Why Investigators Skipped Alleigha Botner's Home After Ashley Flynn Died

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

Tony Brueski (0:08)

Let's go on to another part of the conversation with Caleb Flynn. When you dig into the digital records, Alleigha Botner, otherwise known as SidePeace, sent double the text messages Caleb Flynn did, like a lot. And when you're talking 107,000 texts, that adds up. She typed out horrifying statements like, I want to kill her, Caleb.

Researched how to scrub conversations from messaging apps, wiped her own phone the exact morning Ashley died, and blatantly lied to federal agents during her initial interview. But she's pretty.

So all that goes away, right? Seven or eight law enforcement agencies collaborated on this investigation with the FBI interviewing her twice. Her entire alibi rests on staying at a pastor's home and in security footage showing her car parked across the street. Defense attorney Mulligan highlighted to the jury that investigators never identified who she met in Florida weeks prior, nor did they search the field behind the Flynn home or cross-reference regional license plate readers. The burning question isn't just whether she was physically involved. It's whether law enforcement ever truly verified her story. I'm going to ask, before we can get into any of the questions there, do you think they did a thorough enough investigation on the woman? Right off the top, not saying she's involved, she's never been charged with anything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But the questions I think are fair to ask. I know her attorney has been talking, maybe we should get her attorney on there and ask him some questions. But obviously, they didn't even check for gunshot residue on Caleb. Do you think they did a thorough enough vetting and digging into her, or did they see a pretty face after some questioning and saw that she's a churchgoer and kind of gave her a bit of a pass?

Robin Drake (2:08)

I don't think they did a thorough enough investigation because we haven't covered a case yet where anyone did do a thorough enough investigation because you have a bunch of cops that are human beings, especially if you're in a town like this that doesn't typically have homicides, except once every 20 years, you don't quite know exactly what you should or shouldn't do, especially when the evidence so clearly earlier on is that he did it. The investigators get a lot of confirmation bias when collecting data and doing their investigation when you have limited resources. It's not making excuses, I'm just understanding the machinations behind how they did what they did. You know, it's funny when you keep mentioning that she's good looking and pretty.

Now in my experience, that never weighed in. I know it's not supposed to, but in reality, it just doesn't because you are really, good investigators, and again, I'm going to give grace, I'm assuming a lot of them are, that really doesn't weigh in someone's looks because especially what happens is that if you have a couple of years on any law enforcement force, whether it's federal, state or local, you get really, really aware when people are aware they're good looking and they try to use that against you as an investigator. It becomes extremely obvious whether you're pulling people over for a car stop or whether you're conducting an interview, you can really tell within seconds whether someone is used to using their looks to get over on you. And so it's very easy to inoculate yourself against it in general. So I would think that it's not, it wasn't a shoddy investigation against her because of that. It probably was because they figured it was such a slam dunk. Not that anyone thinks that, prosecutors, no one ever thinks that. But again, when you have limited resources and it shows that there was no other intruder in the house, it looked like he staged everything from the first second that they walked in that house. I mean, so, because here's the first thing investigators are going to look at. First thing I looked at was, you look at him on the body cam footage of the second officer interviewing him, lying there, crying on the floor, given his detailed alibi about what he was doing, and it makes no sense, right?

And when you then listen to the 911 call, it's a very, very typical 911 call of someone who, again, nothing is ever 100%, but it was a very typical 911 call of someone that the perpetrator called it in, because when you are given facts, status, and details of your own alibi, and not of the horror of what you just witnessed, it's very, very telling to someone that's got at least three or four reps of having done this. And so when you start first seeing those things, and you start doing your walk around investigation, I mean, just think about how this didn't make sense to the initial investigators that showed up on the scene.