Full Transcript for Break In Katie Suarez Case: Jogger, 28, Knifed In Neck Moments Before Meeting Parents, Suspect Ex-cop

soles of his shoes as he is moving away from the initial attack. So there's a lot that the blood can tell. There's a lot that the injuries can tell, Nancy. 00:06:57 Speaker 7: It's horrible. 00:06:58 Speaker 5: It's horrible. 00:06:58 Speaker 8: I'm sure the police are trying all they can, but You know, I don't know what to say about that. 00:07:03 Speaker 9: This person has to turn themselves. 00:07:10 Speaker 6: In. 00:07:11 Speaker 2: The mom begging, if you are watching, turn yourself in. Please, turn yourself in. And earlier, you hear her saying, I couldn't find her, I couldn't find her, she wasn't there. That's from our friends at CBS. The fact that tonight's prime suspect is a former NYPD in the Marines. They had the good sense to boot him out of the Marines. Now working as a paraprofessional at PS 200. Public school, 200. He is with elementary school students every day. This is the prime suspect. It's a lot to take in. So Joe Scott, you were explaining to me why she couldn't speak and about the copious amount of blood at the scene. But another thing you were mentioning is regarding blood at the scene. It's our understanding tonight that police have reconstructed what happened based on her blood going along the pathway. 00:08:27 Speaker 6: When do you have an initial attack, Nancy? There's going to be more of a, I don't know really how to frame it other than say it's going to be much more dynamic. Like the blood will be scattered about, spread about, where you will have these events in the initial attack where the blood is going to look a little bit different. than say the gravitational falling away of the blood where you've got these steady drops that lead to a specific position. So that's how they're trying to frame it, Nancy. 00:08:54 Speaker 2: And there's more blood evidence that we're learning about as we go to air. But now I want to go to Dr. Bethany Marshall to answer that big question. How in the H-E-double-L? And with us tonight, we've got David Sarney, former NYPD, 27 years. But before I get to him, Dr. Bethany Marshall is joining us, renowned psychoanalyst out of the LA jurisdiction. You can see her on Bravo, Hulu, Peacock. She has a hit new podcast, the Dr. Bethany Marshall Podcast. Dr. 00:09:24 Speaker 5: Bethany. 00:09:25 Speaker 4: How? 00:09:26 Speaker 2: How did he get on the NYPD, get into the Marines, and now he's working at a public school? And by the way, after the murder of Katie, he goes back to school. He works there for days and days and days and nobody notices. But how did this happen? Don't give me he slipped through the cracks. That's BS. 00:09:47 Speaker 6: Well. 00:09:48 Speaker 10: Sadly, he did because the clinical psychologists interview police candidates, Nancy, and there's a reason these tests are so rigorous that these candidates get. And that is because sociopaths and criminals gravitate to positions of power. They want to be on the police force. They want to be in a situation where they can terrorize

other people, where they can bribe other people, where they can have power. over the other people. So the psychometric testing that clinical psychologists offer, often there's what's called the MMPI. Nancy, that actually has a lie scale on it, meaning that the person who takes it, if they're trying to just garner favor or to look good, they will fail the lie scale on that test. Also, the clinical psychologist will look for a history of disciplinary action. Nancy, they even look at these candidates' driving record. everything is combed through. So you have this guy who obviously planned. 00:10:50 Speaker 2: For this crime. I find that really hard to believe, Dr. Bethany, that quote, everything was combed through. He made it to the police force, not just the police force, the NYPD. They are the elite in the whole country. Translation, the whole world. It doesn't matter if they're the elite. How was he on the force? 00:11:12 Speaker 10: It matters if The clinical psychologists are the elite, not the candidates, not the police officers. It is the screening process. My dearest friend here in Los Angeles does all the fitness for duty review, does all the training, does all the psych testing for police officers. And we often talk about it when their officer involves shootings. suicides, things like that. And she doesn't really feel that there is a good screening process around the nation. She really feels it has to be tightened up quite a bit. 00:11:44 Speaker 7: You know what, Dr. 00:11:44 Speaker 2: Bethany, I see you talking, but it all sounds like blah, blah, blah, blah to me because this guy was on the force. And another thing, Dr. Bethany Marshall, every job he sought out was a position of authority. Every single job. 00:12:03 Speaker 1: Why? 00:12:03 Speaker 2: What is that? 00:12:05 Speaker 10: Well, Nancy, people who fall more into the sociopathic realm, they relate to others on the basis of power. 00:12:12 Speaker 2: Power. 00:12:13 Speaker 10: That is how they relate. That's their attachment style. And what is the ultimate power? The ultimate power is to either be around little kids, which he was, because they follow your directions. They do, for the most part, what you ask them to do. But also to wield a knife and to be a police officer. 00:12:31 Speaker 2: That's a position. 00:12:33 Speaker 10: of extensive power, more so than a politician or a bank executive or something like that, because those people are removed from people on the streets. But a police officer is down in the streets, nitty gritty, up close. And often they pull cars over or they can pull people into an alley and they can have power with impunity. That's why all these officer involved shootings, all these reviews that take place, they have to be so strict because candidates do slip through the cracks. 00:13:11 Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. 00:13:17 Speaker 2: To David Sarney joining us, former NYP detective for 27 years, now Professor John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Sarney, what about it? How in the H-E-double-L did this guy get all the way through cadet training? Isn't that a very intensive process? 00:13:36 Speaker 9: That's what I want to know. I mean, what you come down to is this. There's a vetting process. It starts at the beginning. You do all your process. You do your paperwork. You get your background checks. 00:13:45 Speaker 3: You're done. 00:13:45 Speaker 9: You get your drug screening. You get your psychological, which a lot of people fail, by the way, so I don't. 00:13:50 Speaker 3: Know how he got through. 00:13:51 Speaker 9: Not only that, he's not there a month. He goes through the police academies. He does six months. Within that six months of training, you're going to engage with other recruits. You're going to engage with supervisors, academy instructors. Did anyone not see what this person was? Not only that, he's wearing a shield, a badge, which means he's got his gun and shield. There's a day called Gun and Shield Day. He got that gun and shield. He was actually assigned to a command, a precinct in the Bronx. So that's the question. How did he get through this? And not only that, He gets removed from the Marine Corps in a month. He went through six-plus months of investigations and the academy to go where he goes. That's a concern because here's the other issue. 00:14:36 Speaker 2: Well, that's not the only concern. That's not the only concern because Randolph Rice is joining us. He's a veteran trial lawyer, defense attorney. Not only that, after he voluntarily leaves the police force, he wants to go into the Marines. They have him for about a month and they boot him. Boot to the rear end. He's gone. Then he comes back to the NYPD and they're like, no, you left once. You can't, no re-entrance. He gets a job with the public school system with elementary school children. 00:15:14 Speaker 11: Nancy, let me just give you a little bit of the legal perspective on this because there's certainly going to be a lot of motions and things in the courts in the next coming weeks and months here But there are two big issues I see right now with this case. One is, is there enough evidence to prove that he did this case? There are certainly some indicators with the blood in his apartment, obviously with the video himself. But here's the other big thing, and you know where I'm going with this, not criminally responsible because of a mental defect or because of some sort of disease. Those incidents in the past with the police department, with the Marines, with all the psychological violations. 00:15:49 Speaker 2: He went back to work, Randolph, after... Katie Suarez's murder. Isn't that true? Dave Mack, he goes back to work, and he worked for days, right? Yes. 00:16:00 Speaker 5: Nancy, between the time that this stabbing took place and the time that he was taken into custody, he was at work the whole time. 00:16:07 Speaker 2: And no one waved a flag of alarm. So I guess you're saying,

Randolph Rice, you would raise a mental instability defense, yet he was perfectly fine at work. Working with elementary school children. 00:16:24 Speaker 11: Yeah, that's even more crazy. I mean, the more crazy the things he does, that makes the defense so much stronger because if he really was guilty, maybe he would have turned himself in. Maybe he would have felt sorrow. But he's so crazy that he went back to take care of kids the next day. 00:16:39 Speaker 2: No, you have to show he did not know right from wrong at the time of the incident. You can't just use street vernacular. He crazy. No, that doesn't work. This is a legitimate defense, but it's not Randolph Rice's version of what is crazy. And the fact that he went back to work and functioned normally, getting ready for work every day, going to work, performing, coming back home, indicates he was not insane at the time. But I want to follow up on that, Randolph Rice. To Dave Mack, I want to go back to the moment that the father finds his daughters. He has to flag down passersby to try and get help for Katie. What happens then? 00:17:28 Speaker 5: A cyclist is going by, and that's who actually stops and provides the aid and calls 911, gets EMS rolling towards that location. Katie is taken to the hospital very quickly, Nancy. But, you know, there was so much blood at the scene. They got her to the hospital, and she's alive. Her dad, I mean, amazingly enough, He was able to hold her and she lived until she got to the hospital. She was there being treated in intensive care. She was unable to speak. But investigators immediately started combing the area for video, anything they could find. 00:18:06 Speaker 7: That's very shocking. Makes me feel unsafe. I was just planning to walk by near the ocean here. And now since it's dark, it's kind of scary to walk around here, especially by yourself at night, like as a woman. 00:18:24 Speaker 2: I think they should put more lights here and more security, like a policeman, you know, walking. 00:18:34 Speaker 1: We feel more safe then. 00:18:35 Speaker 12: This is made worse, I think, by the fact that there is a pedestrian bridge, the 17th Avenue pedestrian bridge, that has been under construction for an absurd amount of time. I'm going to be pushing to do whatever we can to get more lighting. 00:18:49 Speaker 2: Now they're going to put in lighting? Now? that Katie Suarez is dead. That's where our friends at Fox 5 and CBS New York. So let me understand this. Just got Morgan. You heard Dave Mack and he's correct. The police are having to ask passersby. Hey, a lot of cars like a Tesla has 360 view on camera. Could you look, If you happen to drive that way, could you look? Because all the cameras, no good. We don't have lighting. So they can't see the perp. Really? 00:19:30 Speaker 6: If they can get their hands on footage, perhaps that could in some way be treated by those that are in the digital field to enhance it, to bring up the lighting, any kind of ambient lighting that might have assisted in this. And still, it's not going to be good enough, I don't think. in my opinion, at least, to come up with a facial ID, even through biometrics. I think if it's that dark, like this politician is saying, I don't know that you could enhance it to the point where you could verify that. But with so much traffic around there, Nancy, and so many dwellings, I think Tesla is a good bet if you can find someone that was in that area at that particular time. But again, Nancy, needle in the haystack. 00:20:16 Speaker 2: So you're saying piece it together, back time it from not necessarily the time of the stabbing attack, but before that, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, getting camera, ring cam from homes and businesses along the way to see who went that way. That's a needle in the haystack. David Sarney. The cops worked their tails off on this case. And they tried their best to get vehicle surveillance video. And I can't stress how important that is. I don't know if you recall the case of jogger Molly Tibbetts. Look at this. 00:20:56 Speaker 13: A complaint in affidavit names Christian Bahena Rivera, age 24, who resides in rural Poweshie County, and he has been charged with murder in the first degree. A body was discovered early this morning in a farm field southeast of Brooklyn, Iowa. The identity has not been confirmed. However, we believe it to be the body of Molly Tibbetts. During our neighborhood canvas, we came across an individual that had security cameras. We took those cameras. He was kind enough to give us the footage from it. And through that, we were able to identify a vehicle that we believe belonged to Mr. 00:21:34 Speaker 10: Rivera. 00:21:34 Speaker 13: It was a black vehicle. 00:21:37 Speaker 6: Malibu. 00:21:39 Speaker 13: And from that, we were able to track his pattern and the routes in which he took. We were also able to find Molly running on this video. And we were able to determine that he was one of the last ones to have seen Molly running based on the video, again, that we were able to see from the general public. 00:21:56 Speaker 2: David Sarney, the video we're talking about, seeing it there, that's Molly jogging. And police could enhance this vehicle video so well. they could identify scratches and markings on the vehicle peculiar to that vehicle, and that is how they found the defendant. And I'm sure you recall the case of Lakin Riley, where she, a nursing student, is jogging, and then surveillance video actually catches the perp standing there, hiding in the bushes, waiting for a victim to go by. And then he attacks her. So, David Sarney, NYPD is reduced to, because there's no lighting along this pedestrian pathway, to asking drivers if they can check their cars. I mean, they are beating the bushes, aren't they, Sarney? 00:22:54 Speaker 9: Okay, when you talk about cameras and with this incident, it takes place near traffic. So, it would be common sense to ask anyone around that time frame,

to get any camera access that they have available to them. That's one thing we look for. You know, anytime we get any video, it's a value, it's probative to where you can determine it's not. So that's one aspect. And then you look for exterior cameras because you're going to have to get in and out of this location or out of the parkway, you have to go onto the street. So that's another thing. So it takes time to do that extensive video canvas because that's the reason why you have an individual leaving that park around the time of the incident. And then they have to painstakingly get video from each location. It takes time to retrieve. It takes time to review and analyze that. And that's why it took a while to do because you don't have witnesses to see what happened. You have to rely on digital evidence such as video surveillance cameras to do that. So they were able to create this timeline from video step-by-step process to where we could locate the individual involved in this defense. 00:24:02 Speaker 2: Dave Mack, I understand that what they did, what police did, and it was very painstaking, is they back-timed the stabbing. You've got the incident, and this is largely based on those cell phone calls back and forth to her parents. Between 7.56 and about 8.16, you got 20 critical minutes. So they back-timed from there and start collecting ring cam, door cam, you name it cam, business cam. And they actually are led to By doing that, a barbershop. And they go in the barbershop. This is a lot of legwork. And it's my understanding the people that run the barbershop know the suspect. 00:24:48 Speaker 5: What they actually found, Nancy, you mentioned Needle in a Haystack a while ago. They actually saw a person walking toward the trail prior to the stabbing happening. And that same individual running. That was their first hint as to who to look for. They did end up at the barbershop and said, hey, anybody recognize this? Now, I'm sure they asked everybody else between the park and the barbershop, but it was at the barbershop. Like, yeah, we know that guy. He gets his haircut here. And that's how they got the identity of the suspect. And by the way, they were able to figure out where he lived based on that. barbershop and then tacking all the other videos, surveillance videos along the way. They were able to build a timeline and a track of him walking, running from the track to his apartment. Nancy, then they saw him at the apartment. 00:25:41 Speaker 2: So Randolph Rice joining us, former prosecutor, now criminal and civil attorney joining us out of Maryland. Rice, I'm sure you're going to come up with some evidentiary challenge to this, but let me advise you at the get-go, it was just successfully done in the Jennifer Dulos case, a Connecticut mom of five. The Connecticut police put together a montage of her husband, Fotis Dulos, P-O-S, leaving one location, and they followed him from this door cam to that door cam, And I was so impressed with their work because they even got him scooting by when a public school bus door opened and you see Dulos go by. And with that incriminating montage of video, they put together a case. And I believe that's what they have done in Katie Suarez's case. 00:26:36 Speaker 11: They've certainly put together a good case here. The question is, is this the individual who actually killed Ms. Suarez or is he an individual that possibly came upon her and got her blood on him and then was running from the scene. That's going to be the gap that the prosecutor is going to have. And let me just go back real quick to this psychological argument. When he tells the police officers, he says to them, he said he sat down on the bike path with a knife because he believed people were going to come and kill his family. We talk about crazy. That's clearly somebody who's having a psychological breakdown. And he also says he blacks out and doesn't remember anything. That's one of the elements of a psychological defense. 00:27:16 Speaker 2: Okay, Randolph, I'm pretty sure that the prime suspect is not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. So I don't know how much credence I'm going to give his self-diagnosis, but thank you. And I'm sure they're going to use that at trial because now that he's blurted that out, he's kind of stuck with it, isn't he? This whole blackout theory thing. And isn't it true to Joe Scott Morgan, we now have evidence that suggests that he brought the knife to the location prior to the attack? 00:27:53 Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, that gives you kind of this idea that this is a planned event. Why would you do that in advance? Was he targeting? I think my question as a former investigator, was he targeting this specific victim or was he just going to go out and randomly kill somebody? And he had this preset. He apparently felt very comfortable with this environment. And again, that's that's quite terrifying. I agree with people on the street that are saying, look, man, you know, we feel really unsafe. 00:28:23 Speaker 7: This guy. Yeah. 00:28:27 Speaker 2: I want to analyze something you said. Was he waiting for this victim or was it random? I think it's both. He was waiting for a random woman to go by, much like in the case of nursing student Lake and Riley. 00:28:39 Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely. 00:28:40 Speaker 1: That defendant did. 00:28:41 Speaker 2: Not know Lake and the nursing student. He was waiting for a lone woman jogging, unaware, not paying attention to her surroundings, jogging happily, blissfully. He was looking for someone that did not have runners directly in front of her or directly behind her. He was isolating her. a lone victim. He didn't know her, so in that sense it's random, but he was looking for a specific type of victim, I believe, just as in this case. And speaking of blood analysis, I need you on this too. Dave Mack, so you're telling us that police ISO'd video of him walking toward the scene and then running away from the scene. They went,

wait a minute, why is he running? Now, you heard Randolph Rice say, hypothetically, that he came upon... Katie Suarez's body and ran and just happened to get her blood on himself. Then they backtrack and they go all up and down the street surrounding the entrance to the jogging path and they finally find this barber shop and in that barber shop the people there go, yeah, I know him. This is his name and this is where he lives. Now, at that point What happens? I'm leading up to blood evidence found in his home. 00:30:03 Speaker 5: Nancy, the surveillance videos from around the area clearly showed our suspect arriving back. 00:30:09 Speaker 2: At his apartment. 00:30:10 Speaker 5: Then, 15 minutes after arriving at his apartment, he is then seen on video in his underwear throwing a bag of stuff into a garbage chute. Because of knowing what time he put the garbage in the garbage chute, police were able to locate that garbage that he put in the chute and found the garbage on Staten Island to tie back to him directly from his apartment. But again, remember, he's standing outside his apartment only wearing his underwear. He has stripped all of his clothing off, the bloody clothing. 00:30:51 Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. 00:30:56 Speaker 2: So he takes off all the bloody clothing, according to reports, goes out to the trash, and throws it in the trash receptacle. And is that caught on video as well, or are there eyewitnesses to that? It's all caught on video, Nancy. 00:31:14 Speaker 5: Everything they've got here is on video. 00:31:17 Speaker 2: There's video everywhere. 00:31:18 Speaker 5: I know it seems difficult on the track, but once you get to where homes are, where apartments are, where businesses are, yeah, everything's on video. 00:31:25 Speaker 2: They've got him exactly where... So he had the wherewithal to go throw bloody items into the trash. 00:31:33 Speaker 7: Okay. 00:31:35 Speaker 2: I want to go back to Joseph Scott Morgan, Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University. We know... that his home is not the primary crime scene. So how is it that KV Suarez's blood is found in his home? And that is the big connection to him. 00:31:56 Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely is. It's where he's domiciled. And they're saying that they, there have been reports stating that there was a significant amount of blood. that the PD was able to find at his apartment, Nancy. And also, here's one other thing that goes to awareness, and you'll love this. There was an attempt on his part, apparently, to clean up said blood at his domicile. So, you know, obviously, I'm not Dr. Bethany here. However, you know, you begin to think this thing through. You know, he has an awareness that there is blood in his in his home that can be tied back to the victim here because, you know, all we have to do is do a DNA sampling on this and it will very specifically come back to her. Yeah. 00:32:44 Speaker 2: How is it that you can look at blood, not visible to the naked eye and you can tell not only is there blood there, but there has been a cleanup. 00:32:57 Speaker 10: Yeah. 00:32:58 Speaker 6: You're looking through it, particularly if it's not, totally dried, and depending upon what kind of agent you apply to it, like a bleach or other type of household cleansers that are around, you can actually see where there are swipes, where there have been attempts to clean an area. And no one ever gets up all of the blood, Nancy. You know that. We've seen this played out time and time again. So when you luminesce this, okay, you're talking about Luminol, Blue Star, these that have what's called chemical luminescence. And it flashes bright. It's this incredible blue color, kind of like the screen behind me. It luminesces, it pops. You do this in the dark and you have to snap images of it. And it's very telling at that point in time. And you can see where people, where you have a pristine spot, say you've got blood that has dropped gravitationally straight down onto a target area and it'll be in a pristine state, okay? Then you have an adjacent area where you can see someone has taken a rag with something applied to it, and it'll look just like an old dirty mop has been drug through this thing, but only it's luminescing as a result of the chemical reaction that's going on. 00:34:11 Speaker 2: So Randolph Rice, we have him on video entering the home with bloody clothes, stripping down, coming outside, throwing them into the dumpster. As a matter of fact, NYPD is now searching sanitation barges. You know how a lot of the refuse is put on barges outside of New York because there's nowhere else they've run out of places to put trash? They're searching through barges now to try and find that particular trash, his bloody clothing. But he's on video. And not only that, he cleans up Katie's blood in his apartment. Now, how can he be mentally imbalanced if he knows to get rid of the bloody clothes and clean up the blood? 00:35:01 Speaker 11: The mental imbalance, Nancy, has to be at the time of the crime itself. And you can be saying, and I'm sure Dr. Bethany can talk about this, in that you can be sane five minutes before the crime and you can be sane five minutes after the crime. It's during the crime itself you have to have that mental defect or disease that prevents you from understanding the criminality, the criminal consequences, or... what you're actually doing, which goes to my argument that he blacked out and he doesn't remember anything. And remember in his statement that you have, it says he denies stabbing anybody. So clearly he doesn't even remember what happened. 00:35:35 Speaker 2: Oh, okay. I guess that makes it so. He denied it. There he is. That's his perp walk coming out of the courthouse. From our friends at NBC4, a community is left broken and a family desperate for answers. 00:35:52 Speaker 1: I don't want my son to come here anymore. 00:35:55 Speaker 10: Like, I don't feel comfortable anymore, you know? 00:35:57 Speaker 8: I can't tell you how heartbroken I am and how angry I am that this happened here. I'm living here 50 years, and I've never seen anything like this. I biked this path myself for hundreds of days in the past, and we are going to bring this animal to justice. 00:36:15 Speaker 2: From CBS New York and Fox 5, I see a lot of the banners stating, RUNNER. Her name, Katie Suarez. She lived for three days, saving the lives of five others through organ donation. Why did this happen? Why was the prime suspect allowed to be on the NYPD? allowed to enter the Marines, they had the good sense to boot him out, and ultimately allowed to work with elementary school students at PS200. If you know or think you know anything regarding this case, dial toll-free 800-577-8477. We remember an American hero, police officer Christopher Wilson, San Diego PD, shot and killed in the line of duty. Leaving Behind Children, Kelly and Connor, American Hero, Police Officer Christopher Wilson. Thank you to our guests, but especially to you for being with us tonight. And please join us in our effort seeking justice for Katie Suarez. And join us in prayer for her family. Nancy Gray signing off for tonight, but I'll see you tomorrow night. And until then, good night, friends. Music.