Did Investigators Deliberately Destroy the Key Evidence in Aaron Spencer's Case?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke.

**Tony Brueski** (0:09)
Appearance of a cover-up. A judge looked at how the Lowano County handled the Aaron Spencer case, and used the phrase that we've been using for about a year and a half. Appearance of a cover-up. He found that law enforcement, their conduct was so egregious that the entire murder prosecution had to be thrown out. That's not a defense attorney talking, that's the actual judge on the record. And it raises a question nobody in Arkansas is asking out loud. A 13-year-old girl was allegedly failed by the system meant to protect her. The man charged with crimes against her walked out on bond and allegedly got access to her again. The father stepped in, and then the same system charged the father with murder. And according to the court, mishandled the one piece of evidence that might have told the full story. So who investigates the people who let all of that happen? That's what we're going to be getting to today in the aftermath now of the Aaron Spencer trial that will never happen because it's been dismissed. Joining me to discuss, it's Friday, it's our FBI panel, retired FBI panel.
Robin Dreeke, retired FBI special agent, chief of the counterintelligence behavioral analysis program and Jennifer Coffindaffer, retired FBI special agent, host of the podcast Break the Case, available wherever you get podcasts and on YouTube. Big news yesterday, very excited about this, very happy about this. A sitting judge wrote that law enforcement conduct in this case was so egregious, it warranted throwing out a murder prosecution and that the evidence handling gave the appearance of a cover up. Let's start there.
Jen, how loud does language like that register at a federal level when they're looking at something like this? Is this something that could, should, will, would be investigated going forward about who was behind this sort of a prosecution that a judge is saying, there's an interesting cover up possibly going on here?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (2:23)
Well, I first want to say, I wish this judge would have been on the Delphi case.

**Tony Brueski** (2:28)
No kidding, yes.

**Robin Dreeke** (2:29)
Yeah. Oh my gosh. We need a transfer, right?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (2:32)
Yeah, we do. But you know what? This is so great when you finally see these good judges come forward and call it for what it is. This is the problem.
I always say that incompetence mirrors corruption and corruption mirrors incompetence, right? It's very hard to distinguish. It really comes down to intent. That's where the FBI can get involved in a public corruption matter, if this was purposely covered up. But I got to tell you, I see a lot of incompetence jumping off the page, not only on this case, but on so many of these cases. The question is, did they try to cover up the incompetence afterwards?

**Robin Dreeke** (3:13)
Yeah. I think we got really lucky on this one, if you can call lucky. The incompetence that led to him being led out on such an easy bond, which enabled him to then s-abuse her again, which was a hugely tragic part. But at least they're consistent with their incompetence, with the collecting of the data and the card and everything. So it allowed the judge to do the righteous move and actually dismiss the case, which we're all cheering about yesterday.
I'm curious because again, you and I know how to sausage is made behind the scenes on these cases, Jen. Do you think the office that's going to be handling this or could handle this for the FBI has the bandwidth or the energy to do a public corruption? Because it's one of the hardest things we do in the bureau is public corruption, just because we're in a business in law enforcement, especially in the FBI of creating relationships with locals, and it gets a really sticky situation when you start investigating locals.

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (4:05)
Yeah, it really does, and you have to have these great relationships, and when those fail, it fails the community. But when you look at this case, I'll be very interested to see what their IA comes up with. Yeah, I will be too. Their internal affairs, that's really likely what it will come down to, because if their internal affairs comes up with a lot of significant evidence as to a true corrupt behavior here, that's when you find things now melding together, and a referral can be made, and you can step in as the FBI and take over a case like this.

**Robin Dreeke** (4:47)
I'm sorry to add one follow-up to that, Jen, because I'm going to get a little bit on the weeds on this one for the viewers to understand, because this is how mechanics of these things work. Jen, I saw Fox News covering this, and it's actually on their front headline saying yesterday, which is very, very good for the FBI getting involved, because what does Cash Patel like? He likes notoriety, he likes being out front. Are you been covering this on News Nation as much?