CenLAw
Kellye, the true crime enthusiast, and Kyler, her willing partner, delve into intriguing cases from Central & Northeastern Louisiana.
From small-town cases to nationally known crimes, they bring you stories that hit close to home, always with that Louisiana connection.
Tune in bi-weekly for your true crime fix and support their show for a shout-out in the next episode.
Stay safe out there!
CenLAw
The Cold Case of Courtney Coco ft. The Uncle of the (un)Solved!
We invite you to be part of the courtroom drama as we witness the trial proceedings. Do the testimonies hold water? Is the defense's attempt to discredit the star witness successful? Will justice be served? From the gripping eyewitness accounts to the landmark ruling by the appellate court, we leave no stone unturned. Tune in to Episode 15 of CenLAw and join us on this captivating journey as we journey through the fight to justice for Courtney Coco.
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Real Time Real Crime Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-life-real-crime/id1451676874
Dateline: Season 31, Episode 27 "Who Killed Courtney Coco?"
Appeal: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/la-court-of-appeal/115581782.html
- https://fox4kc.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/599047323/award-winning-podcaster-helps-to-get-guilty-verdict-in-18-year-old-cold-case/
- https://www.kalb.com/2021/06/07/detective-david-anthony-burns-arrested-murder-courtney-coco-after-being-ided-by-witness/
- https://www.myplainview.com/news/article/Alexandria-woman-found-dead-in-Texas-8988704.php
- https://www.kalb.com/2022/11/01/verdict-david-anthony-burns-found-guilty-oct-2004-murder-courtney-coco/
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All🎶created by: Uncle Sawyer
As the twelve jurors re-entered the courtroom, taking their appointed seats, a poppable hush fell over the gallery. The family breathless with anticipation and consciously drawing deep breaths as they scrutinized each juror's face for a hint, just a small clue to the imminent decision. A mere ninety minutes had transpired in the deliberation chamber. The fate of the man standing stoically at the defendants' table hung in a precarious balance, the culmination of a nearly two-decade-long hellish journey. For the family of the victim In the gallery, hands in her lock, tarts raced as silent prayers echoed within their thoughts. He impending verdict, a beacon of resolution, pressed upon them like an unrelenting anchor. Every second felt longer than the last, magnifying the gravity of their weight for justice that had already endured the test of nearly two decades. Join us today as we embark on a riveting journey through the enigmatic and convoluted tale. Unveil the layers of this captivating narrative with us as we delve into a saga that transcends time and resonates with the echoes of justice seeking its rightful place. This is Episode 15, the Cold Case of Courtney Coco, on today's episode of CINLAW. Hello and welcome to Episode 15 again, and this is going to be the Cold Case of Courtney Coco. I'm Kelly and I'm Uncle Sawyer, and I messed up, we messed up, somebody messed up Definitely you. We recorded last night or the night before last, whatever night it was, and we listened. You know we listened to it as we were recording to make sure it sounded all right. It sounded great. You know everything was going well, going smooth. I go to edit it and there is this annoying ticking, vibrating, completely noticeable and irritating noise that is penetrating throughout the entire recording. So there was no way in good conscience that I could put that out or try to edit it around it and try to make it sound decent. So here we are again. We're recording again. So it's not going to be as much of a surprise this time around, but it could be interesting because Uncle Sawyer will be able to add input and things, knowing how it kind of turns out in the end, and that'll be different from any other time. So it'll also be able to keep you on straight line. Straight line, yeah right, exactly. So I had to redo the outline too, because there was a whole lot. I get caught up a lot of times in these deeper stories that have a lot of details. It's not that deep. It's not that deep, but it lasted a really long time. There's a lot of moving pieces and parts and things that I was having a hard time filtering. But you're saying rumors. I think we got it now. I think we got it all narrowed down. I've got a new outline. We should be good to go. So we're going to go ahead and jump right in and hopefully we'll do better this time, or I will do better, and then the editing won't be a big be a be a All right. So from the beginning of our story to the point where we get to the jury, like the intro, it took almost 20 years. So let's go back to October 2004.
Kellye:October 4th in Winnie, texas, over there in chambers, chambers County, chambers County, winnie, texas, a gentleman on a tractor is going by like an abandoned building off the side of I-10 and he sees Not off the side of I-10. Whatever, on the side of I-10. No, it's about 20 miles away from I-10. Said that there's an easy on ramp up right there onto 10. Yeah, onto the road, whatever, it's still a ways away. The way they made us out it was like right there on I-10. No, like you get on I-10 and you can haul ass, you can, okay, but it's several, several miles before you get to where they were down the road. Okay, well, anyway, so we're near I-10.
Kellye:We're actually it's Farm to Market Road, something or another, and Guy on a tractor drives by the this abandoned building that has been there for a while, apparently FM 1406. 1406. So abandoned building. The guy that was using it he was he was a construction guy, but he died and so it just kind of like started to waste away. Nobody mess with it, and so there weren't any doors or anything and he could see a body inside that building. So he immediately called the police and the detectives roll out to the scene.
Kellye:They find a young woman severely decomposed, wearing only a purple LSU T-shirt and was naked from the waist down. They could see like a thin layer of dust and dirt across the ground or on the floor. Where she was found, she was on her back with her knees and knees up on her back and her legs were kind of open. And again, she's naked from the waist down. So it was very vulgar and positioning and they could also see a couple of shoe prints and the dirt and the dust, but other than that it wasn't really too disturbed. I think one of the records says that it. You could tell that she wasn't dragged because the disturbance was very minimal, minimal and there was only a couple shoe prints. So they don't know who this lady is. She has no car. She has no identification. There's nothing to be able to say who she is or who she isn't.
Kellye:When the crime scene people go ahead and come out, they do locate a ring on her finger. That is a class ring from the class of 2003, from Alexandria, louisiana, and it's got a name on it. So one of the detectives calls up the Alexandria PD and asks them if they have any missing persons. You know that the description with the name that they found on the ring, and you know he looks in the system, doesn't see anything and he's like you know what? I'll look up this name and see if I can find. You know this girl. Maybe somebody hasn't gotten around to reporting her yet or maybe they just don't know she's missing. So he starts calling. He ends up calling Miss Stephanie Balegard, whose daughter was 19 year old Courtney Megan Coco, and she gets a call on October 4.
Kellye:I think it was mid afternoonish and they asked her if she knew where her daughter was because they had found a body in Texas, about almost 200 miles away from Alexandria, and they had found a body with her daughter's name on her graduation ring, on her finger, on this dead body. And Stephanie was like no, no, no, no, no. I just talked to her a couple days ago. She's dog watching for us, we're squirrel hunting. I mean she's no. No, she's had a couple burglaries at her apartment in the last few months. Somebody had to have stolen her ring and that's that's what you're finding here. It's not her. So she immediately hangs up and starts calling Courtney and she's not getting an answer. She's not getting an answer on any text she's sending. She immediately calls Courtney's older sister, lace, and asked her when the last time she's spoken to her. It's been a couple days, and then she's, you know, full blown panic mode, and so at this point they're starting to kind of get that sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach and realizing that nobody's spoken with her in at least two days. So when it all comes down to it, they eventually pretty well figured that this is her. They get Courtney's uncle to go and ID the body. The mom tells him to specifically look for two things, which would have been Courtney's brand new braces that she just got or I'm sorry, courtney's braces that she just that she had got within the last year and a brand new butterfly tattoo. So when the uncle got there saw the body and verified that it was her, and then their whole world just kind of fell out from underneath them.
Kellye:So before we get too far into much of the case stuff, I want to talk about Courtney and her family. That would be have a good base of her immediate group there. So Courtney, like I said, she was 19 years old. She had graduated the year before in the class of 2003. And she was starting at Northwestern in Natchitoch, louisiana, and she was a criminal justice major. She said, or things that were said about her as a person was she was quiet, she was shy, quiet, shy and polite, and that was from her family side. In high school she did cheer, she's softball gymnastics and you know everybody that said anything about her you know was always very kind, very caring.
Kellye:Her immediate family, her father, she was her father's only biological child and her dad died when she was nine. So she's a freak A little bit. We'll get into that in a minute. That was his only biological child when he passed away. When she was nine, she got an inheritance, a good chunk of an inheritance, a good money, which paid out in like a lump sum every year, and then every five years it doubled. So she got these all the way up and her mom had control over that until she turned 18. And then it went straight to her. So Courtney her mom, dad, passed away when she was nine.
Kellye:She has an older sister, lace. She has another older sister because Courtney was the youngest of three. The other child, the third sibling I can't haven't been able to locate a name or anything but anyway youngest of the three. She had just moved out and started living on her own, because she's like if she was starting in Northwestern, in Nacodish.
Kellye:And once they identified the body they actually know I think they kept it in Chambers County because initially they weren't sure if the murder had occurred in which jurisdiction. So they didn't know she had been killed in Alexandria and then brought to Winnie, or she had been killed in Winnie and just left there. They didn't know what had happened. So they had to get the autopsy done. So her, before they did that, though, mom Courtney Lace, the other close proximity, because anytime there's a homicide you got to look at the immediate surrounding family. Lace had a fiance that had been and I didn't catch this the first time. They were engaged for six years. She didn't get on the pod, sir, but anyway. So her sister older sister Lace was engaged to Anthony Burns. They'd been engaged for six years and he ended up this is how close he was to the family. He actually ended up being one of the haul bearers at her funeral. So now that we have a kind of a close knit group here, we'll get into the boyfriend thing for Courtney here in a minute. Which one? Which one? That's why we're going to talk about it.
Kellye:So they go ahead and get the autopsy. That's one of the first things they're trying to get done. Of course they're analyzing the scene and they're actually contacting Alexandria Police Department to do look over the scene at Courtney's house and see if there's any evidence present there, if there was any sign of anything at her house, and just trying to get an overall grasp of what might have happened. So body gets sent off to the autopsy. They're trying to look for evidence of the scene Once they get. You know. They're trying to figure out. Well, now they realize from the family and everybody else they can't find Courtney's car. They haven't located her phone either and all of her stuff that would have normally been with her that wasn't at her apartment once they realized it's not there, okay, well, now we got to put an APB out for the car and subpoena the phone records. So they do that and in the meantime they go ahead and get the autopsy stuff done.
Kellye:So Dr Brown did the original autopsy in 2004. The weird part about that was there wasn't a lot to note. There was no trauma, no obvious signs of death. There was no natural causes that he could find. Basically, there was nothing. There were no ligus restringulation marks, there were no broken bones, there was no stab wounds. There were no In so much as there weren't even any defensive wounds. There were no, and eventually they'll find out after they get all the stuff back. But there's no DNA under the fingernails. I mean, there's just literally nothing.
Kellye:So it's like she died of natural causes yeah, but he could rule that out as well Like she's a 19-year-old, because a 19-year-old isn't going to just die for no reason. There's not going to be a zero person Like you'd be able to see if it was a brain aneurysm or if it was something that would actually just stop life right. So the only things that he could surmise because of the placement of the body, because of where she was and because of how she was presented at the site he assumed that it was. The manner of death was homicide, Because of death was undetermined, but leaning towards asphyxiation and or smothering. So a couple reasons, specifically the stomach contents he found a wad of bubble gum, and a 19-year-old in their normal state would not just swallow a wad of bubble gum. We've done grown out of that about eight to seven, eight, yeah, because everybody's mother tells them the same thing If you swallow your gum it's going to stay in there for years and years and years it's busted, which also isn't true, but you still listen to your mom.
Kellye:So when the toxicology comes back, he had to use the spleen because of the decomposition. So the body, even though it had only been about 52 hours from the time that she was last known to have been seen or heard from to the time that they found the body, it was 52 hours and because of this and because of the advanced state of the decomposition, dr Brown had to say like she had to have been because of the temperatures, the outside temperatures at the time. She had to have been placed somewhere where it was hotter than the ambient temperatures for a period of time before she was placed back outside or out into the ambient temperature because of the advanced decomp. So he surmised that she was placed into a trunk and then transported, which is eventually why, because of that autopsy finding, that was why Alexandria had jurisdiction, because the autopsies pretty well showed that she was placed into a trunk and transported across state lines. So they shifted it back over to Alexandria. Pd Detective Green took over the investigation for Alexandria over here. So they did work kind of tandem with Chambers County and the Texas Rangers office over in Winnie and Houston area to be able to continue the investigation on that side. So after they get the autopsy done, they shift that back to the family and the family gets to go ahead and go through the funeral, all of that and, like I said, megan Courtney's sister, her and her fiance the fiance was one of the paul bears and the mom and everybody there all just kind of broken and shocked at this.
Kellye:So, lace, and what's his name? Anthony, anthony, they're trying to work through this. Just shock, because I mean, how many questions do you have at this point. It's bad enough that you have this stab at the heart that your sister's dead, but now why was she that far away? Did she drive over there herself? Did she get kidnapped? Did it accidentally kill her? Your mind can run for days or you can just go completely numb. I don't know. I've never, and hopefully we'll never, have to be in that position, but I can imagine how crazy this time period was for them. Well, yeah, you don't have a sister. Yeah, no, I don't have a sister. I mean, you're close, but so pretty.
Kellye:Remember they had sent off for the phone records. Well, the day of the funeral they actually got those records back. So the phone records show that the last outgoing communication or any kind of communication or ping happened on October 2nd at about 430 and then her phone went dead, like it went off. There was no transmissions to her from until two days later at 10pm. So on October 4th at 10pm, which was the way past the time when her body was found. Okay, so 10pm phone comes back on and it's peeing off of towers in Houston, texas.
Kellye:So they gear up, they tell the Texas Rangers and them over there like hey, we're getting these pains, we're going to shoot this information over to you. Do you think you can track this down? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they go to do that and they eventually do actually find the phone and the person using the phone and it's a 15 year old juvenile who says he bought the phone for 10 bucks off of two guys walking down the street that he's never seen before and he thinks the one guy's name was red, One was tall, one was short. That's all they got. So that's kind of a dead end. Now they've still got the car out there somewhere and the car was a Pontiac Bonneville sedan and they had license plate numbers and all that. And they put an APP out and they put it out in the news that this girl's body had been found. This car might be in connection. If you see it, call somebody. So they put that information out there and you know they're just waiting to see and they're continuing their investigation on the home front side of it.
Kellye:They go to the house and the initial sweep. They look over everything. There's no forced entry. They actually have to break a window to get into the house because everything's locked up tight. There's no real disarray outside of like normal living messiness and there's like I think a trash can was turned over and the mattress was a skew on the bed and like the headboard was falling or had fallen over and like somebody had just been getting freaky. Maybe, maybe, but I mean really that was it. There was a log box under the bed but it didn't look like it had been tampered with and there wasn't any significant amount of money or anything in it anyway, and you know, there just wasn't a whole lot. There wasn't a whole lot to go on. They did find like remnants of weed in the living room from where the last night she was there, because now they've got all this stuff and they're looking at the scene and obviously there was more than one person there. So they see this stuff and they're like, okay, well, let's go and talk to people and see who's our last, who we talked with or who interacted and all that. So they go and they're talking to all of the friends and there was a couple of people there with her that night a couple boyfriend, girlfriend. Another guy had stopped by with a friend of his, stayed for a couple minutes and they had just been playing dominoes and, yeah, smoking some weed and just kind of hanging out.
Kellye:They're doing all of these interviews and they're ruling people out. You know, based on alibis, based on, you know, different testimonies or statements from each other that are corroborated and what have you, and they actually can see. They think they found some video from one of the gas stations where Courtney is going and buying whatever, and basically they just come up with a lot of dead ends. You know there are a multitude of men that are in Courtney's life. Her mom said she had like one steady boyfriend which his nickname was Jitty J-I-T-T-Y. Jitty. But even he had another girlfriend and they found out that the call at 4.30 on October 2nd that was actually to the landline of Jitty's girlfriend's house yeah, it's yeah, and that's just scraping a little bit of the surface. There she had at least two or three other gentlemen that she was engaging in sex with at the same time period and they worked through everybody. You know they got all of the different testimonies and statements from everyone and pretty well marked everybody off the list and they didn't have any other leads. Really there wasn't anything to go off of.
Kellye:So after they released all the information about the car, they eventually get a couple people from Winnie, texas themselves and she remembered seeing a vehicle that looked kind of similar to that around the same kind of time. And you know there's another gentleman who said he almost got hit by a car that was pulling out from where that abandoned building was around that same time. But when the Chambers County Sheriff's Office took their statements the dates didn't really add up. They thought it was a little bit too soon, like there's a date on the written statement that it was like September 27th and Courtney had still been alive then. So they kind of got pushed to the bottom of a pile, right. So I want to say it was like October 11th or 12th. It was the 12th, october 12th.
Kellye:The car was found. They got a hit on the license plate and everything and they eventually they go find out that the car has been in use in the whole time, pretty much since the day her body was found, and it has been being used and rented for drugs. So basically, if somebody wanted to use a vehicle, they would just bring the guy drugs and he would let him use the car for however long I guess, however many drugs they had. That's how long they got to use the car. I don't know. I don't know how this works. But they did get the car. They confiscated it and what's crazy is that even though it had been eight days over a week that the car had been missing, all of Courtney's stuff was still in it.
Kellye:She worked for a digital practice with her sister. She'd actually quit two days before she went missing, but her lab jacket and her badge were still in the car, like still just hanging out in the vehicle. All of her other stuff was just like they were there. Her notes are stuff. All were still in the car. The same day they process everything. Don't get a whole lot.
Kellye:I think they got a hit on. There was a stain in the trunk that was turned out to be Courtney's blood and then a DNA, like a touch DNA from another one of her past, like boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, past relationship, past sexual partners. That was Fred Landry and that one again it was kind of like I think at the trial they eventually said that it was like a doorknob. He was around, he was her boyfriend. They get the turn. Not just that, but it's explainable. It makes sense why his fingerprint would have been on the trunk.
Kellye:So don't get much from the car. Don't get anything really from the car. So you've got a phone that gets you nowhere, a car that gets you nowhere Except for a place that might have been hot enough to store a body to make it decompose that much. Right other than that, I mean, scientifically that makes the most sense. That's really the only way that in 52 hours you can be as decomposed as that does not even have enough blood in your system to be able to run a tox that you have to use the spleen. So, and honestly it's kind of gruesome, kind of gross. If you guys don't want to hear this he actually picked the spleen and had to like squeeze it to get enough blood out of it to be able to run a toxicology. So, yeah, that's how bad that was. So now we're about two weeks out.
Kellye:They are doing investigations into everybody. They find out interesting things, but nothing substantial. They hear about the money. They hear about the inheritance that she had just got, a lump sum of $20,000 in June. But when they talked to the mom about it even though they tried to come back and introduce that as maybe like a quote unquote motive that the mom was jealous that she gets all this money, so maybe she did something to her the mom was like look, screw y'all, I'm polygraph, give me a DNA, whatever I need to do. She was 100% cleared, lace.
Kellye:They pull her in her sister and Lace is a little bit that person Like she doesn't even want to think about it in her mind that she could possibly be the one who killed her sister. It just it's unfathomable to her. So it throws her completely off when they ask her straight up, like she wasn't prepared for this question, and so she gets really upset, she leaves, like she just fails out, and they make they make a kind of a big deal about it or they try to anyway. And this episode was also covered on Dateline, so you can. You can watch that one for yourself. Season 31, episode 17,. I think is what we ended up with. I think so. Hey guys, this is Kelly dropping in from the editing side. It is not episode 17. It is episode 27. So it's Dateline, episode 27,. Season 32,. Who killed Courtney Coco? Alright, back to the show. So anyway, you can see her on there and judge that for yourself. But she eventually went back, she eventually did the polygraph and she was cleared as well.
Kellye:However, in talking to Lace they got, you know, a good amount of suspects to start with anyway. And one of them was actually her own fiance, anthony. She said she had been suspicious of Anthony and her sister being in an having an affair and she had caught like she kept noticing that they were both gone at the same times. And then one time her fiance accidentally but dialed her and she swore she heard her sister's voice in the background. But she said she had asked them about it. They'd always denied it. And this wasn't the only place that they heard that the officers, the detectives, in investigating, heard that that might have been a thing, that they might have been having an affair.
Kellye:And when I say that Courtney had, you know, let's go with her mischievous tendencies and I don't mean that in any kind of we're not slut-shaming, we're not doing any of that. All I'm saying is that when I was doing my map of people, there were at least six to seven different people on that, just in the one little circle Admittedly and knowingly had had sex with her and she at 19 years old it was, it was. It seemed like a lot. But then you know, you learn that her dad died and her dad and her were really close and it kind of broke her a little bit. You try to fill those gaps. Oh, why not holes, kelly? I'm not doing that. Why aren't you going to say holes, I'm not going to say holes. So you try to fill in that void that that love left, and it it happens. So no slut-shaming, just it is what it is. Yeah, we love sluts, right, we do, absolutely, especially me.
Kellye:Yeah, sure, so they have the detectives, have their work cut out for them, at least initially, trying to get everybody cleared and trying to figure everything out. And they do. They do. They're due justice, but they don't do a very good job though they well, that I mean. Yeah, well, apparently, you can, you can say that because the red they never identified, he was a true red herring, because they never actually identified who that was. I told you who that was, I know, I know, but we'll get there. And then the circles of people that they went around and tried to dig through, and all that. They never got any actual viable suspects. Now, about a year and a half after the murder happened, they got a call and it was kind of mysterious, you know, and it said they said follow the money. So again, they're gonna jump back into this inheritance thing thinking that this might be a motive and again they do their due diligence. They can't really see any line where any of this would go.
Kellye:But there were rumors floating around that maybe Lace and her fiance had killed Courtney off for her money. But there was never any substantial evidence of anything to and Lace didn't get any money out of this deal. Lace didn't get anything. And the fiance, anthony, that may or may not have been having an affair with Coco. They stayed together for a little bit after that but they ended up breaking up and not ever actually getting married. And you know she Okay. So Lace, when she gave her statement, she said that she didn't actually know where he was that weekend. She couldn't say for sure because he had gotten into an argument. He left, came back after 45 minutes and then she didn't see him again until Monday.
Kellye:But there was a couple people that were in you know Courtney's life that had similar stories, like they couldn't vouch for it specifically or they didn't know exactly where they were, but they had no way of proving that they were murdering Coco and taking, or Courtney and taking her all the way to winning. So just because you don't have an alibi doesn't mean you're going to be able to be proven guilty, because they have no way of proving anybody was anywhere. They don't even really have a way of proving that she was murdering. But they do so Well because this is still early, early early aughts, so they don't have like the same kind of cellular triangulation stuff that we have at this point. I mean, they were, they were still there. They just didn't have as good of a handle and grip on using it yet. So Lace didn't give Anthony an alibi, though she didn't. She straight up said like I don't know where he was. He didn't come back till Monday. There's no telling he could have done anything.
Kellye:And then the um, the different Parts that were involved. Like Courtney, she was smoking weed that night before she went missing. She was a little per-miscellaneous, she had a lot of partners. Her boyfriends were not the best choices. Like, if my daughter were dating these fools, it would not. Uncle Sawyer would have a fun weekend. It would be terrible Because, like the one that her mom actually called her or she called her future husband, her mom said it was her quote-unquote steady boyfriend.
Kellye:He was a drug dealer, he had a very extensive criminal past, and at least three of the other guys that they spoke with in relation to Courtney or having something to do with Courtney. They all were in and around the same circles, whether they were doing drugs, whether they had already been in prison. There's one of the guys who was actually later um with you know, within a couple years of this thing being done, he was arrested for homicide. So Fast forward a little bit and the cases at this point ice-freaking cold. But over the years, there are trickles of statements and people coming forward with Not so much, you know, breaking evidence or like it's not gonna blow the case wide open, but they've gotten. They've gotten. Over the years they've had different statements from people that are not um, engaging with each other. They're independent of each other and they're all basically saying the same thing that Anthony Burns gets drunk and he starts talking, and usually the conversation ends up being about Embragging about stuff the death of Courtney Coco in one way or another.
Kellye:So apparently he's in jail with a friend of his that he's known since childhood In 2011,. They share a sale and he tells them that yeah, he smothered her with a pillow and then he wrapped her body in a comforter and took her body and dumped it in Texas. Now wait doesn't. Didn't nobody know about all that Exactly? That's exactly right, so, like you'd have to be there when it happened, right? So the knowledge of her body, the way it was found specifically and how she died was never released. So they told them that this you know it was homicide, but they didn't release the specifics of what they found in the autopsy or what they didn't find, and then they never told anybody that she was wrapped in anything when her body was found in Winnie. So it was only the police force that knew these details.
Kellye:So the information that they were getting from these independent statements from these people that were around Anthony and that wasn't the only one that was the cell mage slash friend from childhood, there was another one that was a girlfriend of a friend of Anthony's that she had been around him and had several times heard him make statements about. You know, things that they did to her Hers were a little bit different. I think that hers involved sex with one of Courtney's known sex partners and they had all had sex with her, but they were going to get away with it because they used condoms or something. But then you know they were conflicting but they were always something to do with it Along the same line, right, and that her story that she told the officers was they wrapped her up and took her with one of the other guys' cousins and they switched cars to his cousin's car and they took the shower curtain as well to be able to make sure she didn't get blood everywhere. It was a whole lot, but there were things, again they didn't release, that she said that matched to the story that only the person who killed her, like killed Courtney would have known.
Kellye:So slowly, slowly, building, you know, more suspicion. And they actually, in 2011, they actually officially named David Anthony Burns as a suspect, but again, there is no physical evidence. There's no way to tie him to the scene of the crime. Nothing, zero, zip, nada. That's shitty. Yes, so as much as they suspected it was him that he had something to do with it. Even if it wasn't him specifically, maybe he was a principal or a party to. They have zip when it comes to Absolutely no way, absolutely nothing that a district attorney, for damn sure, is going to want to be like. Oh, yeah, we can trick Rolls-Royce, sure, yeah, let's go ahead and throw this guy in, not even close.
Kellye:So they do that with handicapped people all the time, though I only said the two, but there were multiple. There was at least three or four or five different people that had brought statements forward and the prevailing theme was that he knew details that were guilty, knowledge that only the killer would know. Only somebody there when it happened would have known other than the police. Right, and they had to have been there or they had to have been. You know, they knew who the killer was because they got those details from the killer themselves. Right, they're intertwined.
Kellye:So fast forward again, or actually we're going to rewind half a second, because in 2006-2007-ish, mom, stephanie, her and the family are, you know this has already been two, three years at this point that they're having to go with no answers, no, nothing, no updates that they can see, and the only update they get is we don't have anything. And then, in fact, the main officer detective that was assigned to the case, detective Green, the mom straight up, called the police chief in Alexandria and was like I want him off my daughter's case Because he was. She felt like they were not taking it as seriously as they could and not putting enough effort into it because of the circumstances, with her not having the best boyfriend choices or sex partner choices and the weed and everything else, and she just felt like there was a stigma that was being placed on her daughter and her daughter's case and she didn't appreciate it. Now, on the Dateline episode you guys can watch this for yourself he makes a comment about them quote, unquote the family interfering in the investigation, and that sounded like a negative language to me, that I wouldn't want someone a detective working on my daughter's case to tell me that I was interfering when you're not doing shit to help, right, I feel like they're being inadequate. I can see that being a problem. Yeah, she was not happy about it, so he got pulled off the case. The police chief on the Dateline episode I think he said something along the lines of it's been sitting here for an hour trying to figure out how to fire you Something that actually get fired. That was an easy way to do it, right? So they did remove him and you know it got passed along as the years went by. So meanwhile, the family they have started their own collection of binders and notebooks and you know references and they keep everything together and they're doing their own investigation because they feel like the Alexandria Police Department is just completely let them down. So they're doing that. They're also doing vigils, they're doing victims marches, they're putting up flyers, they are advocating online. They are trying to get the attention of anybody and everybody they can. The sister actually wrote to Dateline and they got her case on the Missing in America series online for Dateline, which was the initially done back in I think it was like 2010, maybe 2009 that they put her online.
Kellye:In the Missing America thing they even started, you know, asking for help from Louisiana Sheriff's Office, like the local Sheriff's offices and I think there was another one. It was like groups for parents of murdered children, like just everything and anything they could think of to do. They even put out a reward for information leading to an arrest, more than due diligence, trying their best, trying to just figure out. Somebody's got to know something right. So all of this keeps happening and in 2016, we're now 12 years after the death, the Louisiana State Police call up mom Stephanie and they say hey, I've got some bad news for you. Your daughter wasn't murdered, she accidentally overdosed. This is an homicide. Now what? Yeah, 14 years later, how the hell are they going to say that 14 years later? I'm going to tell you there wasn't enough blood to do it to begin with. I'm going to tell you, so unbeknownst to the family or anybody else the member, that they'd been reaching out to everybody to try to get help Louisiana State Police, actually.
Kellye:They decided they were going to rerun the toxicology and I don't know if it was because this is one of those things that they were just trying to get rid of because they were tired of them calling, but they did. They sent off the toxicology again in 2016. And their talks report came back and said that she had, like a point one, 6% ethanol or alcohol blood blood alcohol content, but that she also showed a high level of tramadol, which is a prescription synthetic opioid pain medicine. And they said that those doses not by themselves or like the levels not by themselves were indicative of any kind of overdose. But the possibility was that, you know, taking both together and that could have contributed to an accidental overdose and you know that. Okay, sure, sure, sure, sure.
Kellye:But how did she get in Winnie, texas? How did she get from point A to point B? Obviously, she wasn't dragged into like she didn't, like there were too many things like even if it wasn't a homicide, even if nobody actually killed her. They moved the body, they left the body and they haven't talked about it for 14 years. And again, this is another one of those things that you know was a gut punch for the family, especially the mom, because she's like she felt like they were just trying to sweep it under the rug and be done with it. I washed my hands of it oh look, we did such a good job. She overdosed, it wasn't even a murder, we're done. And see, that's just all. That's just probably pushing paperwork, trying to get it off their desk Right, and that that's exactly how she felt. She felt like it was just one of those things where they just wanted to put the file in the drawer and be done with it. So time keeps going forward. They keep getting angry, they keep trying to advocate and try to get that story out there, try to figure it out, find anybody that could possibly get the case to do something.
Kellye:In 2018, the case finally switched hands to the last cold case detective that he would have. This was Detective Tanner Dryden. He was assigned in 2018 and he started off basically the same way as everybody he dug through went back looking through all of the entire case file, looking through old suspects and witnesses and statements and everything, and at the same time, within that same year of 2018-2019, the family still desperate, still trying every avenue. They actually reached out to a former Sheriff's Office Deputy Investigator, now Podcaster, woody Overton. He has created and is the host of the podcast Real Life, real Crime. He still does episodes to this day. Most of them are about his years as an investigator and his voice is amazing.
Kellye:But they reached out to him and asked if he would look over or just like go over the case and see if there was anything that he could, any suggestions. Well, when he went over the information and went over all of their gathered documentation and evidence and their binders and binders of, you know, knowledge that they've kept over the years, he said I'm going to solve this case or I'm going to die. Those are the two options he thought that there was absolutely. It was absolutely solvable so I want him to be on my case Right, me too 100%. He ended up doing an 18 episode podcast just over her case specifically.
Kellye:By the end of that podcast, he felt like he knew exactly who the killer was. He felt he had evidence to point to the killer. And then he did the right thing he turned over all of his evidence to the Alexandria Police Department, to detective Dryden, and said it's in your hands. Now You've got to do what you've got to do. And detective Dryden, extremely grateful, but also still a police officer, and anytime you have any kind of private investigator or any outside source, you have to still verify that as a member of the police department detective, you have to be able to verify it through police means, right? So September 6, 2019 is when he started, Woody started his first episode of that podcast.
Kellye:That's when things kind of shifted, all of it kind of shifted because now they've got a lot of pressure. They've got a lot because Mr Overton his podcast is not small. He calls his listeners lifers, which I love. I thought it was derogatory at first, but then I was like no, no, no, that's great, that's freaking great and like his patreons are like different levels of criminal. I think it's really cute. Anyway, that's pretty funny. I thought it was great. The Patreon thing, yeah, and so he's got a lot of followers, a lot of listeners. They're writing into the PD every day. They're writing into district attorney's office every day, like there's a lot of pressure going on now because they've listened to 18 episodes of a podcast. Why haven't you arrested somebody? There's plenty of evidence from our you know our armchair, you know spot Right. So the DA makes a statement to the new. I think it's when one of the news articles I have in the source notes down there he says you know, there's going to be a rest any day. He's going to be arrested any day. Let's 2019 turns into 2020, 2020 turns into 2021.
Kellye:But on the back end, on the back side, detective Dryden is still doing his due diligence. He is investigating and doing things and as he's going through the case file and he's specifically going back and looking because they still have to find a way to tie their prime suspect, mr Anthony Burns they're trying to figure out how to put him either in that car or somewhere in the vicinity to prove that he was either where the body was dumped or something he they need something. So he's going back and he's looking through and he finds a couple of written statements from Winnie, Texas, in 2004, from a gentleman and a lady, and they're talking about this car and in the statement from the man, the guy describes that a sedan with the darker color and he even had two of the letters from the license plate in the written statement. So Detective Dryden's like you know what, I don't know? The only problem was was the dates in the man statement were off by a couple of days. Like I said earlier in the podcast in our episode here, dates were a little bit off but he was like you know what, what the hell? I'm gonna go talk to him anyway and see, see if he remembers anything. It's now, it's 15 years later. I'm just gonna go see, you know. So he gets in contact with him and he remembers it just like it was yesterday and there's probably a good reason for that. He's got a photographic memory Shit with dates. Can't tell you if it's Monday or Thursday, but a photographic memory, okay. So, and he remembers the license plate specifically because the license plate had two of his initials JW, jude Wilson. Never trust the Jews. So Detective Tanner goes over there to meet him and he's talking to him about the whole thing and he's like do you think you'd be able to see?
Kellye:Because they're talking about the situation and the statement that Jude gave initially, mr Wilson. He said I saw a car. There was a gentleman, he walked in front of the headlights. I saw him as he walked in front of the headlights of the car that was parked outside of this abandoned building and then I was kind of watching him, paying attention. Because of the way that they were driving so haphazardly, I was worried they were going to pull out and hit me, which they almost did. I had to swerve to miss them. As they swerved around and pulled around in front of me, I caught, you know, a couple of the license plate digits and I remember the two specifically because they were my initials. And then I remember there was an eight in there somewhere too. Now, why the eight didn't get put into the statement, no one knows.
Kellye:He admitted on the stand later. He did not read over the statement and his reasoning for that was he trusted the you know, the police to be thorough and to do what they said they were going to do. And he understood, you know, this was a man's life on the line, all that good stuff. But when he came down to it, when Detective Tanner is talking to him and he's telling him like, I saw the profile of his face. He looked to be Caucasian, you know, because they have certain features. Yada, yada, yada. He says you know what I'll do better than that. Give me a piece of paper, I'll draw it for you. What's?
Kellye:Mr Jude Wilson is a graphic designer in Texas. His photographic memory is even better when it comes to artistry when he is drawing. So he Detective Tanner, standing right there, he draws out the silhouette of the profile he saw. Now, a silhouette isn't much and this is one of those points of contention that the defense in the trial actually hung on hard. This silhouette could be literally anybody. Would you want to go to jail for somebody drawing a silhouette of your profile, of your profile? Not even if you're. You know what I mean. Like it's not very definitive, it's not very exact and 15 years after the fact, photographic memory or not, it still seems a little bit muddy and a little bit unreliable. But this is how we're going to roll.
Kellye:So the license plate on Courtney's car that they surmised had been part of the body dump in some way or another was, I believe, the actual license plate. I think I have it. It's JUW468. So we caught the first, the middle and the last digits on the license plate. Now this gives them the tie in right.
Kellye:So this is how they put Anthony at the scene. Because they now get Jude and they ask him. They say Detective Actaner asks him hey, do you think you could do a photo lineup? And Jude, to his credit, was like I don't know, pal, I've never done one of those before. It's been 15 years. I only saw the profile. But you know what, I'll give it a shot. And if I'm not 100% or if I'm not, you know majorly sure, I just won't, I just won't pick anybody. And he explains it later that you know he, in his mind's eye, he could turn the profile, he could turn the face to forward facing, and that's how he ended up and he picked believe it or not, he picked Anthony Burns out of a six person photo lineup Dun dun, dun. Okay, now this is more interesting later and I'll talk about the witnesses, because the first time I reported this episode I called that show. Now they've got that kind of wrapped up, they've got the quote, unquote eyewitness at this point. So they go back to the DA and the DA says you know what, all right, all right, let's roll. Let's roll with it. So on April 8, 2021, they arrested David Anthony Burns, who at that point was 46 years old, and they took him to jail and set his bond at $500,000 for second degree murder.
Kellye:The grand jury came together on the 13th of April 2021. And they did get a true bill for a second degree murder and onward with the legal circus, fiasco, all of the things. They had a millions of motions in my opinion, millions, probably not millions, but there was a ton. They had motions, they had rids, they had all the things. They were pulling out all the stops, getting all the things trying to suppress all of the stuff, which I mean, in fairness, like you're talking about, the only tenuous, very smallest, slightest connection that they have for Anthony to be connected to any part of it is this guy who said he saw his profile in what a couple a split second in front of a headlight and then a split second as he's about to hit his truck. I mean, like, if you're about to pull out in front of me, I'm not focusing so much on your faces, I am where the vehicle is going to come into contact to, trying to focus on that. You know what I mean. So there's a lot of holes you can poke into these things and that's literally the only cat hair, fine, thin connection that you have. That I feel like that would be pretty easy to you know, stab through. Anyway. So they start doing all this legal wrangling. You've got Special Assistant District Attorney Hugo Holland, who is the major lead attorney district attorney on the case. Then you've got Johnny Giordano of the Rapids DA's office. You've got a quote, unquote defense team Chris LaCour is the main attorney for the defense, willie Stevens assisting and Randall Hayes assisting and they, like I said, they go through the wringer with all this.
Kellye:I think the I said the indictment was on April 13th of 2021. Yeah, almost exactly a year and a half. October 25th is when the I'm sorry, october 24th was when jury selection chart started in 2022. Judge Mary Doggett or Dodgett, I'm not really sure which. I had a way to say that one Doge Do it? No, I don't think that's it. Oh, come on, why not? She was presiding and you know they had to rule on a lot of different things, a lot of different motions. Pretty much every time they started the court day they had to make sure there was nothing that they were going to bring up in front of the jury before the jury ever came out of the box. They started jury selection on the 24th. They finished on the 25th.
Kellye:They had seven witnesses that they brought up on the stand. That included the cellmate friend that said, you know, burns had said he smothered her with a pillow and then wrapped her body in a blanket the one that had all the details that only the killer would have known. Right, he was actually transported. They actually arrested him to be able to transfer him to the trial because he was homeless and had a warrant out for his arrest. You know, I guess it's not the best guys. The next witness was the Texas Ranger from 2004 that went to the crime scene he went to. He was the one who actually helped track down the phone in the car and he just testified to the you know how she was found and how her body was placed and things like that.
Kellye:Dr Brown, he's got a way longer list of things that he's good at. He had over 15,000 autopsies at that point in his life, yeah, but he testified to all the things that he found, you know no defensive wounds, no sign of trauma, so on and so forth. He also testified specifically about the two different toxicology reports and that their the use of the spleen fluid for the blood for the testing was not accurate, and medical examiners in his field did not rely on accurate toxicology reports from the spleen. They did it as kind of like a waypoint, specifically for, just like the, the, the decomp and the the alcohol blood alcohol content initially, but it was more for qualitative, not quantitative, which just means that it's not a good enough source to be able to say, okay, this is exactly how much was in her blood. So he basically discounted this 2016 toxicology and stuck by his understanding of her tox report when he did her autopsy in 04 and said that the majority of the alcohol in her blood came from the advanced decomposition, because when your body breaks down, it turns that alcohol becomes a part of your decomposition process. So, all in all, he testified.
Kellye:I still believe it was some sort of asphyxia, likely a smothering, but he did, you know, concede there was no evidence of any kind of struggle or anything else. He gets over there testifies all that. He also talks about the the way that the body was discolored on the one side, so she had to have been placed on one side and then moved to her back and put out into the thing, and the fact that she was in a trunk for the majority of the time because her body was way harder than it should have been, and so on. Then the next one they had was Fred Landry, who was the guy they found the touch DNA on the trunk handle. They actually transported him from a mental hospital. Yeah, lots of good people here. He wasn't on the sand long, he just talked about the fact that, you know, there was a reason for his DNA to be there. Yes, he had had sex with her. No, he didn't kill her. No, he didn't really know much else.
Kellye:Detective Green, the original investigator that said the family was interfering, he got up on the stand to testify about his initial investigation and passing it along. And then there was another guy who testified about the crime scene investigation that he did and crime scene reconstruction stuff. So that was the end of the first day. Second day, they had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, I think seven witnesses, the star witness, of course, being Mr Jude Wilson, and the defense did everything in his power to try to tear him down and tear him apart, you know, poking the holes. Obviously, the statements that he gave in 2004 and 2019 were conflicting because, you know, he remembered all of a sudden that there was an eight in the license plate. He also couldn't say for sure if he had seen the license plate on the news or not, because the reason that he went to the police office or the sheriff's office or called them and let them know about the car incident back in 2004 was because he saw the news report about the car being missing and he knew that that was the same one. And so the defense tried to say that you know, he knew about the license before he wanted to talk to them. So he just kind of put two and two together and then randomly picked the defendant out of a six photo lineup. That's not so random though, right, and you're about to find out exactly how not random that is.
Kellye:So wonderful witness, and this is probably my favorite one, because I've never seen in all of my true crime watching things, I've never seen them bring a math expert onto the witness stand. This was Dr Charles Del Zell. I apologize if I butchered that, but that's what it looks like. He was an expert in mathematics, specifically in probabilities, and he testified that the subject, or the test subject, he created like a study. So he did a study on the probabilities, right?
Kellye:So the test subject, the probability of them correctly guessing, or two out of the six letters on a license plate and correctly guessing it was a Louisiana license plate. So two out of the six, and guessing that it was a Louisiana plate was less than 1%. Now you would have gone even further than that he said smaller than way less than 1% if that person could also guess the perpetrator out of a six-man photo lineup. So all in all, it was an impossible thing to be able to guess, for the probability of you being able to guess the license plate, to be able to guess that it was a Louisiana plate and then to correctly guess the person that they believed to be in that car with that license plate at that time at that place, was less than half of a percent. Now they did stipulate that this was only if the test subject or the person guessing the license plate and where it had come from, only if they didn't know the license plate ahead of time, which is obvious that you wouldn't be testing for it otherwise.
Kellye:But the defense was just trying to say that was the defense tactic Again was to try to say well, maybe he knew it beforehand, so it's not that you know, not that far of a stretch to say that maybe he did just pick the right guy, or the right guy according to the prosecution. So another hole they tried to poke in there. Other than that, they had, you know, a couple of the other people that had heard statements over the years. They had her sister, lace. She got on the sand and talked about the suspicions that she had, and a couple other witnesses, again with the statements about hearing or having been present for Anthony saying things about the death of Courtney. Family members that remember certain things that were there. And then they weren't like her aunt, when she went to the apartment after everything had been released that she found like mechanic rags in the dryer that smelled like bleach and there was no comforter in the bedroom and that was weird to her. And then again they tried to say you know, wasn't it at one point? Weren't you accused of maybe telling your sister for the money? Did you do that, you know? And so they go through all of this and of course Lace is like no, I didn't kill my sister, I love my sister and there's plenty of evidence to back that part up. So, or is there really is? Oh, there actually is evidence this time. Great.
Kellye:So day three. They go into, you know, they go to the grandma she's on the stand, the mom, she's on there, but not for very long. And they go to another one of the main three people that had statements that were of any value or weight against Anthony Burns. One was the cellmate. They held his, you know, pretty heavy because the smothering was a detail, and then being wrapped in a comforter, wrapped in a blanket, that was another detail. And that she was in Texas, which was another detail. And the same thing was from a lady named Charlene Goldman. She was actually married to a friend of Anthony's at the time and had heard him say the kind of the same thing. We talked about it earlier.
Kellye:And then the third guy was the one she was married to and that was setlif, seamus setlif, and he basically had the same kind of story. You know, he said a couple of different things, but his, when he got on the stand and testified, it was very minimal, very succinct, and then by the end of it he just completely said okay, I don't, I take any of it back. He never said anything, I don't know anything. We're done so very unreliable, very much it, it, it. It seemed kind of like a dick. To be honest, just reading the testimony and the interactions that he had with the prosecutors and with the defense attorneys, he just he didn't want to be there. He was pissed off. He was already going to jail for either manslaughter or one of those and he was just over it and he basically they tried to make it seem like because the the wife at the time, goldman they were actually divorced now and she had divorced him and she was actually an eyewitness to the murder that he committed. So it was. It was a whole, like I'm telling you it's a whole, whole lot of of of whips, fabricated whips, right, and so then you got another girlfriend testify about the same shit.
Kellye:The detective dried in about his involvement as of 2018 forward and how everything went. And then you had another I think it was a forensic pathologist. They got on there. The prosecution start and finish. They had 20 witnesses take the stand, our witness being your Jude Wilson, with the silhouette and the outline and all of this. They rested the beginning of the last day.
Kellye:The defense got to call their only person that they were calling to the stand and it was not the defendant, thank goodness, it was a doctor, dr Norman. Now, dr Norman had come forward and actually I believe the rep heeds parish of district attorney's office had asked him to review the 2016 toxicology report on autopsy and do basically just do a review of forensic review of the autopsy and toxicology and all that Although it started with the district attorney's office. The results that came back from Dr Norman's reports were more favorable to the defense, so he agreed to testify for the defense and his he found that he believed it was more indicative of an accidental overdose. He said there was no signs because there was gum in the stomach. None of that made any sense. The toxicology reports that were more advanced reporting systems in 2016, you know they showed the trimadol and they showed the alcohol. Now he did not definitively say that it was. He just said that he would not be able to qualify it specifically as a homicide solely based on what he knew from the autopsy and the toxicology reports.
Kellye:Basically, what this entire trial came down to was the dueling experts. So who do you believe? Who does the jury believe when you look at one expert compared to another expert testimony? Who do you believe? Do you believe the 2004 original autopsy? The guy who had his hands physically on the body, who looked her over and could see with his own eyes what he was doing, or the guy who literally just looked at a bunch of paper and information and admitted that he didn't take into account any of the evidentiary value of the scene or anything about where the body was placed or anything along those lines. He took in nothing but what he got from the autopsy report and toxicology report and that's what they went with.
Kellye:But when you think about it, even if you're going to say that it was an accidental overdose, somebody's still going to be on the hook for what happened with the body. Why didn't you say anything? You know all of that. So when Dr Norman got done, he said some rude stuff too. If you want to, you can go look at all the things. There were two other forensic pathologists that had agreed with Dr Brown and he basically just discounted them outright. He never came outright and said that Dr Brown was wrong or that he completely discounted his opinion, but he did say that Dr Brown's wrong. I feel like the most obvious answer is my answer. So after his testimony the defense rested.
Kellye:The closing argument started at about 3 pm on October 31st. The jury was dismissed to begin deliberations at 5 pm that night of Halloween and about an hour and a half later, at about 8 o'clock that night, the jury signaled that they had a verdict. And we get back full circle all the way back to the intro of the podcast episode you're listening to now. 18 and a half, almost 19 years, jury came back out, sat in their seats, 12 people went in and voted and 12 people voted guilty of second degree murder. You didn't miss verdict. The family overwhelmed with gratitude, with finality, just grateful to Woody Overton, the former detective, now podcaster, that did as much as he did because without that pressure or without that extra push, it may never have happened.
Kellye:Now and some people are still of the opinion that this was not enough. There was not enough substantial and even in the Dateline episode, the defense attorney, chris LeCour. He said he was shocked because he felt like he had poked like so many holes in the fist size, holes in almost every single person that got up on that stand, every single statement, the amount of circumstantial that. And then he thought also that he had presented enough alternative versions of what could have happened, alternate suspects that could have very likely just as easily been motivated or been in a position to have done this. He felt like he had given them enough options to see that beyond a reasonable doubt was not a place that they could get. But apparently he was wrong. He was sentenced later a couple weeks later or a month later or so, and it was life without parole because of Louisiana. That is the mandatory sentence, and they began the appeal process shortly after the appeal was filed, as soon as they got done, which still would have been either the very end of 2022 or the beginning of this year.
Kellye:This is why I went ahead and decided to do this case is because the appeal for his just came back from the Third Circuit Court on December 6th, so literally eight days ago. A lot of the information that I got from this and the entire map that I made of all the people that they had involved, all the witnesses and everything and how they were connected. I'm going to put that up on my social media, so make sure you check those links down below, because it'll be on TikTok, it'll be on X or Twitter and I'll probably also have some version of it on YouTube as well. But go ahead and make sure you check those out, because I'm going to put up the couple of the pictures and things that I've gotten the source notes down there too. That way you can see kind of what we're looking at in Courtney's face and her family and all that.
Kellye:But when it came to the appeal they only had one assignment of error, which is the argument that they think is. You know, this is the reason why my conviction and shouldn't stand is because of this. They only have the one, but they point out in the appeal that it kind of has two parts. So the one assignment of error alleged in the appeal is insufficient evidence. Now the two primary arguments are that the prosecution failed to prove that it was indeed a homicide and not an accidental overdose and that was one part. So they failed to prove that somebody murdered her. And even if it was a homicide, if somebody did kill her, they failed to prove that David Anthony Burns committed the murder or was a principal to it. Now there are a lot of things that happen in an appeal, so so many.
Kellye:They go through all of the different versions, especially in this one. This was a probably like a 50-something page appeal answer from the Third Circuit because they went through the entire trial witnesses. They went through the whole list. They went through and pointed out every single thing because there was just a lot you know, and they went in real depth with it. So they get to the part where they're talking about you know why, or why not. Now, the first primary argument of the insufficient evidence was that it wasn't proved to be a homicide.
Kellye:Now this is the case of the dueling experts. Basically, what it comes down to is if the jury is making their conclusion on the experts and who to believe in, that, that is a sound decision. They I think it was a quote actually may not be disturbed or not. They should not disturb the jury's choice to accept one expert's opinion unless the opinion is patently unsound, which neither experts were patently unsound. They both made a good, presentable argument for what they believed, and so that's what you're putting them on the stand for is their expert opinion. They're you're asking for their opinion. So both of them made patently sound arguments. So therefore, the decision by the jury to accept one and not the others was exactly what they're supposed to do, and the appellate court is never going to overturn that.
Kellye:I'm failing to prove it was a homicide. The jury decided to believe the expert that said that it was so that one's I mean it had to have been regardless that she's not going to get up and walk her dead body that far away. But that would literally just be a accessory after the fact, or a yeah, no, he, how else, how else? I mean that the apartment's locked up, all that other stuff, look, no, no. That's why I agree with you and that's why the third secretary court is agreeing with you. So the second part of that if it is a homicide, the prosecution failed to prove that he was the one who did it or that he was a principal to it.
Kellye:So now the appellate court points out a few things. The big thing that they point out is the fact that the majority of the circumstantial evidence for him being a suspect in the first place came out of his own mouth. The fact that several independent statements were made by people who were not in the same atmosphere of the world. They had no involvement with each other, had and, as far as they were aware, had never even had conversations, because they were on different parts of his world and they were all saying, in general, the kind of the same thing. Now the argument that Burns made was that, well, the inconsistency of all the statements to all the different people in and of itself proved that none of them were true, which is not. No, that's not the case. That's not generally, that's not how that works. The weight of his own incriminating statements to all the different people over a vast number of years it wasn't just like one or two people within a week of each other right after she died. No, that wasn't the case. It was over 10, 11 years that he was telling all of these different people, at different moments of his life, probably the same story, and all the common denominator was that he had done something or had something to do with Courtney Coco and her death. So that was their biggest thing with the appellate court. And they also said that you know we're not going to discount the jury's decision because it, quote explains the consolation of evidence aligned against the defendant. And that's how the jury's conclusion it's the only one that you can come up with that explains all of the circumstantial evidence that was being presented against David Burns, david Anthony Burns. So I bet you can't guess what the appellate court decided. Yes, I can, because I already know they upheld the verdict.
Kellye:As of this recording, anthony Burns is being housed at Angola and I'm sure he's going to keep bitching and moaning and complaining and try to get out. But go watch the the date line for yourself. Go listen to Woody Overton on Real Life, real Crime, and not just the Courtney Coco case all of them. His voice is amazing. He tells amazing stories. He does a really great job. I really, really hope that one day someone will hear me and tell him that I would love to. Just, I don't even care if we do a podcast together, I just want to pick his brain for a minute. That I mean like he's like the Louisiana version of Joe Kenda and I am here for it.
Kellye:As far as the family and everything goes, they'll never be able to get over and I mean like almost 20 years of having to do something and having to deal with something. That takes a toll on people. It takes a toll on a family and you know 18 and a half years of having a drive and a focus and then have it come to a conclusion and be done. It's just-. Now. They're going to have to find something better to do with their lives. Even on the date line itself, you know they talk about how amazing she was and how they think about her every day and it's really, it's really hard, it's really hard to think about Always the quiet ones. It's still kind of up in the air. You don't really know, because the only people that know how everything played out and how everything happened is Courtney and whoever actually did it to her, and maybe the more than one who actually did it to her. But for right now I hope that they can have some peace in knowing that the person that is most reasonably the person responsible for nothing else than for her not being here anymore in some way or another, that he's going to be in jail for the rest of his natural life, and hope they get some kind of not closure because you know it's never really over, but just some kind of.
Kellye:I don't know what's the word Recompense Justice maybe, but I don't even think it's justice because, oh my gosh, it took forever. It took forever and they went through the ranger and like, if you listen to Woody's podcast, he goes into it so much more and he even does it like a follow-up thing about the repeats. It's actually called it's like a three episode thing where it's rapids burning and he talks about the corruption and shit inside the rapids, parrots, sheriffs, all of this but I'm not getting any of that. You can go listen to his podcast. It's amazing, and I'm going to go ahead and wrap this one up, because we're already pushing almost an hour and a half and I've got to get this edited. So thank you guys.
Kellye:So, so, so much for sticking with me and bearing through it, and at some point in the future, I will probably throw the other version of this on, like a Patreon or something, because people that don't want to hear it shouldn't have to hear it, and the people out there that want to hear it you probably don't, but I mean it's there anyway. Yeah, it's pretty rough It'll be completely unedited where we have all of the talking about the bathroom and the toilet and like all of the things that are not working or are working, and we have interesting conversations when we're not talking about what I'm not talking, so, which is hardly ever Specifically about my cases. So thank you guys, so much again. I appreciate your time, I appreciate your listening, I appreciate you telling people about me, I appreciate you following me either on TikTok or Twitter or just being a subscriber on YouTube. I am hesitant to ask for you to rate and review on either Spotify or Apple Podcast. That's because you scared when I'm at right now, where we're at as a podcast right now, because the majority of the people that listen to my podcast listen because someone else told them about it and they're not going to who gives a shit, whether you have a rating or review on it or not. They're going to listen because of who told them. So just keep doing that for me, yeah, and if people knew what it was good for them, they'd listen because I told them. Yeah, okay, so keep telling people about us, keep sharing with people.
Kellye:I'm going to try to get the episodes set up to where over the Christmas and New Year's holiday, because we'll be going out of town at the beginning of January as well. So I'm going to try to get things lined up so we'll have episodes come out, and they may even be weekly. I haven't decided yet how many more of these we got to record. This is just the one for tonight. Thank you guys. I love you guys. You're welcome.
Kellye:If you have any questions, comments, concerns, you can always throw them on any of the social medias and, actually, if you download the app or if you don't have a favorite podcast platform yet the Good Pods app. You can rate and comment on each individual episode. So if you go listen to this one say you're listening to this one on Good Pods right now and you click on the episode, after you listen, you can go in and write a comment specifically pertaining to that episode and rate the singular episode itself, as well as rate the podcast and comment on the podcast as a whole. So if you have any questions or comments or anything like that, you can always go to Good Pods. You don't have to specifically go to the, get an app or anything, but it is on Google Play and the app store got like feeds and you can join groups. It's just really. It's really cool. It's a really neat little almost like a, like a library for podcasts that you can ask questions and do the things with it. So I thought it was really interesting. I'm promoting them because I think it's really cool that you can comment and rate each episode.
Kellye:Other than that, stick to what you're good at what if you're not good at anything, we're going to throw a bonus episode at y'all at some point in the next few days, probably closer to Monday, because we're already pushing it now because we had the other technical difficulties and it's just been a lot and I don't know if you guys can hear it in my voice and I've had to edit out so many coughs during this thing between the weather going from 29 degrees at night to 75 in the same like 18 hours span. It's not fun. It's playing hail on all of the things. So I apologize or you're welcome, depending on how you like it. If you don't, either way, come back, come listen again, tell your friends Wow, that's that you're trying to our dad. I'll probably edit it out, but y'all take care out there.
