a coward.
DEE: Don’t be a coward because people now know.
JEFF: That didn’t happen.
JEFF: He was convicted.
JEFF: Actually, and I want to talk about-
JEFF: A little anger.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: No, but justifiable anger.
JEFF: So he was convicted on all these charges.
JEFF: So he was charged with one count each of second degree murder, one count of first degree feticide, aggravated kidnapping, second degree kidnapping and obstruction, four counts of illegal use of a weapon.
JEFF: He was sentenced to life in prison.
JEFF: And what I think is particularly notable is there was no hard evidence.
JEFF: There was all the bits of evidence that we’ve talked about, but no hard evidence was found, but he was still convicted.
JEFF: So for these other crimes that we’ve talked about where people don’t get charged, like there’s a reluctance to charge someone because there isn’t enough evidence, this guy did get charged and he got sentenced to life in prison.
JEFF: And I think there’s seemingly no question that he did it, but there was still a lack of hard evidence and they still were able to get the conviction.
DEE: Yep, that’s a good point.
DEE: So Jeff, like, I’m trying to tamper down my anger.
DEE: Look, this is one episode, as we said, like this podcast deals with like loads of different crimes, whether it’s over one or two episodes.
DEE: I’d love to know, I think I do know, but I’d love to know like how eager you are to keep listening.
JEFF: I mean, I think that’s a tough question.
JEFF: I think I’m very eager to keep listening in terms of, I think this is a well-made podcast.
JEFF: It’s a host who I have a lot of confidence in her skills as a host, as a researcher, as a presenter.
JEFF: These are dark stories, though.
JEFF: Like these are tough stories.
JEFF: So I think, but I think, and you know this, like I’m not like, I’m not by default a huge true crime fan.
JEFF: Like this is not what I go to by choice.
JEFF: But if I am gonna listen to true crime, like this is, I think, a really well-made show that is worth, also because it elevates stories that are often ignored.
JEFF: Like I think there’s so many things in its favor.
JEFF: It’s not just that it’s about the stories that are often ignored.
JEFF: I think it’s also, it’s done well.
JEFF: It’s presented well.
JEFF: What do you think?
DEE: Yeah, I totally agree.
DEE: Like I am a big true crime fan.
DEE: I think this is very different to what I would usually listen to.
DEE: But I really feel like, I just, I really, I find it hard to say I enjoyed listening to it because I didn’t, but I really just appreciate what Amara is trying to do here.
DEE: And I think she does it so well.
DEE: I enjoy how well the story was told.
DEE: And if you let me bring you on a journey, I did this once before and I’m going to do it again.
DEE: But this time I just want to remind people, this is a one episode, 30 ish minutes of actual storytelling.
DEE: We hear from friends and family about the victim Lyntell.
DEE: I feel like I get a real sense of who she is as a person before the murder.
DEE: Like her soul is what I feel like I hear about here.
DEE: We hear about the relationship with Darren and its breakdown, her new relationship with Robbie, his interest in her daughter being there for Lyntell, the mourning of Lyntell’s daughter being found wandering barefoot, Leslie and his findings, the police’s case, including interviews, the strategy to arrest Robbie on what they could, the search for Lyntell’s body, the trial, the outcome, and the life for her daughter and family after Lyntell’s death in 30 minutes.
DEE: There is no fluff, there is no filler, just a victim first account of a horrific crime.
DEE: And it’s so well told.
JEFF: Yeah, I think I agree with everything you just said.
DEE: So recommendation to listeners from me would be absolutely, it wouldn’t be a series I would binge.
DEE: I would listen to this and then listen to a few lighthearted things because it’s hard to, I don’t know, what am I trying to say here?
DEE: It’s a lot.
JEFF: Yeah, you need time to process what you’re hearing.
DEE: That’s the great sentence.
DEE: You need time to process it.
JEFF: And Dee, this is a great lead in to our true crime question of the week.
JEFF: Bye Are you ready?
JEFF: Are you ready?
DEE: All right.
JEFF: Dee, this was a heavy story, like a lot of stories we listened to.
JEFF: So my question for you, how do you counterbalance all of the heaviness, all of the murder, all of the grimness of these true crime stories?
JEFF: What do you listen to that is the total opposite of true crime?
DEE: Great question.
DEE: Okay, what do I listen to?
DEE: I’m a podcast fiend, love a podcast.
DEE: I go to podcasts over music.
DEE: I think I said that at the top of our show, maybe in episode one.
DEE: So I have like a big variety in my catalog.
DEE: One of my favorites is My Therapist Ghosted Me, which is an Irish podcast, two Irish girls, a comedian and an influencer, model slash DJ slash, I don’t know.
DEE: So Joanne McNally and Vogue Williams go together and they kind of just have the chats.
DEE: They started during COVID and it’s, I think stellar, a lot of my friends might be saying they’re falling off the wagon of it, but I think it’s really good, very lighthearted.
DEE: The other two, I’ll have two more.
DEE: The other one would be Normal Gossip, where have you ever listened to Normal Gossip?
JEFF: No, I don’t know.
DEE: Okay, so it’s basically people send in their gossip stories to these presenters and they like anonymize the story and they retell it, so they bring a guest on and they’re retelling this gossip story to the guest and it’s just very, very funny.
DEE: Like you could have a story about like, there was like a dog grooming parlor one that sticks out that like this is the gossip story of there and then there could be like, I like a dating story.
DEE: There’s such a variety of stories that I’ve heard from there.
DEE: Like I really, I think it’s unbelievable.
DEE: Very, very lighthearted.
DEE: And the other one then I think we both listen to is Bad Dates.
DEE: Which is just so funny.
DEE: So, so funny.
DEE: So they’re my three and I feel like my comedic.
DEE: Oh, well also there’s another Irish podcast.
DEE: Okay, the Tommy Hector and Lerita podcast.
DEE: It’s these kind of three comedians.
DEE: Like sometimes they sit in a bar, like randomly in a pub around Dublin, having a pint of Guinness.
DEE: Sometimes like 10 a.m.
DEE: and they’re having a pint of Guinness, like chatting through whatever, like nothing and everything.
DEE: And sometimes they’re sitting in Tommy Turing’s like shed.
DEE: He’s got like a studio in his garden.
DEE: It’s just very funny.
DEE: Cause like he’s quite crude and like Hector is real into stuff and Lerita’s real like chill.
DEE: It’s just very funny.
DEE: I don’t know.
DEE: Actually, maybe you should listen to that.
DEE: I wonder like, will the Irishness of it like not land?
JEFF: These all sound good the way you’re describing them.
JEFF: Like these all sound like nice, like murder-free.
DEE: Oh, no murder in any of them.
JEFF: Much more fun.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: Okay.
JEFF: All right.
DEE: Much more fun.
DEE: Are you not having a good time, Jeff?
JEFF: Oh, oh, Dee.
DEE: Go on, tell us yours.
DEE: Are you going to sit in the fence and save none?
DEE: You don’t really care for any podcasts at all?
JEFF: I listen to so many podcasts.
JEFF: And honestly, like, it’s funny that we’re well, it’s part of the reason I asked this question, because the podcast, the things that got me into listening to podcasts, the first one was WTF with Mark Maron.
JEFF: So he’s a comedian.
JEFF: Any interviews?
DEE: Well, the first one was serial, no?
JEFF: No, it was WTF.
JEFF: I listened to WTF when Barack Obama was on in like 2015, which is I think a lot of people got into podcasts.
JEFF: But I had listened to him before.
JEFF: I liked him as a comedian.
JEFF: And so I’ve listened to a bunch of different…
JEFF: Like I like him because he’s a great way to find out about comedians I haven’t heard of, and then I go watch their specials.
JEFF: And I’ve discovered a ton of comedians through that.
JEFF: I listened to a bunch of NPR ones that are less fun.
JEFF: I’m looking for some of the goofier ones I listened to, like Bad Dates.
JEFF: Oh, I listened to…
JEFF: This one isn’t producing new episodes anymore, but every once in a while, they pop up with a new one.
JEFF: It’s called Mall Walk-In.
JEFF: And it’s these two guys who basically…
DEE: Sorry, you’re gonna…
DEE: Like mall as in M-A-L-L?
JEFF: Yeah, yeah.
DEE: Okay, mall walking.
JEFF: Yeah, they basically take a couple of mics, they go to a mall in the greater Los Angeles area, they walk around and they talk about what they see.
JEFF: The stores, the people, they always find massage chairs in the mall, and they end every episode by sitting in one of those massage chairs.
DEE: I have a real gripe with these massage chairs.
DEE: I don’t understand who’s relaxing while people are walking by judging them relaxing.
DEE: I don’t understand it.
DEE: I find it hard enough to relax when we get chair massages and work, and I’m in a meeting room, and people might be near, it’s just so odd.
JEFF: It’s an entertaining thing to listen to.
JEFF: Like I said, there’s only a handful of episodes of that one.
JEFF: Other things that I like that are the total opposite of this, the Sporkful, you ever listen to the Sporkful?
DEE: No.
JEFF: This is a podcast about food.
JEFF: It is all different angles, just about quirky.
DEE: Made me think of Sporkle, the website, with all the quizzes.
JEFF: Well, Sporkful is the podcast.
JEFF: That’s a good one.
JEFF: I don’t know, I listened to a bunch of, yeah, yeah.
JEFF: Those are the ones I want to talk about.
JEFF: Yeah, all right, all right.
DEE: Do you know what we should do, Jeff?
JEFF: What should we do?
DEE: One of our episodes coming up, we should both make the other one listened to an episode that is not at all true crime based, and we should like dive into that.
JEFF: Love it, let’s do it.
DEE: Bring B-Y-O-P.
JEFF: Bring your own podcast.
DEE: Yeah, it took me a while to get that acronym.
DEE: I had an F in my head and I don’t know why.
DEE: It’s not your second podcast, it’s just your podcast.
JEFF: Let’s talk about next time, all right.
DEE: Next time, we’ll discuss four more episodes of Black Girl Gone.
JEFF: Amara Cofer is a wide spectrum of stories, so we picked a few that we thought would give you a good idea of what the show is like.
DEE: Specifically, we’ll cover two pairs of episodes.
JEFF: So first up, we’re gonna cover a two-parter from April of 2024 called The Victims of the Charlotte Strangler.
JEFF: This is a story about a serial killer from the early 1990s.
DEE: And then from October and November of 2023, we’ll discuss A Missing Person.
DEE: The Disappearance of Celina Mays and a special afterthoughts episode on Celina Mays where Amara and her co-host Jason share their thoughts.
DEE: You might be familiar with this story.
DEE: Celina Mays was a 12-year-old girl who went missing in 1996 when she was nine months pregnant.
JEFF: That’s next time on So Much Crime.
DEE: So little time.
DEE: So Much Crime, So Little Time is a production of MimeGov Media.
DEE: The executive producer is Paxton Calariso.
DEE: Our associate producer is Blythe Tai.
DEE: The music was composed by Vyacheslav Starostin.
DEE: If you haven’t done it yet, please subscribe to this show in your podcast app.
DEE: Don’t forget to give us a five-star rating and a review.
DEE: Even better, tell your friends.
DEE: To join the discussion, look for us on social media.
DEE: Check out the show notes for all the links.
DEE: Thanks for listening.
