Hi, everyone. Ashley Flowers here. If you're like me, diving into true crime is about more than just the details of a case.
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Download today. Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Britt Prewatt.
And I'm Ash. We're switching things up today.
Yeah. I have been working on some pretty big cases lately.
So, Britt, you came across this from a podcast and, like, made contact.
We have to cover it. I'm so excited. Yeah.
The story I have for you today seemingly starts as a late 90s fatal teen romance.
But a shocking confession and so many twists and turns later, you're going to be wondering if police got this one right.
Now, over 20 years later, I'm bringing you a crime junkie breakdown on what happened and digging into who could be responsible for murder.
This is the story of Anastasia Whitbulls-Fugin.
It's almost 4 a.m. on October 23rd, 1997, when Deputy David Epperson with the Jackson County Sheriff's Department is patrolling through Kansas City, Missouri and cuts into Lincoln Cemetery.
He's looking for any sign of stolen vehicles.
Apparently, it's a common place people leave them.
And this cemetery is dark. He's just got his headlights shining ahead.
And as he gets to a turnaround spot in the back of the lot, he comes upon someone lying on the ground.
He doesn't know if they're drunk or hurt, but they're not moving.
So he gets out of his cruiser only to realize it's neither of those things.
In front of him is a woman with dark hair lying on her back with a huge gunshot wound to the middle of her face.
To Deputy Epperson, it looks like she was shot right there where she stood, point blank, and by someone else because there's no gun present.
He calls for backup, and while he waits, he looks for anything that can help ID this woman.
But there's nothing around her, no purse or anything.
And the only thing they find in her pockets is a key and a cuckoo clock keychain.
That's nothing that's going to immediately help IDing her.
By the time the sun begins to rise, investigators have already looked the woman over and had her body removed for an autopsy.
Is she, like, young, old? She's definitely young, but without an ID, there's really no way of knowing, right?
And with the light, they now have a more thorough search of the cemetery that gets underway, looking not just for evidence, but also for witnesses.
They don't seem to get anything from anyone at Lincoln Cemetery, but when they expand out their search and canvas radius to include the cemetery next door, one that's called Mount Washington, the property manager there says something interesting that helps police build out a potential timeline.
He says that the night before, there was actually a young woman hanging out alone in his cemetery.
He saw her a little before 5 p.m., didn't interact with her then.
She wasn't up to anything or trespassing.
It was fine for her to be there. But then when he was doing a quick patrol around 7 p.m. before closing, he saw her again, this time with two guys and a girl.
Now, at that point, the cemetery was closing, so he pulled up behind them, flashed his lights, letting them know, hey, you need to get out of here.
He never made contact with them, but it seemed like they took the hint and left.
Now, he didn't know the girl or any of the people she was with, but he knows that whoever it was he saw, that girl's dad had been looking for her because around 6 a.m. this morning.
Well, you're talking about like literally just a couple of hours ago.
Yeah. A man comes up to the gates and asked him if he'd seen his daughter.
The man showed him a picture, and it was the same woman from the night before.
He didn't have anything to offer this dad more than what he'd just told police.
But that guy had left his number, so he hands the dad's number over to the officers.
When they ring the guy, they find out that he's Robert Whitbulls-Fugin, who goes by Bob.
And his daughter, who he'd been looking for, is 18-year-old Anastasia Whitbulls-Fugin.
They don't tell Bob why they're calling or what they found.
They just, over the phone, ask if he knows who his daughter's dentist is.
Well, I mean, like, he's got to know what they're looking for.
You don't even need to be a crime junkie to know what the implication is.
Well, if he didn't know, he's about to find out.
Because while they track down her dental records, another officer drives over to Bob's house and tells him in person that they're working on identifying a young woman.
And they ask if he could give a statement.
And I don't know if it's denial or their delivery because this whole thing has unfolded so backwards or what.
But he's like, I don't know what you want me to give a statement about.
But the pieces eventually... So he's like not... He's not connecting like all of the dots here.
But the pieces eventually fall into place.
The dental records confirm it's Bob's daughter, Anastasia, and her family helps put a further timeline together of what she was doing the night before.
Bob says his wife, Anastasia's stepmom, dropped her off at Mount Washington Cemetery to meet up with her boyfriend, Justin Bruton, a little before 4.30 p.m.
Why are they meeting at a... Why is she dropping her off at a cemetery?
Like, is her boyfriend dead? Like, I don't even... So, they were into the... goth subculture and the cemetery fit that aesthetic.
Anastasia would go there and write poetry and it was just like this quiet place to hang out.
For like the vibes. Right. Okay. So Bob says he got home around 9.30 p.m. and realized that Anastasia was still out and that Justin had tried to call the house before he got home looking for Anastasia.
Bob calls Justin. It goes to voicemail. But by around 10 p.m., Justin called him back.
And Justin told Bob that getting his call made him immediately worried because, yes, they had been together at one point that night.
But they'd gotten into a fight that led to Anastasia getting out of the car and walking off alone.
And he hadn't heard or seen her since then.
Bob tells detectives that that's when he went out and started searching for her, but aside from talking to that property manager, he hadn't found any sign of her.
So obviously, police want to talk to Justin, A, to figure out if his story is legit, and B, if it is legit, find out... where she got out of the car, and which direction she started walking off in.
Right, that's like her last known movements.
Right, but they run into problems right away.
His story doesn't line up? No, they can't even get his story because Justin seems to be MIA.
There's no answer when they call him, no one at his apartment when they go knocking.
He's 20 and lives alone, so it's not like they were expecting anyone but him to answer.
Like, he could just be out. He's definitely out because his two-door blue-green Honda seems to be missing from the apartment building's parking lot.
So they're kind of left with this question, like, is it bad timing or is the boyfriend of our victim in the wind?
Well, and it's super sus because, like, clearly he's calling her dad.
Like, he knows he says he's worried. He knows dad is worried and all of a sudden we can't find you.
Right. Like, he knows that, like, she's in theory, like, her whereabouts are unknown.
Right. Right. So looks us, but they don't know what to make of it.
And without him, it's making it harder to find out who else they were with that night.
Because even though Justin hadn't mentioned other people to Bob, remember what that guy at Mount Washington said?
Oh, that she was with other people, right?
She was like with two guys and a girl? Right.
So then if one of the guys was Justin, then there has to be at least two more people.
Right. And before they even begin to try to figure out how to solve this problem, the investigative heavens open up.
And these mystery friends just come to them.
Honestly, it would be suspicious if they didn't.
Like, I mean, I imagine word is spreading fast about something like this.
Yeah, that's exactly what happened. These two got wind that Anastasia had been found, and they came forward because they— I was with her last night.
Exactly. Yeah, okay. So the other guy is 18-year-old Byron Case, and the girl is his 15-year-old girlfriend, Kelly Moffitt.
They say that earlier in the night on October 22nd, Byron and Kelly were hanging out with Justin when Justin got a call from Anastasia.
She was calling them from a payphone at a Dairy Queen, hello 90s, which was across the street from the Mount Washington Cemetery.
What they picked up from the conversation was that Anastasia was upset with Justin because apparently the two of them were supposed to meet at Mount Washington Cemetery to talk about their relationship.
But... Justin didn't show. He just like ghosted her?
Yeah. So Anastasia asked them to pick her up and they tell police they got to the Dairy Queen at like 7 and they all went back over to Mount Washington within a couple of minutes.
And this is when they're seen by that property manager who got them to leave.
So they loaded up in Justin's car, drove off.
But as they did, Anastasia and Justin, who was driving the car, started fighting.
And she got out of the car at a stoplight about a block away and started walking into what Kelly tells police is a sketchy part of town.
And they're just like, leave her. Yeah, all of them.
Justin sped off and took Kelly and Byron back to his place, where they just hung out until Kelly had to get home for her 9 p.m. curfew.
Byron and Justin took Kelly to her house around, like, 8.30.
Okay. They drop her off, and when they did, apparently Justin went in Kelly's house real quick to make that first call to Anastasia's house.
And Byron tells detectives that Justin was getting worried.
He didn't like that Anastasia just bailed from the car.
And he wanted to check to see if she had called asking anyone else to pick her up, since that's kind of what he assumed she'd do.
He didn't think that there was any way that she was going to walk, like, it was something like almost four miles back to her dad's house.
It would have taken like an hour and a half.
So he made a quick phone call to see if Anastasia had called her house, anybody there had heard from her.
Whoever answered said no, she hadn't called.
And that worried Justin. Yeah. I'm also, like, picturing her, like, when you talk about her hanging out in a cemetery and, like, goth culture.
I'm picturing her in, like, I don't know what she was wearing, but, like, full, like, chunky black boots.
Like, you're not going for a four-mile hike home in this.
Like, you would have had to have gotten a ride.
Totally. And it's at night. We're still out there.
Yeah. At the time, Byron and Kelly didn't know anything was wrong.
After dropping Kelly off, Justin took Byron home.
He got dropped off around like 10 that night at his mom's place where he lives, and he just went to bed.
He had talked to Justin once more, though.
He said the next morning, Justin called him saying he couldn't sleep.
He said it was like 9 a.m. and that was far too early for Byron.
So he told him he'd call him back later.
Is the insinuation that he's been like awake this whole time if he can't sleep?
Yes. But Byron had no time for this. His sleep was important to him.
When he finally does wake up, he tries calling Justin and Justin doesn't answer any of his calls.
And it was after that when he found out about Anastasia being found and that kind of sent him into a little bit of a spiral.
He still couldn't get a hold of Justin. He started worrying about him.
So it's not like the cops have just like missed Justin.
Nobody can find this guy. No one can find him.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The autopsy results had come back by now and showed Anastasia died from a gunshot wound to the head, and the gun had been pressed to her nose when the trigger was pulled.
There was an exit wound, but no bullet found, and they don't know what kind of gun was used.
They found a lead fragment in her scalp and set it out for testing, but it wasn't helpful at all in determining what type of gun could have been used.
She had no defensive wounds or drugs or alcohol in her system, and there were no signs of sexual assault.
Unfortunately, they can't determine a time of death for Anastasia.
But once those initial autopsy results are back, police release a statement saying that they just want to talk to Justin about Anastasia's murder.
One of the last people who were with her.
Her friends came forward. He's not considered a suspect or anything, and they just want to talk to him to line up this story, these timelines.
So the longer you're gone, the more sus it gets.
Exactly. So they put out a bolo for his car and officers are posted up in the area.
And one of those officers is Deputy Epperson, who, remember, is the officer that found Anastasia.
So he's posted up at the entrance of a third cemetery close to both Mount Washington Cemetery and Lincoln Cemetery.
How many cemeteries are there? It's like cemetery town here, it seems.
So he's posted up there, and Bob rolls up and asks to be taken to the place where his daughter was killed.
Which is super random, because he doesn't even know if they're working the case, like these officers.
But the officers are like, we can't help you.
Contact the detective unit for that information.
And Bob leaves. Worried about Bob's well-being, the deputies go check to see if Bob actually went to Lincoln Cemetery.
And sure enough, they find him there. In fact, Bob is standing in the exact spot where Anastasia's body was found.
Bob notices the deputies behind him and straight up says, am I close?
Wait, is there no crime scene tape up? Like, I don't think they were processing the scene anymore at this point.
So it seems like you could just walk right up on it.
And I don't know if there was still blood or anything that marked it, but he was close.
All right. I mean, that person didn't want to tell him, but he's right on the mark.
And while he's there, the weight of everything must have kind of settled in.
Because Bob says he remembers something from the night he went out looking for his daughter.
Something he hadn't mentioned before. He says around 11.30 p.m., he heard a loud gunshot from what he thinks was a large caliber rifle.
And somehow, in that moment, he just knew his daughter was dead.
I mean, first of all, feels relevant, right?
Yeah. But did that's what I don't understand.
So we know she's shot. Right. So like this could make sense.
But was she shot at 11? Did anyone else hear this gunshot?
I mean, I feel like someone would. We know it's across from a Dairy Queen.
So no one reported hearing any shots, not at 1130, not at any other time, which, to your point, is kind of wild to me.
But here's what else is wild. Speaking of not. like crime scene taping anything off, Bob goes back to the scene another time.
And he comes to police after and he's like, uh, I was out there and I found some skull fragments today.
Don't worry. I picked them up for you guys.
They're over my desk if you want to grab them.
I'm sorry. He's just like... First of all, why are they there?
And why is Bob picking them up and putting them in a bag?
I mean, he didn't put them in a bag. I don't know what he did with them.
But like, what? He has them in his desk somewhere.
Right. So all of that. But get this. After looking over the investigative files, it doesn't seem like police do much with this.
Like, at all. Like they don't like go test them?
They don't even go get them. What? It's one thing to not get them the first time, but after he's like, hey, by the way, I have this?
Okay. So this case popped on my radar after journalist Leah Rothman did a super deep dive into it on the third season of her podcast, The Real Killer.
I love that podcast. I listened to the two seasons before this.
Yes. Highly recommend. Yes. Thanks to her, we got access to a massive case file with All of these details.
And she comes to a similar assessment about how the police's investigation could have been more thorough.
And like, you have to go listen to season three once you finish here.
Anyway, even though everyone they talked to during their canvas didn't hear anything, they do find a witness who saw something.
Police come across a mechanic who works nearby this area where the cemeteries are, and he thinks he saw Anastasia that night getting out of a car.
He said the car drove off and Anastasia took off walking east, which from where he was would have been in the direction of both Anastasia's house and Lincoln Cemetery where she was found dead.
Like she would have had to walk past Lincoln Cemetery to get to her house.
And what time is he seeing her? This is around 8.30 p.m.
So, like, it seems like everything that Justin is telling or told Bob was, like, true.
Yeah, which is great, but they still want to confirm it with Justin himself.
I mean, at this point, Justin's timeline is hearsay, essentially.
And they're still looking for him the next day on October 25th when they get word from an agency in Kansas, about 30 miles away, that Justin's been found dead.
What? Cause of death? Gunshot wound to the head.
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This other agency in Kansas had found Justin's car abandoned near an old warehouse.
They ran the plates and learned that the owner of the vehicle was wanted for questioning in a homicide investigation in Kansas City, Missouri.
So they do a sweep of the area, and as they were conducting their search, they found Justin on the ground lying next to the building.
So outside of his car? Yes. Unlike in Anastasia's case, police did find a shotgun next to Justin, and they know that it was the weapon used.
Authorities quickly ruled his death a suicide and then informed the Jackson County Sheriff's Department of his death.
Now, Justin's exact time of death is unknown, but he appears to have been dead for at least 18 hours before he was found on Saturday, October 25th.
Meaning he would have died around 7 p.m. on the 24th.
And, like, this is a timeline thing. I was literally trying to do the timeline in my head.
To keep this all in context, the timeline is super important.
Yeah. Because I'm like, I'm trying to figure out, like, was he, has he been dead this whole time he's been missing?
So police believe that Anastasia was shot the night of the 22nd and found the morning of the 23rd.
And then they believe that Justin died the evening of the 24th and was found on the 25th.
So there's a gap. Right. There's like a two-day gap.
Where's he been for two days while everyone's been looking for him?
Detectives have no idea. But I think they're wondering, what did Justin do after 10 p.m. when he dropped Byron off?
Right. Like, say Bob's account of hearing a gunshot around 1130 near the cemetery is actually true.
True, yeah. Is there a way that Justin was with Anastasia and shot her?
Like, did he go back looking for her? Right.
Right. I don't remember what you said. Did they get a time of death for Anastasia?
The ME could never determine a time of death.
So basically, the last time someone saw Anastasia was around 8.30 p.m.
That mechanic guy? Yeah. And Byron last saw Justin at 10.
And then Anastasia's body is found at 4.
So there's like an eight-hour window that detectives are working with.
And six of those, Justin is unaccounted for.
And they theorize, just like you were, that maybe Justin met back up with Anastasia alone, killed her, then took off and took his own life out of guilt.
Yeah. And that would explain, at least to me, why there's like no gun fight.
It could, but authorities from the other agency had found a receipt in Justin's trunk.
The receipt is for the shotgun, and it's dated Thursday, October 23rd.
And when investigators go to the gun store looking for surveillance footage, they see Justin buying it at 1025 in the morning.
So she's already dead by then. Yeah. So he would have what?
Like he would have got rid of the gun he used on Anastasia, then went out and bought a different one to take his own life?
That's what investigators need to find out.
Like what? That doesn't even, like, make a lot of sense.
Right. So next, they search Justin's condo for any information on why he possibly would have wanted Anastasia dead.
They collect his computer and other personal notes to go through.
And they find a card from Anastasia. And in it, she apologized to Justin for how she acted and hoped that they could still be friends.
And this is dated September 19th. So a little over a month before this all happens.
And when she talks about still being friends, so like, are they, at the time that this happens, are they together or are they broken up?
It'd be great to talk to Anastasia or Justin to know for sure.
I mean, they were going to meet up to talk about their relationship.
It sounds like they were broken up in this note somewhere.
But regardless, investigators are feeling more and more confident about this murder-suicide theory with, like, each piece of evidence they find.
Like, a letter they found on Justin's hard drive that's seemingly written and edited by Anastasia just two days before her murder.
And here's part of it. You remember when you said that you could beat me over the head with a bat and spray paint on my face that you did it?
And still tomorrow I would call up and ask for forgiveness because I believed that I caused it?
Well, you're wrong. I may forgive you for a lot of things, including hurting me, but believe me, I have nothing holding me here.
I never cared what anyone thought of me until I loved you.
Then I only cared what you thought of me.
Byron can go f*** himself for all I care."
You don't deserve my love. You don't care about my love at all.
I am strong, stronger than you will ever know.
You and Byron deserve each other because that seems to be the one you want.
Someone who shares your brain and your thinking and so f*** me.
So that's the condensed version. The original note is long.
Um, I feel like this is new. What is this Byron and Justin stuff?
Yeah. They've already started hearing rumors that Justin and Byron may have either been messing around or that Byron was enamored with Justin.
Like, there's clearly more to this group than it seems on the surface.
Yeah. Facebook status complicated. Yeah, so detectives speak to more of Anastasia's friends and loved ones, and their assessments of Byron vary.
Some say he was super upset by his friend's deaths.
Others say he didn't seem that affected at all.
And lots of people have no idea what they're talking about when they mention a love triangle or any kind of romantic connection between Byron and Justin, which Byron completely denies, by the way.
So I was going to say, yeah, we have Byron.
Let's just ask Byron. Yeah. He says, absolutely not.
Okay. So somewhere along the way, detectives come up with this theory that maybe Justin and Anastasia's deaths were part of a, quote, goth suicide pact that may be... Tell me it's the 90s.
Right. But that maybe Kelly and Byron just backed out of.
Like this pact was for the four of them.
But everyone they talked to was like, no, definitely not.
I could have told you no and not just because we're like halfway through the episode.
Yeah. Even though Byron and Kelly are still some of the last people to see Anastasia alive, there's nothing tying them to her murder.
So police aren't able to do anything except keep coming back to the same people asking the same questions.
And they do this a year out even, try to bring Byron back in for questioning.
But now he's lawyered up. And it seems investigators have hit a wall.
But that wall starts to crumble when Kelly walks into the police station and says she is ready to tell the truth about what really happened to Anastasia.
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Now 17 years old, Kelly tells detectives she's been lying for years.
But she's ready to tell the truth as long as she gets transactional immunity.
The hell is transactional immunity? Like, I thought there was just immunity.
So, yes, but it's a little different. Transactional immunity offers her a broader protection from specific offenses related to her testimony.
It's like a full pardon for whatever she says.
And at this point, detectives have nothing.
And since they've always been pretty sure that the key to this case is locked up somewhere in what Kelly and Byron know.
They're like the only two people left. Right.
Like they're like, you know what? Sure. We're willing to play ball with this transactional immunity thing.
And so, Kelly tells detectives how the night Anastasia was murdered really went down.
Kelly starts by telling detectives that the whole thing, Anastasia's murder, was planned by Justin and Byron.
And that she, Kelly, had no idea what was going to happen.
That day, Kelly got in the car expecting them to just hang out or whatever.
But Justin and Anastasia were fighting again.
They had a pretty rocky relationship and Justin was complaining about her.
He looked at Kelly in the backseat and said, who's my biggest problem?
Kelly, not knowing where he was going with that, was like, I don't know.
And he told her, Anastasia, she's gotta go.
Kelly didn't really know what they meant, but as they drove around, they got to scheming.
And ultimately, the guys made Kelly call Anastasia before picking her up.
Wait, I thought Anastasia called Justin from Dairy Queen.
That was the original story. But now Kelly's telling them that she made the call.
And it's been a couple of years. She could be misremembering.
But I like that doesn't even make sense to me because like, how would she know that Anastasia was going to be at the Dairy Queen?
I don't know. Well, I'm confused. Did anyone like pull the phone records?
That would have been great, wouldn't it?
No. You're kidding me. Detectives never pulled any call logs.
Not even early on when they like... Not for Kelly, not for Anastasia, not for DQ, nothing.
Even like Justin calls. Did he meet up with her later?
Great question. I bet his call logs would have something.
No call logs. So Kelly continues her confession by saying that on their way over, Justin and Byron begin talking about what it would be like to kill Anastasia.
So the three of them pick her up around 7.
They went to Mount Washington, then ended up next door in Lincoln Cemetery.
And it wasn't long before Justin and Anastasia began arguing about their relationship and got out of the car.
And Kelly and Byron were in the back until things started escalating between Justin and Anastasia.
And Kelly says that's when Byron got out, opened the trunk, pulled out a shotgun, walked up to Anastasia, aimed the gun at her, and pulled the trigger.
Byron? Then, Byron threw the gun back in the trunk and got into the car.
And Justin completely lost it, but still managed to drive them out of the cemetery.
All the while, he was yelling at Byron, asking him if he'd heard him say, never mind.
And Byron's like, no, I was focused on what I was doing.
And they drove over to some train tracks and threw the gun out.
Once they'd fled the scene and dumped the weapon, they went back to Justin's place, came up with a story to make sure they were all on the same page.
And Kelly says she was shocked by what had happened.
And she remembers telling Byron, you know this makes you a murderer, right?
You think? And his response was so matter of fact.
He said, no, I did it because Justin asked me to.
And a murderer is someone who doesn't feel bad about what they did.
I feel bad, but what's done is done. Still makes you a murderer.
Yeah. And this information helps things click into place for police.
Byron's odd behavior, his jealousy of Anastasia.
It makes sense to them that he would kill Anastasia for Justin because he had romantic feelings for Justin himself.
But detectives need to know, why now? Like, why is Kelly coming forward now, after almost three years have passed since that awful night in the cemetery?
And specifically episode five of The Real Killer really gets into that.
It kind of boils down to Kelly's trauma from witnessing Byron kill Anastasia sent her down a dark path of substance use that she was now trying to turn her life around from.
And she didn't really feel like she could do that while still holding on to this.
Right. Also, you say this all the time, ties that bind weren't so tight anymore.
Usually it takes longer, but a couple of years, it'll change things.
She tells them that Byron had recently moved to St.
Louis and tried cutting all contact with Kelly and that had triggered her.
She felt wronged by the fact that Byron seemed to be doing fine while she was spiraling deeper into addiction.
She'd been kicked out of her parents' home and was experiencing homelessness before getting admitted to rehab.
And she decided to finally tell the truth to police after she admitted what happened to her rehab counselor.
So the story was huge for police, but they were going to need more than a story if they hoped to solve this case and take it to court.
It would basically be Byron's word against Kelly's.
So hoping to find some substantial evidence, detectives take Kelly for a ride to see if she can show them where they threw the gun that night.
And she does show them to a few areas where it could be, but three years out, I don't think anyone's surprised when they don't find anything.
Wait, where does she even say they got the gun to begin with?
She doesn't. Detectives push her on her past statements, and she previously told them that Justin had a shotgun or something like that, but Byron told her that he had sold it.
Today, though, she's saying Byron made her lie about that.
So it kind of make Justin look guilty since he was already gone.
OK, so she's saying that he shot her. They all get back in the car.
Like, I keep thinking, like, there was probably blood on the gun or, like, someone's clothes, Byron's clothes, if he was the one that was there, Justin's clothes if he was standing next to her.
And then they all get in the car, right?
Like, there's no way they came out without some kind of, like, something on them.
Like, I feel like, like, did they ever even check Justin's car?
So looking back through the reports, the police that found Justin and his car looked at his car and noted that it was clean and tidy.
They looked in his trunk, too, and nothing in their notes said there was blood anywhere.
Yeah, but like, I mean, like, we have a window of time.
Like, you could have cleaned the car before he died.
You're right. And the car was towed to a secure lot for the Jackson County Sheriff's Department to retrieve it.
But I couldn't find anything in the police reports saying that they retrieved and processed this car.
Well, yeah, that too. Like if it like you would have to like look in detail.
I'm not saying they're like soaked in blood.
And if you don't just like if all you're doing is just scoping this car and being like nothing to see here.
Yeah, but I mean, that's pretty much all we have confirmed.
We don't even confirm that the agency in charge of Anastasia's case even retrieved the car, let alone processed it.
And basically they still have zero physical evidence because this was a poor investigation from the start.
No kidding. A lack of evidence isn't stopping investigators, though, because they've set their sights on a confession from Byron.
That's the only thing they're going to be able to get.
There's literally nothing else. So detectives tap Kelly's phone lines, hoping she can get Byron on the phone.
And eventually, on June 5th, 2001, Byron picks up.
And we're going to play a snippet of their conversation that we got from Leah.
And fair warning, it's not great quality.
And on top of that, Byron sounds kind of muffled, but...
Here it is. Why, seriously, why did you have to kill her?
What was the whole big deal? Could you explain that to me?
Because I don't get it. Seriously. Justin's dead for no reason.
She's dead for no reason. It's just all f***ed up.
And for some reason, they're talking to me because you won't talk.
So I'm f***ed. And it makes me look horrible because everybody already knows that I'm a crackhead, that I'm a cokehead, that I'm an alcoholic.
And I don't remember if I try to talk to them, nothing's going to add up.
So, I mean, if you could seriously explain to me as to why you actually felt the need to kill her, then that would really help me feel better about the whole thing.
I mean, was there seriously any reason to all of this?
Off and off and off. So police think that that's a tacit admission, which is when someone indirectly admits something without saying it.
And police are like, by saying, we shouldn't talk about this, he's admitting that he did kill her.
That there's something to talk about. Or the thing to talk about is the thing she's saying.
But let's be honest, the audio quality alone leaves a lot to interpretation.
Like, does he actually say we should talk about this?
It's almost impossible. Like, I can see your face.
Like, you're like, I didn't consider that.
Once you think about it, it's impossible to put that out of your mind.
But police have made up their minds that he says shouldn't.
But I also do feel like someone who like.
If this truly is coming out of nowhere, right, like their original story is they she gets out of the car.
They all have like a normal night. I feel like if that's what happened, I'd be like, what are you talking about?
Not like we should or shouldn't talk about this.
I'd be like, where is this coming from? Right.
And I mean, even if his response is like, oddly, we shouldn't talk about this.
Maybe he's not talking specifically about the murder, right?
Maybe it's just like, we shouldn't talk about this incredibly traumatic thing that happened in our lives.
Fair. Yeah. But either way, police think that and Kelly's confession are enough.
And six days later, Byron's arrested in his home and charged with first degree murder and armed criminal action.
Dude, this is what I'm talking about. We see cases where, like, there's this huge circumstantial case and they're like, oh, police are not enough.
Prosecutors are not enough. Like, I get someone's telling you what happened and they were there.
But this doesn't feel like enough. I feel like I'm losing my mind.
Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing else. And even the public defender he gets to represent him knows the prosecution is reaching a little bit.
Yeah. Because in pretrial, the prosecutors asked to be allowed to discuss Byron's goth lifestyle and his obsession with sex. death it's like west memphis three like please they definitely want to use the tap phone call as their proof of admission and they have a clear objection to the defense's request to present kelly's medical records like the defense wants to show that kelly is essentially an unreliable witness with a substance use disorder and they're like no no we don't need any details about her or how we got here just what she's willing to say about the night and who did it so the All that gets put before a judge, and the judge decides that Kelly's medical records stay sealed.
That's not going to get brought up in court.
The recorded conversation is in. And some of the goth lifestyle info is out.
Which means some of it's also in. Byron's trial begins April 29th, 2002.
Kelly testifies, giving the same story she told police, that Byron is responsible for killing Anastasia.
Byron takes a stand in his own defense. Don't say that every day.
I know. And he maintains the same story he originally told police.
His defense calls Evelyn Case, Byron's mother, and she testifies that Byron got home at 10 p.m. that night.
And in the days after Anastasia's murder, Evelyn never felt that Kelly was acting afraid of Byron, and things seemed normal between the two.
She says Kelly called her after Byron got arrested and told her that she felt responsible too and that she should be in jail with him.
The jury deliberates for over three hours before coming back with a verdict.
They find Byron Case guilty of murder in the first degree and armed criminal action.
And the judge sentences Byron to two concurrent life terms.
And that's where this story could end. But Byron still claims his innocence.
In 2010, the Midwest Innocence Project looks into Byron's case.
Ultimately, they pass on taking it on. And we tried reaching out to them to ask why.
I was just going to say, why? But they never got back to us.
And it's actually a personal injury attorney named Brian Russell who stumbles upon the Free Byron Case website in 2019.
And he immediately goes down the rabbit hole.
He reads all the case files and court transcripts and decides to call Byron up and see if he wants a lawyer.
They have one meeting and Brian decides to take on the case to help clear Byron's name.
Leah interviewed Brian Russell for The Real Killer and he told her he wasn't even convinced Byron was innocent when he first offered to take on this case.
He just knew that he didn't get a fair trial.
But the more they talked and Brian got to know him, he says the more he became convinced of Byron's innocence.
And, like, I can't vouch for that. Our team reached out to Byron, but he said his attorneys didn't want him to talk to us.
Regardless, Brian and his team feel confident about their case, which is built not just on the things that they think went wrong and the lack of physical evidence against Byron.
They know that their burden of proof is much higher now that he's already been found guilty.
You don't have that, like... Not that I, you know, in some cases you never get the, like, presumption of innocence.
Yeah. Definitely not now. Yeah. But they don't have to prove if not Brian, then who.
But having an alternative suspect sure wouldn't hurt.
Yeah. And they put forward not one, not two, but three alternatives.
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First up is Justin. Turns out, Kelly herself wasn't even always consistent with her story about Byron being the killer.
Apparently, the night before Kelly went into rehab, she told her dad that Byron did it.
But while she was in rehab, she told her counselor Justin did it.
But she later said she only claimed that in rehab because by that point, Justin was already gone.
Police were thinking he did it then. And she thought he was just as guilty as Byron.
And by the way, prosecutors brought up her inconsistency at trial.
So it's not like this was... Yeah. This was not brand new information like after Byron's conviction.
And listen, like... Honestly, like there's things that don't piece together, but Justin makes more sense to me than Byron.
Well, and it could have been an accident, too.
Bob told police he heard secondhand that Byron had given Justin a loaded gun.
And Justin, not knowing it was loaded, aimed it at Anastasia and accidentally shot her.
Which is possibly why Justin felt guilty if he really did take his own life.
I also keep coming back to, like, in my mind, Justin didn't own the gun that killed Anastasia.
Otherwise, like, why go buy a new one? Still even going and buying one, like, if you all dumped it together, you could have just gone back and get that.
I don't know. Whatever. But the thing I don't understand is, like, if it really was Justin, like, why?
She's going back and forth. Like, she would just say Justin.
Like, there's no point in ever pointing the finger at Byron.
So, like, and he's, like, he's almost easier to point the finger at because he's not here.
Right. Byron's team said that Kelly had some sort of, like, grudge against him.
Like, I don't know her feelings right when it's happened, but before she came forward, apparently, like, he just cut off all contact.
I just have, like, a zillion questions. And, like, I keep coming back to his suicide, if that's what it really was.
Like... his death has to be involved, right?
Or like he has to know, he had to have known something more about what happened.
It sure feels that way because there's never been any other explanation for his death.
Like there was no suicide note. As far as I know, he didn't say anything to anyone before.
If they're even like suggesting that it was Justin, why didn't Byron just say that ever?
Like Byron's always, like you said on the stand, he's stuck to his original story about like going home and hanging out and nothing.
Like, Same way where I think it'd be easier for Kelly to point the finger at him, like, Justin is Byron's get-out-of-jail-free card.
And Byron's the one who's been on trial.
I don't know. They could have just walked into the police station after Justin died and said, look, he killed her, then he killed himself.
That doesn't make sense. But they don't.
They walk in from like day one and say she walked away and we never saw her again.
And like we also have the mechanic who saw her, right?
Right. So we saw the mechanic saw her get out of the car and start walking.
So, OK, let's just say Justin did it. Like we talked about earlier what the police were initially thinking of murder.
Suicide seems plausible. And clearly other people thought he did this.
Well, let me tell you. This is totally unrelated to this case, so bear with me.
I promise it comes back to our story. It's a short story.
In 2008, a woman named April Wilkins filed an appeal against her conviction for first-degree murder for shooting and killing her ex-fiancé Terry Carlton on April 28, 1998.
April claimed she killed Terry because she was experiencing intimate partner violence, and in her appeal...
She said one of the reasons she was so afraid of Terry was that he told her he had a nephew, Justin, that had recently killed his ex-girlfriend, a.k.a.
Anastasia. And Terry told her, quote, that got what she deserved and said that she was next.
And maybe this was a baseless threat Terry was throwing around to scare April.
Yeah, because also, like, it's just what everyone believed at the time.
Or maybe Justin should have been investigated more than he was.
Yeah, like investigating his death and processing his car, you mean.
Yeah, just those little things. But for lack of effort, because the evidence wouldn't have been there even if they went looking for it, they just have nothing solid to back that up.
Hmm. There is this little, it's not even a full theory, I'll call it a half theory, that pops up too when they're speculating.
It's one that Anastasia's dad, Bob, and her godfather seem to think is plausible.
That someone completely unknown, maybe someone in their friend group, maybe a total stranger, shot Anastasia, then shot Justin later to keep him quiet.
That maybe Justin's death could have been made to look like a suicide.
But to me, I mean, yes, I have so many questions about his death that don't make sense to me.
But to me, that only makes sense if we're back to Byron and Kelly.
Well, take Kelly out of the equation for a second.
Byron still says nothing happened. I think they're saying that what if it happened after they all stopped hanging out?
Again, not a lot of meat to this theory to grab onto.
And like, I mean, like, do we know anything about her other friends or like?
Ashley, we could spy on her about this for days.
But Justin is just the first alternative theory.
I brought up Anastasia's godfather. Let me introduce you to Patrick Rock.
He's another person Byron's team identified as someone worth looking into.
He runs Anastasia's memorial website, stasia.org, and he's close family friends with Bob.
Apparently, Anastasia was known to be comfortable enough to call him if she needed him.
And allegedly, she knew his number by heart.
The theory from Byron's team is that if Anastasia had gotten out of the car after her fight with Justin, then she would have needed a ride home.
And she could have called Patrick. We know that the DQ payphone is nearby, like I told you earlier.
Yeah, could have, would have, should have.
We don't have the records to show that she actually did, though.
Correct. And that doesn't even really feel like a solid theory to me.
Like, oh, she was close enough that she memorized his number.
Like, it's the 90s. Like, I still remember your home phone number.
You told us to be like the other day. Yeah.
I'm sure she had a lot of numbers memorized, not just his.
Like, she probably had Justin's memorized from the payphone.
She probably had Byron's. She probably had Kelly's.
Right. For me, and it seems like for you too, there's nothing there.
Yeah. Anastasia could have called anyone when slash if she got out of that car.
And despite what Byron's innocence team is trying to say, Patrick has never been named a suspect.
Our team reached out to him for a comment and he declined to talk to us.
Honestly, Patrick's most suspicious to me because of his friendship with Bob.
So, after Justin and Patrick, another alternative theory leads us back to Bob.
He's dad, Bob. Yes. He's been a grieving dad, a persistent advocate for justice for his daughter.
He's been relentless in making sure detectives were investigating her case and taking everything seriously.
But there's a few things that I left out.
Bob was also out here doing some... strange is too nice of a word...
He was straight up being suspicious. As I mentioned before, in the days after Anastasia was found, Bob walked up to some deputies and asked them to take him.
Where she was killed. Yes. And when they said to call the detective unit for that, Bob started going off about how his daughter was frisky and she would have put up a fight if she was attacked.
And the officers are like, okay. And then Bob leaves.
This is when he goes to like where she was shot at the graveyard.
Okay. Then, after detectives went to check on Bob and Bob realized they were there, he went off on them again.
He was like, what are you guys doing following me?
I'm not the bad guy. You guys should be out looking for the bad guy.
And this is when... He tells him that he hears the gunshot, right?
Yes. And he knew his daughter was dead. He claps his hands together and said, boom, there goes the neighborhood.
I don't know. But there's those interactions.
Plus him finding supposed skull fragments, remember?
Downright creepy. Right. Weird sus. Which is like, it makes me wonder, were they even skull fragments now?
Like, was he acting weird? Like, police were like, I'm not collecting this weird piece of plastic that you have.
Or did he have anything at all if they never even went to go get anything?
Right. And there's some things about Bob's past I haven't told you about yet either.
Betsy Owens, Anastasia's mother, talked to the police after Bob's home was searched.
I was wondering, like, she hasn't come up in the story.
So she and Bob had been divorced for about 10 years, and she told detectives that Bob's behaved inappropriately with a young child in his neighborhood.
It's noted in the police report that she says there were claims that he exposed himself to children and was being accused of molesting another child, but...
No police reports were made at the time of these alleged incidents, so nothing's done.
And they definitely should have done something about it, because today, Bob's serving a seven-year sentence in Missouri for statutory sodomy of a minor.
What? According to the Missouri Sex Offender Registry, his victim was a 15-year-old girl.
There's no indication that Bob abused his daughters.
Detectives asked Betsy as much. But she did tell them that if he was inappropriate with Anastasia, that could explain why Anastasia moved in with Justin for a little bit.
Wait, when did she move in with Justin? I thought she lived with her parents.
So I don't know when she lived with Justin, but Anastasia was for sure back living with Bob before she died.
And they had broke it up. So maybe she moved in with them and then when they broke up, moved back home.
Yeah, maybe. And looking back, they do a search of Bob's house or at least Anastasia's room there because I know they collected like hard drives and stuff.
But guess what they found on her bed? A stun gun.
A weapon. Yeah. Like, what's she protecting herself against?
Or, like, who from? Exactly. It doesn't seem like she was afraid of a stranger because, like, why not take that with you when you leave the house?
Yeah. To hang out in a cemetery at night.
Yes. Yeah. So then like it's at your home.
So are you keeping it to protect yourself from someone in your home?
So you said they collected the hard drive.
Did they find anything else in her room?
Or more specifically, like I'm wondering, we've got that note from Justin's hard drive.
Like did she write anything on hers? Did she keep a diary about like maybe stuff that was happening in the home?
Nothing's ever mentioned about interesting items of her digital stuff, and it doesn't seem like she journaled.
Bullshit. I'm sorry, but like you started this whole thing being like that she likes to go into the cemetery and like she wrote there and she like like those are the vibes and she was a writer or whatever, whatever.
She's writing these like long letters to Justin.
I keep thinking about like 1990s. I would bet the farm that she had a journal.
But what? It's not there or they just didn't collect it or what?
I wish I had answers on a lot of things, but that too.
So throughout the investigation, Bob just kept doing weird shit.
We got this huge police report packet from Leah with over 2,000 pages.
And there are so many emails from Bob. To who?
To police and police reports about Bob. In one of those reports, they wrote that Bob was rambling almost every time he talked to them.
I mean, literally, the police reports about Bob are endless.
In another report, almost six months after Anastasia's murder, Bob point blank asked the lead detective if he was a suspect.
And the detective said no one's been ruled out yet.
And a couple months later, Bob came back and was like, well, if you need more people to look at, I've got a list.
And this is absolutely absurd. But Bob gave detectives a list of 31 cars to look into with license plates and driver descriptions and everything.
From where? So he says the night he was searching for Anastasia, he parked at the South Gate to Mount Washington Cemetery and watched all 31 of these cars go by in the span of like 10 to 15 minutes.
And he's pretty sure that all those drivers either know what happened to Anastasia or were directly involved in her death.
Wait, he's doing this the night he's out looking for her?
Yeah. When he doesn't know anything's wrong yet.
That's what I'm saying. That makes no sense.
Right. Like, you're... Which and have you already heard the boom?
But if you heard the boom, you think she's dead.
Why aren't you going to look for her? Why are you just like taking down license plate numbers?
It like, no, I like I don't even know what to say because like that's so wild.
Yeah. And like it kind of feels like maybe they were he was like making a list that they wouldn't look at him.
Yeah. Like here's a list of all these. And also it's not even like it's it feels so weird to me because it's not like a list of names.
It's cars. It's cars and license plates where it's like, it's like I'm giving you a name.
I'm giving you a chore. And they all either know what happened or have something to do with it, is what he says.
Because you are... And what, like, what I think about... And he knows that from cars.
Because he was there. And, like, how many cases have you seen where, like, profilers talk about or, like, detectives talk about, like, someone placing themselves there?
Inserting themselves in the investigation.
And that... Well, inserting themselves like later on, but like when they talk to police, they're like, they put themselves at the scene when it happened.
They have a reason to be there that's not the crime itself.
It's weird. Yeah. So now knowing his criminal history and all of the suspicious things happening around him back in the 90s, it honestly just makes you question everything.
Like, it was a bad investigation from the start.
We know that, yes. But now I don't know if we'll ever get to the truth.
All that to say, despite him being one of the three possible alternatives Byron's lawyers suggest, Bob has never been named a suspect in Anastasia's case.
Our team reached out to him as well, but he declined to comment.
Regardless of what Byron's innocence team is trying to convey, in the eyes of the justice system and Anastasia's family and loved ones, including Bob and Patrick, the person responsible for Anastasia Whitbull-Fugan's death is behind bars.
But the investigation and claims of a tacit admission leave a lot to be desired.
The Jackson County Sheriff's Department is no longer investigating Anastasia's death.
Her case is closed. And from what we know, Byron has exhausted all of his appeals.
Wait, so that's it for him? Yeah. And something that strikes me is how easy it is for Anastasia's story to get lost amid all the theories and rumors and odd behavior.
Yeah. Like, we can't forget, this is her story.
She's at the heart of why we're telling it.
And at the end of the day, Anastasia was a young woman filled with so many emotions, and she got caught up in an emotionally volatile relationship, which is so easy to do as a teen.
She had her whole life ahead of her, and she was passionate about sharing those feelings through her writing and poetry.
But sadly, all of her future stories were cut short.
And I know we talked a bit about suicide in today's episode, so it's important for you or anyone you know who is thinking about suicide to be aware that emotional support can be reached by calling or texting the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
You can find all the source material for this episode at our website, CrimeJunkiePodcast.com.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.
And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
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