Burning Questions, Gruesome Murder - The White/Pontiff Case

Could you imagine the chilling feeling of learning that your loved one's life was cut short in a brutal and heart-wrenching murder, only to have the investigation drag on with inconclusive results? That's exactly what happened to Angela, the mother of Gwendolyn Lee McIntosh, who raised the alarm when she hadn't heard from her daughter and grandchildren for over a month. Gwendolyn was caught in a web of domestic violence, substance abuse, and a love triangle that ended in her tragic death.

We take you through the twists and turns of this gut-wrenching case, from Gwendolyn's puzzling relationship with her ex-boyfriend Daniel White, to the shocking discovery of her car abandoned in Houma, Louisiana. We discuss the multi-faced investigation carried out by the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office, exposing the complex dynamics of fear and control that culminated in Gwendolyn's murder. We also probe into the conflicting stories from key players, including the elusive Leah Pontiff and Daniel White himself.

This episode is more than just a recounting of a gruesome murder, it is a stark reminder of the grim reality of domestic violence. As we navigate through the courtroom proceedings, the shocking plea deals, and the numerous legal complications that delayed justice for Gwendolyn, we also address the crucial role of domestic violence resources and the importance of intervention. Join us in this heart-wrenching journey that calls for reflection on the societal issues that lead to devastating ends for victims like Gwendolyn.

If you or someone you know needs help, please use the following resources:

•National Alliance on Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264

•National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN): 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)

•National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

•Crisis Text Line: Within the US, text HOME to 741741

Source List:

1. https://www.theadanews.com/news/local_news/two-charged-in-killing-of-former-ada-resident/article_f75c4295-2924-5ec1-9ff7-19a0edd64633.html
2. https://www.hannapub.com/concordiasentinel/guilty-verdict-in-2014-homicide/article_d43970b6-4b30-11e9-aad5-4fa11cee7282.html
3. https://casetext.com/case/state-v-white-8262263

This has been an elfaudio production.

Transcript

KellyeHost00:00 

On June 24th 2014,. The Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office received a welfare check request call from a worried mother about her daughter and her daughters to children, her grandchildren when the police were unable to locate them, what followed was a whirlwind of multiple agencies investigating a missing person's case that turned into one of the most brutal murders we've ever covered. On today's episode of CenLAw. Hello and welcome to this episode of CenLAw. I'm Kellye and Weesie and again, that's not Kyler. 

KellyeHost  

We've got a very special guest today. Weesie, she's gonna be joining me for this. You heard the extra discretion at the beginning of this episode. This one's going to be rough guys. It is absolutely not meant for children or young listeners. And I will add, there's a couple spots that get a little bit more graphic and the language is harder for people. So I'll make a little note before I get into those sections. That way, if you want to skip through it because it's triggering, I'll make sure and put that in there. So otherwise, I think we're ready, you ready, Weesie?  

WeesieCo-host 

I'm ready, all right.  

KellyeHost  

So today we're actually going to be going to wash it to a parish, which you can ask. We see, when I first saw this word spelled out, I was like is that pronounced? Oh-shit-uh, because of the way it, like every Louisiana has the craziest spellings for things and I get it. They're part French Cajun by you, all of the things. So it's definitely not spelled the way it sounds. It's wash it up. So we're gonna be going up there to Ouachita parish and according to the Census Bureau I think they have today is about 155,000 in the parish, so I think they have about 155,000 today. We're actually going to be going just north, a little bit west, northwest of Monroe, which Monroe today has about 48,000. But the place where the victim in today's story was actually living at the time that this occurred was in Stirlington, which I had never heard of. I had to Google it and apparently in 2014, when our story takes place, they were actually the fastest growing community in northeastern Louisiana, which I found interesting, even though at the time, in 2014, they only had about 2,200 people in Stirlington. So anyway, that's kind of where we're at, a little bit northwest of Monroe. So we're gonna start on June 24th, like I said in the intro... 

02:47 

Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office received a welfare check request from one, miss Angela McIntosh. At about 11 o'clock at night. She called because she wanted the police to go check on her daughter and her two grandchildren because she said she hadn't heard from them in about a month, which wasn't you know, it had been a while, but she lived in Grand Prairie, Texas, so she was out of state. So they, you know they randomly made contact every now and then, but she hadn't heard from them in a month, which was unusual. So from about 11 o'clock six, from the time she made the first call, again right before midnight about 11 55, she requested once again that they go do a welfare check because she was worried, and she added at this time that she feared that her daughter may have been harmed by her boyfriend, ex boyfriend, father of her children, whose name was Daniel White. However, let's go back a little bit, because this wasn't the first time law enforcement had received a call, and this entire story that we're going to be talking about is Angela McIntosh is the mother of Gwendolyn Lee McIntosh.  

03:55 

She was 29 at the time that she was reported missing and she had had many interactions with different law enforcement agencies, whether it was Ouachita Parish sheriff's office, monroe Police Department, stirlington's Police Department. There were multiple, multiple calls over the years, but just even in the just the last three months, there had been at least three calls. In March she had called because she had locked herself inside of a gas station, because she had been driving down the road when her ex boyfriend, baby daddy, had been following her on the road. She couldn't escape. She eventually managed to exit with him following and she sprinted inside of a gas station, locked the door from the inside and he only left from pursuing her once he saw her get on the phone with police. However, when the police arrived, she told them what happened, but she didn't want to press charges. She just wanted him to leave her alone. That's why she called 911.  

04:53 

Then again in April, she called Monroe Police Department to report that again, her ex had showed up at her home with another mutual friend of theirs and after he left she called and just wanted to report that he was there Trespassing quote unquote because she wanted to make sure that it was on record that she didn't want him on her property or anywhere around her. So one more time, on June 12th remember June 24th was the day that her mom calls on June 12th they got a call that went straight to 911 that Gwendolyn was calling to a report, that Daniel had locked her in the trunk and was threatening to kill her and upon her trying to escape, he had slammed her hand while the trunk was closing. And again, by the time the police arrived she had already gone back into her apartment, he had already fled the scene and even though she wanted to make a report of the incident, she still did not press charges. So nobody knows why. And this happens a lot of domestic violence cases. You know they'll call, they'll make a record of it, they'll say they would want the police to come because that's their only way of mitigating the situation, but then they don't actually follow through and that's for a lot of reasons. You know.  

06:18 

Some people say and psychologists and stuff have weighed in on that that it's more of like, well, I don't have any other option, but I don't want them to get them in trouble.  

06:25 

You know I still love them. I just want them to leave me alone. You know all of those things and being the father of her children, it added that extra. You know, little bit of weight. And from things that I read, apparently he was bankrolling all of her bills, he was paying for her apartment and that that played a lot into it too. She didn't want to get him in trouble, get him put in jail and then not have that money coming in from him as well. So those are all pretty much just my assumptions, based on what I read, but that you know it follows. So who knows, if she had actually pressed charges any of these times in the past three months and just two weeks before she went missing or was reported missing, that maybe, maybe things would have turned out differently. But well, unfortunately we'll never know, because I'm telling you guys this story so we know that it doesn't end up well.  

WeesieCo-host07:17 

And that's usually when domestic violence is the attachment that that people have. In that situation feel like they have no other out, but in the moment when they feel like they're fixing to lose their life, sometimes they're able to reach out to law enforcement. And then, as it deescalates, they, they can their mind, the control piece of it. Okay, well, it wasn't that bad, I was imagining it, or right, or the, you know the person worse than it was.  

KellyeHost07:51 

Yeah.  

WeesieCo-host07:51 

You know, or the person that's doing you know the behaviors, you know, flowers them, sugars them, you know builds up that. Oh, I'm so sorry, I'll never do it again.  

KellyeHost08:03 

Well, and in this case too, specifically, there was a lot of drug use right between all of the parties. So that played a lot into it as well. That definitely will heighten that addiction, especially if the person that is committing the violence against you is the person that generally is. Come back to here, baby, we can do these together. I'll get these. You know that kind of stuff, because that that adds that extra, like you said, that weight to it.  

08:25 

Absolutely so after the first call by Gwendolyn's mom, Angela, at around 11, the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office sent someone out at 11, 16, they dispatched the patrol deputy to the one of the addresses that was given, which ended up with no contact with Gwendolyn or the two children. And they actually found that the person who was living in that address now had just moved in a week before. So they had no knowledge of Gwendolyn or who she was and hadn't seen her. So after the second call at around midnight 41, so that would have made it June 25th Ouachita again dispatched another patrol deputy, this time a corporal, to a different address, but unfortunately again they came up empty. They didn't contact anybody that knew anything about who she was or anything.  

09:16 

Both of these addresses came up kind of blank. So after that, and according to the court records, I couldn't find any other movement specifically regarding that side of it. So they checked those two addresses and that's pretty much all they got for at that point. Now, later on the 25th, around 111 in the afternoon, they received the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office received notification from Mama how do you say that one Terrebonne, Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Office that Gwendolyn's vehicle, registered in her name, had been found abandoned in Houma. Now Houma is way down south, it's, I think it's kind of more towards the if you were have, if you had the boot with shoelaces on the top of the foot of the shoelaces in Houma, right in that general area.  

10:03 

Yes, just like south of Baton Rouge south of Baton Rouge with north of New Orleans and it kind of that.  

WeesieCo-host10:08 

no way, I'm almost on the same plane with the Orleans.  

KellyeHost10:12 

I thought it was, oh no, I'm thinking Hammond Hammond's above. Okay, so Houma is south of Baton Rouge, west of New Orleans, a little bit down in the south area that was. So it's a pretty good ways down there. And again, the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Office. They requested the West to attempt to reach Gwendolyn because they were trying to figure out why her car would have been in abandoned in Houma. Okay, yeah, okay, so if you were going to go to New Orleans, you'd go a little bit more eastern, and then if you were going to go to home where, you went, a little bit more western.  

WeesieCo-host10:46 

Okay, but almost due south of.  

KellyeHost10:48 

But almost due south of Baton Rouge. Okay, so they randomly find her car down there. Don't know why it's there. They're still trying to reach her and make contact with her. But after dispatching another patrol deputy, they still have made no contact. Now, from what I read in the court records, the mother at that point was trying frantically to reach anybody that she could to try to figure out especially where her grandbaby's were, because she hadn't heard anything, nobody could find them, nobody could place the children or her daughter, and so finally she reached out to the sister of Daniel on Facebook trying to see if she knew where the children were, because she knew from past, I guess, that they had spent the time or they'd been around her at least enough that she might know where they were. So she reached out on Facebook and the sister actually verified yeah, he came, dropped off the kids with me and they've been here and they're safe. And the police eventually followed up and verified that they were there. Now, thinking quickly, the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office communications sergeant, brandi Evans submitted an emergency situation disclosure of cellular records from Verizon Wireless in hopes of retrieving some information of the whereabouts of Gwendolyn McIntosh and her children. And they did get those records.  

12:05 

Shortly after, somewhere in the timeframe like seven and eight the evening of the 25th, and by 6.54 that evening, the Ouachita Parish issued a missing persons below for Gwendolyn I don't know that they and I think at that time they knew where the children were. So they didn't issue one for the children, they just issued one for her. And in talking to Angela McIntosh, the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office discovered that she had made contact and that she had talked to the children and that they said that they were safe, that they'd been staying with their dad and they hadn't seen their mother. So they responded, the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office investigators. They went to the address that they found for the sister and they found that she was there with an ex-wife of Daniel Whites and confirmed that they had the children and they had been there since June 25th, the day before. So this was the 26th and the investigators asked the sister to call and when she called and he answered, Daniel answered. The officers asked him to come meet with them and he did, arriving about 30 minutes later and agreeing to go to the Sheriff's Office to continue talking, and at that time he had driven up in a Cadillac. They asked him for his permission to search the car and he gave them verbal permission and then they took him down to the station to interview him.  

13:26 

So all the while this is happening, there was also another side that, because this had so many different investigation teams and agencies involved they had the Monroe PD, the Ouachitaada PD, the Terrebonne and then they had the Sterlington PD, Monroe PD I mean there were so many different moving parts. At the very beginning even, it was really impressive. All right. So they got information. The investigators got information from someone who called in saying that Lea Pontiff was somehow involved with the missing person's case of Gwendolyn Macintosh. And this was according to an intimate friend of Leah Pontiff's and he had reported to this person who called in that she told him after doing drugs and hanging out with them and whatever, she told him that she had been involved with the disappearance and he said that she admitted that they had quote unquote killed the girl and left her in a field or something along those lines. Yeah, that's the first sign that they know that this is probably going to go a lot deeper than just a missing person's case and with that information they start looking for Lea Pontiff because now, from that witness statement or information. They think that the last known people to have seen Gwendolyn Macintosh alive would have been Daniel White and Leah Pontiff. So they are on the lookout now and they also do a cell phone request for AT&T to try to get the records for Leah Pontiff stuff as well. So just because they're still trying to locate her at this point. So they're hoping that if they can figure out where Pontiff and White are, they can figure out where Gwendolyn is. So now we can cut back to Daniel.  

15:32 

He arrived at the station, he waived his rights and agreed to a recorded interview. At this point the investigators already had his cell phone records and when his story began to not match up even close because he was saying why it was here all day, I never left this area and when they started to conflict with what they already knew to be true based on the cell phone records, he started changing his story back around. Well, according to his cell phone records, on Sunday, june 15th that was Father's Day he said he never left the Monroe Bastrop area that's how you say that, right, Bastrop? Okay, and all of his calls from the records placed him in the Sicily Island, Winnsboro area. So when you're looking at a map, Monroe, Bastrop area and Sicily Island, Winnsboro area, especially if you're more towards Sicily Island, that's a distance of at least 30, 45 minutes apart, oh yeah.  

WeesieCo-host16:37 

Longer than that Bastrop. Bastrop is north of Monroe.  

KellyeHost16:40 

Okay, so you're talking north of Monroe and then you're all the way down to Sicily Island. You're talking at least an hour right. So I mean, it's not like these areas could have conflicted enough for it to have been just a cell phone, a tower jump or something like that. It was pretty definitive that he wasn't where he was trying to say he was.  

WeesieCo-host16:58 

So Bastrop is?  

KellyeHost16:59 

I see, yeah, above Sterlington. Okay, yeah, so it's a good distance away. So, when confronted, he said he had family in the Sicily Island area and said that he had spent a couple hours visiting with them, which still did not add up to the amount of time that his cell phone records showed that he was actually in the Sicily Island area. So Daniel White eventually told them that he shared an apartment with Gwendolyn and that on June 12th they had got into an altercation. That was the same day that she had called 911 and said that he had locked her in the truck, threatened to kill her or whatever, and he said he took the children that day and left, saying that later he got a call from Gwendolyn either the 14th or the 15th, either the day before Father's Day or on Father's Day, and said they were being evicted. At which point Daniel White rented a U-Haul, went back to pack up the apartment and take the items to storage in Monroe and he said that was the last time he'd heard from Gwendolyn and that's what he stuck with.  

18:04 

Now, during this interview and before they finished up that time, the investigators went ahead and ran White's name through the NCIC database, which checks for background. It's like a background check, so it sees all of his past criminal records and if he has any active warrants. Well, turns out he did. He had an active warrant and they took him into custody for that which I believe it was either skipping bail or one of those. It wasn't a big one, but it was enough to keep him in custody until they figured out what the hell was actually going on. So when they took him into custody they took a cell phone that he had on his person and they had also recovered a cell phone from the Cadillac that he'd given them permission to search. And when they went to go check on the apartment that he shared with Gwendolyn, she wasn't there and they got permission from the landlord to actually go in and search the apartment, later got a full-blown search warrant to get all of that, to process everything at that apartment as well. So again, all of this is happening within the span of the 24th, the 25th, the 26th, like there's a lot, a lot going on. So they used the cell phone records to track that. They sent out to AT&T, because they sent out for Verizon for Gwendolyn's and AT&T for Leah Pontiff. So now back to Leah Pontiff. They used her cell phone GPS, active GPS coordinates provided by AT&T and they located her and brought her in to get an interview.  

19:35 

Now the interview that I mentioned earlier, or the person who called in to say that an intimate friend of Leah's had mentioned that you know he thought she might be involved in a murder. That friend came in to actually do a full-blown interview and I believe his name is Lee Short. That led law enforcement to brought in their search and led to them go ahead and getting Leah Pontiff in, and in that interview he laid all of the conversations out and there's a lot more of that that we'll get into in a minute. But that basically was the reason for Leah Pontiff being brought in Now. His interview was actually still ongoing when they brought Leah into the police department to be interviewed as well.  

20:31 

So she began her recorded statement. She signed a waiver of her rights and asked for a lawyer and now her version began, very similar started, very similar to Daniel White's first version who, for whatever reason, she randomly called Eddie. I don't know if she was trying to help cover for him or maybe try to keep his name out of it, I don't know, but in the court records her statement she called him Eddie. So she said that she and Eddie had left Gwendolyn at a hotel in Stirlington or in Monroe, somewhere up there, and they hadn't seen her since. And that was one of the varying stories that they got from White as well. But after many, many false versions, Leah came out and said she was basically terrified of Daniel White and was more afraid of him. If she told the truth then she was afraid to lie to the police. So then the final version at that time of what she said was the truth followed, and that's it. It's pretty close to what they eventually came to believe was the closest to the truth. So Varying, varying parts are very self-serving for Leah. So that's really the only thing that I'll differ between this and when we get to other court documents later. So Leah confirmed that Daniel and Gwendolyn had been in a fight on June 13th or so but had made up by Father's Day and had planned to spend some time together.  

22:02 

Eventually, white since Pontiff to Sicily Island with Gwendolyn to get to do a drug run, and when she called him back when she was in Sicily Island, he said just to come to his cousin's house that was there, located in Sicily Island as well, and they would hang out for a bit and you know, you know, hang out new drugs, whatever and a little while after that they he left, I think, to go do something, either to go get more drugs or to go get liquor and then comes back and they're drinking tequila hanging out there and Eventually she says that white leaves and then calls Gwendolyn and says for her to walk to the end of the driveway to meet him out there. So Leah, she asks why didn't he come to the house? Gwendolyn just shrugged and said I don't know and left anyway. About an hour later, according to Leah, daniel called her and gave her like specific instructions on where to go. So she he was like go down this road, take a left when you see no houses, turn down this road, and that her that Gwendolyn and he would be waiting on her when she got there. So she follows these crazy instructions to a side road and when she got there she saw Gwendolyn tied with a rope by the arms to a seat in the car and she had a rope around her neck. Now stay with me here, because this is this gets a little weird, okay, so?  

23:30 

So basically what Leah says is that why it wants her to take the rope and Strangle Gwendolyn. But she couldn't do it, although she does say she touched the rope. She makes it very, she makes a very specific admission that she touched the rope with her thumb and index finger but then that she ran away in her car and that white called her and told her to come back and then got Gwendolyn on the phone and said hey, we were just playing a game, it's not a big deal, come back. But by the time she got back she said that she saw a barrel on fire with a tire on top of it, and when she asked white where Gwendolyn was, he said she was gone. And then White told Leah to take some clothes and get rid of them, burn them, but whatever. And then she said that she had refused but that he had beat her, and so he made her get in Gwendolyn's car and he followed her in Leah's car and they took off, driving Headed back towards, I guess, just Earlington, to the apartment that they shared. So they made it to Winnsboro and and pulled off into like a Walmart parking lot and she said she didn't want to drive the car anymore. She again tried to refuse to help in any way. But he beat her again. So she complied. They went and got some stuff from the apartment and then she took off down south with the car.  

24:54 

So she says that she went to her friend's house down there and she said that she never returned to the side after that and and she ended up visiting some quote relatives and the friend Lee short down in Houma and that she wasn't the one who Took the clothes and stuff and hid them under his trailer. Because Lee Short said in his interview that she had hid something under his trailer while she was there and they eventually recovered that. But she said the guy that's, you know, basically got her involved in this whole situation, that he was the one who did that. And he also told the Sheriff's office that Leah did have a black eye the the day that she showed up to come visit with him or whatever. So he did kind of verify her story in that way that he you know she had been, at least somebody had hit her. And later it was noted that what we now know was the murder.  

26:04 

The Lee Short believed that Leah Pontiff and Gwendolyn were either selling drugs or maybe just Leah was and Gwendolyn was Sleeping with men for money for both of them. So like Daniel was basically pimping out Gwendolyn and he was using Leah to run drugs or both or all, and so what you could basically call a pimp you could just say that blanket covers both pretty much. So he believed that Leah had been selling drugs for him and that she had also been kind of like sneaking away money or drugs from him, and that was why Daniel why had told her that she needed to strangle Gwendolyn to kind of prove her loyalty to him. And that's what he believed. So when Pontiff later stated that she Because I mean her story changed repeatedly and it never was the same story twice she later told the investigators that she was present for almost the entirety of the attack, murder and witnessed Dana White pulling Gwendolyn from the car while Gwendolyn was asking what's going on, Daniel, why are you doing this?  

27:21 

And also begging Leah to help her and to stop him. And then she admitted to trying to strangle Gwendolyn. Leah did but failed. And when she failed, daniel smacked her and then proceeded to try to strangle Gwendolyn herself or himself, I'm sorry and when that kind of failed, he I guess she was unconscious and he put her inside the barrel with the tire on top, set the tire and the barrel on fire with her body inside of that, and then, once the fire had gone down, used and this was a quote used a shovel to chop her up. She also added that she saw White get a Delta Gas Card from someone and use that to fill up the gas jugs that were subsequently used to go back and further burn the body inside the barrel, and that was later also verified by other witness testimony. So they found that guy who actually had given the Delta Gas Card to White.  

28:25 

So at this point the multiple agencies again are the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Office, Ouachita Monroe and the FBI local FBI branch had also got involved and according to court records, after the interview I think it was the second interview with Leah members of all these agencies met in Catahoula Parish where Leah led them to a very rural country road in Sicily Island and pointed to the place where she said that Daniel White had killed and then subsequently burned Gwendolyn McIntosh in a trash barrel. They located the barrel with Char and Ash residue, which seemed to corroborate her story, and at this point jurisdiction was given to the Catahoula Parish Sheriff's Office who continued to work the investigation with the continuing help of the Louisiana State Police. So on June 26, 2014, at approximately 1130, they located the 55 gallon barrel with soot and char markings like and or, I'm sorry, soot and char. That also had markings all around the area, like that of a shovel with the stirred ground around the burn site, and they sealed off the scene immediately and eventually they had to get a big tarp to cover the area because there was impending rain and they didn't want to lose any potential evidence. So they also found a few other holes or like disturbed areas of dirt where they figured that some of evidence or other things had been buried around the area, and they located a shoe print and took a plaster casting of that that was near the barrel and the crime scene. They also located a shovel later under a nearby bridge.  

30:09 

Other groups of law enforcement were at the same time processing the Cadillac that White had driven up in and gave them permission to search. They analyzed the cell phone data from the two phones and Leah identified those two phones later as Whites and Gwendolyn's, and they also obtained an executed search warrant on the addresses given as the last known whereabouts the apartment, and I think they even had one for the hotel where they had been saying, shortly prior to and even more still, officers were interviewing witnesses and gathering information that way. So massive effort on the part of law enforcement and with such like little dick measuring. That I could see Like, because usually when you have inter inter well, maybe not so much sheriff's offices in different parishes, but generally if you have like state police, fbi and parish sheriff's offices, there's a little bit of like oh this is our, this is our case, you know stuff like that.  

31:03 

But there doesn't seem to be any of that in this case. It seemed like they were all very coordinated and collaborated very well together to be able to get to the bottom of this. So on the 27th early morning so it was, you know, within an hour and a half, two hours of them locating the 55 gallon barrel and the crime scene, the FACES personnel. Do you know what the FACES agency is? Okay, FACES, all capital is the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services Laboratory and they provide forensic anthropology and forensic imaging services to agencies within Louisiana and they're based out of LSU. Really, yes, so.  

WeesieCo-host31:49 

I was gonna say that even in Louisiana, yes it is.  

KellyeHost31:52 

It's the LSU for LSU FACES laboratory. So they showed up at about 120 on the 27th, the same morning, and they finished excavating the skeletal human remains from the scene. Now, initially their estimate was they had recovered only approximately 25% of the entire skeleton. And then I'm gonna read you a quote the shafts of the right tibia and fibula that contained areas that were not touched by fire, proximal and distal ends of the radii. So that would be the arm.  

32:26 

Yes, multiple pieces from the shafts of the femoral, multiple metacarpals and metatarsals, fingers and toes, multiple pieces from ribs, the distal and proximal ends of the tibia, multiple phalanges, a charred but intact portion of the wrist that included the distal ends of the radius and part of the hand, and over a hundred other bone fragments. No bone that was collected at the site was unaffected by fire. The remains were subsequently identified as human by Mary H Mannheim, and she's the director of the FACES Laboratory at LSU. The same team also later determined a positive DNA match that the charred and fragmented remains found burned in the barrel were that of Gwyndolin Lee Macintosh, and they figured that out by using the mother and father to find that DNA profile for her and verify that it was her.  

WeesieCo-host33:22 

Yeah, the reverse DNA.  

KellyeHost33:23 

Right, exactly. So the final results of the remains and this came, you know, probably, I think it was like a month later. The fragments were identified from only certain areas of the body and the skeleton is largely incomplete. Only portions of the arms, hands, legs, feet and ribs were recovered. So the head, most of the leg or, I'm sorry, most of the torso was never found.  

WeesieCo-host33:51 

Some of the ribs.  

KellyeHost33:52 

Some of the ribs, but it was mostly unaccounted for. But they never found her head. Never found her head. And I believe that they took Leah out many times because I think later she says that they buried portions, which is like the disturbed ground that they had found, but she took them to different places and pointed out different spots multiple times but they never were able to recover her head, which is just barbaric. I mean, it's hard to imagine this entire situation to begin with, but when you talk about not even being able to have 25 to 30% of a skeleton and completely missing the head, it's mind blowing.  

WeesieCo-host34:36 

Absolutely mind blowing. I mean, you think about somebody's mind and how they think and how we think, and the morbid grossity of the whole thing. Just how does somebody live with themselves or even come to that type of a thought that it's okay to not just kill someone but dismember them?  

KellyeHost35:01 

To viciously mutilate their body and with a shovel With a shovel With a shovel. Take off somebody's head with a shovel.  

WeesieCo-host35:09 

Those kind of people we need to cut their heads off and throw them out in the river to the alligators. I mean seriously. What kind of person can do that? And whatever kind of person does that, they're not in their right mind. There's no way you could ever convince me that they're in their right mind and they consciously made that decision and choice. And, like I said, if they're in that, there's something not working properly. So there's a disconnect.  

KellyeHost35:35 

Their ways are not in the correct order. Their linear thinking is not at all. I mean, do you think?  

WeesieCo-host35:43 

about a baby being born and the things that the innate factors that we're born with. We're not really born with the sense of right and wrong. We learn that as we grow, right. You know, as the child's get older, they go to school, they learn what's appropriate, what's not appropriate, and some people do push the Well, yeah, you have to test the boundaries.  

KellyeHost36:04 

You have to see what you can and can't get away with. And some get away with more, and then some they have that innate. And that's where and I learned this from Candice DeLong, the retired FBI lady who does Women who Kill on ID or whichever one, and I listened to her podcast as well. It's oh shoot, now I forget the name of it. I listen to it every week. Anyway, she talks about the fact that a sociopath is made, a psychopath is born.  

36:38 

So, you think about it, that your psychology and your brain is made up from the time that you're born. A psychopath is one thing. A sociopath can be made. A psychopath is born. So that kind of leads into what you're saying, though. We learn behaviors and what we can get away with, and people who end up doing vicious, brutal things like this type of murder, because murder in itself is innately horrible. But when you're talking about burning someone, decapitating them with a shovel and then just going back about your day and it just makes my head hurt trying to get my head around it which I think is a good thing, because if I was able to understand it, it would probably be I'd be in the same boat, and that's a little terrifying, so don't wanna be in that boat. So initially, Leah Pontiff was arrested on June 14th for obstruction of justice, and they arrested. They went to the Ouachita Correctional facility where they were keeping Daniel White for the arrest warrant. They went and arrested him for secondary kidnapping, and that was on the 14th. Okay, now they interviewed or they try to interview both of them many times.  

37:59 

I have way more of the interviews with Leah, because they used her interviews as evidence in Daniel White's trial and Leah, she never went to trial, so I have more information because that was what was in his documentation. So mostly she claimed that she was just mortally terrified, which I mean I understand. To a certain extent I completely understand this guy. You're watching him dismember and cut somebody's head off with a shovel. I'd be terrified of him too, like if he could do this to her. They lived together, they had children together and I can understand where she would be absolutely terrified to go against him and that all makes sense. However, she did mention that he was like a pimp to both her and Gwendolyn and they often beat them and turned them against each other, and she said multiple times during her interviews that she was jealous of Gwendolyn.  

WeesieCo-host38:59 

So investigators what was she jealous?  

KellyeHost39:01 

of Just her relationship with Daniel, with White. So she won that relationship Basically, yeah, and because Gwendolyn had the two children, so they had, quote unquote, a closer relationship or whatever. She had more of a hold over him, I guess, and that was why so and that was her attachment, right, right? Well, more of it, and more of it. Like, you can't break that bond with her because you have to be the father to her. She's the mother of your children, so it's not as easy to cut her off as it would be to cut off Leah, right?  

39:27 

So the investigators, obviously they weren't quick to just accept her claims of terror and fear, and especially after they talked to her cellmate that she had been sharing a bunk with at the facility where she was being housed, her cellmate. So we have as another snitch statement here. So you have to take that with a grain of salt, and I say that with every single person that we have that comes out of. You know, I don't think she got anything out of this. There was no mention of any kind of benefit she got from telling police about her conversation.  

WeesieCo-host39:59 

She wasn't given a deal to reduce her sentence or line her.  

KellyeHost40:01 

I couldn't find any record of that. If there is one, I don't know about it. I couldn't find it. But she tells investigators what her and Leah have been talking about and I'm gonna read this verbatim from what it said in the police report. And this is again a cellmate statement and take it with a grain of salt. And also, this statement is highly graphic. It has mentions of rape and domestic violence and I just wanna make sure everybody knows that. So if you don't wanna listen to that, skip ahead a few, you know, maybe about a minute, and that way you don't have to hear that stuff and you can finish the story. Okay, so here we go.  

40:42 

White called Pontiff and told her to bring Gwyndolin with her to Sicily Island because he had to get rid of his problem because Gwyndolin kept making threats to call his probation officer. Pontiff then met with Gwyndolin and they met at a trailer at the end of Ditter Road at Leroy Levi's house. That was in Sicily Island. White gave Pontiff a rope to kill Gwyndolin. They left the car with White and Gwyndolin in the front and Pontiff in the back. When Pontiff pulled the rope over Gwyndolin's neck, she began to fight for her life. White pulled the car over. Pontiff got out and pulled Gwyndolin from the car.  

41:19 

Pontiff began fighting with Gwyndolin and started choking her. While choking her, pontiff pushed her two thumbs down hard into Gwyndolin's throat. Gwyndolin begged for her life. The whole struggle lasted about 15 minutes and when Gwyndolin was limp, pontiff checked for a breathing. Gwyndolin was not breathing, but her heart was still beating. So White panicked and started jumping with both feet on the chest of Gwyndolin. Pontiff could hear the bones crack, victim, I'm sorry.  

41:45 

Gwyndolin was then dead. They knew she was dead because Gwyndolin's bowels had moved. They put Gwyndolin on the back seat. Pontiff could hear her neck crack and she laughed. They then went back to the other car, put her in the trunk and rode around following each other trying to figure out what to do with her. They went to White's cousin's house right across the road from his mother's home and got two tires and they stole someone's garbage barrel. They rode around until they found a place they could burn her. When White went to get Gwyndolin out of the trunk, Gwyndolin's clothes were coming off. White pulled her out, but her ass on his dick. Pontiff got mad because Gwyndolin's ass made White hard and he raped her dead body.  

WeesieCo-host42:24 

Oh my god.  

KellyeHost42:25 

In parentheses it says Thornhill stated that Pontiff got raging mad with jealousy over him raping her dead body. Back to her statement. They put a tire in the barrel, put Gwyndolin in the barrel head first and put a tire on top. They poured $10 of gas on her and set it on fire and left the area. They drove to the Chase Hotel in both cars. While at the hotel they showered and cleaned up. They washed out the gas can and cleaned White's shoes.  

42:49 

White and Pontiff went back to where they left the body burning at daylight. About four or five hours later they brought water and put out the fire. They dumped the barrel. The only remains left were with the ribcage, backbone and skull with hair. Gwyndolin's hair was still styled. They separated the head from the other remains and put it into a garbage can. That was taken from the hotel.  

43:08 

Pontiff claimed quote the spinal cord is a hell of a thing to break unquote. They drove about a half a mile and drove up on a single trailer with a man watering his yard. They panned it. They stopped throughout the ribcage and the backbone. Then they went to another location that Pontiff described as quote past catfish plant. Two churches crossed the road on the left woods on right unquote. Pontiff led, let him out for about 30 minutes. White came back muddy, it did not rain. Pontiff picked him up and saw an inmate van with inmate workers and then they went back to the hotel and had sex with. While Pontiff told I'm sorry they had sex, white then told Pontiff that if she would kill Gwyndolin he would take the charge if they got caught. So that statement's kind of confusing, I think. What that means is they, oh they had sex. And then, while they did that, he told Pontiff that if she, if they got caught, that he would take the charge. Pontiff was scared White would quote roll on her. Unquote. Now, and Pontiff was going to say that White threatened her life if she didn't kill Gwyndolin. But he didn't.  

44:20 

Pontiff never cried when telling these things to Thornhill the Thornhill is the cellmate. And when she asked Pontiff if she regretted doing it or if she could go back and change things, would she on to replied, quote no, that bitch deserved it. Unquote. And that's what the cellmate statement was to police. Now, when they had that information and went back again to talk to Leah Pontiff, she admitted that she thought that Gwyndolin was a terrible mother and maybe she had said she was deserving of something because of how she treated her children, but that she never said that Gwyndolin deserved to die. So you can form your own opinions on that, but you have to remember a couple of things, especially when you're talking about jailhouse statements.  

45:04 

People in those situations, they tend to do a couple of things. They either tend to brag and bolster their stories to try to make themselves look harder or to give themselves whatever quote, unquote street cred while they're in jail, more so than anything to try to protect themselves, I think. But you have to take anything said while in jail very, very loosely and just go with what's backed up by the evidence. For the most part, and that's kind of what they went with, but that was a very damning statement that was given by Leah Pontiff's cellmate. So after that, in this entire painstaking investigation, with multiple agencies working wonderfully together, they came. They all came to the same conclusion.  

45:51 

Both 30-year-old Leah Pontiff and 36-year-old Daniel White were arrested and charged with first-degree murder on July 14th 2014, and each of them had their bond set at $2 million. So we're gonna talk real quick about Leah Pontiff first and her subsequent legal journey, because hers is a little bit shorter, although I say shorter, it still took over two years before her stuff was completed. She was eventually appointed a public defender named DeVan Pardue, and, after multiple continuances and even a sanity commission request, she eventually took a plea deal for manslaughter on March 1st 2016. They never actually completed the sanity hearing portion that they had requested. Now get this. Her sentence was 30 years hard labor, with all but 20 years suspended, and she was given credit for time served from the date she was arrested in July, two years before. So basically she got an 20-year sentence, 18 years from the time she was actually she actually pled guilty and was sentenced and then, after she completed her DOC sentence, she would also be required to be under active supervised probation for five years.  

47:10 

And since I can't find her on the inmate website and it's been nine and a half years since the time she was arrested I'm assuming she's out or something. I can't find anything. I haven't found any kind of. There was no news articles, there was no other arrest records, there was no other anything. There was no like probation, revocations or anything like that, and so I'm assuming she got out on good behavior. So I don't know for sure if she's still on probation or almost finished or whatever. My opinion, though, that was a hell of a license for being a part of it. But again, I can understand, due to the background of this man, that you put yourself in that situation. What would you do, knowing that he literally just put this woman's body in a barrel and then waited till later to put it out with fire and then decapitate her? And I mean, that's just I don't know. I don't know what I would do.  

WeesieCo-host48:15 

But then, admitting to the certain things about the jealousy and Well, she does, said her, the relationship between Gwendolyn and him was always gonna be closer and if he could do that to the mother of his children, she has no connection with him other than, hey, I liked him or whatever. So, yeah, if he could do that to the mother of his children, he gets my drugs. Yeah, yeah, no, I don't know what I would do either, but I definitely.  

KellyeHost48:49 

Right and I feel like this If I could run, I would probably run. Right, but I mean people in those situations don't often feel like they have that option. That's right. So I mean, and I feel like a lot of the statement that the cellmate gave, I feel like that had a lot more to do with like bolstering and trying to make herself seem more of a badass or whatever.  

WeesieCo-host49:06 

Yeah, she's a prism. Yeah, she kinda showed up to be a badass, exactly, or they're gonna take you down.  

KellyeHost49:12 

And I mean, while she may have had some of those feelings, that I still feel like it was more of a protection of herself. Oh, probably so. So I mean.  

WeesieCo-host49:21 

I mean, I can see that, obviously see that.  

KellyeHost49:23 

So I don't know if she.  

WeesieCo-host49:24 

No way out.  

KellyeHost49:25 

Got off light or not because of the amount of damage this probably has done to her and everything else, but again, she's still alive. So I still feel like she. You know as much a part as she could have played in it or didn't play in it. It's still hard to say if I feel like the prison thing.  

WeesieCo-host49:41 

The statement from the.  

KellyeHost49:43 

The snitch.  

WeesieCo-host49:44 

I mean, I think she probably, you know, really blew up the story just again. You know she's in there and she's gotta seem to be a hard ass, so they don't, you know, take advantage of her or beat her down and, you know, take her crap.  

KellyeHost49:59 

So For sure, for sure. So that's what I have on her and, like I said, I can't find anything else on her, any other information on her as of today. I didn't find any obituary either. So I think she's still alive, but there's just a big question mark here for her. I'm not sure. So she's probably just kept her head down since her release, which is probably the best thing for her to have done.  

WeesieCo-host50:21 

Yeah, she lay in love.  

KellyeHost50:22 

Yeah, she probably disappeared, all purpose oh yeah, and I mean like I don't blame her, Me either. So now for Daniel White. And now I have in my notes that this is the man of many names because, like I said, in the statement that she gave to her cellmate she called him Shug and she actually was like they found like a carving in the cell wall or whatever that said Shug and Bonnie for life or something. And so then she called him Eddie in the one statement and then he actually presented himself as Daniel Jackson, but his legal name was Daniel White. But in the court records even it says Daniel White, AKA Daniel Jackson. So many names. Whatever, piece of actual human garbage is what we should call him.  

51:06 

But due to the immense time and effort needed in this case, the public defender board had to refer an attorney better equipped than the ones in the parish, and then the state actually had difficulty locating an attorney that would be able to handle a case of his magnitude. So eventually they did land on Martin Reagan and the lingo wrangling commenced. Now, due to Reagan being one of the few attorneys able to try capital cases, he was able to successfully continue the trial date multiple times over the next four years. Oh wow, he even appealed to the Supreme Court when Judge Reeves denied his motion to continue because of the different cases that he was working on and he did. He had multiple other murder trials that he was doing and so they had to keep pushing it back. Well, the one that Judge Reeves denied, he moved it to the Supreme Court. Thanks, Pete and Port granted it. So it pushed it back even further, but eventually and finally, so much for a Speedy fast trial.  

WeesieCo-host52:01 

Well.  

KellyeHost52:01 

I mean, unless the defense requests it, then they don't have to. You know, that's our right to have a Speedy, a fair and Speedy trial. But unless the defense actually requests that to be a thing, then it doesn't. You know you don't have to. No, that's quite balanced in my mind no, it doesn't.  

WeesieCo-host52:17 

There's a lot of things the family shouldn't have to Exactly, you know that should a fair, speedy trial should be taken into consideration, right and the world, the parties, the victims, as well as the perpetrators.  

KellyeHost52:29 

And I agree with that, and there's a lot of people that are advocating now for more victims' rights, because the Constitution of, and state and the government like the country, constitution the whole thing. They have a lot of criminal rights. You have a lot of rights as a criminal Way, more than the victims and the victims' families. So I know that there are a lot of people over the years, especially in the last couple of decades, have been advocating for more victims' rights and there has been some movement there. It's just I, like you said, I feel like it's still extremely unbalanced. So eventually, oh eventually, on February 25th 2019, the jury selection began and that actually went on until the next day. It took on all of the 25th, most of the 26th, but by 542, the evening of the 26th, opening statements began. I think they heard two witnesses before they retired for the night. But this trial went from February 25th, with jury selection starting on the 25th. It went to March 12th, dang.  

53:36 

So it was a two weeks in change and due to the massive amount of evidence, because they had DNA evidence, they had bone evidence, they had evidence from three or four different scenes. They had the vehicle, they had the cell phone records, they had witnesses coming in, expert witnesses coming in for all of these things and then they had all of the different witness testimonies that they got from the different places. They had the different fan. I mean they just it was just a lot, it was a massive amount of information. So it took over two weeks for that trial and on March 12th at 12.05, after receiving their instructions, the court recessed and jury deliberations began. Now this is 12.05. So, jury recess or court recess at 12.05, did they have lunch or did they not have lunch?  

WeesieCo-host54:21 

They usually do, okay, so if they have lunch.  

KellyeHost54:23 

They came back at right. So with the lunch they recessed at 12.05,. They returned to court at 1.16. So if they took an hour for lunch, that leaves 11 minutes for actual deliberations.  

WeesieCo-host54:42 

If they gave them an hour for lunch, yeah, I mean it was a, I mean that was in. I was in Texas the jury pool but we had an hour every day.  

KellyeHost54:51 

Oh, and they were sequestered as well. They, the defense, motion for them to be sequestered. So I just thought that was absolutely crazy, Because when I read that that they recessed at 12.05, they came back with a verdict and were back in court at 1.16. So it was a working lunch then. I would maybe.  

WeesieCo-host55:07 

And we had that a couple of during the sentencing phase of the one I was a part of. They brought the lunch into us into the jury room and it was like sandwich box lunches or whatever and we worked through the lunch discussions and books and whatever.  

KellyeHost55:23 

And I've actually heard that the juries will say like we don't want to take lunch, we're gonna deliberate and then we're gonna be done.  

55:29 

And then and that can happen too- yeah, I don't know if that's what happened in this case, but you know I still in. Hour and 11 minutes was how long they, from the time they recessed after they got their instructions to the time they came back in court and said they had a verdict. It was an hour and 11 minutes and they returned with a unanimously guilty of second degree murder. Now, they were originally arrested for first degree, but by the time they went to trial they went, they, they. It was for second degree murder, it wasn't for first. So he was found unanimously guilty of second degree murder and then he was later sentenced, on April 4th, although the automatic sentence for second degree murder in Louisiana is life without parole, probation or benefit of sentence. So he, as of this recording, he is imprisoned at Angola and he is 45 years old and I believe it was 2020 when he filed an appeal and uh.  

WeesieCo-host56:28 

Let's see appealing.  

KellyeHost56:29 

Well, I mean because I'm, you know they always do an appeal and it was automatic and at the end of the sentence saying they are at the end of the, the, the trial, they automatically did the filings and he, the, the public defender that represented him, withdrew so that the um a pellet board, could come in and do their their appeal stuff. So right.  

WeesieCo-host56:54 

I mean, that was just morbid what he did.  

KellyeHost56:57 

Absolutely.  

WeesieCo-host56:58 

And you know, that's, that's just my opinion, I just it. It still blows my mind.  

KellyeHost57:05 

I can tell you what he appealed on. There was a couple. One was that there wasn't enough evidence to show that he actually did it. Another one was that um they because Judge Reeves had denied a couple of their motions to suppress and he felt that that was unfair that other crimes evidence because they actually submitted um after they did did the initial discovery. They additional supplement that they were going to admit um evidence of previous crimes of his to show um what's that word? I'm looking for? Um that they do the same thing, that this is this is not the, this is a normal behavior for this guy and that that shouldn't have been allowed.  

WeesieCo-host57:48 

Well, escalating crimes. I mean, they you know bit repeating, and they're just a pattern, a pattern of behavior.  

KellyeHost57:54 

And then another one was that he was improperly interrogated after requesting counsel. He argued that, um, the trial counsel should have been allowed to move closer to witnesses because he had difficulty hearing the witnesses, um, and that they made no um accommodations because he said that his lawyer had a hard time hearing and that was why he didn't get to properly question the witnesses. And then that the prosecutor hugged the witness, lee Short, the one that initially had brought Pontiff into the whole thing. He said that he gave him a hug and then that was a form of vouching for his testimony or something. But anyway, all of these things to say that, um, it it was upheld. The the, the third circuit court of appeals upheld his sentence and conviction and I did not find any remnants or even a submission to the Supreme Court for an appeal. And even if he had, the Supreme Court only hears like what's the 8% of?  

58:55 

all cases they get and that. And you know, that was something I found interesting when I asked one of the district attorneys why, in any case, why would somebody, if they had such good evidence, why would they go for second degree murder and not first? And the answer was surprising to me. It was all capital murder cases go to the Supreme Court. Really All of them. Wow, blanket. If it's a capital case, it goes to the Supreme Court. And so by doing a second degree murder case, it's not automatically going to the Supreme Court, it's going to go to the third. If they do an appeal, it'll go to the third circuit, but there is a 92% chance that the Supreme Court will never see it, which means a less overturned convictions, less trial, less, you know, having to redo things Because you know, like in the case that's about to come back up in Catahoula Parish, he was not unanimous, unanimously found guilty. He was 11 of 12 for, and I think his was still second degree, but his is coming back and he's getting a retrial now and that was from 2018.  

WeesieCo-host01:00:00 

And so now he's now. Now it has to be unanimous, so he filed that appeal.  

KellyeHost01:00:05 

He was granted. Now he's got to go back to court and do the whole thing over again.  

WeesieCo-host01:00:08 

Yeah, see, I think that's crazy too, because it happened before the law was passed.  

KellyeHost01:00:12 

Right. But you know, when they realize that things have changed and things you know are more justified in one way or the other, well, I mean, you have to think about it too. In the case of, like juveniles, you know, the more studies that we've done and the more information that we've got with the frontal lobe development and things like that, it makes sense that some of these things get looked at, especially when it comes to juvenile lifers. So anyway, that's pretty much where this whole case ends. The end of the story is just that he's in jail and it's probably never going to get out, as far as everything that I can find.  

WeesieCo-host01:00:50 

Did they? ever find the head? 

KellyeHost01:00:50 

 Never, they never recovered her head. And the picture that I saw from the autopsy what if you can even call it an autopsy? The scale. And I've never seen an autopsy report like that either, because they had each bone in the human body that you know and they're left and the right.  

WeesieCo-host01:01:14 

It's hard to do the last puzzle. It's like they get back together over the table.  

KellyeHost01:01:17 

They basically went in there and made a like, a like, a Count, yeah, whatever. It was just like a like. It was like a check. They had to check. This is we found this bone, we have this bone, we have this bone. And I'd never seen an autopsy report like that, though, where it listed out every single one of the bones and they just went through and, like, slashed which ones they did have, and then they had the picture of the skeleton and they shaded in all of the areas that they didn't have. So it was, it only showed the areas that they did have, and it was yeah, didn't make a whole body.  

01:01:49 

It broke my heart. Well, of course it didn't make a whole body, it was less than 30% and just the amount of fire damage to what was left. And then they had the additional. There was a note in there about the discoloration because of the tires that they had burned on top of her had melted into the bones.  

WeesieCo-host01:02:07 

And see, I don't know anything. They didn't put charges on him for desecration of a body, no, it was just second to the remit. They didn't put sex after the fact or anything.  

KellyeHost01:02:15 

Well, because, that one all they had was All they had was the cellmate statement that that's what Leah told him, and she never admitted to saying that.  

WeesieCo-host01:02:23 

But still the desecration of a body.  

KellyeHost01:02:25 

No, no, absolutely, and just the miss. What is it? The abuse of a corpse, yeah, but I don't know if that was because they didn't know if she was still alive or not at the time. And I mean based on the statement Good intel yeah.  

01:02:39 

Based on the statement? Well, no, because they had no way of knowing, but based on the statement that the cellmate claims Leah told her he stomped on her chest and that's how she died and broke all the bones that way and then decapitated her without having any of those other, barely having enough bones to tell it was her, much less tell an actual cause of death or time of death. They have to go by what they have, and the majority of the case against Daniel White was based on the statements that Leah Pontiff gave them and testified to a trial.  

WeesieCo-host01:03:11 

So, and that's also, she's trying to save her hide too.  

KellyeHost01:03:14 

Well see, and that's the thing is. I again didn't see where they made the agreement for her for a lesser sentence for testifying a state witness, which I'm sure she did, because the sentence itself was not not much for a second degree murder or for well. She plead to manslaughter, which is a maximum of 40 years, so she got 30, with 10 suspended and then five years active supervised probation. So all in all it's just gruesome, absolutely gruesome. Daniel White will be imprisoned for the rest of his life, hopefully of his natural life.  

WeesieCo-host01:03:52 

And they saw her children.  

KellyeHost01:03:55 

I did not Nothing. I did not Cause I. There were no names of them or anything like that, and I didn't dig too far into who got custody or anything like that. I assume it would have been her mother, but I'm not for sure Because she, you know, she was worried about all of them, she wasn't just worried about her daughter. So it's not. I don't know what kind of feelings those would evoke, but you know many other cases that you watch. The grandparents almost never hold it against the children because they're just glad their children are still there and they have a part of their. Their child that they lost left. And Gwendolyn Lee McIntosh was brutally and gruesomely murdered and dismembered and desecrated it's a good word for that and Two children lost their mother. They actually lost their mother and their father.  

01:04:43 

Yeah, but I don't know if that was a bad thing for the father parts.  

WeesieCo-host01:04:47 

You know, drugs and alcohol change people.  

KellyeHost01:04:50 

Absolutely, absolutely, and his rest record was 18 pages long.  

WeesieCo-host01:04:55 

Oh my lord, have mercy.  

KellyeHost01:04:57 

Yeah, that the NCIC report that I because I was gonna try to like list a few things but did that the Numerous pages, 18 pages long, of a rest record should tell you more than everything you need to know about his past. And, like I said, they introduced evidence of past crimes into the trial to show.  

WeesieCo-host01:05:16 

I borrow that particular comment from my experience. The reason they want to suppress that is because it you know, with the jury's mind. Absolutely. The one I sat on was an intoxication manslaughter.  

KellyeHost01:05:30 

They were not allowed to introduce any of his priors right For your that crime that you're being tried for, not your previous, what you've done in your life previously to that right, but in what we found out it sentencing was he had multiple cases of intoxication issues, drunk driving, multiple Charges and things that all occurred because he was up intoxicated right. So he had a history of being a drunk a lot, a lot and driving a lot and endangering the lives of others.  

WeesieCo-host01:06:01 

Absolutely, and that would have definitely played, oh yeah, into our you know Thinking and the jury instructions were crazy, but no, no, they're like seven pages long, I think.  

KellyeHost01:06:11 

I think in the last case, or what did?  

WeesieCo-host01:06:14 

have occurred if it hadn't been for a block or it would not have occurred. Yeah, it's just um. When you break it down into piece by piece, when we heard the their information during sentencing, it was like, oh crap, this guy needs to stay in jail for a long time, right?  

KellyeHost01:06:33 

but you can't base your the what.  

01:06:36 

What you have to base your verdict on has to be the evidence of the case that you're listening to, not the fact that, oh well, he's done this a lot more.  

01:06:43 

So we should just tell these guilty so that he doesn't get out and hurt anybody else, because that's that's not fair, it's just, it's not. I mean, it's it's relevant. That's why they let you know in sentencing. That's why a lot more information, especially in those cases when the jury because they can decide you know, I think it's actually defense's option, except for capital murder cases they can say we want the judge to decide the sentence thing, or we want the jury to hear the same thing, yes, but when, with that you get the but load of information which now can't change your verdict, but it can adjust your mindset to what the sentence saying should be right would be the weight that it should be, the weight that it should have based on if this might happen again, or if this is a punishment that needs to fit what it was done, knowing that he had the option to do better many, many times before that particular case was.  

WeesieCo-host01:07:33 

He chose a Jury to do the sentencing because the judge sitting on the case had been in previous cases with him. That makes sense, and so the judge already had the knowledge right of his activities.  

KellyeHost01:07:46 

Right and he had a more, more firsthand knowledge because he had been the judge for the other case as well.  

WeesieCo-host01:07:50 

Okay, I'm gonna let the jury, I'm gonna let these 12 people battle that out and see you know what they give me, because the judge is probably gonna slam the books and say, nope, yeah, give me the max and be done.  

KellyeHost01:08:01 

Yeah, and I understand that and like it and you know there's there's that saying that you know if you're innocent, go with the judge, if you're guilty, go with the jury. Yeah, because you can play on the jury's emotions and you can try to get one person.  

WeesieCo-host01:08:12 

You got it.  

KellyeHost01:08:13 

You got a 12 to one, you know. You know you gotta get one person out of 12 with a judge. You just got to convince the one guy and he's got all that legal base knowledge and that's why you know, and even if you're not quote, unquote, innocent, if it's more of a legality thing and it's Like circumstantial and things like that, then you know, sometimes it might be better to go with just the judge. So Thank you guys for listening, thank you, we see, for joining me. I had a great time. This was a crazy, crazy story. It breaks my heart. Very sad, very, and they're just unnecessarily gruesome, unnecessarily brutal and For, if you're all the people's life that it touched and disturbed and wrecked , really I mean these poor kids, you know, to any, any children in that situation. It just breaks my heart anybody that's ever.  

WeesieCo-host01:09:03 

We know the difficulties with people, the best domestic violence, but please know there are resources out there, it's, and you can be kept safe and you can get a new life started. You know, even being under that spell of you know you're that's the love of your life and the father of your children, but in a case like this, where that mother is taken, it happens all the time.  

KellyeHost01:09:30 

Well, it escalates because she just in the three months prior there were three different times that she called the 12th June.  

WeesieCo-host01:09:37 

12th was within two to three days of her actually being murdered and there were all of those signs and we don't know the statistical number of what percentage of women you know they end up either close to dead or dead. Yeah, you know.  

KellyeHost01:09:54 

As Weesie pointed out, there are resources and we have resources that will be in the show notes for this episode Victims of domestic violence for mental illness, suicide hotlines every resource that anyone could need, that is.  

WeesieCo-host01:10:06 

Please reach out.  

KellyeHost01:10:08 

There are people out there. There, I believe even now there is a number that you can text Hmm, I don't know that, for I think it's the suicide hotline for that one. But I mean, there are so many resources, there are so many people that are willing to help. It is not your only option to continue knowing your fault and it's not your fault, it's.  

01:10:26 

It's always, always, always going to be better to not be in that situation Than just stay in and hope it gets better, and with that we will. You guys check the show notes. Like I said, for those resources. They'll be down there. They're always gonna be available. We have them on any episode that has to do with domestic violence and any other issues that might come up. Thank you guys for listening. We'll see you in a couple weeks. You guys have any questions? Comments concerns our gmail is in the link or in the show notes as well. We hope you guys stay safe and take care out there.