Bakersfield, California on July the 8th, 2003, local police detective Jeff Watts got to work early. The morning I got the call I um I was the duty uh detective for call-out homicides. Um I’m sitting at my desk. I thought my day was going to be an easy day. It was a Tuesday morning. Um we had just had a long 4th of July weekend.

Jeff could not have been more wrong. I had sat at my desk and I heard the radio traffic of um suspicious activity unknown circumstances at 901 3rd Street. I remember thinking um that something didn’t sound right. Uh just the way the call was coming through on the radio. Shortly thereafter I received a phone call at my desk at the police department uh that there it was a homicide at the at the location.

Bakersfield has its fair share of crime. Gun deaths are not uncommon. Jeff headed to the scene. I was looking at the scene from a the a standpoint of any um number of things whether it could have been a burglary, whether it could have been uh a specific like a drive-by shooting um because I hadn’t walked in yet.

Initially when we enter a house when it’s a when we know it’s a homicide, in this case fire department had been there. We were told by the original reporting party that there were supposed to be five people in the house and of the five people that were were in there, two were adults and three were children. The residents were all from one family.

Ernestine Harper, her daughter Joanie, and Joanie’s three children, Marcus, four, Lindsey, two, and baby Marshall, just six weeks old. I truly thought, okay, this cannot happen. This entire family, you’re talking grandmother, mother, kids, three generations. >> [music] >> As the police began recording the scene, they found Joni, Marcus, and Lindsey in the main bedroom, all on the bed, dead.

Jeff Cecil was the lead crime scene technician that day. Each of the children had single gunshot wounds. Joni, you could see that some aggression was taken out on Joni. So, Joni had multiple gunshot wounds. She had multiple stab wounds. Police had been alerted by a close friend who had heard nothing from the family since seeing them at church on July the 6th, two days before.

From the clothing they were found in, it seemed the family had been murdered after returning home from the service. Ernestine, Joni, they were just completely involved with the church. They were very faithful. They would um they would go to church starting in the morning on Sunday. >> [music] >> They’d break for lunch, and they’d be there for the rest of the evening after lunch.

 They usually their routine was morning church, morning service. They’d go to lunch. That particular day where they were murdered, they went to Black Angus. And then the routine was to go home, rest, take a nap. In the hallway outside her bedroom, Ernestine had been shot twice. A gun by her side indicated she had heard the killer and tried to intervene with her own [music] weapon.

She had uh unfortunately uh some old ammunition in this handgun. She’s squeezing that trigger. She’s trying to work that gun. Doesn’t doesn’t go off. There’s the bullets are bad. >> [snorts] >> And they they they were corroded, but you know, uh she did try to she did try to save her family. This crime scene would have been so traumatic for the police officers who who were first on scene.

 Uh it was basically carnage. The scene that greeted those police officers would have been horrific. I was only 3 years into the job. I had never uh worked a mass murder um as in this case. So, it was one of those those feelings where this is something big. Um and this needs to be solved. The hardest part were the babies. So, you have very young kids in that house.

Um innocent kids that that were, you know, just taking a nap and I think the hardest part was just being in there and seeing the the destruction that was caused to them. You know, I have kids this age and so some of the hardest part is just to look at these kids and and in their stillness and just wondering, you know, why somebody would do this.

As they searched the house, it became clear not all the family were accounted for. Baby Marshall appeared to be missing. Once we found out Marshall was missing, we put a halt on the video. Everybody on deck, start looking for this baby. Do we have a baby? Has it been kidnapped? So, I went in and documented the scene so that we could start looking for the baby.

My main area of concern was going to be that bedroom with the the the main bodies. Another lab technician handled everything near Earnestine in the hallway. And then a third lab technician was documenting the exterior of the residence. There’s a possibility there’s fingerprints. And we need to look for trace evidence.

So, if the person’s walking around, they might have dropped some hairs or fibers. And then, um DNA, the invisible stuff. But the only prints and DNA they found belonged to the family. I started putting yellow evidence numbers uh to mark um each physical item of evidence. So, um in my crime scene photos, you’ll start to see yellow numbers.

 There was clothing evidence that was on the floor. And that belongs to the kids, but that’s still evidence to us that that could have some potential value. At first glance, it looked like the killer was interrupted while trying to rob the house. See a computer that was removed from the bedroom and placed into the laundry room like it was set up that somebody was going to take it out the garage and steal it.

 You can see things that are that are knocked over, things that are high-value items. Uh back in 2003, uh a big-screen TV was was a high-value item. That may maybe five or six thousand dollars for a TV back then. But something [music] doesn’t add up. Somebody is breaking in this house, uh why wasn’t the TV taken? There’s money on it on the nightstand um in the bedroom where Joni and the kids were killed.

Um large amount of money. Why wasn’t it taken? And it became clear, hey, this scene looks like it’s a staged scene. Somebody is wanting us to think, wanting the police to think that this was potentially a burglary gone bad. And it was pretty clear to me that um this was somebody that was um intent on killing a family versus committing a burglary and being caught in the act.

 Just by, you know, the very nature of what was seen. As well as the baby, there was one other family member missing. Joni’s estranged husband, Vincent Brothers. When we found out that Vincent was the the husband, my concern what initially went to where was he at? Is he alive? Is he outstanding? Is he safe? It turns out Vincent was in Ohio, 2 and 1/2 thousand miles away.

We were told now he’s in Columbus. Well, let’s make sure he’s safe. Somebody’s going to want to take the time to walk into a house and kill his family, [music] they may be after him as well. By now, the media had got wind of the case and were out in [music] force. As news spread, it sent shockwaves through [music] the community.

I don’t think there was panic. I I don’t remember that at that being part of I I mean, I think people were interested in, you know, having the having the person brought to justice, but it wasn’t a fear I I don’t remember it as being a fever pitch like that. It was more of a fever pitch, at least from where I was coming from, of sadness for for this family and just disbelief [music] that something like this could happen.

The team had been at the house for 15 hours when Jeff Cecil made a heart-rending discovery. I think there was only three of us in the residence. So, after the photographs were taken and one of the detectives moved a pillow that was on the bed and there was the baby. So, the baby had actually been covered by a pillow.

 He had a single gunshot wound. It was an immediate uh call to action for me. I mean, I I truly thought, “Okay, this cannot happen. There was somebody out there that had committed five murders and was at the time Scott free. >> [music] >> In Bakersfield, California, a brutal murder of a family with young [music] children had left local police stunned.

It’s just something that that stays with you. I think it takes a very unique person to to be able to internalize what you see and keep it in there and not let it boil over and and wreck your your whole life. It’s a tough tough job. Definitely something that um it’s tough on you. And your your feelings are we got to catch the person who did this.

And we need to make sure that they they pay the price. >> [music] >> Concerned that the killer may have been targeting the entire family, lead detective Jeff Watts needed to contact his estranged husband and father, Vincent Brothers, fast. There was a period of time during that first day um of July 8th, 2003 uh that I wasn’t sure if Vincent was a victim himself.

And so we had put out a broadcast, a national broadcast, trying to attempt to locate him, check his welfare um and if he was going to be okay, let him know what happened. And at some point he turned himself into Elizabeth City, North Carolina Police Department. And this is on the same day, July 8th, 2003. Um and my partner uh Don Currier and I, we flew out that night from LAX on the last flight coming out.

 And we landed in Elizabeth City and the first time I laid eyes on Vincent was in a um in the city council chambers there. Uh he wasn’t he wasn’t under arrest uh but he wanted to know what happened. Vincent had driven from Ohio to Elizabeth to visit his mother. Now he had arrived at the local police station to discover why they wanted to talk to him.

Vincent’s reaction to uh learning the death of his family uh because I told him I I explained to him what happened. Uh what I said he started screaming for his mother uh multiple times. And when I tried to get his attention and talk to him he charged at me. Uh not run but charged toward me in a very aggressive manner and I remember thinking you know, I don’t know what is going through this man’s mind.

 And so I told him multiple multiple times, “Hey look, we are trying to figure out what’s going on with your family. Will you talk to us?” Never gave us a statement. Didn’t want to talk to us at that point. And um so that was my first encounter with Vincent Brothers. And then he spoke with his believe it was his sister and they decided he needed a lawyer.

He wasn’t under arrest. We were at that point fact gathering. That was it. No interrogation. >> [music] >> Interview. I wanted information. I wanted to help him help with his family’s murders. And that’s what we got. >> [music] >> Vincent Brothers [music] was the vice principal of Emerson Junior High School. Local reporter Herb Benham’s daughter attended Emerson [music] when Vincent Brothers worked there.

He was such a powerful force at that school. Vincent [music] would stand there in the morning first thing at 7:30 or 7:20 right in front of the entrance, >> [music] >> and those kids would come in and they’d stream in there by the hundreds. [music] And he would look them in the eye just like this and he’d put out his hand and he’d shake them and he would make them shake his hand.

And make sure you and you look me in the eye while you are shaking my hand. And he would do that every single morning that I showed up there. He was there doing that. That’s the vibe he gave those kids and I think they respected him for that. They know who Vincent Brothers was. But Jeff Watts had doubts.

 Unsettled by Vincent’s strange behavior, he reached out to FBI profiler Mark Safarik and asked him to build a portrait of the killer by working the crime scene from the ground up. What I was being asked to do was to look at this crime scene, to look at the dynamics of the interaction between the offender and these five victim members of the Harper family.

 I’m looking at the level of planning and organization, of access to the victims or access to this residence. And then also also how did this individual get out? So, ingress and egress from the from the location. What happened to the bodies after the murder? What is going on in the crime scene? Safarik began his profile by stepping into the shoes of the killer that day.

It was a Sunday afternoon, middle of the afternoon. It was a sunny day and people are out and about. So, this is not a typical work day. So, people are out walking around. They’re walking their dogs. It’s a house that sits on a corner of a very busy street. The The residential street isn’t that busy, but the main street is.

 So, again, this presents a rather high risk for the offender to offend at that location, especially when you’re using a firearm. Jeff Watson and his team had reported that the house had seemed [music] very secure. The house was well fortified. Wrought iron on the doors, wrought iron on the windows. Inside the houses were uh security bars under the doors so you could not force them open.

Ernestine kept dowels laid in the track of the window or the sliding glass door so that even if you could unlock the door, even if you could get through the burglar bars, prying that door open, you still wouldn’t be able to open up the door because there’s a dowel there. And the offender knew this. He let himself in, removed the dowel that was blocking the slider from being open, went outside, closed it, waited [music] for them to come home and take a nap like they always did, came back in, and that’s how he entered and how he exited.

So, there’s no forced entry to this residence, which means that the offender had to provide access for himself at an earlier time. This suggested the killer had prior knowledge of the home security, but once inside, he also seemed to know his way around. Ernestine was coming for him with a gun, but he got to her first.

Now, here’s this interesting dynamic in this house. There is like this sliding glass door here, which would not be the the location one would think to get access to Ernestine over here. The logical path, if you didn’t know this house layout, be to go [music] this way across the family room, through the kitchen, into the formal dining room, through the formal living room, and finally into the hallway where he would have encountered Ernestine.

But that’s not the way he went. He went the shortest route, which is here. We know he came through this way because he fired several gunshots, one [music] striking the wall, and that the direction of that shot could only have come from having come down this hallway. So, this was a way that someone would come if you knew the layout of this house.

Jeff Waltz had already discounted a burglary gone wrong as the reason for the shooting. That meant that the intruder may have come to the house intending to kill. Ernestine had been active in being critically vocal about the local gangs in the area. So, when you sort of place yourself in an elevated position of risk by being outwardly critical of of the gangs, you can make yourself a target potentially for those gangs.

 So, is her death and the death of the others related to this risk? But the killer’s attention seemed to have focused on Joni and the children, not Ernestine. She was the only of the five victims that’s not only shot, but she stabbed, too. Um that spoke to me a little bit as well. I mean, why are you going to shoot somebody in the head twice and then want to stab them? In most homicides, as in most crimes, once the offender is done with the homicide, what we typically see is they leave.

 But we know that the offender covered up both Marcus and covered up Joni. Not only that, then the offender also covered Marshall. Why are you depersonalizing these victims? Why is it uncomfortable for you to see these see what you’ve done to these victims? Because you have a relationship with not only Joni, but with the children.

 So, now who who fits into that category? When the police entered the crime scene to see a wife, a mother-in-law, and three children killed, straight away that is indicative of a family annihilation case. So, they would have been looking straight away for the father. As Jeff Watts dug deeper into Vincent Brothers’ background, he began to uncover a disturbing, entangled picture.

This case took 9 months for me [snorts] to put together. And it wasn’t for lack of you know, not having things to do. During that 9-month period, I put together um a report on just Vincent Brothers’ girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, lovers, um ex-wives. An entire binder. I mean, a 3-in binder. That’s un- unbelievable.

And we had to go through all of those women, make contact with all of them. The women who’d been involved with Brothers told shocking stories of infidelity, abuse, and violence. A teaching colleague reported a sinister episode of stalking. Small wonder Vincent’s relationship with Joni was rocky. Initially, they got married in January of uh 2000, and then they filed for divorce like a month later.

And then they remarried in Las Vegas um in January of 2003 if I remember right. >> [snorts] >> Um The marriage was not good. In this case, when we look at Vincent Brothers, uh we need to look at obviously his relationship with his wife, but also really significantly his relationship with previous partners. And what we see is a misogynistic, violent, domestic abuse perpetrator and a stalker.

 And what we know about stalkers is that stalkers who commit violence and harassment against their partners and other people are very dangerous. And they will go on and perpetuate more and more violence and potentially homicide. Vincent Brothers was now the cops’ prime suspect. But Brothers had an alibi. On the day of the murders, he was 2 and 1/2 thousand miles away.

Jeff Watts had to somehow solve an impossible conundrum. I kept on trying to figure out how he was able to be in two places at once. In Bakersfield, California, Detective Jeff Watts had hit a brick wall. After months of painstaking investigation, he now suspected Vincent Brothers had killed his wife, Joanie Harper, her mother, Ernestine, and their three children.

We wanted to make sure that there was no potential other suspect. We wanted to make sure every suspect that could have been out there was eliminated, which left Vincent. All the evidence always pointed toward Vincent. Following his police interview, Vincent Brothers returned to Bakersfield, Jeff Watts kept a close eye on him.

He was under constant surveillance. We weren’t just going to let somebody like this run around town. Vincent knew the cops were on his tail >> [music] >> and seemed to enjoy it. He would like to I don’t want to say taunt but let the officers know that he knew they were there, you know. He’d ride by him on a bicycle and wave or say good morning officers, that type of deal.

We had wiretapped his phone and his cell phone. He thought he was being pretty slick and he’d walk from his apartment to the payphone down the block by a gas station and make calls on that. Problem was we wiretapped that phone, too. So, um there were times I I one time if I remember right, he was talking to his mother.

But he was disguising his voice and she’s she said, “Vincent, is that you?” And his response was, “Mom!” >> [snorts] >> And I remember thinking, “Oh my god, this guy. He is something else. I mean, we all know it’s you.” What we often see in with these type of perpetrators is when they can get away with their using the superficial charm and they think they have somebody believing [music] it, they will they will go with that.

 This is a man who’s got away with things [music] consistently all his life. So, I absolutely believe that he was so egotistical to believe that he could have get away with this. The family funeral was held on July the 16th, 2003 and the community turned out in force to pay its respects. >> [music] >> Vincent was every inch the grieving husband and father.

The funeral was at the at our convention center. I don’t know how many people attended it but there was thousands of people attended the funerals. You’re grateful that in this tragic time that the community banded together and at the funeral, there was, you know, there’s people that never knew these people, but they showed up and they played paid their respects to them.

While the people of Bakersfield grieved, Jeff Watts continued digging. He decided to probe deeper into Vincent’s alibi. One of the potential alibis was [music] Vincent’s credit card and signature being used on July 6th, 2003 at AJ Wright, which is [music] a a store and uh Walmart. Then Jeff had a brainwave. He checked out the store’s CCTV to see if he could spot the transactions taking place, and he found something unexpected.

The man using the credit card in the video is Vincent’s brother, Melvin. Melvin brother’s had actually forged Vincent’s signature and bought certain items at Vincent’s request at certain locations, and then use Vincent’s credit card, and that was all at the request of Vincent brothers. It was the first major break in the investigation.

It began to look like Vincent had duped his brother. Vincent’s defense was, “I was always in Columbus. I was using credit cards. I never left my brother’s house that whole weekend. You can ask my brother and his family. They heard me.” Well, it turns out they said they heard him, and then those statements later became, “Well, maybe I didn’t hear anything.

” The fact that Vincent was not in Columbus on the day of the murders didn’t by itself make him the murderer. Jeff Watts now had to prove that Vincent was in Bakersfield. One of the items of evidence was the rental car that he had rented once he arrived in Columbus, Ohio. I rented it from Dollar Rental.

 It was a um >> [music] >> a Neon, a Dodge Neon. It was blue. I remember thinking, you know, we really need to go outside of the box. I mean, that this this man is just literally littered with alibis. And we knew we had something solid in the mileage of that car. We knew that the car could play a big factor. And we got to thinking, what what evidence could show that he was in California? While in Vincent’s possession, the car had clocked up an incredible 5,000 mi, enough mileage for a round trip.

We sent officers, detectives, to every convenience store, gas station, anything on I-40 from Bakersfield to Columbus to seize videotape. And we seized it. And then we assigned detectives to watch hundreds of hours of videotapes to see if he walked into any store or parked his car to gas it anywhere. So, that proved negative, but it also allowed the thinking of, “Okay, what happens if he picked up a hitchhiker, a insect, a bug while he’s driving?” Anybody has an older car is going to know when they look at the radiator,

look at all that. Dead bugs all over it, right? So, I requested the FBI remove that radiator from that rental car. They removed it, they packaged it up. Though he didn’t know it, Jeff Watts was about to write a new chapter in criminal forensics. We got a hold of Dr. Lynn Kimsey. Now, Dr.

 Kimsey is an entomologist with the University of California, Davis. Called her up. If you look at the insects on this radiator, can you tell me where the vehicle has been? We thought, anything for a weird life. Never done it before. No one ever has. Maybe it’ll [music] work. Uh, maybe not. We went over the radiator pretty thoroughly.

 You know, picking off everything and putting on clean white paper [music] so you could see it and then trying to figure out what it was. I’m the queen of bug splats right now, you know that. Because of this case. The painstaking work took Kimsey’s team more than 5 hours. She was able [music] to, based on charting for us, show us where every one of those specific insects was, um, >> [music] >> confined to a certain area, a certain region.

There were four, maybe five insects that we found on that radiator that could only have gotten onto the car in the southwestern states. Nowhere in the Midwest, nowhere [music] east of the Rockies. It had to be in the southwest. So, once we had that and she was able to collect specimens and she’s an expert. The woman is an expert in her field.

 She was able to actually show us specimens of the actual bug. We found a paper wasp, I should say the fragments of a paper wasp. And it was another species of insect found only in southwestern states. There was a true bug in the family [music] Piesmatidae, um, and it was one of the things that’s only found in sort of the Arizona sort of northwestern Arizona, California, New Mexico, uh, um, very, very [music] regionalized, but a slightly more southern distribution cuz it has very specific food plant, so it doesn’t

go very far. Then we found the grasshopper, which had very specific distributions kind of in the four corners area of Arizona, um New Mexico, and so on. There was an additional bug which is a lygaeid that we found. Um it was harder to get specific information on that one, but it did put the car >> [music] >> into California.

But nothing we found actually put the car into Bakersfield. But we could put it into California. I don’t know the difference between a true bug and a regular bug or paper wasp and a red shank grasshopper, but she did. And all three of those things that I just mentioned were on that radiator. And all three of those things were indigenous just to the west of the Rockies.

Professor Kimsey could draw only one conclusion. If it’s on your radiator, it means you had to encounter it in that place, which meant that even though the testimony was that he had never left Ohio in this rental car, he clearly, and since he was only the fourth person to, as I understand it, the fourth person to actually have rented that car, it was brand new.

They could account for all of the other drivers, you know, short distances in Ohio, and so by placing the car in California, we placed him in California. Vincent Brothers was last seen in Columbus on Friday, July the 4th, and next seen late on Monday, the 7th. Could he have made such a massive journey in the time? What we found on the radiator implied that the car had been driven primarily at night because we found none of the common things fly during summer months, you know, painted lady butterflies, sulfur butterflies,

none of that was on the car. And yet, if you’ve driven around California at all during the summer and other parts of the the country, those butterflies are everywhere. And you hit them. Right? But we didn’t find any, which suggested that he was doing a lot of night driving. By driving nights and day and taking only a few short breaks, Vincent Brothers could have made his rendezvous with murder and still return to Columbus in the time available.

Detective Jeff Watts had enough to make his move. The net was closing in on family mass murder suspect Vincent Brothers. Detective Jeff Watts had astonishing evidence based on insects found in the radiator of Brothers’ rental car, showing that he had secretly made a round trip of 5,000 mi to kill his family. We thought, okay, we got the mileage.

We might not have him on video, but we got bugs on board insects and something that he could have never got in Columbus. And we knew the previous three drivers never left Columbus. So, that was a that was a a good hit for us, a a good home run. I’ve never heard of anybody ever even coming with up with that idea of of looking for bugs.

The evidence was strong, but it didn’t prove that Brothers was present at the house at the time of the murders. Jeff Watts needed something to clinch the case. His CSI partner, Jeff Cecil, had some news from the crime scene. We found a glove tip that was um just the tip of a finger and that was found underneath a purse where all the contents were dumped out.

So, that was a unique thing to find and it it did ultimately have DNA on it. When the DNA comes back, uh Vincent Brothers could not be excluded from being that being his DNA. Vincent had of course lived in the house. His DNA was everywhere. It could have been he was wearing them to paint a paint a part of the residence.

 Uh he’s wearing them to do some some work so he didn’t get his hands dirty. In this case, the importance of the glove tip [music] was its location. Under a purse that had belonged to the victim that had been intentionally dumped out. That was pretty significant. And it suggests that he was there not only in the house at some given time, but it suggests that he was there during the murders.

After 9 months, it was time to charge Vincent Brothers with five counts of first-degree murder. But first, they had to find him. My partner and I were actually going to meet him at an airport at Los Angeles International Airport. He was scheduled to actually fly in from being out of state. And so we’re waiting at the the the jet bridge of this airplane that’s disembarking.

No Vincent. So, at the last minute, just like he always had been, he changes airline flight. And it’s just I mean, that was quintessential Vincent Brothers. Just constantly turning left when you think he’s right. We drove back from Los Angeles to Bakersfield and we found him. It was early in the morning. It was just as after dawn.

And he was walking to uh the community mailboxes, you know, the set of 9 12 mailboxes that the they use in residential areas. So, he was now living in a gated community with a brand new house that he had built. No worries in the world. And we drove up and we put the handcuffs on him. And I’ll tell you what, that was the best feeling in the world.

The people who knew him were stunned. And the rest Well, even but even the people who didn’t know him were It’s you know, you’re a vice principal at a school, you’re a high flyer. Who Who Who does something like that? So, there was a little bit of disbelief, certainly. After his arrest, Brothers continued to maintain his innocence.

 The possible motive for the murders remained a mystery. I think Joanie had really had it with Vincent and his, you know, seeing other women and she just decided it was time to for her to go on her own and was intending to divorce Vincent. But the problem for Vincent was he had three young children and that would have meant financial it would have meant alimony.

It would have meant then financial responsibility and support of these children really for the next 18 to 20 20 years. And Vincent just simply did not want to do that. He devised this elaborate plan to basically put himself out of state at the time they were murdered. So, he he flew to Ohio. >> [music] >> Then he rented a car in Ohio and drove straight back to Bakersfield where he enacts his plan.

I remember sitting there thinking this has been a long 4 years because it had been 4 years from the murders to the trial in 2007. When the case [music] finally came to court, Jeff Watts had a ringside seat. Brothers demeanor at the trial was um was different. Uh when the jury was present impaneled sitting there across from him he’s very stoic.

 He He would barely make any movements. Uh he would just sit there with uh just a frozen look on his face. Um when the jury wasn’t there he became quite animated. Uh he as far as I was concerned he liked to taunt um the uh the prosecutor. Um it was clear Vincent thought he was the smartest person in the room anytime the jury was not there.

But come the verdict, it was a different story. The jury went out and deliberated for 3 days. And um they came back in and I could see you could literally see his heart pounding through his shirt. And he was kind of leaned back waiting for the verdict and the clerk read the verdict and the first count was read and it was uh you know guilty murder in the first degree.

He knew he finally was done. Vincent Brothers was found guilty on all five counts. He was sentenced to death. The investigation was one that would stay with all those involved long after it had concluded. So just being out here it’s it’s just a real feeling in and a 20-year career. I’ve seen plenty of other homicides and but I I do remember this one.

 It really stands out in my mind. I I don’t think it’ll be anything I will ever forget. This particular case was something completely novel for me. And I don’t think anyone else has any experience with this kind of thing, either. >> [music] >> With this case, it was just [music] I I I don’t know. It’s it’s It was just a very unique case for me to work.

 It it was very personal in and a lot of the just photographs I saw um one particular photograph I had told the district attorney, “I do not want to see that photograph in court. Please do not show it to me unless there’s some huge need to show this photograph in court. I didn’t want to see it. Uh it reminded me of my own son.” Yeah, it’s one of the kind of the the tragedies public tragedies of my adult lives to to watch somebody who was such a positive influence just you know, do this awful thing.

Cuz I I I really believed in him, you know. I just believe that. I was one of many who I would have never thought it impossible. I think Vincent Brothers is probably a psychopath and deserves to be on death row. But in the end, is justice really served for these kids? You know, wouldn’t it have been better if they could have lived their lives and if Joanie and Ernestine could have finished out their lives? Of course.

And that’s I think for me is always the sadness in these cases that yeah, we get to a legal justice and Vincent Brothers will be incarcerated for the rest of his life. But what about the victims? They their lives are over and I think that is always the sad piece.