Hi, Crime Junkies.
Britt and I did not make a new episode this week, but don't you dare hit pause, because I actually still have an episode that is brand new to you.
And that is because I'm going to give you one of our fan club episodes.
People ask me all the time, like, oh, is the fan club just ad-free content?
Yes, everything is ad-free, but that's not it.
Oh, do we just get the episodes early?
Yes, you get them early, but that is not just it.
Oh, are the bonus episodes like short or just behind the scenes?
And no, the episodes are exactly like the ones you get here in your feed.
And so that is why I wanted to drop this one, to show you what you guys are missing if you are not in the fan club.
If you're in the club, you will find all of our episodes, tons of bonus episodes, early releases, and it's not just Crime Junkie.
It's so many of the AudioChuck shows.
So...
If one episode this week isn't enough for you maybe you're looking for some extra listens or you're traveling this holiday season the Crime Junkie Fan Club is where you'll want to be.
And because today is Cyber Monday, you can join the Crime Junkie Fan Club at a discount today.
Just head to CrimeJunkie.com to learn more and to join.
Now, let's get into this special release from the Crime Junkie Fan Club.
Hi, Crime Junkies.
I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And I'm Britt.
And the story I have for you today is my umpteenth reason to stay out of Washington.
This twisty and gut-wrenching tale includes a double murder, a historic landslide, a trail of evidence and a manhunt to Mexico.
And I'm going to take you along and explain how investigators combined old school boots-on-the-ground investigative methods with modern-day forensic evidence to get the killer captured all over the course of 100 days.
And listen closely, because in this story, there are two central themes.
Details matter, and the truth never dies.
This is the story of Patrick Shun and Monique Patinot.
Snohomish County Major Crimes Detective Dave Fontenot walks into his office in Everett Washington, on April 13th 2016 with plans to drop his stuff and go home and rest.
He and the rest of the homicide squad had just wrapped up about 40 hours of work at a murder scene, and they were beyond tired.
But before he can walk out the door, a notice lands in his hands from the patrol unit about a missing couple up in the Oso area.
That's about 45 minutes northeast.
The notice says it's a missing husband and wife who were last seen the day before.
Their cars are missing, no one can get a hold of them, and there is no activity on their socials.
So is this report just coming in or is this just like the official handoff to major crimes here?
That's the latter.
So the report actually came in the day before.
So day one of this case started April 12th.
That's when the first call about the missing couple came in to Snohomish County 911 dispatch.
And that actually came from the couple's neighbor friends, Mike and his wife, Suzanne.
Basically the reason he called.
The four of them were supposed to go to an Iron Maiden concert the night of the 11th.
But Patrick and Monique were a no show.
Red flag number one.
Now, Mike had gone to their house to see what was up, sees their beloved dog Cairo running loose.
Red flag number two, which is what prompted Mike to call Patrick's work on the 12th. and they told him that Patrick was a no-show at the office.
Another red flag.
Yeah, that's when he calls police.
So patrol deputies had gone up there to do a welfare check.
They get Mike's official statement and they see that the couple's cars are still missing, which I'm sure to a lot of people would give the impression that everything's fine.
They'd be like, oh, they just went somewhere.
Yeah, they're just not here.
Yeah, but Mike can just feel whatever this is in his bones, so much so that he told the deputies He actually grabbed the SD card out of Patrick's trail camera and he was going to check it himself to see, like when they were last on it, because it's kind of like near the entrance of their long driveway.
But he's like, you know what, since police are here, like here, I'll just give it to you guys.
And the conviction in his voice.
His actions like that's being picked up on by patrol deputies, who then pass this notice off to Detective Dave Fontenot.
In major crimes,
And on day two, the official criminal investigation kicks off.
Now his first move is to put in expedited requests for their cell phone data, which comes back pretty fast.
It shows that Patrick and Monique's phones both stopped transmitting at 8.32 a.m. on April 12th.
But the activity before that is odd.
Now, most of the activity from the 11th looks normal.
It has Monique kind of out and about running errands.
Patrick is placed at work.
Mm-hmm.
Monique's phone shows that she arrived home to where their driveway gate was at 11.04 a.m.
And then Patrick's phone shows him arriving home at that same spot at 3.07 p.m.
Now, their phones don't seem to move for a long time, as if they are home.
But remember, the 11th is when they're supposed to go to that concert.
And Mike said that he actually went over to the house on the 11th at about 4.30 p.m.
Their car's already gone then.
So if they both arrived home earlier that day...
Where are they?
The next activity Detective Fontenot sees on the phone data is at 326 am, when both of their phones travel up an old logging road and then they both stop transmitting five hours later, at 832 am.
Now, the 3.26 a.m. time is strange in and of itself, right?
Like, where are you going?
Why are you going up this logging road in the middle of the night?
It's super weird.
But where this road is, is like the weirdest part of all.
You see, two years before this, Oso Washington was home to one of the deadliest landslides in American history.
I mean, some 40 houses got buried and 43 people died.
Patrick and Monique's house was spared, but barely.
I mean, the aerial photos of this landslide are bonkers.
It took out an entire mountainside along with houses and roads.
And so much of it dumped into the North Fork-Stilaguamish River that the whole river dammed and caused even more houses to flood.
I mean, this was a huge tragic mess that ended up in FEMA basically having to buy out much of the properties.
So all that to say where their phones were traveling was like even higher up the mountain than where this landslide had been.
There is nothing there.
Certainly not at 3 o'clock or 3.30 in the morning.
And were the phones in that same location when they stopped transmitting at like, what, 830-ish?
Same general area.
Now another super weird thing about the phone activity is that friends and family are telling detectives that the messages that they've been sending to Patrick and Monique on the 11th like between the time they got home to them moving up the mountains at 330, those were all getting actively read.
Like they can tell from read receipts.
Right, like someone's opening the phone and seeing the messages.
Yeah.
They just don't think that it's Patrick and Monique because no one's responding.
And the read receipts stopped completely that morning at around the same time that the phones just totally stopped transmitting.
So it would seem that something happened to them after they got home, if they were in fact the ones in possessions of their phone when they got home to begin with.
Mm-hmm.
That SD card from the trail camera that Mike took could come in real handy now.
Except when they look at the files, the card was completely full so it had stopped recording before all of this.
Ashley.
It's like, how?
I had gotten my hopes up.
I thought maybe we could, like, trust trail cams more than, like, business security cameras.
I have no faith in business surveillance, but, like, even the trail cams.
Once again, I'm disappointed.
Upgrade your SD card gigabytes to those trail cam people.
Like, neither.
So yeah, this could have shown if it was them, who they were with, when and where they got home.
All of that is stuff they need to know.
It's going to be important.
But first things first, they need to try and find Patrick and Monique.
And the best place to start is where the phones were pinging on the morning of the 12th.
By day three of the investigation.
This is now April 14th.
Major crimes detectives are pretty sure they're dealing with foul play and they put eagle-eyed searchers up in a helicopter.
And Britt, when I say eagle-eyed, like just you wait, I'm going to be testing your eyesight in a minute.
And while they're up in the air, detectives work to search the wooded area on the ground while they wait for their search warrant on the house to go through that.
And Britt, this terrain is wild.
And I mean that in the literal sense of the word.
I mean yeah, I'm picturing Western Washington like mountains rivers woods beautiful, but like really vast, really dangerous scenery.
Yeah, it is rugged on the ground.
There's like also huge canopies of trees up above from the sky, like covering all of that.
Plus, remember, add the whole Oso landslide debris stuff on top of this.
I actually have some footage if you want to take a look at it over here.
Okay.
There it is at like 33 seconds in.
I mean, that looks that looks like a car.
Yeah.
So that's their first sighting of Patrick's missing Land Rover.
Once the heli folks radio major crimes, they get out there on foot.
But it's a struggle just to get down to where the car is, because it's a steep treed hillside and the Land Rover is fully like nose down 90 degrees and it's stuck on a stump.
It's immediately clear that someone tried to cover the car up with like brush and debris, also a camouflaged tarp.
Oh, okay.
And guess what else they see below the car?
Exactly 268 feet further down is Monique's Jeep laying on its side.
So both cars look as though someone pushed them over the upper cliff's edge and just like, let them tumble down like a game of Hot Wheels or Domino's or something.
But Patrick's car, the Land Rover, that's the one that got stuck on the stump.
So interestingly, there is this wooden four by four post weirdly positioned.
But it looks like someone was trying to like use it as a jack to get the car unstuck from the stump that it's dangling from.
Oh, my God.
I mean, this scene is obviously no good, but I'm kind of bracing myself for what they're going to find inside the cars.
Detectives are bracing themselves, too.
But what they find is not what...
They, or you, probably expected.
Detectives run out of daylight, so the cars don't get processed until the next day, on day four of the investigation.
Detectives on the ground are expecting that when they open the doors of the Land Rover, that they're going to find the bodies of Patrick and Monique.
But they don't.
Instead, they just find loads of suspicious items.
That just adds to the mystery of what could have happened to them.
I mean in Patrick's car.
There's rope, plastic sheeting tarps, some towels and blood in the back of the Rover.
And falling out near Monique's Jeep, they find her wallet with her driver's license, a bag of dog food, a bag of chicken feed, a roll of unopened paper towels, some black plastic gloves, cables and A McDonald's receipt dated for April 11th at 1041 am.
They also find some spent shell casings and a shopping list that's covered in blood.
Now all of that stuff that fell out of her car actually matches the shopping list and her phone activity.
Because one of the errands that she was going to run was to a co-op grocery store where she bought all that food for her animals.
And the McDonald's receipt lines up too.
Which all that stuff still being in her car means nothing.
She likely never made it back inside her house after arriving back on the property at home.
Right.
But to be triple sure, they even send someone out to the McDonald's just to check the security footage, to make sure that it actually was her who was there.
Make sure that she was alone.
And when they look, sure enough, it's her in the drive-thru with her dog Cairo, in the passenger seat.
The same exact time and date as the receipt and matching what the cell phone data shows.
So with all of this evidence, especially the blood and the shell casings, detectives are now certain that whatever happened to patrick and monique, they probably didn't make it out alive.
As the car scenes are being processed, neighbor and family interviews are also happening and this theme begins to emerge.
There is one name that almost everyone mentions when asked the age-old question.
Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Patrick and Monique?
John Reed.
Who?
John is Patrick and Monique's neighbor.
And there is a nasty dispute going on between them.
Patrick and Monique had accused John of trespassing and essentially being a bad steward of the land.
And again, the theme of this episode is landslide.
So John's property is one parcel closer to where the landslide destruction was.
His house was barely missed, but the mudslide actually took out part of his driveway.
So he had been using a road easement that was more or less Patrick and Monique's driveway.
But here's the thing.
John actually took a massive payout from FEMA to allow authorities to seize his house and property.
And part of that deal was meant that John had to move out and he wasn't allowed to access that property anymore without a government official present.
But he was still like coming and going as if he still lived there, basically squatting on a property that was no longer his.
And Patrick and Monique accused him of illegally cutting down trees and like all of this other stuff that they didn't like.
The dispute had even escalated to each party calling the cops on each other in the past.
So this little neighbor spat had gotten pretty ugly.
And has their relationship with John like been rocky the whole time they've been neighbors?
I mean, like off and on for like a few years.
But Patrick's niece Erin, told us that there was a time after the landslide when Patrick felt like sorry for John.
I mean, he like, the guy lost his property.
And he showed Patrick, showed him a lot of compassion, giving him permission to use their driveway gate, all of that.
But then it reached a point where he felt as if John was abusing their kindness.
And Patrick and Monique ended up putting locks on their gate.
And then that's why they actually put up the trail camera.
Because by that time, they were like, this is it.
We need evidence of him trespassing so we can sue this guy.
So, I mean, leading up to this, things had hit a boiling point.
And when I say boiling point, I want to make it clear.
None of Patrick and Monique's relatives are like, oh, John definitely murdered them.
It's more like, you know, they had zero enemies except for this One neighbor.
One guy.
Yeah, this one guy who seemed to hate their guts.
But everything is now like starting to click into place for detectives.
All the stories are merging into one.
Because remember neighbor Mike who reported them missing?
So his wife Suzanne, told detectives that on April 13th so this is going on two days with no sightings of their friends she had gone over there to check on things.
And as she's approaching the gate, she sees john reed in his red pickup truck exiting the gate and john's brother tony, is with him.
Now, suzanne doesn't know tony, but he's wearing a hoodie, with the hood like pulled up.
He's like wearing sunglasses like, let's just say, the vibes were off.
And suzanne stops to talk to john and she glances in the back of his truck and she sees in the back are some cables and a four by four wooden post And, based on Suzanne's description of these things, they are a perfect match for the items found by the vehicles up on the mountain.
And not even knowing any of that at the time, that Suzanne is like talking to them and seeing this.
She is already so suspicious of John that she actually rolled some video on her phone during this interaction, just in case something went down.
That is such a crime junkie move.
I know.
Like props to the girlies out there who are basically citizen detectives.
So...
This is enough for Detective Fontenot to do some John Reed homework.
He runs a background check on John and sees that he actually is a convicted felon, but not for anything violent for an old felony marijuana conviction.
But Brother Tony, also a convicted felon, and his past is violent.
So this is when police roll over to John's house.
John's house that he doesn't technically own anymore, where he's not really supposed to be.
Correct.
Got it.
At least in that moment, he is following the rules.
He and Tony are nowhere to be found.
So while they figure out how to track them down, they start knocking on doors of other neighbors to ask if anyone had any information or security footage.
And oh boy, does this pay off.
Police obtain video from two different houses that are on the road that goes above the landslide.
And one of them...
One shows Patrick's Land Rover, followed by Monique's Jeep, driving up the road, one right after the other.
On April 12th at 331 am.
It is the exact route and timestamps as the cell phone data.
Now the other video shows John Reed's red truck taking the same route nearly six hours later, at 921 am.
And sticking out of the back of his truck is that 4x4 wooden post.
Detective Fontenot told our reporter Emily Muir that, at least for him, these videos were the evidence that changed everything.
I mean in his words.
From that moment forward, the hunt for John and Tony Reed was quote on like Donkey Kong is what he told her.
Now they have enough to serve search warrants at John's house or his former property.
And even more physical evidence is found there.
Shell casings, plastic sheeting, a camo tarp, guns, more 4x4 posts.
Zip ties in the closet.
I mean, there's blood in the bathtub.
And that's just evidence that was collected from inside.
By his garage they find a trash barrel that is full of clothes not burnt, just soaking in diesel fuel.
And they find not one, but two secret underground bunkers.
I think the only thing worse than finding one secret underground bunker is...
Is the second one?
Is finding two secret underground bunkers.
And listen.
He said that, like each time, they were like stumbling across these, because like they weren't expecting to find them.
Yeah.
They're literally thinking like oh my God, we're going to find Patrick and Monique, either like tied up and bleeding and injured, or worse.
But just like the cars, both of the bunkers are empty.
Basically, Detective Fontenot told us he thinks that Those were actually just former grow rooms for John's marijuana operations.
But anyways, they collect everything, they send it off to the crime lab and bolos are officially issued for John and Tony Reed.
The U.S.
Marshals Service also sticks some agents on John and Tony's parents' house in Ellensburg Washington, to do surveillance, just in case they showed up there.
And do they find anything suspicious inside Patrick and Monique's house?
No, not really.
So their house...
It's like kind of immaculate.
There's no signs of a struggle.
And detectives even had relatives come look around to see if anything looked out of place or missing or whatever.
And interestingly, there were only two things that they could note.
One, they said Patrick's computer was missing.
And like the other one is so small, they said that the wrong cat bowl was out.
What exactly does that mean, the wrong cat bowl?
They said that there was like a certain cat bowl that Patrick and Monique used for like their cat with, like food or whatever.
And like the one that was sitting out.
Was not it.
Yeah.
I mean, it must've been so distinct that all of them knew or whatever.
Yeah.
And it's so interesting because this is one of the things that Detective Fontenot admitted to us.
He's like I kind of just dismissed this as nothing at the time.
But it becomes a learning moment for him later on because that different capital, it was a clue.
The details matter.
The details matter.
Now, it's not until day five, April 16th, that detectives get word from those agents who are on the stakeout at John and Tony's parents' house.
But on day five, they've spotted John's red truck in the garage.
Snohomish County detectives drop everything.
They drive the three hours away to Ellensburg to serve search warrants on the parents' house and on John's truck.
But they didn't get there quick enough to intercept John or Tony.
Like, they are already gone by then.
And their parents, Clyde and Faye, are pretty unhelpful.
They're basically like, yep, our sons were here, but we're not going to tell you where they went.
Oh, cool.
Great.
Yeah.
Not at all concerning.
So in the garage they find more tarps, more plastic sheeting that match everything found at the crime scene.
And inside John's truck, detectives find a small spot of what looks like blood near the passenger side door.
Now, this is tiny compared to the blood that they found in Patrick's Land Rover, but but it still gets swapped anyways.
And they also find some recent US bank receipts for like big cash outs and a 7-Eleven receipt from Arlington Washington dated on April 11th, just before midnight.
And that just before midnight.
That's like square in the missing time frame we have for Monique and Patrick right.
So detectives decide to take this.
They go to the 7-Eleven, and sure enough, on surveillance video, that was working.
Praise be.
Ugh.
They actually see John and Tony buying energy drinks and chips at midnight, wearing, guess what?
The clothes that were found at John's in that barrel soaking in diesel fuel.
So the evidence is just piling up against these guys.
Yeah, and they just keep collecting more and more.
Searchers find Monique's keys and glasses like seven miles away from where the cars were dumped.
And they now have help of a cadaver dog who finds Patrick's jacket in which is covered in blood.
So five days in, they've basically solved their case.
And Detective Fontenot and his team go ahead and make their case to the prosecutor to get arrest warrants issued for John and Tony Reed for a no-body homicide.
But now the manhunt begins.
Abolo got put out on their mom's car, which is the only car that was missing from their house when John left his truck, and they get cell phone data for John and Tony.
Both investigative avenues are fruitful.
Not only do they get a hit on Faye's license plate, but cell mapping is showing exactly where the fugitive brothers are when they go looking for them on day five.
And it's nowhere near Washington.
By April 16th, the Reed brothers have made it all the way to Phoenix, Arizona.
That is a solid 20-hour drive.
But before cops can descend on them down south, Their phones just go dark and they are just completely off the grid.
Now all authorities can do is hope for a sighting or another license plate catch, or for the brothers' phones to come back online or something even better.
And something even better happens on day 35.
In mid-May, a call comes in from an attorney in Ellensburg, Washington.
He says that he's calling on behalf of his client, Tony Reed.
And Tony wants to turn himself in on one condition.
They must agree to take the death penalty off the table.
Now, the thing is, the death penalty hasn't even been discussed.
Because back then, there was a moratorium on executions in the state of Washington.
And while the Snohomish County Prosecutor technically could have called for the death penalty or charge and whatever, or ask for it,
They had no plans to bring any capital charges during the moratorium.
But like, whatever, detectives just see this as an opportunity.
So they're like, deal of a century.
Yeah, happy to agree.
And they do that so they can arrest and interrogate Tony.
So deal gets done.
And on May 16th, again same day, day 35 of their case Detectives fly down to the Mexico-San Diego border and Tony surrenders to Washington authorities.
They get him back to Washington, and by May 22nd, day 40 of this saga, Tony's ready to talk.
Now, he says he didn't kill them.
His brother did.
But he did try to help his brother cover his tracks.
He said that he shot those people.
And he told them it was self-defense.
He said that they came to the gate with a gun...
And then he started wrestling with one of them, and the gun went off.
Tony says that he's been in Mexico this whole time, but John suggested that he go home and surrender.
He's the one that talked me into turning myself in, because if something was to happen to me over this, he would not be able to live with himself.
Detectives asked Tony to walk them through exactly what happened, and he does.
Tony says that his brother John, killed Patrick and Monique on April 11th and that John basically called him to help get rid of the cars and the bodies.
What does he tell you?
What's the plan?
We're going to take the cars up and dump them.
Okay.
Did you stop and look in the cars at that first time?
No.
Okay.
When was the first time you saw the bodies?
When I got in the car to drive away.
Okay.
Which car did you drive?
The black and white one.
As Tony goes on to describe how they tried to cover their tracks, all the little puzzle pieces that detectives had been getting, the ones that made sense and even the ones that didn't, they start coming together.
He says that they noticed a trail camera on a tree at the gate, which is right where John killed Patrick and Monique.
So I'm sure he was like, oh, crap, like my crimes might be on video.
So they ended up taking the trail cam, not realizing that the SD card was missing.
And Tony says that John goes inside Patrick and Monique's house to take Patrick's computer, thinking that the trail cam footage might like automatically upload straight to it.
But before John left, after he took the computer, he stopped to feed Patrick and Monique's cat.
With the wrong cat bowl.
Their cat was apparently like meowing and just seemed very hungry.
So Tony says that John stops their murder cover-up efforts to feed the victim's cat.
And I don't even know what to make of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
After that, Tony says, they drive the victims' cars up to the Oso landslide road with the bodies in the backs of the cars and they find a spot for a grave at the base of this uprooted tree.
Did you guys have to dig a hole?
Yeah.
Did you bring shovels with you?
Yeah.
They dispose of the bodies, cover them and then push the cars over the cliff's edge and watch them just tumble down.
The only issue was that the Land Rover got caught on that stump and was kind of like out in the open.
So they decided to come back later and try to pry it loose or to cover it better.
Tony says that he and John then walked a trail back down to John's garage.
And along the way, Patrick and Monique's phones were just like blowing up with messages from their friends and family.
And Tony is reading them, trying to gauge if anyone had called police yet.
The read receipts.
Mm-hmm.
But down the trail, Tony decides to toss the phones into a spring along with Patrick's wallet.
Now he's telling them in this interview cut to one of the detectives stepping out of the interview to tell Search and Rescue to go out to this trail see if they can recover the phones from the mud.
They're probably not going to need a whole lot more evidence but, like anything to corroborate this confession is going to be helpful.
Yeah.
And sure enough, they are right where Tony described, soaked in mud right next to Patrick's wallet.
Now, back in the interview room, Tony is still yapping away.
He says they destroyed and tossed Patrick's computer and trail camera out in the woods, which searchers later find as well.
And after he says, they get back down to John's garage and toss their blood-soaked clothes in a burn barrel and, just like douse them in fuel.
Why?
Because they were supposed to burn them.
But they forgot.
Whoops.
Stay stupid, criminals.
Stay stupid.
So they drive back up to the cars the next day.
They try to like use that 4x4 as a jack to get the rover off that stump.
But the reason that they just leave it in there before they actually do is because they start seeing helicopters circling above.
So that's when they like give up.
They're like putting branches and the tarp over it because they're like, we got to get out of here.
Yeah.
And they know that they've got to make a run for it.
So they head to mom and dad's house in Ellensburg to switch cars, get some cash and off to Phoenix they go.
Tony says that in Phoenix, they meet up with a buddy to switch cars again.
And that's when they headed to Mexico in that car.
Now, when asked about the murder weapon, he says they took it to Mexico and he thinks John still has it.
You got right across the border with the gun.
The one thing that Tony won't give the cops is his brother's location.
But Tony does agree to take law enforcement to Patrick and Monique's bodies on day 41.
Tony gets booked and charged for first-degree murder and investigators start the two-day process of recovering Patrick and Monique from the hole that they were left in, about a mile from the cars under this uprooted tree.
And detectives said that this was, like, very emotional for them.
I mean, they had been going nonstop for six weeks and along the way they felt like they'd really gotten to know Patrick and Monique through their loved ones.
And Brett, they sounded like legit the coolest couple ever.
They met at Burning Man.
They loved their little slice of paradise on the river where they had a hobby farm and, just like, worshipped their animals.
And I know I mentioned Monique was like buying chicken feed.
So they had chickens and roosters.
They're not for butchering or eating.
Those were Monique's pets.
They also loved fly fishing and hiking and camping.
And they were just like this very calm and steady presence within their families.
Now, when investigators found find Patrick and Monique.
They're in the same grave, wearing the same clothes that they were last seen in.
And both family members that we interviewed for this episode that was Monique's foster sister Vi and Patrick's niece Erin.
They said the same thing that after they saw the crime scene photos that it looked like they were cuddling when they were found.
And while they can never unsee that image, they said it actually brought them some peace to know that they were together till the very end.
Now, word about what they were finding spreads faster than you can dig up two bodies.
So while this painstaking work was happening, news choppers were circling.
And Britt, if you look at the aerial news footage from the scene at this time, it's so interesting.
And this is like my favorite behind the scenes moment of this case.
All of the cameras of like the footage that day.
They're all focused on this big blue tarp with a bunch of huge branches, like Laid out in order smallest to biggest.
And what's that have to do with anything?
Absolutely nothing.
This was a tactic that Detective Dave Bilyeu used to make the news camera focus on something besides the bodies.
Oh, that is brilliant, like it looks important because they're all in order right, you're immediately like as a crime junkie, I'd be like what does it mean?
It was like you gotta decode it.
These sticks are important.
They were used in like the and they're coming out in like an order and they're all lined up like I mean it was, it was brilliant and it worked.
I mean there's a King 5 news story where the close-up's are all of this tarp and sticks.
So do you think the news stations know that they got duped, or are we going to be the bearer of bad news here?
Oh, I actually don't.
I bet they're finding out for the first time.
So anyways, again, behind the scenes a little bit, it was so interesting to me.
This works.
They're able to get the bodies out of there.
Do the autopsies where it's confirmed that gunshot wounds are the causes of death?
Now, Patrick's single wound to the head was fatal and had to have been a surprise close range ambush from behind.
Now, the medical examiner can't say in what order Monique's shots came.
She had multiple, three actually, her arm, neck and head.
But the speculation is that she rolled up to the gate that morning after running errands with her groceries, her dog in the car.
She came upon John Reed where there was some sort of confrontation and then John snapped.
Detective Fontenot believes Monique was in her car when John first pulled out his gun and that maybe she like put up her arm in defense when the first shot landed.
But he kills her.
And then he thinks that John like paced around for a few hours just waiting for Patrick to get home.
And then he shot him in the same spot.
Now, since they had locks on the gate, you had to actually like stop your car, put it in park, get out before you could drive through.
So John must have known that he'd have the perfect opportunity to sneak up on Patrick, either as he approached the gate on foot or as he stopped his car at the gate.
And was there blood outside by the gate or just in the cars?
Just in the cars.
I mean, at the gate, there was one lone shell casing left behind.
So investigators think that John was like laying in wait and then shot Patrick the moment that he pulled up and just stopped there.
Or he shot him as he approached the gate on foot.
But again, there wasn't enough blood to like see an obvious, like anything obvious in the dirt.
But what I will say is that most of Patrick's blood was found soaked into that jacket that they found in the woods and inside the Land Rover.
Now, in late May, after the autopsies, all they're still missing for this investigation to be wrapped up is John Reed.
They know he's likely still in Mexico.
So they are constantly bugging international and federal authorities to be on the lookout for him or investigating the guy's car that they took from Phoenix to Mexico.
They also put up wanted flyers with his photo in areas that they think he might be hiding.
And as they wait, they continue just building their case against both Reed brothers.
By June.
They analyze Tony and John's cell phone data, which actually shows Tony was in Ellensburg when Patrick and Monique likely died.
So they drop the murder charges against Tony and they just charge him with assisting in the crimes.
They also arrest and charge the Reed parents, Clyde and Faye, for rendering criminal assistance, because further follow-up revealed that the elderly couple actually went to the bank and got additional cash for their fugitive sons, essentially helping in their escape, as if, like giving them the getaway car wasn't enough.
And about a month later, in July, the final breakthrough comes, when international authorities call Detective Fontenot and say we have found John Reed.
Detective Fontenot said he was skeptical.
He says, like, send me a picture of him.
And, sure enough, this is the guy that Snohomish County cops have been chasing for.
Count them 100 days now.
The authorities in Mexico say they spotted John's getaway car outside a barbershop in Puerto Penasco, about 62 miles south of the Arizona border.
They'd gone to this apartment above the barbershop where they thought he lived.
John wasn't there, so they leave.
And what do you know?
Who is walking right towards them on the sidewalk outside.
Stop it.
Like all this time he's been like two days ahead, a couple steps up, like just out of their reach, running on like what seems like pure luck.
Yeah.
And he's just there.
And he doesn't try to run.
Luck is now on detective's sides.
He is arrested.
He's taken back to the U.S., back to Washington.
But unlike his brother Tony, John's lips are closed.
Does he know his brother confessed and is like already arrested and charged and everything?
Unclear.
We asked Detective Fontenot and he said that, again, like John just refused to talk.
So it's hard to say what he did or didn't know at the time.
But if what Tony said was true, it was John who suggested that he turn himself in.
So who knows?
But detectives had a mountain of evidence against him.
So John still gets charged, put behind bars.
And though he's not talking to them personally, Word gets out that his defense is going to be self-defense.
Okay.
How?
I know.
What?
The prosecution knows that all they have to do... All they have to do.
I say it like it's easy.
All they have to do is prove that Monique and Patrick got home and died at different times.
Right.
And if they can do that, it's going to be so hard for John to claim that they pulled guns on him first.
Right.
Because then it would have...
It had to have happened, like, two separate times.
Snohomish County digital forensics detectives James Hedrick and Tyler Quick.
They take another look at John Reed's cell data and it confirms John was in Oso on the day of the murders from at least 1030 am to 330 pm.
He then drives to Ellensburg to pick up his brother Tony, and they arrive back in Oso at around 330 am.
Okay, so, so far... all of that matches up with the other evidence.
Right.
They also analyzed the health app data on Monique and Patrick's phones, which essentially confirms their last movements alive in a few different ways.
They can see on Monique's phone that the last time the power or like that home button was pressed was at 1107 am.
Patrick's phone, same deal.
Last time those buttons were used was on April 11th at 3.07 p.m.
Then there is no health app activity again Until their phones start moving up that old logging road toward the landslide, just before 330 am.
The health apps also confirmed the moment that their phone stopped working after Tony Reed tossed them into that spring, at 830 am on the 12th.
And listen, you are never guaranteed a slam dunk case.
But man, like when the investigation is done right, it is good news.
Yes.
Everything is buttoned up come the spring of 2018, when Snohomish County presents 43 witnesses and about 750 exhibits.
And as expected, John claims self-defense and even takes the stand.
John must not have known about the state's evidence showing Monique and Patrick getting home separately.
Because his story was that they both got home and they both came at him.
And they pulled guns on him first.
Sure as I could, I screwed off like three shots.
John testified that he shot them both and considered calling 911, but says he panicked.
He even said if he had to do it over again, he would call police.
He got angry. destroyed on cross examination.
And ultimately he was found guilty of aggravated first degree murder for Patrick and second degree murder for Monique.
He remains in prison in Washington.
And we did send him a letter back in September to try and give him plenty of time to do an interview or to provide us a statement.
We never heard back.
So John's locked up.
But what about the brother?
Like, did he or the parents go to prison, too?
They did do some time in the county jail, but all three are out now.
And we tried reaching them, too, but we didn't hear back from any of them either.
This story is so bonkers.
But like at the end of the day, I don't really I don't really get it.
Like what made John resort to killing Patrick and Monique?
Like I feel like neighbor disputes are just common.
Like they end up worst case.
It's like civil court or maybe like.
Yeah.
Neighbors taking sides, some over the fence smack talk, whatever.
What's the difference between your unhinged neighbor who might yell at you and your unhinged neighbor who might kill you?
Yeah.
Like, how do you know?
Or like, what made this time the time that it escalated to double homicide?
Well, I mean, that was something that I kind of wondered about, too.
And when we talked to Detective Fontenot he told us basically he thinks this whole thing came down to like who John Reed was, like his personality.
Yeah.
And that basically he got overwhelmed and just snapped.
He says that because of how the homicides played out, which he calls disorganized.
Now they have zero evidence that John was under the influence when he killed Patrick and Monique, which is another interesting factor.
Because Detective Fontenot also told us he's like listen, typically homicides boil down to three things.
Sex, drugs, money.
So he called this case atypical.
I mean, sure, there were high emotions.
There was animosity between the households.
But typically, What did John gain by killing them?
Yeah, like, that's what I'm trying to think of.
Like, the hope of not being sued, maybe?
Like, making the civil law— Are you just so angry?
Yeah, it just seems like extreme choices to avoid kind of small things like civil lawsuits.
But you could have avoided the civil lawsuits by just, like, not doing the thing, too, right?
Yeah, just like not— being in that sort of like elevated conflict.
In the first place he seems like an angry man, like where i get like things had happened to him like you know he lost his property but you got paid for the property like i don't know, like i just can't.
It's hard to like distill and boil down and i always like it's motive.
For me that's always so interesting because so many of our cases i'm like trying to figure out what's the why, how do you what's like, how do you protect yourself, what do you look for?
And like it's hard to pinpoint that here.
Now for Patrick and Monique's family, seeing John convicted and sent to prison was a form of justice.
But like also it doesn't bring them back.
Nothing brings them back.
Losing them was extremely difficult, and nothing has replaced the hole that their absence has created.
Vi told us that Monique used to cuddle her chickens and her roosters.
And when they got sheep, she raised the babies inside their house which, like as a farm girly, I saw so many animals in your home.
Yes.
And Patrick's niece, Erin, said that her uncle was like a father figure to her.
He stepped in to make sure that she had school clothes when she was little.
And he was a huge jokester.
She said he once put potatoes in her stockings on Christmas morning just to make her laugh.
After all was said and done, Vi got a rooster tattoo in honor of Monique.
And Erin got the truth never dies tattooed on her collarbone.
She said that throughout the investigation, Detective Fontenot kept telling her that and it stuck with her.
And it's a reminder that even in a whirlwind 100-day investigation, it pays to never give up, and the tiniest of details that you gather along the way might be what puts the killer behind bars.
You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, CrimeJunkie.com.
And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production.
I think Chuck would approve.
