S3 Ep352: The Flight, the Wig, and the Lie | How Detectives Caught Piper Rountree (Part 2)

Just after sunrise on October 30, 2004, police in a Richmond, Virginia suburb responded after a neighbor walking his dogs discovered the body of 52-year-old University of Richmond professor Dr. Fred Jablin lying in his driveway. He’d been shot multiple times as he went outside to grab his newspaper, something he did every morning. Inside the house, officers found his three children - still asleep, unaware of what had happened just beyond their front door. As police began to search the neighborhood for clues, one name surfaced again and again: Fred’s ex-wife, Piper Rountree. Their marriage had been volatile, their divorce bitter, and their custody battle filled with accusations that seemed to have no end. When detectives started tracing Piper’s movements before and after the shooting, they uncovered a series of bizarre and calculated choices - each one more unhinged than the last. And soon, it became clear that the story of Fred Jablin’s murder wasn’t just about one act of violence - it was about everything that led to it. Try our coffee!! - www. CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > ｿ https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> ｿ https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPodADS:1. https://www. SimpliSafe.com/CrimeWeekly - Save 50% on a SimpliSafe home security system today!2. https://www. SmartCredit.com/CrimeWeekly - Start your 7-Day trial now!3. https://www. Rula.com/CrimeWeekly - Connect with quality therapists and prioritize your mental health today. 4. https://www. EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% off ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 0:15Derrick Levasseur?

  And I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 0:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  So today, we are diving into part two of the Dr. Fred Jablin case. In part one, we traced the volatile relationship between Dr. Fred Jablin, a respected University of Richmond professor, and his ex-wife, Piper Rountree.

• 0:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Go, Piper.

• 0:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. What began as an opposites attract romance in the early 1980s gradually unraveled under the weight of Piper's instability, secret deaths, substance abuse, and violent mood swings. Their marriage devolved into years of false accusations, public humiliation, and an ugly custody battle that left Fred raising their three children alone, while Piper's resentment turned into obsession. By the fall of 2004, Dr. Fred Jablin was finally at peace. He had built a new life for himself and his children, far removed from the chaos of his marriage to Piper Rountree. He was thriving in his work as a respected professor. He'd started to find happiness again, and he was really looking forward to celebrating his favorite holiday, Halloween.

• 1:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  But on the morning of Saturday, October 30th, everything he'd rebuilt was shattered. Just after 6:35 a.m., Fred stepped outside to grab his newspaper like he did every morning, and he was shot multiple times in his driveway with bullets going through his right arm and the lower back. Inside the house, his three children were still asleep, unaware that their father was lying dead just outside their door. When detectives arrived, they found no signs of forced entry, no sign of a robbery, nothing that made sense. But as they started talking to Fred's friends and neighbors, one name came up over and over again. And whose name was that, Derek?

• 1:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Our good friend Piper.

• 1:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, our girl Piper Roundtree, the ex-wife who had spent years trying to destroy Fred, the one person with every reason to want him gone. And as detectives began piecing together her movements before and after the shooting, they realized this case was going to be far more twisted and far more calculated than anyone could have imagined. So that's where we left off. Detectives are investigating. Um, hopefully they, they get a look at Piper's business card and

• 2:21Derrick Levasseur?

  That, that business card haunted me all week.

• 2:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:24Derrick Levasseur?

  I must've looked at it like three or four times. Then the video came out and I'm like, yeah, it's, it's as bad as it looked when I originally saw it.

• 2:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. After you said Da Vinci Code, that's all I could think of.

• 2:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Literally.

• 2:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. She's like, I am a professor of demonology and code breaking.

• 2:39Derrick Levasseur?

  With friends like hers, who needs them? Because I'll tell you what, someone should've stepped in and gone, hey, Piper, we gotta change this photo up. This isn't, this isn't the move.

• 2:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know.

• 2:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Someone told her, that looks great. That looks great.

• 2:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Probably her sister, man.

• 2:52Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't know.

• 2:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know. She had friends so much as people who enabled her and probably it looks to be just her sister at this point was kind of in her corner.

• 3:01Derrick Levasseur?

  I seriously, I've never heard a saying where it's like, you know, who needs friends, who needs enemies when you have friends like that? That literally is what I think of her showing people that flyer and what they, them being like, oh my God, that's so awesome. That's horrible.

• 3:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. They were like, go girl. That business card's gonna pull in the dollar, dollar bills.

• 3:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 3:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then you're not gonna pay Fred back for all the money you stole from him.

• 3:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  So detectives set out to learn more about Fred and the people closest to him. Early that morning that he was shot, they spoke with Fred and Piper's three children who were between eight and 15 years old. None of them knew what had happened. Obviously they'd been sleeping when their father was shot. They told detectives that their relationship with him was great and that everything at home had been normal. Their mom had called the night before saying she was driving home from Galveston. The last time they'd seen her was earlier that month when she'd come to Virginia to visit. During that trip, she found out that Fred was seeing someone new. That he'd introduced her, this new person to the kids and Piper hadn't taken it well. Which is no surprise to me, right? Piper doesn't want Fred.

• 4:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  But she doesn't want anyone else to have him and she doesn't want anybody showing up in her kids' lives, especially a person who's healthy and wholesome and, and good for those kids and mentally, you know, capable of making room for what the kids need and, you know, giving them a strong foundation. Piper doesn't want that because then there's going to be something to compare to her, right? A mother figure, quote unquote, to compare to Piper and her kids would realize even further, hey, something's not right with our mom. Detectives then contacted Fred's brother, Mike, who was stunned by the news. Once the initial shock wore off, he asked whether Piper was a suspect. He explained how bitter Fred and Piper's divorce had been and how Fred had been so concerned for his safety

• 4:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  that he'd listed Mike as the children's guardian if anything ever happened to him. After hearing this, detectives asked Mike to come pick up the children while they continued looking into Piper. So they obtained warrants for her phone records and learned that her phone had connected to towers in Richmond on the morning of the murder. Surprise, surprise.

• 5:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Shocker. Well, she didn't turn, she didn't turn off her phone like Brian Koberger? She didn't think that was gonna do the trick?

• 5:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't think she knew any better. I, I guess.

• 5:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Turning off your phone right before committing the crime? It's not looking good for her. I know I said in part one where everything is leaning toward her. It's still the case. We're obviously just starting this episode, but I'm, I'm wondering if you're gonna throw a curve ball at me. It's not looking good for Piper at this point.

• 5:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, not only did she not turn off her phone, but it looks like she's either making or taking calls because at 4:30 a.m., just a few hours before the murder, a call from her phone bounced off a tower just five miles from Fred's house. By noon after the murder, her phone had connected in Norfolk, Virginia, and 90 minutes later, it pained again in Baltimore. That told detectives her phone had likely been on a flight, so an officer was sent to Norfolk to check whether she'd purchased a ticket or if anyone remembered seeing her. But there were no flights under Piper's name and no one recalled seeing her, which is interesting, but we're going to explain it. So detectives also reached out to Houston police, explaining what had happened and asking if they could locate.

• 6:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Kate Piper. They went to her house, but she wasn't there, so officers left a message on her phone. Houston PD kept looking into Piper and learned that she had a sister named Tina Rountree. They suggested Virginia detectives check flight records under Tina's name, too. All right, Tina's back, the sister, the accomplice, the echo chamber, Tina. She's re-entered the conversation, re-entered the chat, as the kids say. So when they started looking into Tina, everything began to fall into place. They learned that a Tina Rountree had flown out of Norfolk at 12:30 PM, changed planes in Baltimore, and landed in Houston around 4:30 PM Central Time. The timing matched Piper's phone activity exactly, but detectives

• 7:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  couldn't yet confirm whether Piper had the phone, or if Tina did. Both women obviously had strong feelings about Fred, and either one could have wanted revenge. So detectives asked Houston PD to send officers to the airport with photos of both sisters, and to detain whoever got off the plane. So they were also instructed to hold any luggage until a warrant could be issued, but by the time police arrived, it was too late. Whoever had been flying under Tina's name was already gone. Houston officers went to both Tina's house and Piper's house, but neither woman was there. At this point, it was decided that two Virginia detectives, Colby Kelly and Robin Dorton, would fly to Houston to follow up on leads and hopefully talk to Piper in person, while other officers stayed

• 7:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  behind in Virginia to continue gathering evidence. Meanwhile, Piper's former friend, Lonnie, the one she'd lived with for a time, if you remember, Lonnie had been questioned during the whole divorce and custody battle as to whether, you know, she had ever seen Fred being abusive, or, you know, had any indications that he was. And Piper's own friend Lonnie was like, no, I don't know what you're talking about. So Lonnie called Piper to tell her that Fred was dead. So I guess Lonnie didn't really get the connection at this point, that... That it was probably Piper related. And Piper's on the phone with Lonnie and after a moment of silence, Piper simply said, "Uh huh." Lonnie explained to her that Fred had been shot and killed in the driveway and Piper

• 8:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  said, quote, "Uh huh, so where are my kids?" End quote. Lonnie told her she didn't know, only that the police had taken them. This enraged Piper and not long after she called Detective Kelly and said she had spoken to Lonnie and was trying to find her children. He said, "Hey, that's great Piper, I'm so glad you called me because actually, uh, I'm on the way to Houston to talk to you and I'll explain more in person." So Piper said she'd be staying with her sister and Detective Kelly could find her there. So when Kelly and Doran arrived in Houston, they drove straight to Tina's house, but no one was home. They kept looking for Piper and Tina and around 9:00 PM, more than 12 hours after Fred was found dead, Detective Kelly finally got Piper on the phone again.

• 9:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  And the first thing she asked was where her kids were. He said he wanted to talk to her about that and he asked about the divorce. Piper told him that Fred had been physically abusive and then switched back to focusing on the kids, claiming she had custody. But Kelly told her that Fred had a will stating that if anything happened to him, the kids were to go to his brother. Piper got angry and said she was their mother and then hung up. And that's interesting because I'm confused about how this would work. If you had two parents and there was a custody battle and one parent was, you know, given custody of the kids with the other parent having visitation, but then the parent who

• 9:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  had custody died, would custody automatically go to the remaining living parent or would the deceased parent's will, um, the last will and testament saying, "Hey, I want my kids to be in the custody of this person, my brother, in this case Fred's brother." What would take precedent there? Or would there have to be another court case where Fred's brother went to court with Piper to sort of argue the custody issue?

• 10:23Derrick Levasseur?

  I think overall it would be a custody issue, even with a will. This isn't our area of expertise, but I do think it's a case by case basis. I also think the circumstances surrounding the custody decision matter. For example, let's say you and I are married and it's determined that I'm abusive to the children or that I may be a danger to the children, not even abusive, that's an extreme, right? But just a danger where the judge agrees with you that the children are in a better position with you. Well, if something happens to you, does that automatically mean the kids are just stuck with the negligent parent because there's no one else left? No, that means that the responsible parent that was given custody and the decision making ability for those

• 11:06Derrick Levasseur?

  children can decide where those children should go. Do I have a fight in court? For sure. But if the judge has already determined that you were the most capable parent of taking care of the children, then your opinion before your death should have some weight. Can she fight it? Of course. But I do think that even in death, whatever you thought was best for the children would be followed unless there's some resistance. That's my opinion. What do you think?

• 11:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know, because it's their biological mother, you know?

• 11:36Derrick Levasseur?

  But does the biological parent automatically get custody just because you're the last person left, even if you're a parent? Like, there were circumstances in this divorce where it was proven that Piper was not great for the kids. And that was stipulated in the divorce, in the child custody battle. So just because she's the only game in town doesn't mean that the kids automatically have to suffer for that. That's what, that would be my interpretation of it. You've already proven that you're not a good parent. So I'm not going to, as a judge, I'm not going to stick the children with you just because there's, just because you have a biological connection to them. If you're a piece of, you're a piece of shit.

• 12:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but she definitely would obviously go to court and fight that in every way, shape and form.

• 12:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course, and she may win.

• 12:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  And she may win, yeah.

• 12:19Derrick Levasseur?

  It depends on the judge, it depends on the court, depends on what they had for breakfast.

• 12:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  And that's, family court is just the worst sometimes. So the next day detectives Kelly and Dorton went to Piper's house with Houston officers. And as they sat outside, they saw Piper pull into the garage. So obviously they went up to the house and knocked because at this point she's kind of been dodging them, right? She's like, hey, I'm at my sister's house. Come find me. She hasn't been to her sister's house. They've been there a whole day. They can't find her. So they go up to the house and knock. No one answers. Realizing Piper was trying to avoid them yet again, one officer stayed behind to keep watch while the others left to find Tina, hoping to talk to her before she and Piper could coordinate their stories. By this time, Piper and Tina know the police are looking for them. They've already coordinated their stories. But after

• 13:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  those detectives left, Piper backed out of the driveway fast enough to leave tire marks. So the officer who was left on surveillance, Officer Ferguson, followed and kept her in sight while calling for backup. The other officers joined in as Piper drove through Houston, eventually pulling into the parking lot of her old law office. She got out of her car and Kelly got out too, following her inside. He told her they needed to talk. And Piper said, come in. Inside the office was Piper's sister Tina and an attorney named Marty McVeigh, who Piper had once worked for. Isn't Marty McVeigh the guy's name from Back to the Future?

• 13:42Derrick Levasseur?

  Marty McFly.

• 13:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Marty McFly, yeah.

• 13:43Derrick Levasseur?

  Close though.

• 13:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Marty McFly, Marty McVeigh. So Piper's got a lawyer there. She got her sister there. Obviously, like I said, Piper and her sister have already gotten their ducks in a row. Piper and Tina are already in the, you know, company of a lawyer. They know what they're doing. And

• 14:00Derrick Levasseur?

  And by the way, nothing wrong with that. If you're not guilty of something, I say it on all the time. Like, there's nothing wrong with having legal representation if you're being questioned, even if you're not being questioned, but you know, someone you had some disputes with is now dead. I strongly recommend you get an attorney. And you getting an attorney doesn't automatically mean you're guilty of something. It just means you're, you're doing what you should do. So on the surface, we're not saying, oh, she got an attorney. She must be guilty. We're just saying, coupled with everything else, it seems like, from what you're telling us, she was very prepared. She had everything lined up, ready to go. Almost as if she knew it was gonna happen.

• 14:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Because I'm asking, if you were, if you, obviously, you're, if you're innocent of this and you know you're innocent of this, would you even think that detectives were coming there in suspicion of you?

• 14:44Derrick Levasseur?

  I would, you would too.

• 14:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know if I, I'm in a different state. It's like, how could I have done this? You know?

• 14:50Derrick Levasseur?

  I, I, I would be like, oh, they're gonna assume it's me, you know, but I think that's because of our background, you know, like, I think I would look at it like as from, from a investigatory perspective and say, I have, I definitely have motive.

• 15:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't know. I'm naive. I'd probably be like, I didn't do it. Like, I don't assume anybody's coming here to ask me if I did or not. I don't know. It's weird, but.

• 15:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Guilty.

• 15:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Guilty. So Piper, she's in the office now. Her sister's there, the lawyer's there, Marty McVeigh. She starts pacing and crying. She's asking about the children. Detective Kelly told her that the kids were safe and staying with Fred's brother, Mike. He said they could call so she could speak with them, but when he tried, Mike didn't answer. While they waited, Kelly asked if Piper had any questions. Piper said that Lonnie had already told her what happened. Detectives asked where she had been that weekend. Piper shifted in her chair, visibly uncomfortable, and said, well, um, but before she could say anything else, the phone rang.

• 15:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  It was the kids. This call lasted about thirty minutes and during that time, Kelly overheard Piper telling them, quote, "Your dad is dead. I don't want you to be next. I'm afraid for you guys. Your uncle Mike will inherit everything when you die. There's probably millions. If I were you, I'd ask for police protection." End quote. And then she told them to be suspicious of Mike, saying, quote, "Your uncle is the only one who would profit from this," end quote. She's an idiot. She's an idiot. She's sitting on the phone with her minor children.

• 16:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, eight to fifteen years old, you said? Eight to fifteen?

• 16:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, saying these horrifying and scary things already in the wake of what happened to their father and them having to come to terms with that. Now she's saying all of this stuff, clearly, for selfish reasons, because I'm sorry, this bitch is selfish, man, and this just proves it. This solidifies it. She wants to set the narrative and she wants them to start distrusting their legal guardian. She wants them to start looking at their legal guardian as somebody who could have potentially killed their father, his own brother, because he's going to inherit the money. And now like it's Tudor England, he's going to have them taken out too, so he can get their money. This is ludicrous. And she's saying this in front of the police.

• 17:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, she's saying in front of the police on purpose. You hadn't picked up on that? She's putting forward an alternate theory and she's hoping detectives are listening and they're going to go, hmm, didn't think about that. I gotta look into Uncle Mike, he would have a reason to kill him.

• 17:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  As somebody who worked as a guardian at Lightem, she should and would know that this would be considered parental alienation, alienation against their guardian. This would be incredibly traumatic and damaging to tell her children. And all the police are going to think, in my opinion, because if I was a police officer sitting there, all I would think is this woman's nuts and I can't believe she is further traumatizing her children to, to protect herself and to get this other narrative out. Absolutely gross, gross. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Okay, so Piper's having this 30 minute conversation with her kids where instead of saying, I miss you and I'm so sorry about having your father and everything's going to be okay, she's trying to-

• 18:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Put forward other suspects.

• 18:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Put forward other suspects, reframe the narrative. And then when the call ended, detectives asked, what did she mean by those comments? And Piper said the only person who stood to gain from Fred's death was Mike. He'd get control of the estate and the life insurance money and he'd be in charge of the children's trusts. Then she told detectives that the University of Richmond could also be responsible. She claimed Fred had been in charge of a $3 billion endowment and described him as, quote, "a powerful and secretive man," end quote, "who had a private room in the garage." She said Fred grew marijuana and sold it and that he wasn't really a professor, he was a big time drug dealer.

• 18:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  She added that he'd kept a gun in the house even though she didn't want him to and that could have been the murder weapon. She said Fred had abused her, manipulated the judge in their divorce and that the kids were scared they'd never see her again. Now we've got, okay, now we've got more things going on. Okay, it's Uncle Mike. And also, he's got a $3 billion endowment that he's in charge of. So the university could have had him killed because he's a powerful and secretive man.

• 19:09Derrick Levasseur?

  This sounds like the plot of Breaking Bad, even though I haven't seen Breaking Bad.

• 19:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, you should. It's very good.

• 19:15Derrick Levasseur?

  I've heard it's amazing.

• 19:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  And now he's a college professor slash big time drug dealer who's growing marijuana in a secret room in his garage. So it could be the drugs that killed him, right? But not her.

• 19:27Derrick Levasseur?

  The drug shot him? Or you should say his involvement with drugs finally come. Okay, got it.

• 19:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, yeah, the involvement with drugs. So somebody in the drug trade or the university or Uncle Mike, but definitely not Piper.

• 19:38Derrick Levasseur?

  Definitely not Piper.

• 19:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  Through it all, though, Piper never answered the question the detectives had asked her, where she had been that weekend. When detectives asked if she'd been in Virginia, she said no. They asked where she had been and whether anyone could confirm it, and she'd said she'd been in Houston and Galveston working. She claimed she'd been driving back from Galveston when she called her kids the night before, but detectives didn't believe her. They kept pressing for specifics about where she'd been Friday night and Saturday morning, but Piper avoided answering until she finally said she'd been with a married man at a bar called Under the Volcano. She then changed her story, saying she'd been at Tina's, but she couldn't remember whether Tina had been there or not because it was a big house. As questioning continued, Piper's former employer, attorney Marty

• 20:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  McVeigh, encouraged her to tell detectives the truth. They told Piper that if she cooperated, she might be able to work something out with CPS. Instead, Piper shifted the conversation away from herself and asked if detectives had spoken to Fred's girlfriend. She claimed the relationship had started five years earlier, two years before their divorce, and insisted that Fred had been unfaithful throughout their marriage, saying she never realized at the time because she'd been too focused on raising their children. Okay, so now we got Uncle Mike, the university.

• 20:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Some competition in the drug field.

• 20:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and then maybe now his girlfriend too, because the relationship started two years before Piper and Fred's divorce, which is provably false, but okay.

• 21:11Derrick Levasseur?

  All right, so, so real quick, just to, to pause here. Not knowing this case, here's where I'm at right now. You have someone who's clearly a suspect, should be a suspect because as much as she doesn't want you to believe it, she would also have a lot to gain by Fred being dead. She potentially would get the kids back. That may result through the court proceedings of her getting a portion of his money because the kids are entitled to that money, whatever it might be. So I don't like this. This, there's some red flags here for me as a detective when I'm going into this because what I'm seeing is her giving alternatives to who could be involved and not just addressing herself. She should be in this moment focused on clearing her own name.

• 21:53Derrick Levasseur?

  She's smart enough to know at this point that they didn't come down to Houston to get her opinions on who could have done this. They came there to vet her alibi and any reasonable person would pick up on that and would say, okay, I know why you're here. I'm not happy about it. I'm offended maybe, but I'm going to give you everything you need to completely clear my name. Then we can go from there. But she's, she's being cagey. She's, she's avoiding this and that's not good. Coupled with everything else we already know, as, as you're sitting here describing this to me, I'm becoming concerned because on the surface, yeah, Piper's on my list, but now with her behavior and her reaction to it, not good.

• 22:35Derrick Levasseur?

  As obvious as it looks to be her, I was thinking it could be someone else, but at minimum right now in this part of the story, I'm thinking she has some type of involvement. If she's not directly tied to it, she knows who is. That's my thoughts as of right now, based on this conversation she's having with law enforcement.

• 22:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I mean, my thoughts are of course a hundred percent she's responsible.

• 22:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, you wrote the script.

• 22:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think even the detectives are like.

• 23:03Derrick Levasseur?

  It's not looking good.

• 23:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Your phone, your phone was five miles from his house, my friend.

• 23:08Derrick Levasseur?

  That's right.

• 23:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then your sister took a flight allegedly.

• 23:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, here's the thing, at this point, they're doing what you should be doing, which is they're asking questions that they already have the answers to, right? They're asking her, were you in Virginia? They know the answer is yes, or at least her phone was there. So they're not only. Asking her to get her side of the story. They're asking her to tie her into a statement that can be used against her, right? That they can say, hey, we went there, we spoke to her, she lied directly to us. So basically, that's what they're doing here. They're locking her into a story. And then even though they've already done some vetting, they're going to further prove that she's lying, which may not say, hey, 100% she did it, but at minimum, it shows deception. And then the question becomes, why? Why is she lying?

• 23:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly. So let's say she went to Virginia for a completely unrelated reason.

• 23:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct.

• 23:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  And, and she is asked now by the police, did you go to Virginia? She's like, yes, actually, but it's because I had to see my old psychiatrist.

• 24:04Derrick Levasseur?

  That's right.

• 24:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Because I had to pick something up. Like, this is definitely coincidence. I know how it looks. And I'm going to be completely honest with you about it, but she's not doing that. So there's no legitimate reason that she was there that's unrelated to Fred's death. And she's lying flat out about being in Virginia.

• 24:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Lying flat out.

• 24:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  At all.

• 24:19Derrick Levasseur?

  And now she's got to prove that her phone, well, I can see where this is going to go. She's going to have to prove that her phone wasn't with her. And so if I were in during this interview with law enforcement, and maybe you don't have it in the script, maybe it did happen. At some point during this conversation, I would try to elicit a specific action. And that action would be, hey, um, what kind of phone do you have? We're looking at our phones. Oh, I have a SIM. Let me see your phone. Something to get her to take her phone out so I can observe the phone in person and document that I saw her phone on her persons. It was in her possession when I was there to show, hey, hours ago, this phone was pinging in Virginia.

• 25:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Now it's here in her possession.

• 25:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, what could she say? So Fred's killers flew to Texas, stole my phone, flew back to Virginia, killed him, and then flew back to Texas.

• 25:13Derrick Levasseur?

  That's right. That's right.

• 25:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  To return my phone.

• 25:15Derrick Levasseur?

  So if, without even asking her, they can just say, I observed her phone in her possession. I would even, while sitting there with her.

• 25:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Butt dial her, air quotes, butt dial her.

• 25:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Her phone goes off, "Oh, excuse me for a second." "Oh, sorry, that's me. I must have just hit your number on my phone." Now, I let it go. I don't give any indication of what I'm doing. "Oh, sorry, my bad. I didn't mean to call you. I must have just butt dialed your number." And now I can say, "When I called her number from my phone at this time while sitting in front of her, her phone rang and I saw her pick it up."

• 25:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I mean, just, just in general, I'm sure she, at some point in that, that time period of leaving Texas and going to Virginia and going back to Texas, she talked to somebody on the phone. She texted somebody.

• 25:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, you can have call records, yeah.

• 26:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  So if you talk to somebody as Piper Rountree during that time, you can't say anyone else had your phone.

• 26:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Can't separate yourself from the phone. But she, at this point, probably doesn't realize they've already pinged her phone.

• 26:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, I'm sure she didn't, because if she did, she probably wouldn't have brought her phone with her.

• 26:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Or probably would have made a better lie about not being in Virginia.

• 26:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, exactly. So, when it became clear the conversation was going nowhere, detectives decided to wrap it up. Piper agreed to call Detective Kelly at 6 o'clock that evening to talk about the custody of the children, and said that during that call, she'd finally reveal the name of the man she claimed to have been with the night that Fred was killed. Because remember, she said she was at a bar called Under the Volcano with a married man, but then she said she was at her sister's house. So, not sure. She's probably gonna try to fish around here and see if she can find any man who will pretend to be this guy, but if she can't, she'll just go with the "I was at Tina's house." So next, detectives headed to Tina's house to speak with her privately instead of at the law office. They asked if she'd seen-

• 26:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Smart.

• 26:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, and I'm surprised, honestly, that the lawyer or Tina allowed it to happen. So I'm almost wondering, is the lawyer specifically there to protect Piper? And he's like, "Whatever, Tina, you're on your own" kind of thing? So they asked Tina if she'd seen Piper on Friday or Saturday, but Tina was evasive. Right? She doesn't want to answer directly, yes or no, because she knows they know something, or they will know something.

• 27:19Derrick Levasseur?

  And she doesn't know what Piper said.

• 27:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  And she doesn't also know what they're going to find out, or what they know already. So she's gonna kind of not answer directly. She just repeatedly asked about the children instead of answering their questions. She finally said she'd tell them where her sister had been that weekend if they brought the kids. Because to these dumb, selfish women, these three children are bargaining chips and chess pieces instead of actual human beings who have just gone through the worst thing in their life. And the last thing they need is to be around crazy ass Piper and Tina. So when the police asked, Tina, why won't you just answer our simple questions? Tina said she didn't trust anyone in Virginia. They reminded her that it was a very easy question, had she seen Piper or not.

• 28:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  But she refused to talk and told them to leave, which is her right. You don't have to talk to the police. That's her right.

• 28:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. However, I will say, having an attorney present during questioning, no issue with it. But when asked simple, straightforward questions that are not incriminating, unless you're actually involved in the crime.

• 28:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  Unless you're actually guilty, yeah.

• 28:27Derrick Levasseur?

  That is a red flag. And anybody who's listening or watching and says it's not, it is. They're investigating a murder. They're asking you a simple question. Where were you? And did you see this person? You being evasive and choosing not to answer it? And then saying it's because you don't trust law enforcement?

• 28:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, she doesn't trust anyone in Virginia.

• 28:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Anyone in Virginia, whatever, including law enforcement?

• 28:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Virginia, the whole state of Virginia is off the, off the map for Tina. She doesn't trust any of them.

• 28:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Regardless of your reasoning behind it, it looks bad.

• 28:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 28:59Derrick Levasseur?

  This is a straightforward question. You do have a right against self-incrimination for sure. But it does not look good. And you wouldn't be doing your job as a detective if you didn't note this and say, that's suspicious.

• 29:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, cuz it's like, these detectives from Virginia, as you've pointed out, right? As, as Tina herself has pointed out, they're from Virginia. They don't even live in Texas. They don't give a shit who Piper was with that night. If she was with a married man, they don't care. They're not gonna go tell this guy's wife. They do not care. It has nothing to do with anything. So to hide it like it's some big damaging secret, when in fact, it's not. And that's the reason you're not telling anybody anything. But you will tell them if they bring the kids. So you're trying to get something out of this. It's just very awkward. And honestly, it scares me because. First of all, why would they think the police would agree to that? Like, oh yeah, let's get on the phone. We'll have them flown out here right now. And secondly, it scares

• 29:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  me because if Tina and Piper had been able to get into custody of those kids, I don't know what would have happened. Like, what would have happened to those kids? Because they weren't just gonna sit there and then become cooperative with the police all of a sudden. So, um, as the detectives walked away, I guess Tina kept like yelling at them and yelling after them and being kinda like, you know, aggressive and angry. So, later that afternoon, Piper called Detective Kelly and said she didn't wanna talk.

• 30:22Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm calling you to tell you I don't wanna talk.

• 30:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, she's like, I'm calling you to tell you that I don't wanna call you.

• 30:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that seems smart.

• 30:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  She explained that she felt, quote, "between a rock and a hard place," end quote.

• 30:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Not really.

• 30:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Not really.

• 30:37Derrick Levasseur?

  It's pretty simple. If you're not involved, just say where you were and it's over with. We're moving on.

• 30:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 30:41Derrick Levasseur?

  You're only between a rock and a hard place if you can't figure out how to lie to us without being caught.

• 30:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly. You're in between a rock and a hard place because you're stuck. You're stuck between telling the truth and protecting yourself. Yeah.

• 30:51Derrick Levasseur?

  I was really thinking this was gonna be someone you hadn't mentioned, mentioned yet, but this might be one of those rare cases where it's exactly how it looks. But, I digress. We'll see.

• 31:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, Detective Kelly asked Piper, like, hey, do you think you're being accused of something? And Piper said she was just tired and needed to focus on getting her children back. Which I guarantee you, while you're not cooperating with the police, and they're starting to suspect you as being a part of your husband's murder, that's not gonna be the driving force in getting your children back.

• 31:22Derrick Levasseur?

  That's not gonna help your cause.

• 31:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Nope. So, the detectives and Piper agreed to meet the next morning at McVeigh's office at 9 a.m. So, like I said, the next morning, Piper's supposed to meet with Kelly, but she called and said she couldn't come because of thunderstorms.

• 31:36Derrick Levasseur?

  I get it. They're dangerous. She didn't want them. But they happen and unfortunately, safety is the number one priority here.

• 31:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  They can do a lot of things, like you can get frizzy hair. If you're a wicked witch, you can melt, maybe a lightning strike. You never know.

• 31:49Derrick Levasseur?

  You could get struck by lightning. It's pretty good odds, right? Don't they say that? Pretty good odds that you get struck by lightning happens all the time, doesn't it?

• 31:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Pretty rare odds, but Piper, if it was gonna be anyone, it would be Piper.

• 32:01Derrick Levasseur?

  You know what? With her luck right now, she's not wrong. Yeah.

• 32:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  I kind of agree with her on that. So then the weather cleared, right? And so Piper told her former boss Marty McFay to tell police that she had spoken to an attorney in Virginia who advised her to not say anything because it could hurt her case. Alright, so now she's got a lawyer in Texas who's telling her, Piper, tell, tell the truth. And she's like, you suck. You suck, Marty. I'm gonna call a lawyer in Virginia who's gonna advise me to stay quiet and not say anything and not cooperate with the police. Now, did she actually speak to a lawyer in Virginia? I don't know. We'll talk. Maybe, maybe we'll find out if she did or not. So we got a lot going on here, but what's very clear is that Piper does not want to talk to the police at all, right? She wanted to see them, make, make sure they saw her,

• 32:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  make sure they knew that she had a lawyer. But now she knows if she sits down with them again, this whole, you know, like little game she's playing of evading the questions, it's not going to work for much longer. And it could lead to an arrest, honestly, because she, once again, just like her sister, doesn't know what the police know, what they have. And, and she knows they're not gonna tell her that. So we're gonna talk more about what Piper's up to, but let's take a quick break first.

• 33:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Alright, we're back. Meanwhile, Detective Kelly went to Tina's clinic to speak with her medical assistant, because remember, Tina's a nurse. Tina's a registered nurse. So he asked if Tina had been there the day Fred was killed, and the assistant said, yes. Tina had been seeing patients until about 12:30 PM, and then she got a phone call and left in a hurry. So this detail confirmed, obviously, what detectives already suspected. Tina wasn't the woman in Richmond. She wasn't the one who had taken the flight from Texas to Richmond, even though whoever that person was.

• 33:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Piper had used Tina's ID, which I mean is illegal in itself.

• 33:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Or at minimum, let's stay in the middle here. I'm trying to, you know, go slow. Someone looked like Tina. Someone used her photo ID to get on this plane as her. Now that, that list of people who would look like her would be small, but I'm just saying at this point, we've narrowed it down to someone. Like, put it this way, I didn't use her ID to get on the plane.

• 34:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes.

• 34:17Derrick Levasseur?

  That's the point I'm making.

• 34:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Her sister looks like her, right?

• 34:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, does she? What a coincidence.

• 34:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, they are genetically related.

• 34:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay.

• 34:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, and I mean, who else would have access to Tina's identification and documents to be able to fly under her name? Which is actually crazy to think that you could just take your sister's like passport or driver's license. And if you look enough like her, you're flying under her name. That's kind of weird and scary.

• 34:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, by the way, I just want to real quick, while we're here, I'm going to throw up a photo. We got a picture of Tina and Piper together. Throw it up on the screen here. You guys tell me if they look alike. So the photo, photo's on the screen right now. If you're on audio, spoiler alert, they do look alike.

• 34:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  They look like they could be twins. Remember, isn't what they said, they were like soulmates or twins, not just sisters? They look identical.

• 35:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, they look a little bit like, a little bit like Meg Ryan. Is that a, is that a insult?

• 35:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I mean, that's a reference that maybe not everyone will get, but yeah.

• 35:16Derrick Levasseur?

  But they do look alike. That's, that's the, for the, for the audio listeners, they do look alike.

• 35:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think now they have like facial recognition stuff at, um, at TSA and airport security and stuff. Because the last few times I've flown, they'll like take my passport and scan it and then ask me to stand in front of this thing. That's like looking at my face. So I think it's facial recognition technology. But I wonder if somebody looked as much alike as Piper and Tina do, would that even pick it up? I don't know.

• 35:42Derrick Levasseur?

  No, no, I mean, I, it probably would look, look at face ID, right? Like it's very accurate now, but back then.

• 35:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, sometimes when I don't have makeup on, my face ID is like, who are you?

• 35:55Derrick Levasseur?

  No, no, but I mean, with this, back in the, you know, when this occurred, you have a physical human being doing it. And maybe the person lost weight, maybe they gained weight. You're not going to, if it's close, you're not going to say anything. Because that could be a whole new can of worms. So just looking at these photos, especially if time was spent trying to look like the person in the, in the ID. I think she would pass. I think she would pass and nobody would pick up on it.

• 36:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, for sure, especially back then.

• 36:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes.

• 36:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. So with the new information in hand, detectives focused on proving that Piper, not Tina, had been the one on the flight from Houston to Richmond. They started by tracing who had purchased the ticket and learned that it had been bought with a debit card under the name Jerry Walters. Bank records showed that on October 25th, someone tried to use the card to buy a ticket to Norfolk, but the purchase was declined. Then, after a $1,000 deposit was made into that account, the ticket was successfully purchased on October 28th. Detectives also discovered that the same debit card had been used at an online store called Paris Boutique Wigs. The $261 order included two long flowing wigs, one red and one blonde, shipped to Jerry

• 37:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  Walters' address, which happened to be near Piper's home. When investigators followed up with the company, they learned that the red wig hadn't shipped with the blonde one because it was out of stock at the sale price. But on October 25th, Piper called the store, the wig store, and told an employee she quote, "absolutely had to have it," end quote. She paid full price plus an extra $35 to have it overnighted, ensuring it would arrive by October 27th. So I guess Piper wanted to be a redhead instead of a blonde.

• 37:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't blame you.

• 37:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, there's certain photos, there's certain photos online, I don't know what their hair color was at the time, but going back to the photos that we're just talking about, they're blonde in those photos, but then there's other photos that I'm looking at that are just of Piper and she has brunette.

• 37:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Brunette hair, yeah.

• 37:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so I mean, it depends on what their hair color was at that time. This photo that we're showing you, that may not have been their hair color at the time when this occurred.

• 38:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, it looks like she was blonde at the time, but I'll have to...

• 38:09Derrick Levasseur?

  But maybe Tina was a brunette, that's what I'm saying. Like, she might have been a different hair color than Tina at the time.

• 38:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, because you would definitely want, if you were...

• 38:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Or at the, or the photo, the photo color, whatever hair color Tina had at the time in her ID, that would be important.

• 38:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  It looks like Piper was... I guess a brunette at the time. It's really hard to tell. But either way, you'd want a hair color that wasn't that close to your natural one, even if you had short hair and you got a long wig. You still wouldn't want eyewitnesses to be like, yeah, we saw a blonde woman. You know, hanging around outside his house if you were blonde or, you know, brunette or vice versa. But maybe that's why she wanted red because it didn't match either blonde or brunette.

• 38:52Derrick Levasseur?

  No, well, here's what I'm thinking. She asked for two different wigs, right? Blonde and brunette. She needed both. She got one at the discount. She couldn't get the other one. Well, why would she need both? One would match the ID. One would match the ID, right? The other one would be used during the crime.

• 39:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:09Derrick Levasseur?

  So whatever one you're using to get through TSA, to get through security, to get on the plane. Well, now when you're in the area where the crime occurs, you want to look like someone different. You don't want someone saying, I saw Piper near the, near the residence at the time when the murder occurred. So she's going to wear a disguise, shoot him, and then dispose of that wig. So whatever color she was, if she was a brunette at the time, she's going to be a blonde. If she was a blonde, she wants to be a brunette. So that way, if someone happens to capture or a witness this murder, they're going to say, yeah, it was a brunette. When in reality, Piper was a blonde at the time or vice versa.

• 39:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  So what you're saying is it wasn't a fact of her ordering two wigs because she wanted the choice of how to look. It was that she was going to use them both. This is some devious like spy stuff here.

• 39:57Derrick Levasseur?

  She needs both. And by the way, great job by law enforcement here. Not anything like super involved. It's all kind of basic investigatory work, but we know after doing cases for almost five years now, they don't always do this. So to go this extra mile or not even this extra mile, just to do their job, they're doing what they need to do to follow the breadcrumbs, right?

• 40:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  And build the case in every angle.

• 40:20Derrick Levasseur?

  And even if you don't know. Investigations, you could listen to this or read this and go, okay, I see the picture they're painting for me.

• 40:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and I mean, what we have here is Piper's legitimately like taking this very seriously. She's using a wig to get on a plane and then taking that off and putting another wig in order to, you know, drive over to her ex-husband's house and kill him. And then she's got these wigs to like choose from, put the one back on to get back on the flight. This is some very extensive stuff here.

• 40:50Derrick Levasseur?

  A lot of premeditation, definitely building a first degree murder charge.

• 40:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  So then the wig was gonna come on October 27th. She was gonna get, you know, assurances and she paid extra money to make sure she had it by the 27th. But while she was waiting for the wigs to arrive, Piper spent the 26th and the 27th of October, guess where? At a local gun range, practicing shooting a revolver using her sister Tina's ID.

• 41:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Man.

• 41:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  What an idiot.

• 41:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Piper, I was thinking this was a red herring. I was thinking Stephanie was throwing us off here. If you're not involved, this is gonna be the best case I've ever heard of because the case you're building against her right now,

• 41:32Derrick Levasseur?

  not good. This is a slam dunk and we're not even halfway through this episode. So I don't know what's coming from this, but we're halfway through and Piper looks guilty as sin.

• 41:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  So detectives looked further into Jerry's bank accounts. Remember Jerry is Jerry Walters.

• 41:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I'm assuming the guy she's gonna say she was with, by the way.

• 41:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  I was, I was wondering that too, right? Like, is this her married boyfriend? Well, he lives close to her. She used his debit card to buy the plane ticket and she used his debit card to buy the wigs, which is how the police found the wigs. So the police are now looking into Jerry's bank accounts and they saw that his debit card was being used across the Richmond area from Thursday, October 28th through Saturday, October 30th. So detectives in Richmond visited each location to see if anyone recognized Piper. No one did, but they were also able to obtain surveillance footage from each store, which I mean, that's a fluke. That's hard to do. Usually these stores, like if you're going to multiple places, you might get surveillance at one. One place, two place, a couple places.

• 42:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  But some of them are gonna be like, yeah, our cameras aren't even on. They don't actually record. They're just filming, et cetera, et cetera. But they got surveillance footage from each store. And on one tape from a 7-Eleven, they spotted a woman who looked strikingly like Piper Rountree. So they sent it to the crime lab for enhancement. The results showed a woman wearing a blonde wig identical to the one purchased online.

• 42:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Mm-hmm. There you go.

• 42:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  Detectives Kelly and Dorton then tried to find Jerry Walters. I would already done tried to find Jerry Walters because I want to know, like, is this guy okay? You know what I mean? Like,

• 43:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Jerry, we gotta check in on him. We gotta do a well-being check immediately.

• 43:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's using his card. She's using his address. Either he's in on it or he's dead. You know what I mean? And, and I would really be worried about Jerry's safety right now. So they went to the address where the wigs had been delivered and discovered it wasn't a home after all. It was a business that rented mailboxes. Inside, there was a shared box for Jerry Walters and Piper Rountree. Detectives contacted Jerry and asked to meet. He agreed and he explained that he was Piper's boyfriend. And when asked where he'd been on the 30th of October, Jerry said he'd been at a football game in Baton Rouge, which detectives later confirmed. Jerry said he knew his,

• 43:47Derrick Levasseur?

  See how easy that was?

• 43:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  I know, right? I have no idea what you're, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm gonna tell you where I was on that day.

• 43:54Derrick Levasseur?

  And they're gonna confirm it and it's over.

• 43:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and it's over. Now Jerry did say he knew his debit card had been used by Piper. He'd opened that bank account for Piper when she filed for bankruptcy. How does Piper keep getting men to do things for her? How does Piper keep getting these poor men?

• 44:12Derrick Levasseur?

  You just made that too easy for me and I'm not taking the bait.

• 44:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  Come on, men have to be a little bit more intelligent and, and more complicated than just, oh, you give me sex, I'll give you the world. Come on.

• 44:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Some guys are very simple and the things they do for, man, I'm not taking this. This is gonna be bad.

• 44:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Do for love.

• 44:32Derrick Levasseur?

  The things they'll, there we go. The things they'll do for love. She had a lot of love to give.

• 44:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  She does. She had a lot of love to give and a lot of,

• 44:38Derrick Levasseur?

  Saying some guys, they don't need much, just,

• 44:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Just football and sex.

• 44:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Basically, yeah.

• 44:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  So he opened up this bank account for her under his name when she filed bankruptcy. And then Jerry further said that on the night after Fred's death, Piper told him the card had been stolen. How convenient, Piper.

• 45:00Derrick Levasseur?

  Aww.

• 45:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  And yeah, not only that, Piper was like, hey, could you not report the card missing? But Jerry, you know, he may not have the, the best discerning qualities when it comes to women, but he knows about finances and he's like, uh, no, I'm not gonna have your debit card be stolen and then have it not reported missing so somebody can just use all the money? Absolutely not. So he did report it missing and then he closed the account.

• 45:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 45:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  Good for you, Jerry.

• 45:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Okay. Can I go off the path here a little bit?

• 45:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, yeah, please.

• 45:30Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm sitting here and thinking about all of this. And I keep going back to the plane and I know we're gonna come back to it, but you have to remember too, like, we're talking about her getting on the plane as someone else. This is post nine 11.

• 45:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:43Derrick Levasseur?

  How did she?

• 45:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I guess it was, yeah.

• 45:46Derrick Levasseur?

  It was 2004, right?

• 45:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Nine 11 happened 2001. Security was at an all time high there. Clearly it was not up to snuff.

• 45:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, I guess, I, she, yeah, but she got the, she got on the plane in Galveston and in Virginia, too.

• 46:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Got right through it.

• 46:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Two different TSAs, man.

• 46:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Anyways, I'm just saying, I just keep going back because I'm like, man, our security, and I know it's not perfect. They do as good of a job as they can, but I mean, I've had times where, I think I've even told you this. I had a, um, a Leatherman right in my front pocket of my

• 46:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Like a knife, you mean?

• 46:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Right in my front backpack, totally got through security. Didn't even know I had it. I didn't realize I had it till I got to California.

• 46:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's crazy, dude. How long ago was that?

• 46:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Years ago. But I mean, there's been other times where I've had things slip through where I'm like, man, but damn, put a bottle of water in your backpack?

• 46:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh. Oh, they'll be flashing the lights to pat you down, checking your luggage.

• 46:42Derrick Levasseur?

  I've never gotten a 3.5 ounce over that can of anything through security, man. They are on it. I don't know what it is, but the security systems do not miss that.

• 46:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  But knives, eh, that's alright.

• 46:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Seriously, man, I don't know.

• 46:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  People posing as their sisters, that's alright.

• 46:58Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, keep it on track. We're talking about Jerry. I'm just saying, I'm sitting here thinking about it, like, how did she even pull this off? Because there's a lot that she put on.

• 47:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's what I was thinking too.

• 47:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Her not being identified.

• 47:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  I know.

• 47:08Derrick Levasseur?

  Anyways.

• 47:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  I know. That's what I'm thinking too. Like, that's a little scary to me.

• 47:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it could have been stopped.

• 47:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  That you can board a plane as somebody else. But now I do think they have facial recognition. I mean, I could look it up, but they ask you to stand in front of something.

• 47:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, it's a lot better now.

• 47:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 47:24Derrick Levasseur?

  But even 2000, like I said, you had said it earlier, which I couldn't get off of. I'm like, 2004, that's not too long ago. It's obviously a while ago.

• 47:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  It was like right after 9/11.

• 47:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Three years after 9/11.

• 47:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, that's crazy. And they got facial recognition technology at Universal Studios now, man.

• 47:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I know.

• 47:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. So they got it everywhere, but...

• 47:43Derrick Levasseur?

  The only reason I'm dwelling on it is because I'm like, man, if they would have stopped her at the airport, maybe this doesn't happen.

• 47:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  It wouldn't have, right? How could she have gotten there?

• 47:50Derrick Levasseur?

  She might have pulled it off a different way, but maybe not. Maybe she has second thoughts and she doesn't do it, but...

• 47:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, not in time.

• 47:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 47:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, I'm sure she would have eventually tried again.

• 47:59Derrick Levasseur?

  That's the thing, right?

• 48:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Figured out a way to drive there. Maybe not that day, but yeah. So next detectives called the airline and they learned that the ticket for Tina Rountree had originally been booked as a round trip with a return scheduled for Sunday, October 31st. But on Saturday morning, Tina, aka Piper, had arrived at the airport around 8:30 a.m. and asked for the next available flight to Houston. So detectives tracked down the ticket clerk who made the change, but she didn't recognize Piper's photo. Then detectives located the ticket agent who had checked Tina, aka Piper, in for her flight out of Houston. And the woman remembered this passenger very clearly. She said, quote, "She was a really cute woman." And she was wearing a blonde wig.

• 48:44Derrick Levasseur?

  So it didn't pass, so the wig didn't pass?

• 48:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  I was, I didn't think it would pass, but that's even more like, okay, so now you've got somebody coming through TSA with an identification and she's wearing a wig. She's wearing a wig and you can obviously see that. I mean, maybe this woman just knew because maybe she knew what wigs looked like or wore wigs or had experience with wigs and like the guy at TSA was like, yeah, go ahead, blondie passed through. But yeah, I, I was thinking it would be a pretty obvious looking wig, right? You can tell.

• 49:13Derrick Levasseur?

  And then it's like, well, why didn't she say anything? Did she not say anything because she thought maybe this woman was going through something with her hair?

• 49:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  People wear wigs, yeah.

• 49:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, didn't want to point it out.

• 49:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  People wear wigs for all sorts of reasons. She could be going through cancer treatment. I mean, look at Cardi B. Cardi B wears a different wig every day.

• 49:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, she could have alopecia. There's a lot of things. I mean, just.

• 49:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Maybe she just likes to change up her look. Who knows? But she also, the ticketing agent also remembered the name because she thought that the name Tina Rountree was unusual. So she remembered that. Kelly showed the clerk a photo of Piper and she said, quote, "That was her," end quote. So she's talking about Tina Rountree. She's talking about the wig. She's talking about remembering her and then she sees a picture of Piper and she's like, that's Tina Rountree. So the clerk explained that Tina, AKA Piper, had been in a rush and insisted on getting the next available flight to Norfolk. She then declared that she had a revolver with her. What? What?

• 50:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  When asked to open the gun case for inspection, she hesitated, fumbled with it and eventually showed that the weapon wasn't loaded. She completed the required paperwork and a TSA agent was called over to examine it. The gun was cleared and she was free to go. All right, this is adding a new layer of what the hell happened here.

• 50:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, also that's a federal crime right there, by the way.

• 50:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  But she told them she had it. So did she have a conceal and carry permit?

• 50:33Derrick Levasseur?

  No, you don't need a concealed carry permit for, for that because you're transporting the gun. You have to claim it and you could be transporting it for instruction to the gun range at this different location. All you have to do when you're there is show that you have a blue card, like a safety card, which clearly she had because she was at the gun range, as you described earlier. And in order to go to gun rage, all you need is your gun safety card. So you can transport a firearm via plane. If you have your gun safety card, you have to show that. Show your ID and then you have to fill out federal paperwork. To basically claim what you're doing and who you are, but.

• 51:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  Even still, even still, man. Even still, you can do that?

• 51:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  You can, you can get on a plane with a gun?

• 51:11Derrick Levasseur?

  No, but you don't. Okay. So this is, I don't wanna, that's a good point because I don't think a lot of people know this. So if I'm mansplaining, I'm sorry, but the way you get a gun on a plane. Is you have to have it locked with two different locks into a approved TSA gun case. The gun has to be in one box. The ammunition has to be separate from the gun. You go through a separate line. You show them the gun. They open it up. They look at it. It's shown that it's clear so that there's no ammunition in the firearm. Again, like I said, the ammunition has to be separate. Then they take the gun from you and the ammunition from you, although. Yes, they take the ammunition from you as well. Those two things are transported in a different part of the plane, separate of you. You're not allowed to take the gun on the plane with you.

• 51:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay. You can't just hold it at your seat.

• 51:57Derrick Levasseur?

  No, no, it's like, it's checked in. It's checked in and then you have to pick it up at a different area. So no, no person other than like a federal air marshal.

• 52:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  US marshal, yeah.

• 52:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Is allowed to take a gun on the plane. You can transport a gun via plane, but you have, it's, it's separate to you. You're not allowed to, to carry on your firearm. So, but you have to fill out this paperwork and disclose who you are and that you're doing this. So she's lying about who she is on federal paperwork, which is a crime.

• 52:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, not only that, but you're kind of like, okay. You, you just traveled with a weapon to the.

• 52:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, yeah, that's, yeah, considering the circumstances of what we're talking about here, it's really, a really bad look. And I'm assuming the caliber weapon's gonna match. Uh, the weapon used in the crime, but I'm just saying on the surface, she's already committing a crime just to do this.

• 52:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And honestly, that's, that's absolutely insane because if you were smart, you would have figured something else out, taken a previous flight. Gotten a gun there, hidden it, hidden it there. So you're not actively and on.

• 52:55Derrick Levasseur?

  You're gonna be in Virginia. You could get a gun somewhere.

• 52:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, you're not actively on documentation, traveling to the place where your ex-husband gets gunned down on the day he gets gunned down with a gun. Come on, come on, Piper. All right. We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 53:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, so detectives kept digging and they found that one of Piper's phone calls in the days before Fred's murder had been to a Papa John's in Richmond. Shout out to Papa John's, by the way. Great pizza.

• 53:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Garlic butter?

• 53:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Dude, have you had that pepperoni pizza with the hot honey sauce on it?

• 53:31Derrick Levasseur?

  What do you think?

• 53:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  You have, right?

• 53:33Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course I have.

• 53:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh my-

• 53:35Derrick Levasseur?

  You have ever had Mike's Hot Honey?

• 53:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 53:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay.

• 53:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  I love it.

• 53:39Derrick Levasseur?

  I have a jar of Mike's Hot Honey in my kitchen at all times and I don't eat pizza without hot honey.

• 53:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  I have to say, on Saturday night, I ate an entire medium pizza from Papa John's by myself.

• 53:52Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm proud of you.

• 53:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  And almost an entire thing of fried dough.

• 53:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Nothing wrong with that.

• 53:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  And it was amazing.

• 53:58Derrick Levasseur?

  It always is.

• 53:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then I had stomach cramps all day yesterday, but-

• 54:01Derrick Levasseur?

  That also is true. That happens a lot as well.

• 54:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  That pizza is so good. Papa John's, I love them, so-

• 54:06Derrick Levasseur?

  So Papa John's shout out, but also if you guys eat like pizza, Mike's Hot Honey.

• 54:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  But also get that Papa John's with a cup and char pepperoni and then they drizzle that hot honey sauce over it.

• 54:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Over. Game over.

• 54:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh my god. I'm starving. I'm gonna, I'm gonna destroy myself with that pizza all over again tonight, I think. All right, so they find out that Piper's calling Papa John's in the days before Fred's murder. And when they called the restaurant and asked if anyone named Rountree had ordered a pizza, they said yes. It had been delivered to room 171 at the Homestead Suites on Thursday, October 28th. So detectives went to the pizza shop and got the receipt, but the delivery driver said he wouldn't be able to identify anyone because he made too many deliveries to remember, which is absolutely fair.

• 54:51Derrick Levasseur?

  That's fair.

• 54:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Detectives then drove to the Homestead Suites and asked who had rented room 171. The clerk said it was booked under the name Jerelyn Smith. Why does that name sound familiar? Like we've, we've covered somebody named Jerelyn Smith in another case. I'm gonna have to look into that, but-

• 55:09Derrick Levasseur?

  I got nothing.

• 55:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, they said it was booked under that name, Jerelyn Smith. Detectives showed the manager a photo of Piper and he immediately recognized her as the woman who had checked in. They said she'd arrived around 8:50 PM that Thursday, wearing a hat, scarf, coat, and sunglasses, even though it wasn't cold, and had first signed in as Tina Rountree before asking to change the name- Before asking to change the name on the registration to Geraldine Smith.

• 55:36Derrick Levasseur?

  Damn.

• 55:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, Piper.

• 55:38Derrick Levasseur?

  This just proves the point, just like with law enforcement, not all lawyers are smart. I don't want to hear it anymore. Just because you're a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, doesn't mean you're intelligent. You can still be pretty freaking dumb.

• 55:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, my God. It would be one thing.

• 55:51Derrick Levasseur?

  This is 2004, not, not 1984. I mean, she has to know there's going to be documentation in the paper trail. I mean, Jesus.

• 56:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, by the way, I looked it up. And yes, there's a Geraldine Smith who went missing in 2018. And there was a severed foot that like led to the discovery of her remains.

• 56:14Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't think we covered that, but, but maybe you were doing it during your research.

• 56:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  I must have done something like that.

• 56:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Been looking up Crime Weekly News or something.

• 56:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but yeah, that's crazy. She's like, I'm going to check in as Tina Rountree. And then she's like, on second thought, change that name.

• 56:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, so here's, here's what I'll say at this point, not even knowing the conclusion of all this. Anybody out there, if you're dumb enough where you're going to try to commit a crime, at this point, when you accidentally sign in under the wrong name, that's your sign right there to maybe pull the plug on this mission. Stop doing what you're doing between the paper trail you left at the airport with the gun. And now this. Maybe it's time to turn around and go back home. Just saying. There was still time to make, there was still time to go home and not go through with this.

• 57:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that was the night before.

• 57:04Derrick Levasseur?

  That should have been it right there where she just said, you know what? Maybe I'm not cut out for this.

• 57:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  I don't even think it was that she signed in with the wrong name because she signed in with Tina's name, which isn't her name. She didn't accidentally sign in with her real name. She signed in with Tina's name.

• 57:16Derrick Levasseur?

  There's a problem with that because Tina's not in Virginia either.

• 57:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but she flew there under Tina's name, so.

• 57:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Again, all reasons why she should have said, let's not do this.

• 57:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, maybe this isn't the best method.

• 57:29Derrick Levasseur?

  I didn't think this went out.

• 57:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the clerk at the hotel also remembered that Piper was pacing the lobby and looking nervous. So now detectives had confirmation that Piper had been in Richmond that night. And they soon learned that Tina, AKA Piper, had also rented a car that Thursday in Norfolk. So, the agency still had the vehicle and detectives went to check it out. The clerk said that Tina had called earlier that week asking if she could rent a car without a credit card. And he told her she could, as long as she brought a driver's license and a utility bill. So, that's weird. You definitely couldn't do that now. You need a credit card to rent a car. Just bring a driver's license and a utility bill? What is that? It feels like it's the 1970s all of a sudden.

• 58:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, when she arrived on October 28th, Tina was wearing a wig, heavy makeup, and another scarf and coat. She handed over an ID that said Tina Rountree and a cable bill. And she said she'd return the car Sunday. But when she was told the agency was closed that day, she said she'd bring it back Saturday instead. Because obviously, she's not going to be in town on Sunday. So, the car was returned on schedule, having been driven 342 miles. The clerk looked at a photo of Tina and said, "This is not her. This is not the person who rented the car." But when shown Piper's photo, he said he was 100% sure that that was the woman who had rented it. Unfortunately, the van had already been cleaned and rented out again.

• 58:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  But when detectives searched it, they did find a key to the homestead suites, which shows you how good rental cars get cleaned after their return. And at that point, everything was pointing to Piper. But the investigation wasn't over and Piper knew it. She got a hotel room to avoid the police and didn't fly to Virginia for Fred's funeral. Instead, she went to the Under the Volcano Bar and asked the bartender if she remembered seeing her there last Friday. The bartender thought she did, but couldn't be sure of the day. So, Piper said she needed to find the married man she'd been talking to that night. And the bartender, a woman named Kreider, turned to the regulars and asked if anyone remembered Piper. Now, one man, Kevin, said he thought so and asked why it mattered.

• 59:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Piper told him she'd gotten a call from Virginia Police saying her ex-boyfriend had been stabbed to death and that detectives wanted to know where she'd been that night. She asked for Kevin's number in case she needed to confirm her alibi. He gave it to her and she left. So... It's funny because Kevin's not even like, yeah, I definitely saw you here. He's like, I mean, maybe I did. And she's like, all right, that's good enough for me. Give me your number so I can give it to the police so I can give them something. Works for me. Yeah. She's like, hopefully this will buy me some time. A few minutes later, after leaving the, under the volcano bar, Piper returned with Tina and two men in business suits. They approached Kevin and asked him to sign a statement saying he'd seen Piper at the bar and have it notarized. And of course, Kevin, he refused.

• 1:00:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  He said, listen, this girl already has my number. The police can call me if they need to. So Piper started arguing with him, but Tina told her they needed to leave. The next day, Piper called Detective Kelly and told him about Kevin and the bartender, and she gave him their information and said she was still trying to find the married man she'd been with that night. This is funny. So now she's pissed Kevin off, you know? He's like, I'm just a man, day drinking at a bar, trying to mind my own business, and you brought two men in business suits putting paperwork in front of me, ready to notarize it, this, this and that? No, man, I am now not on your side anymore, Piper. So Detective Kelly followed up with Kevin, and Kevin said, I'm not completely sure I saw Piper at the bar that Friday night.

• 1:01:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Detective Kelly checked with the bartender. Kreider reviewed the tabs and confirmed that Kevin hadn't even been there Friday. He'd been there Saturday. That meant that Piper hadn't been in Texas the night before Fred's murder, or at least she wasn't at the bar on Friday because, you know, or Kevin wasn't at the bar, so he couldn't have possibly seen her there Friday, and nobody else could remember her being there on Friday. And she still hasn't found this illustrious married man with whom she had an illicit night with. So at this point, detectives had a huge pile of evidence against Piper, and they made plans to take her into custody as she left a custody hearing in Virginia on Monday, November 7th.

• 1:01:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  But before the arrest, detectives got an unexpected call from a tipster saying police needed to speak with Tina Rountree's friend Carol. Apparently Carol had information about Fred's murder. So detectives went to Carol and she broke down. She told them she'd helped Tina and Piper after the fact, after Fred's murder, and agreed to cooperate with the police in exchange for immunity.

• 1:02:18Derrick Levasseur?

  Got them.

• 1:02:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Carol told detectives that on Thursday, the day Piper left for Virginia, Tina had told her Piper had taken off with her driver's license and credit card, and that she thought Piper was going to, quote, "do something stupid," end quote. Then on Sunday, after the murder, Tina called Carol crying and said that Piper had gone to Virginia and killed her ex-husband. Wow, Tina, Tina's not, Tina's not a vault. She is not. So Tina said she helped Piper get rid of evidence, including a purse and a wig, by putting them in grocery bags and throwing them into two dumpsters, one at a medical center and one at a convenience store. Carol told her that wasn't safe, so they went back to get the items.

• 1:03:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Carol, why? Carol, why are you involved in Carol? All right, well, Tina then dropped Carol off at work, but when she came back, the bags were gone and the car had been washed inside and out. So the next day, Carol went to Tina's house. She said Piper was there. Tina told Carol to get rid of the garbage bags in her garage, and Piper asked her to throw out her desktop computer and laptop as well. Tina added her own computer to the pile. Carol took everything, but she soon got nervous, and she spoke with a lawyer who told her to give the items to the police. Instead, she returned them to Piper. But after the tip came in, she didn't have a choice anymore. She had to talk. I gotta wonder, who called in the tip against Carol?

• 1:03:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Tina's talking to Carol. Piper and Tina are talking to Carol. They're giving her evidence to get rid of, trusting that she would do that and not go straight to the police. And then Carol's talking to somebody about this, outside of a lawyer, because I don't know if a lawyer would be able to call in a tip like that. Do you think they could with a, like a privilege thing?

• 1:04:06Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean, is attorney-client privilege? Now, does that stop them from doing an anonymous call that can't be traced back to them?

• 1:04:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think technically, it probably would fall under that. Like, if you're the client, you'd probably want that to be included.

• 1:04:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Correct. I agree. But if you have someone with a conscience, who might just say, hey, listen, but they don't know they can't prove, I'm good with it, you know?

• 1:04:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, if you can't trace it and it's anonymous, oof, slippery slope. So based on Carol's statements, detectives obtained a warrant to arrest Tina for helping cover up the murder. So now we have Piper and Tina arrested. They also presented the case to a grand jury, which indicted Piper on charges of first degree murder and unlawful use of a firearm. And I mean, there should have been more, there should have been more charges. She flew under her sister's name and brought a gun with her and filled out, like you said, filled out federal paperwork, making claims that were not true.

• 1:05:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Falsifying federal documents, yeah, that's a problem.

• 1:05:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  So both arrests were set for Monday, November 7th, and were to be carried out at the same time. So understand, all this happened in like a week, right? Fred Fred's killed the day before Halloween. And by November 7th, both Piper and Tina are arrested, and they've already presented the case to a grand jury. And that's all happening in like a week, which is great. That's a great, I mean, Piper made a lot of mistakes, but that's really good for the police. So for Piper's arrest, officers waited at a Richmond area courthouse where she was attending a custody hearing. And the judge at that custody hearing ruled that the children would remain with Mike until the investigation was complete. So as Piper left the courthouse, detectives moved in and took her into custody.

• 1:05:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  At the station, she immediately asked for her attorney. Her high-profile defense attorney arrived soon after, and Piper never spoke to detectives again. So we are going to take our last break, and we'll be right back to finish the case. In Houston, officers arrested Tina at her nurse practitioner clinic and brought her in for questioning. They told her that if she cooperated, it could help her avoid losing her nursing license and probably lessen her sentence. I 1 million percent believe that everything Tina did should be an automatic losing your nurse's license.

• 1:06:26Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I think that would qualify under you're no longer allowed to take care of others. You can't be trusted.

• 1:06:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I know. I know they wanted to turn against her sister, but let's be honest here. You got more than enough evidence against Piper. You really don't need Tina and Tina really needs to pay for her part that she took in this, honestly.

• 1:06:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Agreed.

• 1:06:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Tina asked for an attorney and refused to say anything further. She was later released on bond. Piper was not, and while awaiting trial, Piper wrote letters to her children after her calls went unanswered. In those letters, she claimed detectives had already told her she was in the clear and said she didn't understand why she was still in jail. The children eventually wrote back, but only Jocelyn ever came to visit. Only one of her children really wanted to have anything to do with her at that point. So Piper's trial began on February 22, 2005. Prosecutors argued that she killed Fred after learning he was moving on, driven by jealousy, control, and money. They said she wanted to stop paying child support, collect on a life insurance she was still a beneficiary of,

• 1:07:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  and prevent another woman from becoming a mother figure to her kids. The state laid out a detailed timeline. On Thursday, October 28, Piper flew from Houston to Norfolk using Tina's ID. She rented a car, drove to Richmond, and stayed at the Homestead Suites for two nights. On the morning of Saturday, October 30, she drove to Fred's house, waited in the shadows as he went to get his newspaper, and shot him. She then fled, returned the car, and flew back to Houston, where she and Tina, and Carol, I guess, in some, in some instances here, they disposed of evidence and lied to detectives. So the defense worked to create reasonable doubt, arguing that Tina, not Piper, was the guilty one. Holy [bleep]. Piper turned on her sister.

• 1:08:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Wow.

• 1:08:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Which I guess I, I could say I'm not surprised.

• 1:08:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Didn't see that coming.

• 1:08:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Piper is kind of a loose cannon here, but with the one person who had your back through everything, the one person?

• 1:08:27Derrick Levasseur?

  And the one person, and one, one of the two people that can expose you.

• 1:08:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and she didn't even talk to the police. She could have exposed you. She could have taken a deal, got her nursing license back, went on with her life, and she stayed loyal. Piper, you are not a good person.

• 1:08:40Derrick Levasseur?

  And how does Piper not know she's going to be on camera everywhere? And that all these people she interacted with during her travels is not going to identify her over her sister if there's a photo lineup done? Like what is she hoping that just everybody says, yeah, that's right. That was Tina at the airport. Oh, that's right. That was Tina who checked into the hotel.

• 1:08:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's just eyewitness statements. She could say they were incorrect.

• 1:09:00Derrick Levasseur?

  But if there's smoke, there's fire. If you have seven witnesses and they all identify you over your sister, there's some credibility there, right? If nobody picks her out in a lineup ever, that's a problem for you, Piper.

• 1:09:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  So here's what I'm thinking. So Tina told Carol, Piper took my ID and flew, you know, to Virginia where she's gonna do something stupid. I wonder if Piper actually did steal Tina's ID and didn't tell her that she was gonna do that. And Tina wasn't complicit in allowing Piper to fly under her credentials. Because it almost seems like this was a setup from the beginning. If I get caught, I'll just say it was Tina. Cause that was the name that bought the ticket. And that was the name on the paperwork. That was the person who flew to Virginia. How can you blame me? I almost wonder if this was kind of a backup plan like, I'll just blame Tina. That's horrible.

• 1:09:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, clearly it was in the back of her mind.

• 1:09:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Derrick Levasseur?

  You're using your sister's ID to go through all of this. So at minimum, your sister is gonna have a paper trail of her traveling to Virginia. So absolutely, this is not something she just came up with. This was the plan all along, just in case.

• 1:10:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, I was thinking maybe if Tina was complicit in allowing Piper to use the ID and knew what she was doing, that maybe that wouldn't be the plan. But yeah, this is, this is pretty dirty. This is pretty bad. So Piper's defense said, no one had seen Piper pull the trigger and there was no forensic evidence tying her to the murder scene. The wigs are for Halloween and the gun range visits were explained away as innocent outings with Tina's boyfriend, who was quote, "a gun freak," end quote. They pointed out that the phone calls could have been made by anyone and that every major purchase had been made in Tina's name. Piper, they argued, was too intelligent to leave such obvious breadcrumbs. Did the defense forget that Tina was at work treating patients actively that day?

• 1:10:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Did they forget that? I'm sure, what did Piper step into Tina's place and, and get some medical knowledge and experience? And she was able to pull it off without anybody being like, hey, you're not Tina, you're Piper.

• 1:11:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Piper wasn't too intelligent to make that flyer and actually pass it out to people.

• 1:11:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, exactly. So I, I don't really understand how Piper or her defense thought this, this was gonna fly when you literally have Tina in Texas, working and seeing patients.

• 1:11:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Nope. You know what you don't have in Texas?

• 1:11:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Piper?

• 1:11:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, exactly. But you got her everywhere else.

• 1:11:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  You got her everywhere else. So when Piper took the stand, she maintained that she hadn't killed her ex-husband Fred. She said she didn't own a 38 revolver. That gun belonged to Tina. The wigs weren't hers either, she claimed, and Tina was the one who regularly used her phone. When asked outright if she wanted the jury to believe Tina was the real killer, Piper said she had no idea what had happened. So not only is she having her defense throw her sister under the bus, but she's getting on the stand and throwing her sister under the bus.

• 1:11:55Derrick Levasseur?

  So here, here's how I take this. Well, first off, it's a huge scumbag move, right? She, she clearly was planning this from the start, using a gun that Tina owned and using her identification. I can't believe I'm defending Piper to a certain degree. I'm not, spoiler alert. But what I, what could be happening here is, yes, she planned this ahead of time, but now with their defense, the team is saying, hey, listen, we're not trying to get your sister convicted for a crime she didn't commit. However, if we can raise enough reasonable doubt, where they can't decide whether it's you or Tina, or it's possibly both of you, you both could walk away scot-free. We just got to get one

• 1:12:39Derrick Levasseur?

  jury member to say, I don't know, guys, maybe it was Tina. And that could be enough where you and your sister are free, free individuals moving forward and you can mend that relationship afterwards. But if we don't offer an alternate theory, you both could go to prison. So you're actually doing this for her, to help her. That's how you got to look at this. This is for both the betterment of you and your sister. That was my, that's my defense there. How'd I do?

• 1:13:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  I, I mean, I guess, but if you're, if you're Tina, how do you think you feel about that?

• 1:13:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, you're not happy about it?

• 1:13:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  No.

• 1:13:14Derrick Levasseur?

  You're not happy about it. And I don't, I'm sure Tina wasn't in on that part of the plan. But that could be the mindset here. It's not to throw my sister under the bus. It's to offer a theory where if I can convince one person on that jury that it's possible, then we get a hung jury and maybe we both get out of this okay.

• 1:13:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  I gotta be honest with you. I am loyal to a fault. But if I'm Tina and I've been there for you.

• 1:13:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, no, you're not invited to the Christmas dinner.

• 1:13:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  I know. Not only that, I've been there through you, for you through all of this. I helped you. I housed you. I gave you a place to turn. I helped you. And then the police offered me a deal and I said, no, and I still stayed silent. And then you pull this. I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be raising my hand in that courtroom and saying, actually, I'd like to testify.

• 1:14:00Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Let me tell you everything about this crazy bitch here. My sister, freaking unbelievable. My sister Piper is a psychopath. Absolutely. So, yeah, it didn't work. After both sides rested, the jury deliberated for less than an hour. Piper was then found guilty of first degree murder.

• 1:14:19Derrick Levasseur?

  A whole hour, huh?

• 1:14:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  A whole hour. I'm sure for 45 minutes of that, they were like, let's just hang out here and.

• 1:14:24Derrick Levasseur?

  What are we getting for lunch?

• 1:14:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  Let's play hang, let's play hangman. Yeah, Papa John's. Let's play hangman. So it seems like it, we actually, you know, were conflicted by this. She was found guilty of first degree murder and of using a firearm during the commission of a felony. She was sentenced to life in prison plus three years. And after her conviction, Piper agreed to an interview with the media. And you know what she did? She called herself a victim.

• 1:14:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, no.

• 1:14:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Does she know Lori Vallow?

• 1:14:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Does she know Lori Vallow? Does she know Casey Anthony? Let's keep going. She stated, quote, "I'm just an indication of what's happened or where an abused and victimized woman ends up further victimized by the system," end quote. So in November of 2005, Piper's sister Tina accepted a plea deal for evidence tampering, which was a misdemeanor charge. She was given nine months of deferred adjudication, fined $300, and ordered to complete 80 hours of community service. She kept both her nursing license and her clinic. And to this day, both sisters continue to insist they are innocent. She kept her nursing license and clinic?

• 1:15:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  What in the world? So with Piper serving a life sentence, Fred's brother Mike and his wife were granted full custody of the children. They never visited their mother in prison, though there were a few letters exchanged in the years that followed. The kids began therapy and the community surrounded them with support. At the University of Richmond, where Fred had been beloved by students and colleagues alike, a scholarship fund was created for his children. The university also established an annual award in his name honoring outstanding PhD candidates, a legacy that reflected the same dedication that defined his life. Because Dr. Fred Jablin had been a mentor, a father, and a friend to many. And while the people who loved him will never understand how someone he once trusted

• 1:16:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  and treated so well could destroy so much, they've made sure that what mattered most about him, the kindness, the curiosity, and the quiet stability he offered others, it didn't die with him. And they've made sure that his children are taken care of and loved and remember their father. So that's, that's what happened. Geez.

• 1:16:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Sad story. Pretty straightforward and a very easy case to prove. I know I've said it over the years, whereas police officers of criminals were smart, we wouldn't catch them. They would, because what we're looking for are the mistakes, right? There's going to be a lot that they do to cover up their crimes, but they may miss something. Our job is to find those things and put it together so that it can be demonstrated to a jury. And this case was very easy to do. Seems like from the start, they knew exactly what happened and it was just a matter of putting the pieces together. And like I've said before, as a detective, you also have to play defense attorney.

• 1:17:24Derrick Levasseur?

  So in addition to building a case against a particular person, you also have to explore alternate theories so that when they try to present that as their defense at court, i.e. Tina did it, you have all of this evidence that isn't necessarily needed to prove that Piper did it, but it does rule out the possibility of an alternate theory. So you can say, hey, jury. Not only do we believe it's this person, but we also explored other theories, didn't get tunnel vision, and we were able to definitively rule them out based on the evidence we collected. And that's what they did here. They were able to approach it where it seemed like from the start, they were exploring the possibility that it was Tina or Piper, and even though they probably

• 1:18:07Derrick Levasseur?

  knew it was Piper. And so every step of the way, as you kind of articulated through the story, halfway through, they probably realized it was Piper, but they still showed photos of Tina and Piper to have that witness say, no, it is not that person. It might seem irrelevant as you're telling the story, but it's extremely impactful at a trial. No, what she's saying right now, as far as it being Tina, that's not true because witness A, B, C, D, and E, all were shown a photo of Tina and all said definitively it was not her. So that's, that's, that's a very good job by them to, to serve both sides and make sure that they document everything, dot their I's, cross their

• 1:18:49Derrick Levasseur?

  T's, tie up all the loose ends and ensure that you don't lose this case at trial because of just one thing you missed. As far as the whole overall story, it's a tragic circumstance. You have children who have lost their father. Clearly they're doing a lot to carry on his name, but it doesn't change the fact that they have a dad who's gone and a mom who's insane. So these kids are going to be affected for the rest of their lives. And I can only hope that with the help of Mike and the rest of their family and friends that they can go on to live as normal of a life as possible. And that was, this was many years ago. So at this point, they're all adults and I hope they're doing well. I hope they're doing extremely well and they know their father was a good man and he didn't deserve this. And unfortunately, the person responsible is going to spend the rest of their life in prison.

• 1:19:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I find it very strange that Piper's defense didn't try to go for a mental health defense because I think if they'd had her examined by a psychiatrist, we would have found some real issues there. You know what I mean? And it might have helped her case if she admitted to it and then said, I plead not guilty by reason of mental insanity kind of thing, you know, and then build that case. But instead they just tried to throw her sister under the bus, which was a delusional defense strategy to begin with, I believe. But either way, yeah, yeah, that's, that's where we are. And this is crazy and. We'll move on to the next case now.

• 1:20:12Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, we, we got them. She's behind bars. Happy to see that this was a, a good outcome where we're not left with more questions than answers. That's gonna do it. Part two in the books. We have a couple cases that we're looking at for next week. Not a hundred percent yet. Stephanie's been researching both of them. We're gonna see which direction we're gonna go. I have a case that I'm hoping to cover. She has another one that she mentioned. We were talking about a third case before we recorded this. So to be transparent, we don't know what we're recording next week. We have a couple researches done, ready to go, but we'll figure it out. And when we do.

• 1:20:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  We'll get them all done. We'll get them all done.

• 1:20:51Derrick Levasseur?

  We'll get them all done, but you'll know when we know, I guess. So any other words from you, Stephanie Harlow?

• 1:20:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, that's it. Thank you guys so much for being here and we will see you next week. As always, Crime Weekly is always here for you.

• 1:21:01Derrick Levasseur?

  That's right. Stay safe out there. We'll see you soon. Have a good night.

• 1:21:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  Bye.