Pod Insights Criminology The Terwilliger Family Murders About this episode In 2023, five people were brutally murdered in a home in Florida, and it turned out, as it does in many cases like this, that the killer was someone close to home. Two young boys were also at the house but were unharmed and able to call for help. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the Terwilliger family murders. As police were investigating the grisly murders, one named surfaced quickly; Domenico Gigante. Gigante was the biological father of one of the victims. You can help support the show through Patreon. We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms: Facebook - Facebook Discussion group - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Twitch - Tik Tok Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.
0:37 Speaker 01 Hello everyone and welcome to episode 369 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.
0:43 Speaker 02 And this is Mike Morford.
0:45 Speaker 01 Morph, how you doing buddy? Getting ready for vacation?
0:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm getting ready to head out, packing up some stuff. I'm a little bit tired because I stayed up all night binging the new network. The new Netflix documentary, Amy Bradley is missing. Did you see that one?
1:00 Speaker 01 No, I saw it pop up, but I haven't watched it. Obviously if you binged it, you must've been into it.
1:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was, it was really good. It was well done and I came away believing that she's still alive and out there. I don't want to give any spoilers for anyone, but I, I thought it was well done and I, I'd recommend it.
1:18 Speaker 01 Well, I will definitely watch it. I, I've been kind of caught up in these train wreck series on Netflix. I don't know if you've watched any of those, but they're really good.
1:29 Speaker 02 I spent a lot of time searching for my next British crime show. Usually it's not true crime. It's usually, you know, these famous inspectors and detectives and they're well done and I just can't get enough and I keep running out of them. So now I'm watching like parole from 1989. It's just desperately trying to get some shows to watch.
1:51 Speaker 01 Well, there's no shortage of shows. The, the problem is that they're spread out among all these different subscription services now. It's like you have to have them all to catch everything.
2:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, you gotta have the, the Brit Box and the Acorn. Those are the two main ones. I think that give you the bulk of them.
2:11 Speaker 01 All right, Morph, let's go ahead and do our Patreon shout outs. And we had new support from Lori Quatro Chiochi. So we really appreciate that.
2:22 Speaker 02 Thanks for all that Patreon support, everyone that helps. We really appreciate it. For anyone else that would like to head over to patreon.com/criminology to get started.
2:31 Speaker 01 And we just want to remind everyone that, you know, it's coming down to the wire to make plans to hang out with us at CrimeCon 2025 this September. It's just over a month away.
2:42 Speaker 02 CrimeCon 2025 is happening September 5th through the 7th at the Gaylord Rockies Resort Convention Center in Aurora, Colorado. It's your chance to hang out with not only us on Podcast Row, but with all your like-minded true crime friends. And you can save some money on your passes by going to crimecon.com and using our code CRIMINOLOGY at checkout. That's going to save you 10% on your standard badges.
3:06 Speaker 01 And be sure to listen closely over the next few episodes because we'll be letting you know where our annual joint Criminology TCAT CrimeCon meetup is. We hope we'll get to hang out with a lot of our listeners. So Morph, now that we have all of that out of the way, let's jump into this week's case. And this week, we're heading back down to your home state, Florida. And you know, Florida has no shortage of true crime. There are shows, YouTube channels, all dedicated to, you know, what is going on or what has gone on down there in your state of Florida.
3:48 Speaker 02 It's funny, in the section of Florida where I live, nothing ever happens. So when I hear about all these crazy cases and these strange things going on in Florida, it's like everywhere but the part that I live in. And usually the craziest thing down here is, you know, a golf cart will get stolen or something like that. And, you know, the neighborhood's up in arms over it. But, you know, I'm fortunate not to live in one of the areas where all these crazy crimes happens.
4:15 Speaker 01 That's what everyone says until there is a crime in their city or part of the state. But in 2023, there was a brutal murder of a family down in Florida. And it turned out, as is the case in many like this, the killer was someone close to home. We're talking about the Terwilliger family murders. And just a heads up, we do discuss some harm to animals in this episode. We want to say that upfront because we know that is a trigger for a lot of listeners.
4:52 Speaker 02 The Brevard County Sheriff's Department received a 911 call around 2:00 in the morning on March 1, 2023. It was a confusing situation. The caller, Michael Bayshym, had received a frantic FaceTime call from two young children, the sons of his current girlfriend, Constance. They were trying to tell him something bad was happening in their house. He stayed on FaceTime as he made his way to the scene to see what was happening. When he arrived, he found the two young boys terrified and took them out to his car. Sadly, none of the adults in the home were alive to help the children or make the call to 911 for themselves.
5:30 Speaker 01 When officers arrived at the Terwilliger home on Allen Shepherd Avenue in the rural area of Cannaveral Groves, Florida, the two children were safe in a car outside of the house with the man who had come to help them. Inside the home, officers found 63-year-old Glenda Terwilliger, her daughter, 35-year-old Constance Marie Terwilliger, Glenda's granddaughter, and Constance's Daughter, 15-year-old Kiara Terwilliger and 36-year-old Michael Andrew Watson, all dead. They had been shot to death. The two young boys, ages six and nine years
6:11 Speaker 01 old, were alive and physically unharmed. But it was clear, they had been inside during the murders, and there's no telling what horrors they had witnessed. Reports are vague, with some sources just stating that Michael Watson lived in the home. Some sources state that the two boys were the children of Constance, while others say they were Michael's sons. An affidavit for an arrest warrant in this case makes it clear that Constance and Michael were not together at the time of the murders, but they did have two boys together in the past while they were dating. It was Constance's current boyfriend, Michael Bayshym, who got
6:53 Speaker 01 the FaceTime call and rushed over to the scene. They had been dating for about five years. So, right out of the gate, more of, I mean, you know, we're faced with a horrific scene, and we're going to get into, you know, more of the details as we go along. But you think about getting a FaceTime call. We all get them. Most people have FaceTime or some equivalent. You know, they're meant to be fun, a way to talk and see someone at the same time. My daughters often FaceTime my wife and I from college. It's just a great
7:35 Speaker 01 way to see them because we don't get to see them every day. But this is something completely different. You have two young boys FaceTiming and right away saying that something is really wrong. And I think like most of us would, Michael, you know, jumps into action. I think he realizes that that something is dire. I'm sure he has no idea the extent of it, but he rushes to the scene, gets these two young boys and then, you know, what's discovered is absolutely horrendous.
8:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, it's never a good thing. Usually when you're getting a call that late in the middle of the night, half, you know, late hours of the morning, whatever you want to phrase it as, it's usually something bad has happened and you're getting a call to let you know about it. So he had to be probably pretty nervous, I would think, getting that FaceTime call that time of, of the day, probably figuring it was going to be something bad, but probably not having an idea that it would be as, as bad as it was.
8:45 Speaker 01 No, I mean, who wants to go to that extreme in their minds right off the bat? Now, you know, something's wrong, but you're probably not going there that a family has been shot and killed.
9:02 Speaker 02 Police asked Michael Baysham what had happened. According to him, the boys both told him that they had been asleep when the attack began. They woke up to crackling sounds and then heard constant screaming from Michael Watson. When it was over, they got Kara's cell phone from her room to call Michael for help. Kara was technically on her phone when the murders happened. She had her phone plugged in and sitting on the nightstand next to her bed. A video call with her boyfriend, Gavin, was still open. They had both fallen asleep before hanging up, something they often did. This is a lucky situation because it meant when the call ended, the phone would be unlocked. If it had just been sitting on her nightstand with no call active, the children might not have
9:46 Speaker 02 been able to unlock and use the phone.
9:49 Speaker 01 The FaceTime call between Cara and Gavin was disconnected at 1:18 a.m. When the boys called Michael Bayshym, they first made a regular cellphone call, audio only. They explained what they heard, but didn't really fully express the severity of the situation at first. Michael was obviously confused. The call was from Cara's phone, but it was the two young boys instead. And what they were saying didn't make a lot of sense. He asked the boys to call back on FaceTime so that he could see what was going on. At first, Michael thought, and maybe he wished that somehow the boys were just playing a prank
10:31 Speaker 01 on him. Still, he rushed over to the home. He lived in Rockledge, about 15 miles away. When he got to the home, the two boys came running out to his car. This is when he knew that something serious had happened. He went inside and found the carnage. As a sad side note, when Gavin woke up the next morning, he tried to call Cara, but she didn't answer. When he checked her location on Life 360, her phone was at the fire department. He rode his bike there to find out what was going on. And that's when he got the news that his girlfriend was dead. And I think I probably talked about it before,
11:12 Speaker 01 but my family uses that Life 360. It's really kind of a very cool app, especially for us, our girls being older and college. I kind of have the need to check on them, especially when they go out with their friends on the weekends. I want to make sure they got home. And that app kind of has a way to set up triggers so that you get alerts when people leave or reach a location. But I cannot imagine being in a situation like Gavin was in and having to find this news out the way he did.
11:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, those apps are very helpful and give you a lot of peace of mind. But in this instance, you know, it sort of let him know that something was really wrong and have to feel for him as a young man to have to deal with this, the death of his 15 year old girlfriend. And I want to go back for a second to talk about these two young boys and just having the wherewithal to be in that house when these murders happened, probably terrified and, you know, scared at making a move and not knowing if the killer was still there. And then to have that, you know, fortitude to use that phone to call for help. You know, they could have called 911, but just calling
12:35 Speaker 02 somebody that would come help them in any fashion was certainly helpful. And I give them a lot of credit for being able to have the strength to do that through whatever they experienced in that house.
12:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's a good point. I don't think it can be overlooked. I mean, these boys were pretty young. They could have, you know, just hidden and they could have been so scared that they they didn't act at all. But that's not what happened. They at least were able to get to a phone, you know, call Michael. So as you said, you know, there was some strength there to be able to do that.
13:16 Speaker 02 Police asked Michael if he had any idea who might have been responsible for the massacre, and one name jumped to his mind. He told investigators about Keira's strained relationship with her biological father, Domenico Gigante. He had been suddenly trying to be more involved in her life, and she didn't want him there. Still, he kept showing up at the Terwilliger house unannounced and uninvited at all hours. In fact, the day before the murders, he was with Keira when she was out shopping for glasses. Gigante called her and she answered to tell him that she couldn't talk at the moment, and this upset him. According to court documents, he said, fuck you, before hanging up.
13:57 Speaker 01 And it's always interesting to me when people are asked, you know, who they think might be involved. You know, a lot of times people have no idea. They don't even have one single name to throw out there because you know, a lot of families don't have trouble with anyone. But this is a different scenario. I mean, right from the start, Michael gives them the name of the person that he believes it could have been. And then you start to, you know, find out a little bit about the dynamics of the relationship, especially
14:36 Speaker 01 between Domenico and his daughter, Kiara. Obviously, it wasn't good. I mean, when you're saying F you to your daughter and then hanging up on her, well, you got some issues there.
14:50 Speaker 02 And I think police are always going to look at those closest to the victims and sort of work their way out from there. So they probably would have eventually looked at Domenico Gigante. But for Michael to say, hey, there's some problems with this guy. This is someone you're going to want to talk to right away. That probably puts him up a peg in the pecking order of who they want to talk to.
15:12 Speaker 01 Later that day, officers went to Domenico Gigante's. They had the unfortunate task of informing him that his teenage daughter had been killed, but they also wanted to see his reaction to the news. He didn't live with his daughter, Kiara, because he and her mother, Constance, broke up around the time she was born. And when he eventually tried to reach out and start a relationship with her, Kiara hadn't wanted to continue one with him. He tried to reach out and wanted to be in her life, but she refused to reciprocate any of the effort. She just didn't want to see him. She only wanted to be with her mother. As we mentioned, from his text to her the day before, this upset him.
15:58 Speaker 02 The officers also wanted to know if he had any information about who may have wanted to harm Kiara and the rest of her family. So they asked him to go to the Criminal Investigative Services Building. Before they left, Gigante asked to go back inside the home to get his keys. It's not an odd request if you're about to leave your home for an unknown amount of time. But when he went back inside, his roommate, Bruce McCain, came outside to talk to police officers. He had some very legitimate concerns about Gigante and some of the things he was saying.
16:29 Speaker 01 While they were inside, out of earshot of the officers, Bruce asked Gigante if he was the person responsible for the murders. Instead of denying it or playing dumb, he admitted that he had shot Kiara three times. Body cam footage from the notification also shows that Gigante wasn't the one who asked any questions about what happened to Kiara. Bruce seemed much more shocked and concerned than Gigante. And he was the one who immediately asked what happened and whether they had found her at school. He obviously was imagining
17:08 Speaker 01 some type of horrible accident, maybe a car crash, a shooting, or a fight at the school, something of that nature. Not that she had been shot multiple times while she was sleeping in her bed.
17:23 Speaker 02 Bruce McCain was also much more cooperative than Gigante, too. Gigante initially refused to go with officers for the interview, saying that he wouldn't go at this time because he needed to process this. His roommate was the one who said, "Domenico, they need to talk to you." And he finally convinced him to go. Once Bruce knew that Gigante shot Kiara, he was extremely upset. He was sure that Gigante had used his gun to do it. Gigante told him quietly, "It's just you and me now. We have to stick together and we will get through this." His backup plan must have been to let Bruce take the fall if investigators tied Bruce's gun to the murders.
18:02 Speaker 01 And I think you have to put yourself in Bruce's shoes. He's got some kind of explosive information from Domenico. Now, you know, what's he going to do with it? But I really want to go back to, you know, how people act when they're told, you know, very bad news by police. I think in a lot of cases, you see where it really kind of raises suspicion on the part of police, because sometimes people just don't act the way that you would think they would. Right? Bruce acts like, you know, he can't believe it. He's asking questions. He's shocked.
18:47 Speaker 01 But Domenico Gigante doesn't act that way. And he's actually Kiara's dad. So that had to be pretty eye opening for police.
18:57 Speaker 02 You know, when the roommate that probably doesn't really even know the family is more concerned than the father of one of the victims, that probably jumps out. That probably sticks out like a sore thumb. And listeners can find this video online because the footage is out there, the police footage of this interview, this initial interview when they arrive at the scene. And, you know, the body language by Gigante is just sort of matter of fact. There's no real emotion. He's just, you know, again, we talk about all the time that it's hard to tell what somebody is really experiencing in that moment because everybody handles grief
19:42 Speaker 02 and different news differently. But I think most people would probably agree that he just didn't seem phased at all by the news. And in contrast, the roommate is just asking question after question and, and very concerned.
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21:38 Speaker 01 At the police station, Bruce McCain admitted that he knew Gigante had been thinking about the murders before they happened. Just one day prior, Gigante told him, "I guess I'm going to go over there and kill them all." Unfortunately, Bruce didn't take him seriously because this wasn't the first time he had made that kind of threat. He hadn't followed through before. Why should it be expected that he was going to this time? According to police documents, Bruce later said to police, "God help me, maybe I should have known." But it seemed like just another one of his fits.
22:18 Speaker 01 And this is another situation that comes up, right? You have somebody who, let's call it blowing off steam. That's probably not the right term, but they're venting all the time about something, some situation they're not happy with. And maybe they say some things that are, you know, way over the line, but they never do anything until they do. And I think that's kind of the situation that Bruce was in. You know, how proactive is he going to be when this is kind of a regular thing? Gigante venting about Kiara and, and members
23:03 Speaker 01 of her family and not just venting, right? Saying that he's going to kill them, but he doesn't do anything in all these different times. So at a certain point, do you just kind of discount the rantings?
23:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think all of us at one point or another have, has said sort of jokingly, I'm going to kill you. Like if somebody, you know, dumps water on you or plays a prank on you and you say, I'm going to kill you. We don't mean it. We're not actually planning a murder. So it's not like the person you're saying that to is going to suddenly call police, but it, it sounds like this may have been more of a detailed discussion of, I think I'm going to go over there and murder Kara and her family. I, I haven't been in that position, but if I had been and he started talking about it a little bit more detailed
24:01 Speaker 02 and laying it out, if I was Bruce, I think I would have alerted the police. But since I wasn't there, I don't know what tone, what language was used. So maybe Bruce wouldn't have taken that, taken it that seriously.
24:15 Speaker 01 Well, however it went down, the one thing that I am sure is that Bruce has a lot of guilt over the situation. I'm sure he thinks about it and says, well, if I had only done this, that's pretty natural, right? In these stories, but at the time, like I said, he probably just thought it was just another rant. Nothing's going to come of it, but unfortunately this time it did.
24:46 Speaker 02 Looking at the timeline of events from that night, Gigante had expressed his intention less than two hours before he made it a reality. It was about 11:30 PM when he and his roommate were talking about his issues with Kiara. By 1:30, Kiara and her family were dead. Bruce knew that Gigante was capable of violence, though. Gigante had lived with Bruce for about 18 years. And in that time, Gigante had broken Bruce's hip during one of their many arguments. Gigante was gone for less than an hour that night, and it was in the middle of the night. Aside from the sound of the front door and the truck starting, there would have been no indication that Gigante wasn't just in his room asleep. Even if Bruce had woken up during the night, everything probably would have seemed normal to him.
25:31 Speaker 02 And he likely would have no idea that his roommate was off killing his daughter and her family.
25:36 Speaker 01 As for Gigante during his interview, his story was all over the place. He called Constance an idiot because he claimed that she not only smoked marijuana in front of Kiara, she let her use it and let her drink alcohol too. But he also said not much later that he gave marijuana to Kiara, but only so that she wouldn't have to get it from some guy on the street who might use it as leverage for sex. When confronted with the fact that ring camera footage from his own home proved that he left the house with a gun, something he didn't mention in any version of that night,
26:19 Speaker 01 he told investigators that he must have forgotten that he went to a friend's house to smoke weed. It must have just slipped his mind.
26:28 Speaker 02 Gigante claimed that he had missed a call from Kiara at 1:28 that morning. As we know, this is after she was already dead. And Gigante was on his way home to Rockledge. At first, it seemed like he was trying to make up some pretty mild lies to try and throw off the timeline and the investigation. But it turns out that Kiara's phone did call Gigante's at 1:28 in the morning. The children, for whatever reason, called his number before calling Michael Bayshine. He didn't answer because he was fleeing the scene of the murders. It's chilling to think that the children may have spoken to the person responsible when they were asking for help. Timestamps would later prove that the children made their first call to Michael Bayshine just four minutes after Gigante pulled away from the home.
27:14 Speaker 01 Police combed over the text exchanges between Gigante and Kiara just before 6:00 PM on the night before the murders. Gigante texted Kiara a bunch of insults, including fuck you in all capitals. It's not about me dumb ass, fucking bullshit, and finally fucking asshole. She responded, oh yeah, you just lost a lot of respect and then said, good job buddy. As we'll talk about later, Gigante was already upset that she didn't call him dad. Calling him buddy must have really stunk.
27:54 Speaker 01 This is just another interaction that shows exactly why Kiara didn't want to have him in her life. And I don't know that you can blame her for that. I mean, look at the texts that she's getting from her biological father. Now granted, we're probably missing some context in all of this, but no matter what the context is, to say that stuff to your daughter is just, it's really rough. I can't imagine myself ever, you know, writing those types of texts to either one of my daughters.
28:34 Speaker 02 It just seems like somebody that's very immature and probably not good dad material to be, you know, this sounds like a couple of young teenagers having some immature fight over, you know, by text and he's doing this to his 15 year old daughter. And I don't, I don't blame her at all for not wanting anything to do with this guy.
28:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, to me, you know, it seems like a situation where things aren't going the way that he wants them to go. And so he's lashing out, something that, you know, we see with a lot of people. They want things to go a certain way and anytime they don't, then they lash out at the people around them.
29:19 Speaker 02 After the interview with detectives, 36-year-old Domenico "Claw" Gigante was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree premeditated murder. These murders marked the deadliest individual incident in Brevard County in just over a decade. That previous incident was also a homicide involving firearms and children, where a mother killed her four children before she took her own life. During a search of Gigante's room, investigators found a box of Hornady 9mm Luger P22 white cartridge casings with his fingerprints on it. This is the same ammunition used to kill Kara, Constance, Glenda, and Michael. A pair
30:00 Speaker 02 of boots he tried to hide on the bottom shelf of a bookcase matched bloody boot impressions left in the living room at the crime scene. Bruce's handgun was found on top of his dresser. Gigante's fingerprints were on the magazine.
30:14 Speaker 01 And Morphe, you and I, we do so many cases, and there are quite a few of them where, you know, a killer is, at least in their minds, pretty meticulous, right? They're, they're trying to get away with what they're doing. I'm getting the sense here that Domenico Gigante was by no means a criminal mastermind. You know, he leaves this box of ammunition with his fingerprints on it. He doesn't even get rid of these boots that he wore at the crime scene. He just puts them, you know, on a shelf, and he doesn't get rid of the murder
30:58 Speaker 01 weapon. And police are easily able to, you know, find his fingerprints on the magazine.
31:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, I agree with you. Not very smart. It seems like there's three kinds of murders like this. One where the person absolutely does nothing to try and hide it. They just say, I give up. You got me. One where there's a real half-assed attempt to cover it up. And then one where it's, it's covered up so well, you're not sure if the person actually did it. And I think Gigante falls here in that middle column where, you know, he, he made a poor attempt to cover it up.
31:34 Speaker 01 Well, like you said earlier, he did use Bruce's handgun. And maybe he thought for some reason, if it ever hit the fan, they would think it was Bruce because it was his gun. But the fact that his fingerprints are on the magazine kind of, you know, leaned away from that idea. Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey held a press conference to update the shocked community. He said, I'm going to tell you that this is an extremely violent individual with an extremely violent past dating back as far as 2005, who should have never been on our streets where
32:18 Speaker 01 he could take the lives of this entire family. That 2005 arrest was for domestic violence and battery, followed by multiple arrests in 2008 for cruelty to animals. This wasn't just neglect or being too rough with them. According to Sheriff Ivey, he actually killed the dog by slamming his head on a table and breaking its neck, then stabbing another dog. This is the same year that Keira was born. Sheriff Ivey said, there is a direct correlation between somebody who can harm an animal, somebody that has enough evil inside to harm an animal, has that same evil to harm a human.
33:04 Speaker 01 And, and obviously that information is why we gave the disclaimer at the beginning of the episode. That's rough stuff to hear, but I agree with the, the sheriff. You know, if you can do something like that to an animal, is it that much of a stretch to think that you have the same type of evil inside you to harm a human? You know, a lot of people, if they were really being honest with themselves, might say, well, I could harm a human before I could harm an animal. That's how much people love their animals.
33:43 Speaker 02 I think it's because animals had no chance to defend themselves. You know, humans, as tragic and terrible as this is, they have the ability to lock doors or to arm themselves, or maybe call 911 or run away. Animals really have no idea what's happening and no way to defend against it. So I think that's why so many people get really angry when somebody does this to an animal. And we've seen it time and time again, the people that do this kind of stuff to animals, you know, they go on to do things like that to humans. It's not a big leap.
34:19 Speaker 01 Well, just look at how many serial killers we've profiled over the years and how many of them had cruelty to animals in their past. There is some correlation. There's just no way around it.
34:34 Speaker 02 Somehow, Gigante apparently managed to stay out of trouble to 2012 when he was charged with aggravated assault and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Todd Brown, who was the spokesperson for the state attorney's office, said at a briefing, "There is no justification for these crimes and our office will aggressively prosecute Gigante, seeking justice on behalf of the victims and the maximum penalty permissible under Florida law." Gigante pleaded not guilty to the four murders and was held without bail. One month after the killings, a grand jury indicted him on all four counts of murder and an additional count of armed burglary while inflicting great bodily harm or death.
35:17 Speaker 01 Following the indictment, the prosecution filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty. Florida State Attorney Phil Archer briefed the public, saying, "Even though Gigante's prior convictions could not have produced a prison sentence preventing these horrific crimes, I am aware of the great responsibility placed on my office to use every means possible to protect society from predators and seek justice on behalf of victims." Going on to explain that this includes asking a jury to impose the ultimate punishment of putting a criminal defendant to death to ensure that outcome.
35:59 Speaker 01 Well, we talk about the death penalty a lot and I understand it's a sensitive topic. Some people are are good with it. Some people are completely opposed to it. But in my mind, if there was someone who deserved that ultimate punishment, it would be the person who could commit a crime like this.
36:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, four murders of sleeping victims, no chance to defend themselves. One of them, his own daughter. I mean, that's just as low as you can go. And if there is a case that calls for the death penalty, you would think this would be it. After his arrest, Gigante was very upset with his roommate Bruce for cooperating with the investigation. Astonishingly, as a last ditch effort, Gigante asked Bruce to confess to the murders out of love. Obviously, Bruce declined to take the fall for his roommate. Surveillance footage, cell phone records and GPS data all proved that Gigante left his home in Rockledge,
37:06 Speaker 02 a little less than half an hour away, around 1 a.m. and headed to Cannaveral Groves. Gigante left his phone at home during the time of the murders. There was no activity from the time he pulled out of the driveway until he got back to his house. This appears to have been done on purpose to try and create an alibi for himself. If his phone was at his house, how could he have been at the crime scene? He pointed to the phone's location as proof that he was innocent before his arrest.
37:33 Speaker 01 As we mentioned earlier, surveillance footage from Gigante's house showed him getting into his truck with a gun in his hand. More surveillance from a home nearby the crime scene captured Gigante pulling up to 4075 Allen Shepherd Avenue and parking in the driveway. After he parked, he walked up to the home and broke in by kicking in the front door. A boot print was left next to the door handle. He went to Glenda's bedroom door first. It was locked, so he had to kick that door in too. He shot her in the face.
38:10 Speaker 02 Constance and Michael were in the living room when he found them. They slept there in a makeshift bedroom that was cordoned off from the rest of the room by bookshelves. The noise from kicking down the doors and shooting Glenda had woken them both up. Michael was up and walking toward the noise when he was shot. Constance was found lying on top of Michael in a pool of blood on the floor. Footprints tracked through their blood and around the house as he walked down the hall to Kara's room. Her door was locked too, so he kicked it in and shot her three times in the head. On his way out of the house, he shot Constance one more time, directly in the back of the head. His arrest records list Gigante as over 200 pounds. So kicking down all these doors apparently was not an issue for him.
38:55 Speaker 01 The surveillance camera that caught Gigante arriving also captured the sound of him kicking down the door and multiple gunshots as he made his way through the home, as well as the sound of a woman screaming, which we know from the affidavits in the case was Constance. The attack happened incredibly quickly. It was over almost before it began, according to the timestamps on the surveillance footage. Gigante arrived at 1:19 a.m. and left just four minutes later. The actual murders, from the time he shot Glenda to the time he shot Kara,
39:35 Speaker 01 took place in approximately 90 seconds before he fled. And Michael Bayshym arrived there just a few minutes later. If this had taken longer and Gigante was delayed, Michael may have encountered Gigante fleeing and we may be talking about one more victim. So there's a couple of things that jump out at me here. One is just how quickly all of the people in this house were murdered. You think about the span of 90 seconds. 90 seconds goes by so very quickly. I mean, I think it gives a sense of, number one, how determined he was.
40:22 Speaker 01 To do this, but then number two, how efficient he actually was in carrying it all out. And then the other thing was, you know, kind of all of what was captured on surveillance footage. You know, we talk about it a lot, but the proliferation of the doorbell cameras, home security, cameras, things like that, they have added just a completely different element to catching what happens in some of these crimes. You think about it more, there's
41:04 Speaker 01 video, there was also sound. So, I mean, look at the evidence that police have. They have this guy leaving his house with a gun in his hand when he gets into his truck. They have footage of him parking in the driveway and then footage and audio of him kicking in the door, gunshot audio, screaming audio. I mean, this is a prosecutor's dream to have this much evidence against a suspect.
41:43 Speaker 02 You know, unfortunately, this is probably an outlier as far as crimes go. You don't always have smoking gun evidence, no pun intended, to where you have, you know, video footage of the suspect leaving their house and then arriving at the victim's house. This just seems like something that's going to be a nightmare for a defense team to try and defend. How do they explain that away? And I wonder if eventually a defense team for him might try and just whittle down the sentence somehow and change it from a death penalty to a life sentence instead, and maybe argue that he had mitigating factors, you know, mental
42:27 Speaker 02 health issues, whatever, just so he spared the death penalty. Because it seems, just from what we're looking at here, it seems like such an open and shut case that it would be hard to get him off these charges completely.
42:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think in some situations, the defense knows that even though they're gonna try, it's going to be very tough to completely get an acquittal on the murders. And then it becomes more of a, well, how do we mitigate this sentence?
43:01 Speaker 02 Gigante was back in his home in Rockledge by 1:41 a.m., just 20 minutes after leaving the home on Allen Shepherd Avenue. As soon as he got inside the house, he continued to create his alibi. He texted Kara apologizing for not answering when she called because he said he was on the toilet. He also apologized for overreacting earlier in the day and said he would be bringing her sushi soon, like everything was fine.
43:27 Speaker 01 And we need to talk a little bit more about these two young boys who survived this horrible situation. The reports are redacted because of the, the children's ages, but one of them, possibly the six-year-old, thought that Constance and Michael had been attacked by a coyote. They had no way to process what they were actually seeing. There was just blood and what they thought were scratches. They didn't even know what bullet wounds looked like. In their young minds, they couldn't conceive what happened. Thankfully, Gigante left those two boys alive. And we don't really know why he left them alive.
44:09 Speaker 01 You know, it seems strange to me. I get it. They were very young and maybe he did draw a line as in, you know, that was something he, he wasn't willing to cross, but that's kind of hard to believe, given what he did in the house. But maybe that's what it was. Don't know.
44:33 Speaker 02 Gigante may have killed all these family members because he thought they had helped Keira turn against him. Keira called victim Michael Watson dad, and that bothered Gigante because she didn't call him that. She called him by his first name. But what could he really expect? Michael was the one who had raised her. Constance and Gigante had only been dating for about two months before she got pregnant. And after Keira was born, it was Gigante that left and didn't want to be in her life. Constance decided to get back together with Michael Watson, who she had dated in the past. He raised Keira, and he and Constance went on to have two more children together before breaking up. The relationship must have remained amicable, though, because they apparently continued to live together with
45:18 Speaker 02 their children under one roof. Gigante's interest in being involved in Keira's life was recent and unexpected.
45:25 Speaker 01 And you know, when you talk about this relationship between Domenico and Keira, it doesn't surprise me one bit that she really didn't, you know, want to have that much to do with him. I'm sure she felt abandoned. He had not been in her life really from the get go. And then all of a sudden, it's like he wants to, to come back in and be dad. That's not going to go over well for a lot of people.
45:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, we often talk about how young people or teenagers make foolish decisions and sometimes don't think things through all the way. But a lot of times, they have a really good bullshit meter and a really good bullshit detector, and they're able to tell when somebody is, is not good or not good for them, or maybe shouldn't be in their life, in their life. And I think Keira sensed this in Gigante, and she was probably right to not want him to be in her life.
46:33 Speaker 01 Gigante told his roommate Bruce that he was going to plead insanity, but the reason he gave him is redacted from the reports. It seems he knew exactly who he wanted to kill and he accomplished that goal. This was an extremely clear case of premeditated murder. He went there with the intention of killing and he succeeded. He kicked multiple doors down to make it happen. He had a history of violence. He had a history of hurting animals. There is a lot of troubling history with this man.
47:09 Speaker 02 If these murders hadn't happened and Gigante was still in Cara's life, it's hard to imagine that that life for her would have been without issues. Even without any of his previous charges or behaviors. At the end of the day, he's still the kind of father willing to kill his child because he was angry. Can you really blame Cara for not wanting any kind of relationship with someone like that? Even if they were a blood relative. Knowing about his prior crimes wouldn't have made it any easier to want to get close to him. He killed two dogs in a very brutal manner. What kind of happy childhood would she have been able to have with a man like that as her father? Always wondering if her family pet would be safe from him. The behavior we know about is just the stuff that led to the criminal charges.
47:52 Speaker 02 It may be very possible that eventually Cara may have cut off all ties with Gigante. And then maybe the same thing might have happened down the road further.
48:01 Speaker 01 Domenico Gigante is still currently awaiting trial. He's being held without bond at Brevard County Jail. It's always possible that we won't see this case make it to trial. He could still decide to plead guilty. It would save the trouble of a trial. And if he is found guilty, a long and drawn out process of appeals. The children will probably have to testify and face Gigante in court. If he doesn't decide to change his plea. And the last thing we want to see is those kids have to do this. You know, relive the terrible events of that night. But if it happens more, you know, they may have to, to be brave once again.
48:46 Speaker 01 To help put this guy away. Now, as we said, you know, as we wrap this case up, the mountain of evidence against this guy seems to be staggering. You have. Digital data, you've got surveillance, video and audio. You've got fingerprints, the bloody boots. I mean, I, I feel like if you're the prosecutor, you have to be pretty secure in the thought that you're going to be able to get a conviction.
49:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm no attorney, but to me, this seems like one of the easiest cases that a prosecutor could ever get. You've got the murder weapon in Gigante's home. You have the footage of him leaving with the gun in his hand and arriving a short time later at the murder scene and kicking the door in. I mean, if you just had those three things there, it, it seems like it would be more than enough to convict him. So again, that defense team, I, I don't know what they're going to do, but you know, maybe the, at the end of the day, they're just trying to lighten his sentence and that's it.
50:00 Speaker 01 And you know, it'll be interesting to see what decision he makes. You know, does he look at this mountain of evidence and decide to, to plead guilty? Or as some people do, does he want to draw this out? Does he want to try to make it a circus, a spectacle? And he could even try to, you know, run down or bad mouth the victims. And maybe that's becomes part of his plan. You know, with a guy like this, you have no idea. I feel like he's capable of anything.
50:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I, I feel sorry for, you know, everybody in this case, but Kara, you know, especially because she's didn't have her father in her life. And she was okay with that because she had someone that she considered her father. But here Giganti came back and inserted himself into her life against, really against her will. She really didn't want to be part of it and was trying to push him away. And he just could not handle that rejection of him. And you know, he went to these extreme measures to remedy it and to make her pay. And it's just. Someone that is supposed to be protective, that's your offspring there. You think that
51:23 Speaker 02 you would want them to have a good life, even if it's not with you in their life. And here he ended her life and it's just so tragic.
51:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, the whole time that we were going through this, the one thought that kept popping into my head was, you know, this guy is angry about the current situation, right? That Kiera doesn't want him in her life. But like we said, why would she, given this guy's history? And really, everything that happened was of his own doing. I mean, it's his actions, right? Leaving, not being around for 14, 15 years that caused the, the feelings that Kiera had. And I don't
52:16 Speaker 01 blame her one bit. She must have felt abandoned by this guy and like she didn't even know him. He must have felt like a stranger to her. And on top of that, maybe a dangerous stranger, knowing, you know, what his, his past history and record was. But at the end of the day, I think more if this was a guy who was very selfish, you know, he wanted things to be a certain way. And when he couldn't make that happen, he chose to, to end the lives of, you
52:57 Speaker 01 know, a lot of different people. But that's it for our episode on the Terwilliger family murders. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a review, a rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast really helps us out.
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53:37 Speaker 01 So that's it for another episode of Criminology, but Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then for Mike.
53:47 Speaker 02 And Morph.
53:48 Speaker 01 We'll talk to you next week.
53:49 Speaker 02 Take care everyone.
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